Chapter XVI (1)

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL.

With Hegel the glorious dynasty which, with a strong hand, had guided the fate of German philosophy since the conclusion of the preceding century disappears. From his death (1831) we may date the second period of post-Kantian philosophy,[1] which is markedly and unfavorably distinguished from the first by a decline in the power of speculative creation and by a division of effort. If previous to this the philosophical public, comprising all the cultured, had been eagerly occupied with problems in common, and had followed with unanimous interest the work of those who were laboring at them, during the last fifty years the interest of wider circles in philosophical questions has grown much less active; almost every thinker goes his own way, giving heed only to congenial voices; the inner connection of the schools has been broken down; the touch with thinkers of different views has been lost. The latest decades have been the first to bring a change for the better, in so far as new rallying points of philosophical interest have been created by the neo-Kantian movement, by the systems of Lotze and Von Hartmann, by the impulse toward the philosophy of nature proceeding from Darwinism, by energetic labors in the field of practical philosophy, and by new methods of investigation in psychology.

[Footnote 1: On philosophy since 1831 cf. vol. iii. of J.E. Erdmann's _History_; Ueberweg, _Grundriss_, part iii. §§ 37-49 (English translation, vol. ii. pp. 292-516); Lange, _History of Materialism_; B. Erdmann, _Die Philosophie der Gegenwart_ in the _Deutsche Rundschau_, vols. xix., xx., 1879, June and July numbers; (A. Krohn,) _Streifzüge durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart_ in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik_, vols. lxxxvii., lxxxix., 1885-86; (Burt, _History of Modern Philosophy_, 1892), also the third volume of Windelband's _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, when it appears.]

%1. From the Division of the Hegelian School to the Materialistic Controversy.%

A decade after the philosophy of Hegel had entered on its supremacy a division in the school was called forth by Strauss's _Life of Jesus_(1835). The differences were brought to light by the discussion of religious problems, in regard to which Hegel had not expressed himself with sufficient distinctness. The relation of knowledge and faith, as he had defined it, admitted of variant interpretations and deductions, and this in favor of Church doctrine as well as in opposition to it. Philosophy has the same content as religion, but in a different form, _i.e._, not in the form of representation, but in the form of the concept--it transforms dogma into speculative truth. The conservative Hegelians hold fast to the identity of content in the two modes of cognition; the liberals, to the alteration in form, which, they assert, brings an alteration in content with it. According to Hegel the lower stage is "sublated" in the higher, _i.e._, conserved as well as negated. The orthodox members of the school emphasize the conservation of religious doctrines, their justification from the side of the philosopher; the progressists, their negation, their overcoming by the speculative concept. The general question, whether the ecclesiastical meaning of a dogma is retained or to be abandoned in its transformation into a philosopheme, divides into three special questions, the anthropological, the soteriogical, and the theological. These are: whether on Hegelian principles immortality is to be conceived as a continuance of individual existence on the art of particular spirits, or only as the eternity of the universal reason; whether by the God-man the person of Christ is to be understood, or, on the other hand, the human species, the Idea of Humanity; whether personality belongs to the Godhead before the creation of the world, or whether it first attains to self-consciousness in human spirits, whether Hegel was a theist or a pantheist, whether he teaches the transcendence or the immanence of God. The Old Hegelians defend the orthodox interpretation; the Young Hegelians oppose it. The former, Göschel, Gabler, Hinrichs, Schaller (died 1868; _History of the Philosophy of Nature since Bacon_, 1841 _seq_.), J.E. Erdmann in Halle (1805-92; _Body and Soul_, 1837; _Psychological Letters_, 1851, 6th ed., 1882; _Earnest Sport_, 1871, 4th ed., 1890), form, according to Strauss's parliamentary comparison carried out by Michelet, the "right"; the latter, Strauss, Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and A. Ruge, who, with Echtermeyer, edited the _Hallesche_, afterward _Deutsche, Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst_, 1838-42, the "left." Between them, and forming the "center," stand Karl Rosenkranz[1] in Königsberg (1805-79), C.L. Michelet in Berlin (p. 16; _Hegel, the Unrefuted World-philosopher_, 1870; _System of Philosophy_, 1876 _seq_.), and the theologians Marheineke (a pupil of Daub at Heidelberg) and W. Vatke (_Philosophy of Religion_, edited by Preiss, 1888). Contrasted with these is the group of semi- or pseudo-Hegelians (p. 596), who declare themselves in accord with the theistic doctrines of the right, but admit that the left represents Hegel's own opinion, or at least the correct deductions from his position.

[Footnote 1: K. Rosenkranz: _Psychology_, 1837, 3d ed., 1863; _Science of the Logical Idea_, 1858; _Studies_, 1839 _seq_., _New Studies_, 1875 _seq_.; _Aesthetics of the Ugly_, 1853; several works on the history of poetry.]

The following should also be mentioned as Hegelians: the philosopher of history, Von Cieszkowski, the pedagogical writer, Thaulow (at Kiel, died 1883), the philosopher of religion and of law, A. Lasson at Berlin, the aesthetic writers Hotho, Friedrich Theodor Vischer[1] (1807-87), and Max Schasler (_Critical History of Aesthetics_, 1872; _Aesthetics_, 1886), the historians of philosophy, Schwegler (died 1857; _History of Greek Philosophy_, 1859, 4th ed., 1886, edited by Karl Köstlin, whose _Aesthetics_ appeared 1869), Eduard Zeller[2] of Berlin (born 1814), and Kuno Fischer (born 1824; 1856-72 professor at Jena, since then at Heidelberg; _Logic and Metaphysics_, 2d ed., 1865). While Weissenborn (died 1874) is influenced by Schleiermacher also, and Zeller and Fischer strive back toward Kant, Johannes Volkelt[3] in Würzburg (born 1848), who started from Hegel and advanced through Schopenhauer and Hartmann, has of late years established an independent noëtical position and has done good service by his energetic opposition to positivism _(Das Denken als Hülfvorstellungs--Thätigkeit und als Aupassungsvorgang_ in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophic_, vols. xcvi., xcvii., 1889-90).

[Footnote 1: Vischer: _Aesthetics_, 1846-58; _Critical Excursions_, 1844 _seq_.; several _Hefte "Altes and Neues_". The diary in the second part of the novel _Auch Einer_ develops an original pantheistic view of the world.]

[Footnote 2: Zeller: _The Philosophy of the Greeks in its Historical Development_, 5 vols., 3d ed., vol. i. 5th ed. (English translation, 1868 _seq_.); three collections of _Addresses and Essays_, 1865, 1877, 1884.]

[Footnote 3: Volkelt: _The Phantasy in Dreams_, 1875; _Kant's Theory of Knowledge_, 1879; _On the Possibility of Metaphysics_, inaugural address at Basle, 1884; _Experience and Thought, Critical Foundation of the Theory of Knowledge_, 1886; _Lectures Introductory to the Philosophy of the Present Time_ (delivered in Frankfort on the Main), 1892.]

The leaders of the Hegelian left require more detailed consideration. In David Friedrich Strauss[1] (1808-74, born and died at Ludwigsburg) the philosophy of religion becomes a historical criticism of the Bible and of dogmatics. The biblical narratives are, in great part, not history (this has been the common error alike of the super-naturalistic and of the rationalistic interpreters), but myths, that is, suprasensible facts presented in the form of history and in symbolic language. It is evident from the contradictions in the narratives and the impossibility of miracles that we are not here concerned with actual events. The myths possess (speculative, absolute) truth, but no (historical) reality. They are unintentional creations of the popular imagination; the spirit of the community speaks in the authors of the Gospels, using the historical factor (the life-history of Jesus) with mythical embellishments as an investiture for a supra-historical, eternal truth (the speculative Idea of incarnation). The God become man, in which the infinite and the finite, the divine nature and the human, are united, is the human race. The Idea of incarnation manifests itself in a multitude of examples which supplement one another, instead of pouring forth its whole fullness in a single one. The (real) Idea of the race is to be substituted for a single individual as the subject of the predicates (resurrection, ascension, etc.) which the Church ascribes to Christ. The Son of God is _Humanity_.

[Footnote 1: Strauss: _The Life of Jesus_, 1835-36, 4th ed., 1840 [English translation by George Eliot, 2d. ed., 1893]; the same "for the German People," 1864 [English translation, 1865]; _Christian Dogmatics_, 1840-41; _Voltaire_, 1870; _Collected Writings_, 12 vols., edited by Zeller, 1876-78. On Strauss cf. Zeller, 1874 [English, 1874], and Hausrath, 1876-78.]

In his second principal work Strauss criticises the dogmas of Christianity as sharply as he had criticised the Gospel narrative in the first one. The historical development of these has of itself effected their destruction: the history of dogma is the objective criticism of dogma. Christianity and philosophy, theism and pantheism, dualism and immanence, are irreconcilable opposites. To be able to know we must cease to believe. Dogma is the product of the unphilosophical, uncultured consciousness; belief in revelation, only for those who have not yet risen to reason. In the transformation of religious representations into philosophical Ideas nothing specifically representative is left; the form of representation must be actually overcome. The Christian contraposition of the present world and that which is beyond is explained by the fact that the sensuo-rational spirit of man, so long as it does not philosophically know itself as the unity of the infinite and the finite, but only feels itself as finite, sensuo-empirical consciousness, projects the infinite, which it has in itself, as though this were something foreign, looks on it as something beyond the world. This separation of faith is entirely unphilosophical; it is the mission of the philosopher to reduce all that is beyond the world to the present. Thus for him immortality is not something to come, but the spirit's own power to rise above the finite to the Idea. And like future existence, so the transcendent God also disappears. The absolute is the universal unity of the world, which posits and sublates the individual as its modes. God is the being in all existence, the life in all that lives, the thought in all that think: he does not stand as an individual person beside and above other persons, but is the infinite which personifies itself and attains to consciousness in human spirits, and this from eternity; before there was a humanity of earth there were spirits on other stars, in whom God reflected himself.

Three decades later Strauss again created a sensation by his confession of materialism and atheism, _The Old Faith and the New_, 1872 (since the second edition, "With a Postscript as Preface"),[1] in which he continues the conflict against religious dualism. The question "Are we"--the cultured men of the day--"still Christians?" is answered in the negative. Christianity is a cult of poverty, despising the world, and antagonistic to labor and culture; but we have learned to esteem science and art, riches and acquisition, as the chief levers of culture and of human progress. Christianity dualistically tears apart body and soul, time and eternity, the world and God; we need no Creator, for the life-process has neither beginning nor end. The world is framed for the highest reason, it is true, but it has not been framed by a highest reason. Our highest Idea is the All, which is conformed to law, and instinct with life and reason, and our feeling toward the universe--the consciousness of dependence on its laws--exercises no less of ethical influence, is no less full of reverence, and no less exposed to injury from an irreverent pessimism, than the feeling of the devout of the old type toward their God. Hence the answer to the second question "Have we still a religion?" maybe couched in the affirmative. The new faith does not need a _cultus_ and a Church. Since the dry services of the free congregations offer nothing for the fancy and the spirit, the edification of the heart must be accomplished in other ways--by participation in the interests of humanity, in the national life, and, not last, by aesthetic enjoyment. Thus in his last work, which in two appendices reaches a discussion of the great German poets and musicians, the old man returns to a thought to which he had given earlier expression, that the religious _cultus_ should be replaced by the _cultus_ of genius.

[Footnote 1: English translation by Mathilde Blind, 1873.]

As Strauss went over from Hegelianism to pantheism, so Ludwig Feuerbach[1] (1804-72), a son of the great jurist, Anselm Feuerbach, after he had for a short time moved in the same direction, took the opposite, the individualistic course, only, like Strauss, to end at last in materialism. "My first thought," as he himself describes the course of his development, "was God; my second, reason; my third and last, man." As theology has been overcome by Hegel's philosophy of reason, so this in turn must give place to the philosophy of man. "The new philosophy makes man, including nature as his basis, the highest and sole subject of philosophy, and, consequently, anthropology the universal science." Only that which is immediately self-evident is true and divine. But only that which is sensible is evident (_sonnenklar)_; it is only where sensibility begins that all doubt and conflict cease. Sensible beings alone are true, real beings; existence in space and time is alone existence; truth, reality, and sensibility are identical. While the old philosophy took for its starting point the principle, "I am an abstract, a merely thinking being; the body does not belong to my essence," the new philosophy, on the other hand, begins with the principle, "I am a real, a sensible being; the body in its totality is my ego, my essence itself." Feuerbach, however, uses the concept of sensibility in so wide and vague a sense that, supported--or deceived--by the ambiguity of the word sensation, he includes under it even the most elevated and sacred feelings. Even the objects of art are seen, heard, and felt; even the souls of other men are sensed. In the sensations the deepest and highest truths are concealed. Not only the external, but the internal also, not only flesh, but spirit, not only the thing, but the ego, not only the finite, the phenomenal, but also the true divine essence is an object of the senses. Sensation proves the existence of objects outside our head--there is no other proof of being than love, than sensation in general. Everything is perceivable by the senses, if not directly, yet indirectly, if not with the vulgar, untrained senses, yet with the "cultivated senses," if not with the eye of the anatomist or chemist, yet with that of the philosopher. All our ideas spring from the senses, but their production requires communication and converse between man and man. The higher concepts cannot be derived from the individual Ego without a sensuously given Thou; the highest object of sense is man; man does not reach concepts and reason in general by himself, but only as one of two. The nature of man is contained in community alone; only in life with others and for others does he attain his destiny and happiness. The conscience is the ego putting itself in the place of another who has been injured. Man with man, the unity of I and Thou, is God, and God is love.

[Footnote 1: Feuerbach was born at Landshut, studied at Heidelberg and Berlin, habilitated, 1828, at Erlangen, and lived, 1836-60, in the village of Bruckberg, not far from Bayreuth, and from 1860 until his death in Rechenberg, a suburb of Nuremberg. _Collected Works_ in 10 vols., 1846-66. The chief works are entitled: _P. Bayle_, 1838, 2d ed., 1844; _Philosophy and Christianity_, 1839; _The Essence of Christianity_, 1841, 4th ed., 1883 [English translation by George Eliot, 1854]; _Principles of the Philosophy of the Future_, 1843; _The Essence of Religion_, 1845; _Theogony_, 1857; _God, Freedom, and Immortality_, 1866. Karl Grün, 1874, C.N. Starcke, 1885, and W. Bolin, 1891, treat of Feuerbach.]

To the philosophy of religion Feuerbach assigns the task of giving a psychological explanation of the genesis of religion, instead of showing reason in religion. In bidding us believe in miracles dogma is a prohibition to think. Hence the philosopher is not to justify it, but to uncover the illusion to which it owes its origin. Speculative theology is an intoxicated philosophy; it is time to become sober, and to recognize that philosophy and religion are diametrically opposed to each other, that they are related to each other as health to disease, as thought to phantasy. Religion arises from the fact that man objectifies his own true essence, and opposes it to himself as a personal being, without coming to a consciousness of this divestment of self, of the identity of the divine and human nature. Hence the Hegelian principles, that the absolute is self-consciousness, that in man God knows himself, must be reversed: self-consciousness is the absolute; in his God man knows himself only. The Godhead is our own universal nature, freed from its individual limitations, intuited and worshiped as another, independent being, distinct from us. God is self objectified, the inner nature of man expressed; man is the beginning, the middle, and the end of religion. All theology is anthropology, for all religion is a self-deification of man. In religion man makes a division in his own nature, posits himself as double, first as limited (as a human individual), then as unlimited, raised to infinity (as God); and this deified self he worships in order to obtain from it the satisfaction of his needs, which the course of the world leaves unmet. Thus religion grows out of egoism: its basis is the difference between our will and our power; its aim, to set us free from the dependence which we feel before nature. (Like culture, religion seeks to make nature an intelligible and compliant being, only that in this it makes use of the supernatural instruments faith, prayer, and magic; it is only gradually that men learn to attack the evils by natural means.) That which man himself is not, but wishes to be, that he represents to himself in his gods as existing; they are the wishes of man's heart transformed into real beings, his longing after happiness satisfied by the fancy. The same holds true of all dogmas: as God is the affirmation of our wishes, so the world beyond is the present embellished and idealized by the fancy. Instead of "God is merciful, is love, is omnipotent, he performs miracles and hears prayers," the statement must be reversed: mercy, love, omnipotence, to perform miracles, and to hear prayers, is divine. In the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper Feuerbach sees the truth that water and food are indispensable and divine. As Feuerbach, following out this naturalistic tendency, reached the extreme of materialism, the influence of his philosophy--whose different phases there is no occasion to trace out in detail--had already passed its culmination. From his later writings little more has found its way into public notice than the pun, that man is (_ist_) what he eats (_isst_).

The remaining members of the Hegelian left may be treated more briefly. Bruno Bauer[1] (died in 1882; his principal work is the _Critique of the Synoptics_, in three volumes, 1841-42, which had been preceded, in 1840, by a _Critique of the Evangelical History of John_) at first belonged on the right of the school, but soon went over to the extreme left. He explains the Gospel narratives as creations with a purpose (_Tendenzdichtungen_), as intentional, but not deceitful, inventions, from which, despite their unreality, history may well be learned, inasmuch as they reflect the spirit of the time in which they were constructed. His own publications and those of his brother Edgar are much more radical after the year 1844. In these the brothers advocate the standpoint of "pure or absolute criticism," which extends itself to all things and events for or against which sides are taken from any quarter, and calmly watches how everything destroys itself. As soon as anything is admitted, it is no longer true. Nothing is absolutely valid, all is vain; it is only the criticising, all-destroying ego, free from all ethical ties, that possesses truth.

[Footnote 1: Not to be confused with the head of the Tübingen School, Ferdinand Christian Baur (died 1860).]

One further step was possible beyond Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, that from the community to the particular, selfish individual, from the criticising, therefore thinking, ego, to the ego of sensuous enjoyment. This step was taken in that curious book _The Individual and his Property_, which Kaspar Schmidt, who died in 1856 at Berlin, published in 1845 (2d ed., 1882), under the pseudonym of Max Stirner. The Individual of whom the title speaks is the egoist. For me nothing is higher than myself; I use men and use up the world for my own pleasure. I seek to be and have all that I can be and have; I have a right to all that is within my power. Morality is a delusion, justice, like all Ideas, a phantom. Those who believe in ideals, and worship such generalities as self-consciousness, man, society, are still deep in the mire of prejudice and superstition, and have banished the old orthodox phantom of the Deity only to replace it by a new one. Nothing whatever is to be respected.

* * * * *

Among the opponents of the Hegelian philosophy the members of the "theistic school," who have above been designated as semi-Hegelians, approximate it most closely. These endeavor, in part retaining the dialectic method, to blend the immanence of the absolute, which philosophy cannot give up and concerning which Hegel had erred only by way of over-emphasis, with the transcendence of God demanded by Christian consciousness, to establish a theism which shall contain pantheism as a moment in itself. God is present in all creatures, yet distinct from them; he is intramundane as well as extramundane; he is self-conscious personality, free creative spirit, is this from all eternity, and does not first become such through the world-development. He does not need the world for his perfection, but out of his goodness creates it. Philosophy must begin with the living Godhead instead of beginning, like Hegel's Logic, with the empty concept of being. For the categories--as Schelling had already objected--express necessary forms or general laws only, to which all reality must conform, but which are never capable of generating reality; the content which appears in them and which obeys them, can only be created by a Deity, and only empirically cognized. This is the standpoint of Christian Hermann Weisse[1] in Leipsic (1801-66), Karl Philipp Fischer[2] in Erlangen (1807-85), Immanuel Hermann Fichte[3] (1797-1879; 1842-65 professor in Tübingen), and the follower of Schleiermacher, Julius Braniss in Breslau (1792-1873). The following hold similar views, influenced, like Weisse and K. Ph. Fischer, by Schelling: Jacob Sengler of Freiburg (1799-1878; _The Idea of God_, 1845 _seq_.), Leopold Schmid of Giessen (1808-69; cf. p. 516, note), Johannes Huber (died 1879), Moritz Carrière[4] (born 1817), both in Munich, K. Steffensen of Basle (1816-88; _Collected Essays_, 1890), and Karl Heyder in Erlangen (1812-86; _The Doctrine of Ideas_, vol. i. 1874). Chalybaeus at Kiel (died 1862), and Friedrich Harms at Berlin (died 1880; _Metaphysics_, posthumously edited by H. Wiese, 1885), who, like Fortlage and I.H. Fichte, start from the system of the elder Fichte, should also be mentioned as sympathizing with the opinions of those who have been named.

[Footnote 1: Weisse: _System of Aesthetics_, 1830; _The Idea of the Godhead_, 1833; _Philosophical Dogmatics_, 1855. His pupil Rudolf Seydel has published several of his posthumous works; H. Lotze also acknowledges that he owes much to Weisse. Rud. Seydel in Leipsic (born 1835), _Logic_, 1866; _Ethics_, 1874; cf. p. 17.]

[Footnote 2: K. Ph. Fischer: _The Idea of the Godhead_, 1839; _Outlines of the System of Philosophy_, 1848 _seq_.; _The Untruth of Sensationalism and Materialism_, 1853.]

[Footnote 3: I.H. Fichte: _System of Ethics_, 1850-53, the first volume of which gives a history of moral philosophy since 1750; _Anthropology_, 1856, 3d ed., 1876; _Psychology_, 1864.]

[Footnote 4: Carrière: _Aesthetics_, 1859, 3d ed., 1885; _The Moral Order of the World_, 1877, 2d ed., 1891; _Art in connection with the Development of Culture_, 5 vols., 1863-73.]

The same may be said, further, of Hermann Ulrici[1] of Halle (1806-84), for many years the editor of the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik_, founded in 1837 by the younger Fichte and now edited by the author of this _History_, which, as the organ of the theistic school, opposed, first, the pantheism of the Young Hegelians, and then the revived materialism so loudly proclaimed after the middle of the century. This _Zeitschrift_ of Fichte and Ulrici, following the altered circumstances of the time, has experienced a change of aim, so that it now seeks to serve idealistic efforts of every shade; while the _Philosophische Monatshefte_ (founded by Bergmann in 1868, edited subsequently by Schaarschmidt, and now) edited by P. Natorp of Marburg, favors neo-Kantianism, and the _Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_ (begun in 1877, and) edited by R. Avenarius of Zurich, especially cultivates those parts of philosophy which are open to exact treatment.

[Footnote 1: Ulrici: _On Shakespeare's Dramatic Art_, 1839, 3d ed., 1868 [English, 1876]; _Faith and Knowledge_, 1858; _God and Nature_, 1861, 2d ed., 1866; _God and Man_, in two volumes, _Body and Soul_, 1866, 2d ed., 1874, and _Natural Law_, 1872; various treatises on Logic--in which consciousness is based on the distinguishing activity, and the categories conceived as functional modes of this--on Spiritualism, etc.]

The appearance of _materialism_ was the consequence of the flagging of the philosophic spirit, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the dissatisfaction of the representatives of natural science with the constructions of the Schelling-Hegelian school. If the German naturalist is especially exposed to the danger of judging all reality from the section of it with which he is familiar, from the world of material substances and mechanical motions, the reason lies in the fact that he does not find it easy, like the Englishman for example, to let the scientific and the philosophico-religious views of the world go on side by side as two entirely heterogeneous modes of looking at things. The metaphysical impulse to generalization and unification spurs him on to break down the boundary between the two spheres, and, since the physical view of things has become part of his flesh and blood, psychical phenomena are for him nothing but brain-vibrations, and the freedom of the will and all religious ideas, nothing but illusions. The materialistic controversy broke out most actively at the convention of naturalists at Göttingen in 1854, when Rudolph Wagner in his address "On the Creation of Man and the Substance of the Soul" declared, in opposition to Karl Vogt, that there is no physiological reason for denying the descent of man from one pair and an immaterial immortal soul. Vogt's answer was entitled "Collier Faith and Science." Among others Schaller (_Body and Soul_, 1855), J.B. Meyer in a treatise with the same title, 1856, and the Jena physicist, Karl Snell,[1] took part in the controversy by way of criticism and mediation. A much finer nature than the famous leaders of materialism--Moleschott (_The Circle of Life_, 1852, in answer to Liebig's _Chemical Letters_), and Louis Büchner, with whose _Force and Matter_ (1855, 16th ed., 1888; English translation by Collingwood, 4th ed., 1884) the gymnasiast of to-day still satisfies his freethinking needs--is H. Czolbe (1819-73; _New Exposition of Sensationalism_, 1855; _The Limits and Origin of Human Knowledge_, 1865), who, on ethical grounds, demands the exclusion of everything suprasensible and contentment with the given world of phenomena, but holds that, besides matter and motion, eternal, purposive forms and original sensations in a world-soul are necessary to explain organic and psychical phenomena.

[Footnote 1: Snell (1806-86): _The Materialistic Question_, 1858; _The Creation of Man_, 1863. R. Seydel has edited _Lectures on the Descent of Man_, 1888, from Snell's posthumous writings.]

%2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hartmann%.

The speculative impulse, especially in the soul of the German people, is ineradicable. It has neither allowed itself to be discouraged by the collapse of the Hegelian edifice, nor to be led astray by the clamor of the apostles of empiricism, nor to be intimidated by the papal proclamation of the infallibility of Thomas Aquinas.[1] Manifold attempts have been made at a new conception of the world, and with varying success. Of the earlier theories[2] only two have been able to gather a circle of adherents--the dualistic theism of Günther (1783-1863), and the organic view of the world of Trendelenburg (1802-72).

[Footnote 2: In 1879 a summons was sent forth from Rome for the revival and dissemination of the Thomistic system as the only true philosophy (cf. R. Eucken, _Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit_, 1886). This movement is supported by the journals, _Jahrbuch für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie_, edited by Professor E. Commer of Münster, 1886 _seq_., and _Philosophisches Jahrbuch_, edited, at the instance and with the support of the Görres Society, by Professor Const. Gutberlet of Fulda, 1888 _seq_. While the text-books of Hagemann, Stoeckl, Gutberlet, Pesch, Commer, C.M. Schneider, and others also follow Scholastic lines, B. Bolzano (died 1848), M. Deutinger (died 1864) and his pupil Neudecker, Oischinger, Michelis, and W. Rosenkrantz (1821-74; _Science of Knowledge_, 1866-68), who was influenced by Schelling, have taken a freer course.]

[Footnote 2: Trahndorff, gymnasial professor in Berlin (1782-1863), _Aesthetics_, 1827 (cf. E. von Hartmann in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xxii. 1886, p. 59 _seq_., and J. von Billewicz, in the same, vol. xxi. 1885, p. 561 _seq_.); J.F. Reiff in Tübingen: _System of the Determinations of the Will_, 1842; K. Chr. Planck (died 1880): _The Ages of the World_, 1850 _seq_.; _Testament of a German_, edited by Karl Köstlin, 1881; F. Röse (1815-59), _On the Method of the Knowledge of the Absolute_, 1841; _Psychology as Introduction to the Philosophy of Individuality_, 1856. Emanuel Sharer follows Röse. Friedrich Rohmer (died 1856): _Science of God, Science of Man_, in _Friedrich Rohmer's Wissenschaft und Leben_, edited by Bluntschli and Rud. Seele, 6 vols., 1871-92.]

Anton Günther (engaged in authorship from 1827; _Collected Writings_, 1881; _Anti-Savarese_, edited with an appendix by P. Knoodt), who in 1857 was compelled to retract his views, invokes the spirit of Descartes in opposition to the Hegelian pantheism. In agreement with Descartes, Günther starts from self-consciousness (in the ego being and thought are identical), and brings not only the Creator and the created world, but also nature (to which the soul is to be regarded as belonging) and spirit into a relation of exclusive opposition, yet holds that in man nature (body and soul) and spirit are united, and that they interact without prejudice to their qualitative difference. J.H. Pabst (died in 1838 in Vienna), Theodor Weber of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn (died 1889), V. Knauer of Vienna and others are Güntherians.

Adolf Trendelenburg[1] of Berlin, the acute critic of Hegel and Herbart, in his own thinking goes back to the philosophy of the past, especially to that of Aristotle. Motion and purpose are for him fundamental facts, which are common to both being and thinking, which mediate between the two, and make the agreement of knowledge and reality possible. The ethical is a higher stage of the organic. Space, time, and the categories are forms of thought as well as of being; the logical form must not be separated from the content, nor the concept from intuition. We must not fail to mention that Trendelenburg introduced a peculiar and fruitful method of treating the history of philosophy, viz., the historical investigation of particular concepts, in which Teichmüller of Dorpat (1832-88; _Studies in the History of Concepts_, 1874; _New Studies in the History of Concepts_, 1876-79; _The Immortality of the Soul_, 2d ed., 1879; _The Nature of Love_, 1880; _Literary Quarrels in the Fourth Century before Christ_, 1881 and 1884), and Eucken of Jena (cf. pp. 17 and 623) have followed his example. Kym in Zurich (born 1822; _Metaphysical Investigations_, 1875; _The Problem of Evil_, 1878) is a pupil of Trendelenburg.

[Footnote 1: Trendelenburg: _Logical Investigations_, 1840, 3d ed., 1870; _Historical Contributions to Philosophy_, 3 vols., 1846, 1855, 1867; _Natural Law on the Basis of Ethics_, 1860, 2d ed., 1868. On Trendelenburg cf. Eucken in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, 1884.]

Of more recent systematic attempts the following appear worthy of mention: Von Kirchmann (1802-84; from 1868 editor of the _Philosophische Bibliothek_), _The Philosophy of Knowledge_, 1865; _Aesthetics_, 1868; _On the Principles of Realism_, 1875; _Catechism of Philosophy_ 2d ed., 1881; E. Dühring (born 1833), _Natural Dialectic_, 1865; _The Value of Life_, 1865, 3d ed, 1881; _Critical History of the Principles of Mechanics_, 1873, 2d ed., 1877; _Course of Philosophy_, 1875 (cf. on Dühring, Helene Druskowitz, 1889); J. Baumann of Göttingen (born 1837), _Philosophy as Orientation concerning the World_, 1872; _Handbook of Ethics_, 1879; _Elements of Philosophy_, 1891; L. Noiré, _The Monistic Idea_, 1875, and many other works; Frohschammer of Munich (born 1821), _The Phantasy as the Fundamental Principle of the World-process_, 1877; _On the Genesis of Humanity, and its Spiritual Development in Religion, Morality and Language_, 1883; _On the Organization and Culture of Human Society_, 1885.

In the first rank of the thinkers who have made their appearance since Hegel and Herbart stand Fechner and Lotze, both masters in the use of exact methods, yet at the same time with their whole souls devoted to the highest questions, and superior to their contemporaries in breadth of view as in the importance and range of their leading ideas--Fechner a dreamer and sober investigator by turns, Lotze with gentle hand reconciling the antitheses in life and science.

Gustav Theodor Fechner[1] (1801-87; professor at Leipsic) opposes the abstract separation of God and the world, which has found a place in natural inquiry and in theology alike, and brings the two into the same relation of correspondence and reciprocal reference as the soul and the body. The spirit gives cohesion to the manifold of material parts, and needs them as a basis and material for its unifying activity. As our ego connects the manifold of our activities and states in the unity of consciousness, so the divine spirit is the supreme unity of consciousness for all being and becoming. In the spirit of God everything is as in ours, only expanded and enhanced. Our sensations and feelings, our thoughts and resolutions are His also, only that He, whose body all nature is, and to whom not only that which takes place in spirits is open, but also that which goes on between them, perceives more, feels deeper, thinks higher, and wills better things than we. According to the analogy of the human organism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beings endowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntary motion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itself dead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance which it produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life may not exceed that of an infant, its sensations, at all events, since they do not form the basis of a higher activity, are superior in force and richness to those of the animal. Thus the human soul stands intermediate in the scale of psychical life: beneath and about us are the souls of plants and animals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in and encompassing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are in their turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. The omnipresence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means of escaping from the desolate "night view" of modern science, which looks upon the world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, light and sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend around us with objective reality--as sensations of the divine spirit, to which everything that vibrates resounds and shines.

[Footnote 1: _Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants_, 1848; _Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond_, 1851; _Physical and Philosophical Atomism_, 1855; _The Three Motives and Grounds of Belief_, 1863; _The Day View_, 1879; _Elements of Aesthetics_, 1876; _Elements of Psycho-physics_, 1860; _In the Cause of Psycho-physics_, 1877; _Review of the Chief Points in Psycho-physics_, 1882; _Book of the Life after Death_, 1836, 3d ed., 1887; _On the Highest Good_, 1846; _Four Paradoxes_, 1846; _On the Question of the. Soul_, 1861; _Minor Works by Dr. Mises_ (Fechner's pseudonym), 1875. On Fechner cf. J. E. Kuntze, Leipsic, 1892.]

The door of the world beyond also opens to the key of analogy. Similar laws unite the here with the hereafter. As intuition prepares the way for memory, and lives on in it, so the life of earth merges in the future life, and continues active in it, elevated to a higher plane. Fechner treats the problem of evil in a way peculiar to himself. We must not consider the fact of evil apart from the effort to remove it. It is the spur to all activity--without evil, no labor and no progress.

Fechner's "psycho-physics," a science which was founded by him in continuation of the investigations of Bernoulli, Euler, and especially of E.H. Weber, wears an entirely different aspect from that of his metaphysics (the "day view," moreover does not claim to be knowledge, but belief--though a belief which is historically, practically, and theoretically well-grounded). This aims to be an exact science of the relations between body and mind, and to reach indirectly what Herbart failed to reach by direct methods, that is, a measurement of psychical magnitudes, using in this attempt the least observable differences in sensations as the unit of measure. Weber's law of the dependence of the intensity of the sensation on the strength of the stimulus--the increase in the intensity of the sensation remains the same when the relative increase of the stimulus (or the relation of the stimuli) remains constant;[1] so that, _e.g._, in the case of light, an increase from a stimulus of intensity 1 to one of intensity 100, gives just the same increase in the intensity of the sensation as an increase from a stimulus of intensity 2 (or 3) to a stimulus of 200 (or 300)--is much more generally valid than its discoverer supposed; it holds good for all the senses. In the case of the pressure sense of the skin, with an original weight of 15 grams (laid upon the hand when at rest and supported), in order to produce a sensation perceptibly greater we must add not 1 gram, but 5, and with an original weight of 30 grams, not 5, but 10. Equal additions to the weights are not enough to produce a sensation of pressure whose intensity shall render it capable of being distinguished with certainty, but the greater the original weights the larger the increments must be; while the intensities of the sensations form an arithmetical, those of the stimuli form a geometrical, series; the change in sensation is proportional to the relative change of the stimulus. Sensations of tone show the same proportion (3:4) as those of pressure; the sensibility of the muscle sense is finer (when weights are raised the proportion is 15:16), as also that of vision (the relative brightness of two lights whose difference of intensity is just perceptible is 100:101). In addition to the investigations on the threshold of difference there are others on the threshold of stimulation (the point at which a sensation becomes just perceptible), on attention, on methods of measurement, on errors, etc. Moreover, Fechner does not fail to connect his psycho-physics, the presuppositions and results of which have recently been questioned in several quarters,[2] with his metaphysical conclusions. Both are pervaded by the fundamental view that body and spirit belong together (consequently that everything is endowed with a soul, and that nothing is without a material basis), nay, that they are the same essence, only seen from different sides. Body is the (manifold) phenomenon for others, while spirit is the (unitary) self-phenomenon, in which, however, the inner aspect is the truer one. That which appears to us as the external world of matter, is nothing but a universal consciousness which overlaps and influences our individual consciousness. This is Spinozism idealistically interpreted. In aesthetics Fechner shows himself an extreme representative of the principle of association.

[Footnote 1: Fechner teaches: The sensation increases and diminishes in proportion to the logarithm of the stimulus and of the psycho-physical nervous activity, the latter being directly proportional to the external stimulus. Others, on the contrary, find a direct dependence between nervous activity and sensation, and a logarithmic proportion between the external stimulus and the nervous activity.]

[Footnote 2: So by Helmholtz; Hering _(Fechners psychophysisches Gesetz_, 1875); P. Langer _(Grundlagen der Psychophysik_, 1876); G.E. Müller in Göttingen _(Zur Grundlegung der Psychophysik_, 1878); F.A. Müller _(Das Axiom der Psychophysik_, 1882); A. Elsas _(Ueber die Psychophysik_, 1886); O. Liebmann _(Aphorismen zur Psychologie, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. ci.--Wundt has published a number of papers from his psycho-physical laboratory in his _Philosophische Studien_, 1881 _seq_. Cf. also Hugo Münsterberg, _Neue Grundlegung der Psychophysik_ in _Heft_ iii. of his _Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie_, 1889 _seq_). [Further, Delboeuf, in French, and a growing literature in English as A. Seth, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. xxiv. 469-471; Ladd, _Elements of Physiological Psychology_, part ii. chap, v.; James, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. i. p. 533 _seq_.; and numerous articles as Ward, _Mind_, vol. i.; Jastrow, _American Journal of Psychology_, vols. i. and iii.--TR.]]

The most important of the thinkers mentioned in the title of this section is Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817-81: born at Bautzen; a student of medicine, and of philosophy under Weisse, in Leipsic; 1844-81 professor in Göttingen; died in Berlin). Like Fechner, gifted rather with a talent for the fine and the suggestive than for the large and the rigorous, with a greater reserve than the former before the mystical and peculiar, as acute, cautious, and thorough as he was full of taste and loftiness of spirit, Lotze has proved that the classic philosophers did not die out with Hegel and Herbart. His _Microcosmus_ (3 vols., 1856-64, 4th ed., 1884 _seq_; English translation by Hamilton and Jones, 3d ed., 1888), which is more than an anthropology, as it is modestly entitled, and _History of Aesthetics in Germany_, 1868, which also gives more than the title betrays, enjoy a deserved popularity. These works were preceded by the _Medical Psychology_, 1852, and a polemic treatise against I.H. Fichte, 1857, as well as by a _Pathology_ and a _Physiology_, and followed by the _System of Philosophy_, which remained incomplete (part i. _Logic_, 1874, 2d ed., 1881, English translation edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed., 1888; part ii. _Metaphysics_, 1879, English translation edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed., 1887). Lotze's _Minor Treatises_ have been published by Peipers in three volumes (1885-91); and Rehnisch has edited eight sets of dictata from his lectures, 1871-84.[1] Since these "Outlines," all of which we now have in new editions, make a convenient introduction to the Lotzean system, and are, or should be, in the possession of all, a brief survey may here suffice.

[Footnote 1: _Outlines of Psychology, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Nature, Logic and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics, Aesthetics_, and the _History of Philosophy since Kant_, all of which may be emphatically commended to students, especially the one first mentioned, and, in spite of its subjective position, the last. [English translations of these _Outlines_ except the fourth and the last, by Ladd, 1884 _seq_.] On Lotze cf. the obituaries by J. Baumann (_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. xvii.), H. Sommer (_Im Neuen Reich_), A. Krohn (_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. lxxxi. pp. 56-93), R. Falckenberg (Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_, 1881, No. 233), and Rehnisch (_National Zeitung_ and the _Revue Philosophique_, vol. xii.). The last of these was reprinted in the appendix to the _Grundzüge der Aesthetik_, 1884, which contains, further, a chronological table of Lotze's works, essays, and critiques, as well as of his lectures. Hugo Sommer has zealously devoted himself to the popularization of the Lotzean system. Cf., further, Fritz Koegel, _Lotzes Aesthetik_, Göttingen, 1886, and the article by Koppelmann referred to above, p. 330.]

The subject of metaphysics is reality. Things which are, events which happen, relations which exist, representative contents and truths which are valid, are real. Events happening and relations existing presuppose existing things as the subjects in and between which they happen and exist. The being of things is neither their being perceived (for when we say that a thing is we mean that it continues to be, even when we do not perceive it), nor a pure, unrelated position, its position in general, but _to be is to stand in relations_. Further, the _what_ or essence of the things which enter into these relations cannot be conceived as passive quality, but only abstractly, as a rule or a law which determines the connection and succession of a series of qualities. The nature of water, for example, is the unintuitable somewhat which contains the ground of the change of ice, first into the liquid condition, and then into steam, when the temperature increases, and conversely, of the possibility of changing steam back into water and ice under opposite conditions. And when we speak of an unchangeable identity of the thing with itself, as a result of which it remains the same essence amid the change of its phenomena, we mean only the consistency with which it keeps within the closed series of forms a1, a2, a3, without ever going over into the series b1, b2. The relations, however, in which things stand, cannot pass to and fro between things like threads or little spirits, but are states in things themselves, and the change of the former always implies a change in these inner states. To stand in relations means to _exchange actions_. In order to experience such effects from others and to exercise them upon others, things must neither be wholly incomparable (as red, hard, sweet) and mutually indifferent, nor yet absolutely independent; if the independence of individual beings were complete the process of action would be entirely inconceivable. The difficulty in the concept of causality--how does being _a_ come to produce in itself a different state _a_ because another being _b_ enters into the state [Greek: _b_]?--is removed only when we look on the things as modes, states, parts of a single comprehensive being, of an infinite, unconditioned substance, in so far as there is then only an action of the absolute on itself. Nevertheless the assumption that, in virtue of the unity and consistency of the absolute or of its impulse to self-preservation, state [Greek: _b_] in being _b_ follows state [Greek: _a_] in being _a_ as an accommodation or compensation follows a disturbance, is not a full explanation of the process of action, does not remove the difficulty as to how one state can give rise to another. Metaphysics is, in general, unable to show how reality is made, but only to remove certain contradictions which stand in the way of the conceivability of these notions. The so far empty concept of an absolute looks to the philosophy of religion for its content; the conception of the Godhead as infinite personality (it is a person in a far higher sense than we) is first produced when we add to the ontological postulate of a comprehensive substance the ethical postulate of a supreme good or a universal world-Idea.

By "thing" we understand the permanent unit-subject of changing states. But the fact of consciousness furnishes the only guaranty that the different states _a, [Greek: b], y_, are in reality states of one being, and not so many different things alternating with one another. Only a conscious being, which itself effects the distinction between itself and the states occurring in it, and in memory and recollection feels and knows itself as their identical subject, is actually a subject which has states. Hence, if things are to be real, we must attribute to them a nature in essence related to that of our soul. Reality is existence for self. All beings are spiritual, and only spiritual beings possess true reality. Thus Lotze combines the monadology of Leibnitz with the pantheism of Spinoza, just as he understands how to reconcile the mechanical view of natural science (which is valid also for the explanation of organic life) with the teleology and the ethical idealism of Fichte. The sole mission of the world of forms is to aid in the realization of the ideal purposes of the absolute, of the world of values.

The ideality of space, which Kant had based on insufficient grounds, is maintained by Lotze also, only that he makes things stand in "intellectual" relations, which the knowing subject translates into spatial language. The same character of subjectivity belongs not only to our sensations, but also to our ideas concerning the connection of things. Representations are results, not copies, of the external stimuli; cognition comes under the general concept of the interaction of real elements, and depends, like every effect, as much upon the nature of the being that experiences the effect as upon the nature of the one which exerts it, or rather, more upon the former than upon the latter. If, nevertheless, it claims objective reality, truth must not be interpreted as the correspondence of thought and its object (the cognitive image can never be like the thing itself), nor the mission of cognition, made to consist in copying a world already finished and closed apart from the realm of spirits, to which mental representation is added as something accessory. Light and sound are not therefore illusions because they are not true copies of the waves of ether and of air from which they spring, but they are the end which nature has sought to attain through these motions, an end, however, which it cannot attain alone, but only by acting upon spiritual subjects; the beauty and splendor of colors and tones are that which of right ought to be in the world; without the new world of representations awakened in spirits by the action of external stimuli, the world would lack its essential culmination. The purpose of things is to be known, experienced, and enjoyed by spirits. The truth of cognition consists in the fact that it opens up the meaning and destination of the world. That which ought to be is the ground of that which is; that which is exists in order to the realization of values in it; the good is the only real. It is true that we are not permitted to penetrate farther than to the general conviction that the Idea of the good is the ground and end of the world; the question, how the world has arisen from this supreme Idea as from the absolute and why just this world with its determinate forms and laws has arisen, is unanswerable. We understand the meaning of the play, but we do not see the machinery by which it is produced at work behind the stage. In ethics Lotze emphasizes with Fechner the inseparability of the good and pleasure: it is impossible to state in what the worth or goodness of a good is to consist, if it be conceived out of all relation to a spirit capable of finding enjoyment in it.

If Lotze's philosophy harmoniously combines Herbartian and Fichteo-Hegelian elements, Eduard von Hartmann (born 1842; until 1864 a soldier, now a man of letters in Berlin) aims at a synthesis of Schopenhauer and Hegel; with the pessimism of the former he unites the evolutionism of the latter, and while the one conceives the nature of the world-ground as irrational will, and the other as the logical Idea, he follows the example of Schelling in his later days by making will and representation equally legitimate attributes of his absolute, the Unconscious. His principal theoretical work, _The Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 1869 (10th ed., 1891; English translation by Coupland, 1884), was followed in 1879 by his chief ethical one, _The Moral Consciousness_ (2d ed., 1886, in the _Selected Works_); the two works on the philosophy of religion, _The Religious Consciousness of Humanity in the Stages of its Development_, 1881, and _The Religion of Spirit_, 1882, together form the third chief work (_The Self-Disintegration of Christianity and the Religion of the Future_, 1874, and _The Crisis of Christianity in Modern Theology_, 1880, are to be regarded as forerunners of this); the fourth is the _Aesthetics_ (part i. _German Aesthetics since Kant_, 1886; part ii. _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, 1887). The _Collected Studies and Essays_, 1876, were preceded by two treatises on the philosophy of nature, _Truth and Error in Darwinism_, 1875, and _The Unconscious from the Standpoint of Physiology and the Theory of Descent_, published anonymously in 1872, in the latter of which, disguised as a Darwinian, he criticises his own philosophy. Of his more recent publications we may mention the _Philosophical Questions of the Day_, 1885; _Modern Problems_, 1886; and the controversial treatise _Lotzes Philosophy_, 1888.[1]