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Title: Modern French Philosophy: A Study Of The Development Since Comte
Author: J. Alexander Gunn
Release Date: June 09, 2002 [EBook #5246]
[Most recently updated: March 17, 2020]
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN FRENCH PHILOSOPHY ***
Modern French Philosophy
A study of the Development since Comte.
by J. Alexander Gunn, M.A., PH.D.
Fellow of the University of Liverpool; Lecturer in Psychology to the
Liverpool University Extension Board
WITH A FOREWORD BY
HENRI BERGSON
de l’Academie francaise et de l’Academie des
Sciences morales et politiques
T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
First published in 1922.
(All rights reserved)
TO
MY TEACHER
ALEXANDER MAIR
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL
AS A SMALL TOKEN OF ESTEEM
AND AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS INSTRUCTION
Contents
“Mais il n’y a pas que cette France, que cette France glorieuse, que cette
France révolutionnaire, cette France émancipatrice et initiatrice du genre
humain, que cette France d’une activité merveilleuse et comme on l’a dit, cette
France nourrie des idées générales du monde, il y a une autre France que je
n’aime pas moins, une autre France qui m’est encore plus chère, c’est la France
misérable, c’est la France vaincue et humiliée, c’est la France qui est
accablée, c’est la France qui traîne son boulet depuis quatorze siècles,
la France qui crie, suppliante vers la justice et vers la liberté, la France
que les despotes poussent constamment sur les champs de bataille, sous prétexte
de liberté, pour lui faire verser son sang par toutes les artères et par toutes
les veines, oh! cette France-là, je l’aime.”—GAMBETTA,
Discours, 29 September, 1872.
“Les jeunes gens de tous les pays du monde qui sont venus dans les campagnes de
France combattre pour la civilisation et le droit seront sans doute plus
disposés à y revenir, apres la guerre chercher la nourriture
intellectuelle. Il importe qu’ils soient assurés de l’y trouver, saine,
abondante et forte.”—M. D. PARODI, Inspecteur de l’Académie de Paris,
1919.
FOREWORD
Je serais heureux que le public anglais sût le bien que je pense du
livre de M. Gunn, sur la philosophie francaise depuis 1851. Le sujet choisi est
neuf, car il n’existe pas, à ma connaissance, d’ouvrage relatif à
toute cette période de la philosophie française. Le beau livre que M.
Parodi vient de publier en français traite surtout des vingt dernières
années de notre activité philosophique. M. Gunn, remontant jusqu’à
Auguste Comte, a eu raison de placer ainsi devant nous toute le seconde moitié
du siècle passé. Cette période de cinquante ans qui a précédée notre vingtième
siècle est d’une importance capitale. Elle constitue réellement notre
dix-neuvième siècle philosophique, car l’oeuvre même de Maine de Biran,
qui est antérieure, n’a été bien connue et étudiée qu’à ce moment, et la
plupart de nos idées philosophiques actuelles ont été élaborées pendant ces
cinquante ans.
Le sujet est d’ailleurs d’une complication extrême, en raison du
nombre et de la variété des doctrines, en raison surtout de la diversité des
questions entre lesquelles se sont partagés tant de penseurs. Dr. Gunn a su
ramener toutes ces questions à un petit nombre de problèmes essentiels :
la science, la liberté, le progrès, la morale, la religion. Cette division me
paraît heureuse. Elle répond bien, ce me semble, aux principales
préoccupations de la philosophie francaise. Elle a permis à l’auteur
d’être complet, tout en restant simple, clair, et facile à
suivre.
Elle présente, il est vrai, un inconvénient, en ce qu’elle morcelle la
doctrine d’un auteur en fragments dont chacun, pris à part, perd un peu
de sa vitalite et de son individualité. Elle risque ainsi de présenter comme
trop semblable à d’autres la solution que tel philosophe a donnée de tel
problème, solution qui, replacée dans l’ensemble de la doctrine,
apparaîtrait comme propre à ce penseur, originale et plus forte.
Mais cet inconvénient était inévitable et l’envers de l’avantage que je
signalais plus haut, celui de l’ordre, de la continuité et de la clarté.
Le travail du Dr. Gunn m’apparaît comme tout à fait distingué.
Il témoigne d’une information singulièrement étendue, précise et sûre.
C’est l’oeuvre d’un esprit d’une extrême souplesse, capable de
s’assimiler vite et bien la pensée des philosophes, de classer les idées dans
leur ordre d’importance, de les exposer méthodiquement et les apprécier
à leur juste valeur.
[These pages are a revised extract from the more formal Rapport which
was presented by M. Bergson to the University of Liverpool].
PREFACE
This work is the fruit of much reading and research done in Paris at the
Sorbonne and Bibliothèque nationale. It is, substantially, a revised form of
the thesis presented by the writer to the University of Liverpool for the
degree of Doctor in Philosophy, obtained in 1921. The author is indebted,
therefore, to the University for permission to publish. More especially must he
record his deep gratitude to the French thinkers who gave both stimulus and
encouragement to him during his sojourn in Paris. Foremost among these is M.
Henri Bergson, upon whose rapport the Doctorate was conferred, and who
has expressed his appreciation of the work by contributing a Foreword for
publication.
Mention must also be made of the encouragement given by the late M. Emile
Boutroux and by the eminent editor of the well-known Revue de Métaphysique
et de Morale, M. Xavier Léon, a leading spirit in the Société de
Philosophie, whose meetings the writer was privileged to attend by
invitation. Then MM. Brunschvicg, Levy-Bruhl, Lalande, Rey and Lenoir, from
time to time discussed the work with him and he must record his appreciation of
their kindness.
To Professor Mair of Liverpool is due the initial suggestion, and it has been
felt a fitting tribute to his supervision, criticism, encouragement and
sympathy that this book should be respectfully dedicated to him by one of his
grateful pupils. In the labour of dealing with the proofs, the writer has to
acknowledge the co-operation of Miss M. Linn and Mr. J. E. Turner, M.A.
* * * * * * * * *
The method adopted in this history has been deliberately chosen for its
usefulness in emphasising the development of ideas. A purely chronological
method has not been followed. The biographical system has likewise been
rejected. The history of the development of thought centres round problems, and
it progresses in relation to these problems. The particular manner in which the
main problems presented themselves to the French thinkers of the second half of
the nineteenth century was largely determined by the events and ideas which
marked the period from 1789 to 1851. For this reason a chapter has been devoted
to Antecedents. Between the Revolution and the coup d’état of Napoleon
III., four distinct lines of thought are discernible. Then the main currents
from the year 1851 down to 1921 are described, with special reference to the
development of the main problems. The reconciliation of science and
conscience proved to be the main general problem, which became more
definitely that of Freedom. This in itself is intimately bound up with the
doctrines of progress, of history, of ethics and religion. These topics are
discussed in a manner which shows their bearing upon each other. The conclusion
aims at displaying the characteristics of French thought which reveal
themselves in the study of these great problems. Its vitality, concreteness,
clearness, brilliance and precision are noted and a comparison made between
French thought and German philosophy.
From a general philosophical standpoint few periods could be so fascinating.
Few, if any, could show such a complete revolution of thought as that witnessed
since the year 1851. To bring this out clearly is the main object of the
present book. It is intended to serve a double purpose. Primarily, it aims at
being a contribution to the history of thought which will provide a definite
knowledge of the best that has been said and thought among philosophers in
France during the last seventy years. Further, it is itself an appeal for
serious attention to be given to French philosophy. This is a field which has
been comparatively neglected by English students, so far as the nineteenth
century is concerned, and this is especially true of our period, which is
roughly that from Comte to Boutroux (who passed away last month) and Bergson
(who has this year resigned his professorship). It is the earnest desire of the
writer to draw both philosophical students and lovers of France and its
literature to a closer study and appreciation of modern French philosophy.
Emotion and sentiment are inadequate bases for an entente which is to be
really cordiale between any two peoples. An understanding of their
deepest thoughts is also necessary and desirable. Such an understanding is,
after all, but a step towards that iternationalisation of thought, that common
fund of human culture and knowledge, which sets itself as an ideal before the
nations of the world. La philosophie n’a pas de patrie! Les idées sont
actuellement les forces internationales.
J. A. G.
THE UNIVERSITY,
LIVERPOOL,
December, 1921
CHAPTER I
(INTRODUCTORY)
ANTECEDENTS
HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE MAIN CURRENTS FROM THE REVOLUTION OF 1789 UP TO 1851.
After the Revolution—The Traditionalists: Chateaubuand, De Bonald, De
Maistre, Lamennais, Lacordaire
Main Currents:
1. Maine de Biran.
2. The Eclectics: Cousin, Jouffroy.
3. The Socialists: Saint-Simon, Fourier and Cabal, Proudhon and Blanc.
4.Positivism: Auguste Comte.
CHAPTER I
ANTECEDENTS
This work deals with the great French thinkers since the time of Auguste Comte,
and treats, under various aspects, the development of thought in relation to
the main problems which confronted these men. In the commencement of such an
undertaking we are obliged to acknowledge the continuity of human thought, to
recognise that it tends to approximate to an organic whole, and that,
consequently, methods resembling those of surgical amputation are to be
avoided. We cannot absolutely isolate one period of thought. For this reason a
brief survey of the earlier years is necessary in order to orient the approach
to the period specially placed in the limelight, namely 1851-1921.
In the world of speculative thought and in the realm of practical politics we
find reflected, at the opening of the century, the work of the French
Revolutionaries on the one hand, and that of Immanuel Kant on the other.
Coupled with these great factors was the pervading influence of the
Encyclopædists and of the thinkers of the Enlightenment. These two groups of
influences, the one sudden and in the nature of a shock to political and
metaphysical thought, the other quieter but no less effective, combined to
produce a feeling of instability and of dissatisfaction at the close of the
eighteenth century. A sense of change, indeed of resurrection, filled the minds
and hearts of those who saw the opening of the nineteenth century. The old
aristocracy and the monarchy in France had gone, and in philosophy the old
metaphysic had received a blow at the hands of the author of the Three
Critiques.
No better expression was given to the psychological state of France at this
time than that of Alfred de Musset in his Confession d’un Enfant du
Siècle. Toute la maladie du siècle présent (he wrote) vient de
deux causes; le peuple qui a passé par ’93 et par 1814 porte au cœur deux
blessures. Tout ce qui était n’est plus; tout ce qui sera n’est pas encore. Ne
cherchez ailleurs le secret de nos maux.[1]
De Musset was right, the whole course of the century was marked by conflict
between two forces—on the one hand a tendency to reaction and
conservatism, on the other an impulse to radicalism and revolution.
It is true that one group of thinkers endeavoured, by a perfectly natural
reaction, to recall their fellow-countrymen, at this time of unrest, back to
the doctrines and traditions of the past, and tried to find in the faith of the
Christian Church and the practice of the Catholic religion a rallying-point.
The monarchy and the Church were eulogised by Chateaubriand, while on the more
philosophical side efforts on behalf of traditionalism were made very nobly by
De Bonald and Joseph de Maistre. While they represented the old aristocracy and
recalled the theocracy and ecclesiasticism of the past by advocating reaction
and Ultramontanism, Lamennais attempted to adapt Catholicism to the new
conditions, only to find, as did Renan later, that “one cannot argue with a bar
of iron.” Not the brilliant appeals of a Lacordaire, who thundered from Notre
Dame, nor the modernism of a Lamennais, nor the efforts in religious philosophy
made by De Maistre, were, however, sufficient to meet the needs of the time.
The old traditions and the old dogmas did not offer the salvation they
professed to do. Consequently various groups of thinkers worked out solutions
satisfactory to themselves and which they offered to others. We can distinguish
clearly four main currents, the method of introspection and investigation of
the inner life of the soul, the adoption of a spiritualist philosophy upon an
eclectic basis, the search for a new society after the manner of the socialists
and, lastly, a positive philosophy and religion of humanity. These four
currents form the historical antecedents of our period and to a brief survey of
them we now turn.
* * * * * * * * *
I
To find the origin of many of the tendencies which appear prominently in the
thought of the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly those
displayed by the new spiritualistic philosophy (which marked the last thirty
years of the century), we must go back to the period of the Revolution, to
Maine de Biran (1766-1824)—a unique and original thinker who laid the
foundations of modern French psychology and who was, we may note in passing, a
contemporary of Chateaubriand. A certain tone of romanticism marks the work of
both the literary man and the philosopher. Maine de Biran was not a thinker who
reflected upon his own experiences in retreat from the world. Born a Count, a
Lifeguardsman to Louis XVI. at the Revolution, and faithful to the old
aristocracy, he was appointed, at the Restoration, to an important
administrative position, and later became a deputy and a member of the State
Council. His writings were much greater in extent than is generally thought,
but only one important work appeared in publication during his lifetime. This
was his treatise, or mémoire, entitled Habitude, which appeared
in 1803. This work well illustrates Maine de Biran’s historical position in the
development of French philosophy. It came at a tome when attention and
interest, so far as philosophical problems were concerned, centred round two
“foci.” These respective centres are indicated by Destutt de Tracy,[2] the disciple of Condillac on the one hand, and by
Cabanis[3] on the other. Both were
“ideologues” and were ridiculed by Napoleon who endeavoured to lay much blame
upon the philosophers. We must notice, however, this difference. While the
school of Condillac,[4] influenced by
Locke, endeavoured to work out a psychology in terms of abstractions, Cabanis,
anxious to be more concrete, attempted to interpret the life of the mind by
reference to physical and physiological phenomena.
It is the special merit of De Biran that he endeavoured, and that successfully,
to establish both the concreteness and the essential spirituality of the inner
life. The attitude and method which he adopted became a force in freeing
psychology, and indeed philosophy in general, from mere play with abstractions.
His doctrines proved valuable, too, in establishing the reality and
irreducibility of the mental or spiritual nature of man.
Maine de Biran took as his starting-point a psychological fact, the reality of
conscious effort. The self is active rather than speculative; the self is
action or effort—that is to say, the self is, fundamentally and
primarily, will. For the Cartesian formula Cogito, ergo sum, De Biran
proposed to substitute that of Volo, ergo sum. He went on to maintain
that we have an internal and immediate perception of this effort of will
through which we realise, at one and the same time, our self in its fullest
activity and the resistance to its operations. In such effort we realise
ourselves as free causes and, in spite of the doctrine of physical determinism,
we realise in ourselves the self as a cause of its own volitions. The greater
the resistance or the greater the effort, the more do we realise ourselves as
being free and not the absolute victims of habit. Of this freedom we have an
immediate consciousness, it is une donnée immédiate de la conscience.
This freedom is not always realised, for over against the tendency to action we
must set the counter-tendency to passivity. Between these two exists, in
varying degrees of approach to the two extremes, habitude. Our inner
life is seen by the psychologist as a field of conflict between the sensitive
and the reflective side of our nature. It is this which gives to the life of
this homo duplex all the elements of struggle and tragedy. In the
desires and the passions, says Maine de Biran, the true self is not seen. The
true self appears in memory, reasoning and, above all, in will.
Such, in brief, is the outline of De Biran’s psychology. To his two stages,
vie sensitive and vie active (ou réflexive), he added a
third, la vie divine. In his religious psychology he upheld the great
Christian doctrines of divine love and grace as against the less human attitude
of the Stoics. He still insists upon the power of will and action and is an
enemy of the religious vice of quietism. In his closing years De Biran penned
his ideas upon our realisation of the divine love by intuition. His intense
interest in the inner life of the spirit gives De Biran’s Journal Intime
a rank among the illuminating writings upon religious psychology.
Maine de Biran was nothing if not a psychologist. The most absurd statement
ever made about him was that he was “the French Kant.” This is very misleading,
for De Biran’s genius showed itself in his psychological power and not in
critical metaphysics. The importance of his work and his tremendous influence
upon our period, especially upon the new spiritualism, will be apparent. Indeed
he himself foresaw the great possibilities which lay open to philosophy along
the lines he laid down. “Qui sait,” he remarked,[5] “tout ce que peut la réflection concentrée et
s’il n’y a pas un nouveau monde intérieur qui pourra être découvert un
jour par quelque ‘Colomb métaphysicien.’” With Maine de Biran began the
movement in French philosophy which worked through the writings of Ravaisson,
Lachelier, Guyau, Boutroux and particularly Bergson. A careful examination of
the philosophy of this last thinker shows how great is his debt to Maine de
Biran, whose inspiration he warmly acknowledges.
But it is only comparatively recently that Maine de Biran has come to his own
and that his real power and influence have been recognised. There are two
reasons for this, firstly the lack of publication of his writings, and secondly
his being known for long only through the work of Cousin and the Eclectics, who
were imperfectly acquainted with his work. Upon this school of thought he had
some little influence which was immediate and personal, but Cousin, although he
edited some of his unpublished work, failed to appreciate its originality and
value.
So for a time De Biran’s influence waned when that of Cousin himself faded.
Maine de Biran stands quite in a different category from the Eclectics, as a
unique figure at a transition period, the herald of the best that was to be in
the thought of the century. Cousin and the Eclectic school, however, gained the
official favour, and eclecticism was for many years the “official philosophy.”
II
This Eclectic School was due to the work of various thinkers, of whom we may
cite Laromiguière (1756-1837), who marks the transition from Condillac,
Royer-Collard (1763-1845), who, abandoning Condillac, turned for inspiration to
the Scottish School (particularly to Reid), Victor Cousin (1792-1867), Jouffroy
(1796-1842) and Paul Janet (1823-1899), the last of the notable eclectics. Of
these “the chief” was Cousin. His personality dominated this whole school of
thought, his ipse dixit was the criterion of orthodoxy, an orthodoxy
which we must note was supported by the powers of officialdom.
He rose from the Ecole Normale Supérieure to a professorship at the Sorbonne,
which he held from the Restoration (1815 to 1830), with a break of a few years
during which his course was suspended. These years he spent in Germany, to
which country attention had been attracted by the work of Madame de Staël,
De l’Allemagne (1813). From 1830 to the beginning of our period (1851)
Cousin, as director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, as a pair de France
and a minister of state, organised and controlled the education of his country.
He thus exercised a very great influence over an entire generation of
Frenchmen, to whom he propounded the doctrines of his spiritualism.
His teaching was marked by a strong reaction against the doctrines of the
previous century, which had given such value to the data of sense. Cousin
abhorred the materialism involved in these doctrines, which he styled une
doctrine désolante, and he endeavoured to raise the dignity and conception
of man as a spiritual being. In the Preface to his Lectures of 1818, Du
Vrai, du Beau et du Bien (Edition of 1853), published first in 1846, he
lays stress upon the elements of his philosophy, which he presents as a true
spiritualism, for it subordinates the sensory and sensual to the spiritual. He
upholds the essentially spiritual nature of man, his liberty, moral
responsibility and obligation, the dignity of human virtue, disinterestedness,
charity, justice and beauty. These fruits of the spirit reveal, Cousin claimed,
a God who is both the author and the ideal type of humanity, a Being who is not
indifferent to the welfare and happiness of his creatures. There is a vein of
romanticism about Cousin, and in him may be seen the same spirit which, on the
literary side, was at work in Hugo, Lamartine and De Vigny.
Cousin’s philosophy attached itself rather to the Scottish school of “common
sense” than to the analytic type of doctrine which had prevailed in his own
country in the previous century. To this he added much from various sources,
such as Schelling and Hegel among the moderns, Plato and the Alexandrians among
the ancients. In viewing the history of philosophy, Cousin advocated a division
of systems into four classes—sensualism, idealism, scepticism and
mysticism. Owing to the insufficiency of his vérités de sens commun he
was prone to confuse the history of philosophy with philosophy itself. There is
perhaps no branch of science or art so intimately bound up with its own history
as is philosophy, but we must beware of substituting an historical survey of
problems for an actual handling of those problems themselves. Cousin, however,
did much to establish in his native land the teaching of the history of
philosophy.
His own aim was to found a metaphysic spiritual in character, based upon
psychology. While he did not agree with the system of Kant, he rejected the
doctrines of the empiricists and set his influence against the materialistic
and sceptical tendencies of his time. Yet he cannot be excused from
“opportunism” not only in politics but in thought. In order to retain his
personal influence he endeavoured to present his philosophy as a sum of
doctrines perfectly consistent with the Catholic faith. This was partly, no
doubt, to counteract the work and influence of that group of thinkers already
referred to as Traditionalists, De Bonald, De Maistre and Lamennais. Cousin’s
efforts in this direction, however, dissatisfied both churchmen and
philosophers and gave rise to the remark that his teaching was but une
philosophie de convenance. We must add too that the vagueness of his
spiritual teaching was largely responsible for the welcome accorded by many
minds to the positivist teaching of Auguste Comte.
While Maine de Biran had a real influence upon the thought of our period
1851-1921, Cousin stands in a different relation to subsequent thought, for
that thought is largely characterised by its being a reaction against
eclecticism. Positivism rose as a direct revolt against it, the neo-critical
philosophy dealt blows at both, while Ravaisson, the initiator of the
neo-spiritualism, upon whom Cousin did not look very favourably, endeavoured to
reorganise upon a different footing, and on sounder principles, free from the
deficiencies which must always accompany eclectic thought, those ideas and
ideals to which Cousin in his spiritualism had vaguely indicated his loyalty.
It is interesting to note that Cousin’s death coincides in date with the
foundation of the neo-spiritual philosophy by Ravaisson’s celebrated manifesto
to idealists, for such, as we shall see, was his Rapport sur la Philosophie
au Dix-neuvième Siècle (1867). Cousin’s spiritualism had a notable
influence upon several important men—e.g., Michelet and his friend Edgar
Quinet, and more indirectly upon Renan. The latter spoke of him in warm terms
as un excitateur de ma pensée.[6]
Among Cousin’s disciples one of the most prominent was Jouffroy of the Collège
de France. The psychological interest was keen in his work, but his Mélanges
philosophiques (1883) showed him to be occupied with the problem of human
destiny. Paul Janet was a noble upholder of the eclectic doctrine or older
spiritualism, while among associates and tardy followers must be mentioned
Gamier, Damiron, Franke, Caro and Jules Simon.
III
We have seen how, as a consequence of the Revolution and of the cold,
destructive, criticism of the eighteenth century, there was a demand for
constructive thought. This was a desire common not only to the Traditionalists
but to De Biran and Cousin. They aimed at intellectual reconstruction. While,
however, there were some who combated the principles of the Revolution, as did
the Traditionalists, while some tried to correct and to steady those principles
(as De Biran and Cousin), there were others who endeavoured to complete them
and to carry out a more rigorous application of the Revolutionary watchwords,
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. The Socialists (and later
Comte) aimed at not merely intellectual, but social reconstruction.
The Revolution and the War had shown men that many changes could be produced in
society in a comparatively short time. This encouraged bold and imaginative
spirits. Endeavours after better things, after new systems and a new order of
society, showed themselves. The work of political philosophers attempted to
give expression to the socialist idea of society. For long there had been
maintained the ecclesiastical conception of a perfect social order in another
world. It was now thought that humanity would be better employed, not in
imagining the glories of a “hereafter,” but in “tilling its garden,” in
striving to realise here on earth something of that blessed fellowship and
happy social order treasured up in heaven. This is the dominant note of
socialism, which is closely bound up at its origin, not only with political
thought, but with humanitarianism and a feeling essentially religious. Its
progress is a feature of the whole century.
The most notable expression of the new socialistic idea was that of Count Henri
de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), a relative of the celebrated Duke. He had great
confidence in the power of science as an instrument for social reconstruction,
and he took over from a medical man, Dr. Burdin, the notions which, later on,
Auguste Comte was to formulate into the doctrines of Positivism. Saint-Simon’s
influence showed itself while the century was young, his first work Lettres
d’un Habitant de Genève appearing in 1803. In this he outlined a scheme for
placing the authoritative power of the community, not in the hands of Church
and State, but in a freely elected body of thinkers and artistes. He
then endeavoured to urge the importance of order in society, as a counterpart
to the order erected by science in the world of knowledge. To this end was
directed his Introduction aux Travaux scientifiques du Dix-neuvième
Siècle (1807-8). He also indicated the importance for social welfare of
abandoning the preoccupation with an imaginary heaven, and pointed out that the
more social and political theory could be emancipated from the influence of
theological dogmas the better. At the same time he quite recognised the
importance of religious beliefs to a community, and his sociological view of
religion foreshadowed Guyau’s study, an important work which will claim our
attention in due course.
In 1813, Saint-Simon published his Mémoire sur la Science de l’Homme, in
which he laid down notions which were the germ of Auguste Comte’s Law of the
Three Stages. With the peace which followed the Battle of Waterloo, a
tremendous stimulus was given in France to industrial activity, and Saint-Simon
formulated his motto “All by industry and all for industry.” Real power, he
showed, lay not in the hands of governments or government agents, but with the
industrial class. Society therefore should be organised in the manner most
favourable to the working class. Ultimate economic and political power rests
with them. These ideas he set forth in L’Industrie, 1817-18, La
Politique, 1819, L’Organisateur, 1819-30, Le Système
industriel, 1821-22, Le Catéchisme des Industriels, 1822-24. Since
1817 among his fellow- workers were now Augustin Thierry and young Auguste
Comte, his secretary, the most important figure in the history of the first
half of the century.
Finding that exposition and reasoned demonstration of his ideas were not
sufficient, Saint-Simon made appeal to sentiment by his Appel aux
Philanthropes, a treatise on human brotherhood and solidarity. This he
followed up in 1825 by his last book, published the year of his death, Le
Nouveau Christianisme. This book endeavoured to outline a religion which
should prove itself capable of reorganising society by inculcating the
brotherhood of man in a more effective manner than that of the Christian
Church. Fraternité was the watchword he stressed, and he placed women on
an equal political and social footing with men. He set forth the grave
deficiencies of the Christian doctrines as proclaimed by Catholic and
Protestant alike. Both are cursed by the sin of individualism, the virtue of
saving one’s own soul, while no attempt at social salvation is made. Both
Catholics and Protestants he labelled vile heretics, inasmuch as they have
turned aside from the social teaching of Christianity. If we are to love our
neighbour as ourselves we must as a whole community work for the betterment of
our fellows socially, by erecting a form of society more in accord with
Christian principles. We must strive to do it here and now, and not sit piously
getting ready for the next world. We must not think it religious to despise the
body or material welfare. God manifests Himself as matter and spirit, so
Religion must not despise economics but rather unite industry and science as
Love unites spirit and matter. Eternal Life, of which Christianity makes so
much, is not to be sought, argued Saint-Simon, in another world, but here and
now in the love and service of our brothers, in the uplift of humanity as a
whole.
Saint-Simon believed in a fated progress and an inevitable betterment of the
condition of the working classes. The influence of Hegel’s view of history and
Condorcet’s social theories is apparent in some of his writings. His insistence
upon organisation, social authority and the depreciative view of liberty which
he held show well how he was the real father of many later doctrines and of
applications of these doctrines, as for example by Lenin in the Soviet system
of Bolshevik Russia. Saint-Simon foreshadowed the dictatorship of the
proletariat, although his scheme of social organisation involved a triple
division of humanity into intellectuals, artists and industrials. Many of his
doctrines had a definite communistic tendency. Among them we find indicated the
abolition of all hereditary rights of inheritance and the distribution of
property is placed, as in the communist programme, in the hands of the
organising authority. Saint-Simon had a keen insight into modern social
conditions and problems. He stressed the economic inter-relationships and
insisted that the world must be regarded as “one workshop.” A statement of the
principles of the Saint- Simonist School, among whom was the curious character
Enfantin, was presented to the Chambre des Députés in the critical year
1830. The disciples seem to have shown a more definite communism than their
master. The influence of Saint-Simon, precursor of both socialism and
positivism, had considerable influence upon the social philosophy of the whole
century. It only diminished when the newer type of socialist doctrine appeared,
the so-called “scientific” socialism of Marx and Engels. Saint-Simon’s impulse,
however, acted powerfully upon the minds of most of the thinkers of the
century, especially in their youth. Renouvier and Renan were fired with some of
his ideas. The spirit of Saint-Simon expressed itself in our period by
promoting an intense interest in philosophy as applied to social problems.
Saint-Simon was not, however, the only thinker at this time with a social
programme to offer. In contrast to his scheme we have that of Fourier
(1772-1837) who endeavoured to avoid the suppression of liberty involved in the
organisation proposed by Saint-Simon.
The psychology of Fourier was peculiar and it coloured his ethical and social
doctrine. He believed that the evils of the world were due to the repression of
human passions. These in themselves, if given liberty of expression, would
prove harmonious. As Newton had propounded the law of the universal attraction
of matter, Fourier endeavoured to propound the law of attraction between human
beings. Passion and desire lead to mutual attraction; the basis of society is
free association.
Fourier’s Traité de l’Association domestique et agricole (1822), which
followed his Théorie des Quatre Mouvements (1808), proposed the
formation of associations or groups, phalanges, in which workers unite
with capital for the self-government of industry. He, like Saint- Simon,
attacks idlers, but the two thinkers look upon the capitalist manager as a
worker. The intense class- antagonism of capitalist and labourer had not yet
formulated itself and was not felt strongly until voiced on behalf of the
proletariat by Proudhon and Marx. Fourier’s proposals were those of a
bourgeois business man who knew the commercial world intimately, who
criticised it and condemned the existing system of civilisation. Various
experiments were made to organise communities based upon his phalanges.
Cabet, the author of Icaria (1840) and Le nouveau Christianisme,
was a further power in the promotion of socialism and owed not a little of his
inspiration to Robert Owen.
The most interesting and powerful of the early socialist philosophers is
undoubtedly Proudhon (1809- 1865), a striking personality, much misunderstood.
While Saint-Simon, a count, came from the aristocracy, Fourier from the
bourgeoisie, Proudhon was a real son of the people, a mouthpiece of the
proletariat. He was a man of admirable mental energy and learning, which he had
obtained solely by his own efforts and by a struggle with poverty and misery.
Earnest and passionate by nature, he yet formulated his doctrines with more
sanity and moderation than is usually supposed. Labels of “atheist” and
“anarchist” have served well to misrepresent him. Certainly two of his
watchwords were likely enough to raise hostility in many quarters. “God,” he
said, “is evil,” “Property is theft.” This last maxim was the subject of his
book, published in 1840, Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (ou, Recherches
sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement) to which his answer was
“C’est le vol!” Proudhon took up the great watchword of Egalité,
and had a passion for social justice which he based on “the right to the whole
product of labour.” This could only come by mutual exchange, fairly and freely.
He distinguished between private “property” and individual “possession.” The
latter is an admitted fact and is not to be abolished; what he is anxious to
overthrow is private “property,” which is a toll upon the labour of others and
is therefore ultimately and morally theft. He hated the State for its support
of the “thieves,” and his doctrines are a philosophy of anarchy. He further
enunciated them in Système des Contradictions économiques (1846) and
De la Justice (1858). In 1848 he was elected a député and,
together with Louis Blanc and Pierre Leroux, figured in the Revolution of 1848.
Blanc was a man of action, who had a concrete scheme for transition from the
capitalist régime to the socialist state. He believed in the organisation of
labour, universal suffrage and a new distribution of wealth, but he disapproved
strongly of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of violent revolution.
Proudhon expressed his great admiration for Blanc.
The work of both of these men is a contradiction to the assertion put forward
by the Marxian school that socialist doctrine was merely sentimental, utopian
and “unscientific” prior to Marx. Many of the views of Proudhon and Blanc were
far more “scientific” than those of Marx, because they were closer to facts.
Proudhon differed profoundly from Marx in his view of history in which he saw
the influence of ideas and ideals, as well as the operation of purely economic
factors. To the doctrine of a materialistic determination of history Proudhon
rightly opposes that of a spiritual determination, by the thoughts and ideals
of men.[7] The true revolution Proudhon and Blanc
maintained can come only through the power of ideas.
All these early socialist thinkers had this in common: they agreed that purely
economic solutions would not soothe the ills of society, but that moral,
religious and philosophic teaching must accompany, or rather precede, all
efforts towards social reform. The earliest of them, Saint-Simon, had asserted
that no society, no system of civilisation, can endure if its spiritual
principles and its economic organisation are in direct contradiction. When
brotherly love on the one hand and merciless competition on the other are
equally extolled, then hypocrisy, unrest and conflict are inevitable.
IV
The rise of positivism ranks with the rise of socialism as a movement of
primary importance. Both were in origin nearer to one another than they now
appear to be. We have seen how Saint-Simon was imbued with a spirit of social
reform, a desire to reorganise human society. This desire Auguste Comte
(1798-1857) shared; he felt himself called to it as a sacred work, and he
extolled his “incomparable mission.” He lamented the anarchical state of the
world and contrasted it with the world of the ancients and that of the Middle
Ages. The harmony and stability of mediaeval society were due, Comte urged, to
the spiritual power and unity of the Catholic Church and faith. The liberty of
the Reformation offers no real basis for society, it is the spirit of criticism
and of revolution. The modern world needs a new spiritual power. Such was
Comte’s judgment upon the world of his time. Where in the modern world could
such a new organising power be found? To this question Comte gave an answer
similar to that of Saint-Simon: he turned to science. The influence of
Saint-Simon is here apparent, and we must note the personal relations between
the two men. In 1817 Comte became secretary to Saint-Simon, and became
intimately associated with his ideas and his work. Comte recognised, with his
master, the supreme importance of establishing, at the outset, the relations
actually obtaining and the relations possible between science and political
organisation. This led to the publication, in 1822, of a treatise, Plan des
Travaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la Société, which
unfortunately led to a quarrel between the two friends, and finally, in 1824,
to a definite rupture by which Comte seems to have been embittered and made
rather hostile to his old master and to have assumed an ungenerous
attitude.[8] Comte, however, being a proud and
ambitious spirit, was perhaps better left alone to hew out his own path. In him
we have one of the greatest minds of modern France, and his doctrine of
positivism is one of the dominating features of the first half of the century.
His break with Saint-Simon showed his own resources; he had undoubtedly a finer
sense of the difficulties of his reforming task than had Saint-Simon; moreover,
he possessed a scientific knowledge which his master lacked. Such equipment he
needed in his ambitious task, and it is one of the chief merits of Comte that
he attempted so large a project as the Positive Philosophy endeavoured
to be.
This philosophy was contained in his Cours de Philosophie positive
(1830-1842), which he regarded as the theoretic basis of a reforming political
philosophy. One of the most interesting aspects of this work, however, is its
claim to be a positive philosophy. Had not Comte accepted the
Saint-Simonist doctrine of a belief in science as the great future power in
society? How then comes it that he gives us a “philosophie positive” in
the first place and not, as we might expect, a “science positive”?
Comte’s answer to this is that science, no less than society itself, is
disordered and stands in need of organisation. The sciences have proceeded to
work in a piecemeal fashion and are unable to present us with une vue
d’ensemble. It is the rôle of philosophy to work upon the data
presented by the various sciences and, without going beyond these data, to
arrange them and give us an organic unity of thought, a synthesis, which shall
produce order in the mind of man and subsequently in human society.
The precise part to be played by philosophy is determined by the existing state
of scientific knowledge in the various departments and so depends upon the
general stage of intelligence which humanity has reached. The intellectual
development of humanity was formulated generally by Comte in what is known as
“The Law of the Three Stages,” probably that part of his doctrine which is best
known and which is most obvious. “The Law of the Three Stages” merely sets down
the fact that in the race and in the individual we find three successive
stages, under which conceptions are formed differently. The first is the
theological or fictitious stage, in which the explanation of things is referred
to the operations of divine agency. The second is the metaphysical or abstract
stage when, for divinities, abstract principles are substituted. In the third,
the scientific or positive stage, the human mind has passed beyond a belief in
divine agencies or metaphysical abstractions to a rational study of the
effective laws of phenomena. The human spirit here encounters the real, but it
abstains from pretensions to absolute knowledge; it does not theorise about the
beginning or the end of the universe or, indeed, its absolute nature; it takes
only into consideration facts within human knowledge. Comte laid great emphasis
upon the necessity of recognising the relativity of all things. All is
relative; this is the one absolute principle. Our knowledge, he insisted
(especially in his Discours sur l’Esprit positif, 1844, which forms a
valuable introduction to his thought as expressed in his larger works), is
entirely relative to our organisation and our situation. Relativity, however,
does not imply uncertainty. Our knowledge is indeed relative and never
absolute, but it grows to a greater accord with reality. It is this passion for
“accord with reality” which is characteristic of the scientific or positivist
spirit.
The sciences are themselves relative and much attention is given by Comte to
the proper classification of the sciences. He determines his hierarchy by
arranging them in the order in which they have themselves completed the three
stages and arrived at positivity. Mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
biology and sociology are his arrangement. This last named has not yet arrived
at the final stage; it is but a science in the making. Comte, indeed, himself
gives it its name and founds it as the science of society, science applied to
politics, as was first indicated in his scheme of work and early ideas of
reform.
Comte strongly insists upon the social aspect of all knowledge and all action.
He even goes to the extent of regarding the individual man as an abstraction;
for him the real being is the social being, Humanity. The study of human
society has a double aspect, which is also a feature of the other sciences. As
in biology there is the study of anatomy on the one hand and of physiology on
the other, so in sociology we must investigate both the laws which govern the
existence of a society and those which control its movements. The distinction
is, in short, that of the static and the dynamic, and it embraces in
sociological study the important conceptions of order and of progress. Comte
very rightly stressed the idea of progress as characteristic of modern times,
but he lamented its being divorced from that of order. He blamed the
conservative view of order as responsible for promoting among “progressives”
the spirit of anarchy and revolution. A positive sociology would, Comte
maintained, reconcile a true order, which does not exclude change, with real
progress, a movement which is neither destructive nor capricious. Comte here
owes a debt in part to Montesquieu and largely to Condorcet, whose Esquisse
d’un Tableau historique des Progrès de l’Esprit humain (1795) did much to
promote serious reflection upon the question of progress.
We have already noted Comte’s intense valuation of Humanity as a whole as a
Supreme Being. In his later years, notably after 1845, when he met his
“Beatrice” in the person of Clotilde de Vaux, he gave to his doctrines a
sentimental expression of which the Religion of Humanity with its ritualism was
the outcome. This positivist religion endeavoured to substitute for the
traditional God the Supreme Being of Humanity—a Being capable, according
to Comte, of sustaining our courage, becoming the end of our actions and the
object of our love. To this he attached a morality calculated to combat the
egoism which tends to dominate and to destroy mankind and intended to
strengthen the altruistic motives in man and to raise them to the service of
Humanity.
We find Comte, at the opening of our period, restating his doctrines in his
Système de Politique positive (1851-54), to which his first work was
meant to serve as an Introduction. In 1856 he began his Synthèse
subjective, but he died in 1857. Comte is a singularly desolate figure; the
powers of officialdom were against him, and he existed mainly by what he could
gain from teaching mathematics and by a pension raised by his admirers in
England and his own land.
The influence of his philosophy has been great and far- reaching, but it is the
spirit of positivism which has survived, not its content. Subsequent
developments in science have rendered much of his work obsolete, while his
Religion has never made a great appeal. Comte’s most noted disciple, Littré
(1801-1881), regarded this latter as a retrograde step and confined himself to
the early part of his master’s work. Most important for us in the present work
is Comte’s influence upon subsequent thinkers in France, notably Taine, and we
may add, Renan, Cournot, and even Renouvier, although these last two promoted a
vigorous reaction against his philosophy in general. He influenced his
adversaries, a notable testimony. Actually, however, the positivist philosophy
found a greater welcome on the English side of the Channel from John Stuart
Mill, Spencer and Lewes. The empiricism of the English school proved a more
fruitful soil for positivism than the vague spiritualism of Cousin to which it
offered strong opposition. Positivism, or rather the positivist standpoint in
philosophy, turned at a later date to reseek its fatherland and after a sojourn
in England reappears as an influence in the work of French thinkers near the
end of the century—e.g., Fouillée, Guyau, Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson
express elements of positivism.
We have now passed in review the four main currents of the first half of the
century, in a manner intended to orient the approach to our period, 1851-1921.
Without such an orientation much of the subsequent thought would lose its
correct colouring and perspective. There is a continuity, even if it be partly
a continuity marked by reactions, and this will be seen when we now examine the
three general currents into which the thought of the subsequent period is
divided.
CHAPTER II
MAIN CURRENTS SINCE 1851
Introductory: Influence of events of 1848-1851—Reactionary character of
Second Empire—Disgust of many thinkers (e.g., Vacherot, Taine, Renan,
Renouvier, Hugo, Quinet)—Effects of 1870, the War, the Commune, and the
Third Republic.
General character of the Philosophy of the Period—Reaction against both
Eclecticism and Positivism.
THE THREE MAIN CURRENTS.
I. Positivist and naturalist current turning upon itself, seen in Vacherot,
Taine, and Renan.
II. Cournot, Renouvier, and the neo-critical philosophy.
III. The New Spiritual Philosophy, to which the main contributors were
Ravaisson, Lachelier, Boutroux, Fouillée, Guyau, Bergson, Blondel, and Weber.
CHAPTER II
MAIN CURRENTS
The year 1851 was one of remarkable importance for France; a crisis then
occurred in its political and intellectual life. The hopes and aspirations to
which the Revolution of 1848 had given rise were shattered by the coup
d’état of Louis Napoleon in the month of December. The proclamation of the
Second Empire heralded the revival of an era of imperialism and reaction in
politics, accompanied by a decline in liberty and a diminution of idealism in
the world of thought. A censorship of books was established, the press was
deprived of its liberty, and the teaching of philosophy forbidden in
lycées.[1]
Various ardent and thoughtful spirits, whose minds and hearts had been uplifted
by the events of 1848, hoping to see the dawn of an era expressing in action
the ideals of the first Revolution, Liberté, Egalité,
Fraternité, were bitterly disappointed. Social ideals such as had been
created by Saint-Simon and his school received a rude rebuff from force,
militarism and imperialism. So great was the mingled disappointment and disgust
of many that they left for ever the realm of practical politics to apply
themselves to the arts, letters or sciences. Interesting examples of this state
of mind are to be found in Vacherot, Taine, Renan and Renouvier, and, we may
add, in Michelet, Victor Hugo and Edgar Quinet. The first of these, Vacherot,
who had succeeded Cousin as Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne, lost his
chair, as did Quinet and also Michelet, who was further deprived of his
position as Archivist. Hugo and Quinet, having taken active political part in
the events of 1848, were driven into exile. Disgust, disappointment,
disillusionment and pessimism characterise the attitude of all this group of
thinkers to political events, and this reacted not only upon their careers but
upon their entire philosophy. “With regard to the Second Empire,” we find Renan
saying,[2] “if the last ten years of its duration
in some measure repaired the mischief done in the first eight, it must never be
forgotten how strong this Government was when it was a question of crushing the
intelligence, and how feeble when it came to raising it up.”
The disheartening end of the Empire in moral degeneracy and military defeat
only added to the gloominess, against which the Red Flag and the red fires of
the Commune cast a lurid and pathetic glow, upon which the Prussians could look
down with a grim smile from the heights of Paris. Only with the establishment
of the Third Republic in 1871, and its ratification a few years later, does a
feeling of cheerfulness make itself felt in the thought of the time. The years
from 1880 onwards have been remarkable for their fruitfulness in the
philosophic field—to such an extent do political and social events react
upon the most philosophical minds. This is a healthy sign; it shows that those
minds have not detached themselves from contact with the world, that the spirit
of philosophy is a living spirit and not merely an academic or professional
product divorced from the fierce realities of history.
We have already indicated, in the treatment of the “Antecedents” of our period,
the dominance of Eclecticism, supported by the powers of officialdom, and have
remarked how Positivism arose as a reaction against Cousin’s vague
spiritualism. In approaching the second half of the century we may in general
characterise its thought as a reaction against both eclecticism and positivism.
A transitional current can be distinguished where positivism turns, as it were,
against itself in the work of Vacherot, Taine and Renan. The works of Cournot
and the indefatigable Renouvier with his neo-criticism mark another main
current. Ultimately there came to triumph towards the close of the century a
new spiritualism, owing much inspiration to De Biran, but which, unlike
Cousin’s doctrines, had suffered the discipline of the positivist spirit. The
main contributors to this current are Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouillée and Guyau,
Boutroux, Bergson, Blondel and Weber. Our study deals with the significance of
these three currents, and having made this clear we shall then discuss the
development of thought in connection with the various problems and ideas in
which the philosophy of the period found its expression.
In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant endeavoured, at a time when
speculation of a dogmatic and uncritical kind was current, to call attention to
the necessity for examining the instrument of knowledge itself, and thereby
discovering its fitness or inadequacy, as the case might be, for dealing with
the problems which philosophy proposes to investigate. This was a word spoken
in due season and, however much subsequent philosophy has deviated from the
conclusions of Kant, it has at least remembered the significance of his advice.
The result has been that the attitude adopted by philosophers to the problems
before them has been determined largely by the kind of answer which they offer
to the problems of knowledge itself. Obviously a mind which asserts that we can
never be sure of knowing anything (or as in some cases, that this assertion is
itself uncertain) will see all questions through the green-glasses of
scepticism. On the other hand, a thinker who believes that we do have knowledge
of certain things and can be certain of thiss, whether by objective proof or a
subjective intuition, is sure to have, not only a different conclusion about
problems, but, what is probably more important for the philosophic spirit, a
different means of approaching them.
Writing in 1860 on the general state of philosophy, Renan pointed out, in his
Essay La Métaphysique el son Avenir[3]
that metaphysical speculation, strictly so-called, had been in abeyance for
thirty years, and did not seem inclined to continue the traditions of Kant,
Hegel, Hamilton and Cousin. The reasons which he gave for this depression of
the philosophical market were, firstly, the feeling of the impossibility of
ultimate knowledge, a scepticism of the instrument, so far as the human mind
was concerned, and secondly, the rather disdainful attitude adopted by many
minds towards philosophy owing to the growing importance of science—in
short, the question, “Is there any place left for philosophy; has it any
raison d’être?”
The progress of the positive sciences, and the assertions of many that
philosophy was futile and treacherous, led philosophy to give an account of
itself by a kind of apologia pro vita sua. In the face of remarks akin
to that of Newton’s “Physics beware of metaphysics,” the latter had to bestir
itself or pass out of existence. It was, indeed, this extinction which the more
ardent and devoted scientific spirits heralded, re-iterating the war-cry of
Auguste Comte.
It was a crisis, in fact, for philosophy. Was it to become merely a universal
science? Was it to abandon the task of solving the problems of the universe by
rapid intuitions and a priori constructions and undertake the
construction of a science of the whole, built up from the data and results of
the science of the parts—i.e., the separate sciences of nature?
Was there, then, to be no place for metaphysics in this classification of the
sciences to which the current of thought was tending with increasing
impetuosity? Was a science of primary or ultimate truths a useless chimera, to
be rejected entirely by the human mind in favour of an all-sufficing belief in
positive science? These were the questions which perplexed the thoughtful minds
of that time.
We shall do well, therefore, in our survey of the half century before us, to
investigate the two problems which were stressed by Renan in the essay we have
quoted, for his acute mind possessed a unique power of sensing the feeling and
thought of his time. Our preliminary task will be the examination of the
general attitude to knowledge adopted by the various thinkers and schools of
thought, following this by an inquiry into the attitude adopted to science
itself and its relation to philosophy.
I
With these considerations in mind, let us examine the three currents of thought
in our period beginning with that which is at once a prolongation of positivism
and a transformation of it, a current expressed in the work of Vacherot, Taine
and Renan.
Etienne Vacherot (1809-1897) was partially a disciple of Victor Cousin and a
representative also of the positivist attitude to knowledge. His work, however,
passed beyond the bounds indicated by these names. He remained a convinced
naturalist and believer in positive science, but, unlike Comte, he did not
despise metaphysical inquiry, and he sought to find a place for it in thought.
Vacherot, who had won a reputation for himself by an historical work on the
Alexandrian School, became tne director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, an
important position in the intellectual world. He here advocated the doctrines
by which he sought to give a to metaphysics. His most important book, La
Métaphysique et la Science, in three volumes, appeared in 1858. He suffered
imprisonment the following year for His liberal principles under the Empire
which had already deprived him of his position at the Sorbonne.
The general attitude to knowledge adopted by Vacherot recalls in some respects
the metaphysical doctrines of Spinoza, and he endeavours to combine the purely
naturalistic view of the world with a metaphysical conception. The result is a
profound and, for Vacherot, irreconcilable dualism, in which the real and the
ideal are set against one another in rigorous contrast, and the gap between
them is not bridged or even attempted to be filled up, as, at a later date, was
the task assumed by Fouillee in his philosophy of idées-forces. For
Vacherot the world is a unity, eternal and infinite, but lacking perfection.
Perfection, the ideal, is incompatible with reality. The real is not at all
ideal, and the ideal has no reality.[4] In this
unsatisfactory dualism Vacherot leaves us. His doctrine, although making a
superficial appeal by its seeming positivism on the one hand, and its
maintenance of the notion of the ideal or perfection on the other, is actually
far more paradoxical than that which asserts that ultimately it is the ideal
only which is real. While St. Anselm had endeavoured to establish by his proof
of the existence of God the reality of perfection, Vacherot, by a reversal of
this proof, arrives at the opposite conclusion, and at a point where it seems
that it would be for the ideal an imperfection to exist. The absolute existence
of all things is thus separated from the ideal, and no attempt is made to
relate the two, as Spinoza had so rigorously done, by maintaining that reality
is perfection.[5]
The influence of Vacherot was in some measure continued in that of his pupil,
Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), a thinker who had considerable influence upon the
development of thought in our period. His ability as a critic of art and
literature was perhaps more marked than his purely philosophical influence, but
this is, nevertheless, important, and cannot be overlooked.
Taine was a student of the Ecole Normale, and in 1851 was appointed to teach
philosophy at Nevers. The coup d’état, however, changed his career, and
he turned to literature as his main field, writing a work on La Fontaine for
his doctorate in 1853. In the year of Comte’s death (1857) Taine published his
book, Les Philosophes français du XIXe Siècle, in
which he turned his powerful batteries of criticism upon the vague spiritualism
professed by Cousin and officially favoured in France at that time.[6] By his adverse criticism of Cousin and the Eclectic
School, Taine placed his influence upon the side of the positivist followers of
Comte. It would, however, be erroneous to regard him as a mere disciple of
Comte, as Taine’s positivism was in its general form a wider doctrine, yet more
rigorously scientific in some respects than that of Comte. There was also an
important difference in their attitude to metaphysics. Taine upheld strongly
the value, and, indeed, the necessity, of a metaphysical doctrine. He never
made much of any debt or allegiance to Comte.
In 1860 a volume dealing with the Philosophy of Art appeared from his
pen, in which he not only endeavoured to relate the art of a period to the
general environment in which it arose, but, in addition, he dealt with certain
psychological aspects of the problem. Largely as a result of the talent
displayed in this work, he was appointed in 1864 to tne chair of the History of
Art and Æsthetics in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Taine’s interest in philosophy, and especially in psychological problems, was
more prominently demon strated in his book De l’Intelligence, the two
volumes of which appeared in 1870. In this work he takes a strict view of the
human intelligence as a mechanism, the workings of which he sets forth in a
precise and cold manner. His treatment of knowledge is akin, in some respects,
to the doctrines of the English Utilitarian and Evolutionary School as
represented by John Stuart Mill, Bain and Spencer. The main feature of the
Darwinian doctrine is set by Taine in the foreground of epistemology. There is,
according to him, “a struggle for existence” in the realm of the individual
consciousness no less than in the external world. This inner conflict is
between psychical elements which, when victorious, result in sense-perception.
This awareness, or hallucination vraie, is not knowledge of a purely
speculative character; it is (as, at a later date, Bergson was to maintain in
his doctrine of perception) essentially bound up with action, with the instinct
and mechanism of movement.
One of the most notable features of Taine’s work is his attitude to psychology.
He rejects absolutely the rather scornful attitude adopted with regard to this
science by Comte; at the same time he shatters the flimsy edifice of the
eclectics in order to lay the foundation of a scientific psychology. “The true
and independent psychology is,” he remarks, “a magnificent science which lays
the foundation of the philosophy of history, which gives life to physiology and
opens up the pathway to metaphysics.”[7] Our debt
to Taine is immense, for he initiated the great current of experimental
psychology for which his country has since become famous. It is not our
intention in this present work to follow out in any detail the purely
psychological work of the period. Psychology has more and more become
differentiated from, and to a large degree, independent of, philosophy in a
strictly metaphysical meaning of that word. Yet we shall do well in passing to
note that through Taine’s work the scientific attitude to psychologv and its
many problems was taken up and developed by Ribot, whose study of English
Psychology appeared in the same year as Taine’s Intelligence.
Particularly by his frequent illustrations drawn from abnormal psychology,
Taine “set the tone” for contemporary and later study of mental activity of
this type. Ribot’s later books have been mainly devoted to the study of “the
abnormal,”and his efforts are characteristic of the labours of the Paris
School, comprising Charcot, Paulhan, Binet and Janet.[8] French psychology has in consequence become a
clearly defined “school,” with characteristics peculiar to itself which
distinguish it at once from the psychophysical research of German workers and
from the analytic labours of English psychologists. Its debt to Taine at the
outset must not be forgotten.
The War and the subsequent course of events in France seemed to deepen the
sadness and pessimism of Taine’s character. He described himself as
naturellement triste, and finally his severe positivism developed into a
rigorous stoicism akin to that of Marcus Aurelius and Spinoza. This attitude of
mind coloured his unfinished historical work, Les Origines de la France
contemporaine, upon which he was engaged for the last years of his life
(1876-1894). It may be noticed for its bearing upon the study of sociological
problems which it indirectly encouraged. Just as Taine had regarded a work of
art as the product of social environment, so he looks upon historical events.
This history bears all the marks of Taine’s rigid, positive philosophy,
intensified by his later stoicism. The Revolution of 1789 is treated in a cold
and stern manner devoid of enthusiasm of any sort. He could not make historical
narrative live like Michelet, and from his own record the Revolution itself is
almost unintelligible. For Taine, however, we must remember, human nature is
absolutely the product of race, environment and history.[9]
In the philosophy of Taine various influences are seen at work interacting. The
spirit of the French thinkers of the previous century—sensualists and
ideologists—reappears in him. While in a measure he fluctuates between
naturalism and idealism, the predominating tone of his work is clearly
positivist. He was a great student of Spinoza and of Hegel, and the influence
of both these thinkers appears in his work. Like Spinoza, he believes in a
universal determination; like Hegel, he asserts the real and the rational to be
identical. In his general attitude to the problems of knowledge Taine
criticises and passes beyond the standpoints of both Hume and Kant. He opposes
the purely empiricist schools of both France and England. The purely empirical
attitude which looks upon the world as fragmentary and phenomenal is deficient,
according to Taine, and is, moreover, incompatible with the notion of
necessity. This notion of necessity is characteristic of Taine’s whole work,
and his strict adherence to it was mainly due to his absolute belief in science
and its methods, which is a mark of all the positivist type of thought.
While he rejected Hume’s empiricism he also opposed the doctrines of Kant and
the neo-critical school which found its inspiration in Kant and Hume. Taine
asserted that it is possible to have a knowledge of things in their objective
reality, and he appears to have based his epistemology upon the doctrine of
analysis proposed by Condillac. Taine disagreed with the theory of the
relativity of human knowledge and with the phenomenal basis of the neo-critical
teaching, its rejection of “the thing in itself.” He believed we had knowledge
not merely relative but absolute, and he claimed that we can pass from
phenomena and their laws to comprehend the essence of things in themselves. He
endeavours to avoid the difficulties of Hume by dogmatism. While clinging to a
semi-Hegelian view of rationality he avoids Kant’s critical attitude to reason
itself. We have in Taine not a critical rationalist but a dogmatic rationalist.
While the rational aspect of his thought commands a certain respect and has had
in many directions a very wholesome influence, notably, as we have remarked,
upon psychology, yet it proves itself in the last analysis self-contradictory,
for a true rationalism is critical in character rather than dogmatic.
In Taine’a great contemporary, Ernest Renan (1823-1892), a very different
temper is seen. The two thinkers both possessed popularity as men of letters,
and resembled one another in being devoted to literary and historical pursuits
rather than to philosophy itself.
Renan was trained for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. He has left
us a record of his early life in Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse. We
there have an autobiography of a sincere and sensitive soul, encouraged in his
priestly career by his family and his teachers to such a degree that he had
conceived of no other career for himself, until at the age of twenty, under the
influence of modern scientific doctrines and the criticism of the Biblical
records, he found himself an unbeliever, certainly not a Roman Catholic, and
not, in the ordinary interpretation of that rather vague term, a Christian. The
harsh, unrelenting dogmatism of the Roman Church drove Renan from Christianity.
We find him remarking that had he lived in a Protestant. country he might not
have been faced with the dilemma.[10] A via
media might have presented itself in one of the very numerous forms into
which Protestant Christianity, is divided. He might have exercised in such a
sphere, his priestly functions as did Schleiermacher. Renan’s break with Rome
emphasises the clear-cut division which exists in France between the Christian
faith (represented, almost entirely by the Roman Church) and
libre-pensée, a point which will claim our attention later, when we come
to treat of the Philosophy of Religion.
Having abandoned the seminary and the Church, Renan worked for his university
degrees. The events of 1848-49 inspired his young heart with great enthusiasm,
under the influence of which he wrote his Avenir de la Science. This
book was not published, however, until 1890, when he had lost his early hopes
and illusions. In 1849 he went away upon a mission to Italy. “The reaction of
1850-51 and the coup d’état instilled into me a pessimism of which I am
not yet cured,” so he wrote in the preface to his Dialogues et Fragments
philosophiques.[11] Some years after the
coup d’état he published a volume of essays (Essais de Morale et de
Critique), and he showed his acquaintance with Arabic philosophy by an
excellent treatise on Averroes et l’Averroisme (1859). The following
year he visited Syria and, in 1861, was appointed Professor of Hebrew at the
Collège de France. He then began his monumental work on Les Origines du
Christianisme, of which the first volume, La Vie de Jésus, appeared
in 1863. Its importance for religious thought we shall consider in our last
chapter; here it must suffice to observe its immediate consequences. These were
terrific onslaughts from the clergy upon its author, which, although they
brought the attention of his countrymen and of the world upon Renan, resulted
in the Imperial Government suspending his tenure of the chair. After the fall
of the Empire, however, he returned to it, and under the Third Republic became
Director of the Collège de France.
Renan, although he broke off his career in the Church and his connection with
organised religion, retained, nevertheless, much of the priestly character all
his life, and he himself confesses this: “I have learned several things, but I
have changed in nowise as to the general system of intellectual and moral life.
My habitation has become more spacious, but it still stands on the same ground.
I look upon my estrangement from orthodoxy as only a change of opinion
concerning an important historical question, a change which does not prevent me
from dwelling on the same foundations as before.” He indeed found it impossible
to reconcile the Catholic faith with free and honest thought. His break with
the Church made him an enemy of all superstition, and his writings raised
against him the hatred of the Catholic clergy, who regarded him as a deserter.
In the customary terms of heated theological debate he was styled an atheist.
This was grossly unfair or meaningless. Which word we use here depends upon our
definition of theism. As a matter of fact, Renan was one of the most deeply
religious minds of his time. His early religious sentiments remained, in
essence if not in form, with him throughout his life. These were always
associated with the tender memories he had of his mother and beloved sister and
his virtuous teachers, the priests in the little town of Brittany, whence he
came. Much of the Breton mysticism clung to his soul, and much of his
philosophy is a restated, rationalised form of his early beliefs.
As a figure in the intellectual life of the time, Renan is difficult to
estimate. The very subtilty of his intellect betrayed him into an oscillation
which was far from admirable, and prevented his countrymen in his own day from
“getting to grips” with his ideas. These were kaleidoscopic. Renan seems a
type, reflecting many tendencies of the time, useful as an illustration to the
historian of the ideas of the period; but for philosophy in the special sense
he has none of the clearly defined importance of men like Renouvier, Lachelier,
Guyau, Fouillée, Bergson or Blondel. His humanism keeps him free from
dogmatism, but his mind fluctuates so that his general attitude to the ultimate
problems is one of reserve, of scepticism and of frequent paradox and
contradiction. Renan seems to combine the positivist scorn of metaphysics with
the Kantian idealism. At times, however, his attitude is rather Hegelian, and
he believes in universal change which is an evolving of spirit, the ideal or
God, call it what we will. We need not be too particular about names or forms
of thought, for, after all, everything “may be only a dream.” That is Renan’s
attitude, to temper enthusiasm by irony, to assert a duty of doubt, and often,
perhaps, to gain a literary brilliance by contradictory statements. “The survey
of human affairs is not complete,” he reminds us, “unless we allot a place for
irony beside that of tears, a place for pity beside that of rage, and a place
for a smile alongside respect.”[12]
It was this versatility which made Renan a lover of the philosophic dialogue.
This literary and dramatic form naturally appealed strongly to a mind who was
so very conscious of the fact that the truths with which philosophy deals
cannot be directly denied or directly affirmed, as they are not subject to
demonstration. All the high problems of humanity Renan recognised as being of
this kind, as involving finally a rational faith; and he claimed that the best
we can do is to present the problems of life from different points of view.
This is due entirely to the peculiar character of philosophy itself, and to the
distinction, which must never be overlooked, between knowledge and belief,
between certitude and opinion. Geometry, for example, is not a subject for
dialogues but for demonstration, as it involves knowledge and certitude. The
problems of philosophy, on the contrary, involve “une nuance de foi,” as
Renan styles it. They involve willed adhesion, acceptance or choice; they
provoke sympathy or hate, and call into play human personality with its varying
shades of colour.
This state of nuance Renan asserts to be the one of the hour for
philosophy. It is not the time, he thinks, to attempt to strengthen by abstract
reasoning the “proofs” of God’s existence or of the reality of a future life.
“Men see just now that they can never know anything of the supreme cause of the
universe or of their own destiny. Nevertheless they are anxious to listen to
those who will speak to them about either.”[13]
Knowledge, Renan maintained, lies somewhere between the two schools into which
the majority of men are divided. “What you are looking for has long since been
discovered and made clear,” say the orthodox. “What you are looking for is
impossible to find,” say the practical positivists, the political “raillers”
and the atheists. It is true that we shall never know the ultimate secret of
all being, but we shall never prevent man from desiring more and more knowledge
or from creating for himself working hypotheses or beliefs.
Yet although Renan admits this truth he never approaches even the pragmatist
position of supporting “creative beliefs.” He rather urges a certain passivity
towards problems and opinions. We should, he argues in his Examen de
Conscience philosophique,[14] let them work
themselves out in us. Like a spectator we must let them modify our
“intellectual retina”; we must let reality reflect itself in us. By this he
does not mean to assert that the truth about that reality is a matter of pure
indifference to us-far from it. Precisely because he is so conscious of the
importance of true knowledge, he is anxious that we should approach the study
of reality without previous prejudices. “We have no right,” he remarks, “to
have a desire when reason speaks; we must listen and nothing more.”[15]
It must be admitted, however, that Renan’s attitude to the problems of
knowledge was largely sceptical. While, as we shall see in the following
chapter, he extolled science, his attitude to belief and to knowledge was
irritating in its vagueness and changeableness. He appeared to pose too much as
a dilettante making a show of subtle intellect, rather than a serious
thinker of the first rank. His eminence and genius are unquestioned, but he
played in a bewitching and frequently bewildering manner with great and serious
problems, and one cannot help wishing that this great intellect of
his—and it was unquestionably great—was not more steady and was not
applied by its owner more steadfastly and courageously to ultimate problems.
His writings reflect a bewildering variety of contradictory moods, playful,
scathing, serious and mocking. Indeed, he replied in his Feuilles
detachées (1892) to the accusations of Amiel by insisting that irony is the
philosopher’s last word. For him as for his brilliant fellow-countryman,
Anatole France, ironical scepticism is the ultimate product of his reflection
upon life. His Examen de Conscience philosophique is his Confession of
Faith, written four years before his death, in which he tries to defend his
sceptical attitude and to put forward scepticism as an apology for his own
uncertainty and his paradoxical changes of view. Irony intermingles with his
doubt here too. We do not know, he says, ultimate reality; we do not know
whether there be any purpose or end in the universe at all. There may be, but
on the other hand it may be a farce and fiasco. By refusing to believe in
anything, rejecting both alternatives, Renan argues, with a kind of mental
cowardice, we avoid the consequence of being absolutely deceived. He
recommended an adoption of mixed belief and doubt, optimism and irony.
This is a surprising attitude in a philosopher and is not characteristic of
great modern thinkers, most of whom prefer belief (hypothetical although that
be) to non-belief. Doubtless Renan’s early training had a psychological effect
which operated perhaps largely unconsciously throughout his life, and his
literary and linguistic ability seems to have given him a reputation which was
rather that of a man of letters than a philosopher. He had not the mental
strength or frankness to face alternatives squarely and to decide to adopt one.
Consequently he merited the application of the old proverb about being between
two stools. This application was actually made to Renan’s attitude in a
critical remark by Renouvier in his Esquisse d’une Classification des
Doctrines philosphiques.[16] Renouvier had no
difficulty in pointing out that the man who hesitates deprives himself of that
great reality, the exercise of his own power of free choice, in itself valuable
and more akin to reality (whatever be the choice) than a mere “sitting on the
fence,” an attitude which, so far from assuring one of getting the advantages
of both possibilities as Renan claims, may more justly seem to deprive one of
the advantages in both directions. The needs of life demand that we construct
beliefs of some sort. We may be wrong and err, but pure scepticism such as
Renan advocated is untenable. Life, if it is to be real and earnest, demands of
us that we have faith in some values, that we construct some
beliefs, some hypotheses, by which we may work.
Both Renan and Taine exercised a considerable influence upon French thought.
While inheriting the positivist outlook they, to a great degree, perhaps
unconsciously, undermined the positive position, both by their interest in the
humanities, in art, letters and religion and in their metaphysical attitude.
Taine, beginning with a rigid naturalism, came gradually to approach an
idealistic standpoint in many respects, while Renan, beginning with a dogmatic
idealism, came to acute doubt, hypotheses, “dreams” and scepticism. Taine kept
his thoughts in too rigid a mould, solidified, while those of Renan seem
finally to have existed only in a gaseous state, intangible, vague and hazy. We
have observed how the positivist current from Comte was carried over by
Vacherot to Taine. In Renan we find that current present also, but it has begun
to turn against itself. While we may say that his work reflects in a very
remarkable manner the spirit of his time, especially the positivist faith in
science, yet we are also able to find in it, in spite of his immense
scepticism, the indications of a spiritualist or idealist movement, groping and
shaping itself as the century grows older.
II
While the positivist current of thought was working itself out through
Vacherot, Taine and Renan to a position which forms a connecting link between
Comte and the new spiritualism in which the reaction against positivism and
eclecticism finally culminated, another influence was making itself felt
independently in the neo-critical philosophy of Renouvier.
We must here note the work and influence of Cournot (1801-1877), which form a
very definite link between the doctrines of Comte and those of Renouvier. He
owed much to positivism, and he contributed to the formation of neo-criticism
by his influence upon Renouvier. Cournot’s Essai sur le Fondement de nos
Connaissances appeared in 1851, three years before Renouvier gave to the
world the first volume of his Essais de Critique générale. In 1861
Cournot published his Traité de l’Enchaînement des Idées, which
was followed by his Considerations sur le Marche des Idées (1872) and
Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisme (1875). These
volumes form his contribution to philosophical thought, his remaining works
being mainly concerned with political economy and mathematics, a science in
which he won distinction.
Like Comte, Cournot opposed the spiritualism, the eclecticism and the
psychology of Cousin, but he was possessed of a more philosophic mind than
Comte; he certainly had greater philosophical knowledge, was better equipped in
the history of philosophy and had much greater respect for metaphysical theory.
He shared with Comte, however, an interest in social problems and biology; he
also adopted his general attitude to knowledge, but the spirit of Cournot’s
work is much less dogmatic than that of the great positivist, and he made no
pretensions to be a “pontiff” such as Comte aspired to be. Indeed his lack of
pretensions may account partly for the lack of attention with which his work
(which is shrewd, thoughtful and reserved) has been treated. He aimed at
indicating the foundations of a sound philosophy rather than at offering a
system of thought to the public. This temper was the product of his scientific
attitude. It was by an examination of the sciences and particularly of the
principles upon which they depend that he formulated his group of fundamental
doctrines.
He avoided hasty generalisations or a priori constructions and, true to
the scientific spirit, based his thought upon the data afforded by experience.
He agreed heartily with Comte regarding the relativity of our knowledge. An
investigation of this knowledge shows it to be based on three
principles—order, chance, and probability. We find order existing in the
universe and by scientific methods we try to grasp this order. This involves
induction, a method which cannot give us absolute certainty, although it
approximates to it. It gives us probability only. There is therefore a reality
of chances, and contingency or chance must be admitted as a factor in evolution
and in human history.
Cournot foreshadows many of the doctrines of the new spiritualists as well as
those of the neo-critical school. Much in his work heralds a Bergson as well as
a Renouvier. This is noticeable in his attitude to science and to the problem
of contingency or freedom. It is further seen in his doctrine that the
vivant is incapable of demonstration, in his view of the soul or higher
instinct which he distinguished from the intelligence, in the biological
interest displayed in his work (due partly to the work of Bichat[17]), and in his idea of a Travail de Création.
Unlike Bergson, however, he admits a teleology, for he believed this
inseparable from living beings, but he regards it as a hazardous finality, not
rigid or inconsistent with freedom.
The immediate influence of Cournot was felt by only a small circle, and his
most notable affinity was with Renouvier, although Cournot was less strictly an
intellectualist. Like Renouvier he looked upon philosophy as a “Critique
générale.” He was also concerned with the problem of the categories and
with the compatibility of science and freedom, a problem which was now assuming
a very central position in the thought of the period.
Renouvier, in the construction of his philosophy, was partly influenced by the
work of Cournot. In this lone, stern, indefatigable worker we have one of the
most powerful minds of the century. Charles Renouvier shares with Auguste Comte
the first honours of the century in France so far as philosophical work is
concerned. Curiously enough he came from Comte’s birth-place, Montpellier. When
Renouvier was born in 1815, seventeen years later than Comte, the great
positivist was in his second year of study at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.
To this great scientific and mathematical institution came Renouvier, to find
Comte as Répétiteur of Higher Mathematics. He was not only a keen
student of the mathematical sciences but also an ardent follower of
Saint-Simon, and although in later life he lost many of the hopes of his youth
the Saint-Simon spirit remained with him, and he retained a keen interest in
social ethics and particularly in the ideas of Fourier, Proudhon and Blanc. At
the Ecole he met as fellow-pupils Jules Lequier and Felix Ravaisson.
Instead of entering the civil service Renouvier then applied himself to
philosophy and political science, influenced undoubtedly by Comte’s work. The
year 1848, which saw the second attempt to establish a republic, gave
Renouvier, now a zealous republican, an opportunity, and he issued his
Manuel républicain de l’Homme et du Citoyen. This volume, intended for
schoolmasters, had the approval of Carnot, Minister of Education to the
Provisionary Government. Its socialist doctrines were so criticised by the
Chamber of 1849 that Carnot, and with him the Government, fell from power.
Renouvier went further in his Gouvernement direct et Organisation communale
et centrale de la République, in which he collaborated with his socialist
friends in outlining a scheme of communism, making the canton a local power, a
scheme which contained the germ-idea of the Soviet of Bolshevik Russia. Such
ideas were, however, far too advanced for the France of that date and their
proposal did more harm than good to the progressive party by producing a
reaction in wavering minds. Renouvier, through the paper Liberté de
penser, launched attacks upon the policy of the Presidency, and began in
the Revue philosophique a serial Uchronie, a novel of a political
and philosophical character. It was never finished. Suddenly, like a bolt from
the blue, came, on December and, the coup d’état. The effect of this
upon Renouvier was profound. Disgusted at the power of the monarchy, the
shattering of the republican hopes, the suppression of liberty and the general
reaction, he abandoned political life entirely. What politics lost, however,
philosophy has gained, for he turned his acute mind with its tremendous energy
to the study of the problems of the universe.
Three years after the coup d’état, in the same year in which Comte
completed his Système de Politique positive, 1854, Renouvier published
the first volume of his magnum opus, the Essais de Critique
générale.[18] The appearance of this work is a
notable date in the development of modern French philosophy. The problems
therein discussed will concern us in later chapters. Here we must point out the
indefatigable labour given to this work by Renouvier. The writing and revision
of these essays covered almost the whole of the half century, concluding in
1897. In their first, briefer form they occupied the decade 1854-64, and
consisted of four volumes only, which on revision became finally thirteen.[19] These Essays range over Logic, Psychology, the
Philosophy of the Sciences and the Philosophy of History.
Having thus laid the foundations of his own throught, Renouvier, in conjunction
with his scholarly friend Pillon, undertook the publication of a monthly
periodical, L’Année philosophique, to encourage philosophic thought in
France. This appeared first in 1867, the same year in which Ravaisson laid the
foundations of the new spiritualism by his celebrated Rapport. In 1869
Renouvier published his noteworthy treatise upon Ethics, in two volumes, La
Science de la Morale.
The war of 1870 brought his monthly periodical to an untimely end. The
conclusion of the war in 1871 resulted in the establishment, for the third
time, of a republic, which in spite of many vicissitudes has continued even to
this day. With the restoration of peace and of a republic, Renouvier felt
encouraged to undertake the ambitious scheme of publishing a weekly paper, not
only philosophical in character but political, literary and religious. He
desired ardently to address his countrymen at a time when they were rather
intellectually and morally bewildered. He felt he had something constructive to
offer, and hoped that the “new criticism,” as he called it, might become the
philosophy of the new republic. Thus was founded, in 1872, the famous
Critique philosophique, which aimed primarily at the consolidation of
the republic politically and morally,[20]
This paper appeared as a weekly from its commencement until 1884,then continued
for a further five years as a monthly. Renouvier and his friend Pillon were
assisted by other contributors, A. Sabatier, L. Dauriac, R. Allier, who were
more or less disciples of the neo-critical school. Various articles were
contributed by William James, who had a great admiration for Renouvier. The two
men, although widely different in temperament and method, had certain
affinities in their doctrine of truth and certitude.[21]
Renouvier’s enthusiasm for his periodical did not, however, abate his energy or
ardour for more lasting work. He undertook the task of revising and augmenting
his great work, the Essais de Critique générale, and added to the series
another (fifth) Essay, in four volumes. He also issued in 1876 the curious work
Uchronie, a history of “what might have been” (in his view) the
development of European civilisation. Together with Pillon he translated
Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature.
Meanwhile the Critique philosophique continued to combat any symptoms of
a further coup d’état, and “to uphold strictly republican principles and
to fight all that savoured of Caesar or imperialism.” In 1878 a quarterly
supplement La Critique religieuse was added to attack the Roman Catholic
Church and to diminish its power in France.[22]
Articles which had appeared in this quarterly were published as Esquisse
d’une Classification systématique des Doctrines philosophiques in 1885 in
two volumes, the second of which contained the important Confession of Faith of
Renouvier, entitled, How I arrived at this Conclusion.
His thought assumed a slightly new form towards the close of the century, at
the end of which he published, in conjunction with his disciple Prat, a
remarkable volume, which took a prize at the Académie des Sciences morales
et politiques, to which rather late in the day he was admitted as a member
at the age of eighty-five. In its title La Nouvelle Monadologie, and
method it reveals the influence of Leibnitz.
The close of the century shows us Renouvier as an old man, still an enormous
worker, celebrating his eighty-sixth birthday by planning and writing further
volumes (Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique pure and its sequel,
Histoire et Solution des Problèmes métaphysiques). This “grand old man”
of modern French philosophy lived on into the early years of the twentieth
century, still publishing, still writing to the last. His final volume, Le
Personnalisme, was a restatement of his philosophy, issued when he was in
his eighty-ninth year. He died “in harness” in 1903, dictating to his friend
Prat a résumé of his thought on important points and leaving an
unpublished work on the philosophy of Kant.[23]
Renouvier’s career is a striking one and we have sketched it somewhat fully
here because of its showing more distinctly than that of Taine or Renan the
reflections of contemporary history upon the thinking minds who lived through
the years 1848-51 and 1870-71. Renouvier was a young spirit in the year of the
revolution, 1848, and lived right on through the coup d’état, the Second
Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, the Third Republic, and he
foresaw and perhaps influenced the Republic’s attitude to the Roman Church. His
career is the most significant and enlightening one to follow of all the
thinkers who come within our period. Let us note that he never held any
academic or public teaching appointment. His life was in the main a secluded
one and, like Comte, he found the University a limited preserve closed against
him and his philosophy, dominated by the declining eclecticism which drew its
inspiration from Cousin. Only gradually did his influence make itself felt to
such a degree that the University was compelled to take notice of it. Now his
work is more appreciated, but not as much as it might be, and outside his own
country he is little known. The student finds his writings somewhat difficult
owing to the author’s heavy style. He has none of the literary ease and
brilliance of a Renan. But his work was great and noble, animated by a passion
for truth and a hatred of philosophical “shams” and a current of deep moral
earnestness colours all his work. He had considerable power as a critic, for
the training of the Ecole Polytechnique produced a strictly logical temper in
his work, which is that of a true philosopher, not that of a merely brilliant
litterateur or dilettante, and he must be regarded as one of the
intellectual giants of the century.
While we see in Positivism a system of thought which opposed itself to
Eclecticism, we find in the philosophy of Renouvier a system of doctrine which
is opposed to both Eclecticism and Positivism. Indeed Renouvier puts up a
strong mental fight against both of these systems; the latter he regarded as an
ambitious conceit. He agreed, however, with Comte and with Cournot upon the
relativity of our knowledge. “I accept,” he says, “one fundamental principle of
the Positivist School—namely, the reduction of knowledge to the laws of
phenomena.”[24] The author of the Essais de
Critique générale considered himself, however, to be the apostolic
successor, not of Comte, but of Kant. The title of neo-criticisme[25] which he gave to his philosophy shows his
affinity with the author of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. This is very
noticeable in his method of treating the problem of knowledge by criticising
the human mind and especially in his giving a preference to moral
considerations.[26] It would be, however, very
erroneous to regard Renouvier as a disciple of Kant, for he amends and rejects
many of the doctrines of the German philosopher. We have noted the fact that he
translated Hume; we must observe also that Hume’s influence is very strongly
marked in Renouvier’s “phenomenalism.”[27]
“Renouvier is connected with Hume,” says Pillon, in the preface he contributed
to the translation,[28] “as much as with
Kant. . . . He reconciles Hume and Kant. . . . Something is lacking in Hume,
the notion of law; something is superfluous in Kant, the notion of substance.
It was necessary to unite the phenomenalism of Hume with the a priori
teaching of Kant. This was the work accomplished by Renouvier.”
It may be doubted whether Pillon’s eulogy is altogether sound in its approval
of the “reconciliation” of Hume and Kant, for such a reconciliation of
opposites may well appear impossible. Renouvier himself faced this problem of
the reconciliation of opposites when at an early age he inclined to follow the
Hegelian philosophy, a doctrine which may very well be described as a
“reconciliation of opposites,” par excellence. Dissatisfied, however,
with such a scheme Renouvier came round to the Kantian standpoint and then
passed beyond it to a position absolutely contrary to that of Hegel. This
position is frankly that opposites cannot be reconciled, one or the other must
be rejected. Renouvier thus made the law of contradiction the basis of his
philosophy, as it is the basis of our principles of thought or logic.
He rigorously applied this principle to that very interesting part of Kant’s
work, the antinomies, which he held should never have been formulated. The
reasons put forward for this statement were two: the principle of contradiction
and the law of number. Renouvier did not believe in what mathematicians call an
“infinite number.” He held it to be an absurd and contradictory notion, for to
be a number at all it must be numerical and therefore not infinite. The
application of this to the Kantian antinomies, as for example to the questions,
“Is space infinite or finite? Had the world a beginning or not?” is interesting
because it treats them as Alexander did the Gordian knot. The admission that
space is infinite, or that the world had no beginning, involves the admission
of an “infinite number,” a contradiction and an absurdity. Since, therefore,
such a number is a pure fiction we must logically conclude that space is
finite,[29] that the world had a beginning and
that the ascending series of causes has a first term, which admission involves
freedom at the heart of things.
As Renouvier had treated the antinomies of Kant, so he makes short work of the
Kantian conception of a world of noumena (Dinge an sich) of which we
know nothing, but which is the foundation of the phenomena we know. Like Hume,
he rejects all notion of substance, of which Kant’s noumenon is a survival from
ancient times. The idea of substance he abhors as leading to pantheism and to
fatalism, doctrines which Renouvier energetically opposes, to uphold man’s
freedom and the dignity of human personality.
In the philosophy of Kant personality was not included among the categories.
Renouvier draws up for himself a new list of categories differing from those of
Kant. Beginning with Relation they culminate in Personality. These two
categories indicate two of the strongholds of Renouvier’s philosophy. Beginning
from his fundamental thesis “All is relative,” Renouvier points out that as
nothing can possibly be known save by or in a relation of some sort it is
evident that the most general law of all is that of Relation itself. Relation
is therefore the first and fundamental category embracing all the others. Then
follow, Number, Position, Succession, Quality. To these are added the important
ones, Becoming, Causality, Finality proceeding from the simple to the
composite, from the abstract to the concrete, from the elements most easily
selected from our experience to that which embraces the experience itself,
Renouvier comes to the final category in which they all find their
consummation-Personality. The importance which he attaches to this category
colours his entire thought and particularly determines his attitude to the
various problems which we shall discuss in our following chapters.
As we can think of nothing save in relation to consciousness and consequently
we cannot conceive the universe apart from personality, our knowledge of the
universe, our philosophies, our beliefs are “personal” constructions. But they
need not be on that account merely subjective and individualistic in character,
for they refer to personality in its wide sense, a sense shared by other
persons. This has important consequences for the problem of certitude in
knowledge and Renouvier has here certain affinities to the pragmatist
standpoint.
His discussion of certitude is very closely bound up with his treatment of the
problem of freedom, but we may indicate here Renouvier’s attitude to Belief and
Knowledge, a problem in which he was aided by the work of his friend Jules
Lequier,[30] whom he quotes in his second
Essai de Critique générale. Renouvier considers it advisable to approach
the problem of certitude by considering its opposite, doubt. In a famous
passage in his second Essai he states the circumstances under which we
do not doubt—namely, “when we see, when we know, when we believe.” Owing
to our liability to error (even seeing is not believing, and we frequently
change our minds even about our “seeing”), it appears that belief is always
involved, and more correctly “we believe that we see, we believe that we know.”
Belief is a state of consciousness involved in a certain affirmation of which
the motives show themselves as adequate. Certitude arises when the possibility
of an affirmation of the contrary is entirely rejected by the mind. Certitude
thus appears as a kind of belief. All knowledge, Renouvier maintains, involves
an affirmation of will. It is here we see the contrast so strongly marked
between him and Renan, who wished us to “let things think themselves out in
us.” “Every affirmation in which consciousness is reflective is subordinated,
in consciousness, to the determination to affirm.” Our knowledge, our
certitude, our belief, whatever we prefer to call it, is a construction not
purely intellectual but involving elements of feeling and, above all, of will.
Even the most logically incontrovertible truth are sometimes unconvincing. This
is because certitude is not purely intellectual; it is une affaire
passionnelle.[31] Renouvier here not only
approaches the pragmatist position, but he recalls the attitude to will,
assumed by Maine de Biran. For the Cartesian formula De Biran had suggested the
substitution of Volo, ergo sum. The inadequacy of the the Cogito,
ergo sum is remarked upon by Lequier, whose treatment of the question of
certainty Renouvier follows. As all demonstration is deductive in character and
so requires existing premises, we cannot expect the première vérité to
be demonstrable. If, from the or certainty, we must turn to the will to create
belief, or certainty, we must turn to the will to create beliefs, for no evidence or previous truths exist for us.
The Cogito, ergo sum really does not give us a starting point, as
Descartes claimed for it, since there is no proper sequence from cogito
to sum. Here we have merely two selves, moi-pensée and
moi-objet. We need a live spark to bridge this gap to unite the two into
one complete living self; this is found in moi-volonté, in a free act of
will. This free act of will affirms the existence of the self by uniting in a
synthetic judgment the thinking-self to the object-self. “I refuse,” says
Renouvier, quoting Lequier, “to follow the work of a knowledge which would not
be mine. I accept the certainty of which I am the author.” The première
vérité is a free personal act of faith. Certainty in philosophy or in
science reposes ultimately upon freedom and the consciousness of freedom.
Here again, as in the philosophy of Cournot, we find the main emphasis falling
upon the double problem of the period. It is in reality one problem with two
aspects—the relation of science to morality, or, in other words, the
place and significance of freedom.
The general influence of Renouvier has led to the formation of a neo-critical
“school” of thought, prominent members of which may be cited: Pillon and Prat,
his intimate friends, Séailles and Darlu, who have contributed monographs upon
their master’s teaching, together with Hamelin, Liard and Brochard, eminent
disciples. Hamelin (1856-1907), whose premature and accidental death deprived
France of a keen thinker, is known for his Essai sur les Eléments principaux
de la Représentation (1907), supplementing the doctrines of Renouvier by
those of Hegel.
In the work of Liard (1846-1917), La Science positive et la Métaphysique
(1879), we see a combination of the influence of Vacherot, Renouvier and Kant.
He was also perplexed by the problem of efficient and final causes as was
Lachelier, whose famous thesis De l’Induction appeared eight years
earlier. While Lachelier was influenced by Kant, he, none the less, belongs to
the current of the new spiritualism which we shall presently examine. Liard,
however, by his adherence to many critical and neo-critical standpoints may be
justly looked upon as belonging to that great current of which Renouvier is the
prominent thinker.
Brochard (1848-1907) is mainly known by his treatise De l’Erreur (1879)
and his volumes on Ethics, De la Responsabilité morale (1876), and De
l’Universalité des Notions morales (1876), in all of which the primacy of
moral considerations is advocated in a tone inspired by Renouvier’s strong
moral standpoint. The work De l’Erreur emphasises the importance of the
problem of freedom as being the crux of the whole question involved in the
relation of science and morality. Adhering to the neo-critical doctrines in
general, and particularly to the value of the practical reason, Brochard, by
his insistence upon action as a foundation for belief, has marked affinities
with the doctrines of Blondel (and Olle-Laprune), the significance of whose
work will appear at the end of our next section.
The phenomenalism of Renouvier was followed up by two thinkers, who cannot,
however, be regarded as belonging to his neo-critical school. In 1888 Gourd
published his work entitled Le Phénomène, which was followed six years
later by the slightly more coherent attempt of Boirac to base a philosophy upon
the phenomenalism which expresses itself so rigidly in Hume. In his book
L’Idée du Phénomène (1894), he had, however, recourse to the Leibnitzian
doctrines, which had finally exercised a considerable influence over Renouvier
himself.
III
The reaction against positivism and against eclecticism took another form quite
apart from that of the neocritical philosophy. This was the triumphant
spiritualist philosophy, as we may call it, to give it a general name,
represented by a series of great thinkers—Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouillée,
Guyau, Boutroux, Bergson and, we may add, Blondel. These men have all of them
had an influence much greater than that of Renouvier, and this is true of each
of them separately. This is rather noteworthy for, if we exclude Fouillee,
whose writings are rather too numerous, the works of all the other men together
do not equal in quantity the work of Renouvier. There is another point which is
worthy of notice. While Renouvier worked in comparative solitude and never
taught philosophy in any college or university, being, in fact, neglected by
the University of Paris, all the company—Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouillée,
Guyau, Boutroux and Bergson—had a connection with the University of Paris
in general, being associated with the Sorbonne, the Collège de France or the
important Ecole Normale Supérieure.
The initiator of the spiritualistic philosophy was Ravaisson (1815-1900), who
himself drew inspiration from Maine de Biran, to whose work he had called
attention as early as 1840 in a vigorous article contributed to the Revue
des Deux Mondes. This roused the indignation of Victor Cousin and the
eclectics, who in revenge excluded Ravaisson from the Institute. His
independent spirit had been shown in his thesis De l’Habitude
(1838)[32] and his remarkable study of the
metaphysics of Aristotle (1837-1846).
Ravaisson’s chief title to fame, however, lies in his famous philosophic
manifesto of 1867, for such, in fact, was his Rapport sur la Philosophie en
France au XIXè Siècle. This Report, prepared for the
Exposition universelle at the request of the Ministry of Education,
marks an epoch, for with it began the current of thought which was to dominate
the close of the century. The “manifesto” was a call to free spirits to assert
themselves in favour of a valid idealism. It, in itself, laid the foundations
of such a philosophy and dealt a blow to both the Eclectic School of Cousin and
the followers of Auguste Comte. Ravaisson wrote little, but his influence was
powerful and made itself felt in the University, where in his office of
president of the agrégation en philosophie he exercised no little
influence over the minds of younger men. His pupils, among whom are to be found
Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson, have testified to the profound and inspiring
influence which this thinker exercised. A notable tribute to his memory is the
address given by Bergson when he was appointed to take Ravaisson’s place at the
Académie des Sciences morales et politiques in 1904.
Various influences meet in Ravaisson and determine his general attitude to
thought. He reverts, as we have said, to Maine de Biran, whose insistence upon
the inner life he approves. We must examine human consciousness and make it our
basis. We have in it powers of will, of desire and of love. Ravaisson blends
the Aristotelian insistence upon Thought with the Christian insistence upon
Love. In his method he manifests the influence of the German philosopher,
Schelling, whose lectures he attended at Munich in company with the young Swiss
thinker, Secretan.[33] This influence is seen in
his doctrine of synthesis and his intellectual intuition. Science continues to
give us analyses ever more detailed, but it cannot lead us to the absolute. Our
highest, most sublime knowledge is gained by a synthesis presented in and to
our consciousness, an intuition. Further, he argues that efficient causes,
about which science has so much to say, are really dependent upon final causes.
Spiritual reality is anterior to material reality, and is characterised by
goodness and beauty. Himself an artist, imbued with a passionate love of the
beautiful (he was guardian of sculptures at the Louvre), he constructs a
philosophy in the manner of an artist. Like Guyau, he writes metaphysics like
poetry, and although he did not give us anything like Vers d’un
Philosophe, he would have endorsed the remarks which Guyau made on the
relation of poetry and philosophy if, indeed, it is not a fact that his
influence inspired the younger man.
After surveying the currents of thought up to 1867 Ravaisson not only summed up
in his concluding pages the elements of his own philosophy, but he ventured to
assume the role of prophet. “Many signs permit us to foresee in the near future
a philosophical epoch of which the general character will be the predominance
of what may be called spiritualistic realism or positivism, having as
generating principle the consciousness which the mind has of itself as an
existence recognised as being the source and support of every other existence,
being none other than its action.”[34] His
prophecy has been fulfilled in the work of Lachelier, Guyau, Fouillée,
Boutroux, Bergson, Blondel and Weber.
After Ravaisson the spiritualist philosophy found expression in the work of
Lachelier (1832-1918), a thinker whose importance and whose influence are both
quite out of proportion to the small amount which he has written.[36] A brilliant thesis of only one hundred
pages, Du Fondement de l’Induction, sustained in 1871, together with a
little study on the Syllogism and a highly important article on Psychologie
et Métaphysique, contributed to the Revue philosophique in May of
1885, constitute practically all his written work.[37] It was orally that he made his influence felt; by
his teaching at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (1864-1875) he made a profound
impression upon the youth of the University and the Ecole by the dignity and
richness of his thought, as well as by its thoroughness.
Lachelier was a pupil of Ravaisson, and owes his initial inspiration to him. He
had, however, a much more rigorous and precise attitude to problems. This is
apparent in the concentration of thought contained in his thesis. It is one of
Lachelier’s merits that he recognised the significance of Kant’s work in a very
profound manner. Until his thesis appeared the influence of Leibnitz had been
more noticeable in French thought than that of Kant. It was noticeable in
Ravaisson, and Renouvier, in spite of his professed adherence to Kant, passed
to a Leibnitzian position in his Nouvelle Monadologie.
The valuable work Du Fondement de l’Induction is concerned mainly with
the problem of final causes, which Lachelier deduces from the necessity of
totality judgments over and above those which concern merely efficient causes.
On the principle of final causes, or a ideological conception of a rational
unity and order, he founds Induction. It cannot be founded, he claims, upon a
mere empiricism. This is a point which will concern us later in our examination
of the problem of science.
Lachelier was left, however, with the dualism of mechanism, operating solely by
efficient causes, and teleology manifested in final causes, a dualism from
which Kant did not manage to escape. In his article Psychologic et
Métaphysique he endeavoured to interpret mechanism itself as a teleological
activity of the spirit.[38] He indicates the
absolute basis of our life and experience, indeed of the universe itself, to be
the absolute spontaneity of spirit. In spirit and in freedom we live and move
and have our being. We do not affirm ourselves to be what we are, but rather we
are what we affirm ourselves to be. We must not say that our present depends
upon our past, for we really create all the moments of our life in one and the
same act, which is both present to each moment and above them all.[39] Here psychology appears as the science of
thought itself and resolves itself into metaphysics. Here, too, we find the
significance of the new spiritualism; we see its affinity with, and its
contrast to, the doctrines of the older spiritualism as professed by Cousin.
Lachelier here strikes the note which is so clearly characteristic of this
current of thought, and is no less marked in his work than in that of
Bergson—namely, a belief in the supremacy of spirit and in the reality of
freedom.
The notion of freedom and of the spontaneity of the spirit became watchwords of
the new spiritualist philosophers. Under the work and influence of Boutroux
(1845-1921) these ideas were further emphasised and worked out more definitely
to a position which assumes a critical attitude to the dogmatism of modern
science and establishes a contingency in all things. Boutroux’s thesis De la
Contingence des Lois de la Nature appeared in 1874 and was dedicated to
Ravaisson. His chief fame and his importance in the development of the
spiritualist philosophy rest upon this book alone. In 1894 he published a
course of lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1892-3, Sur l’Idée de Loi
naturelle, which supplements the thesis. Outside his own country attention
has been more readily bestowed upon his writings on the history of philosophy,
of which subject he was Professor. In his own country, however, great interest
and value are attached to his work on The Contingency of the Laws of
Nature. In this Boutroux combines the attitude of Ravaisson with that of
Lachelier. The totality of the laws of the universe manifests, according to
him, a contingency. No explanation of these laws is possible apart from a free
spiritual activity. The stress laid upon contingency in the laws of nature
culminates in the belief in the freedom of man.
The critique of science which marked Boutroux’s work has profoundly influenced
thinkers like Hannequin, Payot and Milhaud,[40]
and in the following century appears in the work of Duhem and of Henri
Poincaré, the noted mathematician, whose books on La Science et
l’Hypothèse (1902), La Valeur de la Science (1905), and Science
et Méthode (1909) have confirmed many of Boutroux’s conclusions.[41]
While the new spiritualist current was thus tending to a position far removed
from that of Taine, at the commencement of our period, a wavering note was
struck by the idealist Fouillée (1838-1912), who, while maintaining a general
attitude in harmony with the new doctrines endeavoured to effect a
reconciliation with the more positive attitude to science and philosophy. In
his philosophie des ideés-forces[42] he
endeavoured to combine and reconcile the diverging attitudes of Plato and of
Comte. He shows a scorn of the neo-critical though of Renouvier. He wrote in
his shorter life more books than did Renouvier, and he is conspicuous among
this later group of thinkers for his mass-production of books, which appeared
steadily at the rate of one per annum to the extent of some thirty-seven
volumes, after he gave up his position as maître de conférence at
the Ecole Normale owing to ill-health.[43]
Fouillée, with the noblest intentions, set himself to the solution of that
problem which we have already indicated as being the central one of our period,
the relation of science and ethics, or, in brief, the problem of freedom. This
was the subject of his thesis, undoubtedly the best book he ever wrote, La
Liberté et le Déterminisme, which he sustained in 1872.[44] The attitude which he takes in that work is
the keynote to his entire philosophy. Well grounded in a knowledge of the
history of systems of philosophy, ancient and modern, he recognises elements of
truth in each, accompanied by errors due mainly to a one-sided
perspective.[45] He recalls a statement of
Leibnitz to the effect that most systems are right in their assertions and err
in their denials. Fouillée was convinced that there was reconciliation at the
heart of things, and that the contradictions we see are due to our point of
view. Facing, therefore, in this spirit, the problems of the hour, he set
himself “to reconcile the findings of science with the reality of spirit, to
establish harmony between the determinism upheld by science and the liberty
which the human spirit acclaims, between the mechanism of nature and the
aspirations of man’s heart, between the True which is the object of all science
and the Good which is the goal of morality.”[46]
Fouillée had no desire to offer merely another eclecticism à la mode
de Cousin; he selects, therefore, his own principle of procedure. This
principle is found in his notion of idée-force. Following ancient usage,
he employs the term “idea” for any mental presentation. For Fouillée,
however, ideas are not idées-spectacles, merely exercising a platonic
influence “remote as the stars shining above us.” They are not merely mental
reproductions of an object, real or hypothetical, outside the mind. Ideas are
in themselves forces which endeavour to work out their own realisation.
Fouillée opposes his doctrine to the evolutionary theory of Spencer and Huxley.
He disagrees with their mechanism and epiphenomenalism, pointing out
legitimately that our ideas, far from being results of purely physical and
independent causes, are themselves factors, and very vital factors, in the
process of evolution. Fouillée looks upon the mechanistic arrangement of the
world as an expression or symbol of idea or spirit in a manner not unlike that
of Lotze.
He bears out his view of idées-forces by showing how a state of
consciousness tries to realise its object. The idea of movement is closely
bound up with the physiological and physical action, and, moreover, tends to
produce it. This realisation is not a merely mechanistic process but is
teleological and depends on the vital unity between the physical and the
mental. On this fundamental notion Fouillée constructs his psychology, his
ethic, his sociology and his metaphysic. He sees in the evolutionary process
ideas at work which tend to realise themselves. One of these is the idea of
freedom, in which idea he endeavours to find a true reconciliation of the
problem of determinism in science and the demands of the human spirit which
declares itself free. The love of freedom arising from the idea of freedom
creates in the long run this freedom. This is Fouillée’s method all through.
“To conceive and to desire the ideal is already to begin its realisation.” He
applies his method with much success in the realm of ethics and sociology where
he opposes to the Marxian doctrine of a materialist determination of history
that of a spiritual and intellectual determination by ideas. Fouillée’s
philosophy is at once intellectual and voluntarist. He has himself described it
as “spiritualistic voluntarism.” It is a system of idealism which reflects
almost all the elements of modern thought. In places his doctrine of
reconciliation appears to break down, and the psychological law summed up in
idées-forces is hardly sufficient to bear the vast erection which
Fouillée builds upon it. The idea is nevertheless a valuable and fruitful one.
Fouillée’s respect for positive science is noteworthy, as is also his great
interest in social problems.[47]
The importance of the sociological aspect of all problems was emphasised in a
brilliant manner by Guyau (1854-1888), the step-son of Fouillée. Guyau was a
gifted young man, whose death at the early age of thirty-four was a sore
bereavement for Fouillée and undoubtedly a disaster for philosophy. Guyau was
trained by his step-father,[48] and assisted him
in his work. When ill-health forced both men from their professorships,[49] they lived in happy comradeship at Mentone
at the same time, it is interesting to note, that Nietzsche was residing there.
Equally interesting is it to observe that although Guyau and Fouillée were
unaware of the German thinker’s presence or his work, Nietzsche was well
acquainted with theirs, particularly that of Guyau. Doubtless he would have
been pleased to meet the author of the Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation
ni Sanction (1885) and L’Irreligion de l’Avenir (1887). Editions of
these books exist in the Nietzsche-Archiv bearing Nietzsche’s notes and
comments.
Guyau himself has a certain affinity with Nietzsche, arising from his
insistence upon Life and its power; but the author of the delightful little
collection Vers d’un Philosophe (1881) is free from the egoism expressed
in Der Wille zur Macht. Guyau posits as his idée-directrice the
conception of Life, both individual and social, and in this concept he
professes to find a basis more fundamental than that of force, movement or
existence. Life involves expansion and intension, fecundity and creation. It
means also consciousness, intelligence and feeling, generosity and sociability.
“He only lives well who lives for others.” Life can only exist by extending. It
can never be purely egoistic and endure; a certain giving of itself, in
generosity and in love, is necessary for its continuance. Such is the view
which the French philosopher-poet expresses in opposition to Nietzsche,
starting, however, from the concept of Life did Nietzsche. Guyau worked out a
doctrine of ethics and of religion based upon this concept which will demand
our special attention in its proper place, when we consider the moral and
religious problem. He strove to give an idealistic setting to the doctrines of
evolution, and this alone would give him a place among the great thinkers of
the period.
In his doctrine of the relation of thought and action Guyau followed the
philosophie des idées-forces. On the other hand there are very
remarkable affinities between the thought of Guyau and that of Bergson. Guyau
is not so severely intellectual as Fouillée; his manner of thought and
excellence of style are not unlike Bergson. More noticeably he has a conception
of life not far removed from the élan vital. His “expansion of life”
has, like Bergson’s évolution créatrice, no goal other than that of its
own activity. After Guyau’s death in 1888 it was found that he had been
exercised in mind about the problem of Time, for he left the manuscript of a
book entitled La Genèse de l’Idée de Temps.[50] He therein set forth a belief in a psychological,
heterogeneous time other than mathematical time, which is really spatial in
character. In this psychological time the spirit lives. The year following
Guyau’s death, but before his posthumous work appeared, Bergson published his
thesis Les Données immédiates de la Conscience (1889), which is better
described by its English title Time and Free Will, and in which this
problem which had been present to Guyau’s mind is taken up and treated in an
original and striking manner. In Guyau, too, is seen the rise of the conception
of activity so marked in the work of Bergson and of Blondel. “It is
action and the power of life,” he insists, “which alone can solve, if
not entirely at least partially, those problems to which abstract thought gives
rise.”[51]
Bergson, born in 1859, Professor at the Collège de France from 1901 to 1921,
now retired, has had a popularity to which none of the other thinkers of this
group, or indeed of our period, has attained. He is the only one of the new
idealists or spiritualists who is well known outside his own country. For this
reason foreigners are apt to regard him as a thinker unrelated to any special
current of thought, an innovator. Although much is original and novel in his
philosophy, his thought marks the stage in the development to which the
spiritualist current has attained in contemporary thought. The movement of
which he forms a part we can trace back as far as Maine de Biran, to whom
Bergson owes much, as he does also to Ravaisson, Lachelier, Boutroux and Guyau.
Two important books by Bergson came prior to 1900, his Time and Free
Will (1889) and his Matter and Memory (1896). His famous Creative
Evolution appeared in 1907. It is but his first work “writ large,” for we
have in Time and Free Will the essentials of his philosophy.
He makes, as did Guyau, a central point of Change, a universal becoming, and
attacks the ordinary notion of time, which he regards as false because it is
spatial. We ourselves live and act in durée, which is Bergson’s term for
real time as opposed to that fictitious time of the mathematician or
astronomer. He thus lays stress upon the inward life of the spirit, with its
richness and novelty, its eternal becoming, its self-creation. He has his own
peculiar manner of approaching our central problem, that of freedom, of which
he realises the importance. For him the problem resolves itself into an
application of his doctrine of la durée, to which we shall turn in due
course.
Bergson insists with Guyau and Blondel upon the primary significance of action.
The importance attached to action colours his whole theory of knowledge. His
epistemology rests upon the thesis that “the brain is an instrument of action
and not of representation,” and that “in the study of the problems of
perception the starting- point should be action and not sensation.” This is a
psychology far different from that of Condillac and Taine, and it is largely
upon his merit as a psychologist that Bergson’s fame rests. He devoted his
second work, Matter and Memory, to showing that memory is something
other than a function of the brain. His distinction between “pure” memory and
mere memorising power, which is habit, recalls the mémoire of Maine de
Biran and of Ravaisson upon Habit. Bergson sees in memory a
manifestation of spirit, which is a fundamental reality, no mere epiphenomenon.
Spirit is ever striving against matter, but in spite of this dualism which he
cannot escape, he maintains that spirit is at the origin of things. This is a
difficulty which is more clearly seen in his later book, Creative
Evolution. Matter is our enemy and threatens our personality in its
spiritual reality by a tendency to lead us into habit, away from life, freedom
and creativeness.
Further we must, he claims, endeavour to see things sub specie durationis in
a durée, in an eternal becoming. We cannot expect to grasp all the varied
reality of life in a formula or indeed in any purely intellectual manner. This
is the chief defect of science and of the so-called scientific point of view.
It tries to fix in concepts, moulds and solid forms a reality which is living
and moving eternally. For Bergson all is Change, and this eternal becoming we
can only grasp by intuition. Intuition and intellect do not, however, oppose
one another. We are thus led to realise that Life is more than logic. The
Bergsonian philosophy concludes with intuitionism and contingency, which drew
upon it the severe criticisms of Fouillée,[52]
who termed it a philosophy of scepticism and nihilism. Of all the spiritualist
group Fouillée stands nearest the positive attitude to science, and his strong
intellectualism comes out in his criticism of Bergson, who well represents,
together with Blondel, the tendency towards non-intellectual attitudes inherent
in the spiritualist development. Blondel has endeavoured to treat the great
problems, a task which Bergson has not attempted as yet, partly because he
(Bergson) shares Renan’s belief that “the day of philosophic systems has gone,”
partly because he desires to lay the basis of a philosophy of the spirit to
which others after him may contribute, and so he devotes his attention to
method and to those crucial points, such as the problem of freedom upon which a
larger doctrine must necessarily rest.[53]
The current of the new idealism or spiritualism reaches a culminating point in
the work of Blondel (born about 1870), whose remarkable and noteworthy book
L’Action appeared in l893.[54] The
fundamental thesis of the Philosophy of Action[55] is that man’s life is primarily one of
action, consequently philosophy must concern itself with the active life and
not merely with thought. By its nature, action is something unique and
irreducible to other elements or factors. It is not the result of any
synthesis: it is itself a living synthesis, and cannot be dealt with as the
scientist deals with his data. Blondel lays emphasis, as did Bergson, upon “the
living” being unique and inexpressible in formulae. Intellect cannot grasp
action; “one penetrates the living reality only by placing oneself at the
dynamic point of view of the will.”[56] His words
recall Bergson’s attitude to the free act. “The principle of action eludes
positive knowledge at the moment at which it makes it possible, and, in a word
that needs to be better defined, it is subjectivity.”[57]
Blondel, however, leads us beyond this subjectivity, for it is not the will
which causes what is. Far from that, he maintains that in so far as it wills it
implies something which it does not and cannot create of itself; it wills to be
what it is not yet. We do not act for the mere sake of acting, but for some
end, something beyond the particular act. Action is not self-contained or self-
sufficing: it is a striving to further attainment or achievement. It therefore
pre-supposes some reality beyond itself. Here appear the elements of “passion”
and “suffering” due to resistance, for all action involves some opposition. In
particular moral action implies this resistance and a consciousness of power to
overcome the resistance, and it therefore involves a reality which transcends
the sphere in which we act.
Owing to this inequality between the power and the wish, we are obliged to
complete our actions or our activity in general by a belief in a Reality
beyond. It is, however, “a beyond that is within,” a Divine power immanent in
man. This view, Blondel claims, unites the idea of God “transcendent” with the
idea of God as “immanent.” Man’s action partakes of both, for in so far as it
results from his own will it is immanent; transcendence is, however, implied in
the fact that the end of man’s action as a whole is not “given.” Blondel leads
us to a conception of a religious idealism in which every act of our ordinary
existence leads ultimately to a religious faith. Every action is sacramental.
Blondel and his follower Laberthonnière, who has taken up this idea from his
master in his volume of Essais de Philosophie réligieuse (1901), go
beyond a purely pragmatist or voluntarist position by finding the supreme value
of all action, and of the universe, not in will but in love. For Blondel this
word is no mere sentiment or transient feeling, but a concrete reality which is
the perfection of will and of intellect alike, of action and of knowledge. The
“Philosophy of Action,” asserts Blondel, includes the “Philosophy of the Idea.”
In the fact of love, he claims, is found the perfect unity between the self and
the non-self, the ground of personality and its relation to the totality of
persons, producing a unity in which each is seen as an end to others as well as
to himself. “Love,” says Laberthonnière, “is the first and last word of all. It
is the principle, the means and the end. It is in loving that one gets away
from self and raises oneself above one’s temporal individuality. It is in
loving that one finds God and other beings, and that one finds oneself.” It is,
in short, these idealists claim, the Summum Bonum; in it is found the
Absolute which philosophers and religious mystics of all ages have ever sought.
The “philosophy of action” is intimately bound up with the “philosophy of
belief,” formulated by Ollé-Laprune, and the movement in religious thought
known generally as Modernism, which is itself due to the influence of modern
philosophic thought upon the dogmas of the Christian religion, as these are
stated by the Roman Church. Both the Philosophy of Belief and Modernism are
characterised by an intense spirituality and a moral earnestness which maintain
the primacy of the practical reason over the theoretical reason. Life, insists
Ollé-Laprune in his book Le Prix de la Vie (l885),[58] is not contemplation but active creation. He urges
us to a creative evolution of the good, to an employment of
idées-forces. “There are things to be made whose measure is not
determined; there are things to be discovered, to be invented, new forms of the
good, ideas which have never yet been received—creations, as it were, of
the spirit that loves the good.” This dynamism and power of will is essential.
We must not lose ourselves in abstractions; action is the supreme thing: it
alone constitutes reality.
A similar note is sounded by the Modernists or Neo-Catholics, particularly by
the brilliant disciple and successor of Bergson, Le Roy, who in Dogme et
Critique (1907) has based the reality of religious dogma upon its practical
significance. We find Péguy (who fell on the field of battle in 1914) applying
Bergsonian ideas to a fervid religious faith. Wilbois unites these ideas to
social ethics in his Devoir et Durée (1912). In quite different quarters
the new spiritualism and philosophy of action have appeared as inspiring the
Syndicalism of Sorel, who endeavours to apply the doctrines of Bergson,
Ollé-Laprune and Blondel to the solution of social questions in his
Réflexions sur la Violence (1907) and Illusions du Progrès
(1911).
It would be erroneous to regard Bergson’s intuitional philosophy as typical of
all contemporary French thought. Following Renouvier, Fouillée and Boutroux,
there prevail currents of a more intellectualist or rationalist type, to which
we are, perhaps, too close to see in true and historical perspective. The
élan vital of French thought continues to manifest itself in a manner
which combines the work of Boutroux and Bergson with Blondel’s idealism. A keen
interest is being taken in the works of Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, and this is
obviously influencing the trend of French philosophy at the moment, without
giving rise to a mere eclecticism. French thought is too original and too
energetic for that. In addition to these classical studies we should note the
great and growing influence of the work of Durkheim and of Hamelin, both of
whom we have already mentioned. The former gave an immense impetus to
sociological studies by his earlier work. Further interest arose with his
Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse in 1912. Hamelin indicated a
turning-point from neo-criticisme through the new spiritualist doctrines
to Hegelian methods and ideas. Brunschwicg, who produced a careful study of
Spinoza, wrote as early as 1897 on La Modalité du Jugement, a truly
Kantian topic. This thinker’s later works, Les Etapes de la Philosophie
mathematique (1912) and the little volume La Vie de l’esprit,
illustrate a tendency to carry out the line taken by Boutroux—namely, to
arrive at the statement of a valid idealism disciplined by positivism. The
papers of Berthelot in his Evolutionnisme et Platonisme are a further
contribution to this great end. In the work of Evellin, La Raison pure et
les Antinomies (1907), the interest in Kant and Hegel is again seen.
Noël, who contributed an excellent monograph on Lachelier to the Revue
de Métaphysique et de Morale (that journal which is an excellent witness in
itself to the vitality of contemporary French philosophy), produced a careful
study of Hegel’s Logik in 1897. Since that date interest has grown along the
lines of Boutroux, Bergson and Blondel in an attempt to reach a positive
idealism, which would combine the strictly positivist attitude so dear to
French minds with the tendency to spiritualism or idealism which they also
manifest. This attempt, which in some respects amounts to an effort to restate
the principles of Hegel in modern or contemporary terms, was undertaken by
Weber in 1903 in his book entitled Vers le Positivisme absolu par
l’Idéalisme. Philosophy in France realises to-day that the true course of
spiritual development will be at once positive and idealistic.
CHAPTER III
SCIENCE
INTRODUCTION: The scientific outlook—Progress of the sciences—The
positivist spirit, its action on science, philosophy and literature—The
problem as presented to philosophy.
I. Comte’s positivism—Work of prominent scientists—Position maintained
by Berthelot and Bernard—Renan’s confidence—Vacherot and
Taine—Insufficiency of sciences alone.
II. Cournot and Renouvier attack the dogmatism of science.
III. The neo-spiritualist group continue and develop this attack, which becomes a
marked feature in Lachelier, Boutroux, and Bergson.
Entire change of attitude in the development of the period.
The problem of freedom opened up in the process.
CHAPTER III
SCIENCE
Having thus surveyed the main currents of our period and indicated the general
attitude adopted to knowledge by the various thinkers, we approach more closely
to the problem of the relation of science and philosophy. The nineteenth
century was a period in which this problem was keenly felt, and France was the
country in which it was tensely discussed by the most acute minds among the
philosophers and among the scientists. French thought and culture, true to the
tradition of the great geometrician and metaphysician Descartes, have produced
men whose training has been highly scientific as well as philosophical. Her
philosophers have been keenly versed in mathematics and physical science, while
her scientists have had considerable power as philosophical thinkers.
One of the very prominent tendencies of thought in the first half of the
nineteenth century was the growing belief and confidence in the natural
sciences. In France this was in large measure due to the progress of those
sciences themselves and to the influences of Comte, which was supported by the
foreign influences of Kant’s teaching and that of the English School,
particularly John Stuart Mill. These three great streams of thought, widely
different in many respects, had this in common—that they tended to
confuse philosophy and science to such a degree that it seemed doubtful whether
the former could be granted any existence by itself. Science, somewhat
intoxicated by the praise and worship bestowed upon her, became proud, arrogant
and overbearing. She scorned facts which could not be adapted to her own
nature, she ignored data which were not quantitative and materialistic, and she
regarded truth as a system of laws capable of expression by strict mathematical
methods and formulae*. Hence science became characterised by a firm belief in
absolute determinism, in laws of necessity operating after the manner of
mathematical laws. This “universal mathematic” endeavoured also to explain the
complex by reference to the simple. Difficulties were encountered all along the
line, for experience, it was found, did not quite fit into rigid formulae*,
“new” elements of experience presented a unique character and distressing
discrepancy. Confidence in science, however, was not shaken by this, for the
perfect science, it was imagined, was assured in a short time. Patience might
be needed, but no doubt was entertained of the possibility of such a
construction. Doubters were told to look at the rising sciences of psychology
and sociology, which, as Auguste Comte had himself prophesied, were approaching
gradually to the “type” venerated—namely, an exact and mathematical
character. Biology, it was urged, was merely a special branch of
physico-chemistry. As for beliefs in freedom, in art, morality and religion,
these, like philosophy (metaphysics) itself, belonged to the earlier stages
(the theological and metaphysical) of Comte’s list, stages rapidly to be
replaced by the third and final “positive” era.
Such, briefly stated, were the affirmations so confidently put forward on
behalf of science by its devoted worshippers. Confidence in science was a
marked feature of the work written by Renan in the years 1848-1849, L’Avenir
de la Science. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, Renan himself played a
large part in undermining this confidence. Yet the time of his writing this
work is undoubtedly the period when the confidence in science was most marked.
By this it is not implied that an even greater confidence in science has not
been professed since by many thinkers. That is probably true, but the important
point is that at this time the confidence in science was less resisted than
ever in its history. It seemed to have a clear field and positivism seemed to
be getting unto itself a mighty victory.
The cult of facts, which is so marked a characteristic of the scientific or
positivist temper, penetrated, it is interesting to note, into the realm of
literature, where it assumed the form of “realism.” In his Intelligence we find
Taine remarking, “de tout petits fails bien choisis, importants,
significatifs, amplement circonstanciés et minutieusement notés, voilà
aujourd’hui la matière de toute science.”[1]
It was also, in the opinion of several writers, the matière de toute
littérature. The passion for minute details shows itself in the realism of
Flaubert and Zola, in the psychology of Stendthal* and the novels of the
Goncourts. It was no accident that their works were so loved by Taine. A
similar spirit of “positivism” or “realism” animated both them and him.
With the turn of the half century, however, a change manifested itself by the
fact that the positivist current began to turn against itself, and our period
is, in some respects, what Fouillée has called la réaction centre la science
positive.[2] The function of
philosophy is essentially criticism, and although at that period the vitality
of philosophy was low, it nevertheless found enough energy to criticise the
demands and credentials of Science.
The publication of Claude Bernard’s volume Introduction à la Médecine
experimentale[3] drew from the pen of
Paul Janet, the last of the Eclectic School dominated by Cousin, an article of
criticism which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and was later
published in his volume of essays entitled, Les Problèmes du XIXe
Siècle. Although Janet’s essay reveals all the deficiencies of the older
spiritualism, he makes a gallant attempt to combat the dogmatism and the
assumed finality of Bernard’s point of view and that of the scientists in
general. Janet regarded the sciences and their relation to philosophy as
constituting an important problem for the century and in this judgment he was
not mistaken.
I
We have, in our Introductory Chapter, reckoned Auguste Comte among the
influential antecedents of our period. Here, in approaching the study of the
problem of science, we may note that the tendency towards the strictly
scientific attitude, and to the promotion of the scientific spirit in
general, was partly due to the influence of his positivism. Comte’s intended
Religion of Humanity failed, his system of positive philosophy has been
neglected, but the SPIRIT which he inculcated has abided and has borne fruit.
We would be wrong, however, if we attributed much to Comte as the originator of
that spirit. His positive philosophy, although it greatly stimulated and
strengthened the positive attitude adopted by the natural sciences, was itself
in large measure inspired by and based upon these sciences. Consequently much
of Comte’s glory was a reflected light, his thought was a challenge to the old
spiritualism, an assertion of the rights of the sciences to proclaim their
existence and to demand serious consideration.
Although he succeeded in calling the attention of philosophy to the natural
sciences, yet owing to the mere fact that he based himself on the sciences of
his day much of his thought has become obsolete by the progress and extension
of those very sciences themselves. He tended, with a curious dogmatism, to
assign limits to the sciences by keeping them in separate compartments and in
general by desiring knowledge to be limited to human needs. Although there is
important truth in his doctrine of discontinuity or irreducible differences,
the subsequent development of the natural sciences has cleared away many
barriers which he imagined to be impassable. There still are, and may always
be, gaps in our knowledge of the progress from inorganic to organic, from the
living creature to self-conscious personality, but we have a greater conception
of the unity of Nature than had Comte. Many new ideas and discoveries have
transformed science since his day, particularly the doctrines dealing with heat
as a form of motion, with light, electricity, and the radio-activity of matter,
the structure of the atom, and the inter-relation of physics and chemistry.
Comte’s claim for different methods in the different departments of science is
of considerable interest, in view of present-day biological problems and the
controversies of vitalists, mechanists and neo-vitalists.[4] Although Comte insisted upon discontinuity, yet he
urged the necessity for an esprit d’ensemble, the consideration of
things synthetically, in their “togetherness.” He feared that analysis, the
esprit de détail or mathematisation, was being carried out à
l’outrance. This opinion he first stated in 1825 in his tract entitled
Considérations sur les Sciences et les Savants. On the social side he
brought this point out further by insisting on the esprit d’ensemble as
involving the social standpoint in opposition to a purely individualistic view
of human life.
Comte was slow to realise the importance of Ethics as an independent study.
Psychology he never recognised as a separate discipline, deeming it part of
physiology. He gave a curious appreciation to phrenology. Unfortunately he
overlooked the important work done by the introspectionist psychologists in
England and the important work of Maine de Biran in his own country. One is
struck by Comte’s inability to appreciate the immense place occupied by
psychology in modern life and in particular its expression in the modern novel
and in much modern poetry. An acquaintance with the works of men like De
Regnier, Pierre Loti and Anatole France is sufficient to show how large a
factor the psychological method is in French literature and life. It is to be
put down to Comte’s eternal discredit that he failed to appreciate psychology.
Here lies the greatest defect in his work, and it is in this connection that
his work is now being supplemented. Positivism in France to-day is not a
synonym for “Comtism” at all; the term is now employed to denote the spirit and
temper displayed in the methods of the exact sciences. For Comte, we must never
forget, scientific investigation was a means and not an end in itself. His main
purpose was social and political regeneration. Positivism since Comte differs
from his philosophy by a keen attention bestowed upon psychology, and many of
Comte’s inadequate conceptions have been enriched by the introduction of a due
recognition of psychological factors.
It is to be noted that Comte died two years before Darwin’s chef-d’œuvre
appeared, and that he opposed the doctrine of evolution as put forward by
Lamarck. Although Comte’s principle of discontinuity may in general have truth
in it, the problem is a far more complicated one than he imagined it to be.
Again, while Comte’s opposition to the subjectivism of Cousin was a wholesome
influence, he did not accord to psychology its full rights, and this alone has
been gravely against the acceptance of his philosophy, and explains partly the
rise and progress of the new spiritualist doctrines. His work served a useful
purpose, but Comte never closed definitely with the problem of the precise
significance of “positivism” or with its relation to a general conception of
the universe; in short, he confined himself to increasing the scientific spirit
in thought, leaving aside the difficulty of relating science and philosophy.
Comte stated in his Philosophie positive[5] that he regarded attempts to explain all phenomena
by reference to one law as futile, even when undertaken by the most competent
minds well versed in the study of the sciences. Although he believed in
discontinuity he tried to bridge some gaps, notably by his endeavour to refer
certain physiological phenomena to the law of gravitation.
The chief work which this undoubtedly great mind accomplished was the
organisation of the scientific spirit as it appeared in his time. Renan hardly
does justice to him in his sarcastic remark in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de
Jeunesse. “I felt quite irritated at the idea of Auguste Comte being
dignified with the title of a great man for having expressed in bad French what
all scientific minds had seen for the last two hundred years as clearly as he
had done.” His work merits more than dismissal in such a tone, and we may here
note, as the essence of the spirit which he tried to express, his definition of
the positive or scientific attitude to the universe given at the commencement
of his celebrated Cours de Philosophie positive. There, in defining the
positive stage, Comte speaks of it as that period in which “the human spirit,
recognising the impossibility of obtaining absolute conceptions, abandons the
search for the origin and the goal of the universe and the inner causes of
things, to set itself the task merely of discovering, by reasoning and by
experience combined, the effective laws of phenomena—that is to say,
their invariable relations of succession and of similarity.”[6] This positive spirit Comte strove to express rather
than to originate, for it was already there in the sciences. Undoubtedly his
work made it more prominent, more clear, and so we have to note an interaction
between positivism in the sciences and in philosophy.
It is equally important for our purpose to notice that the period was one rich
in scientific thought. The work of Lavoisier and Bichat, both of whom as
contemporaries of Maine de Biran, belong to the former century, was now bearing
fruit. Lavoisier’s influence had been great over chemistry, which he
established on a modern basis, by formulating the important theory of the
conservation of mass and by clearing away false and fan- tastic conceptions
regarding combustion.[7] Bichat, the great
anatomist and physiologist, died in 1802, but the publication of his works in a
completed form was not accomplished until 1854. The work and influence of the
Académie des Sciences are noteworthy features of French culture at this
time. There stands out prominently the highly important work of Cuvier in
anatomy, zoology and palæontology.[8] The
nineteenth century was a period of great scientists and of great scientific
theories. Leverrier, applying himself to the problem of the motions of Uranus,
found a solution in the hypothesis of another planet, Neptune, which was
actually discovered from his calculations in 1846. This was a notable victory
for logical and scientific method. In 1809 Lamarck had outlined, prior to
Spencer or Darwin, the scheme of the evolutionary theory (Transformism).[9] Spencer’s work, which appeared from 1850
onwards, has always commanded respect and attention in France even among its
critics.[10] Interest increased upon the
publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, and its translation
into French in 1862. These dates coincide with the rise of the Société
d’Anthropologie de Paris, founded by Broca in the same year that Darwin’s
book appeared. Another translation from Darwin’s work followed in 1872,
Descendance de l’Homme, which aroused further interest in the
evolutionary theory. At the same time the work of men such as Pasteur,
Bertrand, Berthelot and Bernard gave an impetus and a power to science.
Poincare belongs rather to the twentieth century. Pasteur (1822-1895) showed
mankind how science could cure its ills by patient labour and careful
investigation, and earned the world’s gratitude for his noble work. His various
Discours and his volume, Le Budget de la Science (1868), show his
faith in this progressive power of science. In Bertrand (1822-1900), his
contemporary who held the position of Professor of Mathematics at the College
de France, a similar attitude appears.
One of the foremost scientific minds, however, was Claude Bernard (1813-1878),
a friend of Renan, who held the Chair of Medicine at the College de France, and
was, in addition, the Professor of Physiology at the Faculté des Sciences at
the Sorbonne. Science, Bernard maintained, concerns itself only with phenomena
and their laws. He endeavoured in his celebrated Introduction à
l’Etude de la Médécine expérimentale, published in 1865, to establish the
science of physiology upon a sound basis, having respect only to fact, not
owning homage to theories of a metaphysical character or to the authority of
persons or creeds. He desired to obtain by such a rigorous and precise method,
objectivity. “The experimental method is,” he insists, “the really scientific
method, which proclaims the freedom of the human spirit and its intelligence.
It not only shakes off the yoke of metaphysics and of theology, in addition it
refuses to admit personal considerations and subjective standpoints.”[11]
Bernard’s attitude is distinctly that of a positivist, and the general tone of
his remarks as well as his attitude on many special points agrees with that of
Comte. His conclusions regarding physiology are akin to those expressed by
Comte concerning biology. Bernard excludes any metaphysical hypothesis such as
the operation of a vital principle, and adheres strictly to physicochemical
formulas. He accepts, however, Comte’s warning about the reduction of the
higher to terms of the lower, or, in Spencerian phraseology, the explanation of
the more complex by the less complex. Consequently, he carefully avoids the
statement that he desires to “reduce” physiology to physics and chemistry. He
makes no facile and light-hearted transition as did Spencer; on the contrary,
he claims that the living has some specific quality which cannot be “reduced”
to other terms, and which cannot be summed up in the formulae of physics or
chemistry. The physiologist and the medical practitioner must never overlook
the fact that every living being forms an organism and an individuality. The
physiologist, continues Bernard, must take notice of this unity or harmony of
the whole, even while he penetrates the interior to know the mechanism of each
of its parts. The physicist and the chemist can ignore any notion of final
causes in the facts they observe, but the physiologist must admit a harmonious
finality, a harmony pre-established in the organism, whose actions form and
express a unity and solidarity, since they generate one another. Life itself is
creation; it is not capable of expression merely in physico-chemical
formulae. The creative character, which is its essence, never can be so
expressed. Bernard postulated an abstract, idée directrice et créatrice,
presiding over the evolution of an organism. “Dans tout germe vivant, il y a
une idée créatrice qui se développe et se manifeste par l’organisation. Pendant
toute sa durée l’être vivant reste sous l’influence de cette même
force vitale, créatrice, et la mort arrive lorsqu’elle ne peut plus se
réaliser. Ici comme partout, tout dérive de l’idée, qui, seule, crée et
dirige.”[12]
The positivist spirit is again very marked in the doctrines of Berthelot
(1827-1907), another very great friend of Renan, who, in addition to being a
Senator, and Minister of Education and of Foreign Affairs, held the Chair of
Organic Chemistry at the Collège de France. In 1886 he published his volume,
Science et Philosophie, which contains some interesting and illuminating
observations upon La Science idéale et la Science positive. Part of
this, it may be noted, was written as early as 1863, in correspondence with
Renan, and as a reply to a letter of his of which we shall speak
presently.[13] Berthelot states his case with a
clearness which merits quotation.
“Positive science,” he says, “seeks neither first causes nor the ultimate goal
of things. In order to link together a multitude of phenomena by one single
law, general in character and conformable to the nature of things, the human
spirit has followed a simple and invariable method. It has stated the facts in
accordance with observation and experience, compared them, extracted their
relations, that is the general facts, which have in turn been verified by
observation and experience, which verification constitutes their only guarantee
of truth. A progressive generalisation, deduced from prior facts and verified
unceasingly by new observations, thus brings our knowledge from the plane of
particular and popular facts to general laws of an abstract and universal
character. But, in the construction of this pyramid of science, everything from
base to summit rests upon observation and experience. It is one of the
principles of positive science that no reality can be established by a process
of reasoning. The universe cannot be grasped by a priori methods.”
Like Comte, Berthelot believed in the progress of all knowledge through a
theological and metaphysical stage to a definitely scientific or positive era.
The sciences are as yet young, and we cannot imagine the development and
improvement, social and moral, which will accrue from their triumph in the
future. For Berthelot, as for Renan, the idea of progress was bound up
essentially with the triumph of the scientific spirit. In a Discourse at the
Sorbonne given in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his being
appointed Professor at the Collège de France, we find this faith in science
reiterated. “To-day,” he remarks, “Science claims a triple direction of
societies, materially, intellectually and morally. By this fact the role of the
men of science, both as individuals and as a class, has unceasingly come to
play a great part in modern states.”
These scientific men, Berthelot and Bernard, with whom Renan was on terms of
friendship, had a large influence in the formation of his thought, after he had
quitted the seminary and the Church. As a young man Renan possessed the
positive spirit in a marked degree, and did not fail to disclose his enthusiasm
for “Science” and for the scientific method. His book L’Avenir de la
Science, which we have already noted, was written when he was only
twenty-five, and under the immediate influence of the events of 1848,
particularly the socialist spirit of Saint-Simon and the “organising” attitude
of Auguste Comte. It did not, however, see publication until 1890, when the
Empire had produced a pessimistic temper in him, later accentuated by the
Commune and the Prussian War. The dominant note of the whole work is the
touching and almost pathetic belief in Science, which leads the young writer to
an optimism both in thought and in politics. “Science” constitutes for him the
all-in-all. Although he had just previously abandoned the seminary, his
priestly style remained with him to such a degree that even his treatment of
science is characterised by a mixture of the unction of the curé and the
subtilty of the dialectician. Levites were still to be necessary to the people
of Israel, but they were to be the priests of the most High, whose name,
according to Renan, was “Science.”
His ardour for Science is not confined to this one book: it runs through all
his writings. Prospero, a character who personifies rational thought in
L’Eau de Jouvence, one of Renan’s Drames philosophiques,
expresses an ardent love for science continually. In his preface to
Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse we find Renan upon the same theme.
Quaintly enough he not only praises the objectivity which is characteristic of
the scientific point of view, but seems to delight in its abstraction. The
superiority of modern science consists, he claims, in this very abstraction.
But he is aware that the very indefatigability with which we fathom nature
removes us, in a sense, further from her. He recognises how
science leads away from the immediacy of vital and close contact with nature
herself. “This is, however, as it should be,” asserts Renan, “and let no one
fear to prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless dissection comes
life.” He does not stay to assure us, or to enlighten us, as to how that life
can be infused into the abstract facts which have resulted from the process of
dissection. Fruitful and suggestive as many of his pages are, they fail to
approach the concrete difficulties which this passage mentions.
Writing from Dinant in Brittany in 1863 to his friend, Berthelot, Renan gives
his view of the Sciences of Nature and the Historical Sciences. This letter,
reprinted in his Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques, in 1876,
expresses Renan’s.views in a clear and simple form upon the place of science in
his mind and also upon the idea of progress, as for him the two are intimately
connected. Extreme confidence is expressed in the power of science. Renan at
this time had written, but not published, his Avenir de la Science. In a
brief manner this letter summarises much contained in the larger work. The
point of view is similar. Science is to be the great reforming power.
The word “Science” is so constantly upon Renan’s lips that we can see that it
has become an obsession with mm to employ it, or a device. Certainly Renan’s
extensive and ill-defined usage of it conceals grave difficulties. One is
tempted frequently to regard it as a synonym for philosophy or metaphysics, a
word which he dislikes. That does not, however, add to clearness, and Renan’s
usage of “Science” as a term confuses both science and philosophy together.
Even if this were not the case, there is another important point to note—
namely, that even on a stricter interpretation Renan, by his wide use of the
term, actually undermines the confidence in the natural sciences. For he
embraces within the term “Science” not merely those branches of investigation
which we term in general the sciences of nature, but also the critical study of
language, of history and literature. He expressly endeavours to show in the
letter to Berthelot that true science must include the product of man’s spirit
and the record of the development of that spirit.
Renan assumed quite definitely a positivist attitude to metaphysics.
“Philosophy,” he remarks, “is not a separate science; it is one side of every
science. In the great optic pencil of human knowledge it is the central region
where the rays meet in one and the same light.” Metaphysical speculation he
scorned, but he admitted the place for a criticism of the human mind such as
had been given by Kant in The Critique of Pure Reason.
Kantian also, in its professions at least, was the philosophy of Vacherot, who
stated that the aim of his work, La Métaphysique et la Science, was “the
reconciliation of metaphysics with science.”[14]
These dialogues between a philosopher and a man of science, for of such
discussions the book is composed, never really help us to get close to the
problem, for Vacherot’s Kantianism is a profession which merely covers an
actual positivism. His metaphysical doctrines are superimposed on a severe and
rigid naturalism, but are kept from conflict with them, or even relation with
them, by being allotted to a distant limbo of pure ideals, outside the world
which science displays to us.
Taine, in spite of his severely positive attitude, was a strong champion of
metaphysics. The sciences needed, he claimed, a science of first principles, a
metaphysic. Without it, “the man of science is merely a manœuvre and the
artist a dilettante.” The positive sciences he re- garded as inferior
types of analysis. Above them “is a superior analysis which is metaphysics, and
which reduces or takes up these laws of the sciences into a universal formula.”
This higher analysis, however, does not give the lie to the others: it
completes them.
It was indeed a belief and hope of Taine that the sciences will be more and
more perfected until they can each be expressed in a kind of generic formula,
which in turn may be capable of expression in some single formula. This single
law is being sought by science and metaphysic, although it must belong to the
latter rather than to the former. From it, as from a spring, proceeds,
according to Taine, the eternal roll of events and the infinite sea of things.
Taine’s antagonism to the purely empirical schools centres round his conception
of the law of causality. He disagrees with the assertion that this law is a
synthetic, a posteriori judgment, a habit, as Hume said, or a mechanical
attente, as Mill thought, or a generalisation of the sensation of effort
which we feel in ourselves, as was suggested by Maine de Biran. Yet he also
opposes Kant’s doctrine, in which causality is regarded as a synthetic a
priori judgment. His own criticism of Hume and Kant was directed to denial
of the elements of heterogeneity in experience, which are so essential to
Hume’s view, and to a denial of the distinction maintained by Kant between
logical and causal relations. Taine considered that all might be explained by
logical relations, that all experience might some day be expressed in one law,
one formula. The more geometrico of Spinoza and the “universal
mathematic” of Descartes reappear in Taine. He even essays in
L’Intelligence to equate the principle of causality (principe de
raison explicative) with that of identity.
His attempt to reduce the principle of causality to that of identity did not
succeed very well, and from the nature of the case this was to be expected. As
Fouillée well points out in his criticism of Taine, both in La Liberté et le
Déterminisme and the concluding pages of his earlier work on Plato,[15] the notion of difference and heterogeneity which
arises in the action of cause and effect can never be reducible to a mere
identity, for the notion of identity has nothing in common with that of
difference. Differences cannot be ignored; variety and change are undeniable
facts of experience. Fouillée here touches the weak spot of Taine’s doctrine.
In spite of a seemingly great power of criticism there is an underlying
dogmatism in his work, and the chief of those dogmas, which he does not submit
to criticism, is the assertion of the universal necessity of all things. To
this postulate he gives a false air of objectivity. He avoids stating why we do
objectify causality, and he diverts discussion from the position that this
postulate may itself be subjective.
The particular bearing of Taine’s psychology upon the general problem of
knowledge is interesting. He defines perception in L’Intelligence as
une hallucination vraie. His doctrine of the “double aspect,” physical
and mental, recalls to mind the Modes of Spinoza. In his attitude to the
difficult problem of movement and thought he rests in the dualism of Spinoza,
fluctuating and not enunciating his doctrine clearly. The primacy of movement
to thought he abandoned as too mechanical a doctrine, and regarded the type of
existence as mental in character. Taine thus passes from the materialism of
Hobbes to the idealism of Leibnitz. “The physical world is reducible to a
system of signs, and no more is needed for its construction and conception than
the materials of the moral world.”
When we feel ourselves constrained to admit the necessity of certain truths, if
we are inclined to regard this as due to the character of our minds themselves
(notre structure mentale), as Kant maintained, Taine reminds us that we
must admit that our mind adapts itself to its environment. He here adopts the
view of Spencer, a thinker who seems to have had far more influence upon the
Continent than in his own country. Although Taine thus reposes his epistemology
upon this basis, he does not answer the question which the Kantian can still
put to him—namely, “How do we know the structure of things?” He is unable
to escape from the difficulty of admitting either that it is from experience,
an admission which his anti-empirical attitude forbids him to make (and which
would damage his dogma of universal logical necessity), or that our knowledge
is obtained by analysing our own thoughts, in which case he leaves us in a
vicious circle of pure subjectivity from which there is no means of escape.
The truth is that Taine vainly tried to establish a phenomenal doctrine, not
purely empirical in character like that of Hume, but a phenomenalism wedded to
a necessity which is supposed to be self-explanatory. Such a notion of
necessity, however, is formal and abstract. Rather than accept Taine’s view of
a law, a formula, an “eternal axiom” at the basis of things, we are obliged to
postulate an activity, creative in character, of whose action universal laws
are but expressions. Law, formula, axiom without action are mere abstractions
which can of themselves produce nothing.
Taine’s positivism, however, was not so rigid as to exclude a belief in the
value of metaphysics. It is this which distinguishes him from the Comtian
School. We see in him the confidence in science complemented by an admission of
metaphysics, equivalent to a turning of “positivism” in science and philosophy
against itself. Much heavier onslaughts upon the sovereignty of science came,
however, from the thinker who is the great logician and metaphysician of our
period, Renouvier. To him and to Cournot we now turn.
II
While Taine had indeed maintained the necessity of a metaphysic, he shared to a
large degree the general confidence in science displayed by Comte, Bernard,
Berthelot and Renan. But the second and third groups of thinkers into which we
have divided our period took up first a critical attitude to science and,
finally, a rather hostile one.
Cournot marks the transition between Comte and Renouvier. His Essai sur les
Fondements de nos Connaissances et sur les Caractères de la Critique
philosophique contains some very calm and careful thought on the relation
of science and philosophy, which is the product of a sincere and well-balanced
mind.[16] He inherits from the positivists an
intense respect for scientific knowledge, and remarks at the outset that he is
hostile to any philosophy which would be so foolish as to attempt to ignore the
work of the modern sciences.
His work Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisme is a striking example of
this effort on Cournot’s part, being devoted to a study of the use which can be
made in philosophy of the data afforded by the sciences. Somewhat after the
manner of Comte, Cournot looks upon the various sciences as a hierarchy ranging
from mathematics to sociology. Yet he reminds the scientists of the
insufficiency of their point of view, for the sciences, rightly pursued, lead
on to philosophy. He laments, however, the confusion of the two, and thinks
that such confusion is “partly due to the fact that in the realm of
speculations which are naturally within the domain of the philosopher, there
are to be found here and there certain theories which can actually be reduced
to a scientific form”[17] He offers, as an
instance of this, the theory of the syllogism, which has affinities to
algebraical equations—but this interpenetration should not cause us, he
argues, to abandon or to lose sight of the distinction between science and
philosophy.
This distinction, according to Cournot, lies in the fact that science has for
its object that which can be measured, and that which can be reduced to a
rigorous chain or connection. In brief, science is characterised by quantity.
Philosophy, on the other hand, concerns itself with quality, for it endeavours
not so much to measure as to appreciate.
Cournot reminds the apostles of science that quantity, however intimately bound
up with reality it may be, is not the essence of that reality itself. He is
afraid, too, that the neglect of philosophy by science may cause the latter to
develop along purely utilitarian lines. As an investigation of reality, science
is not ultimate. It has limits by the fact that it is concerned with
measurement, and thus is excluded from those things which are qualitative and
incapable of quantitative expression. Science, moreover, has its roots in
philosophy by virtue of the metaphysical postulates which it utilises as its
basis. Physics and geometry, Cournot maintains, both rest upon definitions
which owe their origin to speculative thought rather than to experience, yet
these sciences claim an absolute value for themselves and for those postulates
as being descriptions of reality in an ultimate sense.
Following out his distinction between philosophy and the sciences, Cournot
claims in a Kantian manner that while the latter are products of the human
understanding the former is due to the operation of reason. This apparent
dualism Cournot does not shrink from maintaining; indeed, he makes it an
argument for his doctrine of discontinuity. The development of a science
involves a certain breach with reality, for the progress of the science
involves abstraction, which ever becomes more complicated. Cournot here brings
out the point which we noticed was stressed by Renan.[18]
Reason produces in us the idea of order, and this “idea of order and of reason
in things is the basis of philosophic probability, of induction and
analogy.”[19] This has important bearings
upon the unity of science and upon the conception of causality which it
upholds. In a careful examination of the problems of induction and analogy,
Cournot emphasises the truth that there are facts which cannot be fitted into a
measured or logical sequence of events. Reality cannot be fitted into a formula
or into concepts, for these fail to express the infinite variety and richness
of the reality which displays itself to us. Science can never be adequate to
life, with its pulsing spontaneity and freedom. It is philosophy with its
vue d’ensemble which tries to grasp and to express this concreteness,
which the sciences, bound to their systematic connection of events within
separate compartments, fail to reach or to show us. Referring to the ideas of
beauty and of goodness, Cournot urges a “transrationalism,” as he calls it,
which, while loyal to the rational requirements of science, will enable us to
take the wider outlook assumed by philosophy.[20]
Like Cournot, the author of the Essais de Critique générale was a keen
antagonist of all those who sought to deify Science. It was indeed this which
led Renouvier to give this title to his great work, the first part of which was
published at a time when the confidence in Science appeared to be comparatively
unassailed. We find him defending philosophy as against the scientists and
others by an insistence upon its critical function.
In examining Comte’s positivism in his work Histoire et Solution des
Problèmes métaphysiques, Renouvier points out that its initial idea is a
false one—namely, that philosophy can be constituted by an assembling
together of the sciences.[21] Such an assembly
does not, he objects, make a system. Each science has its own postulates, its
own data, and Science as a whole unity of thought or knowledge does not exist.
He attacks at the same time the calm presumption of the positivist who
maintains that the scientific stage is the final and highest development.
Renouvier is considerably annoyed at this unwarranted dogmatism and assumed air
of finality.
Owing to the excellent training he had received at the Ecole Polytechnique, and
by his own profound study, Renouvier was able on many technical points to meet
the scientists on their own ground. His third Essai de Critique générale
is devoted to a study of “the Principles of Nature,” in which he criticises
many of the principles and assumptions of mechanism, while many pages of his
two previous Essais are concerned with the discussion of questions
intimately affecting the sciences.[22]
An important section of his second Essay, Psychologie rationnelle, deals
with the “Classification of the Sciences.”[23] Renouvier there points out that the attempt
to classify the sciences in accordance with their degrees of certainty ends in
failure. All of them, when loyal to their own principles, endeavour to display
equal certainty. By loyalty Renouvier shows that he means adherence to an
examination of certain classes of phenomena, the observation of facts and laws,
with the proposal of hypotheses, put forward frankly as such. He draws a line
between the logical and the physical sciences—a division which he claims
is not only a division according to the nature of their data, but also
according to method. Following another division, we may draw a line between
sciences which deal with objects which are organic, living creatures, and those
which are not.
Renouvier’s line is not, it must be remembered in this connection, a purely
imaginary one. It is a real line, an actual gap. For him there is a real
discontinuity in the universe. Taine’s doctrine of a universal explanation, of
a rigid unity and continuity, is, for Renouvier, anathema, c’est la
mathématisation a l’outrance. This appears most markedly in the pages which
he devotes to the consideration of la synthèse totale.
An important section of his Traité de Logique (the first Essai de
Critique générale) deals with the problem of this Total Synthesis of all
phenomena.[24] This is a conception which
Renouvier affirms to be unwarrantable and, indeed, in the last analysis
impossible. A general synthesis, an organisation or connected hierarchy of
sciences, is a fond hope, an illusion only of a mind which can overlook the
real discontinuity which exists between things and between groups of things.
He sees in it the fetish of the Absolute and the Infinite and the lure of
pantheism, a doctrine to which he opposes his “Personalism.” He reminds the
scientists that personality is the great factor to which all knowledge is
related, and that all knowledge is relative. A law is a law, but the guarantee
of its permanence is not a law. It is no more easy, claims Renouvier, to say
why phenomena do not stop than it is to know why they have begun. Laws indeed
abide, but “not apart from conscious personalities who affirm them.”[25] Further, attacking the self-confident and
dogmatic attitude in the scientists, Renouvier reminds them that it is
impossible to demonstrate every proposition; and in an important note on
“Induction and the Sciences”[26] he points out
that induction always implies a certain croyance. This is no peculiar,
mystical thing; it is a fact, he remarks, which colours all the interesting
acts of human personality. He here approaches Cournot in observing that all
speculation is attended by a certain coefficient of doubt or uncertainty and so
becomes really rational belief. With Cournot, too, Renouvier senses the
importance of analogy and probability in connection with hypotheses in the
world of nature and of morals. In short, he recognises as central the problem
of freedom.
Renouvier attacks Comte’s classification or “hierarchy” of the sciences as
mischievous and inexact. It is not based, he claims, upon any distinction in
method, nor of data. It is not true that the sciences are arranged by Comte in
an order where they successively imply one another, nor in an order in which
they have come to be constituted as “positive”.[27]
He justifies to the scientist the formulation of hypothesis as a necessary
working method of co-ordinating in a provisional manner varying phenomena. Many
hypotheses and inductions of science are, however, unjustifiable from a
strictly logical standpoint, Renouvier reminds us. His chief objection,
however, is that those hypotheses and inductions are put forward so frequently
as certainties by a science which is dogmatic and surpasses its limits.
Science, Renouvier claims, does not give us a knowledge of the absolute, but an
understanding of the relative. It is in the light of his doctrine of relativity
and of the application of the law of number that he criticises many of the
attitudes adopted by the scientists. Whatever savours of the Absolute or the
Infinite he opposes, and his view of cause depends on this. He scorns the
fiction of an infinite regress, and affirms real beginnings to various classes
of phenomena. Causality is not to be explained, he urges in his Nouvelle
Monadologie, save by a harmony. He differs from Leibnitz, however, in
claiming in the interests of freedom that this harmony is not pre-established.
In meeting the doctrine of the reduction of the complex to the simple,
Renouvier cites the case of “reducing” sound, heat, light and electricity to
movement. This may be superficially correct as a generality, but Renouvier
aptly points out that it overlooks the fact that, although they may all be
abstractly characterised as movement, yet there are differences between them as
movements which correspond to the differences of sensation they arouse in us.
Renouvier upholds real differences, real beginnings, and, it must be added, a
reality behind and beyond the appearances of nature. His Monadologie
admits that “we can continue to explain nature mathematically and mechanically,
provided we recognise that it is an external appearance—that thought,
mind or spirit is at the heart of it.” This links Renouvier to the group of new
spiritualists. His attitude to science is akin to theirs. He does not fear
science when it confines itself to its proper limits and recognises these. It
has no quarrel with philosophy nor philosophy with it. Advance in science
involves, he believes, an advance also in theology and in metaphysics.
The sciences are responsible for working out the laws determining the
development of the Universe. But between Science, an ideal unachieved, and the
sciences which in themselves are so feeble, imperfect and limited, Renouvier
claims that General Criticism, or Philosophy, has its place. “In spite of the
discredit into which philosophy has fallen in these days, it can and ought to
exist. Its object has been always the investigation of God, man, liberty,
immortality, the fundamental laws of the sciences. ‘All these intimately
connected and interpenetrating problems comprise the domain of philosophy.” In
those cases where no science is possible, this seeming impossibility must
itself be investigated, and philosophy remains as a “General Criticism”
(Critique générale) of our knowledge. “It is this notion,” he says,
“which I desired to indicate by banishing the word ‘Philosophy’ from the title
of my Essays. The name ought to change when the method changes.”[28] Thus Renouvier seeks to establish a “critique”
midway between scepticism and dogmatism, and endeavours to found a philosophy
which recognises at one and the same time the demands of science et
conscience.
III
On turning to the spiritualist current of thought we find it, like the
neo-criticism, no less keen in its criticism of science. The inadequacy of the
purely scientific attitude is the recurring theme from Ravaisson to Boutroux,
Bergson and Le Roy. The attitude assumed by Ravaisson coloured the whole of the
subsequent development of the new spiritualist doctrines, and not least their
bearing upon the problem of science and its relation to metaphysics.
Mechanism, Ravaisson pointed out, quoting the classical author upon whom he had
himself written so brilliantly (Aristotle), does not explain itself, for it
implies a “prime mover,” not itself in motion, but which produces movement by
spiritual activity. Ravaisson also refers to the testimony of Leibnitz, who,
while agreeing that all is mechanical, carefully added to this statement one to
the effect that mechanism itself has a principle which must be looked for
outside matter and which is the object of metaphysical research. This spiritual
reality is found only, according to Ravaisson, in the power of goodness and
beauty—that is to say, in a reality which is not non-scientific but
rather ultra-scientific. There are realities, he claims, to which science does
not attain.
The explanation of nature presupposes soul or spirit. It is true, Ravaisson
admits, that the physical and chemical sciences consider themselves independent
of metaphysics; true also that the metaphysician in ignoring the study of those
sciences omits much from his estimate of the spirit. Indeed, he cannot well
dispense with the results of the sciences. That admission, however, does not do
away with the possibility of a true “apologia” for metaphysics. To Newton’s
sarcastic remark, “Physics beware of metaphysics,” Hegel replied cogently that
this was equivalent to saying, “Physics, keep away from thought.” Spirit,
however, cannot be omitted from the account; it is the condition of all that
is, the light by which we see that there is such a thing as a material
universe. This is the central point of Ravaisson’s philosophy. The sciences of
nature may be allowed and encouraged to work diligently upon their own
principles, but the very fact that they are individual sciences compels them to
admit that they view the whole “piecemeal”. Philosophy seeks to interpret the
whole as a whole. Ravaisson quotes Pascal’s saying, “Il faut avoir une
pensée de derrière la tête et juger de tout par là.” This
pensée de derrière la tête, says Ravaisson, while not preventing
the various sciences from speaking in their own tongue, is just the
metaphysical or philosophical idea of the whole.
It is claimed, Aristotle used to say, that mathematics have absolutely nothing
in common with the idea of the good. “But order, proportion, symmetry, are not
these great forms of beauty?” asks Ravaisson. For him there is spirit at the
heart of things, an activity, un feu primitif qui est l’âme, which
expresses itself in thought, in will and in love. It is a fire which does not
burn itself out, because it is enduring spirit, an eternal cause, the absolute
substance is this spiritual reality. Where the sciences fall short is that they
fail to show that nature is but the refraction of this spirit. This is a fact,
however, which both religion and philosophy grasp and uphold.
These criticisms were disturbing for those minds who found entire satisfaction
in Science or rather in the sciences, but they were somewhat general.
Ravaisson’s work inculcated a spirit rather than sustained a dialectic. Its
chief value lay in the inspiration which it imparted to subsequent thinkers who
endeavoured to work out his general ideas with greater precision.
It was this task which Lachelier set himself in his Induction. He had
keenly felt the menace of science, as had Janet;[29] he had appreciated the challenge offered to it by
Ravaisson’s ideas. Moreover, Lachelier’s acute mind discovered the crucial
points upon which the new spiritualism could base its attack upon the purely
scientific dogmatism. Whatever Leibnitz might have said, creative spontaneity
of the spirit, as it was acclaimed by Ravaisson, could not easily be fitted
into the mechanism and determinism upheld by the sciences. Ravaisson had
admitted the action of efficient causes in so far as he admitted the action of
mechanism, which is but the outcome of these causes. In this way he endeavoured
to satisfy the essential demands of the scientific attitude to the universe.
But recognising the inadequacy of this attitude he had upheld the reality of
final causes and thus opposed to the scientists a metaphysical doctrine akin to
the religious attitude of Hellenism and Christianity.
Lachelier saw that the important point of Ravaisson’s doctrine lay in the
problem of these two types of causality. His thesis is therefore devoted to the
examination of efficient and final causes. This little work of Lachelier marks
a highly important advance in the development of the spiritualist philosophy.
He clarifies and re-affirms more precisely the position indicated by Ravaisson.
Lacheher tears up the treaty of compromise which was drafted by Leibnitz to
meet the rival demands of science with its efficient causes and philosophy with
its final causes. The world of free creative spontaneity of the spirit cannot
be regarded, Lachelier claims (and this is his vital point), as merely the
complement of, or the reflex from, the world of mechanism and determinism.
He works out in his thesis the doctrine that efficient causes can be deduced
from the formal laws of thought. This was Taine’s position, and it was the
limit of Taine’s doctrine. Lachelier goes further and undermines Taine’s
theories by upholding final causes, which he shows depend upon the conception
of a totality, a whole which is capable of creating its parts. This view of the
whole is a philosophical conception to which the natural sciences never rise,
and which they cannot, by the very nature of their data and their methods,
comprehend. Yet it is only such a conception which can supply any rational
basis for the unity of phenomena and of experience. Only by seeing the variety
of all phenomena in the light of such an organic unity can we find any meaning
in the term universe, and only thus, continues Lachelier, only on the principle
of a rational and universal order and on the reality of final causes, can we
base our inductions. The “uniformity of nature,” that fetish of the scientists
which, as Lachelier well points out, is merely the empirical regularity of
phenomena, offers no adequate basis for a single induction.
Lachelier developed his doctrines further in the article, Psychologie et
Métaphysique. We can observe in it the marks which so profoundly
distinguish the new spiritualism from the old, as once taught by Cousin. The
old spiritualism had no place between its psychology and its metaphysics for
the natural sciences. Indeed it was quite incapable of dealing with the problem
which their existence and success presented, and so it chose to ignore them as
far as possible. The new spiritualism, of which Lachelier is perhaps the
profoundest speculative mind, not only is acquainted with the place and results
of the sciences, but it feels itself equal to a criticism of them, an advance
which marks a highly important development in philosophy.
In this article Lachelier endeavours to pass beyond the standpoint of Cousin,
and in so doing we see not only the influence of Ravaisson’s ideas of the
creative activity of the spirit, but also of the discipline of the Kantian
criticism, with which Lachelier, unlike many of his contemporaries in France at
that time, was well acquainted.
He first shows that the study of psychology reveals to us the human powers of
sensation, feeling and will. These are the immediate data of consciousness.
Another element, however, enters into consciousness, not as these three, a
definite content, but as a colouring of the whole. This other element is
“objectivity,” an awareness or belief that the world without exists and
continues to exist independently of our observation of it. Lachelier combats,
however, the Kantian conception of the “thing-in-itself.” If, he argues, the
world around us appears as a reality which is independent of our perception, it
is not because it is a “thing-in-itself,” but rather it appears as
independent because we, possessing conscious intelligence, succeed in making it
an object of our thought, and thus save it from the mere subjectivity which
characterises our sense-experience. It is upon this fact, Lachelier rightly
insists, that all our science reposes. A theory of knowledge as proposed by
Taine, based solely on sensation and professing belief in hallucination
vraie, is itself a contradiction and an abuse of language. “If thought is
an illusion,” remarks Lachelier, “we must suppress all the sciences.”[30]
He then proceeds to show that if we admit thought to be the basis of our
knowledge of the world, that is, of our sciences, then we admit that our
sciences are themselves connstructions, based upon a synthetic, constructive,
creative activity of our mind or spirit. For our thought is not merely another
“thing” added to the world of things outside us. Our thought is not a given and
predetermined datum, it is “a living dialectic,” a creative activity, a
self-creative process, which is synthetic, and not merely analytic in
character. “Thought,” he says, “can rest upon itself, while everything else can
only rest upon it; the ultimate point d’appui of all truth and of all
existence is to be found in the absolute spontaneity of the spirit.”[31] Here, Lachelier maintains, lies the real a
priori; here, too, is the very important passage from psychology to
metaphysics.
Finally his treatment of the problems of knowledge and of the foundations of
science leads him to reemphasise not only the reality of spirit but its
spontaneity. He recognises with Cournot and Renouvier that the vital problem
for science and philosophy is that of freedom. The nature of existence is for
Lachelier a manifestation of spirit, and is seen in will, in necessity and in
freedom. It is important to note that for him it is all these
simultaneously. “Being,” he remarks in concluding his brilliant essay,[32] “is not first, a blind necessity, then a
will which must be for ever bound down in advance to necessity and, lastly, a
freedom which would merely be able to recognise such necessity and such a bound
will; being is entirely free, in so far as it is self-creative; it is entirely
an expression of will, in so far as it creates itself in the form of something
concrete and real; it is also entirely an expression of necessity, in so far as
its self-creation is intelligible and gives an account of itself.”
At this stage something in the nature of a temporary “set-back” is given to the
flow of the spiritualist current by Fouillee’s attitude, which takes a
different line from that of Ravaisson and Lachelier. The attitude towards
Science, which we find adopted by Fouillee, is determined by his two general
principles, that of reconcilation, and his own doctrine of idées-forces.
His conciliatory spirit is well seen in the fact that, although he has a great
respect for science and inherits many of the qualities contained in Taine’s
philosophy, particularly the effort to maintain a regular continuity and
solidarity in the development of reality, nevertheless he is imbued with the
spirit of idealism which characterises all this group of thinkers. The result
is a mixture of Platonism and naturalism, and to this he himself confesses in
his work, Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science
positive, where he expresses a desire “to bring back Plato’s ideas from
heaven to earth, and so to make idealism consonant with naturalism.”[33]
Fouillée claims to take up a position midway between the materialists and the
idealists. Neither standpoint is, in his view, adequate to describe reality. He
is particularly opposed to the materialistic and mechanistic thought of the
English Evolutionary School, as presented by Spencer and Huxley, with its
pretensions to be scientific. Fouillee accepts, with them, the notion of
evolution, but he disagrees entirely with Spencer’s attempt to refer everything
to mechanism, the mechanism of matter in motion. In any case, Fouillée claims,
movement is a very slender and one-sided element of experience upon which to
base our characterisation of all reality, for the idea of motion arises only
from our visual and tactual experience. He revolts from the epiphenomenalism of
Huxley as from a dire heresy. Consciousness cannot be regarded as a mere “flash
in the pan.” Even science must admit that all phenomena are to be defined by
their relation to, and action upon, other phenomena. Consciousness, so
regarded, will be seen, he claims, as a unique power, possessing the property
of acting upon matter and of initiating movement. It is itself a factor, and a
very vital one, in the evolutionary process. It is no mere reflex or passive
representation. On this point of the irreducibility of the mental life and the
validity of its action, Fouillée parts company with Taine. On the other hand,
he disagrees with the idealistic school of thought, which upholds a pure
intellectualism and for whom thought is the accepted characterisation of
reality. This, complains Fouillée, is as much an abstraction and a one-sided
view as that of Spencer.
In this manner Fouillée endeavours to “rectify the scientific conception of
evolution” by his doctrine of idées-forces. “There is,” he says,[34] “in every idea a commencement of action, and even
of movement, which tends to persist and to increase like an élan. . . .
Every idea is already a force.” Psychologically it is seen in the active,
conative or appetitive aspect of consciousness. To think of a thing involves
already, in some measure, a tendency toward it, to desire it. Physiologically
considered, idées-forces are found to operate, not mechanically, but by
a vital solidarity which is much more than mere mechanism, and which unites the
inner consciousness to the outer physical fact of movement. From a general
philosophical point of view the doctrine of idées-forces establishes the
irreducibility of the mental, and the fact that, so far from the mental being a
kind of phosphorescence produced as a result of the evolutionary process, it is
a prime factor in that evolution, of which mechanism is only a symbol. Here
Fouillée rises almost to the spiritualism of Ravaisson. Mechanism, he declares,
is, after all, but a manner of representing to ourselves things in space and
time. Scientists speak of forces, but the real forces are ideas, and other
so-called “forces” are merely analogies which we have constructed, based upon
the inner mental feeling of effort, tendency, desire and will.[35]
The scientists have too often, as Fouillée well points in his work on
L’Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces, regarded the concept of Evolution as
all-sufficing, as self-explanatory. Philosophy, however, cannot accept such
dogmatism from science, and asserts that evolution is itself a result and not
in itself a cause. With such a view Fouillée is found ultimately in the line of
the general development of the spiritual philosophy continuing the hostility
to science as ultimate or all-sufficing. Further developments of this attitude
are seen in Boutroux and in Bergson.
In the work of Boutroux we find a continuation of that type of criticism of
science which was a feature in Ravaisson and Lachelier. He has also affinities
with Renouvier (and, we may add, with Comte), because of his insistence upon
the discontinuity of the sciences; upon the element of “newness” found in each
which prevents the higher being deduced from the lower, or the superior
explained by reference to the inferior. Boutroux opposes Spencer’s doctrines
and is a keen antagonist of Taine and his claim to deduce all from one formula.
Such a notion as that of Taine is quite absurd, according to Boutroux, for
there is no necessary bond between one and another science. This is Boutroux’s
main point in La Contingence des Lois de la Nature.
By a survey of laws of various types, logical, mathematical, mechanical,
physical, chemical, biological, psychological and sociological, Boutroux
endeavours to show that they are constructions built up from facts. Just as
nature offers to the scientist facts for data, so the sciences themselves offer
these natural laws as data to the philosopher, for his constructed explanation
of things which is metaphysics or philosophy.
“In the actual condition of our knowledge,” he remarks, “science is not one,
but multiple; science, conceived as embracing all the sciences, is a mere
abstraction.” This is a remark which recalls Renouvier’s witty saying, “I
should very much like to meet this person I hear so much about, called
‘science.’” We have only sciences, each working after its own manner upon a
small portion of reality. Man has a thirst for knowledge, and he sees, says
Boutroux, in the world an “ensemble” of facts of infinite variety. These facts
man endeavours to observe, analyse, and describe with increasing exactness.
Science, he points out, is just this description.
It is futile to attempt a resolution of all things into the principle of
identity. “The world is full of a number of things,” and, therefore, argues
Boutroux, the formula A = B can never be strictly and absolutely true. “Nature
never offers to us identities, but only resemblances.” This has important
bearing upon the law of causality, of which the sciences make so much. For
there is such a degree of heterogeneity in the things to which the most
elementary and general laws of physics and chemistry are applied that it is
impossible to say that the consequent is proportional to the
antecedent—that is to say, it is impossible to work out absolutely the
statement that an effect is the unique result of a certain invariable cause.
The fundamental link escapes us and so, for us, there is a certain contingency
in experience. There is, further, a creativeness, a newness, which is
unforeseeable. The passage from the inorganic to the organic stresses this, for
the observation of the former would never lead us to the other, for it is a
creation, a veritable “new” thing. Boutroux is here dealing hard blows at
Taine’s conception. He continues it by showing that in the conscious living
being we are introduced to a new element which is again absolutely irreducible
to physical factors. Life, and consciousness too, are both creators. The life
of the mind is absolutely sui generis; it cannot be explained by
physiology, by reflex action, or looked upon as merely an epiphenomenon.
Already Boutroux finds himself facing the central problem of Freedom. He
recognises that as psychological phenomena appear to contain qualities not
given in their immediate antecedents, the law of proportion of cause to effect
does not apply to the actions of the human mind.
The principle of causality and the principle of the conservation of energy are
m themselves scientific “shibboleths,” and neither of them, asserts Boutroux,
can be worked out so absolutely as to justify themselves as ultimate
descriptions of the universe. They are valuable as practical maxims for the
scientist, whose object is to follow the threads of action in this varied world
of ours. They are incomplete, and have merely a relative value. Philosophy
cannot permit their application to the totality of this living, pulsing
universe. For cause, we must remember, does not in its strictly scientific
meaning imply creative power. The cause of a phenomenon is itself a phenomenon.
“The positive sciences in vain pretend to seize the divine essence or reason
behind things.”[36] They arrive at descriptive
formulæ and there they leave us. But, as Boutroux well reminds us in concluding
his thesis, formulas never explain anything because they cannot even explain
themselves. They are simply constructions made by observation and abstraction
and which themselves require explanation.
The laws of nature are not restrictions which have been, as it were, imposed
upon her They are themselves products of freedom; they are, in her, what habits
are to the individual. Their constancy is like the stability of a river-bed
which the freely running stream at some early time hollowed out.
The world is an assembly of beings, and its vitality and nature cannot be
expressed in a formula. It comprises a hierarchy of creatures, rising from
inorganic to organic forms, from matter to spirit, and in man it displays an
observing intelligence, rising above mere sensibility and expressly modifying
things by free will. In this conception Boutroux follows Ravaisson, and he is
also influenced by that thinker’s belief in a spiritual Power of goodness and
beauty. He thus leads us to the sphere of religion and philosophy, both of
which endeavour, in their own manner, to complete the inadequacy of the purely
scientific standpoint. He thus stands linked up in the total development with
Cournot and Renouvier, and in his own group with Lachelier, in regard to this
question of the relation of philosophy and the sciences.
The critique of science, which is so prominent in Boutroux, was characteristic
of a number of thinkers whom we cannot do more than mention here in passing,
for in general their work is not in line with the spiritualist development, but
is a sub-current running out and separated from the main stream. This is shown
prominently in the fact that, while Boutroux’s critique is in the interests of
idealism and the maintenance of some spiritual values, much subsequent
criticism of science is a mere empiricism and, being divorced from the general
principles of the spiritualist philosophy, tends merely to accentuate a vein of
uncertainty—indeed, scepticism of knowledge. Such is the general
standpoint taken by Milhaud, Payot, and Duhem. Rather apart from these stands
the works of acute minds like Poincaré, Durand de Gros, and Hannequin, whose
discussion of the atomic doctrines is a work of considerable merit. To these
may be added Lalande’s criticism of the doctrine of evolution and integration
by his opposing to it that of dissolution and disintegration. Passing
references to these books must not, however, detain us from following the main
development which, from Boutroux, is carried on by Bergson.
We find that Bergson, like Boutroux, holds no brief for science, and in
particular he opposes some of its doctrines which have been dogmatically and
uncritically accepted. His work, Matiére et Mémoire, is a direct
critique of the scientific postulate of psycho-physical parallelism which
Bergson regards as the crux of the problem at issue between science and
philosophy—namely, that of freedom. He shows that this theory, which has
been adopted by science because of its convenience, ought not to be accepted by
philosophy without criticism. In his opinion it cannot stand the criticism
which he brings against it. A relation between soul and body is undeniable, but
he does not agree that that relation is one of absolute parallelism. To
maintain parallelism is to settle at once and beforehand, in an unwarrantably
a priori manner, the whole problem of freedom. His intense spiritualism
sees also in such a doctrine the deadly enemy Epiphenomenalism, the belief that
the spiritual is only a product of the physical. He maintains the unique and
irreducible nature of consciousness, and claims that the life of the soul or
spirit is richer and wider than the mere physical activity of the brain, which
is really its instrument. Bergson asks us to imagine the revolution which might
have been, had our early scientists devoted themselves to the study of mind
rather than matter, and claims that we suffer from the dogmatism of
materialistic science and the geometrical and mathematical conceptions of “a
universal science” or “mathematic” which come from the seventeenth century, and
are seen later in Taine.
The inadequacy of the scientific standpoint is a theme upon which Bergson never
tires of insisting. Not only does he regard a metaphysic as necessary to
complete this inadequacy, but he claims that our intellect is incapable of
grasping reality in its flux and change. The true instrument of metaphysics is,
according to him, intuition. Bergson’s doctrine of intuition does not, however,
amount to a pure hostility to intellectual constructions. These are valuable,
but they are not adequate to reality. Metaphysics cannot dispense with the
natural sciences. These sciences work with concepts, abstractions, and so
suffer by being intellectual moulds. We must not mistake them for the living,
pulsing, throbbing reality of life itself which is far wider than any
intellectual construction.
By his insistence upon this point, in which he joins hands with several of his
predecessors, Bergson claims to have got over the Kantian difficulties of
admitting the value and possibility of a metaphysic. There is nothing
irrational, he insists, in his doctrine of metaphysical intuition or
“intellectual sympathy”; it is rather super-rational, akin to the spirit of the
poet and the artist. The various sciences can supply data and, as such, are to
be respected, for they have a relative value. What Bergson is eager to do is to
combat their absolute value. His metaphysic is, however, no mere “philosophy of
the sciences” in the sense of being a mere summary of the results of the
sciences. His intuition is more than a mere generalisation of facts; it is an
“integral experience,” a penetration of reality in its flux and change, a
looking upon the world sub specie durationis. It is a vision, but it is
one which we cannot obtain without intellectual or scientific labour. We can
become better acquainted with reality only by the progressive development of
science and philosophy. We cannot live on the dry bread of the sciences
alone, an intuitional philosophy is necessary for our spiritual welfare.
Science promises us well-being or pleasure, but philosophy, claims Bergson, can
give us joy, by its intuitions, its super-intellectual vision, that vital
contact with life itself in its fulness, which is far grander and truer than
all the abstractions of science. This is the culmination of much already
indicated in Cournot, Renouvier, Ravaisson, Lachelier, and Boutroux, which
Bergson presents in a manner quite unique, thus closing in our period the
development of that criticism and hostility to the finality and absoluteness of
the purely scientific attitude which is so marked a feature of both our second
and third groups, the neo-critical thinkers and the neo-spiritualists.
* * * * * * * * *
Beginning with a glowing confidence in the sciences as ultimate interpretations
of reality, we thus have witnessed a complete turn of the tide during the
develop-* since 1851. Also, in following out the changes in the attitude
adopted to Science, we have been enabled to discover in a general manner that
the central and vital problem which our period presents is that of Freedom. It
will be interesting to find whether in regard to this problem, too, a similar
change of front will be noticeable as the period is followed to its close.
CHAPTER IV
FREEDOM
INTRODUCTORY: The central problem of our period—The reconciliation of
science with man’s beliefs centres around the question of
Freedom—Unsatisfactoriness of Kant’s solution felt.
I. The positivist belief in universal and rigid determinism, especially shown in
Taine. Renan’s view.
II. Cournot and Renouvier uphold Freedom—Strong logical and moral case put
forward for it.
III. The new spiritualists, Ravaisson and Lacheher, set Freedom in the forefront of
their philosophy—Fouillée attempts a reconciliation by the idea of
Freedom as a determining force—Guyau, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson
insist on the reality of Freedom—They surpass Cournot and Renouvier by
upholding contingency —This is especially true of Guyau, Boutroux and
Bergson.
Belief in creativeness and spontaneity replace the older belief in determinism.
CHAPTER IV
FREEDOM
The discussions regarding the relation between science and philosophy led the
thinkers of our period naturally to the crucial problem of freedom. Science has
almost invariably stood for determinism, and men were becoming impatient of a
dogmatism which, by its denial of freedom, left little or no place for man, his
actions, his beliefs, his moral feelings.
“La nature fatale offre à la Liberté
Un problème.”[1]
It was precisely this problem which was acutely felt in the philosophy of our
period as it developed and approached the close of the century.
In a celebrated passage of his Critique of Judgment the philosopher Kant
had drawn attention to the necessity of bringing together the concept of
freedom and the concept of nature as constructed by modern science, for the two
were, he remarked, separated by an abyss. He himself felt that the realm of
freedom should exercise an influence upon the realm of science, but his own
method prohibited his attempting to indicate with any preciseness what that
influence might be. The fatal error of his system, the artificial division of
noumena and phenomena, led him to assign freedom only to the world of noumena.
Among phenomena it had no place, but reigned transcendent, unknown and
unknowable, beyond the world we know.
The artificiality of such a solution was apparent to the thinkers who followed
Kant, and particularly was this felt in France. “Poor consolation is it,”
remarked Fouillée, in reply to Kant’s view, “for a prisoner bound with chains
to know that in some unknown realm afar he can walk freely devoid of his
fetters.”
The problem of freedom, both in its narrow sphere of personal free-will and in
its larger social significance, is one which has merited the attention of all
peoples in history. France, however, has been pre-eminently a cradle for much
acute thought on this matter. It loomed increasingly large on the horizon as
the Revolution approached, it shone brilliantly in Rousseau. Since the
Revolution it has been equally discussed, and is the first of the three
watchwords of the republic, whose philosophers, no less than its politicians,
have found it one of their main themes.
The supreme importance of the problem of freedom in our period was due mainly
to the need felt by all thinkers for attempting, in a manner different from
that of Kant, a reconciliation between science and morals (science et
conscience), and to find amid the development of scientific thought a place
for the personality of the thinker himself, not merely as a passive spectator,
but as an agent, a willing and acting being. Paul Janet, in his essays entitled
Problèmes du XIXe Siècle,[2]
treating the question of science, asks whether the growing precision of the
natural sciences and “the extension of their ‘positive’ methods, which involve
a doctrine or assumption of infallible necessity, do not imperil gravely the
freedom of the moral agent?” While himself believing that, however closely the
sciences may seem to encroach upon the free power of the human soul, they will
only approach in an indefinite “asymptote,” never succeeding in annulling it,
he senses the importance of the problem. Science may endeavour to tie us down
to a belief in universal and rigid determinism, but the human spirit revolts
from the acceptance of such a view, and acclaims, to some degree at least, the
reality of a freedom which cannot be easily reconciled with the determinist
doctrines.
In the period which we have under review the central problem is undoubtedly
that of freedom. Practically all the great thinkers in France during this
period occupied themselves with this problem, and rightly so, for they realised
that most of the others with which philosophy concerns itself depend in a large
degree upon the attitude adopted to freedom. Cournot, Renouvier, Ravaisson,
Lachelier, Fouillée, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson have played the chief part
in the arena of discussion, and although differing considerably in their
methods of treatment and not a little in the form of their conclusions, they
are at one in asserting the vital importance of this problem and its primacy
for philosophy. The remark of Fouillée is by no means too strong: “The problem
which we are going to discuss is not only a philosophical problem; it is,
par excellence, the problem for philosophy. All the other
questions are bound up with this.”[3] This truth
will be apparent when, after showing the development of the doctrines
concerning freedom, we come, in our subsequent chapters, to consider its
application to the questions of progress, of ethics and of the philosophy of
religion.
I
We find in the thought of our period a very striking development or change in
regard to the problem of freedom. Beginning with a strictly positivist and
naturalist belief in determinism, it concludes with a spiritualism or idealism
which not only upholds freedom but goes further in its reaction against the
determinist doctrines by maintaining contingency.
Taine and Renan both express the initial attitude, a firm belief in
determinism, but it is most clear and rigid in the work of Taine. His whole
philosophy is hostile to any belief in freedom. The strictly positivist,
empiricist and naturalist tone of his thought combined with the powerful
influence of Spinoza’s system to produce in him a firm belief in
necessity—a necessity which, as we have seen, was severely rational and
of the type seen in mathematics and in logic. Although it must also be admitted
that in this view of change and development Taine was partly influenced by the
Hegelian philosophy, yet his formulations were far more precise and
mathematical than those of the German thinker.
We have, in considering his attitude to science, seen the tenacious manner in
which he clings to his dogma of causality or universal necessity. All living
things, man included, are held in the firm grip of “the steel pincers of
necessity.” Every fact and every law in the universe has its raison
explicative, as Taine styles it. He quotes with approval, in his treatment
of this question at the close of his work De l’Intelligence, the words
of the great scientist and positivist Claude Bernard: “Il y a un
déterminisme absolu, dans les conditions d’existence des phénomènes naturels,
aussi bien pour les corps vivants que pour les corps bruts.”[4] In Taine and the school of scientists like Bernard,
whose opinions on this matter he voices, no room is accorded to freedom.
Taine’s belief in universal necessity and his naturalistic outlook led him to
regard man from the physical standpoint as a mechanism, from the mental point
of view a theorem. Vice and virtue are, to quote his own words, “products just
as vitriol or sugar.” This remark having appeared to many thinkers a scandalous
assertion, Taine explained in an article contributed to the Journal des
Débats[5] that he did not mean to say
that vice and virtue were, like vitriol or sugar, chemical but they are
nevertheless products, moral products, which moral elements bring into
being by their assemblage. And, he argues, just as it is necessary in order to
make vitriol to know the chemical elements which go to its composition, so in
order to create in man the hatred of a lie it is useful to search for the
psychological elements which, by their union, produce truthfulness.
Even this explanation of his position, however, did not prevent the assertion
being made that such a view entirely does away with all question of moral
responsibility. To this criticism Taine objected. “It does not involve moral
indifference. We do not excuse a wicked man because we have explained to
ourselves the causes of his wickedness. One can be determinist with Leibnitz
and nevertheless admit with Leibnitz that man is responsible —that is to
say, that the dishonest man is worthy of blame, of censure and punishment,
while the honest man is worthy of praise, respect and reward.”
In one of his Essais Taine further argued in defence of his doctrine of
universal determination that since WE ourselves are determined—that is to
say, since there is a psychological determinism as well as a physical
determinism—we do not feel the restriction which this determinism
implies, we have the illusion of freedom and act just as if we were free. To
this Fouillée replied that the value of Taine’s argument was equal to that of a
man who might say, “Because I am asleep, all of me, all my powers and
faculties, therefore I am in a state where I am perfectly free and
responsible.” Certainly Taine’s remark that we are determined had
nothing in common with the belief in that true determinism, which is equally
true freedom, since it is self-determination. Taine professed no such
doctrine, and rested in a purely naturalistic fatalism, built upon formulæ of
geometry and logic, in abstraction from the actual living and acting of the
soul, and this dogma of determinism, to which he clung so dearly, colours his
view of ethics and of history. For Taine, “the World is a living geometry” and
“man is a theorem that walks.”
Like Taine, Renan set out from the belief in universal causation, but he
employed the conception not so much in a warfare against man’s freedom of
action as against the theologians’ belief in miracle and the supernatural.
There is none of Taine’s rigour and preciseness in Renan, and it is difficult
to grasp his real attitude to the problem of freedom. If he ever had one, may
be doubted. The blending of viewpoints, the paradox so characteristic of him,
seems apparent even in this question.
His intense humanism prompted him to remarks in praise of freedom, and he seems
to have recognised in man a certain power of freedom; but in view of his belief
in universal cause he is careful to qualify this. Further, his intensely
religious mind remained in love with the doctrine of divine guidance which is
characteristic of Christian and most religious thought. Although Renan left the
Church, this belief never left Renan. He sees God working out an eternal
purpose in history, and this he never reconciled with the problem of man’s free
will. The humanist in him could remark that the one object of life is the
development of the mind, and the first condition for this is freedom. Here he
appears to have in view freedom from political and religious restrictions. He
is thinking of the educational problem. His own attitude to the ultimate
question of freedom in itself, as opposed to determinism, is best expressed in
his Examen d’une Conscience philosophique. He there shows that the
universe is the result of a lengthy development, the. beginnings of which we do
not know. “In the innumerable links of that chain,” says Renan, “we find not
one free act before the appearance of man, or, if you like, living beings.”
With man, however, freedom comes into the scheme of things. A free cause is
seen employing the forces of nature for willed ends. Yet this is but nature
itself blossoming to self-consciousness; this free cause emanates from nature
itself. There is no rude break between man with his free power and unconscious
nature. Both are interconnected. Freedom is indeed the appearance of something
“new,” but it is not, insists Renan, something divorced from what has gone
before.
We see in Renan a rejection of the severely deterministic doctrine of Taine,
but it is by no means a complete rejection or refutation of it. Renan adheres
largely to the scientific and positivist attitude which is such a feature of
Taine’s work. His humanism, however, recognises the inadequacy of such
doctrines and compels him to speak of freedom as a human factor, and he thus
brings us a step nearer to the development of the case for freedom put forward
so strongly by Cournot and Renouvier and by the neo-spiritualists.
II
A very powerful opposition to all doctrines based upon or upholding determinism
shows itself in the work of Cournot and the neo-critical philosophy. The idea
of freedom is a central one in the thought of both Cournot and Renouvier.
Cournot devoted his early labours to a critical and highly technical
examination of the question of probability, considered in its mathematical
form, a task for which he was well equipped.[6]
Being not only a man of science but also a metaphysician, or rather a
philosopher who approached metaphysical problems from the impulse and data
accorded him by the sciences, Cournot was naturally led to the wider problem of
probabilité philosophique. He shows in his Essai sur les Fondements
de nos Connaissances that hazard or chance are not merely words which we
use to cover our ignorance, as Taine would have claimed. Over against the
doctrine of a universal determinism he asserts the reality of these factors.
The terms chance and hazard represent a real and vital element in our
experience and in the nature of reality itself. Probability is a factor to be
reckoned with, and this is so because of the elements of contingency in nature
and in life. Freedom is bound up essentially with the vitality which is nature
itself.
The neo-critical philosopher, Renouvier, is a notable champion of freedom. We
have already seen the importance he attaches to the category of personality.
For him, personality represents a consciousness in possession of itself, a free
and rational harmony—in short, freedom personified.
From a strictly demonstrative point of view Renouvier thinks it is impossible
to prove freedom as a fact. However, he lays before us with intense seriousness
various. considerations of a psychological and a moral character which have an
important bearing upon the problem. This problem, he asserts, not only concerns
our actions but also our knowledge. To bring out this point clearly, Renouvier
develops some of the ideas of his friend, Jules Lequier, on the notion of the
autonomy of the reason, or rather of the reasonable will. In this way he shows
doubt and criticism to be themselves signs of freedom, and asserts that we form
our notions of truth freely, or that at least they are creations of our free
thought, not laid upon us by an external authority.
More light is thrown on the problem by considering what Renouvier calls
vertige mental, a psychopathological condition due to a disturbance of
the rational harmony or self-possession which constitutes the essence of the
personal consciousness. This state is characterised by hallucination and error.
It is the extreme opposite of the self-conscious, reflective personality in
full possession of itself and exercising its will rationally. Renouvier shows
that between these two extremes there are numerous planes of vertige
mental in which the part played by our will is small or negligible, and we
are thus victims of habit or tendency. Is there, then, any place for freedom?
There most certainly is, says Renouvier, for our freedom manifests itself
whenever we inhibit an action to which we are excited by habit, passion or
imagination. Our freedom is the product of reflection. We are at liberty to be
free, to determine ourselves in accordance with higher motives. This power is
just our personality asserting itself, and it does not contradict our being,
more often than not, victims of habit. We have it in our power to make fresh
beginnings. Renouvier’s disbelief in strict continuity is here again apparent.
We must admit freedom of creation in the personality itself, and not seek to
explain our actions by trying to ascend some scale of causes to infinity. There
is no such thing as a sum to infinity of a series; there is no such thing as
the influence of an infinite series of causes upon the performance of a
consciously willed act in which the personality asserts its initiative—
that is, its power of initiation of a new series, in short, its freedom.
Passing from these psychological considerations, Renouvier calls our attention
to some of a moral nature, no less important, in his opinion, for shedding
light upon the nature of freedom. If, he argues, all is necessary, if all human
actions are predetermined, then popular language is guilty of a grave
extravagance and appears ridiculous, insinuating, as it does, that many acts
might have been left undone and many events might have occurred differently,
and that a man might have done other than he did. In the light of the
hypothesis of rigorous necessity, the mention of ambiguous futures and the
notion of “being otherwise” (le pouvoir être autrement) seem
foolish. Science may assert the docrine of necessity and preach it valiantly,
but the human conscience feels it to be untrue and will not be gainsaid. The
scientist himself is forced to admit that man does not accept his gospel of
universal predestination or fatalism. This Renouvier recognises as an important
point in the debate. Strange, is it not, he remarks, that the mind of the
philosopher himself, a sanctuary or shrine for truth, should appear as a
rebellious citadel refusing to surrender to the truth of this universal
necessity. We believe ourselves to be free agents or, at least beings who are
capable of some free action. However slight such action, it would invalidate
the hypothesis of universal necessity.
If all things are necessitated, then moral judgments, the notions of right and
of duty, have no foundation in the nature of things. Virtue and crime lose
their character; the sentiments and feelings, such as regret, hope, fear,
desire, change their meaning or become meaningless. Renouvier lays great stress
upon these moral considerations.
Again, if everything be necessitated, error is as necessary as truth. The false
is indeed true, being necessary, and the true may become false. Disputes rage
over what is false or true, but these disputes cannot be condemned, for they
themselves are, by virtue of the hypothesis, necessary, and the disputes are
necessarily absurd and ridiculous from this point of view. Where then is truth?
Where is morality? We have here no basis for either. Looking thus at history,
all its crimes and infamies are equally lawful, for they are inevitable; such
is the result, Renouvier shows, of viewing all human action as universally
predetermined.
The objections thus put forward by Renouvier against the doctrine of universal
necessity are powerful ones. They possess great weight and result in the
admission, even by its upholders, that “the judgment of freedom is a natural
datum of consciousness and is bound up with our reflective judgments upon which
we act, being itself the foundation of these.”
Yet, we have, Renouvier reminds us, no logical proof of the reality of freedom.
We feel ourselves moved, spontaneously and unconstrained. The future, in so far
as it depends upon ourselves, appears not as prearranged but ambiguous,
open.[7] Whether our judgment be true or false,
we in practical life act invariably on the belief in freedom. That, of course,
as Renouvier admits at this stage of his discussion, does not prove that our
belief is not an illusion. It is a feeling, natural and spontaneous.
One of the most current forms of the doctrine of freedom has been that known as
the “liberty of indifference.” The upholders of this theory regard the will as
separated from motives and ends. The operation of the will is regarded by them
as indifferent to the claims or influence of reason or feeling. Will is
superadded externally to motives, where such exist, or may be superimposed on
intellectual views even to the extent of annulling these. Judgment and will are
separated in this view, and the will is a purely arbitrary or indifferent
factor. It can operate without reason against reason. The opponents of freedom
find little difficulty in assailing this view, in which the will appears to
operate like a dice or a roulette game, absolutely at hazard, reducing man to a
non-rational creature. Such a type of will, however, Renouvier declares to be
non-existent, for every man who has full consciousness of an act of his has at
the same time a consciousness of an end or purpose for this act, and he
proposes to realise by this means a good which he regards as preferable to any
other. In so far as he has doubts of this preference the act and the judgment
will be suspended. He must, however, if he be an intelligent being, pursue what
he deems to be his good—that is to say, what he deems to be good at the
time of acting. Renouvier here agrees with Socrates and Plato in the view that
no man deliberately and knowingly wills what he considers to be evil or to be
bad for him. Virtue involves knowledge, and although there is the almost
proverbial phrase of Ovid and of Paul, about seeing and approving the better,
yet nevertheless doing the worse, it is a general statement which does not
express an antithesis as present to consciousness at the time of action. The
agent may afterwards say
. . . “Video meliora proboque
deteriora sequor.”
but at the time of action “the worse” must appear to him as a good, at any rate
then and in his own judgment. Further, beyond these psychological
considerations there are grave moral objections, Renouvier points out, to
admitting “an indifferent will,” for the acts of such a will being purely
arbitrary and haphazard, the man will be no moral agent, no responsible person.
A man who wills apart from the consideration of any motive whatever can never
perform any meritorious action. Under the conception of an indifferent will the
term “merit” ceases to have a meaning. The theologians who have asserted the
doctrine (indeed, it seems to have originated, Renouvier thinks, with them)
have readily admitted this point, for it opens up the way for their theory of
divine grace or the good will of God acting directly upon or within the agent.
Will and merit are for them quite separate, the latter being due to the
mystical operations of divine favour or grace, in honour of which the
indifference of the will has been postulated. Philosophers not given to appeals
to divine grace, who have upheld the doctrine of the indifferent will, have
really been less consistent than the theoloians and have fallen into grave
error.
Renouvier appeals to the testimony of the penal laws of all nations in favour
of his criticism of an indifferent will. Motive is deemed a real factor,
for men are not deemed to have acted indifferently. Some deliberation, indeed,
is implied in all action which is conscious and human, some comparison of
motives and a conscious, decision. The values of truth, as well as those of
morality are equally fatal to the indifferentist; for, asks Renouvier, is a man
to be regarded as not determined to affirm as true what he judges to be true?
The doctrine of freedom as represented by that of an indifferent will is no
less vicious, Renouvier affirms, than the opposing doctrine of universal
necessity. The truth is that they both rest on fictions. “Indifferentism”
imagines a will divorced from judgment, separated from the rational man
himself, an unseizable power, a mysterious absolute cause unconnected with
reflection or deliberation, a mere chimera. For determinism the will is equally
a fiction.
A way out of this difficulty is to be found, according to Renouvier, in viewing
the will in a manner different from that of the “indifferentists.” Let us
suppose the will bound up with motive, a motive drawn from the intellectual and
moral equipment of the man. This, however, gives rise to psychological
determinism. The will, it is argued, follows always the last determination of
the understanding. Greater subtilty attends on this argument against freedom
than those put forward on behalf of physical determinism. Renouvier sees that
there is no escape from such a doctrine as psychological determinism unless we
take a view of the will as bound up with the nature of man as a whole, with his
powers of intellect and feeling. Such a will cannot be characterised as
indifferent or as the mere resultant of motives.
The Kantian element in Renouvier’s thought is noticeable in the strong moral
standpoint from which he discusses all problems, and this is particularly true
of his discussion of this very vital one of freedom. He is by no means,
however, a disciple of Kant, and he joins battle strongly with the Kantian
doctrine of freedom. This is natural in view of his entire rejection of Kant’s
“thing-in-itself,” or noumena, and it follows therefrom, for Kant attached
freedom only to the noumenal world, denying its operation in the world of
phenomena. The rejection of noumena leaves Renouvier free to discuss freedom in
a less remote or less artificial manner than that of Kant.
If it be true, argues Renouvier, that necessity rules supreme, then the human
spirit can find peace in absolute resignation; and in looking back over the
past history of humanity one need not have different feelings from those
entertained by the geologist or paleontologist. Ethics, politics and history
thus become purely “natural” sciences (if indeed ethics could here have
meaning, would it not be identical with anthropology? At any rate, it would be
purely positive. A normative view of ethics would be quite untenable in the
face of universal necessity). Any inconvenience, pain or injustice would have
to be accepted and not even named “evil,” much less could any effort be truly
made to expel it from the scheme of things. To these accusations the defenders
of necessity object. The practical man, they say, need not feel this, in so far
as he is under the illusion of freedom and unaware of the rigorous necessity of
all things. He need not refrain from action.
But this defence of necessity leads those who wish to maintain the case against
it to continue the argument. Suppose that the agent does not forget that
all is necessitated, what then? Under no illusion of the idea of freedom, he
then acts at every moment of his existence in the knowledge that he cannot but
do what he is doing, he cannot but will what he wills, he cannot but desire
what he desires. In time this must produce, says Renouvier, insanity either of
an idle type or a furious kind, he will become an indifferent imbecile or a
raving fanatic, in either case a character quite abnormal and dangerous. These
are extreme results, but between the two extremes all degrees of character are
to be, found. The most common type of practical reason presents an antinomy in
the system of universal necessity. The case for necessity must reckon with this
fact—namely, that the operation of necessity has itself given rise to
ethics which exists, and, according to the case, its existence is a necessary
one; yet ethics constitutes itself in opposition to necessity, and under the
sway of necessity is quite meaningless. Here is a paradox which is not lessened
if we suppose the ethical position to be an absurd and false one. Whether false
or not, morality in some form is practically as universal as human nature. That
nature, Renouvier insists, can hardly with sincerity believe an hypothesis or a
dogma which its own moral instincts belie continually.
If, on the other hand, truth lies with the upholders of freedom, then man’s
action is seen to have great value and significance, for man then appears as
creating a new order of things in the world. His new acts, Renouvier admits,
will not be without preceding ones, without roots or reasons, but they will be
without necessary connection with the whole scheme of things. He is thus
creating a new order; he is creating himself and making his own history.
Conscious pride or bitter remorse can both alike be present to him. The great
revolutions of history will be regarded by him not as mystical sweepings of
some unknown force external to himself, but as results of the thought and work
of humanity itself. A philosophy which so regards freedom will thus be a truly
“human” philosophy. Renouvier rightly recognises that the whole philosophy of
history turns upon the attitude which we adopt to freedom.
In view of the many difficulties connected with the problem of freedom many
thinkers would urge us to a compromise. Renouvier is aware of the dangers of
this attitude, and he brings into play against it his logical method of dealing
with problems. This does not contradict his statement about the
indemonstrability of freedom, nor does it minimise the weight and significance
of the moral case for freedom: it complements it. Between contradictories or
incompatible propositions no middle course can be followed. Freedom and
necessity cannot be both at the same time true, or both at the same time false,
for of the two things one must be true—namely, either human actions are
all of them totally predetermined by their conditions or antecedents, or they
are not all of them totally predetermined. It is to this pass that we are
brought in the logical statement of the case. Now sceptics would here assert
that doubt was the only solution. This would not realh be a solution, and
however legitimate doubt is in front of conflicting theories, it involves the
death of the soul if it operates in practical affairs and in any circumstances
where some belief is absolutely necessary to the conduct of life and to action.
The freedom in question, as Renouvier is careful to remind us, does not involve
our maintaining the total indetermination of things or denial of the operations
of necessity within limits. Room is left for freedom when it is shown that this
necessity is not universal. Many consequences of free acts may be necessitated.
For example, says Renouvier, I have a stone in my hand. I can freely will to
hurl it north or south, high or low, but once thrown from my hand its path is
strictly determined by the law of gravity. The voluntary movement of a man on
the earth may, however slightly, alter the course of a distant planet. Freedom,
we might say, operates in a sphere to which necessity supplies the matter.
Ultimately any free act is a choice between two alternatives, equally possible,
but both necessitated as possibilities. The points of free action may seem to
take up a small amount of room in the world, so to speak, but we must realise
how vital they are to any judgment regarding its character, and how
tremendously important they are from a moral point of view. So far, claims
Renouvier, from the admittance of freedom being a destruction of the laws of
the universe, it really shows us a special law of that universe, not otherwise
to be explained—namely, the moral law. Freedom is thus regarded by
Renouvier as a positive fact, a moral certainty.
Freedom is the pillar of the neo-critical philosophy; it is the first truth
involved at once in all action and in all knowledge. Truth and error are not
well explained, or, indeed, at all explained, by a doctrine which, embracing
them both as equally necessary, justifies them equally, and so in a sense
verifies both of them. It was this point which Brochard developed in his work
L’Erreur, which has neo-critical affinities. Man is only capable of
science because he is free; it is also because he is free that he is subject to
error.[8] Renouvier claims that “we do not avoid
error always, but we always can avoid it.”[9] Truth and error can only be explained, he
urges, by belief in the ambiguity of futures, movements of thought involving
choice between opinions which conflict—in short, by belief in freedom.
The calculation of probabilities and the law of the great numbers demonstrates,
Renouvier claims, the indetermination of futures, and consciousness is aware of
this ambiguity in practical life. This belief in the ambiguity of futures is a
condition, he shows, of the exercise of the human consciousness in its moral
aspect, and this consciousness in action regards itself as suspended before
indetermination—that is, it affirms freedom. This affirmation of freedom
Renouvier asserts to be a necessary element of any rational belief whatever. It
alone gives moral dignity and supremacy to personality, whose existence is the
deepest and most radical of all existences. The personal life in its highest
sense and its noblest manifestation is precisely Freedom. Renouvier assures us
that there is nothing mysterious or mystical about this freedom. It is not
absolute liberty and contingency of all things; it is an attribute of persons.
The part played thus freely by personality in the scheme or order of the
universe proves to us that that order or scheme is not defined or formed in a
predetermined manner; it is only in process of being formed, and our personal
efforts are essential factors in its formation. The world is an order which
becomes and which is creating itself, not a pre-established order which simply
unrolls itself in time. For a proper understanding of the nature of this
problem “we are obliged to turn to the practical reason. It is a moral
affirmation of freedom which we require; indeed, any other kind of affirmation
would, Renouvier maintains, presuppose this. The practical reason must lay down
its own basis and that of all true reason, for reason is not divided against
itself reason is not something apart from man; it is man, and man is never
other than practical—i.e., acting.”[10] Considered from this standpoint there are four
cases which present themselves to the tribunal of our judgment—namely,
the case for freedom, the case against freedom, the case for necessity and the
case against necessity.
The position is tersely put in the Dilemma presented by Jules Lequier, the
friend of Renouvier, quoted in the Psychologie rationnelle. There are
four possibilities:
To affirm necessity, necessarily. To affirm necessity, freely. To affirm
freedom, necessarily. To affirm freedom, freely.
On examining these possibilities we find that to affirm necessity, necessarily,
is valueless, for its contradictory, freedom, is equally necessary. To affirm
necessity, freely, does not offer us a better position, for here again it is
necessity which is affirmed. If we affirm freedom necessarily, we are in little
better case, for necessity operates again (although Renouvier notes that this
gives a certain basis for morality). In the free affirmation of freedom,
however, is to be found not only a basis for morals, but also for knowledge and
the search for truth. Indeed, as we are thus forced “to admit the truth of
either necessity or freedom, and to choose between the one and the other with
the one or with the other,”[11] we find
that the affirmation of necessity involves contradiction, for there are many
persons who affirm freedom, and this they do, if the determinist be right,
necessarily. The affirmation of freedom, on the other hand, is free from such
an absurdity.
Such is the conclusion to which Renouvier brings us after his wealth of logical
and moral considerations. He combines both types of discussion and argument in
order to undermine the belief in determinism and to uphold freedom, which is,
in his view, the essential attribute of personality and of the universe itself.
He thus succeeded in altering substantially the balance of thought in favour of
freedom, and further weight was added to the same side of the scales by the new
spiritualist group who placed freedom in the forefront of their thought.
III
The development of the treatment of this problem within the thought of the new
spiritualists or idealists is extremely interesting, and it proceeded finally
to a definite doctrine of contingency as the century drew to its close. The
considerations set forth are usually psychological in tone, and not so largely
ethical as in the neo-critical philosophy.
Ravaisson declared himself a champion of freedom. He accepted the principle of
Leibnitz, to the effect that everything has a reason, from which it follows
that everything is necessitated, without which there could be no certitude and
no science. But, says Ravaisson, there are two kinds of necessity—one
absolute, one relative. The former is logical, the type of the principle of
identity, and is found in syllogisms and in mathematics, which is just logic
applied to quantity. The other type of necessity is moral, and is, unlike the
former, perfectly in accord with freedom. It indeed implies freedom, the
freedom of self-determination. The truly wise man can- not help doing what is
right and good. The slave of Passion and caprice and evil has no freedom. The
wise man selecting the good chooses it infallibly, but at the time with perfect
free-will. “It is perhaps because the good or the beautiful is simply nothing
other than love—that is, the power of will in all its purity, and so to
will what is truly good is to will oneself (c’est se vouloir
soi-même).”[12]
Nature is not, as the materialists endeavour to maintain, entirely
geometrical—that is to say, fatalistic in character. Morality enters into
the scheme of things and, with it, ends freely striven for. There is present a
freedom which is a kind of necessity, yet opposed to fatalism. This freedom
involves a determination by conceptions of perfection, ideals of beauty and of
good. “Fatality is but an appearance; spontaneity and freedom constitute
reality.”[13] So far, continues Ravaisson,
from all things operating by brute mechanism or by pure hazard, things operate
by the development of a tendency to perfection, to goodness and beauty. Instead
of everything submitting to a blind destiny, everything obeys, and obeys
willingly, a divine Providence.
Ravaisson’s fundamental spiritualism is clear in all this, and it serves as the
starting-point for the thinkers who follow him. Spiritualism is bound up with
spontaneity, creation, freedom, and this is his central point, this insistence
on freedom. While resisting mechanical determination he endeavours to retain a
determination of another kind—namely, by ends, a teleology or finalism.
This is extremely interesting when observed in relation to the subsequent
development in Lachelier, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson.
Lachelier’s treatment of freedom is an important landmark in the spiritualist
development. By his concentrated analysis of the problem of induction he
brought out the significance of efficient and final causes respectively. He
appears as the pupil of Ravaisson, whose initial inspiration is apparent in his
whole work, especially in his treatment of freedom. He dwells upon the fact of
the spontaneity of the spirit—a point of view which Ravaisson succeeded
in imparting to the three thinkers, Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson. Besides
the influence of Ravaisson, however, that of Kant and Leibnitz appears in
Lachelier’s attitude to freedom. Yet he passes beyond the Kantian position, and
he rejects the double-aspect doctrine which Leibnitz maintained with regard to
efficient and final causes. Lachelier insists that the spontaneity of spirit
stands above and underlies the whole of nature. This is the point which
Boutroux, under Lachelier’s influence, took up in his Contingence des Lois
de la Nature. Lachelier, in attacking the purely mechanistic conception of
the universe, endeavoured, as he himself put it, “to substitute everywhere
force for inertia, life for death and freedom for fatalism.” Rather than
universal necessity it is universal contingence which is the real definition of
existence. We are free to determine ourselves in accordance with ends we set
before us, and to act in the manner necessary to accomplish those ends. Our
life itself, as he shows in the conclusion of his brilliant little article
Psychologie et Métaphysique, is creative, and we must beware of arguing
that what we have been makes us what we are, for that character which we look
upon as determining us need not do so if we free ourselves from habit, and,
further, this character is, in any case, itself the result of our free actions
over extended time, the free creation of our own personality.
While with Ravaisson and Lachelier the concept of freedom was being rather
fully developed in opposition to the determinist doctrines, Fouillée, in his
brilliant and acute thesis on Liberté et Déterminisme, endeavoured to
call a halt to this supremacy of Freedom, and to be true to the principles of
reconciliation which he laid down for himself in his philosophy. He confesses
himself, at the outset, to be a pacifist rather than a belligerent in this
classic dispute between determinists on the one hand and partisans of freedom
on the other. He believes that, on intimate investigation pursued sufficiently
far, the two opposing doctrines will be seen to converge. Such a declaration
would seem to be dangerously superficial in a warfare as bitter and as sharp as
this. It must be admitted that, as is the case with many who profess to
conciliate two conflicting views, Fouillée leaves us at times without precise
and definite indication of his own position.
In contrast to the attitude of Ravaisson and Lachelier Fouillée inclines in
some respects to the attitude of Taine and many passages of his book show him
to be holding at least a temporary brief for the partisans of determinism. He
agrees notably with Taine in his objecting to the contention that under the
determinist theory moral values lose their significance. Fouillée claims that
it is both incorrect and unfair to argue that “under the necessity-hypothesis a
thing being all that it can be is thereby all that it should be.”[14].
He goes on to point out that the consciousness of independence, which is an
essential of freedom, may be nothing more than a lack of consciousness of our
dependence. Motives he is inclined to speak of as determining the will itself,
while he looks upon the “liberty of indifference” or of hazard as merely a
concession to the operations of mechanical necessity. The “liberty of
indifference” is often the mere play of instinct and of fatality, while hazard,
so far from being an argument in the hands of the upholders of freedom, is
really a determination made previously by something other than one’s own will.
This is a direct attack upon the doctrines put forward by both Cournot and
Renouvier. Fouillée is well aware of this, and twenty pages of his thesis are
devoted to a critical and hostile examination of the statements of both
Renouvier and his friend Lequier.[15]
Fouillée claims that these two thinkers have only disguised and misplaced the
“liberty of indifference”; they have not, he thinks, really suppressed it,
although both of them profess to reject it absolutely. A keen discussion
between Fouillée and Renouvier arose from this and continued for some time,
being marked on both sides by powerful dialectic. Renouvier used his paper the
Critique philosophique as his medium, while Fouillée continued in
subsequent editions of his thesis, in his Idée moderne du Droit and also
in his acute study Critique des Systèmes de Morale contemporains.
Fouillée took Renouvier to task particularly for his maintaining that if all be
determined then truth and error are indistinguishable. Fouillée claims that the
distinction between truth and error is by no means parallel to that between
necessity and freedom. An error may, he points out, be necessitated, and
consequently we must look elsewhere for our doctrine of certitude than to the
affirmation of freedom. In the philosophy of Renouvier, as we have seen, these
two are intimately connected. Fouillée criticises the neo-critical doctrine of
freedom on the ground that Renouvier mars his thought by a tendency to look
upon the determinist as a passive and inert creature. This, he says, is “the
argument of laziness” applied to the intelligence. “One forgets,” says
Fouillée, “that if intelligence is a mirror, it is not an immovable and
powerless mirror: it is a mirror always turning itself to reality.”[16]
On examining closely the difference between Renouvier and Fouillée over this
problem of freedom, we may attribute it to the fact that while the one thinker
is distinctly and rigorously an upholder of continuity, the other believes in
no such absolute continuity. For Fouillée there is, in a sense, nothing new
under the sun, while Renouvier in his thought, which has been well described as
a philosophy of discontinuity, has a place for new things, real beginnings, and
he is in this way linked up to the doctrine of creative development as set
forth ultimately by Bergson. It will be seen also as we proceed that Fouillée,
for all he has to say on behalf of determinism, is not so widely separated in
his view of freedom from that worked out by Bergson, although at the first
glance the gulf between them seems a wide one.
Fouillée, while attacking Renouvier, did not spare that other acute thinker,
Lachelier, from the whip of his criticism. He takes objection to a passage in
that writer’s Induction where he advocates the doctrine that the
production of ideas “is free in the most rigorous sense of that word, since
each idea is in itself absolutely independent of that which precedes it, and is
born out of nothing, as is a world.” To this view of the spontaneity of the
spirit Fouillée opposes the remark that Lachelier is considering only the
new forms which are assumed by a mechanism which is always operating
under the same laws of causality. He asks us in this connection to imagine a
kaleidoscope which is being turned round. The images which succeed each other
will be in this sense a formal creation, a form independent of that
which went before, but, as he is anxious to remind us, the same mechanical and
geometrical laws will be operating continually in producing these forms.
Having had these encounters with the upholders of freedom, and thus to some
degree having conveyed the impression of being on the side of the determinists,
Fouillée proceeds to the task he had set himself—namely, that of
reconciliation. He felt the unsatisfactoriness of Kant’s treatment of
freedom,[17] and he endeavours to remedy the lack
in Kant of a real link between the determinism of the natural sciences and the
human consciousness of freedom, realised in the practical reason. Fouillée
proposes to find in his idées-forces a middle term and to offer us a
solution of the problem at issue in the dispute.
He begins by showing that there has been an unfortunate neglect of one
important factor in the case—a factor whose reality is frankly admitted
by both parties. This central, incontestable fact is the idea of
freedom. This idea, according to Fouillée, arises in us as the result Of a
combination of various psychological factors, such as notions of diversity,
possibility, with the tendency to action arising from the notion of action,
which thus shows itself as a force. The combination of these results in the
genesis of the idea of freedom. Now the stronger this idea of freedom is in our
minds the more we make it become a reality. It is an “idea-force” which by
being thought tends to action and thus increases in power and fruitfulness. The
idea of freedom becomes, by a kind of determinism, more powerful in proportion
to the degree with which it is acted upon. Determinism thus reflects upon
itself and in a curious way turns to operate against itself. This directing
power of the idea of freedom cannot be denied even by the most rigorous
upholders of determinism. They at least are forced to find room in their
doctrine for the idea of freedom and its practical action on the lives of men,
both individually and in societies. The vice of the doctrines of determinism
has been the refusal to admit the reality of the liberating idea of freedom,
which is tending always to realise itself.
The belief in freedom is, therefore, Fouillée claims, a powerful force in the
world. Nothing is a more sure redeemer of men and societies from evil ways than
the realisation of this idea of freedom. So largely is this the case that
indeed the extinction of the belief in freedom would, he argues, not differ
much in consequence from the finding that freedom was an illusion, or, if it be
a fact, its abolition.
Having thus rectified the doctrine of determinism by including a place within
it for the idea of freedom, Fouillée proceeds by careful analysis to show the
error of belief in freedom understood as that of an indifferent will. This
raises as many fallacious views as that of a determinism bereft of the idea of
freedom. The capricious and indifferent liberty he rejects, and in so doing
shows us the importance of the intelligent power of willing, and also reaffirms
the determinists’ thesis of inability to do certain things. The psychology of
character shows us a determined freedom, and in the intelligent personality a
reconciliation of freedom and determinism is seen to be effected. Fouillée
shows that if it were not true that very largely what we have been makes us
what we are, and that what we are determines our future actions, then
education, moral guidance, laws and social sanctions would all be useless.
Indifferentism in thought is the reversal of all thought.
Fouillée sees that the antithesis between Freedom and Necessity is not
absolute, and he modifies the warmth of Renouvier’s onslaughts upon the
upholders of determinism. But he believes we can construct a notion of moral
freedom which will not be incompatible with the determinism of nature. To
effect this reconciliation, however, we must abandon the view of Freedom as a
decision indifferently made, an action of sheer will unrelated to intelligence.
Freedom is not caprice; it is, Fouillée claims, a power of indefinite
development.
Yet, in the long and penetrating Introduction to his volume on the
Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces, Fouillée points out that however much
science may feel itself called upon to uphold a doctrine of determinism for its
own specific purposes, we must remember that the sphere of science is not
all-embracing. There is the sphere of action, and the practical life demands
and, to a degree demonstrates, freedom. Fouillee admits in this connection the
indetermination of the future, pour notre esprit. We act upon this idea
of relative indeterminism, combining with it the idea of our own action, the
part which we personally feel called upon to play. He recognises in his
analysis how important is this point for the solution of the problem. We cannot
overlook the contribution which our personality is capable of making to the
whole unity of life and experience, not only by its achievements in action, but
by its ideals, by that which we feel both can and should be.
Herein lies, according to Fouillée’s analysis, the secret of duty and the ideal
of our power to fulfil it, based upon the central idea of our freedom. By thus
acting on these ideas, and by the light and inspiration of these ideals, we
tend to realise them. It is this which marks the point where a doctrine of pure
determinism not only shows itself erroneous and inadequate, but as Fouillee
puts it, the human consciousness is the point where it is obliged to turn
against itself “as a serpent which bites its own tail.”[18] Fatalism is a speculative hypothesis and nothing
else. Freedom is equally an hypothesis, but, adds Fouillée, it is an hypothesis
which is at work in the world.
In the thought of Guyau there is a further insistence upon freedom in spite of
the fact that his spiritualism is super-added to much which reveals the
naturalist and positive outlook. He upholds freedom and, indeed, contingency,
urging, as against Ravaisson’s teleology, that there is no definite tendency
towards truth, beauty and goodness. At all times, too, Guyau is conscious of
union with nature and with his fellows in a way which operates against a facile
assertion of freedom. In his Vers d’un Philosophe he remarks:
“Ce mot si doux au coeur et si cher, Liberté,
J’en préfèrs encore un: c’est Solidarité.”[19]
The maintenance of the doctrine of liberty, which in view of the facts we are
bound to maintain, does away, Guyau insists, with the doctrine of Providence;
for him, as for Bergson, there is no prévision but only nouveauté
in the universe. Guyau indeed is not inclined to admit even that end which
Bergson seems to favour—namely, “spontaneity of life itself.” The world
does not find its end in us, any more than we find our “ends” fixed for us in
advance. Nothing is fixed, arranged or predetermined; there is not even a
primitive adaptation of things to one another, for such adaptation would
involve the pre-existence of ideas prior to the material world, together with a
demiurge arranging things upon a plan in the manner of an architect. In reality
there is no plan; every worker conceives his own. The world is a superb
example, not of order, such as we associate with the idea of Providence in
action, but the reverse, disorder, the result of contingency and freedom.
The supreme emphasis upon the reality of freedom appears, however, in the work
of Boutroux and of Bergson at the end of our period. They arrive at a position
diametrically opposed to that of the upholders of determinism, by their
doctrines of contingency as revealed both in the evolution of the universe and
in the realm of personal life. There is thus seen, as was the case with the
problem of science, a complete “turn of the tide” in the development since
Comte.
Boutroux, summing up his thesis La contingence des Lois de la Nature,
indicates clearly in his concluding chapter his belief in contingency, freedom
and creativeness. The old adage, “nothing is lost, nothing is created,” to
which science seems inclined to attach itself, has not an absolute value, for
in the hierarchy of creatures contingency, freedom, newness appear in the
higher ranks. There is at work no doubt a principle of conservation, but this
must not lead us to deny the existence and action of another principle, that of
creation. The world rises from inorganic to organic forms, from matter to
spirit, and in man himself from mere sensibility to intelligence, with its
capacity for criticising and observing, and to will capable of acting upon
things and modifying them by freedom.
Boutroux inclines to a doctrine of finalism somewhat after the manner of
Ravaisson. The world he conceives as attracted to an end; the beautiful and the
good are ideals seeking to be realised; but this belief in finality does not,
he expressly maintains, exclude contingency. To illustrate this, Boutroux uses
a metaphor from seamanship: the sailors in a ship have a port to make for, yet
their adaptations to the weather and sea en route permit of contingency along
with the finality involved in their making for port. So it is with beings in
nature. They have not merely the one end, to exist amid the obstacles and
difficulties around them, “they have an ideal to realise, and this ideal
consists in approaching to God, to his likeness, each after his kind. The ideal
varies with the creatures, because each has his special nature, and can only
imitate God in and by his own nature.”[20]
Boutroux’s doctrine of freedom and contingency is not opposed to a teleological
conception of the universe, and in this respect he stands in contrast to
Bergson, who, in the rigorous application of his theory of freedom, rules out
all question of teleology. With Renouvier and with Bergson, however, Boutroux
agrees in maintaining that this freedom, which is the basis of contingency in
things, is not and cannot be a datum of experience, directly or indirectly,
because experience only seizes things which are actually realised, whereas this
freedom is a creative power, anterior to the act. Heredity, instinct, character
and habit are words by which we must not be misled or overawed into a disbelief
in freedom. They are not absolutely fatal and fully determined. The same will,
insists Boutroux, which has created a habit can conquer it. Will must
not be paralysed by bowing to the assumed supremacy of instincts or habits.
Habit itself is not a contradiction of spontaneity; it is itself a result of
spontaneity, a state of spontaneity itself, and does not exclude contingency or
freedom.
Metaphysics can, therefore, according to Boutroux, construct a doctrine of
freedom based on the conception of contingency. The supreme principles
according to this philosophy will be laws, not those of the positive sciences,
but the laws of beauty and goodness, expressing in some measure the divine life
and supposing free agents. In fact the triumph of the good and the beautiful
will result in the replacement of laws of nature, strictly so called, by the
free efforts of wills tending to perfection—that is, to God.
Further studies upon the problem of freedom are to be found in Boutroux’s
lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1892-93 in the course entitled De l’Idée
de la Loi naturelle dans la Science et la Philosophie contemporaines. He
there recognises in freedom the crucial question at issue between the
scientists and the philosophers, for he states the object of this course of
lectures as being a critical examination of the notion we have of the laws of
nature, with a view to determining the situation of human personality,
particularly in regard to free action.[21]
Boutroux recognises that when the domain of science was less extensive and less
rigorous than it is now it was much easier to believe in freedom. The belief in
Destiny possessed by the ancients has faded, but we may well ask ourselves,
says Boutroux, whether modern science has not replaced it by a yet more
rigorous fatalism.[22] He considers that
the modern doctrine of determinism rests upon two assumptions—namely,
that mathematics is a perfectly intelligible science, and is the expression of
absolute determinism; also that mathematics can be applied with exactness to
reality. These assumptions the lecturer shows to be unjustifiable. Mathematics
and experience can never be fitted exactly into each other, for there are
elements in our experience and in our own nature which cannot be mathematically
expressed. This Boutroux well emphasises in his lecture upon sociological laws,
where he asserts that history cannot be regarded as the unrolling of a single
law, nor can the principle of causality, strictly speaking, be applied to
it.[23] An antecedent certainly may be an
influence but not a cause, as properly understood. He here agrees with
Renouvier s position and attitude to history, and shows the vital bearing of
the problem of freedom upon the philosophy of history, to which we shall
presently give our special attention.
Instead of the ideal of science, a mathematical unity, experience shows us,
Boutroux affirms, a hierarchy of beings, displaying variety and
spontaneity—in short, freedom. So far, therefore, from modern science
being an advocate of universal determinism, it is really, when rightly
regarded, a demonstration, not of necessity, but of freedom. Boutroux’s
treatment of the problem of freedom thus demonstrates very clearly its
connection with that of science, and also with that of progress. It forms
pre-eminently the central problem.
The idea of freedom is prominent in the “philosophy of action” and in the
Bergsonian philosophy; indeed, Bergson’s treatment of the problem is the
culmination of the development of the idea in Cournot, Renouvier and the
neo-spiritualists. In Blondel the notion is not so clearly worked out, as there
are other considerations upon which he wishes to insist. Blondel is deeply
concerned with the power of ideals over action, and his thought of freedom has
affinities to the psychology of the idées-forces. This is apparent in
his view of the will, where he does not admit a purely voluntarist doctrine.
His insistence on the dynamic of the will in action is clear, but he reminds us
that the will does not cause or produce everything, for the will wills to be
what is not yet; it strives for achievement, to gain something beyond itself.
Much of Blondel’s treatment of freedom is coloured by his religious and moral
psychology, factors with which Bergson does not greatly concern himself in his
writings. Blondel endeavours to maintain man’s freedom of action and at the
same time to remain loyal to the religious notion of a Divine Providence, or
something akin to that. Consequently he is led to the dilemma which always
presents itself to the religious consciousness when it asserts its own
freedom—namely, how can that freedom be consistent with Divine guidance
or action? Christian theology has usually been determinist in character, but
Blondel attempts to save freedom by looking upon God as a Being immanent in
man.
Bergson makes Freedom a very central point in his philosophy, and his treatment
of it bears signs of the influence of De Biran, Ravaisson, Lachelier, Guyau and
Boutroux. He rejects, however, the doctrine of finality as upheld by Ravaisson,
Lachelier and Boutroux, while he stresses the contingency which this last
thinker had brought forward. His solution of the problem is, however,
peculiarly his own, and is bound up with his fundamental idea of change, or LA
DURÉE.
In his work Les Données immédiates de la Conscience, or Time and
Free-Will, he criticises the doctrine of physical determinism, which is
based on the principle of the conservation of energy, and on a purely
mechanistic conception of the universe. He here points out, and later stresses
in his Matiere et Mémoire, the fact that it has not been proved that a
strictly determined psychical state corresponds to a definite cerebral state.
We have no warrant for concluding that because the physiological and the
psychological series exhibit some corresponding terms that therefore the two
series are absolutely parallel. To do so is to settle the problem of freedom in
an entirely a priori manner, which is unjustifiable.
The more subtle and plausible case for psychological determinism Bergson shows
to be no more tenable than that offered for the physical. It is due to
adherence to the vicious Association-psychology, which is a psychology without
a self. To say the self is determined by motive will not suffice, for in a
sense it is true, in another sense it is not, and we must be careful of our
words. If we say the self acts in accordance with the strongest motive, well
and good, but how do we know it is the strongest? Only because it has
prevailed—that is, only because the self acted upon it, which is totally
different from claiming that the self was determined by it externally. To say
the self is determined by certain tives is to say it is self-determined. The
essential thing in all this is the vitality of the self.
The whole difficulty, Bergson points out, arises from the fact that all
attempts to demonstrate freedom tend only to strengthen the artificial case for
determinism, because freedom is only characteristic of a self in action.
He is here in line on this point with Renouvier and Boutroux, although the
reasons he gives for it go beyond in psychological penetration those assigned
by these thinkers. When our action is over, says Bergson, it seems plausible to
argue a case for determinism because of our spatial conception of time and the
relationships of events in time. We have a habit of thinking in terms of space,
by mathematical time, not in real time or la durée as Bergson calls it,
the time in which the living soul acts.
Bergson thus makes room in the universe for a freedom of the human will, a
creative activity, and thus delivers us from the bonds of necessity and
fatalism in which the physical sciences and the associationist psychology would
bind us. We perceive ourselves as centres of indetermination, creative spirits.
We must guard our freedom, for it is an essential attribute of spirit. In so
far as we tend to become dominated by matter, which acts upon us in habit and
convention, we lose our freedom. It is not absolute, and many never achieve it,
for their personality never shines forth at all: they live their lives in habit
and routine, victims of automatism. We have, however, Bergson urges, great
power of creation. He stresses, as did Guyau, the Conception of Life, as free,
expanding, and in several respects his view of freedom is closer to that of
Guyau than to that of Boutroux, in spite of the latter’s contingency. There is
no finalism admitted by Bergson, for he sees in any teleology only “a reversed
mechanism.”
Obviously the maintenance of such a doctrine of freedom as that of Bergson is
of central importance in any philosophy which contains it. Our conceptions of
ethics and of progress depend upon our view of freedom. For Bergson “the
portals of the future stand wide open, the future is being made.” He is an
apostle of a doctrine of absolute contingency which he applied to the evolution
of the world, in his famous volume L’Evolution Créatrice (published in
1907). His philosophy has been termed pessimistic by some in view of his
rejection of any teleological conception. Such a doctrine would conflict with
his “free” universe and his absolute contingency. On the other hand, it leaves
open an optimistic view, because of its freedom, its insistence upon the
possibilities of development. It is not only a reaction against the earlier
doctrines of determinism, it is a deliverance of the human soul which has
always refused, even when religious, to abandon entirely the belief in its own
freedom.
Such is the doctrine of freedom which closes our period, a striking contrast to
the determinism which, under the influence of modern science, characterised its
opening. The critique of science and the assaults upon determinism proceeded
upon parallel lines. In many respects they were two aspects of the one problem,
and in themselves were sufficient to describe the essential development in the
thought of our half century, for the considerations of progress, ethics and
religion to which we now turn derive their significance largely from what has
been set forth in these chapters on Science and Freedom.
CHAPTER V
PROGRESS
INTRODUCTORY : Freedom and Progress intimately connected—Confidence in
Progress, a marked feature of the earlier half of the nineteenth century, was
bound up with confidence in Science and Reason, and in a belief in determinism,
either natural or divine—Condorcet, Saint-Simon, Comte and others
proclaim Progress as a dogma.
I. The idea of progress in Vacherot, Tame and Renan—Interesting reflections
of Renan based on belief in Reason.
II. Cournot and Renouvier regard Progress in a different light, owing to their
ideas on Freedom—They look upon it as a possibility only, but not
assured, not inevitable—Renouvier’s study of history in relation to
progress and his view of immortality as Progress—No law of progress
exists.
III. The new spiritualist group emphasise the lack of any law of progress, by their
insistence on the spontaneity of the spirit, creativeness and
contingency—Difficulties of finalsm or teleology in relation to progress
as free—No law or guarantee of progress.
CONCLUSION : Complete change from earlier period regarding Progress—New
view of it developed—Facile optimism rejected.
CHAPTER V
PROGRESS
Intimately bound up with the idea of freedom is that of progress. For, although
our main approach to the discussion of freedom was made by way of the natural
sciences, by a critique of physical determinism, and also by way of the problem
of personal action, involving a critique of psychological determinism, it must
be noted that there have appeared throughout the discussion very clear
indications of the vital bearing of freedom upon the wide field of humanity’s
development considered as a whole—in short, its history. The philosopher
must give some account of history, if he is to leave no gap in his view of the
universe. The philosophy of history will obviously be vastly different if it be
based on determinism rather than on freedom. When the philosopher looks at
history his thoughts must inevitably centre around the idea of progress. He may
believe in it or may reject it as an illusion, but his attitude to it will be
very largely a reflection of the doctrine which he has formed regarding
freedom.
The notion of progress is probably the most characteristic feature which
distinguishes modern civilisation from those of former times. It would have
seemed to the Greeks foolishness. We owe it to the people who, in the modern
world, have been what Greece was in the ancient world, the glorious mother of
ideas. The eighteenth century was marked in France by a growing belief in
progress, which was encouraged by the Encyclopaedists and rose to enthusiasm at
the Revolution. Its best expression was that given by Condorcet, himself an
Encyclopaedist, and originally a supporter of the Revolution. His Sketch of
an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind was written in 1793
(while its author was threatened with the guillotine[1]), published two years later, and became, in the
early years of the nineteenth century, a powerful stimulus to thought
concerning progress. Much of the work is defective, but it had a great
influence upon Saint-Simon, the early socialists, and upon the doctrines of
Auguste Comte, which themselves are immediate antecedents of our own period. We
may note briefly here, that Condorcet believed in a sure and infallible
progress in knowledge and in social welfare. This is the important doctrine
which Saint-Simon and Comte both accepted from him. His ideal of progress is
contained in the three watchwords of the Revolution, Liberté,
Egalité, Fraternité, particularly the last two. He forecasts an
abandonment of militarism, prophesies an era of universal peace, and the reign
of equality between the sexes. Equality is a point which he insists upon very
keenly, and, although he did not speak of sociology as did Comte, nor of
socialism as did Saint-Simon, he claimed that the true history of mankind is
the history of the great mass of workers: it is not diplomatic and military,
not the record of dazzling deeds of great men. Condorcet, however, was dogmatic
in his belief in progress, and he did not work out any “law” of progress,
although he believed progress to be a law of the universe, in general, and an
undeniable truth in regard to the life-history of mankind.
Later, his friend Cabanis upheld a similarly optimistic view, and endeavoured
to argue for it, against the Traditionalists, who we may remember endeavoured
to restate Catholicism, and to make an appeal to those whom the events of the
Revolution had disturbed and disillusioned. The outcome of the Terror had
somewhat shaken the belief in a straightforward progress, but enthusiastic
exponents of the doctrine were neither lacking nor silent. Madame de Staël
continued the thought of Condorcet, thus forming a link between him and
Saint-Simon and Comte. The influence of the Traditionalists and the general
current of thought and literature known as Romanticism, helped also to solve a
difficulty which distinguishes Condorcet from Comte. This difficulty lay in the
eighteenth-century attitude to the Middle Ages, which Condorcet had accepted,
and which seriously damaged his thesis of general progress, for in the
eighteenth century the Middle Ages were looked upon as a black, dark regress,
for which no thinker had a good word to say. The change of view is seen most
markedly when we come to Comte, whose admiration of the Middle Ages is a
conspicuous feature of his work. While, however, Saint-Simon and Comte were
working out their ideas, great popularity was given to the belief in progress
by the influence of Cousin, Jouffroy, Guizot, and by Michelet’s translation of
the Scienza nuova of the Italian thinker Vico, a book then a century old
but practically unknown in France. For Cousin, the world process was a result
of a necessary evolution of thought, which he conceived in rather Hegelian
fashion. Jouffroy agreed with this fatal progress, although he endeavoured to
reconcile it with that of personal freedom. Guizot’s main point was that
progress and civilisation are the same thing, or rather, that civilisation is
to be defined only by progress, for that is its fundamental idea. His
definition of progress is not, however, strikingly clear, and he calls
attention to two types of progress—one involving an improvement in social
welfare, the other in the spiritual or intellectual life. Although Guizot tried
to show that progress in both these forms is a fact, he did not touch ultimate
questions, nor did he successfully show that progress is the universal key to
human history. He did not really support his argument that civilisation
is progress in any convincing way, but he gave a stimulus to reflection
on the question of the relationship of these two. Michelet’s translation of
Vico came at an appropriate time, and served a useful purpose. It showed to
France a thinker who, while not denying a certain progress over short periods,
denied it over the long period, and reverted rather to the old notion of an
eternal recurrence. For Vico, the course of human history was not rectilineal
but rather spiral, although he, too, refrained from indicating any law. He
claimed clearly enough that each civilisation must give way to barbarism and
anarchy, and the cycle be again begun.
Such were the ideas upon progress which were current at the time when
Saint-Simon, Fourier and Comte were busily thinking out their doctrines, the
main characteristics of which we have already noted in our Introduction on the
immediate antecedents of our period. The thought given to the question of
progress in modern France is almost unintelligible save in the light of the
doctrines current from Condorcet, through Saint-Simon to Comte, for the second
half of the century is again characterised by a criticism and indeed a reaction
against the idea professed in the first half. This was true in regard to
Science and to Freedom. We shall see a similar type of development illustrated
again respecting Progress.
Already we have noted the general aim and object which both Saint-Simon and
Comte had in view. The important fact for our discussion here is that
Saint-Simon, by his respect for the Middle Ages, and for the power of religion,
was able to rectify the defects which the ideas of the eighteenth century had
left in Condorcet’s doctrine of progress. Moreover, he claimed, as Condorcet
had not done, to indicate a “law of progress,” which gives rise alternately to
“organic” and to “critical” periods. The Middle Ages were, in the opinion of
Saint-Simon, an admirable period, displaying as they did an organic society,
where there was a temporal and spiritual authority. With Luther began an
anarchical, critical period. According to Saint-Simon s law of progress a new
organic period will succeed this, and the characteristic of that period will be
socialism. He advocated a gradual change, not a violent revolutionary one, but
he saw in socialism the inevitable feature of the new era. With its triumph
would come a new world organisation and a league of peoples in which war would
be no more, and in which the lot of the proletariat would be free from
oppression and misery. The Saint-Simonist School became practically a religious
sect, and the chief note in its gospel was “Progress.”
That the notion of progress was conspicuous in the thought of this time is very
evident. It was, indeed, in the foreground, and a host of writers testify to
this, whom we cannot do much more than mention here. A number of them figured
in the events of 1848. The social reformers all invoked “Progress” as
justification for their theories being put into action. Bazard took up the
ideas of Saint-Simon and expounded them in his Exposition de la Doctrine
saint-simonienne (1830). Buchez, in his work on the philosophy of history,
assumed progress (1833). The work of Louis Blanc on L’Organisation du
Travail appeared in 1839 in a periodical calling itself Revue des
Progrès. The brochure from Proudhon, on property, came in 1840, and was
followed later by La Philosophie du Progrès (1851). Meanwhile Fourier’s
Théorie des Quatre Mouvements et des Destinées générales attempted in
rather a fantastic manner to point the road to progress. Worthless as many of
his quaint pages are, they were a severe indictment of much in the existing
order, and helped to increase the interest and the faith in progress. Fourier’s
disciple, Considérant, was a prominent figure in 1848. The Utopia proposed by
Cabet insisted upon fraternité as the keynote to progress, while the
volumes of Pierre Leroux, De l’Humanité, which appeared in the same year
as Cabet’s volume, 1840, emphasised égalité as the essential factor. His
humanitarianism influenced the woman-novelist, George Sand. This same watchword
of the Revolution had been eulogised by De Tocqueville in his important study
of the American Republic in 1834, and that writer had claimed égalité as
the goal of human progress. All these men take progress as an undoubted fact;
they only vary by using a different one of the three watchwords,
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, to denote the kind of
progress they mean. Meanwhile, Michelet and his friend Quinet combated the
Hegelian conception of history maintained by Cousin, and they claimed
liberté to be the watchword of progress. The confidence of all in
progress is almost pathetic in its unqualified optimism. It is not remarkable
that the events of 1851 proved a rude shock. Javary, a writer who, in 1850,
published a little work, De l’Idée du Progrès, claimed that the idea is
the supremely interesting question of the time in its relation to a general
philosophy of history and to the ultimate destiny of mankind. This is fairly
evident from the writers we have cited, without Javary’s remark, but it is
worth noting as being the observation of a contemporary. With the mention of
Reynaud’s Philosophie religieuse, upholding the principle of indefinite
perfectability and Pelletan’s Profession du Foi du XIXe
Siècle, wherein he maintained confidently and dogmatically that progress is
the general law of the universe, we must pass on from these minor people to
consider one who had a profounder influence on the latter half of the century,
and who took over the notion of progress from Saint-Simon.
This was Comte, whose attitude to progress in many respects resembles that of
Saint-Simon, but he brought to his work a mental equipment lacking in the
earlier writer and succeeded, by the position he gave to it in his Positive
Philosophy, in making the idea of progress one which subsequent thinkers could
not omit from consideration.
According to Comte, the central factor in progress is the mental. Ideas, as
Fouillée was later to assert, are the real forces in humanity’s history. These
ideas develop in accordance with the “Law of the Three Stages,” already
explained in our Introduction. In spite of the apparent clearness and
simplicity of this law, Comte had to admit that as a general law of all
development it was to some degree rendered difficult in its application by the
lack of simultaneity in development in the different spheres of knowledge and
social life. While recognising the mental as the keynote to progress, he also
insisted upon the solidarity of the physical, intellectual, moral and social
life of man, and to this extent admitted a connection and interaction between
material welfare and intellectual progress. The importance of this admission
lay in the fact that it led Comte to qualify what first appears as a definite
and confident belief in a rectilineal progress. He admits that such a
conception is not true, for there is retrogression, conflict, wavering, and not
a steady development. Yet he claims that there is a general and ultimate
progress about a mean line. The causes which shake and retard the steady
progress are not all-powerful, they cannot upset the fundamental order of
development. These causes which do give rise to variations are, we may note in
passing, the effects of race, climate and political and military feats like
those of Napoleon, for whom Comte did not disguise his hatred, styling him the
man who had done most harm to humanity. Great men upset his sociological
theories, but Comte was no democrat and strongly opposed ideas of Liberty and
Equality. We have remarked upon his general attitude to his own age, as one of
criticism and anarchy. In this he was probably correct, but he quite
underestimated the extent and duration of that anarchy, particularly by his
estimate of the decline and fall of Catholicism and of militarism, which he
regarded as the two evils of Europe. The events of the twentieth century would
have been a rude shock to him, particularly the international conflagration of
1914-1918. It was to Europe that Comte confined his philosophy of history and
consequently narrowed it. He knew little outside this field.
He endeavoured, however, to apply his new science of sociology to the
development of European history. His work contains much which is good and
instructive, but fails ultimately to establish any law of progress. It does not
seem to have occurred to Comte’s mind that there might not be one. This was the
question which was presented to the thinkers after him, and occupies the chief
place in the subsequent discussion of progress.
I
In the second half of the century the belief in a definite and inevitable
progress appears in the work of those thinkers inspired by the positivist
spirit, Vacherot, Taine and Renan. Vacherot’s views on the subject are given in
one of his Essais de Philosophie critique,[2] entitled “Doctrine du Progrès.” These pages,
in which sublime confidence shines undimmed, were intended as part of a longer
work on the Philosophy of History. Many of Renan’s essays, and especially the
concluding chapters of his work L’Avenir de la Science, likewise profess
an extreme confidence in progressive development. Yet Taine and Renan are both
free from the excessive and glowing confidence expressed by Condorcet,
Saint-Simon and Comte. Undoubtedly the events of their own time reacted upon
their doctrine of progress, and we have already noted the pessimism and
disappointment which coloured their thoughts regarding contemporary political
events. Both, however, are rationalists, and have unshaken faith in the
ultimate triumph of reason.
The attitude which Taine adopts to history finds a parallel in the fatalism and
determinism of Spinoza, for he looks upon the entire life of mankind as the
unrolling of a rigidly predetermined series of events. “Our preferences,” he
remarks, “are futile; nature and history have determined things in advance; we
must accommodate ourselves to them, for it is certain that they will not
accommodate themselves to us.” Taine’s view of history reflects his rejection
of freedom, for he maintains that it is a vast regulated chain which operates
independently of individuals. Fatalism colours it entirely. It is precisely
this attitude of Taine which raises the wrath of Renouvier, and also that of
both Cournot and Fouillée, whose discussions we shall examine presently. They
see in such a doctrine an untrue view of history and a theory vicious and
detestable from a moral standpoint, although it doubtless, as Fouillée
sarcastically remarks, has been a very advantageous one for the exploiters of
humanity in all ages to teach and to preach to the people.
In passing from Taine’s fatalistic view of history to note his views on
progress we find him asserting that man’s nature does not in itself inspire
great optimism, for that nature is largely animal, and man is ever ready,
however “civilised” he may appear to be, to return to his native primitive
ferocity and barbarism. Man is not, according to Taine, even a sane animal, for
he is by nature mad and foolish. Health and wisdom only occasionally reign, and
so we have no great ground for optimism when we examine closely the nature of
man, as it really is. Taine’s treatment of the French Revolution[3] shows his hostility to democracy, and he is
sceptical about the value or meaning of the watchwords, “Rights of Man,” or
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. This last, he claims, is
merely a verbal fiction useful for disguising the reality, which is actual
warfare of all against all.
Yet in spite of these considerations Taine believes in a definitely guaranteed
progress. Man’s lower nature does not inspire optimism, but his high power of
reason does, and it is on this faith in reason that Taine confidently founds
his assertions regarding progress. He sees in reason the ultimate end and
meaning of all else. The triumph of reason is an ideal goal to which, in spite
of so many obstacles, all the forces of the universe are striving. In this
intellectual progress, this gradual rationalisation of mankind, Taine sees the
essential element of progress upon which all other goods depend. The betterment
of social conditions will naturally follow; it is the spiritual and mental
factor which is the keynote of progress Reason, he contends, will give us a new
ethic, a new politic and a new religion.
Renan shares with Taine the belief in reason and its ultimate triumph. His
views on progress are, however, more discursive, and are extremely interesting
and suggestive. He was in his later years shrewd enough to discover the
difficulties of his own doctrine. Thus although he believed in a “guaranteed”
progress, Renan marks a stage midway between the idea of progress as held by
Comte and Taine on the one hand, and by Cournot and Renouvier on the other.
His early book, L’Avenir de la Science, glows with ardent belief in this
assured progress, which is bound up with his confidence in science and
rationality. “Our creed,” he there declares, “is the reasonableness of
progress.” This idea of progress is almost as central a point in Renan’s
thought as it was in that of Comte, and he gave it a more metaphysical
significance. His general philosophy owes much to history, and for him the
philosophy of history is the explanation of progress. By this term he means an
ever-growing tendency to perfection, to fuller consciousness and life, to
nobler, better and more beautiful ends. He thinks it necessary to conceive of a
sort of inner spring, urging all things on to fuller life. He seems here to
anticipate vaguely the central conception of Guyau and of Bergson. But, like
Taine, Renan founds his doctrine of progress on rationalism. He well expresses
this in one of his Drames philosophiques (L’Eau de Jouvence), through
the mouth of Prospero, who represents rational thought. This character declares
that “it is science which brings about social progress, and not progress which
gives rise to science. Science only asks from society to have granted to it the
conditions necessary to its life and to produce a sufficient number of minds
capable of understanding it.”[4] In the preface
written for this drama he declares that science or reason will ultimately
succeed in creating the power and force of government in humanity.
These thoughts re-echo many of the sentiments voiced on behalf of progress by
Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Comte. It is interesting, however, to note an
important point on which Renan not only parts company with them, but ranges
himself in opposition to them. This point is that of socialism or democracy,
call it what one will.
In the spring of 1871 Renan was detained at Versailles during the uproar of the
Commune in Paris, and there wrote his Dialogues et Fragments
philosophiques, which were published five years later. In these pages
certain doctrines of progress and history are set forth, notably in the
“dialogues of three philosophers of that school whose ground-principles are the
cult of the ideal, the negation of the supernatural and the investigation of
reality.” Renan raises a discussion of the end of the world’s development. The
universe, he maintains, is not devoid of purpose: it pursues an ideal end. This
goal to which the evolutionary process moves is the reign of reason. But there
are striking limitations to this advance. From this kingdom of reason on the
earth the mass of men are shut out. Renan does not believe in a gradual
improvement of the mass of mankind accompanied by a general rationalisation
which is democratic. The truth is that Renan was an intellectual aristocrat
and, as such, he abhorred Demos. His gospel of culture, upon which he lays the
greatest stress, is for the few who are called and chosen, while the many
remain outside the pale, beyond the power of the salvation he offers. The
development of the democratic idea he looks upon as thoroughly mischievous,
inasmuch as it involves, in his opinion, degeneration, a levelling down to
mediocrity. In his philosophy of history he adopts an attitude somewhat akin to
that of Carlyle in his worship of Great Men. The end of history is, Renan
states, the production of men of genius. The great mass of men, the common
stuff of humanity, he likens to the soil from which these Great Ones grow. The
majority of men have their existence justified only by the appearance upon the
scene of “Heroes of Culture.” In this teaching the parallelism to the gospel of
the Superman is apparent, yet it seems clear that although Renan’s man of
culture despises the ignorance and vulgarity of the crowd, he does so
condescendingly as a benefactor, and is free from the passionate hatred and
scorn to which Nietzsche’s Superman is addicted. Nevertheless, Renan’s attitude
of uncompromising hostility to democratic development is very marked. He
couples his confidence in Science to his anti-democratic views, and affirms the
“Herd” to be incapable of culture. Although the process of rationalisation and
the establishment of the kingdom of reason is applicable only to the patrician
and not to the plebs, this process is claimed by Renan to be capable of
great extension, not in the number of its adherents but in the extent of
culture. In this final reign of reason, instinctive action and impulse will be
replaced by deliberation, and science will succeed religion.
His famous letter to Berthelot includes a brief statement of his views on
progressive culture, which, for him, constitutes the sign of progress. “One
ought never,” he writes, “to regret seeing clearer into the depths.” By
endeavouring to increase the treasure of the truths which form the paid-up
capital of humanity, we shall be carrying on the work of our pious ancestors,
who loved the good and the true as it was understood in their time. The true
men of progress, he claims, are those who profess as their starting-point a
profound respect for the past. Renan himself was a great lover of the past, yet
we find him remarking in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse that he
has no wish to be taken for an uncompromising reactionist. “I love the past,
but I envy the future,” and he thinks that it would be extremely pleasant to
live upon this planet at as late a period as possible. He appears jealous of
the future and of the young, whose fate it will be to know what will be the
outcome of the activities of the German Emperor, what will be the climax of the
conflict of European nationalities, what development socialism will take. His
shrewd mind had alreadv foreseen in a measure the possible development of
German militarism and of Bolshevism. He regards the world as moving towards a
kind of “Americanism,” by which he means a type of life in which culture and
refinement shall have little place. Yet, although he has a horror and a dread
of democracy, he feels also that the evils accompanying it may be, after all,
no worse than those involved in the reactionary dominance of nobles and clergy.
Humanity has not hitherto marched, he thinks, with much method. Order he
considers to be desirable, but only in view of progress. Revolutions are only
absurd and odious, he asserts in L’Avenir de la Science, to those who do
not believe in progress. Yet he claims that reaction has its place in the plan
of Providence, for it works unwittingly for the general good. “There are,” to
quote his metaphor, “declivities down which the rôle of the
traction engine consists solely in holding back.”
Renan thinks that if democratic ideas should secure a clear triumph, science
and scientific teaching would soon find the modest subsidies now accorded them
cut off. He fears the approach of an era of mediocrity, of vulgarity, in fact,
which will persecute the intellectuals and deprive the world of liberty. He is
not thoughtlessly optimistic; he was far too shrewd an intellect for that. Our
age, he suggests, may be regarded in future as the turning point of humanity’s
history, that point where its deterioration set in, the prelude to its decline
and fall. But he asserts, as against this, that Nature does not know the
meaning of the word “discouragement.” Humanity, proving itself incapable of
progress, but only capable of further deterioration, would be replaced by other
forms. “We must not, because of our personal tastes, our prejudices perhaps,
set ourselves to oppose the action of our time. This action goes on without
regard to us and probably is right.”[5] The
future of science is assured. With its progress, Renan points out, we must
reckon upon the decay of organised religion, as professed by sects or churches.
The disappearance of this organised religion will, however, result most
assuredly in a temporary moral degeneration, since morality has been so
conventionally bound up with the Church. An era of egoism, military and
economic in character, will arise and for a time prevail.
Yet we must not, Renan reminds us, grumble at having too much unrest and
conflict. The great object in life is the development of the mind, and this
requires liberty or freedom. The worst type of society is the theocratic state,
or the ancient pontifical dominion or any modern replica of these where dogma
reigns supreme. A humanity which could not be revolutionary, which had lost the
attraction of “Utopias,” believing itself to have established the perfect form
of existence would be intolerable. This raises also the query that if progress
be the main feature of our universe, then we have a dilemma to face, for either
it leads us to a terminus ad quem, and so finally contradicts itself, or
else it goes on for ever, and it is doubtful then in what sense it can be a
progress.
Renan’s own belief was essentially religious, and was coloured by Christian and
Hebrew conceptions. It was a rationalised belief in a Divine Providence. He
professed a confidence in the final triumph of truth and goodness, and has
faith in a dim, far-off divine event which he terms “the complete advent of
God.” The objections which are so frequently urged by learned men against
finalism or teleology of any kind whatsoever Renan deemed superficial and
claimed, rightly enough, that they are not so much directed against teleology
but against theology, against obsolete ideas of God, particularly against the
dogma of a deliberate and omnipotent Creator. Renan’s own doctrine of the Deity
is by no means clear, but he believed in a spiritual power capable of becoming
some day conscious, omniscient and omnipotent. God will then have come to
himself. From this point of view the universe is a progress to God, to an
increasing realisation of the Divinity in truth, beauty and goodness.
The universe, Renan claims, must be ultimately rooted and grounded in goodness;
there must be, in spite of all existing “evils,” a balance on the side of
goodness, otherwise the universe would, like a vast banking-concern, fail. This
balance of goodness is the raison d’être of the world and the
means of its existence. The general life of the universe can be illustrated,
according to Renan, by that of the oyster, and the formation within it of the
pearl, by a malady, a process vague, obscure and painful. The pearl is the
spirit which is the end, the final cause and last result, and assuredly the
most brilliant outcome of this universe. Through suffering the pearl is formed;
and likewise, through constant pain and conflict, suffering and hardship, the
spirit of man moves intellectually and morally onward and upward, to the
completed realisation of justice, beauty, truth and infinite goodness and love,
to the complete and triumphant realisation of God. We must have patience,
claims Renan, and have faith in these things, and have hope and take courage.
“One day virtue will prove itself to have been the better part.” Such is his
doctrine of progress.
II
With Cournot and Renouvier our discussion takes a new form. Renan, Taine,
Vacherot and the host of social and political writers, together with August
Comte himself, had accepted the fact of progress and clung to the idea of a law
of progress. With these two thinkers, however, there is a more careful
consideration given to the problem of progress. It was recognised as a problem
and this was an immense advance upon the previous period, whose thinkers
accepted it as a dogma.
True to the philosophic spirit of criticism and examination which involves the
rejection of dogma as such, Cournot and Renouvier approach the idea of progress
with reserve and free from the confidently optimistic assertions of the
eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Scorning the rhetoric of political
socialists, positivists and rationalists, they endeavour to view progress as
the central problem of the philosophy of history, to ascertain what it
involves, and to see whether such a phrase as “law of progress” has a meaning
before they invoke it and repeat it in the overconfident manner which
characterised their predecessors. We have maintained throughout this work that
the central problem of our period was that of freedom. By surveying the general
character of the thought of the time, and in following this by an examination
of the relation of science and philosophy, we were able to show how vital and
how central this problem was. From another side we are again to emphasise this.
Having seen the way in which the problem of freedom was dealt with, we are in a
position to observe how this coloured the solutions of other problems. The
illustration is vivid here, for Cournot and Renouvier develop their philosophy
of history from their consideration of freedom, and base their doctrines of
progress upon their maintenance of freedom.
It is obvious that the acceptance of such views as those expressed on freedom
by both Cournot and Renouvier must have far-reaching effects upon their general
attitude to history, for how is the dogma of progress, as it had been preached,
to be reconciled with free action? It is much easier to believe in progress if
one be a fatalist. The difficulty here was apparent to Comte when he admitted
the influence of variations, disturbing causes, which resulted in the
development of mankind assuming an oscillating character rather than that of a
straight-forward progress. He did not, however, come sufficiently close to this
problem, and left the difficulty of freedom on one side by asserting that the
operation of freedom, chance or contingency (call it what we will), issuing in
non-predetermined actions, was so limited as not to interfere with the general
course of progress.
Cournot and Renouvier take up the problem where Comte left it at this point.
Each of them takes it a stage further onward in the development. The
fundamental ideas of Cournot we have briefly noted as being those of order,
chance and probability. The relation of these to progress he discusses, not
only in his Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances and the
Traité de l’Enchaînement d’Idées, but also in a most interesting
manner in his two volumes entitled Considérations sur la Marche des Idées et
des Evènements dans les Temps modernes. Like Comte, he is faithful, as far
as his principles will allow, to the idea of order. There is order in the
universe to a certain degree; science shows it to us. There is also, he
maintains, freedom, hazard or chance. Looking at history he sees, as did Comte,
phenomena which, upon taking a long perspective, appear as interferences. Pure
reason is, he claims, really incapable of deciding the vital question whether
these disturbances are due to a pure contingency, chance or freedom, or whether
they mark the points of the influence of the supernatural upon mankind’s
development. He refers to the enchaînement de circonstances
providentielles which helped the early Jews and led to the propagation of
their monotheism; which helped also the development of the Christian religion
in the Roman Empire. Hazard itself, he claims,[6]
may be the agent or minister of Providence. Such a view claims to be loyal at
once to freedom and to order.
Cournot continues his discussion further and submits many other considerations
upon progress. He claims that it is absurd to see in every single occurrence
the operations of a divine providence or the work of a divine architect. Such a
view would exalt his conception of order, undoubtedly, but only at the expense
of his view of freedom. He will not give up his belief in freedom, and in
consequence declares that there is no pre-arranged order or plan in the sense
of a “law.” He sets down many considerations which appear as dilemmas to the
pure reason, and which only action, he thinks, will solve. He points out the
difficulty of economic and social progress owing to our being unable to test
theories until they are in action on a large field. He shows too how
conflicting various developments may be, and how progress in one direction may
involve degeneration in another. Equality may be good in some ways, unnatural
and evil in others. Increase of population may be applauded as a progress from
a military standpoint, but may be an economic evil with disastrous suffering as
its consequence. The “progress” to peace and stability in a society usually
involves a decrease in vitality and initiative. By much wealth of argument, no
less than by his general attitude, Cournot was able to apply the breaks to the
excessive confidence in progress and to call a halt for sounder investigation
of the matter.
Renouvier did much more in this direction. In his Second Essay of General
Criticism he touched upon the problem of progress in relation to freedom,
and his fourth and fifth essays constitute five large volumes dealing with the
“Philosophy of History.” He also devotes the last two chapters of La
Nouvelle Monadologie to progress in relation to societies, and brings out
the central point of his social ethics, that justice is the criterion of
progress. Indeed, all that Renouvier says regarding history and progress leads
up, in a manner peculiarly his own, to his treatment of ethics, which will
claim attention in our next chapter.
The Analytic Philosophy of History forms an important item in the
philosophical repertoire of Renouvier. He claims it to be a necessary feature
of the neo-critical, and indeed of any serious, philosophy. It is, he claims,
not a branch of knowledge which has an isolated place, for it is as intimately
connected to life as is any theory to the facts which it embraces. That is not
to say, and Renouvier is careful to make this clear, that we approach history
assuming that there are laws governing it, or a single law or formula by which
human development can be expressed. The “Philosophy of History” assumes no such
thing; it is precisely this investigation which it undertakes, loyal to the
principles of General Criticism of which it, in a sense, forms a part. In a
classification it strictly stands between General Criticism or Pure Philosophy
and History itself.
“History,” says Renouvier, “is the experience which humanity has of
itself,”[7] and his conclusions regarding
progress depend on the views he holds regarding human personality and its
essential attribute, freedom. The philosophy of history has to consider
whether, in observing the development of humanity on the earth, one may assert
the presence of any general law or laws. Can one say legitimately that there
has been development? Is there really such a thing as progress? If so, what is
our idea of progress? What is the trend of humanity’s history? These are great
questions.
The attitude which Renouvier adopts to the whole course of human history is
based upon his fundamental doctrines of discontinuity, freedom and personality.
There are, he claims, real beginnings, unpredicable occurrences, happenings
which cannot be explained as having been caused by preceding events. We must
not, he urges, allow ourselves to be hypnotised by the name “History,” as if it
were in itself some great power, sweeping all of us onward in its course, or a
vast ocean in which we are merely waves. Renouvier stands firm in his loyalty
to personality, and sees in history, not a power of this sort, but simply the
total result of human actions. History is the collective work of the human
spirit or of free personalities.[8]
It is erroneous to look upon it as either the fatalistic functioning of a law
of things or as the results of the action of an all-powerful Deity or
Providence. Neither the “scientific” view of determinism nor the theological
conception of God playing with loaded dice, says Renouvier, will explain
history. It is the outcome of human action, of personal acts which have real
worth and significance in its formation. History is no mere display of
marionettes, no Punch-and-Judy show with a divine operator pulling strings from
his concealed position behind the curtain. Equally Renouvier disagrees with the
view that history is merely an unrolling in time of a plan conceived from
eternity. Human society and civilisation (of which history is the record) are
products of man’s own thought and action, and in consequence manifest
discontinuity, freedom and contingency. Renouvier thus opposes strongly all
those thinkers, such as the Saint-Simonists, Hegelians and Positivists, who see
in history only a fatalistic development. He joins battle especially with those
who claim that there is a fatalistic or necessitated progress. History has no
law, he claims, and there is not and cannot be any law of progress.
The idea of progress is certainly, he admits, one with which the philosopher is
brought very vitally into contact in his survey of history. Indeed an
elucidation of, this notion might itself be a part of the historian’s task. If
so, the historians have sadly neglected part of their work. Renouvier calls
attention to the fact that all those historians or philosophers who accept a
comforting doctrine of humanity’s assured progress make very plausible
statements, but they never seem able to state with any clearness or
definiteness what constitutes progress, or what significance lies in their
oft-repeated phrase, “the law of progress.” He rightly points out that this
insistence upon a law, coupled with a manifest inability to indicate what it
is, causes naturally a certain scepticism as to there being any such law at
all.
Renouvier brands the search for any law of progress a futile one, since we
cannot scientifically or logically define the goal of humanity or the course of
its development because of the fact of freedom and because of our ignorance. We
must realise that we, personally at firsthand, see only an infinitesimal part
of humanity’s life on this planet alone, not to speak of a destiny possible
beyond this globe, and that, at second-hand, we have only evidence of a portion
of the great procession of human events. We do not know humanity’s beginning
and primitive history, nor do we know its goal, if it has one. These factors
alone are grave hindrances to the formulation of any conception of progress.
Reflection upon them might have saved men, Renouvier observes, from the
presumptuous belief in assured progress. We cannot presume even to estimate the
tendencies, the direction of its course, because of the enormous and
ever-increasing complexity of free human activity.
By his large work on the “Philosophy of History,” Renouvier shows that the
facts of history themselves are against the theory of a universal and
continuous progress, for the record shows us conflict, advance, retrogression,
peoples rising, others degenerating, empires establishing themselves and
passing away by inward ruin or outer assaults, or both, and civilisations
evolving and disintegrating in their turn. The spectacle does not readily
promote an optimistic view of human development at all, much less support the
doctrine of a sure and certain progress. Renouvier does not blind himself to
the constant struggle and suffering. The theatre, or rather the arena, of
history presents a curious spectacle. In politics and in religion he shows us
that there are conflicts of authority and of free thought, a warfare of
majorities with minorities, a method of fighting issues slightly less savage
than the appeal to pure force, but amounting to what he terms “a pacific
application of the principle of force.” History shows us the corruption,
tyranny and blindness of many majorities, and the tragic and necessary resort
to force as the only path to liberty for down-trodden minorities. How,
Renouvier asks, can we fit this in with a doctrine of assured progress, or,
indeed, progress at all?
Further, he does not find it difficult to show that much unthinking utterance
on the part of the optimists may be somewhat checked by calm reflection on even
one or two questions. For example, Was progress involved in the change from
ancient slavery to the wage-slavery of modern industrialism? Was Christianity,
as Nietzsche and others have attempted to maintain, a retrogression? Or, again,
Was the change from Greek city life to the conditions of the Middle Ages in any
way to be regarded as a progress?
Renouvier considers it quite erroneous to assert, as did Comte, that there is a
steady and continuous development underlying the oscillations, and that the
variations, as it were, from the direct line of progress cancel one another or
balance each other, leaving, as Renan claimed, a balance always and inevitably
on the side of goodness.
Such a confidence in the great world banking concern Renouvier does not
possess. There is no guarantee that the account of goodness may not be
overdrawn and found wanting. He reminds us sternly and solemnly of the terrible
solidarity which characterises evil. Deceit, greed, lust, violence and war have
an enormous power of breeding each other and of supporting one another
increasingly. The optimistic doctrines of progress are simply untrue statements
of the facts of history, and falsely coloured views of human nature. It is an
appalling error in “social dynamics” to overlook the clash of interest, the
greed of nation and of class, the fundamental passionate hate and war. With it
is coupled an error in “social statics,” in which faith is put in institutions,
in the mechanism of society. These, declares Renouvier, will not save humanity;
they will, indeed, ruin it if it allow itself, through spiritual and moral
lethargy, to be dominated by them. They have been serviceable creations of
humanity at some time or other, and they must serve men, but men must not be
bound down to serve them. This servitude is evil, and it has profoundly evil
consequences.
Having attacked Comte’s view of progress and of order in its static and dynamic
point of view, Renouvier then brings up his heavy artillery of argument against
Comte’s idealisation of the Middle Ages. To assert that this period was an
advance on the life of the Greek city, Renouvier considers to be little short
of impudence. The art and science and philosophy of the Greeks are our best
heritage, while the Middle Ages, dominated by a vicious and intolerant Church,
with its infallible theology and its crushing power of the clergy, was a “dead
hand” upon the human spirit. While it provided an organic society, it only
succeeded in doing so by narrowing and crushing the human intellect. The
Renascence and the Reformation proved that there were essential elements of
human life being crushed down. They reached a point, however, where they
exploded.
Not only does Renouvier thus declare the Middle Ages to be a regress, but he
goes the length of asserting that the development of European history
could have been different. This is his doctrine of freedom applied to
history. There is no reason at all for our regarding the Middle Ages or any
such period as necessitated in the order of mankind’s development. There is no
law governing that development; consequently, had mankind, or even a few of its
number, willed and acted upon their freedom differently, the whole trend of the
period we call the Dark Ages might have been quite other than it was. Renouvier
does not shirk the development of this point, which is a central one for his
purpose. It may seem fantastic to the historians, who must of course accept the
past as given and consequently regard reflection on “what might have been” as
wasted time. Certainly the past cannot be altered—that is not Renouvier’s
point. He intends to give a lesson to humanity, a stern lesson to cure it of
its belief in fatalism in regard to history. This is the whole purpose of the
curious volume he published in 1876, entitled Uchronie, which had as its
explanatory sub-title L’Utopie dans l’Histoire, Esquisse historique du
Développement de la Civilisation européenne, tel qu’il n’a pas été, tel qu’il
avail pu être. The book, consisting of two manuscripts supposed to be
kept in the care of an old Dutch monk, is actually an imaginary construction by
Renouvier himself of European history in the period 100 to 800 A.D., written to
show the real possibility that the sequence of events from the Emperor Nerva to
the Emperor Charlemagne might have been radically different from what it
actually was.
All this is intended by Renouvier to combat the “universal justification of the
past.” He sees that the doctrine of progress as usually stated is not only a
lie, but that it is an extremely dangerous one, for it justifies the past, or
at least condones it as inevitable, and thus makes evil a condition of
goodness, demoralises history, nullifies ethics and encourages the damnation of
humanity itself. This fatalistic doctrine, asserts Renouvier with great
earnestness, must be abandoned; freedom must be recognised as operative, and
the human will as making history.There is no law of progress, and the sooner
humanity can come to realise this the better it will be for it. Only by such a
realisation can it work out its own salvation. “The real law lies”, declares
Renouvier,”only in an equal possibility of progress or deterioration for both
societies and individuals.” If there is to be progress it can only come
because, and when, humanity recognises itself as collectively responsible for
its own history, and when each person feels his own responsibility regarding
that action. No acceptance of events will avail; we must will progress
and consciously set ourselves to realise it. It is possible, but it depends on
us. Here Renouvier’s considerations lead him from history to ethics. “Almost
all the Great Men, men of great will, have been fatalists. So slowly does
humanity emerge from its shadows and beget for itself a just notion of its
autonomy. The phantom of necessity weighs heavily,” he laments, “over the night
of history.”[9] With freedom and a recognition of
its freedom by humanity generally we may see the dawn of better things.
Humanity will then consciously and deliberately make its history, and not be
led by the operations of herd-instinct and fatalistic beliefs which in the past
have so disgraced and marred its record.
The existing condition of human society can only be described frankly, in
Renouvier’s opinion, as a state of war. Each individual, each class, each
nation, each race, is actually at war with others. It matters not whether a
diplomatic state of peace, as it is called, exists or not; that must not blind
us to the facts. By institutions, customs, laws, hidden fraud, diplomacy, and
open violence, this conflict is kept up. It is all war, says Renouvier. Modern
society is based on war, economic, military or judicial. Indeed, military and
naval warfare is a clear issue, but only a symbol of what always goes on. Might
always has the upper hand, hence ordinary life in modern society is just a
state of war. Our civilisation does not rest on justice, or on the conception
of justice; it rests on power and might. Until it is founded on justice, peace,
he urges, will not be possible; humanity will be enslaved in further struggles
disastrous o itself. This doctrine of the état de guerre, as descriptive
of modern society, he makes a feature of his ethics, upon which we must not
here encroach, but may point out that he insists upon justice as the ultimate
social criterion, and claims that this is higher than charity, which is
inadequate as a basis for society, however much it may alleviate its ills. One
of the chief necessities, he points out, an essential to any progressive
measure would be to moralise our modern notion of the state.[10] In the notes to his last chapter of the Nouvelle
Monadologie Renouvier attacks the Marxian doctrine of the materialistic
determination of history.
This same book, however, we must note, marks a stage in Renouvier’s own thought
different from his doctrines in the earlier Essais de Critique générale,
and this later philosophy, of which the Monadologie and
Personnalisme are the two most notable volumes, displays an attempt to
look upon progress from a more ultimate standpoint. His théodicée here
involves the notion, seen in Ravaisson, of an early perfection, involving a
subsequent “fall,” the world now, with its guerre universelle, being an
intermediate stage between a perfect or harmonious state in the past and one
which lies in the future.
The march of humanity is an uncertain one because it is free. The philosophy of
history thus reiterates the central importance of freedom. The actual end or
purpose of this freedom is not simply, says Renouvier, the attainment of
perfection, but rather the possibility of progress. It was this thought which
led him on in his reflections further than any of the thinkers of our period,
or at least more deliberately than any, to indicate his views on the doctrine
of a future life for humanity. So far from this being a purely religious
problem, Renouvier rightly looks upon it as merely a carrying further afield of
the conception of progress.
For him, and this is the significant point for us here, any notion of a future
life for humanity, in the accepted sense of immortality, is bound up with, and
indeed based upon, the conception of progressive development. It is true that
Renouvier, like Kant, looks upon the problems of “God, Freedom and Immortality”
as the central ones in philosophy, true also that he recognises the
significance of this belief in a Future Life as an extremely important one for
religious teaching; but his main attitude to the question is merely a
continuation of his general doctrine of progress, coupled with his appreciation
of personality. It is in this light only that Renouvier reflects upon the
problem of Immortality. He makes no appeal to a world beyond our
experience—a fact which follows from his rejection of the Kantian world
of “noumena”; nor does he wish the discussion to be based on the assertions of
religious faith. He admits that belief in a Future Life involves faith, in a
sense, but it is a rational belief, a philosophical hypothesis and, more
particularly, according to Renouvier, a moral hypothesis. He asserts against
critics that the undertaking of such a discussion is a necessary part of any
Critical Philosophy, which would be incomplete without it, as its omission
would involve an inadequate account of human experience.
Renouvier claims that, in the first instance, the question of a future
existence arises naturally in the human mind from the discrepancy which is
manifest in our experience between nature on the one hand and conscience on the
other. The course of events is not in accord with what we feel to be morally
right, and the demands of the moral law are, to Renouvier’s mind, supreme. He
realises how acutely this discrepancy is sometimes felt by the human mind, and
his remarks on this point recall those of the sensitive soul, who, feeling this
acutely, cried out:
“Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
Re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”
These lines well express the sharpness of Renouvier’s own feelings, and he
claims that, such a conspiracy being impossible, the belief in Immortality
becomes a necessary moral postulate or probability.
The grounds for such a postulate are to be found, he claims, even in the
processes of nature itself. The law of finality or teleology manifests itself
throughout the universe: purpose is to be seen at work in the Cosmos. It is
true that in the lower stages of existence it seems obscure and uncertain, but
an observer cannot fail to see “ends” being achieved in the biological realm.
The functions of organisms, more particularly those of the animal world, show
us a realm of ends and means at work for achieving those ends. This development
in the direction of an end, this teleology, implies, says Renouvier, a destiny.
The whole of existence is a gradual procession of beings at higher and higher
levels of development, ends and means to each other, and all inheriting an
immense past, which is itself a means to their existence as ends in themselves.
May one not then, suggests Renouvier, make a valid induction from the destiny
thus recognised and partially fulfilled of certain individual creatures, to a
destiny common to all these creatures indefinitely prolonged?[11]
The objection is here made that Nature does not concern herself with
individuals; for her the individual is merely a means for the carrying on and
propagation of the species. Individuals come into being, live for a time and
pass away, the species lives on perpetually; only species are in the plan of
the universe, individuals are of little or no worth. To this Renouvier replies
that species live long but are not perpetual; whole species have been wiped out
by happenings on our planet, many now are dying out. The insinuation about the
worthlessness of individuals rouses his wrath, for it strikes at the very root
of his philosophy, of which personality is the keynote. This, he says, is to
lapse into Pantheism, into doctrines of Buddhists and of Spinoza. Pantheism and
all kindred views are to be rejected. It is not in the indefinable,
All-existing, the eternal and infinite One, that we find help with regard to
the significance of ends in nature. Ends are to be sought in the individuals or
the species. But while it behoves us to look upon the world as existing for the
species and not the species for the sake of the world, we must remember that
the species exists for the sake of the individuals in it. It is false to look
upon the individuals as existing merely for the sake of the species.
If we subordinate the individual to the species, sacrificing his inherent worth
and unique value, and then subordinate species to genus and all genera to the
All, we lose ourselves in the Infinite substance in which everything is
swallowed up. Again, Pantheism tends to speak of the perfection of individuals,
and speaks loudly of progress from one generation to another. But it tells only
of a future which involves the entire sacrifice of all that has worth or value
in the past. It shows endless sacrifice, improvement too, but all for naught.
“What does it matter to say that the best is yet to be, if the best must perish
as the good, to give place to a yet better ‘best’ which will not have the
virtue of enduring any more than the others? Do we offer any real consolation
to Sisyphus,” asks Renouvier, “by promising him annihilation, which is coupled
with the promise of successors capable of lifting his old rock higher and still
higher up the fatal slope, by offering him the eternal falling of this rock and
successors who will continually be annihilated and endlessly be replaced by
others?” The rock is the personal life. On this theory, however high the rock
be pushed, it always is destined to fall back to the same depth, as low as if
it had never been pushed up hill at all. We refuse to reconcile a world
containing real ends and purposes within it with such a game, vast and
miserable, in which no actor plays for his own sake, and all the false winners
lose all their gains by being obliged to leave the party while the play goes on
for ever. This is to throw away all individual worth, the value of all personal
work and effort, to declare individuality a sham, and to embrace fatality. It
is this mischievous Pantheism which is the curse of many religions and many
philosophies. Against it Renouvier wages a ceaseless warfare. The individuals,
he asserts exist both for their own sake and worth, also for the sake and
welfare of others. In the person, the law of finality finds its highest
expression. Personality is of supreme and unique value.
This being so, it becomes a necessary postulate of our philosophy, if we really
believe in the significance of personalities and in progress (which Renouvier
considers to have no meaning apart from them), to conclude that death is but an
event in the career of these personalities. They are perpetuated beyond death.
For Renouvier, as for Kant, the chief arguments for survival are based on
considerations of a moral character, upon the demands of the moral ideal for
self- realisation, for the attainment of holiness or, more properly,
“wholeness.” This progress can only be made possible by the continued existence
after bodily death of the identical personality, unique and of eternal worth in
the scheme of things, capable of further development than is possible amid the
conditions of life as we know it.
We must, however, present to ourselves Immortality as given by the development
of appearances in this world of phenomena, under the general laws with which we
are acquainted to-day, thus correcting the method of Kant, who placed
Immortality in a noumenal world. The salvation of a philosopher should not be
of such a kind. We must treat Immortality as a Law, not as a miracle. The
thinker who accepts the latter view quits the realm of science—that is,
of experience and reason—to establish a mystic order in contradiction
with the laws of nature. The appeal to the “supernatural” is the denial of
nature, and the appellant ruins his own case by his appeal. If Immortality is a
fact, it must be considered rationally.
Is Death—that is, the destruction of individuals as such, or the
annihilation of personalities—a reality? Renouvier reminds those who jeer
at the doctrine of Immortality that “the reality of death (as so defined) has
not been, and cannot be, proved.” Our considerations must of necessity be
hypothetical, but they can be worthy of rational beings. We must then keep our
hopes and investigations within the realm of the universe and not seek to place
our hope of immortality in a region where nothing exists, “not even an ether to
support the wings of our hope.”
Renouvier’s general considerations led him to view all individuals as having a
destiny in which their individuality should be conserved and developed. When we
turn in particular to man, these points are to be seen in fuller light. The
instinctive belief in Immortality is bound up with his nature as a thinking
being who is capable of setting up, and of striving after, ends. This continual
striving is a marked characteristic of all human life, a counting oneself not
to have attained, a missing of the mark.
The human consciousness protests against annihilation. At times this is very
keenly expressed. “At the period of the great aspirations of the heart, the
ecstasy of noble passions is accompanied by the conviction of Immortality. Life
at its highest, realising its richest personality, protests, in virtue of its
own worth, and in the name of the depths of power it still feels latent in
itself, against the menace of annihilation.”[12]
It cries out with its unconquerable soul:
“Give me the glory of going on and not to die!”
Renouvier finds a further witness in the testimony of Love—that is to
say, in nature itself arrived at the consciousness of that passion in virtue of
which it exists and assuring itself by this passion, of the power to surmount
all these short-comings and failures. Love casteth out fear, the dread of
annihilation, and shows itself “stronger than death.” Hope and Love unite in
strengthening the initial belief in Immortality and the “will to survive.”
Renouvier admits that this is a priori reasoning, and speedily a
posteriori arguments can be brought up as mighty battering-rams against the
fortress of immortal life, but although they mav shake its walls, they are
unable to destroy the citadel. Nothing can demonstrate the impossibility of
future existence, whereas the whole weight of the moral law and the
teleological elements at work in the universe are, according to Renouvier, in
favour of such a belief.
Morality, like every other science, is entitled to, nay obliged to, employ the
hypothesis of harmony. Now in this connection the hypothesis of harmony (or, as
Kant styled it, the concurrence of happiness and virtue necessary to a
conception of order) finds reinforcement from the consideration of the meaning
and significance of freedom. For the actual end or purpose of freedom is not
simply the attainment of perfection, but rather the possibility of progress.
Immortality becomes a necessary postulate, reinforced by instinct, reason,
morality, by the fact of freedom, and the notion of progress. Further,
Renouvier feels that if we posit death as the end of all we thereby give an
absolute victory to physical evil in the universe.
The postulate of Immortality has a certain dignity and worth. The discussion of
future life must, however, be kept within the possibilities of law and
phenomena. Religious views, such as those of Priestley, by their appeal to the
miraculous debase the notion of Immortality itself. Talk of an immortal
essence, and a mortal essence is meaningless, for unless the same identical
person, with his unique character and memory, persists, then our conception of
immortality is of little or no value. The idea of an indestructible spiritual
substance is not any better or more acceptable. Our notion of a future life
must be based upon the inherent and inalienable rights of the moral person to
persistence and to chances of further development or progress. Although we must
beware of losing ourselves in vain speculations, which really empty our thought
of all its content, Renouvier claims that we are quite entitled to lay down
hypotheses.
The same general laws which we see in operation and which have brought the
universe and the beings in it to the stage of development in which they now are
may, without contradiction, be conceived as operating in further developments
after the change we call bodily death. There is no incongruity in conceiving
the self-same personality continuing in a second and different organism.
Renouvier cites the case of the grub and the butterfly and other metamorphoses.
In man himself he points to organic crises, which give the organism a very
different character and effect a radical change in its constitution. For
example, there is the critical exit from the mother’s womb, involving the
change from a being living in an enclosure to that of an independent creature.
When once the crisis of the first breath be passed the organism starts upon
another life. There are other crises, as, for instance, the radical changes
which operate in both sexes at the stage of puberty. Just as the personality
persists in its identity through all these changes, may it not pass through
that of bodily death?
The Stoics believed in a cosmic resurrection. Substituting the idea of progress
for their view of a new beginning, Renouvier claims that we may attain the
hypothesis that all human history is but a fragment in a development
incomparably greater and grander. Again, we may conceive of life in two worlds
co-existing, indeed interpenetrating, so that the dead are not gone far from us
into some remote heaven.
But, whatever form we give to our hypothesis regarding progress into another
existence beyond this present one, Renouvier does not easily allow us to forget
that it must be based upon the significance of freedom, progress and
personality supported by moral considerations. Even this progress is not
guaranteed, and even if it should be the achievement of some spirits there is
no proof that it is universal. Our destiny, he finally reminds us, lies in our
own hands, for progress here means an increased capacity for progress later,
while spiritual and moral indifference will result finally, and indeed,
necessarily, in annihilation. Here, as so often in his work, Renouvier puts
moral arguments and appeals in the forefront of his thought. Progress in
relation to humanity’s life on earth drew from him an appeal for the
establishment of justice: progress in a further world implies equally a moral
appeal. Our duty is to keep the ideal of progress socially and individually
ever before us, and to be worthy of immortality if it be a fact, rather than to
lose ourselves in the mistaken piety of “other- worldliness.” About neither
progress can we be dogmatic; it is not assured, Renouvier has shown, and we
must work for it by the right use of our freedom, our intelligence and our
will.
III
No thinker discussed the problem of progress with greater energy or penetration
than Renouvier. The new spiritualist group, however, developed certain views
arising from the question of contingency, or the relation of freedom to
progress. These thinkers were concerned more with psychological and
metaphysical work, and with the exception of Fouillée and Guyau, they wrote
little which bore directly upon the problem of progress. Many of their ideas,
however, have an indirect bearing upon important points at issue.
In Ravaisson, Lachelier and Boutroux, we find the question of teleology
presented, and also that of the opposition of spirit and matter. From the
outset the new spiritualism had to wrestle with two difficulties inherent in
the thought of Ravaisson. These were, firstly, the reconciliation of the
freedom and spontaneity of the spirit with the operations of a Divine
Providence or teleology of some kind; and, secondly, the dualism assumed in the
warfare of spirit and matter, although spirit was held to be superior and
anterior to matter. This last involved a complication for any doctrine of
progress, as it required a primitive “fall” to account for matter, even a fall
of the Deity himself. This Ravaisson himself admits, and he thinks that in
creating the world God had to sacrifice some of his own being. In this case
“progress” is set over against a transcendental existence, and is but the
reawakening of what once existed in God, and in a sense now and eternally
exists. Progress there is, claims Ravaisson, towards truth and beauty and
goodness. This is the operation of a Divine Providence acting by attracting men
freely to these ideals, and as these are symbols of God himself, progress is
the return of the spirit through self-conscious personalities to the fuller
realisation of harmony, beauty and love—that is, to the glory of God, who
has ever been, now is, and ever shall be, perfect beauty, goodness and love.
Thus, although from a temporal and finite standpoint Ravaisson can speak of
progress, it is doubtful if he is justified in doing so ultimately, sub
specie æternitatis. To solve the problem in the way he presents it, one
would need to know more about the ultimate value and significance of the
personalities themselves, and their destiny in relation to the Divinity who is,
as he claims, perfect harmony, beauty and love. It was this point, so dear to
an upholder of personality, which had led Renouvier to continue his discussion
of progress in relation to history as generally understood, until it embraced a
wider field of eternal destiny, and to consider the idea of a future life as
arising from, and based upon, the conception of progress. It is this same point
which later perplexes Bergson, when he recognises this self-conscious
personality as the ultimate development of the évolution créatrice, and so
constituting in a sense the goal of the spirit, although he is careful to state
that there is no finalism involved at all. Ravaisson stands for this finalism,
however, in claiming that there are ends. He does not see how otherwise we
could speak of progress, as we should have no criterion, no terminus ad
quem; all would be simply process, not progress.
“Détachement de Dieu, retour à Dieu, clôture du grand cercle
cosmique, restitution de l’universel équilibre, telle est l’histoire du
monde.” Such is Ravaisson’s doctrine, much of which is akin to, and indeed
re-echoes, much in Christian theology from St. Augustine, with his idea of an
eternal and restless movement of return to the divinity, to the Westminster
divines in their answer to the important query about the chief end of man,
which they considered to be not only to glorify God but to enjoy Him for ever.
This last and rather strange phrase only seems to have significance if we
conceive, in Ravaisson’s manner, of beauty, truth and goodness as expressions
or manifestations of the Divinity to whom the world-process may freely tend.
For Lachelier the universal process presents a triple aspect, mechanism which
is coupled with finalism and with freedom. These three principles are in action
simultaneously in the world and in the individual. Each of us is at once
matter, living soul and personality—that is, necessity, finality and
freedom. The laws of the universe, so far from being expressed entirely by
mechanical formulae, can only be expressed, as Ravaisson had claimed, by an
approach to harmony and beauty, not in terms of logic or geometry. All this
involves a real progress, a creativeness, which differs from Ravaisson’s
return, as it were, to the bosom of God.
Boutroux combines the views of Ravaisson and Lachelier by insisting on freedom
and contingency, but maintaining at the same time a teleological doctrine.
Already in discussing his conception of freedom we have referred to his
metaphor of the sailors in the ship. His doctrine of contingency is directly
opposed to any rigid pre-ordained plan of reality or progress, but it does not
prevent the spirit from a creative teleology, the formation of a plan as it
advances. This is precisely, is it not, the combination of free action and of
teleology which we find in our own lives? Boutroux is thus able to side with
Ravaisson in his claim to see tendencies to beauty and truth and goodness, the
fruits of the spirit, which it creates and to which it draws us, while at the
same time he maintains freedom in a manner quite as emphatic as Lachelier. He
is careful to remind us that “not all developments are towards
perfection.”[13] In particular he dislikes the
type of social theory or of sociology which undervalues the personal life.[14]
Similar in many ways to the ideas of Ravaisson and of Boutroux are those
expressed by Blondel. He is concerned deeply with the problem of God and
progress, which arises out of his view of the Deity as immanent and as
transcendent. He is quite Bergsonian in his statement that God creates Himself
in us, but he qualifies this by asking the significant question, “If he does
not EXIST how can He create Himself in us.” This brings us back to Ravaisson’s
view. Other remarks of Blondel, however, recall the doctrine of Vacherot and of
Renan, that God is the ideal to which we are ever striving. “It is a necessity
that we should be moving on, for He is always beyond.” All action is an
advance, a progress through the realm of materialistic determinism to the
self-conscious personality in man, but it is from a transcendent teleology, a
Divine Providence, that this action proceeds.
This is the line of thought pursued by Fouillée, who in many of his writings
gives considerable attention to the doctrines of progress. It may be doubted,
however if he ever surpassed the pages in his Liberté et Déterminisme
and L’Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces, which deal with this point. These
are the best expressions of his philosophy, and Fouillée repeated himself a
great deal. We might add, however, his Socialism and his book on
L’Avenir de la Métaphysique.
We have observed the importance attached by Comte to his new science of
sociology. Fouillée endeavours to give to it a metaphysical significance with
which Comte did not concern himself. He suggests in his volume on La Science
sociale contemporaine that as biology and sociology are closely related,
the laws common to them may have a cosmic significance. Is the universe, he
asks, anything more than a vast society in process of formation, a vast system
of conscious, striving atoms? Social science which Fouillée looks upon, as did
Comte, as constituting the crown of human knowledge, may offer us, he thinks,
the secret of universal life, and show us the world as the great society in
process of development, erring here and blundering there in an effort to rise
above the sphere of physical determinism and materialism to a sphere where
justice shall be supreme, and brotherhood take the place of antagonism, greed
and war. The power at the heart of things, which is always ready to manifest
itself in the human consciousness when it can, might be expressed, says
Fouillée, in one word as “sociability.”
Life in its social aspect displays a conspiration to a common end. The
life of a community resembles a highly evolved organism in many respects, as
Fouillée shows; but although he thus partially adopts the biological and
positivist view of the sociologists, Fouillée does not overlook the idealistic
conceptions of Renouvier and his plea for social justice. He rather emphasises
this plea, and takes the opportunity to point out that it represents the best
political thought of his country, being founded on the doctrine of the
contrat social of Rousseau, of which social theory it is a clear and
modern interpretation.
We may take the opportunity afforded here by Fouillée’s mention of sociology,
in which he was so keenly interested, to observe that the positivist tendency
to emphasise an indefinite progress remained with most of the sociologists and
some of the historians. It is seen in the two famous sociological works of
Tarde and Durkheim respectively, Les Lois de l’Imitation and La
Division du Travail social. Two writers on history deserve mention as
illustrating the same tendency: Lacombe, whose work De l’Histoire considérée
comme Science (1894) was very positivist in outlook, and Xénopol. This last
writer, treating history in 1899 in his Principes fondamentaux de
l’Histoire,[15] distinguished cause in history
from causality in science, and showed that white the latter leads to the
formation of general laws the former does not. History has no laws, for it is
succession but never repetition. Much of his book, however, reflects the
naturalism and positivism which is a feature of the sociological writers.[16]
It was his doctrine of idées-forces and its essential spiritualism or
idealism which distinguished Fouillée’s attitude from that of these
sociologists who were his contemporaries. It was the basis, too, of his
trenchant criticisms of socialism, particularly its Marxian forms. Fouillée
agrees with Comte’s doctrine that speculation or thought is the chief factor
and prime mover in social change. For Fouillée the idea is always a force; and
it is, in this connection, the supreme force. The history of action can only be
understood, he asserts, in relation to the history of ideas. This is the
central gospel of the évolutionnisme des idées-forces. The mental or
spiritual is the important factor. This he opposes to the Marxian doctrine of
economic determinism. Will is, he claims a greater reality than brute forces,
and in will lies the essence of the human spirit. It is a will, however, which
is bound up with reason and self-consciousness, and which is progressive in
character.
Summing up his work, Histoire générale de la Philosophie, Fouillée
refers in his Conclusion to the idea of progress as having become the dominant
note in philosophy. He looks upon the history of philosophy as, in some
measure, witness to this. Above the ebb and flow of the varied systems and
ideas which the ages have produced he sees an advance accomplished in the
direction to which humanity is tending—perfect knowledge of itself or
collective self-consciousness and perfect self- possession. This type of
progress is not to be equated with scientific progress. He points out that in
the development of philosophy, which is that of human reflection itself, two
characteristics appear. The distinction of two kinds or aspects of truth is
seen in philosophy; one section, dealing with logic, psychology, aesthetic and
applied ethics, or sociology, approaches to a scientific character of
demonstrability, while the other section, which constitutes philosophy in the
strict sense of metaphysic, deals with ultimate questions not capable of proof
but demanding a rational faith. Obviously the same kind of progress cannot be
found in each of these sections. This must be realised when progress in
knowledge is spoken about. He suggests, as illustrative of progress even in the
speculative realm, the fact that humanity is slowly purifying its conception of
God—a point for further notice in our last chapter.
However much Fouillée is concerned with establishing; a case for progress in
knowledge, it is clear that his main stress is on the progress in
self-consciousness or that self- determination which is freedom. This freedom
can only grow as man consciously realises it himself. It is an
idée-force, and has against it all the forces of fatalism and of egoism.
For Fouillée quite explicitly connects his doctrine of freedom with that of
altruism. The real freedom and the real progress are one, he claims, since they
both are to be realised only in the increasing power of disinterestedness and
love. He believes in the possibility of a free progress. Fatality is really
egoism, or produces it.
Fouillée has a rather clear optimism, for he finds in the development of real
freedom a movement which will involve a moral and social union of mankind. The
good- will is more truly human nature than egoism and selfishness. These vices,
he maintains in his Idée moderne du Droit,[17] are largely a product of unsatisfied physical
wants. The ideal of the good-will is not a contradiction of human nature,
because, he asserts, that nature desires and wills its good. More strikingly,
he states that the human will tends ultimately not to conflict but to
co-operation as it becomes enlightened and universalised. He disagrees with the
pessimists and upholds a comparatively cheerful view of human nature. Egoism is
much less deeply rooted than sympathy, and therefore, he says, war and strife
are transitory features of human development. One contrasts the views of Taine
and Renouvier with this, and feels that man’s history has been, as far as we
know it, entirely of this “transitory” nature, and is long likely to be so.
Fouillée’s optimism seems to be overdrawn mainly because of his doctrine of the
idée-force. He exaggerates the response which human nature is likely to
make to the ideal good. Even if it be lifted up, it is not likely to draw
all men to it. Yet Fouillée’s social and ethical doctrines stand
entirely upon this foundation. They are valuable views, and Fouillée is never
better than when he is exhorting his fellows to act upon the ideas of freedom,
of justice, of love and brotherhood. He is right in his insistence upon
humanity’s power to create good- will, to develop a new order. For the good
man, he says, fatality and egoism are obstacles to be overcome Believing in
freedom and in sympathy, he acts to others in a spirit of freedom and love. By
his very belief in universal good-will among men, he assists largely in
creating it and realising it in the world.[18]
But did not Fouillée, one asks, overrate the number of good men (as good in his
sense), or rather did he not exaggerate the capacities of human nature to
respond to the ideal which he presents? Much of his confidence in moral and
social progress finds its explanation here.
His step-son, Guyau, was not quite so optimistic, although he believed in a
progress towards “sociability” and he adopted many of the doctrines of the
philosphie des idées-forces. He attacks cheerful optimism in his
Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, where he remarks[19] that an absolute theory of optimism is
really an immoral theory, for it involves the negation of progress in the
strict and true sense. This is because, when it dominates the mind, it produces
a feeling of entire satisfaction and contentment with the existing reality,
resulting in resignation and acceptance of, if not an actual worship of, the
status quo. In its utter obedience to all “powers that be,” the notions
of right and of duty are dimmed, if not lost. A definitely pessimistic view of
the universe would, he suggests, be in many respects better and more productive
of good than an outrageous optimism. Granting that it is a wretched state in
which a man sees all things black, it is preferable, Guyau thinks, to that in
which all things appear rosy or blue.
Guyau concludes his Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction by
remarking: “We are, as it were, on the Leviathan, from which a wave has
torn the rudder and a blast of wind carried away the mainmast. It is lost in
the ocean as our earth is lost in space. It floats thus at random, driven by
the tempest, like a huge derelict, yet with men upon it, and yet it reaches
port. Perhaps our earth, perhaps humanity, will also reach that unknown end
which they will have created for themselves. No hand directs us; the rudder has
long been broken, or rather it has never existed; we must make it: it is a
great task, and it is our task.” This paragraph speaks for itself as regards
Guyau’s attitude to the doctrine of an assured progress.
In his notable book L’Irreligion de l’Avenir, the importance of which we
shall note more fully when we deal with the religious problem in our last
chapter, Guyau indicates the possibilities of general intellectual progress in
the future. The demand of life itself for fuller expression will involve the
decay of cramping superstitions and ecclesiastical dogmas. The aesthetic
elements will be given a larger place, and there will be intellectual freedom.
Keen as Guyau is upon maintaining the sociological standpoint, he sees the
central factor in progress to be the mental. “Progress,” he remarks,[20] “is not simply a sensible amelioration of
life—it is also the achievement of a better intellectual formulation of
life, it is a triumph of logic. To progress is to attain to a more complete
consciousness of one’s self and of the world, and by that very fact to a more
complete inner consistency of one’s theory of the world.” Guyau follows his
stepfather in his view of “sociability” or fraternité (to use the
watchword of the Revolution) as the desirable end at which we should
progressively aim—a conclusion which is but the social application of
his central concept of Life.
The next step in human progress must be in the direction of human solidarity.
Guyau thinks it will arise from collective, co-operative energy (synergie
sociale). Further progress must involve simultaneously sympathie
sociale, a community of fellowship or comradeship, promoted by education of
a true kind, not mere instruction, but a proper development and valuation of
the feelings. Here art will play its part and have its place beside science,
ethics and philosophy in furthering the ideal harmony in human society. Such
Progress involves, therefore, that the Beautiful must be sought and appreciated
no less than the True and the Good, for it is a revelation of the larger Life
of which we ourselves are part. These ideals are in themselves but
manifestations of the Supreme Vitality.
The same spontaneous vital activity of which Guyau makes a central doctrine
characterises Bergson’s view of reality. He upholds, like Boutroux, freedom and
contingency, but he will not admit finalism in any shape or form, not even a
teleology which is created in the process of development. He refuses to admit
as true of the universal process in nature and in human history what is
certainly true of human life—the fact that we create ends as we go on
living. For Bergson there is no end in the universe, unless it be that of
spontaneity of life such as Guyau had maintained. There is no guarantee of
progress, no law of development, but endless possibility of progress. Such a
view, as we have already insisted, is not pessimistic. It is, however, a
warning to facile optimism to realise that humanity, being free, may go “dead
wrong.” While Boutroux maintains with Ravaisson that there is at the heart of
things a tendency to superior values such as beauty, goodness and truth, and
while Renan assures us that the balance of goodness in the world is a guarantee
of its ultimate triumph, Bergson, like Renouvier, gives us stern warning that
there is no guarantee in the nature of things that humanity should not set its
heart on other values, on materialistic and egoistic conceptions, and go down
in ruin quarrelling and fighting for these things. There is no power, he
reminds us, keeping humanity right and in the line of desirable progress. All
is change, but that is not to say that all changes are desirable or
progressive. Here we arrive at a point far removed from the rosy optimism of
the earlier thinkers. Progress as a comfortable doctrine, confidently accepted
and dogmatically asserted, no longer holds ground; it is seen to be quite
untenable.
In Bergson the difficulty which besets Ravaisson reappears more
markedly—namely, the relation of spirit and matter to one another, and to
the power at the heart of things, which, according to Bergson himself, is a
spiritual principle. Here we seem forced to admit Ravaisson’s view of a “fall”
or, as the theologians would say, a “Kenosis” of the deity in order to create
the material universe. Yet in the processes of nature we see spirit having to
fight against matter, and of this warfare Bergson makes a great point. These
considerations lead to discussions which Bergson has not touched upon as yet.
He does not follow Ravaisson and Boutroux into the realm of theological ideas.
If he did he might have to make admissions which would compromise, or at least
modify, other doctrines expressed by him. He will have none of Hegel or of the
Absolute Idealism which sees the world process as a development of a Divine
Idea. It is new and it is creation; there is no repetition. Even God himself
se fait in the process, and it may be, suggests Bergson, that love is
the secret of the universe. If so we may well ask with Blondel, “If God se
fait in the process, then does he not already exist and, in a sense, the
process with him?” Instead, however, of reverting to Ravaisson’s view of the
whole affair being a search for, and return to God, Bergson claims that the
development is a purely contingent one, in which a super-consciousness develops
by experiment and error.
Bergson’s God, if he may be so-called, is not so much a Creator, but a power
creative of creators—that is, human personalities capable of free action.
The Deity is immanent in man, and, like man, is ignorant of the trend of the
whole process. The universe, according to Bergson, is a very haphazard affair,
in which the only permanence is change. There is no goal, and progress has
little meaning if it be only and merely further change, which may be equally
regress rather than progress. To live is not merely to change, but to triumph
over change to set up some values as of absolute worth, and to aim at realising
and furthering these. Apart from some philosophy of values the conception of
progress has little meaning.
Interesting discussions of various aspects of the problem are to be found in
the writings of the sociologist we have mentioned, Durkheim, particularly La
Division du Travail sociale, Le Suicide and Les Formes
élémentaires de la Vie religieuse. There is an interesting volume by Weber,
entitled Le Rythme du Progres, and there are the numerous books of Dr.
Gustave Le Bon.
Although he is not strictly a philosopher in the academic or professional
sense, and his work belongs to literature rather than to the philosophy of the
period, we cannot help calling attention briefly here, at the conclusion of
this chapter, to the genial pessimism of Bergson’s great literary contemporary,
Anatole France, the famous satirist of our age. His irony on questions like
that of progress is very marked in L’Ile des Penguins and in
Jérôme Coignard. A remark from one of his works, this latter, will
sufficiently illustrate his view on progress. “I take little interest,” remarks
his character, the Abbé Coignard, “in what is done in the King’s Cabinet, for I
notice that the course of life is in no way changed, and after reforms men are
as before, selfish, avaricious, cowardly, cruel, stupid and furious by turns,
and there is always a nearly even number of births, marriages, cuckolds and
gallows-birds, in which is made manifest the beautiful ordering of our society.
This condition is stable, sir, and nothing could shake it, for it is founded on
human misery and imbecility, and those are foundations which will never be
wanting.” The genial old Abbé then goes on to remind socialist revolutionaries
that new economic schemes will not radically change human nature. We easily see
the ills in history and blind ourselves with optimism for the future. Even in
Sorel, the Syndicalist, who has added to his articles on Violence (which
appeared in 1907 in the periodical Le Mouvement socialiste) a work on
Les Illusions du Progrès, we find the same doctrines about the vices of
modern societies, which he considers no better than ancient ones in their
morality; they are filled with more hypocrisy, that is all. France and Sorel
only add more testimony to the utter collapse of the old doctrine of assured
and general progress.
* * * * * * * * *
To such a final position do we come in following out the development of the
idea of progress. The early assurance and dogmatic confidence which marked the
early years of the century are followed by a complete abandonment of the idea
of a guaranteed or assured progress, whether based on the operations of a
Divine Providence, or on faith in the ultimate triumph of reason, or on merely
a fatalistic determinism. Progress is only a possibility, and its realisation
depends on ‘humanity’s own actions. Further, any mention of progress in future
must not only present it as quite contingent, but we have to reckon with the
fact that the idea of progress may itself progress until it resolves itself
into another conception less complicated and less paradoxical, such as “the
attainment of a new equilibrium.” Some effort must be devoted also to a
valuation of criteria. Various values have in the past been confused together,
scientific, materialistic, hedonistic, moral, aesthetic. Ultimately it seems
that we shall find difficulty in settling this apart from the solution offered
by Renouvier—namely, that true progress is not merely intellectual, but
moral. It involves not merely a conquest of material nature but of human
nature—a self- mastery. Progress is to be measured not by the
achievements of any aristocracy, intellectual or other, but by the general
social status, and our criterion of progress must be ultimately that of social
justice. This itself is a term needing interpretation, and to this question of
ethics we now turn.
CHAPTER VI
ETHICS
INTRODUCTION : Difficulties of the moral problem as presented in the nineteenth
century—Recognised as a social problem—Influence of Comte
important in this connection—Other
influences—Christianity—Kant—The practical reason.
I. Taine and Renan—Renan’s critique of Christian morality—Early
socialistic views—Change in his later life—Prefers criterion of
beauty to that of goodness.
II. Renouvier the great moralist of our period—Relation to Kant —His
Science de la Morale—Personality in Ethics—Justice.
III. Fouillée, Guyau, Ollé-Laprune and Rauh pass further from the Kantian rigorism
to an ethic in harmony with the philosophy of idées-forces of life and
action—Humanitarianism of Fouillée and Guyau—Idées-forces and
Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction —Rauh’s doctrines—Other
thinkers.
CONCLUSION: Action and belief—Ethics and Religion.
CHAPTER VI
ETHICS
Moral philosophy is probably the most difficult branch of those various
disciplines of the human spirit summed up in the general conception of
philosophy. This difficulty is one which all the thinkers of our period
recognised. Many of them, occupied with other problems on the psychological or
metaphysical side, did not write explicitly upon ethics. Yet the problem of
ethics, its place, significance and authority, is but the other side of that
problem of freedom which has appeared throughout this development as central
and vital. The ethical consciousness of man has never been content for long
with the assertion that ethics is a purely positive science, although it has
obviously a positive side. The essence of morality has been regarded as not
merely a description of what exists, but what might, should or ought to exist.
Ethics is normative, it erects or endeavours to outline a standard which is an
ideal standard. This is the characteristic of ethics, and so long as the moral
conscience of humanity, individually and collectively, does not slumber nor
die, it will remain so. This conflict between the ideal and the real, the
positive and normative is indeed the chief source of pain and conflict to man,
but without it he would cease to be human.
Whatever the difficulties, the philosopher who aspires to look upon human life
as a whole must give some interpretation of this vital aspect of human
consciousness. It is in this connection that a solution of the problem of
freedom is so valuable, for under a purely determinist and positivist reading
of life, the moral sentiments become mere data for an anthropological survey,
the hope and tragedy of human life are replaced, comfortably perhaps for some,
by an interpretation in which the true significance of ethics is lost.
One of the outstanding features of the discussion upon ethics in our period is
the fact that the social standpoint colours most of the discussion. This was
largely due to the impulse given by Comte and continued by the sociologists. We
have already remarked the importance which he attached to his new science of
society or “sociology.” However much the development of this branch of study
may have disappointed the hopes of Comte, it has laid a powerful and necessary
emphasis upon the solidarity of the problems of society. As Comte claimed that
psychology could not be profitably studied in the isolated individual alone, so
he insisted that ethics could only be studied with profit from a social
standpoint. This was not forgotten by subsequent thinkers, even by those who
were not his followers, and the main development of the ethical problem in our
period is marked by an increasing insistence upon sociability and solidarity.
Comte was able to turn the thoughts of philosophers away from pre-occupation
with the isolated individual, conceived as a cold and calculating intellectual
machine, a “fiction” which had engrossed the minds of thinkers of the previous
century. He was able also to indicate the enormous part played by instincts,
particularly “herd-instincts,” by passion and feelings of social hatred and
social sympathy. It was the extension of social sympathy upon which Comte
insisted as the chief good. The great defect of Christianity from an ethical
standpoint was, Comte pointed out, due to its individualistic ethic. To the
doctrine of “saving one’s own soul” Comte opposed that of the salvation of
humanity. The social unit is not the individual man or woman, it is the family.
In that society which is not a mere association but a union, arising from
common interests and sympathy, the individual realises himself as part of
society. The highest ethical conception, however, arises when the individual,
transcending himself and his family, feels and acts as a member of humanity
itself, not only in his public, but also in his private life. In the idea of
humanity Comte finds the concrete form of that universal which in the ethic of
Kant was the symbol of duty itself.
It was by this insistence on human social solidarity that Comte left his mark
upon the ethical problem. Many of the details of social ethics given in the
last three large volumes of his work are extremely thoughtful and interesting,
in spite of their excessive optimism, but we can only here indicate what is
sufficient for our purpose, his influence over subsequent thought. That is
summed up in the words “solidarity” and “social standpoint.”
We may observe that the supreme problems in social ethics Comte regarded as
being those of education or mental development and the “right to work.”[1] He foresaw, as did Renan, that Culture and Economic
Justice were the two foci around which the ethical problems were to be
ranged in the immediate future. He regretted that the proletariat in their cry
for justice had not sufficient culture to observe that they themselves are not
a class apart, however class-conscious they be. They stand solid with the
community, and Comte prophesied that, finding this out sooner or later, they
would have to realise the folly of violent revolution. Only a positive culture
or education of the democracy could, he believed, solve this social problem,
which is there precisely because the proletariat are not sufficiently, and do
not feel themselves to be, incorporated in the life of the community or of
humanity. Only when they realise this will work be ennobled by a feeling of
service. The Church has a moral advantage here, in that she has her
organisation complete for furthering the conception of service to God. Comte
realised this advantage of religious morality, but he thought it would come
also to “positive” morality when men came to a conception of service for
humanity To this great end, he urged, our education should be directed, and it
should aim, he thought, at the decline and elimination of militarism which, in
Comte’s view corresponds to the second stage of development (marked also by
theology), a stage to be superseded in man’s development, by an era in which
the war-spirit will be replaced by that of productive service performed not
only pour la patrie, but pour l’humanité.
In viewing the general influences which bore upon the study of the ethical
problem in our period this stress upon the social character of morality is
supreme, and is the most distinctly marked. But in addition to the sociological
influence there are others which it is both interesting and important to note
briefly. There is the influence of traditional religious morality, bound up
with Christianity as presented by the Roman Catholic Church. The deficiencies
of this are frequently brought out in the discussion, but in certain of the
thinkers, chiefly the “modernists,” it appears as an influence contributing to
a religious morality and as offering, indeed, the basis of a religion. Other
writers, however, while rejecting the traditional morality of the Church, lay
stress upon a humanitarian ethic which has an affinity to the idealistic
morality preached by the founder of Christianity, a morality which manifests a
spirit different from that which his Church has usually shown. Indeed, the
general tendency of the ethical development in our period is one of opposition
to the ecclesiastical and traditional standpoint in ethics.
Then there is the influence of Kant’s ethics, and here again, although
Renouvier owed much to Kant, the general tendency is to get away from the
formalism and rigorism of his “categorical imperative.” The current of English
Utilitarian ethics appears as rather a negative influence, and is rather
scorned when mentioned. The common feature is that of the social standpoint,
issuing in conceptions of social justice or humanitarianism and finding in
action and life a concrete morality which is but the reflection of the living
conscience of mankind creating itself and finding in the claims of the
practical reason that Absolute or Ideal to which the pure reason feels it
cannot alone attain.
I
Taine and Renan were influenced by the outlook adopted by Comte. It might well
be said that Taine was more strictly positivist than Comte. In his view of
ethics, Taine, as might be expected from the general character of his work and
his philosophical attitude, adheres to a rigidly positivist and naturalist
conception. He looks upon ethics as purely positive, since it merely states the
scientific conditions of virtue and vice, and he despairs of altering human
nature or conduct. This is due almost entirely to his doctrine of rigid
determinism which reacts with disastrous consequences upon his ethical outlook.
This only further confirms our contention that the problem of freedom is the
central and vital one of the period. We have already pointed out the criticism
which Fouillée brought against Taine’s dogmatic belief in determinism, as an
incomplete doctrine, a half-truth, which involves mischievous consequences and
permits of no valuable discussion of the ethical problem.
More interesting and useful, if we are to follow at all closely the ethical
thought of our period, is it to observe the attitude adopted to ethics by
Taine’s contemporary, Renan.
The extreme confidence which Renan professed to have in “science,” and indeed
in all intellectual pursuits, led him to accord to morality rather a secondary
place. “There are three great things,” he remarks in his Discours et
Conférences,[2] “goodness, beauty and truth,
and the greatest of these is truth.” Neither virtue, he continues, nor art
is able to exclude illusions. Truth is the representation of reality, and in
this world the search for truth is the most serious occupation of all. One of
his main charges against the Christian Church in general is that it has
insisted upon moral good to such an extent as to undervalue and depreciate the
other goods, expressed in beauty and in truth. It has looked upon life from one
point of view only—namely, the moral—and has judged all action by
ethical values alone, despising in this way philosophy, science, literature,
poetry, painting and music. In its more ascetic moods it has claimed that these
things are “of the devil.” Thus Christianity has introduced a vicious
distinction which has done much to mutilate human nature and to cramp the
wholesome expression of the life of the human spirit. Whatever is an expression
of spirit is, claims Renan, to be looked upon as sacred. If such a distinction
as that of sacred and profane were to be drawn it should be between what
appertains to the soul and what does not. The distinction, when made between
the ethical and the beautiful or true, is disastrous.
Renan considers that of the two, the ethical and the beautiful, the latter may
be the finer and grander distinction, the former merely a species of it. The
moral, he thinks, will give place to the beautiful. “Before any action,” he
himself says in L’Avenir de la Science, “I prefer to ask myself, not
whether it be good or bad, but whether it be beautiful or ugly, and I feel that
I have in this an excellent criterion.”
Morality, he further insists, has been conceived up to now in far too rigid a
manner as obedience to a law, as a warfare and strife between opposing laws.
But the really virtuous man is an artist who is creating beauty, the beauty of
character, and is fashioning it out of his human nature, as the sculptor
fashions a statue out of marble or a musician composes a melody from sounds.
Neither the sculptor nor the musician feels that he is obeying a law. He is
expressing and creating beauty.
Another criticism which Renan brings against the ethic of Christianity is its
insistence upon humility as a virtue. He sees nothing virtuous in it as it is
generally interpreted: quite rightly he suspects it of hypocritically covering
a gross pride, after the manner of the Pharisees. He gives a place to honest
asceticism which has its nobility, even although it be a narrow, misconceived
ideal. Much nobler is it, he thinks, than the type of life which has only one
object, getting a fortune.
This leads him to another remark on the moral hypocrisy of so many professedly
religious folk. Having an easy substance and possessing already a decent share
of this world’s goods, they devote all their energies to the pursuit of
pleasure or of further superfluous wealth. From this position they criticise
the worker who endeavours to improve his lot, and have the audacity to tell him
in pious fashion that he must not be materialistic, and must not set his heart
on this world’s goods. It would be laughable were it not so tragic. The whole
question of the relativity of the two positions is overlooked, the whole ethic
of the business ignored. Material welfare is good and valuable, says Renan, in
so far as it frees man’s spirit from mean and wretched dependence and a cramped
life which injures development, physical and spiritual. These goods are a means
to an end. When, therefore, a man, already comfortably endowed, amasses more
and more for its own sake, he commits both a profane and immoral act. But when
a worker endeavours to augment his recompense for his labour, he is but
demanding “what is the condition of his redemption. He is performing a virtuous
action.”[3]
Sound as many of these considerations undoubtedly are, they come from the
Renan, who wrote in the years 1848-9 L’Avenir de la Science. He lived
long enough to see that these truths had complements, that there might be, even
ethically, another side. In speaking of Progress this has been noted: in his
later years he forecasted the coming of an era of egoism, of national and
industrial selfishness, working itself out in policies of military imperialism
among the nations, and of economic greed and tyranny among the proletariat. His
remarks about the virtuous action of the worker bettering his lot were inspired
by the socialism of Saint-Simon. Renan did not at that time raise in his own
mind the question of the workers themselves carrying their reaction so far,
that it, although just at first, might reach a point where it became a
dictatorship decreed by self-interest alone. It is in Renouvier that we find
this danger more clearly indicated. In so far as Renan felt it, his solution
was that which he suggested for the elimination of all social wickedness—
namely, the increase of education. He looked upon wickedness as a symptom of a
lack of culture, particularly the lack of any moral teaching.
It was precisely this point, the education of the democracy, morally no less
than intellectually, which presented a certain difficulty to the French
Republic when, after several unsuccessful attempts, the plan for state
education of a compulsory, gratuitous and secular character was carried in
1882, largely through the efforts of Jules Ferry.[4]
II
The great moralist of our period was Renouvier. Not only, as we have already
seen, did ethical considerations mark and colour his whole thought, but he set
forth those considerations themselves with a remarkable power. His treatise in
two volumes on The Science of Ethics is one of the most noteworthy
contributions to ethical thought which has been made in modern times. Although
half a century has elapsed since its publication on the eve of the
Franco-Prussian War, its intense pre-occupation with the problems which beset
our modern industrial civilisation, its profound judgments and discussions
concerning subjects so vital to the world of to-day (such as the relations of
the sexes, marriage, sex-ethics, civil liberty, property, communism, state
intervention, socialist ideals, nationalism, war, the modern idea of the State,
and international law), give to it a value, which very few works upon the
subject possess. Long as the work is, it has the merit of thoroughness, and
difficulties are not slurred over, but stated frankly, and some endeavours are
made to overcome them. Consequently, it is a work which amply repays careful
study. It is almost presumption to attempt in a few pages to summarise
Renouvier’s important treatise. Some estimate of its significance is, however,
vital to our history.
The title itself is noteworthy and must at that date have appeared more
striking than it does to us now by its claim that there is a science of
ethics.[5] We are accustomed to regard physics,
mathematics and even logic as entitled to the name Sciences. Can we
legitimately speak of a Science of Ethics?
Renouvier insists that we can. Morality deals with facts, although they are not
embraced by the categories of number, extension, duration or becoming (as
mathematical and physical data), but rather by those of causality, finality and
consciousness. The facts “are not the natural being of things, but the
devoir-être of the human will, the devoir-faire of persons,
and the devoir-être of things in so far as they depend upon
persons.”[6] Personal effort, initiative and
responsibility lie at the basis of all ethics. Morality is a construction, like
every science, partly individual and partly collective; it must lay down
postulates, and if it is to justify the claim to be a science, these postulates
must be such as to command a consensus gentium. Further, if ethics is to
be scientifically based it must be independent. In the past this has
unfortunately not been the case, for history shows us ethics bound up with some
system of religion or metaphysics. If ethics is to be established as a science,
Renouvier points out that it must be free from all hypothesis of an irrelevant
character, such as cosmological speculations and theological dogmas.
Renouvier’s insistence upon the independence of ethics was followed up in an
even clearer and more trenchant manner by Guyau in his famous Esquisse d’une
Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction.
Although, generally, ethics has suffered by reason of its alliance to
theological and metaphysical systems, Renouvier affirms that, in this
connection, there is one philosophy which is not open to
objection—namely, the Critical Philosophy of Kant. This is because it
subordinates all the unknown to phenomena, all phenomena to consciousness, and,
within the sphere of consciousness itself, subordinates the speculative reason
(reinen Vernunft) to the practical reason (praktischen Vernunft).
Its chief value, according to Renouvier, lies precisely in this maintenance of
the primacy of moral considerations.
Two standpoints or lines of thought which are characteristic of Renouvier, and
whose presence we have already noted in our first chapter, operate also in his
ethics and govern his whole treatment of the nature of morality and the
problems of the moral life. Briefly stated these are, firstly, his regard for
the Critical Philosophy of Kant; secondly, his view of man as “an order, a
harmony of functions reciprocally conditioned, and, by this fact,
inseparable.”[7] As in his treatment of
Certitude, Renouvier showed this to be a psychological complex into which
entered elements not only of cognition, but of feeling and will, the same
insistence upon this unity of human nature meets us again in his ethics. “Any
ethical doctrine which definitely splits up the elements of human nature is
erroneous.”[8] Abstraction is necessary
and useful for any science, even the science of ethics, but however far we may
carry our scientific analysis, we must never lose sight of the fact that we are
dealing with abstractions. To lose sight of the relationship of the data under
observation or discussion is, indeed, working away from the goal of scientific
knowledge.
“Nothing,” remarks Renouvier in this connection, “has done more to hinder the
spread of Kant’s doctrines in the world than his assertion that the morally
good act must be performed absolutely without feeling.” In view of man as he
is, and in so far as we understand human nature at all, it seems a vain and
foolish statement. For Kant, Duty was supreme, and the sole criterion of a good
act was, for him, its being done from a consciousness of Duty. He himself had
to confess that he did not know of any act which quite fulfilled this ideal of
moral action. With this view of morality Renouvier so heartily disagrees that
he is inclined to think that, so far from a purely rational act (if we suppose
such an act possible) being praiseworthy, he would almost give greater moral
worth to an act purely emotional, whose “motive” lay, not in the idea of cold
and stern Duty, but in the warm impulses of the human heart, springing from
emotion or feeling alone. Emotion is a part of our nature—it has its role
to play; the rational element enters as a guide or controlling power. It is
desirable that all acts should be so guided, but that is far from stating, as
does Kant, that they should proceed solely from rational considerations.
Ultimately reason and sentiment unite in furthering the same ends. No adequate
conception of justice can be arrived at which is not accompanied by, and
determined by, correlatively, love of humanity. Kant rigorously excluded from
operation even the most noble feelings, whose intrusion should dim the worth
and glory of his moral act, devoid of feeling. But “without good-will and
mutual sympathy of persons, no society could ever have established itself
beyond the family, and scarcely the family itself.”[9]
Renouvier confesses that in most of this treatment of the problem of ethics he
follows Kant[10] and although his
admiration for Kant’s work is not concealed, nevertheless he is not altogether
satisfied with it, and does not refrain from criticism. Indeed this
reconstruction of the Critical Philosophy in a revised version is the main
effort of the neo-critical philosopher, and it is constantly manifest.
He complains that Kant did not adhere rigorously to his own principles, but
vainly strove to give an objectivity to the laws of the practical reason by
connecting them to metaphysics. But, he says, “on the other hand I maintain
that the errors of Kant can be corrected in accordance with the actual
principles of his own philosophy. I continue my serious attachment to this
great reformer in spite of the very serious modifications I am endeavouring to
make in his work.”[11]
In the opinion of Renouvier, Kant’s work, the Metaphysic of Morals, is
marred by its neglect of history in its relation to ethics, by a disfigured
picture of right which does not make it any more applicable to existing human
conditions, also by the rather artificial and complicated nature of its
doctrines. He further reproaches Kant for excessive rigorism and formalism,
accompanied by a vagueness which prevents the application of much of his
teaching. This, it seems to us, is a reproach which can be hurled easily at
most of the ethical teachers whom the world has seen. The incessant vagueness
of paradoxical elements in the utterances of such teachers has inevitably
compelled their disciples to find refuge in insisting upon a “right spirit” of
action, being devoid of any clear teaching as to what might constitute right
action in any particular case.
The rudiments of morality, according to Renouvier, are found in the general
notion of “obligation,” the sense of ought (devoir-faire) which the
human consciousness cannot escape. Any end of action is conceived as a good for
the agent himself; and because of liberty of choice between actions or ends, or
between both, certain of these are deemed morally preferable. There are certain
obligations which are purely personal, elementary virtues demanded from any
rational being. It is his interest to preserve his body by abstaining from
excesses; it is his interest also to conserve and develop the faculties of his
nature. This is the point upon which Guyau makes such insistence in common with
Nietzsche—the development, expansion and intensification of life. There
are, Renouvier points out, duties towards oneself, involving constant
watchfulness and intelligence, so that the agent may be truly self-possessed
under all circumstances, maintaining an empire over himself and not falling a
constant victim to passion. “Greater is he that ruleth himself than he that
taketh a city,” are not vain words. This is the rudimentary but essential
virtue which Renouvier calls “virtue militant”—moral courage.
Intellectually it issues in Prudence or Wisdom; on the side of sense and
passion it is represented by Temperance. These duties are present to
conscience, which itself arises from a doubling of consciousness. “We have the
empirical person with his experience of the past, and we have the ideal
person—that is to say, that which we wish to be,”[12] our ideal character. In so far as we are
conscientious we endeavour to bring “what we are” into line with “what we
conceive we should be.” The moral agent thus has duties towards himself,
obligations apart from any relation to or with others of his kind.
This elementary morality is “essentially subjective,”[13] but this only shows us that the most thorough-going
individualism does not by its neglect of others, its denial of altruism,
thereby escape entirely from moral obligations. There are always duties to
one’s higher self, even for a Robinson Crusoe. Frequently it is stated that
duties and rights are co-relative; but Renouvier regards Duty as more
fundamental than Right, which he uses only of man in association with his
fellows. Between persons, right and duty are in a synthesis, but the person
himself has no rights as distinct from duties to himself; he has no right not
to do what it is his duty to perform. From this it follows that if his personal
notion of obligation changes, he has no right whatever to carry out actions in
accordance with his judgments made prior to his change of conscience, merely
for the sake of consistency. He is in this respect a law to him- self, for no
man can act as a conscience for another. The notion of rights only arises when
others are in question, and only too often the word has been abused by being
employed where simply power is meant, as, for example, in many views of
“natural right.” This procedure both sullies the usage of the term Right and
lowers the status of personality. It is always, Renouvier claims, to “the
inherent worth and force of personality, with its powers of reflection,
deliberation, liberty, self-possession and self-direction, that one must return
in order to understand each and every virtue.”
Renouvier’s insistence upon the inherent worth, the dignity and moral value of
personality becomes clearer as he proceeds from his treatment of the lonely
individual (who, it may be objected, is to such an extent an abstraction, as to
resemble a fiction) to associated persons. The reciprocal relation of two
persons brings out the essential meaning of Justice. Two personalities
co-operating for a common end find themselves each possessed of duties and,
inversely therefore, of rights which are simply duties regarded from the point
of view not of the agent, but of the other party. The neo-critical ethic here
brings itself definitely into line with the principle of practical reason of
the Critical Philosophy. This, says Renouvier,[14] is the profound meaning of Justice, which consists
in the fact that the moral agent, instead of subordinating the ends of other
people to his own, considers the personalities[15] of others as similar to his own and
possessing their own ends which he must respect. This principle is that which
Kant formulated under the name of “practical obligation” or “supreme
principle.”[16] “Recognise the personality
of others as equal in nature and dignity, as being an end in itself, and
consequently refrain from employing the personality of others merely as a means
to achieve your own ends.”
This doctrine of Personalism is an assertion not only of Liberté,
Egalité, Fraternité as necessary and fundamental principles, but
also of the value of personality in general and the relativity of “things.” It
constitutes an ethical challenge to the existing state of society which is not
only inclined, in its headlong pursuit of wealth, its fanatical worship of
Mammon, to treat its workers as purely “means” to the attainment of its end,
but further minimises personality by its legal codes and social conventions,
which both operate far more readily and efficiently in the defence of property
than in the defence or protection of personality. From the ethical standpoint
the world is a realm of ends or persons and all other values must be adjusted
in relation to these.
We have been told by religious ethical teachers that we must love our neighbour
as ourself, and have been reminded by moralists continually of the conflict
between Egoism and Altruism. Renouvier points out that ultimately obligation
towards others is reducible to a duty to oneself. He does not do this from the
point of view of Hobbes, who regarded all actions, however altruistic they
appeared to be, as founded purely upon self-interest, but rather from the
opposite standpoint. “We should make our duty to others rank foremost among our
duties to ourselves.”[17] This is the
transcendent duty through the performance of which we achieve a realisation of
the solidarity of persons, demonstrate an objective value for our own
existence, and gain a fuller and richer life.
The idea of personal and moral reciprocity was formulated by the Chinese and
the Greeks; at a later date it reappeared in the teaching of Jesus. This
ancient and almost universal maxim has been stated both positively and
negatively: “Do not to others what you would not have them do unto you,” “Do as
you would be done by.” The maxim itself, however, beyond a statement of the
principle of reciprocity rather vaguely put, has no great value for the science
of ethics. Renouvier regards it not as a principle of morality but a
rule-of-thumb, and he considers the negative statement of it to be more in
harmony with what was intended by the early ethical teachers—namely, to
give a practical warning against the committing of evil actions rather than to
establish a scientific principle of right action.
Renouvier has shown the origin of the notion of Justice as arising primarily
from an association of two persons. “Reason established a kind of community and
moral solidarity in this reciprocity.”[18]
This right and duty unite to constitute Justice. It is truly said that it is
just to fulfil one’s duty, just to demand one’s right, and Justice is formed by
a union of these two in such a manner that they always complement one another.
Bearing in mind the doctrine of personality as an end, we get a general law of
action which may be stated in these terms: “Always act in such a way that the
maxim applicable to your act can be erected by your conscience into a law
common to you and your associate.” Now to apply this to an association of any
number of persons—e g., human society as a whole—we need
only generalise it and state it in these terms: “Act always in such a way that
the maxim of your conduct can be erected by your conscience into a universal
law or formulated in an article of legislation which you can look upon as
expressing the will of every rational being.” This “categorical obligation” is
the basis of ethics. It stands clear of hypothetical cases as a general law of
action, and “there is no such thing really as practical morality,” remarks
Renouvier, “except by voluntary obedience to a law.”[19]
The fulfilment of our duties to ourselves generally tends to fit us for
fulfilling our duties to others, and the neglect of the former will lead
inevitably to inability to perform these latter. Our duty to others thus
involves our duty to ourselves.[20]
Personality which lies at the root of the moral problem demands Truth and
Liberty, and it has a right to these two, for without them it is injured. They
are essential to a society of persons. Another vital element in society is
Work, the neglect of which is a grave immoral act, for as there is in any
society a certain amount of necessary work to be performed, a “slacker” dumps
his share upon his fellows to perform in addition to their own share. With
industrial or general laziness, and the parasitism of those whose riches enable
them to live without working, is to be condemned also the shirking of
intellectual work by all. Quite apart from those who are “intellectuals” as
such, a solemn duty of work, of thought, reflection and reasoning lies on each
person in a society. Apathy among citizens is really a form of culpable
negligence. The duty of work and thought is so vital and of such ethical,
political and social importance that Renouvier suggests that the two words,
work and duty, be regarded as synonyms. It might, he thinks, make clearer to
many the obligation involved.
Justice has been made clear in the foregoing remarks, but in view of Kant’s
distinction of “large” and “strict” duties, Renouvier raises the question of
the relation of Justice and Goodness. He concludes that acts proceeding from
the latter are to be distinguished from Justice. They proceed not from
considerations of persons as such, but from their “nature” or common humanity,
and are near to being “duties to oneself.” They are of the heart rather than of
the head, proceeding from sentiments of humanity, and sentiment is not,
strictly speaking, the foundation of justice, which is based on the notions of
duties and rights. There can be, therefore, an opposition of Justice and of
Goodness (Kindness or Love), and the sphere of the latter is often limited by
considering the former. Renouvier recognises the fact that Justice in the moral
sense of recognition and respect for personality is itself often
“constitutionally and legally” violated in societies by custom, laws and
institutions as well as by members of society in their actions, and he notes
that this “legal” injustice makes the problem of the relation of Justice and
Charity excessively difficult.
The science of ethics is faced with a double task owing to the nature of man’s
evolution and history. Human societies have been built upon a basis which is
not that of justice and right, but upon the basis of force and tyranny—in
short, upon war. There is, therefore, for the moralist the twin duty of
constructing laws and principles for the true society founded upon an ethical
basis, that is to say on conceptions of Justice, while at the same time he must
give practical advice to his fellows living and striving in present society,
where a continual state of war exists owing to the operation of force and
tyranny in place of justice, and he must so apply his principles that
they may be capable of moving this unjust existing society progressively
towards the ideal society.
In our account of Renouvier’s “Philosophy of History” we brought out his
insistence upon war as the essential feature of man’s life on this planet, as
the basis of our present “civilisation.” Here he proclaims it again in his
ethics.[21] War reigns everywhere: it is around
us and within us—individuals, families, tribes, classes, nations and
races. He includes in the term much more than open fighting with guns. The
distribution of wealth, of property (especially of land), wages, custom duties,
diplomacy, fraud, violence, bigotry, orthodoxy, and persecution, lies
themselves, are all, to him, forms of war. Its most ludicrous stronghold is
among men who pride themselves on being at peace with all men, while they force
their idea of God upon other men’s consciences. Religious intolerance is one,
and a very absurd kind of warfare.[22]
The principle of justice confers upon the person a certain “right of defence”
in the midst of all this existing varied warfare of mankind. It involves,
according to Renouvier, resistance. The just man cannot stand by and see the
unjust man oppress his fellow so that the victim is “obliged to give up his
waistcoat after having had his coat torn from him.” Otherwise we must confuse
the just with the saintly man who only admits one
law—namely, that of sacrifice. But Renouvier will have us be clear as to
the price involved in all this violent resistance. It means calling up powers
of evil, emissaries of injustice. He does not found his “right of defence” on
rational right; it is to misconceive it so to found it. We must recognise the
use of violence and force, even in self-defence, as in itself evil, an evil
necessitated by facts which do not conform to the rules of peace and justice
themselves. It is to a large degree necessary, unfortunately, but is none the
less evil and to be frankly regarded as evil, and likely to multiply evil in
the world, owing to the tremendous solidarity of wickedness of which Renouvier
has already spoken in history. It is the absence of the reign of justice which
necessitates these conflicts, and we have to content ourselves with a
conception of actual “right,” a conception already based on war, not with one
of “rational right” or justice.
Right in the true sense, Renouvier insists, belongs to a state of peace; in a
state of war, such as our civilisation is perpetually in, it cannot be
realised. The objection may be made that Renouvier is then justifying the means
by the end. He emphatically denies this. By no means is this the case, for “the
evil,” he remarks, “which corrects another evil does not therefore become good;
it may be useful, but it is none the less evil, immoral, or unjust, and what is
not just is not justifiable. Wars, rebellions, revolutions may lessen certain
evils, but they do not thereby cease to be any the less evils themselves.
Morally we are obliged to avoid all violence; a revolution is only justified if
its success gives an indication of its absolute necessity. We must lament, from
the standpoint of ethics or justice, the evil state of affairs which gives rise
to it.[23]
Renouvier devotes a considerable portion of his treatise to problems of
domestic morals, economic questions and problems of a political and
international character. In all these discussions, however, he maintains as
central his thesis of the supremacy of personality.
Under droit domestique he defends very warmly the right of the woman and
the wife to treatment as a personality. He laments particularly the injustice
which usually rules in marriage, where, under a cloak of legality, the married
man denies to his wife a personal control of her own body and the freedom of
self-determination in matters of sexual intercourse. So unjust and loathsome in
its violation of the personality of woman is the modern view of marriage that
Renouvier considers it little better than polygamy (which is often a better
state for women than monogamy) or prostitution. It is less just than either,
owing to its degradation of the personality of the wife. He remarked too in his
Nouvelle Monadologie that love (in the popular sense), being so largely
an affair of passion and physical attraction, is usually unjust, and that
friendship is a better basis for the relationship of marriage, which should be,
while it lasts among mankind, one of justice.[24]
Consequently, it should involve neither the idea of possession nor of
obedience, but of mutual comradeship.
In the economic sphere Renouvier endeavours to uphold freedom, and for this
reason he is an enemy of communism. Hostile to the communistic doctrine of
property, he is a definite defender of property which he considers to be a
necessity of personality. He considers each person in the community entitled to
property as a guarantee of his own liberty and development. While disagreeing
with communism, Renouvier is sympathetic to the socialist view that property
might be, and should be, more justly distributed, and he advocates means to
limit excessive possession by private persons and to “generalise” the
distribution of the goods of the community among its members. Progressive
taxation, a guarantee of the “right to work” and a complete system of insurance
are among his suggestions. He is careful, however, to avoid giving to the state
too much power.
Renouvier was no lover of the state. While regarding it as necessary under
present conditions, he agrees with the anarchist idealists, to whom government
is an evil. He admits its use, however, as a guarantor of personal liberty, but
is against any semblance of state- worship. The state is not a person, nor is
it, as it exists at present, a moral institution. One of the needs of modern
times is, he points out, the moralising of the conception of the state, and of
the state itself. Although, therefore, he has no a priori objection to
state interference in the economic sphere, and would not advocate a mere
laissez-faire policy, with its vicious consequences, yet he does not
look with approval upon such interference unless it be “the collective
expression of the personalities forming the community.”
The fact of living in a society, highly organised although it be, does not
diminish at all the moral significance of personality. Rights and duties belong
essentially to persons and to them only. We must beware of the political
philosophy which regards the citizens as existing only for the state. Rather
the state exists, or should exist, for the welfare of the citizens. In the past
this was a grave defect of military despotisms, and was well illustrated by the
view of the state taken, or rather inculcated, by German political philosophy.
In the future the danger of the violation of personality may lie, Renouvier
thinks, in another direction—namely, in the establishment of Communistic
states. The basic principle of his ethic is the person as an end in himself,
and the treatment of persons as ends. If this be so, a Communistic Republic
which has as its motto “Each for all,” without also “All for each,” may gravely
violate personality and the moral law if, by constraint, it treats all its
citizens and their efforts not as ends in themselves, but merely means to the
collective ends of all.
The moral ideal demands that personality must not be obliterated. Personality
bound up with “autonomy of reason” is the fundamental ethical fact.[25] In the last resort, responsibility rests upon the
individuals of the society for the evils of the system of social organisation
under which they live. The state itself cannot be regarded as a moral person.
Renouvier opposes strongly any doctrine which tends to the personalisation or
the deification of the state.
He combats also the modern doctrines of “nationality,” and claims that even the
idea of the state is a higher one, for it at any rate involves co-operating
personalities, while a nation is a fiction, of which no satisfactory definition
can be given. He laughs at the “unity of language, race, culture and religion,”
and asks where we can find a nation?[26]
War and death have long since destroyed such united and harmonious groups as
were found in ancient times.
In approaching the questions of international morality Renouvier makes clear
that there is only one morality, one code of justice. Morality cannot be
divided against itself, and there cannot be an admission that things which are
immoral in the individual are justifiable, or permissible, between different
states. Morality has not been applied to these relationships, which are
governed by aggressive militarism and diplomacy, the negation of all
conceptions of justice. Ethical obligation has only a meaning and significance
for personalities, and our states do but reflect the morality of those who
constitute them; our world reflects the relationships and immorality of the
states. War characterises our whole civilisation, domestic, economic and
international. To have inter- national peace, internal peace is essential, and
this pre- supposes the reign of justice within states. War we shall have with
us, Renouvier reminds us, in all its forms, in our institutions, our laws and
customs, until it has disappeared from our hearts. Treaties of “peace” and
federations or leagues of nations are themselves based on injustice and on
force, and in this he sees but another instance of the “terrible solidarity of
evil.”[28] Better it is to recognise this, thinks
Renouvier, than to consider ourselves in, or even near, a Utopia, whence human
greed and passion have fled.
We find in Renouvier’s ethics a notable reversion to the individualism which
characterised the previous century. Much of the individualistic tone of his
work is, however, due to his finding himself in opposition to the doctrines
preached by communists, positivists, sociologists, pessimistic and fatalistic
historians, and supporters of the deified state. Renouvier acclaims the freedom
of the individual, but his individualism is “personalism.” In proclaiming that
the basis of justice and of all morality is respect for personality, as such,
he has no desire to set up a standard of selfish individualism; he wishes only
to combat those heretical doctrines which would minimise and crush personality.
For him the moral “person” is not an isolated individual—he is a social
human being, free and responsible, who lives with his fellows in society. Only
upon a recognition of personality as a supreme value can justice or peace ever
be attained in human society; and it is to this end that all moral education,
Renouvier advocates, should tend. The moral ideal should be, in practice, the
constant effort to free man from the terrible solidarity of evil which
characterises the civilisation into which he is born, and to establish a
community or association of personalities. Such an ideal does not lie
necessarily at the end of a determined evolution; Renouvier’s views on history
and progress have shown us that. Consequently it depends upon us; it is our
duty to believe in its possibility and to work, each according to his or her
power, for its realisation. The ideal or the idea, will, in so far as it is set
before self-conscious personalities as an end, become a force. Renouvier agrees
on this point with Fouillée, to whose ethic, founded on the conception of
idées-forces, we now turn.
III
The philosophy of idée-forces propounded by Fouillée assumes, in its
ethical aspect, a role of reconciliation (which is characteristic, as we have
noted, of his whole method and his entire philosophy) by attempting a synthesis
of individualism and humanitarianism. It is therefore another kind of
personnalisme, differing in type from that of Renouvier. Fouillée’s full
statement of his ethical doctrines was not written until the year 1907,[29] but long before the conclusion of the nineteenth
century he had already indicated the essential points of his ethics. The
conclusion of his thesis La Liberté et le Déterminisme (1872) is very
largely filled with his ethical views and with his optimism. Four years later
appeared his study L’Idée moderne du Droit en Allemagne, en Angleterre et en
France, which was followed in 1880 by La Science sociale
contemporaine, where the relation of the study of ethics to that of
sociology was discussed. A volume containing much acute criticism of current
ethical theories was his Critique des Systèmes de Morale contemporains
(1883), which gave him a further opportunity of offering by way of contrast his
application of the doctrine of idées-forces to the solution of moral
problems. To this he added in the following year a study upon La Propriété
sociale et la Démocratie, where he discussed the ethical value and
significance of various political and socialist doctrines. Ethical questions
raised by the problems of education he discussed in his L’Enseignement au
Point de Vue national (1891). At the close of the century he issued his
book on morality in his own country, La France au Point de Vue morale
(1900).[30]
Fouillée endeavours to unite the purely ideal aspect of ethics—that is to
say, its notion of what ought to be, with the more positive view of ethics as
dealing with what now is. His ethic is, therefore, an attempt to relate more
intimately the twin spheres of Renouvier, l’état de guerre with
l’état de paix, for it is concerned not only with what is, but
with that which tends to be and which can be by the simple fact
that it is thought. As, however, what can be is a matter of
intense interest to us, we are inevitably led from this to consider what
ought to be—that is to say, what is better, or of more worth or
value. The ethical application of the philosophy of idées-forces is at
once theoretical and practical, that philosophy being concerned both with ideas
and values.
As in his treatment of freedom we found Fouillée beginning with the idea
of freedom, so here in a parallel manner he lays down the idea of an end
of action as an incontestable fact of experience, although the existence of
such an end is contested and is a separate question. This idea operates in
consciousness as a power of will (volonté de conscience). Intelligence,
power, love and happiness-in short, the highest conscious life—are
involved in it, not only for us, but for all. Thus it comes about that the
conscious subject, just because he finds himself confronted by nature and by
over-individual ends, proposes to himself an ideal, and imposes at the same
time upon himself the obligation to act in conformity with this full
consciousness which is in all, as in him, and thus he allows universal
consciousness to operate in his own individual life. Here we have conscience,
the idea of duty or obligation, accounted for, and the principle of autonomy of
the moral person laid down. The ethical life is shown as the conscious will in
action, finding within itself its own end and rule of action, finding also the
conscious wills of others like itself. Morality is the indefinite extension of
the conscious will which brings about the condition that others tend to become
“me.” Through the increasing power of intellectual disinterestedness and social
sympathy, the old formula “cogito, conscius sum” gives place to that of
“conscii sumus,” and this is no mere intellectual speculation, but a
concrete principle of action and feeling which is itself akin to the highest
and best in all religions.
One of the features of this ethic is its insistence upon the primacy of
self-consciousness. Indeed, it has its central point in the doctrine of
self-consciousness, which, according to Fouillée, implies the consciousness of
others and of the whole unity of mankind. Emphasising his gospel of
idées-forces, he outlines a morality in which the ideal shall attract
men persuasively, and not dominate them in what he regards as the arbitrary and
rather despotic manner of Kant.
By advocating the primacy of self-consciousness Fouillée claims to establish an
ethic which towers above those founded upon pleasure, happiness and feeling.
The morality of the idées-forces is not purely sentimental, not purely
intellectual, not purely voluntarist; it claims to rest on the totality of the
functions of consciousness, as revealed in the feelings, in intellect and will,
acting in solidarity and in harmony.
He endeavours to unite the positive and evolutionary views of morality to those
associated with theological or metaphysical doctrines, concerning the deity or
the morally perfect absolute. He claims, against the theologians and on behalf
of the positivists, that ethics can be an independent study, that it is not
necessarily bound up with theological dogmas. There is no need to found the
notion of duty upon that of the existence of God. Our own existence is
sufficient; the voice of conscience is within our human nature. He objects, as
did Nietzsche, to the formality and rigour of Kant’s “categorical imperative.”
His method is free from the legalism of Kant, and in him and Guyau is seen an
attempt to relate morality itself to life, expanding and showing itself
creative of ideals and tending to their fulfilment.
From the primacy of self-consciousness which can be expressed in the notion,
Je pense, donc j’ai une valeur morale, a transition is made to a
conception of values. Je pense, donc j’evalue des objets. The essential
element in the psychology of the idees-forces then comes into play by
tending to the realisation of the ideals conceived and based on the valuation
previously made. Finally, Fouillée claims that on this ethical operation of the
idées-forces can be founded the notion of a universal society of
consciences. This notion itself is a force operating to create that society.
The ideal is itself persuasive, and Fouillee’s inherent optimism, which we have
observed in his doctrine of progress, colours also his ethical theory. He has
faith in men’s capacity to be attracted by the ideals of love and brotherhood,
and insists that in the extension of these lies the supreme duty, and the
ideal, like the notion of duty itself, is a creation of our own thought. The
realisation of the universality, altruism, love and brotherhood of which he
speaks, depends upon our action, our power to foster ideas, to create ideals,
particularly in the minds of the young, and to strive ever for their
realisation. This is the great need of our time, Fouillée rightly urges.[31] Such a morality contains in a more concentrated
form, he thinks, the best that has been said and thought in the
world-religions; it achieves also that union of the scientific spirit with the
aspirations of man, which Fouillée regards as so desirable, and he claims for
it a philosophical value by its success in uniting the subjective and personal
factors of consciousness with those which are objective and universal.
Similar in several respects to the ethical doctrines of Fouillée are those of
his step-son. Guyau insists more profoundly, however, upon the “free”
conception of morality, as spontaneous and living, thus marking a further
reaction from Kant’s doctrine. Both Fouillée and Guyau interacted upon one
another in their mental relationship, and both of them (particularly Guyau)
have affinities with Nietzsche, who knew their work. While the three thinkers
are in revolt against the Kantian conception of ethics, the two Frenchmen use
their conceptions to develop an ethic altruistic in character, far removed from
the egoism which characterises the German.[32]
Guyau, after showing in his critique of English Ethics (La Morale anglaise
contemporaine, 1879) the inadequacies of a purely utilitarian doctrine of
morality, endeavoured to set forth in a more constructive manner the principles
of a scientific morality in his Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni
Sanction.
He takes as his starting-point the position where John Stuart Mill fell foul of
the word “desirable.” What, asks Guyau, is the supreme desire of every living
creature? The answer to this question is “Life.” What we all of us desire most
and constantly is Life, the most intensive and extensive in all its
relationships, physical and spiritual. In the principle of Life we find cause
and end—a unity which is a synthesis of all desires and all desirables.
Moreover, the concept or the principle of Life embraces all functions of our
nature—those within consciousness and those which are subconscious or
unconscious. It thus relates intimately purely instinctive action and
reflective acts, both of which are manifestations of Life and can enrich and
increase its power.
The purely hedonistic views of the Utilitarians he considers untrue. Doubtless,
he admits, there is a degree of truth in the doctrine that consciousness tends
to pursue the line of greatest pleasure or least resistance, but then we must
remember how slight a part this consciousness actually plays. Instincts and an
intensive subconscious “will-to-live” are constantly operating. A purely
scientific ethic, if it is to present a complete scheme, must allow for this by
admitting that the purely hedonistic search after pleasure is not in itself a
cause of action, but is an effect of a more fundamental or dominating factor.
This factor is precisely the effort of Life to maintain itself, to intensify
itself and expand. The chief motive power lies in the “intensity of Life.” “The
end which actually determines all conscious action is also the cause which
produces every unconscious action; it is Life itself, Life at once the most
intense and the most varied in its forms. From the first thrill of the embryo
in its mother’s womb to the last convulsion of the old man, every movement of
the being has had as cause Life in its evolution; this universal cause of
actions is, from another point of view, its constant effect and end.”[33]
A true ethic proceeding upon the recognition of these principles is scientific,
and constitutes a science having as its object all the means by which Life,
material and spiritual, may be conserved and expanded. Rising in the
evolutionary development we find the variety and scope of action increased. The
highest beings find rest not in sleep merely, but in variety and change of
action. The moral ideal lies in activity, in all the variety of its
manifestations. For Guyau, as for Bergson, the worst vice is idleness, inertia,
lack of élan vital, decay of personal initiative, and a consequent
degeneration to merely automatic existence.
Hedonism is quite untenable as a principle; pleasure is merely a consequence,
and its being set in the van of ethics is due to a false psychology and false
science. Granting that pleasure attends the satisfaction of a desire, pain its
repression, recognising that a feeling of pleasure accompanies many actions
which expand life, we must live, as Guyau reminds us, before we enjoy. The
activity of life surges within us, and we do not act with a view to pleasure or
with pleasure as a motive, but life, just because it is life, seeks to expand.
Man in acting has created his pleasures and his organs. The pleasure and the
organ alike proceed from function—that is, life itself. The pleasure of
an action and even the consciousness of it are attributes, not ends. The action
arises naturally from the inherent intensity of life.
The hedonists, too, says Guyau, have been negligent of the widest pleasures,
and have frequently confined their attention to those of eating and drinking
and sexual intercourse, purely sensitive, and have neglected those of living,
willing and thinking, which are more fundamental as being identical with the
consciousness of life. But Guyau asserts that, as the greatest intensity of
life involves necessarily its widest expansion, we must give special attention
to thought and will and feeling, which bring us into touch universally with our
fellows and promote the widest life. This expansiveness of life has great
ethical importance. With the change in the nature of reproduction, involving
the sexual union of two beings, “a new moral phase began in the world.” It
involved an expansion not merely physical, but mental—a union, however
crude, of soul.
It is in the extension of this feature of human life that Guyau sees the
ethical ideal. The most perfect organism is the most sociable, for the ideal of
the individual life is the common or social life. Morality is for him almost
synonymous with sociability, disinterestedness, love and brotherhood, and in it
we find, he says, “the flower of human life.”
All our action should be referred to this moral ideal of sociability. Guyau
sees in the phrase “social service” a conception which should not be confined
to those who are endeavouring in some religious or philanthropic manner to
alleviate the suffering caused by evil in human society, but a conception to
which the acts, all acts, of all members of society should be related. Like
Renouvier, he gives to work an important ethical value. “To work is to
produce—that is, to be useful to oneself and to others.” In work he sees
the economic and moral reconciliation of egoism and altruism. It is a good and
it is praiseworthy. Those who neglect and despise it are parasites, and their
existence in society is a negation of the moral ideal of sociability and social
service. In so far as the work of certain persons leads to the accumulation of
excessive capital in individual hands, it is likely to annul itself sooner or
later in luxury and idleness. Such an immoral state of affairs, it is the
concern of society, by its laws of inheritance and possession, to prevent.
Having made clear his principle of morality, Guyau then has to face the
question of its relation to the notion of duty or obligation. Duty in itself is
an idea which he rejects as vague, and he disapproves of the external and
artificial element present in the Kantian “rigorism.” For Guyau the very power
of action contained in life itself creates an impersonal duty. While Emerson
could write:
“Duty says, ‘I must,’
The youth replies, ‘I can,’”
the view of Guyau is directly the converse; for him “I can” gives the “I must”;
it is the power which precedes and creates the obligation. Life cannot maintain
itself unless it grows and expands. The soul that liveth to itself, that liveth
solely by habit and automatism, is already dead. Morality is the unity of the
personality expanding by action and by sympathy. It is at this point that
Guyau’s thought approaches closely to the philosophie des idées-forces
of his step-father, by his doctrine of thought and action.
Immorality is really unsociability, and Guyau thinks this a better key-note
than to regard it as disobedience. If it is so to be spoken of, it is
disobedience to the social elements in one’s own self—a mischievous
duplication of personality, egoistic in character and profoundly antisocial.
The sociological elements which characterise all Guyau’s work are here very
marked. In the notion of sociability we find an equivalent of the older and
more artificial conception of Duty—a conception which lacks concreteness
and offers in itself so little guidance because it is abstract and empty. The
criterion of sociability, Guyau claims, is much more concrete and useful. He
asks us to observe its spirituality, for the more gross and materialistic
pleasures fall short of the criterion by the very fact that they cannot be
shared. Guyau’s thought is here at its best. The higher pleasures, which are
not those of bodily enjoyment and satisfaction, but those of the spirit, which
thinks, feels, wills and loves, are precisely those which come nearest to
fulfilling the ideal of sociability, for they tend less to divide men than to
unite them and to urge them to a closer co-operation for their spiritual
advancement. Guyau writes here with sarcasm regarding the lonely imbecile in
the carriage drawn by four horses. For his own part it is enough to have—
“. . . a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”
He knows who really has chosen the better part. One cannot rejoice much and
rejoice alone. Companionship and love are supremely valuable “goods,” and the
pleasure of others he recognises as a very real part of his own. The egoist’s
pleasure is, on the other hand, very largely an illusion. He loses, says Guyau,
far more by his isolated enjoyment than he would gain by sharing.
Life itself is the greatest of all goods, as it is the condition of all others,
but life’s value fades if we are not loved. It is love, comradeship and the
fellowship of kindred souls which give to the humblest life a significance and
a feeling of value. This, Guyau points out with some tenderness, is the tragedy
of suicides. These occurrences are a social no less than an individual tragedy.
The tragic element lies in the fact that they were persons who were unable to
give their devotion to some object, and the loss of personalities in this way
is a real loss to society, but it is mainly society itself which is to blame
for them.
We need not fear, says Guyau, that such a gospel will promote unduly the
operation of mere animality or instinctive action, for in the growth of the
scientific spirit he sees the development of the great enemy of all instinct.
It is the dissolving force par excellence, the revolutionary spirit
which incessantly wages warfare within society against authority, and in the
individual it operates through reason against the instinctive impulses. Every
instinct tends to lapse in so far as it is reflected upon by consciousness.
The old notion of duty or obligation must, in Guyau’s opinion, be abandoned.
The sole commandment which a scientific and positive ethic, such as he
endeavours to indicate, can recognise, is expressible only in the words,
“Develop your life in all directions, be an individual as rich as possible in
energy, intensive and extensive”—in other words, “Be the most social and
sociable being you can.” It is this which replaces the “categorical
imperative.”
He aptly points out the failure of modern society to offer scope for devotion,
which is really a superabundance of life, and its proneness to crush out
opportunities which offer a challenge to the human spirit. There is a claim of
life itself to adventure; there is a pleasure in risk and in conflict; and this
pleasure in risk and adventure has been largely overlooked in its relation to
the moral life. Such risk and adventure are not merely a pure negation of self
or of personal life, but rather, he considers, that life raised to its highest
power, reaching the sublime. By virtue of such devotion our lives are enriched.
He draws a touching picture of the sacrifice upon which our modern social life
and civilisation are based, and draws an analogy between the blood of dead
horses used by the ploughman in fertilising his field, and the blood of the
martyrs of humanity, qui ont fécondé l’avenir. Often they may have been
mistaken; later generations may wonder if their cause was worth fighting for;
yet, although nothing truly is sadder than to die in vain, that devotion was
valuable in and for itself.
With the demand of life for risk in action is bound up the impetus to undertake
risk in thought. From this springs the moral need for faith, for belief and
acceptance of some hypotheses. The very divergence or diversity of the
world-religions is not discouraging but rather the reverse. It is a sign of
healthy moral life. Uniformity would be highly detrimental; it would cease to
express life, for with conformity of belief would come spiritual decline and
stagnation. Guyau anticipates here his doctrine of a religion of free thought,
a “non-religion” of the future, which we shall discuss in our next chapter,
when we examine his book on that subject. In the diversity of religious views
Guyau sees a moral good, for these religions are themselves an expression of
life in its richness, and the conservation and expansion of this rich variety
of life are precisely the moral ideal itself.
We must endeavour to realise how rich and varied the nature of human life
really is. Revolutionaries, Guyau points out, are always making the mistake of
regarding life and truth as too simple. Life and truth are so complex that
evolution is the key-note to what is desirable in the individual intellect and
in society, not a revolution which must inevitably express the extreme of one
side or the other. The search for truth is slow and needs faith and patience,
but the careful seekers of it are making the future of mankind. But truth will
be discovered only in relation to action and life and in proportion to the
labour put into its realisation. The search for truth must never be divorced
from the active life, Guyau insists, and, indeed, he approaches the view that
the action will produce the knowledge, “He that doeth the will shall know of
the doctrine.” Moreover he rightly sees in action the wholesome cure for
pessimism and that cynicism which all too frequently arises from an equal
appreciation of opposing views. “Even in doubt,” he exclaims, “we can love;
even in the intellectual night, which prevents our seeing any ultimate goal, we
can stretch out a hand to him who weeps at our feet.”[34] In other words, we must do the duty that lies
nearest, in the hope and faith that by that action itself light will come.
In the last part of his treatise Guyau deals with the difficult problem of
“sanction,” so ultimately connected with ethics, and, it must be added, with
religion. The Providence who rewards and punishes us, according to the orthodox
religious creed of Christendom, is merely a personified “sanction” or
distributive justice, operating in a terrestrial and celestial court of assize.
Guyau condemns this as an utterly immoral conception. Religious sanctions, as
he has not much difficulty in showing, are more cruel than those which a man
could imagine himself inflicting upon his mortal enemy. The “Heavenly Father”
ought at least to be as good as earthly ones, who do not cruelly punish their
children. Guyau touches upon an important point here, which will be further
emphasised—namely, the necessity for making our idea of God, if we have
one at all, harmonious with our own ethical conceptions. The old ideas of the
divinity are profoundly immoral and are based on physical force. This is
natural because those views which have survived in modern times are those of
primitive and savage people to whom the most holy was the most powerful and
physically majestic. But, says Guyau, now that we see that “all physical force
represents moral weakness,” the idea of God the All-terrible, with his
hell-fire ready for the sinful soul, must be condemned as immoral blasphemy
itself. “God,” he remarks, “in damning any soul might be said to damn himself.”
Virtue is really its own reward. No one should be or do good in order to gain
an entry into paradise or to escape the torments of hell. That is to build
morality on an immoral principle and on a belief, not in goodness as valuable
in and for itself, but on a basis of material self-interest alone, “the best
policy.” It is true, Guyau admits, that virtue involves happiness, but it is
not in this sense. A conflict between “pleasure” and virtue is usually one of
higher versus lower ideals. Virtue is not a precedent to
sense-happiness, and in this sense is not at all equivalent or bound up with
happiness, but, as the facts of life reveal, very often opposed to it.
Guyau opposes the ordinary view of punishment in society and shows that it is
both immoral and socially harmful in its application. It adds evil to evil, and
legal murder is really more absurd than the illegal murder. Punishment, capital
or other, is no “compensation” exacted for the crime committed, and it never
can be such. Attempts to treat and cure the guilty one would, Guyau suggests,
be far more rational, humane and really beneficial to society itself, which at
present creates by its punishments, especially those inflicted for first
offences, a “criminal class.” One should convert the criminal before punishing
him, and then, Guvau asks, if he is converted, why punish him?
The appeal to justice denoted in the words “To everyone according to his works”
is frequently heard in the defence of punishment. This is an excellent maxim in
Guyau’s opinion, but he is careful to point out that it is purely one of social
economics. It is a plea for a just distribution of the products of labour, but
does not apply at all to the problem of punishment. In a manner which recalls
the remarks of Renan, Guyau sees in evil-doing a lack of culture, or rather of
that sociability, which comes of social culture, from consciousness of a
membership of society and a solidarity with one’s fellows. In vice and in
virtue alike the human will appears aspiring to better things according to its
lights. As virtue is its own reward, so is evil; and the moralist must say to
the wicked: “Verily they have their reward” (Comme si ce n’était pas assez
pour eux d’être méchants).
Guyau comments upon the gradual modifications of punishment from a social point
of view. There was the day when the chastisement was infinitely worse than the
crime itself. Then came the morality of reciprocity, “an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth,” an ethic which represented a high ideal for primitive man
to reach, and one to which, Guyau thinks, we have yet to reach to-day in some
spheres of life. Yet a further moral development will show how foolish, in a
civilised society, are wrath and hatred of the criminal and the cry for
vengeance. Society must aim at ensuring protection for itself with the minimum
of individual suffering. Punishment must be regarded as an example for the
future rather than as revenge or compensation. In the individual himself Guyau
observes how powerful can be the inner sanction of remorse, the suffering
caused by the unrealised ideal. This is perhaps the only real moral punishment,
and it is one which society cannot itself directly enforce. Only by increasing
“sociability” and social sensitiveness can this sanction be indirectly
developed.
Herein lies the highest ethical ideal, far more concrete and living, in Guyau’s
opinion, than the rigorism of a Kant or the “scholastic”[35] temper of a Renouvier. Charity or love for all men,
whatever their value morally, intellectually or physically, must, he claims,
“be the final end pursued even by public opinion.”In co-operation and
sociability, he finds the vital moral ideal; in love and brotherhood, he finds
the real sanction which should operate.”Love supposes mutuality of love,” he
says; and there is one idea superior to that of justice, that is the idea of
brotherhood, and he remarks with a humane tenderness “the guilty have probably
more need for love than anyone else.” “I have,” he cries, “two hands—the
one for gripping the hand of those with whom I march along in life, the other
to lift up the fallen. Indeed, to these I should be able to stretch out both
hands together.”[36]
While Fouillée and, more especially, Guyau were thus outlining an ethic marked
by a strong humanitarianism, a more definitely religious ethic was being
proclaimed by that current of philosophy of belief and of action which has
profoundly associated itself in its later developments with “Modernism” in the
Roman Church. The tendency to stress action and the practical reason is
noticeable in the work of Brochard, Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, also in Rauh.
They agree with Renouvier in advocating the primacy of the practical reason,
but their own reasons for this are different from his, or at least in them the
reasons are more clearly enunciated. Plainly these reasons lie in the
difficulties of intellectualism and the quest of truth. They propose the quest
of the good in the hope of finding in that sphere some objectivity, some
absolute, in fact, which they cannot find out by intellectual searching. They
correspond in a somewhat parallel fashion to the philosophy of intuition with
its rejection of intellectualism as offering a final solution. These thinkers
desire by action, by doing the will, to attain to a knowledge of the doctrine.
The first word in their gospel is—
“Im Anfang war die That.”
It is for them the beginning and the end. Their certainty is an act of belief,
which grows out of action and life. It is a curious mixture of insistence upon
life and action, such as we find in Guyau and in Bergson, coupled with a
religious Platonism. Brochard’s work is of this type. He wrote as early as 1874
on La Responsabilité morale, and in 1876 on L’Universalité des
Notions morales. Three years later appeared his work L’Erreur.
Ollé-Laprune and Blondel, who best represent this tendency, do not like Guyau’s
ethics, which lacks the religious idealism which they consider should be bound
up with morality. This was the thesis developed in the volume La Certitude
morale, written by Ollé-Laprune in 1881. “By what right,” says Ollé-Laprune
in his subsequent book Le Prix de la Vie (1895), “can Guyau speak of a
high exalted life, of a moral ideal? It is impossible to speak so when you have
only a purely naturalistic ethic; for merely to name these things is an
implication that there is not only intensity in life, but also quality. You
suppress duty because you can see in it only a falsely mystical view of life
and of nature. What you fail to realise is that between duty and life there is
a profound agreement. You reduce duty to life, and in life itself you consider
only its quantity and intensity, and regard as illusion everything that is of a
different order from the natural physical order in which you imprison
yourself.”[37]
Such a criticism is not altogether fair to Guyau who, as we noted, proclaimed
the superiority of the higher qualities of spiritual life. It does, however,
attack his abandonment of the idea of Duty; and we must now turn to examine a
thinker, who, by his contribution to ethics, endeavoured to satisfy the claims
of life and of duty.
This was Rauh, whose Essai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale
appeared in 1890. It had been preceded by a study of the psychology of the
feelings, and was later followed by L’Expérience morale (1903). In
seeking a metaphysical foundation for morality, Rauh recalls Kant’s
Metaphysic of Morals. He, indeed, agrees with Kant in the view that the
essence of morality lies in the sentiment of obligation. Belief or faith in an
ideal, by which it behoves us to act, imposes itself, says Rauh, upon the mind
of man as essential. It is as positive a fact as the laws of the natural
sciences. Man not only states facts and formulates general laws in a scientific
manner, he also conceives and believes in ideals, which become bound up in his
mind with the sentiment of obligation—that is, the general feeling of
duty. But beyond a general agreement upon this point, Rauh does not follow
Kant. He tends to look upon the ethical problem in the spirit which Guyau,
Bergson and Blondel show in their general philosophic outlook. In life, action
and immediacy alone can we find a solution. Nothing practical can be deduced
from the abstract principle of obligation or duty in general. The moral
consciousness of man is, in Rauh’s opinion, akin to the intuitional perceptions
of Bergson’s philosophy. Morality, moreover, is creating itself perpetually by
the reflection of sensitive minds on action and on life itself. “Morality, or
rather moral action, is not merely the crown of metaphysical speculation, but
itself the true metaphysic, which is learnt only in living, as it is naught but
life itself.”[38] In concluding his thesis, Rauh
reminds us that “the essential and most certain factor in the midst of the
uncertainties of life and of duty lies in the constant consciousness of the
moral ideal.” In it he sees a spiritual reality which, if we keep it ever
before us, may inspire the most insignificant of our actions and render them
into a harmony, a living harmony of character.
Rauh’s doctrines, we claim, have affinities to the doctrines of action and
intuition. That does not imply, however, that the intelligence is to be
minimised—far from this; but the intelligence triumphs here in realising
that it is not all-sufficing or supreme. “The heart hath reasons which the
reason cannot know.” While Fouillée had remarked that morality is metaphysics
in action, Rauh points out that “metaphysics in action” is the foundation of
our knowledge. We must, he insists, seek for certitude in an immediate and
active adaptation to reality instead of deducing a rule or rules of action from
abstract systems.
He separates himself from the sociologists[39] by
pointing out that, however largely social environment may determine our moral
ideals and rules of conduct, nevertheless the ethical decision is fundamentally
an absolutely personal affair. The human conscience, in so far as active, must
never passively accept the existing social morality. It finds itself
sometimes in agreement, sometimes obliged to give a newer interpretation to old
conventions, and at times is obliged to revolt against them. In no case can the
idea of duty be equated simply and calmly with acquiescence in the collective
general will. It must demand from social morality its credentials and hold
itself free to criticise the current ethic of the community. More often than
not society acts, Rauh thinks, as a break rather than a stimulus; and social
interest is not a measure of the moral ideal, but rather a limitation of it.
Although the moral ideal is one which must be personally worked out, it is not
a merely individualistic affair. Rauh does not abandon the guidance of reason,
but he objects equally to the following of instinct or a transcendent teaching
divorced from the reality of life. Our guide must be reflection upon instinct,
and this is only possible by action and experience, the unique experience of
living itself. Reason itself is experience; and it is our duty to face problems
personally and sincerely, in a manner which the rational element in us renders
“impersonal, universal and disinterested.”
Any code of morality which is not directly in contact with life is worthless,
and all ethical ideas which are not those of our time are of little value. Only
he is truly a man who lives the life of his time. The truly moral man is he who
is alive to this spirit and who does not unreflectingly deduce his rules of
conduct from ancient books or teachers of a past age. The art of living is the
supreme art, and it is this which the great moralists have endeavoured to show
humanity. Neither Socrates nor Jesus wrote down their ethical ideas: they lived
them.
Rauh thus reminds us partly of Guyau in his insistence upon life. He regards
the ethical life at its highest, as one sans obligation ni sanction.
Rather than the Kantian obligation of duty, of constraint, he favours in his
second book, L’Expérience morale, a state of spontaneity, of passion and
exaltation of the personal conscience which faces the issue in a disinterested
manner. The man who is morally honest himself selects his values, his ideals,
his ends, by the light which reason gives him. Ethics becomes thus an
independent science, a science of “ends,” which Reason, as reflected in the
personal conscience, acclaims a science of the ideal ordering of life.
Such was Rauh’s conception of rational moral experience, one which he
endeavoured to apply in his lectures to the two problems which he considered to
be supreme in his time, that of patriotism and of social justice.
These problems were further touched upon in 1896, when Léon Bourgeois (since
noted for his advocacy of the “League of Nations”) published his little work
Solidarité, which was also a further contribution to an independent,
positive and lay morality. In the conception of the solidarity of humanity
throughout the ages, Bourgeois accepted the teaching of the sociologists, and
urges that herein can be found an obligation, for the present generation must
repay their debt to their ancestors and be worthy of the social heritage which
has made them what they are. Somewhat similar sentiments had Been expressed by
Marion in his Solidarité morale (1880). Ethical questions were kept in the
forefront by the society known as L’Union pour l’Action morale, founded
by Desjardins and supported by Lagneau (1851- 1894). After the excitement of
the Dreyfus case (1894- 1899) this society took the name L’Union pour la
Verité. In 1902 Lapie made an eloquent plea for a rational morality in his
Logique de la Volonté, and in the following year Séailles published his
Affirmations de la Conscience moderne. The little Précis of André
Lalande, written in the form of a catechism, was a further contribution to the
establishment of a rational and independent lay morality, which the teaching of
ethics as a subject in the lycées and lay schools rendered in some
degree necessary.[40] This little work appeared
in 1907, the same year in which Paul Bureau wrote his book La Crise morale
des Temps nouveaux. Then Parodi (who in 1919 produced a fine study of
French thought since 1890[41]) followed up
the discussion of ethical problems by his work Le Problème morale et la
Pensée contemporaine (1909), and in 1912 Wilbois published his contribution
entitled Devoir et Durée: Essai de Morale sociale.
Thus concludes a period in which the discussion, although not marked by a
definite turning round of positions as was manifested in our discussions of
science, freedom and progress, bears signs of a general development. This
development is shown by the greater insistence upon the social aspects of
ethics and by a turning away from the formalism of Kant to a more concrete
conception of duty, or an ethic in which the notion of duty itself has
disappeared. This is the general tendency from Renan with his insistence upon
the aesthetic element, Renouvier with his claim for justice in terms of
personality, to Fouillée, Guyau, Ollé-Laprune and Rauh with their insistence
upon action, upon love and life.
Yet, although the departure from an intense individualism in ethics is
desirable, we must beware of the danger which threatens from the other extreme.
We cannot close this chapter without insisting upon this point. Good must be
personally realised in the inner life of individuals, even if they form a
community. The collective life is indeed necessary, but it is not collectively
that the good is experienced. It is personal. In the neglect of this important
aspect lies the error of much Communistic philosophy and of that social science
which looks on society as purely an organism. This analogy is false, for
however largely a community exhibits a general likeness to an organism, it is a
superficial resemblance. There is not a centre of consciousness, but a
multitude of such centres each living an inner life of personal experience
which is peculiarly its own; and these personalities, we must remember, are not
simply a homogeneous mass of social matter, they are capable of realising the
good each in his or her own manner. This is the only realisation of the good.
In this chapter we have traced the attempt to reconcile science et
conscience, after the way had been opened up by the maintenance of freedom.
It was recognised that reason is not entirely pure speculation: it is also
practical. Human nature seeks for goodness as well as for truth. It is
noticeable that while the insistence upon the primacy of the practical reason
developed, on the one hand, into a philosophy of action (anti-intellectual
action in its extreme development as shown in Syndicalism), the same tendency,
operating in a different manner and upon different data, essayed to find in
action, and in the belief which arises from action, that Absolute or Ideal to
which the pure reason feels it cannot alone attain—namely, the
realisation of God. To this problem of religion we devote our next chapter.
CHAPTER VII
RELIGION
INTRODUCTION: The religious situation in France in the nineteenth
century—The intellectual and political forces against the Roman Catholic
Church—Its claims, its orthodoxy and tyranny—The
humanitarians—The power of Rome—Church and State—The
educational problem—Clericalism—The cult of Jeanne d’Arc—The
lack of a via media between Roman orthodoxy and libre
pensée—Protestantism negligible.
I. Comte’s effort in his “Religion of Humanity”—Renan and the
Church—Freedom—Denial of supernatural elements in
Christianity—Vie de Jésus—Renan not
irreligious—Piety—Love and Goodness reveal the Divine—God the
“ideal”—Vacherot and Taine.
II. Renouvier’s efforts, with Pillon, in the Critique philosophique and
Critique religieuse—His republican theology—Freedom,
personality and God—The deity as finite—God as Goodness and as a
Person.
III. Ravaisson’s blend of Hellenism and Christian
thought—Boutroux—Fouillée on the Idea of God—The importance
of Guyau’s L’Irreligion de l’Avenir—The decay of dogma and
ecclesiasticism—The term “irreligion” misleading—Sociology and
religion-Freedom—Religious education and tolerance—Modernism and
the Church—Loisy and others—Symbolism and Fidéisme.
CONCLUSION: The personal factor in faith—Freedom vital to
religion—Change of attitude since the eighteenth century—Value of
religion—Tendency towards a free religion devoid of dogmas, expressive of
the best aspirations of man’s mind.
CHAPTER VII
RELIGION
It is outside our purpose to embark upon discussions of the religious problem
in France, in so far as this became a problem of politics. Our intention is
rather to examine the inner core of religious thought, the philosophy of
religion, which forms an appropriate final chapter to our history of the
development of ideas.
Yet, although our discussion bears mainly upon the general attitude to
religion, upon the development of central religious ideas such as the idea of
God, and upon the place of religion in the future—that is to say, upon
the philosophy of religion—it is practically impossible to understand the
religious attitude of our thinkers without a brief notice of the religious
situation in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In our Introduction we briefly called attention to the attempt of the
Traditionalists after the Revolution to recall their countrymen to the
Christian faith as presented in and by the Roman Catholic Church. The efforts
made by De Bonald, De Maistre, Chateaubriand, Lamennais and Lacordaire did not
succeed as they had hoped, but, nevertheless, a considerable current of loyalty
to the Church and the Catholic religion set in. Much of this loyalty was bound
up with sentimental affection for a monarchy, and arose partly from
anti-revolutionary sentiments.[1] It cannot,
however, be entirely explained by these political feelings. There was the
expression of a deeper and more spiritual reaction directed against the
materialistic and sceptical teachings of the eighteenth century. Man’s heart
craved comfort, consolation and warmth. It had been starved in the previous
century, and revolution and war had only added to the cup of bitterness. Thus
there came an epoch of Romanticism in religion of which the sentimental and
assumed orthodoxy of Chateaubriand was a sign of the times. His Génie du
Christianisme may now appear to us full of sentimentality, but it was
welcomed at the time, since it expressed at least some of those aspirations
which had for long been denied an expression. It was this which marked the
great difference between the two centuries in France. The eighteenth was mainly
concerned with scoffing at religion. Its rationalism was that of Voltaire. In
the first half of the nineteenth century the pendulum swung in the opposite
direction. Romanticism, in poetry, in literature, in philosophy and in religion
was à la mode, and it led frequently to sentimentality or
morbidity. Lamartine, Victor Hugo and De Vigny professed the Catholic faith for
many years. We may note, and this is important, that in France the only form of
Christianity which holds any sway over the people in general is the Roman
Catholic faith. Outside the Roman Church there is no religious organisation
which is of much account. This explains why it is so rare to find a thinker who
owns allegiance to any Church or religion, and yet it would be wrong to deem
them irreligious. There is no via media between Catholicism and free
personal thought. This was a point which Renan quite keenly felt, and of which
his own spiritual pilgrimage, which took him out of the bounds of the Church of
his youth, is a fine illustration. Many of France’s noblest sons have been
brought up in the religious atmosphere of the Church and owe much of their
education to her, and Rome believes in education. The control of education has
been throughout the century a problem severely contested by Church and State.
More important for our purpose than the details of the quarrels of Church and
State is the intellectual condition of the Church itself.
This reveals a striking vitality, a vigour and initiative at war with the
central powers of the Vatican, a seething unrest which uniformity and authority
find annoying. How strong the power of the central authority was, the affair of
the Concordat had shown, when forty bishops were deposed for non-acceptance of
the arrangement between Napoleon and the Pope.[2]
Stronger still was the iron hand of the Pope over intellectual freedom.
Lamennais was not a “modernist,” as this term is now understood, for his
theology was orthodox. His fight with the Vatican was for freedom in the
relations of the Church to society. He pleaded in his Essai sur
L’indifference en Matière de Religion for the Church to accept the
principle of freedom, to leave the cherished fondling of the royalist cause,
and to present to the world the principles of a Christian democracy. Lamennais
and other liberal-minded men desired the separation of Church and State, and
were tolerant of those who were not Catholic. They claimed, along with their
own “right to believe,” that of others “not to believe.” His was a liberal
Catholicism, but its proposals frightened his co-religionists, and drew upon
him in 1832 an encyclical letter (Mirari vos) from the Vatican. The Pope
denounced liberalism absolutely as an absurd and an erroneous doctrine, a piece
of folly sprung from the “fetid source of indifferentism.” Lamennais found he
could not argue, as Renan himself later put it, “with a bar of iron.” It was
the reactionary De Maistre, with his principle of papal authority,[3] and not Lamennais, whom the Vatican, naturally
enough, chose to favour, or rather to follow.
Thus Lamennais found himself, by an almost natural and inevitable process,
outside the Church, and this in spite of the fact that his theology was
orthodox. He endeavoured to present his case in his paper L’Avenir and
in an influential brochure, The Words of a Believer, which left its mark
upon Hugo, Michelet, Lamartine, and George Sand. His views blended with the
current of humanitarian and democratic doctrines which developed from the
Saint-Simonists, Pierre Leroux and similar thinkers. We have already noted that
these social reformers held to their beliefs with the conviction that in them
and not in the Roman Church lay salvation.
This brings us to a crucial point which is the clue to much of the subsequent
thought upon religion. This is the profound and seemingly irreconcilable
difference between these two conceptions of religion.
The orthodox Catholic faith believes in a supernatural revelation, and is
firmly convinced that man is inherently vile and corrupt, born in sin from
which he cannot be redeemed, save by the mystical operations of divine grace,
working only through the holy sacraments and clergy of the one true Church, to
whom all power was given, according to its view, by the historic Jesus. Its
methods are conservative, its discipline rigid and based on tradition and
authority. Its system of salvation is excessively individualistic. It holds
firmly to this pessimistic view of human nature, based on the doctrine of
original sin, thus maintaining a creed which, in the hands of a devoted clergy,
who are free from domestic ties, works as a powerful moral force upon the
individual believer. His freedom of thought is restricted; he can neither read
nor think what he likes, and the Church, having made the thirteenth-century
doctrines of Aquinas its official philosophy, hurls anathema at ideas
scientific, political, philosophical or theological which have appeared since.
No half-measures are allowed: either one is a loyal Catholic or one is not a
Catholic at all. In this relentlessly uncompromising attitude lies the main
strength of Catholicism; herein also is contained its weakness, or at least
that element which makes it manufacture its own greatest adversaries.
While claiming to be the one Church of Jesus Christ, it does not by any means
put him in the foreground of its religion. Its hierarchy of saints is rather a
survival of polytheism; its worship of the Virgin and cult of the Sacré
Cœur issue often in a religious sentimentality and sensuality promoted by
the denial of a more healthy outlet for instincts which are an essential part
of human nature. Tribute, however, must be paid—high tribute—to
the devotion of individuals, particularly to the work done by the religious
orders of women, whose devotion the Church having won by its intense appeal to
women keeps, consecrates and organises in a manner which no other Church has
succeeded in doing. This is largely the secret of the vigorous life of the
Church, for as a power of charity the Roman Church is remarkable and deserves
respect. Her educational efforts, her missions, hospitals, her humbler clergy,
and her orders which offer opportunity of service or of sanctuary to all types
of human nature—these constitute Roman Catholicism in a truer manner than
the diplomacy of the Jesuits or the councils of the Vatican. It is this pulsing
human heart of hers which keeps her alive, not the rigid intellectual dogmatism
and antiquated theology which she expounds, nor her loyalty to the established
political order, which, siding with the rich and powerful, frequently gives to
this professedly spiritual power a debasing taint of materialism.
Against all this, and in vital opposition to this, we have the humanitarians
who, rejecting the doctrine of corruption, believe that human instincts and
human reason themselves make for goodness and for God. While Catholicism looks
to the past, humanitarianism looks forward, believes in freedom and in
progress, and regards the immanent Christ-spirit as working in mankind. Its
gospel is one of love and brotherhood, a romantic doctrine issuing in love and
pity for the oppressed and the sinful. In the collective consciousness of
mankind it sees the incarnation, the growth of the immanent God. Therefore it
claims that in democracy, socialism and world brotherhood lies the true
Christianity. This, the humanitarians claim, is the true religious
idealism—that which was preached by the Founder himself and which his
Church has betrayed. The humanitarians make service to mankind the essence of
religion, and regard themselves as more truly Christian than the Church.
In those countries where Protestantism has a large following, the two doctrines
of humanitarian optimism and of the orthodox pessimism regarding human nature
are confused vaguely together. The English mind in particular is able to
compromise and to blend the two conflicting philosophies in varying degrees;
but in the French mind its clearer penetration and more logical acumen prevent
this. The Frenchman is an idealist and tends to extremes, either that of
whole-hearted devotion to a dominating Church or that of the abandonment of
organised religion. In Protestantism he sees only a halfway house, built upon
the first principles of criticism, and unwilling to pursue those principles to
their conclusion—namely, the rejection of all organised Church religion,
the adoption of perfect freedom for the individual in all matters of belief, a
religion founded on freedom and on personal thought which alone is free.
Such were the two dominant notes in religious thought in France at the opening
of our period.
Catholicism resisted the humanitarianism of 1848 and strengthened its power
after the coup d’état. The Church and the Vatican became more staunch in
their opposition to all doctrines of modern thought. The French clergy profited
by the alliance with the aristocracy, while religious orders, particularly the
Jesuits, increased in number and in power. Veuillot proclaimed the virtues of
Catholicism in his writings. Meanwhile the Pope’s temporal power decreased, but
his spiritual power was increasing in extent and in intensity. Centralisation
went on within the Church, and Rome (i.e., the Pope and the Vatican)
became all-powerful.
Just after the half-century opens the Pope (Pius IX.), in 1854, proclaimed his
authority in announcing the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
Mary.[4] As France had heard the sentence,
L’Etat, c’est moi, from the lips of one of its greatest monarchs, it now
heard from another quarter a similar principle enunciated, L’Eglise, c’est moi.
As democracy and freedom cried out against the one, they did so against the
other. Undaunted, the Vatican continued in its absolutism, even although it
must have seen that in some quarters revolt would be the result. Ten years
later the Pope attacked the whole of modern thought, to which he was
diametrically opposed, in his encyclical Quanta Cura and in his famous
Syllabus, which constituted a catalogue of the modern errors and
heresies which he condemned. This famous challenge was quite clear and
uncompromising in its attitude, concluding with a curse upon “him who should
maintain that the Roman Pontiff can, and must, be reconciled and compromise
with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation!” To the doctrine of
L’Eglise, c’est moi had now been added that of La Science, aussi,
c’est moi. This was not all. In 1870 the dogma of Papal Infallibility was
proclaimed. By a strange irony of history, however, this declaration of
spiritual absolutism was followed by an entire loss of temporal power. The
outbreak of the war in that same year between France and Prussia led to the
hasty withdrawal of French troops from the Papal Domain and the Eternal City
fell to the secular power of the Italian national army under Victor Emmanuel.
The defeat of France at the hands of Prussia in 1871 issued in a revival of
religious sentiment, frequently seen in defeated nations. A special mission or
crusade of national repentance gathered in large subscriptions which built the
enormous Church of the Sacré Coeur overlooking Paris from the heights of
Montmartre.[5]
Seeking for religious consolation, the French people found a Catholicism which
had become embittered and centralised for warfare upon liberal religion and
humanitarianism. They found that the only organised religion they knew was
dominated by the might of Rome and the powers of the clergy. These even wished
France, demoralised as she was for the moment, to undertake the restoration of
the Pope’s temporal power in Italy. Further, they were definitely in favour of
monarchy: “the altar and the throne” were intimately associated in the
ecclesiastical mind.
It was the realisation of this which prompted Gambetta to cry out to the Third
Republic with stern warning, “Clericalism is your enemy.” Thus began the
political fight for which Rome had been strengthening herself. With the defeat
of the clerical-monarchy party in 1877 the safety of the Republic was assured.
From then until 1905 the Republic and the Church fought each other. Educational
questions were bitterly contested (1880). The power of the Jesuits, especially,
was regarded as a constant menace to the State. The Dreyfus affair (1894-
1899) did not improve relations, with its intense anti-semitism and
anti-clericalism. The battle was only concluded by the legislation of
Waldeck-Rousseau in 1901 and Combes in 1903, expelling religious orders. Combes
himself had studied for the priesthood and was violently anti-clerical. The
culmination came in the Separation Law of 1905 carried by Briand, in the Pope’s
protest against this, followed by the Republic’s confiscation of much Church
property, a step which might have been avoided if the French Catholics had been
allowed to have their way in an arrangement with the State regarding their
churches. This was prevented by the severance of diplomatic relations between
France and the Vatican and by the Pope’s disagreement with the French Catholics
whose wishes he ignored in his policy of definite hostility to the French
Government.[6]
During our period a popular semi-nationalist and semi-religious cult of Jeanne
d’Arc, “the Maid of Orleans,” appeared in France. The clergy expressly
encouraged this, with the definite object of enlisting sentiments of
nationality and patriotism on the side of the Church. Ecclesiastical diplomacy
at headquarters quickly realised the use which might be made of this patriotic
figure whom, centuries before, the Church had thought fit to burn as a witch.
The Vatican saw a possibility of blending French patriotism with devotion to
Catholicism and thus possibly strengthening, in the eyes of the populace at
least, the waning cause of the Church.
The adoration of Jeanne d’Arc was approved as early as 1894, but when the
Church found itself in a worse plight with its relation to the State, it made
preparations in 1903 for her enrolment among the saints.[7] She was honoured the following year with the
title of “Venerable,” but in 1908, after the break of Church and State, she was
accorded the full status of a saint, and her statue, symbolic of patriotism
militant, stands in most French churches as conspicuous often as that of the
Virgin, who, in curious contrast, fondles the young child, and expresses the
supreme loveliness of motherhood.[8] The cult of
Jeanne d’Arc flourished particularly in 1914 on the sentiments of patriotism,
militarism and religiosity then current. This was natural because it is for
these very sentiments that she stands as a symbol. She is evidently a worthy
goddess whose worship is worth while, for we are assured that it was through
her beneficent efforts that the German Army retired from Paris in 1914
and again in 1918. The saintly maid of Orleans reappeared and beat them back!
Such is the power of the “culte” which the Church eagerly fosters. The Sacré
Coeur also has its patriotic and military uses, figuring as it did as an emblem
on some regimental flags on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the celebrations of
Napoleon’s centenary (1921) give rise to the conjecture that he, too, will in
time rank with Joan of Arc as a saint. His canonisation would achieve
absolutely that union of patriotic and religious sentimentality to which the
Church in France directs its activities.
The vast majority of the 39,000,000 French people are at least nominally
Catholic, even if only from courtesy or from a utilitarian point of view. Only
about one in sixty of the population are Protestant. Although among cultured
conservatives there is a real devotion to the Church, the creed of France is in
general something far more broad and human than Catholicism, in spite of the
tremendously human qualities which that Church possesses. The creed of France
is summed up better in art, nature, beauty, music, science, la patrie,
humanity, in the worship of life itself.[9]
I
It was against such a background of ecclesiastical and political affairs that
the play of ideas upon religion went on. Such was the environment, the
tradition which surrounded our thinkers, and we may very firmly claim that only
by a recognition that their religious and national milieu was of such a
type as we have outlined, can the real significance of their religious thought
be understood. Only when we have grasped the essential attitude of authority
and tradition of the Roman Church, its ruthless attitude to modern thought of
all kinds, can we understand the religious attitude of men like Renan,
Renouvier and Guyau.
We are also enabled to see why the appeal of the Saint-Simonist group could
present itself as a religious and, indeed, Christian appeal outside the Church.
It enables us to understand why Cousin’s spiritualism pleased neither the
Catholics nor their opponents, and to realise why the “Religion of Humanity,”
which Auguste Comte inaugurated, made so little appeal.[10] This has been well styled an “inverted
Catholicism,” since it endeavours to preserve the ritual of that religion and
to embody the doctrines of humanitarianism. Naturally enough it drew upon
itself the scorn of both these groups. The Catholic saw in it only blasphemy:
the humanitarian saw no way in which it might further his ends.
Comte’s attempt to base his new religion upon Catholicism was quite deliberate,
for he strove to introduce analogies with “everything great and deep which the
Catholic system of the Middle Ages effected or even projected.” He offered a
new and fantastic trinity, compiled a calendar of renowned historical
personalities, to replace that of unknown saints. He proclaimed “positive
dogmas “and aspired to all the authority and infallibility of the Roman
Pontiff, supported by a trained clergy, whose word should be law. Curiously
enough he, too, had his anathemas, in that he had days set apart for the solemn
cursing of the great enemies of the human race, such as Napoleon. It was indeed
a reversed Catholicism, offering a fairly good caricature of the methods of the
Roman Church, and it was equally obnoxious in its tyrannical attitude.[11] While it professed to express humanity and love as
its central ideas it proceeded to outline a method which is the utter negation
of these. Comte made the great mistake of not realising that loyalty to these
ideals must involve spiritual freedom, and that the religion of humanity must
be a collective inspiration of free individuals, who will in love and
fellowship tolerate differences upon metaphysical questions. Uniformity can
only be mischievous.
It was because he grasped this vital point that Renan’s discussion of the
religious question is so instructive. For him, religion is essentially an
affair of personal taste. Here we have another indication of the clear way in
which Renan was able to discern the tendencies of his time. He published his
Etudes d’Histoire religieuse in 1857, and his Preface to the
Nouvelles Etudes d’Histoire religieuse was written in 1884. He claims
there that freedom is essential to religion, and that it is absolutely
necessary that the State should have no power whatever over it. Religion is as
personal and private a matter as taste in literature or art. There should be no
State laws, he claims, relating to religion at all, any more than dress is
prescribed for citizens by law. He well points out that only a State which is
strictly neutral in religion can ever be absolutely free from playing the
rôle of persecutor. The favouring of one sect will entail some
persecution or hardship upon others. Further, he sees the iniquity of taxing
the community to pay the expenses of clergy to whose teachings they may object,
or whose doctrines are not theirs. Freedom, Renan believed, would claim its own
in the near future and, denouncing the Concordat, he prophesied the abolition
of the State Church.
The worst type of organisation Renan holds to be the theocratic state, like
Islam, or the ancient Pontifical State in which dogma reigns supreme. He
condemns also the State whose religion is based upon the profession of a
majority of its citizens. There should be, as Spinoza was wont to style it,
“liberty of philosophising.” The days of the dominance of dogma are passing, in
many quarters gone by already, “Religion has become for once and all a matter
of personal taste.”
Renan himself was deeply religious in mind. He was never an atheist and did not
care for the term “free-thinker” because of its implied associations with the
irreligion of the previous century. He stands out, however, not only in our
period of French thought, but in the world development of the century as one of
the greatest masters of religious criticism. His historical work is important,
and he possessed a knowledge and equipment for that task. His distinguished
Semitic scholarship led to his obtaining the chair of Hebrew at the Collège de
France, and enabled him to write his Histories, one of the Jews and one of
Christianity.
It was as a volume of this Histoire des Origines du Christianisme that
his Vie de Jésus appeared in 1863. This life of the Founder of
Christianity produced a profound stir in the camps of religious orthodoxy, and
drew upon its author severe criticisms. Apart from the particular views set
forth in that volume, we must remember that the very fact of his writing upon
“a sacred subject,” which was looked upon as a close preserve, reserved for the
theologians or churchmen alone, was deemed at that time an original and daring
feat in France.
His particular views, which created at the time such scandal, were akin to
those of Baur and the Tubingen School, which Strauss (Renan’s contemporary) had
already set forth in his Leben Jesu.[12]
Briefly, they may be expressed as the rejection of the supernatural. Herein is
seen the scientific or “positive” influence at work upon the dogmas of the
Christian religion, a tendency which culminated in “Modernism” within the
Church, only to be condemned violently by the Pope in 1907. It was this temper,
produced by the study of documents, by criticism and historical research which
put Renan out of the Catholic Church. His rational mind could not accept the
dogmas laid down. Lamennais (who was conservative and orthodox in his theology,
and possessed no taint of “modernism” in the technical sense) had declared that
the starting-point should be faith and not reason. Renan aptly asks in reply to
this, “and what is to be the test, in the last resort, of the claims of faith
is not reason?”
In Renan we find a good illustration of the working of the spirit of modern
thought upon a religious mind. Being a sincere and penetrating intellect he
could not, like so many people, learned folk among them, keep his religious
ideas and his reason in separate watertight compartments. This kind of people
Renan likens in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse to
mother-o’-pearl shells of Francois de Sales “which are able to live in the sea
without tasting a drop of salt water.” Yet he realises the comfort of such an
attitude. “I see around me,” he continues, “men of pure and simple lives whom
Christianity has had the power to make virtuous and happy. . . . But I have
noticed that none of them have the critical faculty, for which let them bless
God!” He well realises the contentment which, springing sometimes from a
dullness of mind or lack of sensitiveness, excludes all doubt and all problems.
In Catholicism he sees a bar of iron which will not reason or bend. “I can only
return to it by amputation of my faculties, by definitely stigmatising my
reason and condemning it to perpetual silence.” Writing of his exit from the
Seminary of Saint Sulpice, where he was trained for the priesthood, he remarks
in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse that “there were times when I
was sorry that I was not a Protestant, so that I might be a philosopher without
ceasing to be a Christian.” For Renan, as for so many minds in modern France,
severance from the Roman Church is equivalent to severance from Christianity as
an organised religion. The practical dilemma is presented of unquestioning
obedience to an infallible Church on the one hand, or the attitude of
libre-penseur on the other. There are not the accommodating varieties of
the Protestant presentation of the Christian religion. Renan’s spiritual
pilgrimage is but an example of many. In a measure this condition of affairs is
a source of strength to the Roman Church for, since a break with it so often
means a break with Christianity or indeed with all definite religion, only the
bolder and stronger thinkers make the break which their intellect makes
imperative. The mass of the people, however dissatisfied they may be with the
Church, nevertheless accept it, for they see no alternative but the opposite
extreme. No half-way house of non-conformity presents itself as a rule.
Yet, as we have insisted, Renan had an essentially religious view of the
universe, and he expressly claimed that his break with the Church and his
criticism of her were due to a devotion to pure religion, and he even adds, to
a loyalty to the spirit of her Founder. Although, as he remarks in his
Nouvelles Etudes religieuses, it is true that the most modest education
tends to destroy the belief in the superstitious elements in religion, it is
none the less true that the very highest culture can never destroy religion in
the highest sense. “Dogmas pass, but piety is eternal.” The external trappings
of religion have suffered by the growth of the modern sciences of nature and of
historical criticism. The mind of cultivated persons does not now present the
same attitude to evidence in regard to religious doctrines which were once
accepted without question. The sources of the origins of the Christian religion
are themselves questionable. This, Renan says, must not discourage the
believers in true religion, for that is not the kind of foundation upon which
religion reposes. Dogmas in the past gave rise to divisions and quarrels, only
by feeling can religious persons be united in fellowship. The most prophetic
words of Jesus were, Renan points out, those in which he indicated a time when
men “would not worship God in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but when the true
worshippers would worship in spirit and in truth.” It was precisely this spirit
which Renan admired in Jesus, whom he considered more of a philosopher than the
Church, and he reminds the “Christians”[13] who
railed against him as an unbeliever that Jesus had had much more influence upon
him than they gave him credit for, and, more particularly, that his break with
the Church was due to loyalty to Jesus. By such loyalty Renan meant not a blind
worship, but a reverence which endeavoured to appreciate and follow the ideals
for which Jesus himself stood. It did not involve slavish acceptance of all he
said, even if that were intelligible, and clear, which it is not. “To be a
Platonist,” remarks Renan, “I need not adore Plato, or believe all that
he said.”[14]
Renan is in agreement with the central ideas of Jesus’ own faith, and he
rightly regards him as one of the greatest contributors to the world’s
religious thought. Renan’s religion is free from supernaturalism and dogma. He
believes in infinite Goodness or Providence, but he despises the vulgar and
crude conceptions of God which so mar a truly religious outlook. He points out
how prayer, in the sense of a request to Heaven for a particular object, is
becoming recognised as foolish. ‘As a “meditation,” an interview with one’s own
conscience, it has a deeply religious value. The vulgar idea of prayer reposes
on an immoral conception of God. Renan rightly sees the central importance for
religion of possessing a sane view of the divinity, not one which belongs to
primitive tribal wargods and weather-gods. He aptly says, in this connection,
that the one who was defeated in 1871 was not only France but le bon
Dieu to which she in vain appealed. In his place was to be found, remarks
Renan with a little sarcasm, “only a Lord God of Hosts who was unmoved by the
moral ‘délicatesse’ of the Uhlans and the incontestable excellence of the
Prussian shells.”[15] He rightly points to
the immoral use made of the divinity by pious folk whose whole religion is
utilitarian and materialistic. They do good only in order to get to heaven or
escape hell,[16] and believe in God because
it is necessary for them to have a confidant and sonsoler, to whom they may cry
in time of trouble, and to whose will they may resignedly impute the evil
chastisement which their own errors have brought upon them individually or
collectively. But, he rightly claims, it is only where utilitarian calculations
and self-interest end, that religion begins with the sense of the Infinite and
of the Ideal Goodness and Beauty and Love.
He endeavours in his Examen de Conscience philosophique (1888) to sum up
his attitude upon this question. There he affirms that it is beyond dispute or
doubt that we have no evidence whatever of the action in the universe of one or
of several wills superior to that of man. The actual state of this universe
gives no sign of any external intervention, and we know nothing of its
beginning. No beneficent interfering power, a deus ex machinâ,
corrects or directs the operation of blind forces, enlightens man or improves
his lot. No God appears miraculously to prevent evils, to crush disease, stop
wars, or save his children from peril. No end or purpose is visible to us. God
in the popular sense, living and acting as a Divine Providence, is not to be
seen in our universe. The question is, however, whether this universe of ours
is the totality of existence. Doubt comes into play here, and if our universe
is not this totality, then God, although absent from his world, might still
exist outside it. Our finite world is little in relation to the Infinite, it is
a mere speck in the universe we know, and its duration to a divine Being might
be only a day.
The Infinite, continues Renan, surrounds our finite world above and below. It
stretches on the one hand to the infinitely large concourse of worlds and
systems, and, on the other, to the infinitely little as atoms, microbes and the
germs by which human life itself is passed on from one generation to another.
The prospect of the world we know involves logically and fatally, says Renan,
atheism. But this atheism, he adds, may be due to the fact that we cannot see
far enough. Our universe is a phenomenon which has had a beginning and will
have an end. That which has had no beginning and will have no end is the
Absolute All, or God. Metaphysics has always been a science proceeding upon
this assumption, “Something exists, therefore something has existed from all
eternity.” which is akin to the scientific principle, “No effect with- out a
cause.”[17]
We must not allow ourselves to be misled too far by the constructions or
inductions about the uniformity and immutability of the laws of nature. “A God
may reveal himself, perhaps, one day.” The infinite may dispose of our finite
world, use it for its own ends. The expression, “Nature and its author,” may
not be so absurd as some seem to think it. It is true that our experience
presents no reason for forming such an hypothesis, but we must keep our sense
of the infinite. “Everything is possible, even God,” and Renan adds, “If God
exists, he must be good, and he will finish by being just.” It is as foolish to
deny as to assert his existence in a dogmatic and thoughtless manner. It is
upon this sense of the infinite and upon the ideals of Goodness, Beauty and
Love that true faith or piety reposes.
Love, declares Renan, is one of the principal revelations of the divine, and he
laments the neglect of it by philosophy. It runs in a certain sense through all
living beings, and in man has been the school of gentleness and
courtesy—nay more, of morals and of religion. Love, understood in the
high sense, is a sacred, religious thing, or rather is a part of religion
itself. In a tone which recalls that of the New Testament and Tolstoi, Renan
beseeches us to remember that God is Love, and that where Love is there
God is. In loving, man is at his best; he goes out of himself and feels himself
in contact with the infinite. The very act of love is veritably sacred and
divine, the union of body and soul with another is a holy communion with the
infinite. He remarks in his Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse,
doubtless remembering the simple purity and piety of his mother and sister,
that when reflection has brought us to doubt, and even to a scepticism
regarding goodness, then the spontaneous affirmation of goodness and beauty
which exists in a noble and virtuous woman saves us from cynicism and restores
us to communication with the eternal spring in which God reflects himself.
Love, which Renan with reason laments as having been neglected on its most
serious side and looked upon as mere sentimentality, offers the highest proof
of God. In it lies our umbilical link with nature, but at the same time our
communion with the infinite. He recalls some of Browning’s views in his
attitude to love as a redeeming power. The most wretched criminal still has
something good in him, a divine spark, if he be capable of loving.
It is the spirit of love and goodness which Renan admires in the simple faith
of those separated far from him in their theological ideas. “God forbid,” he
says,[18] “that I should speak slightingly of
those who, devoid of the critical sense, and impelled by very pure and powerful
religious motives, are attached to one or other of the great established
systems of faith. I love the simple faith of the peasant, the serious
conviction of the priest.”
“Supprimer Dieu, serait-ce amoindrir l’univers?”
asks Guyau in one of his Vers d’un Philosophe.’[19] Renan observes that if we tell the simple
to live by aspiration after truth and beauty, these words would have no meaning
for them. “Tell them to love God, not to offend God, they will understand you
perfectly. God, Providence, soul, good old words, rather heavy, but expressive
and respectable which science will explain, but will never replace with
advantage. What is God for humanity if not the category of the
ideal?”[20]
This is the point upon which Vacherot insisted in his treatment of religion. He
claimed that the conception of God arises in the human consciousness from a
combination of two separate ideas. The first is the notion of the Infinite
which Science itself approves, the second the notion of perfection which
Science is unable to show us anywhere unless it be found in the human
consciousness and its thoughts, where it abides as the magnetic force ever
drawing us onward and acts at the same time as a dynamic, giving power to every
progressive movement, being “the Ideal” in the mind and heart of man.
Similar was the doctrine of Taine, who saw in Reason the ideal which would
produce in mankind a new religion, which would be that of Science and
Philosophy demanding from art forms of expression in harmony with themselves.
This religion would be free in doctrine. Taine himself looked upon religion as
“a metaphysical poem accompanied by belief,” and he approached to the
conception of Spinoza of a contemplation which may well be called an
“intellectual love of God.”
II
Like Renan, Renouvier was keenly interested in religion and its problems; he
was also a keen opponent of the Roman Catholic Church and faith, against which
he brought his influence into play in two ways—by his
néo-criticisme as expressed in his written volumes and by his energetic
editing of the two periodicals La Critique philosophique and La
Critique religieuse.
In undertaking the publication of these periodicals Renouvier’s confessed aim
was that of a definite propaganda. While the Roman Church profited by the
feelings of disappointment and demoralisation which followed the
Franco-Prussian War, and strove to shepherd wavering souls again into its fold,
to find there a peace which evidently the world could not give, Renouvier
(together with his friend Pillon) endeavoured to rally his countrymen by urging
the importance, and, if possible, the acceptance of his own political and
religious convictions arising out of his philosophy. The Critique
philosophique appeared weekly from its commencement in 1872 until 1884,
thereafter as a monthly until 1889. Among its contributors, whose names are of
religious significance, were A. Sabatier, L. Dauriac, R. Allier[21] and William James.
Renouvier’s great enthusiasm for his periodical is the main feature of this
period of his life, although, owing to his tremendous energy, it does not seem
to have interfered with the publication of his more permanent works. The
political and general policy of this journal may be summed up in a sentence
from the last year’s issue,[22] where we
find Renouvier remarking that it had been his aim throughout “to uphold
strictly republican principles and to fight all that savoured of Caesar, or
imperialism.” The declared foe of monarchy in politics, he was equally the
declared foe of the Pope in the religious realm. His attitude was one of very
marked hostility to the power of the Vatican, which he realised to be
increasing within the Roman Church, and one of keen opposition to the general
power of that Church and her clergy in France. Renouvier’s paper was quite
definitely and aggressively anti-Catholic. He urged all Catholic readers of his
paper who professed loyalty to the Republic to quit the Roman Church and to
affiliate themselves to the Protestant body.
It was with this precise object in view that, in 1878, he added to his
Critique philosophique a supplement which he entitled La Critique
religieuse, a quarterly intended purely for propaganda purposes.
“Criticism,” he had said, “is in philosophy what Protestantism is in
religion.”[23] As certitude is, according
to Renouvier’s doctrines, the fruit of intelligence, heart and will, it can
never be obtained by the coercion of authority or by obedience such as the
Roman Church demands. He appealed to the testimony of history, as a witness to
the conflict between authority and the individual conscience. Jesus, whom the
Church adores, was himself a superb example of such revolt. History, however,
shows us, says Renouvier, the gradual decay of authority in such matters.
Thought, if it is really to be thought in its sincerity, must be free. This
Renouvier realised, and in this freedom he saw the characteristic of the future
development of religion, and shows himself, in this connection, in substantial
agreement with Renan and Guyau.
Renouvier’s interest in theology and religion, and in the theological
implications of all philosophical thought, was not due merely to a purely
speculative impulse, but to a very practical desire to initiate a rational
restatement of religious conceptions, which he considered to be an urgent need
of his time. He lamented the influence of the Roman Church over the minds of
the youth of his country, and realised the vital importance of the controversy
between Church and State regarding secular education. Renouvier was a keen
supporter of the secular schools (écoles laïques). In 1879, when
the educational controversy was at its height, he issued a little book on
ethics for these institutions (Petit Traité de Morale pour les Ecoles
laïques), which was republished in an enlarged form in 1882, when the
secular party, ably led by Jules Ferry, triumphed in the establishment of
compulsory, free, secular education. That great achievement, however, did not
solve all the difficulties presented by the Church in its educational attitude,
and even now the influence of clericalism is dreaded.
Renouvier realised all the dangers, but he was forced also to realise that his
enthusiastic and energetic campaign against the power of the Church had failed
to achieve what he had desired. He complained of receiving insufficient support
from quarters where he might well have expected it. His failure is a fairly
conclusive proof that Protestantism has no future in France: it is a stubborn
survival, rather than a growing influence. With the decline in the power and
appeal of the Roman Catholic Church will come the decline of religion of a
dogmatic and organised kind. Renouvier probably had an influence in hastening
the day of the official severance of Church and State, an event which he did
not live long enough to see.[24]
Having become somewhat discouraged, Renouvier stopped the publication of his
religious quarterly in 1885 and made the Critique philosophique a
monthly instead of a weekly Journal. It ceased in 1889, but the following year
Renouvier’s friend, Pillon, began a new periodical, which bore the same name as
the one which had ceased with the outbreak of the war in 1870. This was
L’Année philosophique, to which Renouvier contributed articles from time
to time on religious topics.
Some writers are of the opinion that Renouvier’s attacks on the Roman Catholic
Church and faith, so far from strengthening the Protestant party in France,
tended rather to increase the hostility to the Christian religion generally or,
indeed, to any religious view of the universe.
Renouvier’s own statements in his philosophy, in so far as these concern
religion and theology, are in harmony with his rejection of the Absolute in
philosophy and the Absolute in politics. His criticism of the idea of God, the
central point in any philosophy of religion, is in terms similar to his
critique of the worship of the Absolute or the deification of the State.
In dealing with the question of a “Total Synthesis” Renouvier indicated his
objections to the metaphysical doctrine of an Absolute, which is diametrically
opposed to his general doctrine of relativity. He is violently in conflict with
all religious conceptions which savour of this Absolute or have a pantheistic
emphasis, which would diminish the value and significance of relativity and of
personality. The “All-in-All” conception of God, which represents the
pantheistic elements in many theologies and religions, both Christian and
other, is not really a consciousness, he shows, for consciousness itself
implies a relation, a union of the self and non-self. In such a conception
actor, play and theatre all blend into one, God alone is real, and he is
unconscious, for there is, according to this hypothesis, nothing outside
himself which he can know. Renouvier realises that he is faced with the ancient
problem of the One and the Many, with the alternative of unity or plurality.
With his usual logical decisiveness Renouvier posits plurality. He does not
attempt to reconcile the two opposites, and he deals with the problem in the
manner in which he faced the antinomies of Kant. Both cannot be true, and the
enemy of pantheism and absolutism acclaims pluralism, both for logical reasons
and in order to safeguard the significance of personality. In particular he
directly criticises the philosophy of Spinoza in which he sees the supreme
statement of this philosophy of the eternal, the perfect, necessary, unchanging
One, who is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. He admits that the idea of
law or a system of laws leads to the introduction of something approaching the
hypothesis of unity, but he is careful to show by his doctrine of freedom and
personality that this is only a limited unity and that, considered even from a
scientific standpoint, a Total Synthesis, which is the logical outcome of such
an hypothesis, is ultimately untenable. He overthrows the idols of Spinoza and
Hegel. Such absolutes, infinite and eternal, whether described as an infinite
love which loves itself or a thought thinking thought, are nothing more to
Renouvier than vain words, which it is absurd to offer as “The Living God.”
Against these metaphysical erections Renouvier opposes his doctrines of
freedom, of personality, relativity and pluralism. He offers in contrast the
conception of God as a Person, not an Absolute, but relative, not infinite, but
finite, limited by man’s freedom and by contingency in the world of creatures.
God, in his view, is not a Being who is omnipotent, or omniscient. He is a
Person of whom man is a type, certainly a degraded type, but man is made in the
image of the divine personality. Our notion of God, Renouvier reminds us, must
be consistent with the doctrine of freedom, hence we must conceive of him not
merely as a creator of creatures or subjects, but of creative power itself in
those creatures. The relation of God to man is more complex than that of simple
“creation” as this word is usually comprehended, “It is a creation of
creation,” says Renouvier,[25] a remark which is
parallel to the view expressed by Bergson, to the effect that, we must conceive
of God as a “creator of creators.”[26] The
existence of this Creative Person must be conceived, Renouvier insists, as
indissolubly bound up with his work, and it is unintelligible otherwise. That
work is one of creation and not emanation—it involves more than mere
power and transcendence. God is immanent in the universe.
Theology has wavered between the two views—that of absolute transcendence
and omnipotence and that of immanence based on freedom and limitation. In the
first, every single thing depends upon the operation of God, whose Providence
rules all. This is pure determinism of a theological character. In the other
view man’s free personality is recognised; part of the creation is looked upon
as partaking of freedom and contingency, therefore the divinity is conceived as
limited and finite.
Renouvier insists that this view of God as finite is the only tenable one, for
it is the only one which gives a rational and moral explanation of evil. In the
first view God is responsible for all things, evil included, and man is
therefore much superior to him from a moral standpoint. The idea of God must be
ethically acceptable, and it is unfortunate that this idea, so central to
religion, is the least susceptible to modification in harmony with man’s
ethical development. We already have noticed Guyau’s stress upon this point in
our discussion of ethics. Our conception of God must, Renouvier claims, be the
affirmation of our highest category, Personality, and must express the best
ethical ideals of mankind. Society suffers for its immoral and primitive view
of God, which gives to its religion a barbarous character which is disgraceful
and revolting to finer or more thoughtful minds.
It is true that the acceptance of the second view, which carries with it the
complete rejection of the ideas of omnipotence and omniscience, modifies
profoundly many of the old and primitive views of God. Renouvier recognises
this, and wishes his readers also to grasp this point, for only so is religion
to be brought forward in a development harmonious with the growth of man’s mind
in other spheres. Man should not profess the results of elaborate culture in
science while he professes at the same time doctrines of God which are not
above those of a savage or primitive people. This is the chief mischief which
the influence of the Hebrew writings of the Old Testament has had upon the
Christian religion. The moral conscience now demands their rejection, for to
those who value religion they can only appear as being of pure blasphemy. God
is neither omnipotent nor omniscient, consequently many things must be unknown
to him until they happen. Foreknowledge and predetermination on his part are
impossible, according to Renouvier. God is not to be conceived as a
consciousness enveloping the entire universe, past, present and future, in a
total synthesis. Such a belief is mischievous to humanity because of its
fatalism, in spite of the comfortable consolation it offers to pious souls.
Moreover, it presents the absurd view of God working often against himself.
The idea of God, Renouvier shows, arises out of the discussions of the nature
of the universal laws of the universe and from the progress of personalities.
The plausible conceptions of God based on causality and on “necessary essence”
have not survived the onslaughts of Criticism. The personality of God seems to
us, says Renouvier, indicated as the conclusion and the almost necessary
culmination of the consideration of the probabilities laid down by the
practical reason or moral law. The primary, though not primitive, evidence for
the existence of God is contained in, and results from, the generalisation of
the idea of “ends” in the universe. We must not go bevond phenomena or seek
evidence in some fictitious sphere outside of our experience. In its most
general and abstract sense the idea of God arises from the conception of moral
order, immortality, or the accord of happiness and goodness. We cannot deny the
existence of a morality in the order and movements of the world, a physical
sanction to the moral laws of virtue and of progress, an external reality of
good, a supremacy of good, a witness of the Good itself. Renouvier does not
think that any man, having sufficiently developed his thought, would refuse to
give the name God to the object of this supreme conception, which at first may
seem abstract because it is not in any way crude, many of its intrinsic
elements remaining undetermined in face of our ignorance, but which,
nevertheless, or just for that very reason, is essentially practical and moral,
representing the most notable fact of all those included in our belief. This
method of approaching the problem of God is, he thinks, both simple and grand.
It is a noble contrast to the scholastic edifice built up on the metaphysical
perfection of being, called the Absolute. In this conception all attributes of
personality are replaced by an accumulation of metaphysical properties,
contradictory in themselves and quite incompatible with one another. This
Absolute is a pure chimerical abstraction; its pure being and pure essence are
equivalent to pure nothing or pure nonsense.
The fetish of pure substance, substantial cause, absolute being, whatever it be
called, is vicious at all times, but particularly when we are dealing with the
fundamental problems of science. It would be advisable here that the only
method of investigation be that of atheism, for scientific investigation should
not be tainted by any prejudices or preconceived ideas upon the nature of the
divinity.
What really is Atheism? The answer to this query, says Renouvier, is clear. The
idea of God is essentially a product of the moral law or conscience. An atheist
is, strictly speaking, one who does not admit the reality of this moral order
of ends and of persons as valuable in themselves. Verily, he himself may
personally lead a much more upright life than the loud champions of theism, but
he denies the general moral order, which is God. With the epithet of atheist as
commonly used for those who merelv have a conception of God which differs from
the orthodox view, we are not here concerned. That may be dismissed as a misuse
of the word due to religious bigotry. The fruits of true atheism are
materialism, pantheism and fatalism. Indeed any doctrine, even a theological
doctrine, which debases and destroys the inherent value of the human
consciousness and personality, is rightly to be regarded, whatever it may
say about God, however it may repeat his name (and two of these
doctrines are very fond of this repetition, but this must not blind us to the
real issue)—that doctrine is atheistic. The most resolute materialists,
the most high-minded worshippers of Providence and the great philosophers of
the Absolute, find themselves united here in atheism. God is not a mere
totality of laws operating in the universe. Such a theism is but a form of real
atheism. We must, insists Renouvier, abandon views of this type, with all that
savours of an Absolute, a Perfect Infinite, and affirm our belief in the
existence of an order of Goodness which gives value to human personality and
assures ultimate victory to Justice. This is to believe in God. We arrive at
this belief rationally and after consideration of the world and of the moral
law of persons. Through these we come to God. We do not begin with him and
pretend to deduce these from his nature by some incomprehensible a
priori propositions. The methods of the old dogmatic theology are reversed.
Instead of beginning with a Being of whom we know nothing and can obviously
deduce nothing, let us proceed inductively, and by careful consideration of the
revelation we have before us in the world and in humanity let us build up our
idea of God.
Renouvier is anxious that we should examine the data upon which we may found
“rational hypotheses” as to the nature of God. The Critical Philosophy has
upset the demonstrations of the existence of God, which were based upon
causality and upon necessary existence (the cosmological and ontological
proofs). Neo-criticism not only establishes the existence of God as a rational
hypothesis, but “this point of view of the divine problem is the most
favourable to the notion of the personality of God. The personality of God
seems to us to be indicated as the looked-for conclusion and almost necessary
consummation of the probabilities of practical reason.”[27]
The admission of ends, of finality, or purpose in the universe is frequently
given as involving a supreme consciousness embracing this teleology. Also it is
argued that Good could not exist in its generality save in an external
consciousness—that is, a divine mind. By recalling the objections to a
total synthesis of phenomena, Renouvier refutes both these arguments which rest
upon erroneous methods in ontology and in theology. The explanation of the
world by God, as in the cosmological argument, is fanciful, while the
ontological argument leads us to erect an unintelligible and illogical
absolute. Renouvier regards God as existing as a general consciousness
corresponding to the generality of ends which man himself finds before him,
finite, limited in power and in knowledge. But in avowing this God, Renouvier
points him out to us as the first of all beings, a being like them, not an
absolute, but a personality, possessing (and this is important) the perfection
of morality, goodness and justice. He is the supreme personality in action, and
as a perfect person he respects the personality of others and operates on our
world only in the degree which the freedom and individuality of persons who are
not himself can permit him, and within the limits of the general laws under
which he represents to himself his own enveloped existence. This is the
hypothesis of unity rendered intelligible, and as such Renouvier claims that it
bridges in a marvellous manner the gap always deemed to exist between
monotheism and polytheism—the two great currents of religious thought in
humanity. The monotheists have appeared intolerant and fanatical in their
religion and in their deity (not in so far as it was manifest in the thoughts
of the simple, who professed a faith of the heart, but as shown in the
ambitious theology of books and of schools), bearing on their banner the signs
of a jealous deity, wishing no other gods but himself, declaring to his awed
worshippers: “I am that I am; have no other gods but me!” On the other hand,
the polytheistic peoples have been worshippers of beauty and goodness in all
things, and where they saw these things they created a deity. They were more
concerned with the immortality of good souls than the eternal existence of one
supreme being; they were free-thinkers, creators of beauty and seekers after
truth, and believers in freedom. The humanism of Greece stands in contrast to
the idolatrous theocracy of the Hebrews.
The unity of God previously mentioned does not exclude the possibility of a
plurality of divine persons. God the one would be the first and foremost,
rex hominum deorumque. Some there may be that rise through saintliness
to divinity, Sons of God, persons surpassing man in intelligence, power and
morality. To take sides in this matter is equivalent to professing a particular
religion. We must avoid the absolutist spirit in religion no less than in
philosophy. By this Renouvier means that brutal fanaticism which prohibits the
Gods of other people by passion and hatred, which aims at establishing and
imposing its own God (which is, after all, but its own idea of God) as the
imperialist plants his flag, his kind and his customs in new territory, in the
spirit of war and conquest. Such a “holy war” is an outrage, based not upon
real religion, but on intolerant fanaticism in which freedom and the
inherent rights of personality to construct its own particular faith are
denied.
Renouvier finds a parallelism between the worship of the State in politics and
of the One God in religion. The systems in which unity or plurality of divine
personality appears differ from one another in the same way in which monarchal
and republican ideas differ. Monarchy in religion offers the same obstacles to
progress as it has done in politics. It involves a parallel enslavement of
one’s entire self and goods, a conscription which is hateful to freedom and
detrimental to personality. To this supreme and regal Providence all is due; it
alone in any real sense exists. Persons are shadows, of no reality, serfs less
than the dust, to whom a miserable dole is given called grace, for which prayer
and sacrifice are to be unceasingly made or chastisements from the Almighty
will follow. This notion is the product of monarchy in politics, and with
monarchy it will perish. The two are bound up, for “by the grace of God” we are
told monarchs hold their thrones, by his favour their sceptre sways and their
battalions move on to victory. This monarchal God, this King of kings and Lord
of hosts, ruler of heaven and earth, is the last refuge of monarchs on the
earth. Confidence in both has been shaken, and both, Renouvier asserts, will
disappear and give place to a real democracy, not only to republics on earth,
but to the conception of the whole universe as a republic. Men raise up saints
and intercessors to bridge the gulf between the divine Monarch and his slaves.
They conceive angels as doing his work in heaven; they tolerate priests to
bring down grace to them here and now. The doctrine of unity thus gives rise to
fanatical religious devotion or philosophical belief in the absolute, which
stifles religion and perishes in its own turn. The doctrine of immortality,
based on the belief in the value of human personality, leads us away from
monarchy to a republic of free spirits. A democratic religion in this sense
will display human nature raised to its highest dignity by virtue of an
energetic affirmation of personal liberty, tolerance, mutual respect and
liberty of faith—a free religion without priests or clericalism, not in
conflict with science and philosophy, but encouraging these pursuits and in
turn encouraged by them.[28]
III
Ravaisson, in founding the new spiritual philosophy, professed certain
doctrines which were a blending of Hellenism and Christianity. In the midst of
thought which was dominated by positivism, naturalism or materialism, or by a
shallow eclecticism, wherein religious ideas were rather held in contempt, he
issued a challenge on behalf of spiritual values and ideals. Beauty, love and
goodness, he declared, were divine. God himself is these things, said
Ravaisson, and the divinity is “not far from any of us.” In so far as we
manifest these qualities we approach the perfect personality of God himself. In
the infinite, in God, will is identical with love, which itself is not
distinguished from the absolutely good and the absolutely beautiful. This love
can govern our wills; the love of the beautiful and the good can operate in our
lives. In so far as this is so, we participate in the love and the life of God.
Boutroux agrees substantially with Ravaisson, but he lays more stress upon the
free creative power of the deity as immanent. “God,” he remarks in his thesis,
“is not only the creator of the world, he is also its Providence, and watches
over the details as well as over the whole.”[29] God is thus an immanent and creative power
in his world as well as the perfect being of supreme goodness and beauty.
Boutroux here finds this problem of divine immanence and transcendence as
important as does Blondel, and his attitude is like that of Blondel, midway
between that of Ravaisson and Bergson.
Religion, Boutroux urges, must show man that the supreme ideal for him is to
realise in his own nature this idea of God. There is an obligation upon man to
pursue after these things-goodness, truth, beauty and love—for they are
his good, they are the Good; they are, indeed, God. In them is a harmony which
satisfies his whole nature, and which does not neglect or crush any aspect of
character, as narrow conceptions of religion inevitably do. Boutroux insists
upon the necessity for intellectual satisfaction, and opposes the “philosophy
of action” in ils doctrine of “faith for faith’s sake.” At the same time he
conceives Reason as a harmony, not merely a coldly logical thing. Feeling and
will must be satisfied also.[30]
We have observed already how Fouillée claimed that the ethics of his
idées-forces contained the gist of what was valuable in the world
religions. He claims that philosophy includes under the form of rational belief
or thought what the religions include as instinctive belief. In religion he
sees a spontaneous type of metaphysic, while metaphysic or philosophy is a
rationalised religion.
Nothing in this connection is more important than a rational and harmonious
view of God. This he insists upon in his thesis and in his Sketch of the
Future of a Metaphysic founded on Experience. The old idea of God was that
of a monarch governing the world as a despot governs his subjects. The
government of the universe may still be held to be a monarchy, but modern
science is careful to assure us that it must be regarded as an absolutely
constitutional monarchy. The monarch, if there be one, acts in accordance with
the laws and respects the established constitution. Reason obliges us to
conceive of the sovereign: experience enlightens us as to the constitution.
There can be little doubt that one of the world’s greatest books upon religion
is the work of Guyau, which appeared in 1886, bearing the arresting title,
L’Irreligion de l’Avenir. Its sub-title describes it as an Etude
sociologique, and it is this treatment of the subject from the standpoint of
sociology which is such a distinctive feature of the book. The notion of a
social bond between man and the powers superior to him, but resembling
him, is, claims Guyau, a point of unity in which all religions are at one. The
foundation of the religious sentiment lies in sociality, and the religious man
is just the man who is disposed to be sociable, not only with all living beings
whom he meets, but with those whom he imaginatively creates as gods. Guyau’s
thesis, briefly put, is that religion is a manifestation of life (again he
insists on “Life,” as in his Ethics, as a central conception), becoming
self-conscious and seeking the explanation of things by analogies drawn from
human society. Religion is “sociomorphic” rather than merely anthropomorphic;
it is, indeed, a universal sociological hypothesis, mythical in form.
The religious sentiment expresses a consciousness of dependence, and in
addition, adds Guyau, it expresses the need of affection, tenderness and
love—that is to say, the “social” side of man’s nature. In the conception
of the Great Companion or Loving Father, humanity finds consolation and hope.
Children and women readily turn to such an ideal, and primitive peoples, who
are just like children, conceive of the deity as severe and all- powerful. To
this conception moral attributes were subsequently added, as man’s own moral
conscience developed, and it now issues in a doctrine of God as Love. All this
development is, together with that of esthetics and ethics, a manifestation of
life in its individual and more especially social manifestations.
It is the purpose of Guyau’s book not only to present a study of the evolution
of religion in this manner, from a sociological point of view, but to indicate
a further development of which the beginnings are already
manifest—namely, a decomposition of all systems of dogmatic religion. It
is primarily the decay of dogma and ecclesiasticism which he intends to
indicate by the French term irréligion. The English translation of his
work bears the title The Non-religion of the Future. Had Guyau been
writing and living in another country it is undoubtedly true that his work
would probably have been entitled The Religion of the Future. Owing to
the Roman Catholic environment and the conception of religion in his own land,
he was, however, obliged to abandon the use of the word religion altogether. In
order to avoid misunderstanding, we must examine the sense he gives to this
word, and shall see then that his title is not meant to convey the impression
of being anti-religious in the widest sense, nor is it irreligious in the
English meaning of that word.
Guyau considers every positive and historical religion to present three
distinct and essential elements:
An attempt at a mythical and non-scientific explanation of (a) natural
phenomena—e.g., intervention, miracles, efficacious prayer;
(b) historical facts—e.g., incarnation of Buddha or Jesus.
A system of dogmas—that is to say, symbolic ideas or imaginative
beliefs—forcibly imposed upon one’s faith as absolute verities, even
though they are susceptible to no scientific demonstration or philosophical
justification.
A cult and a system of rites or of worship, made up of more or less immutable
practices which are looked upon as possessing a marvellous efficacy upon the
course of things, a propitiatory virtue.[31]
By these three different and really organic elements, religion is clearly
marked off from philosophy. Owing to the stability of these elements religion
is apt to be centuries behind science and philosophy, and consequently
reconciliation is only effected by a subtle process which, while maintaining
the traditional dogmas and phrases, evolves a new interpretation of them
sufficiently modern to harmonise a little more with the advance in thought, but
which presents a false appearance of stability and consistency, disguising the
real change of meaning, of view-point and of doctrine. Of this effort we shall
see the most notable instance is that of the “Modernists” or Neo-Catholics in
France and Italy, and the Liberal Christians in England and America.
Guyau claims that these newer interpretations, subtle and useful as they are,
and frequently the assertions of minds who desire sincerely to adapt the
ancient traditions to modern needs, are in themselves hypocritical, and the
Church in a sense does right to oppose them. Guyau cannot see any
satisfactoriness in these compromises and adaptations which lack the clearness
of the old teaching, which they in a sense betray, while they do not
sufficiently satisfy the demands of modern thought.
With the decay of the dogmatic religion of Christendom which is supremely
stated in the faith of the Roman Catholic Church, there must follow the
non-religion of the future, which may well preserve, he points out, all that is
pure in the religious sentiment and carry with it an admiration for the cosmos
and for the infinite powers which are there displayed. It will be a search for,
and a belief in, an ideal not only individual, but social and even cosmic,
which shall pass the limits of actual reality. Hence it appears that
“non-religion” or “a-religion,” which is for Guyau simply “the negation of all
dogma, of all traditional and supernatural authority, of all revelation, of all
miracle, of all myth, of all rite erected into a duty,” is most certainly not a
synonym for irreligion or impiety, nor does it involve any contempt for the
moral and metaphysical doctrines expressed by the ancient religions of the
world. The non-religious man in Guyau’s sense of the term is simply the man
without a religion, as he has defined it above, and he may quite well admire
and sympathise with the great founders of religion, not only in that they were
thinkers, metaphysicians, moralists and philanthropists, but in that they were
reformers of established belief, more or less avowed enemies of religious
authority and of every affirmation laid down by an ecclesiastical body in order
to bind the intellectual freedom of individuals. Guyau’s remarks in this
connection agree with the tone in which Renan spoke of his leaving the Church
because of a feeling of respect and loyalty to its Founder. Guyau points out
that there exists in the bosom of every great religion a dissolving
force—namely, the very force which in the beginning served to constitute
it and to establish its triumphant revolt over its predecessor. That force is
the absolute right of private judgment, the free factor of the personal
conscience, which no external authority can succeed, ultimately, in coercing or
silencing. The Roman Church, and almost every other organised branch of the
Christian religion, forgets, when faced with a spirit which will not conform,
that it is precisely to this spirit that it owes its own foundation and also
the best years of its existence. Guyau has little difficulty in pressing the
conclusions which follow from the recognition of this vital point.
Briefly, it follows that the hope of a world-religion is an illusion, whether
it be the dream of a perfect and world-wide Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, or
Mohammedanism. The sole authority in religious matters, that of the individual
conscience, prevents any such consummation, which, even if it could be
achieved, would be mischievous. The future will display a variety of beliefs
and religions, as it does now. This need not discourage us, for therein is a
sign of vitality or spiritual life, of which the world-religions are examples,
marred, however, by their profession of universality, an ideal which they do
not and never will realise.
The notion of a Catholic Church or a great world- religion is really contrary
to the duty of personal thought and reflection, which must inevitably (unless
they give way to mere lazy repetition of other people’s thoughts) lead to
differences. The tendency is for humanity to move away from dogmatic religion,
with its pretensions to universality, catholicity, and monarchy (of which, says
Guyau, the most curious type has just recently been achieved in our own day, by
the Pope’s proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility), towards religious
individualism and to a plurality of religions. There may, of course, be
religious associations or federations, but these will be free, and will not
demand the adherence to any dogma as such.
With the decay of dogmatic religion the best elements of religious life will
have freer scope to develop themselves, and will grow both in intensity and in
extent. “He alone is religious, in the philosophical sense of the word, who
researches for, who thinks about, who loves, truth.” Such inquiry or search
involves freedom, it involves conflict, but the conflict of ideas, which is
perfectly compatible with toleration in a political sense, and is the essence
of the spirit of the great world teachers. This is what Jesus foresaw when he
remarked: “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” More fully, he might
have put it, Guyau suggests: “I came not to bring peace into human thought, but
an incessant battle of ideas; not repose, but movement and progress of spirit;
not universal dogma, but liberty of belief, which is the first condition of
growth.” Well might Renan remark that it was loyalty to such a spirit which
caused him to break with the Church.
While attacking religious orthodoxy in this manner, Guyau is careful to point
out that if religious fanaticism ls bad, anti-religious fanaticism is equally
mischievous, wicked and foolish.[32] While the
eighteenth century could only scoff at religion, the nineteenth realised the
absurdity of such raillery. We have come to see that even although a belief may
be irrational and even erroneous, it may still survive, and it may console
multitudes whose minds would be lost on the stormy sea of life without such an
anchor. While dogmatic or positive religions do exist they will do so, Guyau
reminds us, for quite definite and adequate reasons, chiefly because there are
people who believe them, to whom they mean something and often a great deal.
These reasons certainly do diminish daily, and the number of adherents, too,
but we must refrain from all that savours of anti- religious fanaticism.[33] He himself speaks with great respect of a
Christian missionary. Are we not, he asks, both brothers and humble
collaborators in the work and advance of humanity? He sees no real
inconsistency between his own dislike of orthodoxy and dogma and the
missionary’s work of raising the ignorant to a better life by those very
dogmas. It is a case of relative advance and mental progress.
It is with great wealth of discussion that Guyau recounts the genesis of
religions in primitive societies to indicate the sociological basis of
religion. More important are his chapters on the dissolution of religions in
existing societies, in which he shows the unsatisfactoriness of the dogmas of
orthodox Protestantism equally with those of the Catholic Church. As
mischievous as the notion of an infallible Church is that of an infallible
book, literally—that is to say, foolishly-interpreted. He recognises that
for a literal explanation of the Bible must be substituted, and is, indeed,
being substituted, a literary explanation. Like Renan, he criticises the vulgar
conception of prayer and of religious morality which promotes goodness by
promise of paradise or fear of hell. He urges in this connection the futility
of the effort made by Michelet, Quinet and, more especially, by Renouvier and
Pillon to “Protestantise” France. While admitting a certain intellectual, moral
and political superiority to it, Guyau claims that for the promotion of
morality there is little use in substituting Protestantism for Catholicism. He
forecasts the limitation of the power of priests and other religious teachers
over the minds of young children. Protestant clergymen in England and America
he considers to be no more tolerant in regard to the educational problem than
the priests. Guyau urges the importance of an elementary education being free
from religious propaganda. He was writing in 1886, some years after the secular
education law had been carried. There is, however, more to be done, and he
points out “how strange it is that a society should not do its best to form
those whose function it is to form it.”[34] In
higher education some attention should be given to the comparative study of
religions. “Even from the point of view of philosophy, Buddha and Jesus are
more important than Anaximander or Thales.”[35] It is a pity, he thinks, that there is not a
little more done to acquaint the young with the ideas for which the great
world-teachers, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, stood,
instead of cramming a few additional obscure names from early national history.
It would give children at least a notion that history had a wider range than
their own country, a realisation of the fact that humanity was already old when
Christ appeared, and that there are great religions other than Christianity,
religions whose followers are not poor ignorant savages or heathen, but
intelligent beings, from whom even Christians may learn much. It is thoroughly
mischievous, he aptly adds, to bring up children in such a narrow mental
atmosphere that the rest of their life is one long disillusionment.
With particular reference to his own country, Guyau criticises the religious
education of women, the question of “mixed marriages,” the celibacy of the
Roman Catholic clergy, and the influence of religious beliefs upon the
limitation or increase of the family.
After having summed up the tendency of dogmatic religion to decay, he asks if
any unification of the great religions is to-day possible, or whether any new
religion may be expected? The answer he gives to both these questions is
negative, and he produces a wealth of very valid reasons in support of his
finding. He is, of course, here using the term religion as he has himself
defined it. The claim to universality by all world-religions, the insistence by
each that it alone is the really best or true religion, precludes any question
of unity. As well might we imagine unity between Protestantism and the Roman
Catholic Church.
In the “non-religious” state, dogma will be replaced by individual
constructions. Religion will be a free, personal affair, in which the great
philosophical hypotheses (e.g., Theism and Pantheism) will be to a large
extent utilised. They will, however, be regarded as such by all, as rational
hypotheses, which some individuals will accept, others will reject. Certain
doctrines will appeal to some, not to others. The evidence for a certain type
of theism will seem adequate to some, not to others. There will be no endeavour
to impose corporately or singly the acceptance of any creed upon others.
With Guyau’s conception of the future of religion or non-religion, whichever we
care to call it, we may well close this survey of the religious ideas in modern
France. In the Roman Church on the one hand, and, on the other, in the thought
of Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, together with the multitude of thinking men and
women they represent, may be seen the two tendencies—one conservative,
strengthening its internal organisation and authority, in defiance of all the
influences of modern thought, the other a free and personal effort, issuing in
a genuine humanising of religion and freeing it from ecclesiasticism and dogma.
A word may be said here, however, with reference to the “Modernists.” The
Modernist movement is a French product, the result of the interaction of modern
philosophical and scientific ideas upon the teaching of the Roman Church. It
has produced a philosophical religion which owes much to Ollé-Laprune and
Blondel, and is in reality modern science with a veneer of religious idealism
or platonism. It is a theological compromise, and has no affinities with the
efforts of Lamennais. As a compromise it was really opposed to the traditions
of the French, to whose love of sharp and clear thinking such general and
rather vague syntheses are unacceptable. It must be admitted, however, that
there is a concreteness, a nearness to reality and life, which separates it
profoundly from the highly abstract theology of Germany, as seen in Ritschl and
Harnack.
The Abbé Marat of the Theological School at the Sorbonne and Father Gratry of
the Ecole Normale were the initiators of this movement, as far back as the
Second Empire. “Modernism” was never a school of thought, philosophical or
religious, and it showed itself in a freedom and life, a spirit rather than in
any formula;. As Sorel’s syndicalism is an application of the Bergsonian and
kindred doctrines to the left wings, and issues in a social theory of “action,”
so Modernism is an attempt to apply them to the right and issues in a religion
founded on action rather than theology. The writings of the Modernists are
extensive, but we mention the names of the chief thinkers. There is the noted
exegetist Loisy, who was dismissed in 1894 from the Catholic Institute of Paris
and now holds the chair of the History of Religions at the College de
France. His friend, the Abbé Bourier, maintained the doctrine, “ Where Christ
is there is the Church,” with a view to insisting upon the importance of being
a Christian rather than a Catholic or a Protestant.
The importance of the Catholic thinker, Blondel, both for religion and for
philosophy, has already been indicated at an earlier stage in this book. His
work inspires most.Modernist thought. Blondel preaches, with great wealth of
philosophical and psychological argument, the great Catholic doctrine of the
collaboration of God with man and of man with God. Man at one with himself
realises his highest aspirations. Divine transcendence and divine immanence in
man are reconciled. God and man, in this teaching, are brought together, and
the stern realism of every-day life and the idealism of religion unite in a
sacramental union. The supreme principle in this union Laberthonnière shows to
be Love. He is at pains to make clear, however, that belief in Love as the
ultimate reality is no mere sentimentality, no mere assertion of the
will-to-believe. For him the intellect must play its part in the religious life
and in the expression of faith. No profounder intellectual judgment exists than
just the one which asserts “God is Love,” when this statement is properly
apprehended and its momentous significance clearly realised. We cannot but
lament, with Laberthonnière, the abuse of this proposition and its subsequent
loss of both appeal and meaning through a shallow familiarity. The reiteration
of great conceptions, which is the method by which the great dogmas have been
handed down from generations, tends to blurr their real significance. They
become stereotyped and empty of life. It is for this reason that Le Roy in
Dogme et Critique (1907) insisted upon the advisability of regarding all
dogmas as expressions of practical value in and for action, rather than as
intellectual propositions of a purely “religious” or ecclesiastical type,
belonging solely to the creeds.
To Blondel, Laberthonnière, and Le Roy can be added the names of Fonsegrive,
Sertillanges, Loyson and Houtin, the last two of whom ultimately left the
Church, for the Church made up its mind to crush Modernism. The Pope had
intimated in 1879 that the thirteenth-century philosophy of Aquinas was to be
recognised as the only official philosophy.[36]
Finally, Modernism was condemned in a Vatican encyclical (Pascendi Dominici
Gregis) in 1907, as was also the social and educational effort, Le
Sillon.
Such has been Rome’s last word, and it is not surprising, therefore, that
France is the most ardent home of free thought upon religious matters, that the
French people display a spirit which is unable to stop at Protestantism, but
which heralds the religion or the non-religion of the future to which
Guyau has so powerfully indicated the tendencies and has by so doing helped, in
conjunction with Renan and Renouvier, to hasten its realisation.
A parallel to the “modernist” theology of the Catholic thinkers was indicated
on the Protestant side by the theology of Auguste Sabatier, whose Esquisse
d’une Philosophie de la Religion d’après la Psychologie et l’Histoire
appeared in 1897[37] and of Menegoz,[38] whose Publications diverges sur le
Fidéisme et son Application a l’Enseignement chrétien traditionnel were
issued in 1900. Sabatier assigns the beginning of religion to man’s trouble and
distress of heart caused by his aspirations, his belief in ideals and higher
values, being at variance with his actual condition. Religion arises from this
conflict of real and ideal in the soul of man. This is the essence of religion
which finds its expression in the life of faith rather than in the formation of
beliefs which are themselves accidental and transitory, arising from
environment and education, changing in form from aee to age both in the
individual and the race. While LeRoy on the Catholic side, maintained that
dogmas were valuable for their practical significance, Sabatier and Ménégoz
claimed that all religious knowledge is symbolical. Dogmas are but symbols,
which inadequately attempt to reveal their object. That object can only be
grasped by “faith” as distinct from “belief”—that is to say, by an
attitude in which passion, instinct and intuition blend and not by an attitude
which is purely one of intellectual conviction. This doctrine of “salvation by
faith independently of beliefs” has a marked relationship not only to
pragmatism and the philosophy of action, but to the philosophy of intuition. A
similar anti-intellectualism colours the “symbolo-fidéist” currents within
Catholicism, which manifest a more extreme character. A plea voiced against all
such tendencies is to be found in Bois’ book, De la Connaissance
religieuse (1894), where an endeavour is made to retain a more intellectual
attitude, and it again found expression in the volume by Boutroux, written as
late as 1908, which deals with the religious problem in our period.
Quoting Boehme in the interesting conclusion to this book on Science and
Religion in Contemporary Philosophy (1908) Boutroux sums up in the words of
the old German mystic his attitude to the diversity of religious opinions.
“Consider the birds in our forests, they praise God each in his own way, in
diverse tones and fashions. Think you God is vexed by this diversity and
desires to silence discordant voices? All the forms of being are dear to the
infinite Being himself!”[39]
This survey of the general attitude adopted towards religion and the problems
which it presents only serves to emphasise more clearly those tendencies which
we have already denoted in previous chapters. As the discussion of progress was
radically altered by the admission of the principle of freedom, and the
discussion of ethics passes bevond rigid formulae to a freer conception of
morality, so here in religion the insistence upon freedom and that recognition
of personality which accompanies it, colours the whole religious outlook.
Renan, Renouvier and Guyau, the three thinkers who have most fully discussed
religion in our period, join in proclaiming the importance of the personal
factor in religious belief, and in valiant opposition to that Church which is
the declared enemy of freedom, they urge that in freedom of thought lies the
course of all religious development in the future, for only thus can be
expressed the noblest and highest aspirations of man’s spirit.
CONCLUSION
The foregoing pages have been devoted to a history of ideas rather than to the
maintenance of any special thesis or particular argument. Consequently it does
not remain for us to draw any definitely logical conclusions from the preceding
chapters. The opportunity may be justly taken, however, of summing up the
general features of the development.
Few periods in the history of human thought can rival in interest that of the
second half of the nineteenth century in France. The discussion covers the
principal problems with which man’s mind is occupied in modern times and
presents these in a manner which is distinctly human and not merely national.
This alone would give value to the study of such a period. There is, however,
to be added the more striking fact that there is a complete “turning of the
tide” manifested during these fifty years in the attitude to most of the
problems. Beginning with an overweening confidence in science and a belief in
determinism and in a destined progress, the century closed with a complete
reversal of these conceptions.
Materialism and naturalism are both recognised as inadequate, a reaction sets
in against positivism and culminates in the triumph of spiritualism or
idealism. This idealism is free from the cruder aspects of the Kantian or
Hegelian philosophy. The Thing-in-itself and the Absolute are abandoned;
relativity is proclaimed in knowledge, and freedom in the world of action.
Thoughts or ideas show themselves as forces operating in the evolution of
history. This is maintained in opposition to the Marxian doctrine of the purely
economic or materialistic determination of history. A marked tendency, however,
is manifested to regard all problems from a social stand point. The dogmatic
confidence in science gives way to a more philosophical attitude, while the
conflict of science and religion resolves itself into a decay of dogma and the
conception of a free religion.
We have indicated the problem presented by “science et conscience,” and
in so far as we have laid down any thesis or argument in these pages, as
distinct from an historical account of the development, that thesis has been,
that the central problem in the period was that of freedom. It was to this
point which the consideration of science, or rather of the sciences, led us. We
have observed the importance of the sciences for philosophy, and it is clear
that, so far from presenting any real hostility to philosophy, it can acclaim
their autonomy and freedom, without attempting by abstract methods to absorb
them into itself. They are equally a concrete part of human thought, and in a
deep and real sense a manifestation of the same spirit which animates
philosophy.
By recognising the sciences philosophy can avoid the fallacy of ideology on the
one hand and naturalism on the other. Unlike the old eclecticism, the new
thought is able to take account of science and to criticise its assertions. We
have seen how this has been accomplished, and the rigidly mechanical view of
the world abandoned for one into which human freedom enters as a real factor.
This transforms the view of history and shows us human beings creating that
history and not merely being its blind puppets. History offers no cheerful
outlook for the easy-going optimist; it is not any more to be regarded as mere
data for pessimistic reflections, but rather a record which prompts a feeling
of responsibility. The world is not ready-made, and if there is to be progress
it must be willed by us and achieved by our struggle and labour.
The doctrine of immanence upon which the modern tendency is to insist, in place
of the older idea of transcendence, makes us feel, not only that we are free,
but that our freedom is not in opposition to, or in spite of, the divine
spirit, but is precisely an expression of divine immanence. Instead of the
gloomy conception of a whole which determines itself apart from us, we feel
ourselves part, and a very responsible part, of a reality which determines
itself collectively and creatively by its own action, by its own ideals, which
it has itself created. This freedom must extend not only to our conceptions of
history but also to those of ethics and of religion.
“English philosophy ends in considering nature as an assemblage of facts;
German philosophy looks upon it chiefly as a system of laws. If there is a
place midway between the two nations it belongs to us Frenchmen. We applied the
English ideas in the eighteenth century; we can in the nineteenth give
precision to the German ideas. What we have to do is to temper, amend and
complete the two spirits, one by the other, to fuse them into one, to express
them in a style that shall be intelligible to everybody and thus to make of
them the universal spirit.”
Such was Taine’s attitude, and it indicates clearly the precise position of
French thought. We are apt to consider Taine purely as an empiricist, but we
must remember that he disagreed with the radical empiricism of John Stuart
Mill. His own attitude was largely that of a reaction against the vague
spiritualism of the Eclectic School, especially Cousin’s eclecticism, a foreign
growth on French soil, due to German influence. The purely a priori
constructions of the older spiritualism could find no room, and allowed none,
for the sciences. This was sufficient to doom it, and to lead naturally to a
reaction of a positive kind, revolting from all a priori constructions.
It was to combat the excessive positive reaction against metaphysics that
Renouvier devoted his energies, but while professing to modernise Kant and to
follow out the general principles of his Critical Philosophy, Renouvier was
further removed from the German thinker than he at times seems to have
observed. Renouvier must undoubtedly share with Comte the honours of the
century in French Philosophy. Many influences, however, prevented the general
or speedy acceptance of Renouvier’s doctrines. The University was closed
against him, as against Comte. He worked in isolation and his style of
presentation, which is heavy and laborious, does not appeal to the
esprit of the French mind. Probably, too, his countrymen’s ignorance of
Kant at the time Renouvier wrote his Essais de Critique générale
prevented an understanding and appreciation of the neo-critical advance on
Criticism.
Renouvier commands respect, but he does not appear to be in the line of
development which manifests so essentially the character of French thought.
This is to be found rather in that spiritualism, which, unlike the old, does
not exclude science, but welcomes it, finds a place for it, although not by any
means an exclusive place. The new spiritualists did not draw their inspiration,
as did Cousin, from any German source, their initial impulse is derived from a
purely French thinker, Maine de Biran, who, long neglected, came to recognition
in the work of Ravaisson and those subsequent thinkers of this group, right up
to Bergson.
This current of thought is marked by a vitality and a concreteness which are a
striking contrast to the older eclectic spiritualism. Having submitted itself
to the discipline of the sciences, it is acquainted with their methods and data
in a manner which enables it to oppose the dogmatism of science, and to acclaim
the reality of values other than those which are purely scientific. Ignoring
a priori construction, or eclectic applications of doctrines, it
investigates the outer world of nature and the inner life of the spirit.
We have said that these ideas are presented, not merely from a national
standpoint, but from one which is deeply human and universal. “La
Science,” re-marked Pasteur, “n’a pas de patrie.” We may add that
philosophy, too, owns no special fatherland. There is not in philosophy, any
more than in religion, “a chosen people,” even although the Jews of old thought
themselves such, and among moderns the Germans have had this conceit about
their Kultur. In so far as philosophy aims at the elucidation of a true
view of the universe, it thereby tends inevitably to universality. But just as
a conception of internationalism, which should fail to take into account the
factors of nationality, would be futile and disastrous, so a conception of the
evolution of thought must likewise estimate the characteristics which
nationality produces even in the philosophical field.
Such characteristics, it will be found, are not definite doctrines, for these
may be transferred, as are scientific discoveries, from one nation to another,
and absorbed in such a manner that they become part of the general
consciousness of mankind. They are rather differences of tone and colour, form
or expression, which express the vital genius of the nation. There are features
which serve to distinguish French philosophy from the development which has
occurred in Germany, Italy, England and America.
Modern French thought does not deliberately profess to maintain allegiance to
any past traditions, for it realises that such a procedure would be
inconsistent with that freedom of thought which is bound up with the spirit of
philosophy. It does, however, betray certain national features, which are
characteristic of the great French thinkers from Descartes, Pascal and
Malebranche onwards.
One of the most remarkable points about these thinkers was their intimacy with
the sciences. Descartes, while founding modern philosophy, also gave the world
analytic geometry; Pascal made certain physical discoveries and was an eminent
mathematician. Malebranche, too, was keenly interested in science. In the
following century the Encyclopaedists displayed their wealth of scientific
knowledge, and in the nineteenth century we have seen the work of Comte based
on science, the ability of Cournot and Renouvier in mathematics, while men like
Boutroux, Hergson and Le Roy possess a thorough acquaintance with modern
science.
These facts have marked results, and distinguish French philosophy from that of
Germany, where the majority of philosophers appear to haye been theological
students in their youth and to have suffered from the effects of their subject
for the remainder of their lives. Theological study does not produce clearness;
it does not tend to cultivate a spirit of precision, but rather one of
vagueness, of which much German philosophy is the product. On the other hand,
mathematics is a study which demands clearness and which in turn increases the
spirit of clarity and precision.
There is to be seen in our period a strong tendency to adhere to this feature
of clearness. Modern French philosophy is remarkably lucid. Indeed, it is
claimed that there is no notion, however profound it may be, or however based
on technical research it may be, which cannot be conveyed in the language of
every day. French philosophy does not invent a highly technical vocabulary in
order to give itself airs in the eyes of the multitude, on the plea that
obscurity is a sign of erudition and learning. On the contrary, it remembers
Descartes’ intimate association of clearness with truth, remembers, too, his
clear and simple French which he preferred to the scholastic Latin. It knows
that to convince others of truth one must be at least clear to them and, what
is equally important, one must be clear in one’s own mind first. Clarity does
not mean shallowness but rather the reverse, because it is due to keen
perceptive power, to a seeing further into the heart of things, involving an
intimate contact with reality.
French thought has always remained true to a certain “common sense.” This is a
dangerous and ambiguous term. In its true meaning it signifies the general and
sane mind of man free from all that prejudice or dogma or tradition, upon
which, of course, “common sense” in the popular meaning is usually based. A
genuine “common sense” is merely “liberté” for the operation of that
general reason which makes man what he is. It must be admitted that, owing to
the fact that philosophy is taught in the lycées, the French are the
best educated of any nation in philosophical ideas and have a finer general
sense of that spirit of criticism and appreciation which is the essence of
philosophy, than has any other modern nation. Philosophy in France is not
written in order to appeal to any school or class. Not limited to an academic
circle only, it makes its pronouncements to humanity and thus embodies in a
real form the principles of egalité and fraternité. It makes a
democratic appeal both by its clarté and its belief that la raison
commune is in some degree present in every human being.
Not only was clearness a strong point in the philosophy of Descartes, but there
was also an insistence upon method. Since the time of his famous Discours de
la Méthode there has always been a unique value placed upon method in
French thought, and this again serves to distinguish it profoundly from German
philosophy, which is, in general, concerned with the conception and production
of entire systems. The idea of an individual and systematic construction is an
ambitious conceit which is not in harmony with the principles of
liberté, egalité, fraternité. Such a view of philosophical
work is not a sociable one, from a human standpoint, and tends to give rise to
a spirit of authority and tradition. Apart from this aspect of it, there is a
more important consideration. All those systems take one idea as their
starting-point and build up an immense construction a priori. But
another idea may be taken and opposed to that. There is thus an immense wastage
of labour, and the individual effort is never transcended. Yet an idea is only
a portion of our intelligence, and that intelligence itself is, in turn, only a
portion of reality. A wider conception of philosophy must be aimed at, one in
which the vue d’ensemble is not the effort of one mind, but of many,
each contributing its share to a harmonious conception, systematic in a sense,
but not in the German sense. Modern French thought has a dislike of system of
the individualistic type; it realises that reality is too rich and complex for
such a rapid construction to grasp it. It is opposed to systems, for the French
mind looks upon philosophy as a manifestation of life itself—life
blossoming to self-consciousness, striving ever to unfold itself more
explicitly and more clearly, endeavouring to become more harmonious, more
beautiful, and more noble. The real victories of philosophical thought are not
indicated by the production of systems but by the discovery or creation of
ideas. Often these ideas have been single and simple, but they have become
veritable forces, in the life of mankind.
French thinkers prefer to work collectively at particular problems rather than
at systems. Hence the aim and tone of their work is more universal and human,
and being more general is apt to be more generous. This again is the expression
of liberte, égalité and fraternité in a true sense. The
French prefer, as it were, in their philosophical campaign for the intellectual
conquest of reality diverse batteries of soixante-quinze acting with
precision and alertness to the clumsy production of a “Big Bertha.” The
production of ambitious systems, each professing to be the final word in the
presentation of reality, has not attracted the French spirit. It looks at
reality differently and prefers to deal with problems in a clear way, thereby
indicating a method which may be applied to the solution of others as they
present themselves. This is infinitely preferable to an ambitious unification,
which can only be obtained at the sacrifice of clearness or meaning, and it
arises from that keen contact with life, which keeps the mind from dwelling too
much in the slough of abstraction, from which some of the German philosophers
never succeed in escaping. Their pilgrimage to the Celestial City ends there,
and consequently the account of their itinerary cannot be of much use to other
pilgrims.
Another feature of modern French thought is the intimacy of the connection
between psychology and metaphysics, and the intensive interest in psychology,
which is but the imestigation of the inner life of man. While in the early
beginnings of ancient Greek philosophy some time was spent in examining the
outer world before man gave his attention to the world within, we find
Descartes, at the beginning of modern philosophy, making his own consciousness
of his own existence his starting-point. Introspection has always played a
prominent part in French philosophy. Pascal was equally interested in the outer
and the inner world. Through Maine de Biran this feature has come down to the
new spiritualists and culminates in Bergson’s thought, in which psychological
considerations hold first rank.
The social feature of modern French thought should not be omitted. In Germany
subsequent thought has been coloured by the Reformation and the particular
aspects of that movement. In France one may well say that subsequent thought
has been marked by the Revolution. There is a theological flavour about most
German philosophy, while France, a seething centre of political and social
thought, has given to her philosophy a more sociological trend.
The French spirit in philosophy stands for clearness, concreteness and
vitality. Consequently it presents a far greater brilliance, richness and
variety than German philosophy displays.[1] This
vitality and even exuberance, which are those of the spirit of youth
manifesting a joie de vivre or an élan vital, have been very
strongly marked since the year 1880, and have placed French philosophy in the
van of human thought.
It would be vain to ask whither its advance will lead. Even its own principles
prevent any such forecast; its creative richness may blossom forth to-morrow in
forms entirely new, for such is the characteristic of life itself, especially
the life of the spirit, upon which so much stress is laid in modern French
philosophy. The New Idealism lays great stress upon dynamism, voluntarism or
action. Freedom and creative activity are its keynotes, and life, ever fuller
and richer, is its aspiration. La Vie, of which France (and its centre,
Paris) is such an expression, finds formulation in the philosophy of
contemporary thinkers.[2]
One word of warning must be uttered against those who declare that the tendency
of French thought is in the direction of anti-intellectualism. Such a
declaration rests on a misunderstanding, which we have endeavoured in our pages
to disclose It is based essentially upon a doctrine of Reason which belongs to
the eighteenth century. The severe rationalism of that period was mischievous
in that it rested upon a one-sided view of human nature, on a narrow
interpretation of “Reason” which gave it only a logical and almost mathematical
significance. To the Greeks, whom the French represent in the modern world, the
term “NOUS” meant more than this—it meant an intelligible harmony. We
would do wrong to look upon the most recent developments in France as being
anti-rational, they are but a revolt against the narrow view of Reason, and
they constitute an attempt to present to the modern world a conception akin to
that of the Greeks. Human reason is much more than a purely logical faculty,
and it is this endeavour to relate all problems to life itself with its pulsing
throb, which represents the real attitude of the French mind. There is a
realisation expressed throughout that thought, that life is more than logic.
The clearness of geometry showed Descartes that geometry is not all-embracing.
Pascal found that to the logic of geometry must be added a spirit of
appreciation which is not logical in its nature, but expresses another side of
man’s mind. To-day France sees that, although a philosophy must endeavour to
satisfy the human intelligence, a merely intellectual satisfaction is not
enough. The will and the feelings play their part, and it was the gteat fault
of the eighteenth century to misunderstand this The search to-day is for a
system of values and of truth in action as well as a doctrine about things in
their purely theoretical aspects.
This is a serious demand, and it is one which philosophy must endeavour to
appreciate Salvation will not be found in a mere dilettantism which can only
express ieal indifference, nor in a dogmatism which results in bigotry and
pride. Criticism is required, but not a purely destructive criticism, rather
one which will offer some acceptable view of the universe. Such a view must
combine true positivism or realism with a true idealism, by uniting fact and
spirit, things and ideas. Its achievement can only be possible to minds
possessing some creative and constructive power, yet minds who have been
schooled in the college of reality. This is the task of philosophy in France
and in other lands. That task consists not only in finding values and in
defining them but in expressing them actively, and in endeavouring to realise
them in the common life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Works of the Period classified under Authors. (The more important monographs
are cited.) Names of philosophical journals.
II. Books on the Period.
III. Comparative Table showing contemporary German and Anglo-American Works from
1851 to 1921.
I
WORKS OF THE PERIOD CLASSIFIED UNDER AUTHORS.
| BERGSON: |
Les Données immédiates de la Conscience. 1889. English Translation—Time and Free-Will. 1910.
Matière et Mémoire. 1896. (E.T.[1] 1911.)
Le Rire. 1901. (E.T. 1911.)
Introduction a la Métaphysique. 1903. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. (E.T. 1913.)
L’Evolution créatrice. 1907. (E.T. 1911.)
L’Energie spirituelle. 1919. (E.T. 1920.)
Some monographs on Bergson: Le Roy (1912), Maritain (1914) in France, Meckauer (1917) in Germany, and for the English reader Lindsay (1911), Stewart (1911), Carr (1912), Cunningham (1916), and Gunn (1920).
|
| BERNARD: |
Introduction a l’Etude de la Médecine expérimental. 1865.
|
| BERTHELOT: |
Science et Philosophie. 1886.
|
| BINET: |
Magnétisme animal. 1886.
Les Altérations de la Personnalité. 1892.
L’Introduction à la Psychologie expérimental. 1894.
(Founded the Année psychologique in 1895.)
|
| BLONDEL: |
L’Action, Essai d’une Critique de la Vie et d’une Science de la Pratique. 1893.
Histoire et Dogme. 1904.
|
| BOIRAC: |
L’Idée du Phénomène. 1894.
|
| BOIS: |
De la Connaissance religieuse. 1894.
|
| BOURGEOIS: |
Solidarité. 1896.
|
| BOUTROUX (EMILE): |
De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature 1874. (E.T. 1916.)
De l’Idée de Loi naturelle dans la Science et la Philosophie contemporaines. 1895. (E.T. 1914.)
Questions de Morale et d’Education. 1895. (E.T. 1913.)
De l’Influence de la Philosophie écossaise sur la Philosophie française. 1897.
La Science et la Religion dans la Philosophie contemporaine. 1908. (E.T. 1909.)
Rapport sur la Philosophie en France depuis 1867. Paper read to Third Congress of Philosophy at Heidelberg in 1908.
Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. Nov., 1908.
Etudes d’Histoire de la Philosophie. (E.T. 1912.)
The Beyond that is Within. E.T. 1912. (Addresses.)
|
| BROCHARD: |
De la Responsabilité morale. 1874.
De l’Universalité des Notions morales. 1876.
De L’Erreur. 1879.
|
| BRUNSCHWICG: |
La Modalité du jugement. 1897.
La Vie de l’Esprit. 1900.
Les Etapes de la Philosophie mathématique. 1912.
|
| BUREAU: |
La Crise morale des Temps nouveau. 1907.
|
| CARO: |
Le Matérialisme et la Science. 1868.
Problèmes de Morale sociale. 1876.
|
| COMTE: |
Cours de Philosophie positive. 6 vols. 1830-42.
Discours sur l’Esprit positive. 1844.
Système de Politique positive. 4 vols. 1851-4.
Catéchisme positiviste.
Synthèse subjective (vol. i.). 1856.
Note.—The Free and Condensed Translation of Comte’s Positive Philosophy in English by Miss Martineau, appeared in two volumes in 1853. Monograph by Lévy-Bruhl.
|
| COURNOT: |
Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances et sur les Caractères de la Critique philosophique (2 vols.). 1851.
Traité de l’Enchaînement des Idées fondamentales dans les Sciences et dans l’Histoire (2 vols.). 1861.
Considérations sur la Marche des Idées et des Evénements dans les Temps modernes (2 vols.). 1872.
Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisine: Etude sur l’Emploi des Données de la Science en Philosophie. 1875.
Note.—A number of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale was devoted to Cournot in 1905. See also the Monograph by Bottinelli and his Souvenirs de Cournot. 1913.
|
| COUTURAT: |
De l’Infini mathématique.
Les Principes des Mathématiques.
|
| CRESSON: |
Le Malaise de la pensée philosophique contemporaine. 1905.
|
| DAURIAC: |
Croyance et Realité. 1889.
Motions de Matière et de Force. 1878.
|
| DELBOS: |
L’Esprit philosophique de l’Allemagne et la Pensée française. 1915.
|
| DUHEM: |
La Théorie physique. 1906.
|
| DUNAN: |
Les deux Idéalismes. 1911.
|
| DURKHEIM: |
De la Division du Travail social. 1893.
Les Regles de la Méthode sociologique. 1894.
Le Suicide. 1897.
Les Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse. 1912. (E. T.)
|
| ESPINAS: |
Societés animales. 1876.
|
| EVELLlN: |
La Raison pure et les Antinomies. 1907.
|
| FONSEGRIVE: |
Morale et Société. 1907.
|
| FOUILLÉE: |
La Philosophie de Platon 2 vols. 1869. Prize for competition in 1867, on the. Theory of Ideas, offered by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. “Crowned” after publication by the Académie française. 1871. Second Edition, revised, and enlarged to four volumes. 1888-9.
La Liberté et le Determinisme. 1872. (Doctorate Thesis)
La Philosophie de Socrate. 2 vols 1874. Prize in 1868, Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.
Histoire générale de la Philosophie. 1875. New Edition revised and augmented, 1910.
Extraits des grands Philosophes. 1877.
L’Idée moderne du Droit en Allemagne, en Ingleterre et en France. 1878.
La Science sociale contemporaine. 1880.
Critique des Systèmes contemporains. 1883.
La Propriété sociale et la Démocratie. 1884.
L’Avenir de la Métaphysique fondée sur l’Expérience. 1889.
L’Evolutionisme des Idées-forces. 1890.
L’Enseignement au Point de Vue national. 1891 (E. T. 1892.)
La Psychologie des Idées-forces. 2 vols. 1893.
Tempérament et Caractère selon les Individus, les Sexes et les Races. 1895.
Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science positive. 1895.
Le Mouvement positiviste et la Conception sociologique du Monde. 1896.
Psychologie du Peuple français. 1898.
Les Etudes classiques et la Démocratie. 1898.
La France au Point de Vue moral. 1900.
La Reforme de l’Enseignement par la Philosophie. 1901.
La Conception morale et civique de L’Enseignement.
Nietzsche et l’Immoralisme. 1904.
Esquisse psychologique des Peuples européens. 1903.
Le Moralisme de Kant et l’Amoralisme contemporain. 1905.
Les Elements sociologiques de la Morale. 1905.
La Morale des Idées-forces. 1907.
Le Socialisme et la Sociologie réformiste. 1909.
La Démocratie politique et sociale en France. 1911.
La Pensée et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intéllectualistes. 1912.
Posthumous: Esquisse d’une Interprétation du Monde.
Humanitaires et Libertaires. 1914.
Equivalents philosophiques des Religions.
On Fouillée, monograph by Augustin Guyau, son of J. M. Guyau.
|
| GOBLOT: |
Traité de Logique. 1918.
|
| GOURD: |
Le Phénomène. 1888.
La Philosophie de la Religion. 1911.
|
| GUYAU: |
La Morale d’Epicure et ses Rapports avec les Doctrines contemporaines. 1878. “Crowned” four years before by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.
La Morale anglaise contemporaine. 1879. An extension of the Prize Essay (Second Part).
Vers d’un Philosophe. 1881.
Problèmes de l’Esthétique contemporaine. 1884.
Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction. 1885. (E.T. 1898.)
L’Irréligion de l’Avenir. 1887. (E.T. 1897.)
Posthumous: Education et Hérédité. (E.T. 1891.)
L’Art au Point de Vue sociologique.
La Genèse de l’Idée de Temps. 1890.
There is a monograph on Guyau by Fouillée.
|
| HAMELIN: |
Essai sur les Eléments principaux de la Représentation. 1907.
|
| HANNEQUIN: |
Essai critique sur l’Hypothèse des Atomes. 1896.
|
| IZOULET: |
La Cité moderne. 1894.
|
| JANET (PAUL): |
La Famille. 1855.
Histoire de la Philosophie morale et politique dans L’Antiquité et dans les Temps modernes. 2 vols. 1858. Republished as Histoire de la Science politique dans ses Rapports avec la Morale. 1872.
La Philosophie du Bonheur. 1862.
La Crise philosophique. 1865.
Le Cerveau et la Pensée. 1867.
Eléments de Morale. 1869.
Les Problèmes du XIXe Siècle. 1872.
La Morale. 1874 (E T. 1884.)
Philosophie de la Révolution française. 1875.
Les Causes finales. 1876. (E.T. 1878.)
|
| JANET (PIERRE): |
L’Automatisme psychologique. 1889
L’Etat mental des Hystériques. 1894.
Névroses et Idées-fixes. 1898.
(Janet founded the Journal de Psychologie. 1904).
|
| JAVARY: |
L’Idée du Progrès. 1850.
|
| LABERTHONNIÈRE. |
Le Dogmatisme morale. 1898.
Essais de Philosophie religieuse. 1901.
Le Réalisme chrétien et l’Idéalisme grec.
|
| LACHELIER: |
Du Fondement de l’Induction. 1871.
Psychologie et Métaphysique. 1885. Article in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, now published with the above.
Etude sur le Syllogisme. 1907.
Monograph by Séailles, article by Noël.
|
| LACOMBE: |
De l’Histoire considérée comme Science. 1894.
|
| LALANDE: |
La Dissolution opposée à l’Evolution, dans les Sciences physiques et morales. 1899.
Précis raisonné de Morale pratique par Questions et Réponses. 1907.
|
| LAPIE: |
Logique de la Volonté. 1902.
|
| LE BON: |
Lois psychologiques de l’Evolution des Peuples.
Les Opinions et les Croyances. 1911.
Psychologie du Socialisme. 1899.
Psychologie des Foules. (E.T.)
La Vie des Vérités. 1914.
|
| LEQUIER: |
La Recherche d’une Première Vérité (Fragments posthumes). 1865.
|
| LE ROY: |
Dogme et Critique. 1907.
|
| LIARD: |
Des Définitions géometriques et des Définitions empiriques. 1873.
La Science positive et la Métaphysique. 1879.
Morale et Enseignement civique. 1883.
L’Enseignement supérieure en France, 1789 à 1889. 1889.
|
| LOISY: |
L’Evangile et l’Eglise. (E.T.)
|
| MARION: |
La Solidarité morale. 1880.
|
| MÉNÉGOZ: |
Publications diverses sur le Fidéisme et son Application à l’Enseignement chrétien traditionnel. 1900. Two additional volumes later.
|
| MEYERSON: |
Identité et Réalité. 1907
|
| MICHELET: |
L’Amour. 1858
Le Prêtre la Femme et la Famille. 1859.
La Bible de l’Humanité. 1864
|
| MILHAUD: |
Essai sur les Conditions et les Limites de la Certitude logique. 1894
Le Rationnel. 1898.
|
| OLLÉ-LAPRUNE: |
La Certitude morale. 1880.
Le Prix de la Vie. 1885
La Philosophie et le Temps présent. 1895.
La Raison et le Rationalisme. 1906.
|
| PARODI: |
Le Problème morale et la Pensée contemporaine. 1910.
|
| PASTEUR: |
Le Budget de la Science. 1868
|
| PAULHAN: |
Phénomènes affectifs.
L’Activité mentale. 1889
|
| PAYOT: |
La Croyance. 1896.
|
| PELLETAN: |
Profession da Foi du XIXe Siècle. 1852.
|
| POINCAIRÉ: |
La Science et l’Hypothèse. 1902. (E.T. 1905.)
La Valeur de la Science. 1905.
Science et Méthode. 1909
Dernières pensées.
|
| PROUDHON: |
Qu’est-ce que la Propriété? 1840
Système des Contradictions économiques. 1846
La Philosophie du Progrès. 1851.
De la Justice. 1858.
|
| RAUH: |
Psychologie appliquée à la Morale et à l’Education.
De la Méthode dans la Psychologie des Sentiments.
Essai sur le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale. 1890.
L’Expérience morale. 1903.
|
| RAVAISSON-MOLLIEN (1813-1900): |
Habitude. 1838. (Thesis.) Reprinted 1894 in Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale.
Aristote. 1837. Vol. I. Vol. II. in 1846. Development of work crowned by Académie des Sciences morales et politiques in 1833, when the author was twenty.
Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siècle. 1867.
La Philosophie de Pascal (Revue des Deux Mondes. 1887)
L’Education (Revue bleue. 1887).
Métaphysique et Morale (Revue des Deux Mondes. 1893).
Le Testament philosophique (Revue des Deux Mondes. 1901).
Cf. Boutroux on Ravaisson (Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. 1900).
Bergson : Discours à l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques. 1904.
|
| RENAN: |
Averroès et l’Averroisme. 1852.
Etudes d’Histoire religieuse. 1857.
Essais de Morale et de Critique. 1851).
Les Origines du Christianisme. 1863-83. 8 vols., of which: Vie de Jésus. 1863. (E.T.)
Questions contemporaines. 1868.
La Réforme intellectual et morale. 1871.
Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques. 1870. (E.T. 1883.)
Drames philosophiques.
Souvenirs d’Enfance et de Jeunesse. 1883. (E.T. 1883.)
Nouvelles Etudes d’Histoire religieuse. 1884. (E.T. 1886.)
Histoire du Peuple d’Israël. 5 vols. 1887-04. (E.T. 1888-91. 3 vols.)
L’Avenir de la Science. 1890. Written 1848-9. (E.T.)
Feuilles détachées. 1802.
For monographs on Renan: Allier: La Philosophie de Renan. 1895.
Monod: Renan, Taine, Michelet. 1894.
Séailles: Renan. 1894*.
|
| RENOUVIER: |
Manuel de Philosophie moderne. 1842.
Manuel de Philosophie ancienne. 1844.
Manuel républicaine de l’Homme et du Citoyen. 1848.
Gouvernement direct et Organisation communale et centrale de la République. 1851.
Essais de Critique générale. 4 vols. 1854, 1859, 1864, 1864. (On revision these four became thirteen vols.)
La Science de la Morale. 2 vols. 1869.
1er Essai, revised: Traité de Logique général et de Logique formelle. 3 vols. 1875.
2e Essai, revised: Traité de Psychologie rationnelle. 3 vols. 1875.
Uchronie (L’Utopie dans l’Histoire), Esquisse historique du Développement de la Civilisation européenne, tel qu’il n’a pas été, tel qu’il aurait pu être. 1876.
Petit Traité de Morale pour les Ecoles laïques. 1879.
Esquisse d’une Classification systématique des Doctrines philosophiques. 2 vols. 1886.
3e Essai, revised: Les Principes de la Nature. 1892.
Victor Hugo, le Poète. 1893.
4e Essai, revised: L’lntroduction à la Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire. 1896.
5e Essai, new: La Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire. 4 vols. I. and II. 1806. III. and IV. 1897. (This brought the Essais up to thirteen volumes.)
La Nouvelle Monadologie. 1891). (With L. Prat.) (“Crowned” by the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.)
Victor Hugo, le Philosophe. 1900.
Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique pure. 1901.
Histoire et Solution des Problèmes métaphysiques. 1901.
Le Personnalisme, suivi d’une Etude sur la Perception externe et sur la Force 1903.
Posthumous:
Derniers entretiens. 1905.
Doctrine de Kant. 1906.
For his two journals, see under “Periodicals.”
In the latest edition the complete Essais de Critique générale are only ten volumes, as follows: Logic, 2; Psychology, 2; Principles of Nature, 1; Introduction to Philosophy of History, 1; and the Philosophy of History, 4.
The best monograph is that of Séailles, 1905.
Renouvier’s Correspondence with the Swiss Philosopher, Sécretan, has been published; cf. also The Letters of William James.
|
| REYNAUD: |
Philosophie religieuse. 1858. (Third Edition.)
|
| RIBOT: |
La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine. 1870. (E.T. 1873.)
Hérédité, Etude psychologique. 1873. (E.T. 1875.)
La Psychologie allemande contemporaine. 1879. (E.T. 1886.)
Les Maladies de la Mémoire, Essai dans la Psychologie positive. 1881. (E.T. 1882.)
Les Maladies de la Volonté. 1883. (E.T. 1884.)
Les Maladies de la Personnalité. 1885. (E.T. 1895.)
La Psychologie de l’Attention. 1889. (E.T. 1890.)
La Psychologie des Sentiments. 1896. (E.T. 1897.)
L’Evolution des Idées générales. 1897. (E.T. 1899.)
Essai sur l’Imagination créatrice. 1900.
La Logique des Sentiments. 1904.
Essai sur les Passions. 1906.
La Vie inconsciente et les Mouvements.
|
| SABATIER (AUGUSTE): |
Esquisse d’une Philosophie de Religion d’après la Psychologie et l’Histoire. 1897.
Les Religions d’Autorité et la Religion de l’Esprit. 1904. (E.T.)
|
| SABATIER (PAUL): |
A propos de la Séparation des Eglises de l’Etat. 1905. E.T., Robert Dell, 1906 (with Text of the Law).
|
| SÉAILLES: |
Affirmations de la Conscience moderne. 1903.
|
| SIMON: |
La Liberté de Conscience. 1859.
Dieu, Patrie, Liberté. 1883.
|
| SOREL: |
Reflexions sur la Violence. 1907. (E.T 1916.)
Illusions du Progrès. 1911.
|
| TAINE: |
Les Philosophes français au XIXe Siecle. 1857.
Essais de Critique et d’Histoire. 1858.
Philosophie de l’Art. 2 vols. 1865. (E.T. 1865.)
Nouveaux Essais de Critique et d’Histoire. 1865.
De l’Intélligence. 2 vols. 1870. (E T. 1871.)
The work Origines de la France contemporaine in 5 vols, 1876-93. Histoire de la Littérature anglaise. 5 vols. 1863. (E.T. by Van Laun. 1887.)
Monographs: De Margerie: Taine. 1894.
Monod: Renan, Taine, et Michelet. 1894.
Barzellotti: La Philosophie de Taine.
Boutmy: H. Taine. 1897.
Giraud: Essai sur Taine. 1901.
|
| TARDE: |
Criminalité comparée. 1898.
Les Lois de l’Imitation. 1900.
|
| VACHEROT: |
Histoire de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie. 1846-51.
La Métaphysique et la Science. 3 vols. 1858.
La Démocratie. 1860.
Essais de Philosophie critique. 1864.
La Religion. 1868.
La Science et la Conscience. 1870.
Le Nouveau Spiritualisme. 1884.
Cf. Parodi on Vacherot, Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. 1899.
|
| WEBER: |
Le Rythme du Progrès.
Vers le Positivisme absolu par l’Idéalisme. 1903.
|
| WlLBOIS: |
Devoir et Durée: Essai de Morale sociale. 1912.
|
| XÉNOPOL: |
Principes fondamentaux de l’Histoire. 1899. Revised and reissued in larger form in 1905 as La Théorie de l’Histoire.
|
PERIODICALS
“LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE,” of Renouvier and Pillon, 1872. to 1884, weekly; monthly from 1885 to 1889.
“LA CRITIQUE RELIGIEUSE,” 1878-1884 (quarterly). Renouvier.
“REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE DE LA FRANCE ET DE L’ÉTRANGER,” founded by Ribot in 1876.
“L’ANNÉE PHILOSOPHIQUE.” 1867-1869. Renouvier and Pillon, refounded in 1890 by Pillon.
“REVUE DE MÉTAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE,” founded by Xavier Leon in 1893. “Crowned” by Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, 1921.
“ANNÉE PSYCHOLOGIQUE,” founded by Beaunet and Binet, 1895.
“REVUE DE PHILOSOPHIE,” founded by Peillaube, 1900.
“REVUE THOMISTE.”
“ANNALES DE PHILOSOPHIE CHRÉTIENNE.” Laberthonnière.
“ANNÉE SOCIOLOGIQUE.” 1896-1912. Durkheim.
“JOURNAL DE PSYCHOLOGIE NORMALE ET PATHOLOGIQUE.” Founded 1904 by Janet and Dumas.
“BULLETIN DE LA SOCIÉTÉ FRANÇAISE DE PHILOSOPHIE.” From 1901.
II
GENERAL BOOKS ON THE PERIOD.
| ALIOTTA: |
The Idealistic Reaction against Science. (E.T. from Italian. 1914.)
|
| BARTH: |
Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Sociologie. 1897.
|
| BERGSON: |
La Philosophie française. 1915.
|
| BOUTROUX: |
Philosophie en France depuis 1867. Report to Congress of Philosophy given in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. 1908.
La Philosophie: an Essay in the volume of collected Essays entitled: Un Demi-Siècle de la Civilisation française. 1870- 1915. Pp. 25-48. (Paris: Hachette. 1916.)
|
| DWELSHAUVERS: |
La Psychologie française contemporaine. 1920.
|
| FAGUET: |
Dix-Neuvième Siècle. 1887.
Politiques et Moralistes du XIXe Siècle. 1881.
|
| FERRAZ: |
Etudes sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siècle. 3 vols. 1882-9.
It is interesting to notice the triple division adopted by Ferraz:
Socialism (under which heading he also groups Naturalism and Positivism).
Traditionalism (Ultramontanism).
Spiritualism (together with Liberalism).
|
| FISCHER: |
Geschichte der neuern Philosophie. 9 vols.
|
| FOUILLÉE: |
Histoire de la Philosophie, Latest Edition, last Chapter.
Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science positive. 1896.
La Pensée et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intellectualistes. 1912.
|
| HÖFFDING: |
Modern Philosophers. (E.T. from Danish. 1915.)
|
| LÉVY-BRUHL: |
Modern Philosophy in France. Chicago, 1899.
|
| MERZ: |
History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century. 4 vols.
A great work. Very comprehensive, particularly for German and British thought.
|
| PARODI: |
La Philosophie contemporaine en France. 1919.
An excellent treatment of the development from 1890 onwards by a French thinker. (“Crowned” by Académie.)
|
| RAVAISSON: |
Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siècle. 1867. (Second Edition, 1889.)
This has become an acknowledged classic.
|
| RENOUVIER: |
Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire. (Vol. IV. latest sections.) 1897.
|
| RUGGIERO: |
Modern Philosophy. 1912. (E.T. from Italian. 1921.)
Gives a stimulating account of German, French, Anglo- American and Italian thought.
|
| STEBBING: |
Pragmatism and French Voluntarism. 1914.
|
| TAINE: |
Les Philosophes français du XIXe Siècle. 1857.
|
| TURQUET-MILNES, G.: |
Some Modern French Writers: A Study in Bergsonism. 1921.
Deals mainly with literary figures-e.g., Barres, Péguy, France, Bourget, Claudel.
|
| VILLA: |
Contemporary Psychology. (E.T. from Italian. 1903.)
L’Idealismo moderno. 1905.
|
| WEBER: |
Histoire de la Philosophie européenne. (Eighth Edition, 1914.)
|
* * * * *
The article contributed by Ribot to Mind in 1877 is worthy of notice, while much light is thrown on the historical development by articles in the current periodicals cited on p. 338, especially in the Revue philosophique and the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale.
IIII
COMPARATIVE TABLE
THE CHIEF PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS IN FRANCE, GERMANY, ENGLAND AND AMERICA FROM 1851 TO 1921.
|
FRANCE. |
|
GERMANY. |
|
ENGLAND AND AMERICA. |
| l851 |
COURNOT: “Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances.” |
1851 |
FECHNER: “Zend Avesta.” |
1851 |
MANSEL: “Prolegomena to Logic.” |
| RENOUVIER: “Gouvernement direct et Organisation communale.” |
|
|
|
|
| PROUDHON: “La Philosophie du Progrès.” |
|
|
1852 |
MOLESCHOTT: “Der Kreislauf des Lebens.” |
| LOTZE: “Medizinische Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele.” |
| 1854 |
RENOUVIER: “Essai de Critique générale”(Ier Essai). |
|
|
1854 |
FERRIER: “Institutes of Metaphysic.” |
| COMTE completes “Systeme de Politique positive.” |
|
|
|
|
1855 |
BÜCHNER: “Kraft und Stoff.” |
1855 |
BAIN: “The Senses and the Intellect.” |
| FECHNER: “Uber die physikalische und die philosophische Atomlehre.” |
SPENCER: “Principles of Psychology.” |
| CZOLBE: “Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus.” |
|
|
| 1856 |
COMTE: “Synthèse subjective,” vol. i. |
1856 |
LOTZE: “Mikrokosmos” (1856-1864). |
|
|
CZOLBE: “Die Enstehung des Selbstbewusstseins.” |
| 1857 |
TAINE: “Philosophes rançais du XIXe Siecle.” |
|
|
1857 |
BUCKLE: “History of Civilization in England” (vol. i.). |
| RENAN: “Etudes d’Histoire religieuse.” |
MANSEL: “The Limits of Religious Thought.” |
| 1858 |
VACHEROT: “La Métaphysique et la Science.” |
1858 |
HAMILTON: “Lectures” (1858-1860). |
| 1859 |
RENOUVIER: “Deuxième Essai de Critique generale.” |
I859 |
DARWIN: “Origin of Species.” |
|
|
1860 |
FECHNER: “Elemente der Psychophysik.” |
|
|
| 1861 |
COURNOT: “Traité de l’Enchaînement des Idees.” |
1861 |
FECHNER: “Uber die Seelenfrage.” |
|
|
1862 |
HÄCKEL: “Generalle Morphologie” (1862-1866). |
1862 |
SPENCER: “First Principles.” |
| 1863 |
RENAN: “Vie de Jésus.” |
1863 |
VOGT: “Vorlesungen iiber den Menschen.” |
1863 |
MILL (J. S.): “Utilitarianism.” |
|
|
FECHNER: “Die Drei Motive des Glaubens.” |
|
|
| 1864 |
RENOUVIER: “Troisième Essai de Critique générale”; “Quatrième Essai de Critique générale.” |
|
|
| 1865 |
BERNARD: “Introduction à l’Etude de la Médecine expérimentale.” |
1865 |
DÜHRING: “Der Wert des Lebens.” |
1865 |
HODGSON: “Time and Space.” |
|
|
CZOLBE: “Die Grenzen und der Ursprung der Menschlichen Erkenntnis.” |
MILL (J. S): “Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy.” |
|
|
HAMILTON: “Lectures on Metaphysics.” |
| STIRLING: “Secret of Hegel.” |
| 1866 |
LANGE: “Geschichte des Materialismus.” |
|
|
| 1867 |
RAVAISSON: “Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXe Siecle.” |
1867 |
MARX: “Das Kapital.” |
1867 |
BUCKLE: “History of Civilization in England” ( vol. ii.). |
| 1868 |
RENAN: “Questions contemporaines.” |
1868 |
LOTZE: “Geschichte der Asthetik in Deutschland.” |
|
|
|
|
HÄCKEL: “Natürliche Schöpftungsgeschichte |
| 1869 |
RENOUVIER: “Science deU Morale.” |
1869 |
HARTMANN: “Philosophic des Unbewussten.” |
| 1870 |
TAINE: “De l’Intelligence.” |
1870 |
RITSCHL: “Lehre von der Rechfertigung”(1870-1874). |
| 1871 |
LACHELIER: “Du Fondement de l’Induction.” |
|
|
| 1872 |
FOUILLÉE: “La LibertcS et la Determinisme,” |
1872 |
STRAUSS: “Der Alte und der neue Glaube.” |
1872 |
MAURICE: “Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy.” |
| JANET: “Problemes du XIXe Siecle.” |
NIETZSCHE: “Die Geburt der Tragödie” |
WALLACE: “Logic of Hegel.” |
| COURNOT: “Considerations sur la Marche des Idees.” |
|
|
| 1873 |
RIBOT: “IWredite.” 1873 |
1973 |
SIGWART: “Logik” (1873-1878). 1873 |
1973 |
STEPHEN (J. F.): “Liberty, Equality,Fraternity.” |
| 1874 |
BOUTROUX: “La Contingence des Lois de la Nature.” |
1874 |
LOTZE: “Drei Bucher der Logik.” |
1874 |
SIDGWICK: “Method of Ethics.” |
|
|
WUNDT: “Physiologische Psychologie.” |
|
|
| BRENTANO: “Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt.” |
| 1875 |
COURNOT: “Materialisme, Vitalisme,Rationalisme.” |
|
|
| RENOUVIER: Revises first and second “Essais.” |
| 1876 |
RENAN: “Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques.” |
1876 |
FECHNER: “Vorschule der Asthetik.” |
1876 |
BRADLEY: “Ethical Studies.” |
| JANET: “Les Causes finales.” |
|
|
GROTE: “Moral Ideals.” |
|
|
|
|
1877 |
FLINT: “Theism.” |
| 1878 |
FOUILLEE: “L’Idee du Droit.” |
1878 |
NIETZSCHE: “Menschliches Allzumenschhches “(1878-1880). |
1878 |
HODGSON: “Philosophy of Reflection.” |
| 1879 |
BROCHARD: “De l’Erreur.” |
1879 |
LOTZE: “Drei Bucher der Metaphysik.” |
1879 |
SPENCER: “Data of Ethics.” |
|
|
HARTMANN: “Phanomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins.” |
BALFOUR: “Defence of Philosophic Doubt.” |
| 1880 |
AVENARIUS: “Kritik der reinen Erfahrung”(1880-1890) |
1880 |
CAIRD: “Philosophy ol Religion.” |
| 1881 |
GUYAU: “Vers d’un Philosophe.” |
1881 |
NIETZSCHE: “Morgenrote.” |
|
|
|
|
1882 |
NIETZSCHE: “Die frohliche Wissenschaft.” |
1882 |
STEPHEN (L.): “Science of Ethics.” |
| 1883 |
NIETZSCHE: “Also sprach Zarathustra”(1883-1891) |
1883 |
GREEN: “Prolegomena to Ethics.” |
| DUHRING: “Der Ersatz der Religion.” |
BRADLEY: “Principles of Logic.” |
| WUNDT: “Logik.” |
|
|
| MACH: “Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung.” |
| 1885 |
GUYAU: “Esquisse d’une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction.” |
|
|
1885 |
MARTINEAU: “Types o. Ethical Theory.” |
| LACHELIER: “Psychologic et Métaphysique.” |
BOSANQUET: “Knowledge and Reality.” |
| 1886 |
GUYAU: “L’Irreligion de l’Avenir.” |
1886 |
MACH: “Analyse der Empfindungen.” |
1886 |
WARD: “Psychology” (article). |
|
|
WUNDT: “Ethik.” |
|
|
| NIETZSCHE: “Jenseits von Gut und Böse.” |
| 1887 |
NIETZSCHE: “Zur Genealogie der Moral.” |
1887 |
SETH (Pringle-Pattison): “Hegelianism and Personality.” |
| 1888 |
EUCKEN: “Die Einheit des Geisteslebens.” |
1888 |
BOSANQUKT: “Logic.” |
| 1889 |
BERGSON: “Les Donnees immediates de la Conscience.” |
1889 |
WUNDT: “System der Philosophie.” |
1889 |
MARTINEAU: “Study of Religion.” |
| FOUILLEE: “L’Avenir de la Metaphysique.” |
LIPPS: “Grundthatsachen des Seelenlebens.” |
ALEXANDER: “Moral Order and Progress.” |
| JANET (Pierre): “L’Automatisme psychologique.” |
|
|
|
|
| PAULHAN: “L’Activité mentale.” |
| 1890 |
RENAN: “L’Avenir de la Science.” |
1890 |
JAMES: “Principles of Psychology.” |
| FOUILLÉE: “L’Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces.” |
|
|
| RAUH: “Le Fondement métaphysique de la Morale” |
|
|
1891 |
SIMMEL: “Moralwissenschaft.” |
| AVENARIUS: “Der menschliche Weltbegriff.” |
| 1892 |
RENOUVIER Revises third “Essai.” |
|
|
1892 |
PEARSON: “Grammar Of Science.” |
| RENAN “Feuilles détachées.” |
|
|
| 1893 |
DURKHEIM: “De la Division du Travail social.” |
1893 |
HUXLEY: “Evolution and Ethics.” |
| BLONDEL: “L’Action.” |
CAIRD: “Evolution of Religion” |
| FOUILLÉE: “Psychologie des Idées-forces.” |
BRADLEY: “Appearance and Reality.” |
|
|
1894 |
MEINONG: “Werththeorie” (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen). |
1894 |
FRASER: “Philosophy of Theism” |
| HERTZ: “Prinzipien der Mechanik.” |
|
|
| 1895 |
FOUILLÉE: “Le Mouvement idéaliste.” |
|
|
1895 |
BALFOUR: “Foundations of Belief.” |
| 1896 |
BERGSON: “Matière et Mémoire” |
1896 |
EUCKEN: “Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt.” |
1896 |
STOUT: “Analytic Psychology.” |
| RENOUVIER: Revises fourth “Essai.” |
|
|
HOBHOUSE: “Theory of Knowledge.” |
| RENOUVIER: Publishes fifth “Essai” (La Philosophie analytique de l’Histoire), vols. 1 and 2. |
MERZ: “History of Thought in the Nineteenth Century” (1896-1914). |
|
|
MACTAGGART: “Hegelian Dialectic.” |
| 1897 |
RENOUVIER: Ditto, vols. 3 and 4. |
1897 |
HARTMANN: “Kategorienlehre.” |
1897 |
JAMES: “The Will to Believe |
| SABATIER: “Esquisse d’une Philosophie de Religion.” |
DREWS: “Das Ich als Grundproblem der Metaphysik.” |
|
|
|
|
EHRENFELS: “System der Werttheorie” (1897-1898). |
|
|
1898 |
WALLACE: “Natural Theology and Ethics.” |
| 1899 |
RENOUVIER (and Prat): “La Nouvelle Monadologie.” |
1899 |
MEINONG: “Uber gegenstände höheren Ordnung.” |
1899 |
WARD: “Naturalism and Agnosticism.” |
|
|
|
|
BOSANQUET: “Philosophical Theory of the State.” |
| HODGSON: “Metaphysic of Experience.” |
| 1900 |
TARDE: “Les Lois de l’Imitation.” |
1900 |
PETZOLDT: “Die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung.” |
1900 |
ROYCE: “The World and the Individual.” |
| BRUNSCHWICG: “La Vie de l’Esprit.” |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1901 |
EUCKEN: “Das Wesen der Religion.” |
| EUCKEN: “Das Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion.” |
| 1902 |
POINCARÉ |
1902 |
COHEN: “System der Philosophie: Logik.” |
1902 |
JAMES: “Varieties of Religious Experience.” |
|
|
|
|
CLIFFORD: “Essays and Lectures.” |
| 1903 |
WEBER: “Vers le Positivisme absolu par l’Idéalisme.” |
1903 |
BERGMANN: “System des objectiven Idealismus.” |
1903 |
RUSSELL: “Principles of Mathematics.” |
| RAUH: “L’Expérience morale.” |
|
|
SCHILLER: “Humanism.” |
| RENOUVIER: “Le Personnalisme.” |
|
|
|
|
1904 |
COHEN: “System der Philosophie: Ethik.” |
1904 |
MACTAGGART: “Hegelian Cosmology.” |
| 1905 |
POINCARÉ: “Valeur de la Science.” |
1905 |
MACH: Erkenntnis und Irrtum.” |
|
|
| 1906 |
OLLÉ-LAPRUNE: “La Raison et le Rationalisme.” |
1906 |
MEINONG: “Die Stellung der Gegenstandtheorie ein System der Wissenschaften.” |
1906 |
BAILLIE: “Idealistic Construction of Experience.” |
| DUHEM: “La Théorie physique.” |
|
|
BALDWIN: “Thought and Things.” |
| 1907 |
HAMELIN: “Les Eléments principaux de la Répresentation.” |
1907 |
EUCKEN: “Grundlinien einer neuen Lebensauschauung.” |
1907 |
SCHILLER: “Studies in Humanism.” |
| BERGSON: “L’Evolution créatrice.” |
EUCKEN: “Hauptprobleme der Religionsphilosophie.” |
|
|
| EVELLIN: “La Raison pure et les Antinomies.” |
|
|
| LALANDEL “Précis de Morale.” |
| FOUILLÉE: “Morale des Idées-forces.” |
| 1908 |
BOUTROUX: “Science et Religion.” |
1908 |
EUCKEN: “Sinn und Wertdes Lebens.” |
|
|
EUCKEN: “Philosophie des Geisteslebens.” |
| MÜNSTERBERG: “Philosophie der Werte.” |
| 1909 |
POINCARÉ: “Science et Méthode.” |
|
|
1909 |
DEWEY: “Logical Theory.” |
|
|
1910 |
REMKHE: “Philosophie als Grundwissenschaft” |
|
|
| 1911 |
DUNAN: “Les Deux Idéalismes.” |
1911 |
EUCKEN: “Konnen wir noch Christen sein?” |
1911 |
WARD: “Realm of Ends.” |
| 1912 |
FOUILLÉE: “La Pensée.” |
1912 |
COHEN: “System der Philosophie: Æsthetik.” |
1912 |
BOSANQUET: “Value and Destiny of the Individual” |
| DURKHEIM: “Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse.” |
EUCKEN: “Erkennen und Leben.” |
|
|
|
|
|
|
1913 |
BOSANQUET: “Value and Destiny of the Individual.” |
| 1914 |
FOUILLÉE: “Humanitaires et Libertaires.” |
|
|
|
|
1915 |
SORLEY: “Moral Values and the Idea of God.” |
| 1917 |
LOISY: “La Religion.” |
|
|
| 1918 |
GOBLOT: “Traité de Logique.” |
| 1919 |
BERGSON: “L’Energie spirituelle.” |
|
|
1920 |
ALEXANDER: “Space, Time and Deity.” |
| 1921 |
RUSSELL: “Analysis of Mind.” |
| MACTAGGART: “Nature of Existence.” |
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