Now let us remember that in laying his foundation Kant expressly and repeatedly rejects every anthropological basis, everything that could prove the Categorical Imperative to be a fact of consciousness, because such a proof would be empirical. Nevertheless, his successors were so emboldened by incidental utterances like the above that they went to much greater lengths. Fichte in his work, System der Sittenlehre, p. 49, warns us expressly "not to allow ourselves to be misled into trying to explain, and derive from external sources, the consciousness that we have duties, because this would be detrimental to the dignity and absoluteness of the law." A very nice excuse! Again on p. 66 he says: "The principle of Morality is a thought which is based on the intellectual intuition of the absolute activity of the intelligence, and which is directly conceived by the pure intelligence of its own accord." What a fine flourish to conceal the helplessness of this clap-trap! Whoever may like to convince himself how Kant's disciples, little by little, totally forgot and ignored the real nature of the foundation and derivation which their master originally gave to the moral law, should read a very interesting essay in Reinhold's Beitrage zur Uebersicht der Philosophie im Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts, No. 2, 1801. In it, on pp. 105 and 106, it is maintained "that in the Kantian philosophy Autonomy (which is the same thing as the Categorical Imperative) is a fact of consciousness, and cannot be traced further back, inasmuch as it declares itself by means of a direct consciousness."
But in this case, it would have an anthropological, and consequently empirical, foundation—a position which is diametrically opposed to Kant's explicit and repeated utterances. Again, on p. 108 we find: "Both in the practical philosophy of criticism, and in the whole of the purified or higher transcendental philosophy, Autonomy is that which is founded, and which founds, by itself alone; and which is neither capable of, nor requires, any other foundation; it is that which is absolutely original, true and certain per se; the primal truth; the prius κατ' ἐξοχήν (par excellence); the absolute principle. Whoever, therefore, imagines, requires, or seeks any basis for this Autonomy external to itself, can only be regarded by the Kantian School as wanting in moral consciousness;[13] or else as failing to interpret this consciousness correctly, through the employment of false first principles in his speculations. The School of Fichte and Schelling declares him to be afflicted with a dulness of intellect that renders him incapable of being a philosopher, and forms the characteristic of the unholy canaille, and the sluggish brute, or (to use Schelling's more veiled expression) of the profanum vulgus and the ignavum pecus." Every one will understand how much truth there can be in a doctrine which it is sought to uphold by such defiant and dogmatic rhetoric. Meanwhile, we must doubtless explain by the respect that this language inspired, the really childish credulity with which Kant's followers accepted the Categorical Imperative, and at once treated it as a matter beyond dispute. The truth is that in this case any objections raised to a theoretical assertion might easily be confounded with moral obliquity; so that every one, although he had no very clear idea in his own mind of the Categorical Imperative, yet preferred to be silent, believing, as he did, in secret, that others were probably better off, and had succeeded in evolving a clearer and more definite mental picture of it. For no one likes to turn his conscience inside out.
Thus in the Kantian School Practical Reason with its Categorical Imperative appears more and more as a hyperphysical fact, as a Delphian temple in the human soul, out of whose dark recesses proceed oracles that infallibly declare not, alas! what will, but what ought to, happen. This doctrine of Practical Reason, as a direct and immediate fact, once it had been adopted, or rather introduced by artifice combined with defiance, was unhappily later on extended also to Theoretical Reason; and not unnaturally: for Kant himself had often said that both are but one and the same Reason (e.g., Preface, p. xii; R., p. 8). After it had been once admitted that in the domain of the Practical there is a Reason which dictates ex tripode,[14] it was an easy step to concede the same privilege to Theoretical Reason also, closely related as the latter is to the former—indeed, consubstantial with it. The one was thus pronounced to be just as immediate as the other, the advantage of this being no less immense than obvious.
Then it was that all philosophasters and fancy-mongers, with J.H. Jacobi—the denouncer of atheists—at their head, came crowding to this postern which was so unexpectedly opened to them. They wanted to bring their small wares to market, or at least to save what they most valued of the old heirlooms which Kant's teaching threatened to pulverise. As in the life of the individual a single youthful mistake often ruins the whole career; so when Kant made that one false assumption of a Practical Reason furnished with credentials exclusively transcendent, and (like the supreme courts of appeal) with powers of decision "without grounds," the result was that out of the austere gravity of the Critical Philosophy was evolved a teaching utterly heterogeneous to it. We hear of a Reason at first only dimly "surmising," then clearly "comprehending" the "Supersensuous," and at last endowed with a perfect "intellectual intuition" of it. Every dreamer could now promulgate his mental freaks as the "absolute," i.e., officially issued, deliverances, and revelations of this Reason. Nor need we be surprised if the new privilege was fully taken advantage of.
Here, then, is the origin of that philosophical method which appeared immediately after Kant, and which is made up of clap-trap, of mystification, of imposture, of deception, and of throwing dust in the eyes. This era will be known one day in the History of Philosophy as "The Period of Dishonesty." For it was signalised by the disappearance of the characteristic of honesty, of searching after truth in common with the reader, which was well marked in the writings of all previous philosophers. The philosophaster's object was not to instruct, but to befool his hearers, as every page attests. At first Fichte and Schelling shine as the heroes of this epoch; to be followed by the man who is quite unworthy even of them, and greatly their inferior in point of talent—I mean the stupid and clumsy charlatan Hegel. The Chorus is composed of a mixed company of professors of philosophy, who in solemn fashion discourse to their public about the Endless, the Absolute, and many other matters of which they can know absolutely nothing.
As a stepping-stone to raise Reason to her prophetic throne a wretched jeu d'esprit was actually dragged in, and made to serve. It was asserted that, as the word Vernunft (Reason) comes from vernehmen (to comprehend), therefore Vernunft means a capacity to comprehend the so-called "Supersensuous," i.e., Νεϕελοκοκκυγία,[15] or Cloud-cuckoo-town. This pretty notion met with boundless, approval, and for the space of thirty years was constantly repeated in Germany with immense satisfaction; indeed, it was made the foundation of philosophic manuals. And yet it is as clear as noon-day that of course Vernunft (Reason) comes from. vernehmen (to comprehend), but only because Reason makes man superior to animals, so that he not only hears, but also comprehends (vernimmt)—by no means, what is going on in Cloud-cuckoo-town—but what is said, as by one reasonable person to another, the words spoken being comprehended (vernommen) by the listener; and this capacity is called Reason (Vernunft).
Such is the interpretation that all peoples, ages, and languages have put on the word Reason. It has always been understood to mean the possession of general, abstract, non-intuitive ideas, named concepts, which are denoted and fixed by means of words. This faculty alone it is which in reality gives to men their advantage over animals. For these abstract ideas, or concepts, that is, mental impressions formed of the sum of many separate things, are the condition of language and through it of actual thought; through which again they determine the consciousness not only of the present (which animals also have), but of the past and the future as such; whence it results that they are the modulus, so to say, of clear recollection, of circumspection, of foresight, and of intention; the constant factor in the evolution of systematic co-operation, of the state, of trades, arts, sciences, religions, and philosophies, in short, of everything that so sharply distinguishes human from animal life. Beasts have only intuitive ideas, and therefore also only intuitive motives; consequently the dependence of their volition on motives is manifest. With man this dependence is no less a fact; he, too (with due allowance for individual character), is affected by motives under the strictest law of necessity. Only these are for the most part not intuitive but abstract ideas, that is, conceptions, or thoughts, which nevertheless are the result of previous intuitions, hence of external influences. This, however, gives him a relative freedom—relative, that is, as compared with an animal. For his action is not determined (as it is in all other creatures) by the surroundings of the moment as intuitively perceived, but by the thoughts he has derived from experience, or gained by instruction. Consequently the motive, by which he, too, is necessarily swayed, is not always at once obvious to the looker-on simultaneously with the act; it lies concealed in the brain. It is this that lends to all his movements, as well as to his conduct and work as a whole, a character manifestly different from that observable in the habits of beasts. He seems as though guided by finer, invisible threads; whence all his acts bear the stamp of deliberation and premeditation, thus gaining an appearance of independence, which sufficiently distinguishes them from those of animals. All these great differences, however, spring solely out of the capacity for abstract ideas, concepts. This capacity is therefore the essential part of Reason, that is, of the faculty peculiar to man, and it is called το λόγιμον,[16] το λογιστικον, ratio, la ragione, il discorso, raison, reason, discourse of reason. If I were asked what the distinction is between it and Verstand, νοῡς, intellectus, entendement, understanding; I should reply thus: The latter is that capacity for knowledge which animals also possess in varying degrees, and which is seen in us at its highest development; in other words, it is the direct consciousness of the law of Causality—a consciousness which precedes all experience, being constituted by the very form of the understanding, whose essential nature is, in fact, therein contained. On it depends in the first place the intuitive perception of the external world; for the senses by themselves are only capable of impression, a thing which is very far from being intuitive perception; indeed, the former is nothing but the material of the latter: νοῡς ὁρᾷ, καὶ νοῡς ἀκούει, τ'ἄλλα κωϕὰ καὶ τυϕλά. (The mind sees, the mind hears; everything else is deaf and blind.) Intuitive perception is the result of our directly referring the impressions of the sense-organs to their cause, which, exactly because of this act of the intelligence, presents itself as an external object under the mode of intuition proper to us, i.e., in space. This is a proof that the Law of Causality is known to us a priori, and does not arise from experience, since experience itself, inasmuch as it presupposes intuitive perception, is only possible through the same law. All the higher qualities of the intellect, all cleverness, sagacity, penetration, acumen are directly proportional to the exactness and fulness with which the workings of Causality in all its relations are grasped; for all knowledge of the connection of things, in the widest sense of the word, is based on the comprehension of this law, and the clearness and accuracy with which it is understood is the measure of one man's superiority to another in understanding, shrewdness, cunning. On the other hand, the epithet reasonable has at all times been applied to the man who does not allow himself to be guided by intuitive impressions, but by thoughts and conceptions, and who therefore always sets to work logically after due reflection and forethought. Conduct of this sort is everywhere known as reasonable. Not that this by any means implies uprightness and love for one's fellows. On the contrary, it is quite possible to act in the most reasonable way, that is, according to conclusions scientifically deduced, and weighed with the nicest exactitude; and yet to follow the most selfish, unjust, and even iniquitons maxims. So that never before Kant did it occur to any one to identify just, virtuous, and noble conduct with reasonable; the two lines of behaviour have always been completely separated, and kept apart. The one depends on the kind of motivation; the other on the difference in fundamental principles. Only after Kant (because he taught that virtue has its source in Pure Reason) did the virtuous and the reasonable become one and the same thing, despite the usage of these words which all languages have adopted—a usage which is not fortuitous, but the work of universal, and therefore uniform, human judgment. "Reasonable" and "vicious" are terms that go very well together; indeed great, far-reaching crimes are only possible from their union. Similarly, "unreasonable" and "noble-minded" are often found associated; e.g., if I give to-day to the needy man what I shall myself require to-morrow more urgently than he; or, if I am so far affected as to hand over to one in distress the sum which my creditor is waiting for; and such cases could be multiplied indefinitely.
We have seen that this exaltation of Reason to be the source of all virtue rests on two assertions. First, as Practical Reason, it is said to issue, like an oracle, peremptory Imperatives purely a priori. Secondly, taken in connection with the false explanation of Theoretical Reason, as given in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, it is presented as a certain faculty essentially concerned with the Unconditioned, as manifested in three alleged Ideas[17] (the impossibility of which the intellect at the same time recognises a priori). And we found that this position, as an exemplar vitiis imitabile,[18] led our muddy-headed philosophers, Jacobi at their head, from bad to worse. They talked of Reason (Vernunft) as directly comprehending (vernehmend) the "Supersensuous," and absurdly declared that it is a certain mental property which has to do essentially with things transcending all experience, i.e., with metaphysics; and that it perceives directly and intuitively the ultimate causes of all things, and of all Being, the Supersensuous, the Absolute, the Divine, etc. Now, had it been wished to use Reason, instead of deifying it, such assertions as these must long ago have been met by the simple remark that, if man, by virtue of a special organ, furnished by his Reason, for solving the riddle of the world, possessed an innate metaphysics that only required development; in that case there would have to be just as complete agreement on metaphysical matters as on the truths of arithmetic and geometry; and this would make it totally impossible that there should exist on the earth a large number of radically different religions, and a still larger number of radically different systems of philosophy. Indeed, we may rather suppose that, if any one were found to differ from the rest in his religious or philosophical views, he would be at once regarded as a subject for mental pathology. Nor would the following plain reflection have failed to present itself. If we discovered a species of apes which intentionally prepared instruments for fighting, or building, or for any other purpose; we should immediately admit that it was endowed with Reason. On the other hand, if we meet with savages destitute of all metaphysics, or of all religion (and there are such); it does not occur to us to deny them Reason on that account. The Reason that proves its pretended supersensuous knowledge was duly brought back to bounds by Kant's critique; but Jacobi's wonderful Reason, that directly comprehends the supersensuous, he must indeed have thought beneath all criticism. Meanwhile, a certain imperious and oracular Reason of the same kind is still, at the Universities, fastened on the shoulders of our innocent youth.
NOTE.
If we wish to reach the real origin of this hypothesis of Practical Reason, we must trace its descent a little further back. We shall find that it is derived from a doctrine, which Kant totally confuted, but which nevertheless, in this connection, lies secretly (indeed he himself is not aware of it) at the root of his assumption of a Practical Reason with its Imperatives and its Autonomy—a reminiscence of a former mode of thought. I mean the so-called Rational Psychology, according to which man is composed of two entirely heterogeneous substances—the material body, and the immaterial soul. Plato was the first to formulate this dogma, and he endeavoured to prove it as an objective truth. But it was Descartes who, by working it out with scientific exactness, perfectly developed and completed it. And this is just what brought its fallacy to light, as demonstrated by Spinoza, Locke, and Kant successively. It was demonstrated by Spinoza; because his philosophy consists chiefly in the refutation of his master's twofold dualism, and because he entirely and expressly denied the two Substances of Descartes, and took as his main principle the following proposition: "Substantia cogitans et substantia externa una eademque est substantia, quae jam sub hoc, jam sub illo attribute comprehenditur."[19] It was demonstrated by Locke; for he combated the theory of innate ideas, derived all knowledge from the sensuous, and taught that it is not impossible that Matter should think. And lastly, it was demonstrated by Kant, in his Kritik der Rationalen Psychologie, as given in the first edition. Leibnitz and Wolff were the champions on the bad side; and this brought Leibnitz the undeserved honour of being compared to the great Plato, who was really so unlike him.