Cudworth wished to revive Plato in England, but to do this after the manner of the demonstrations which we met with in Descartes, and through a trivial metaphysic of the understanding. He wrote a celebrated work: “The true intellectual System of the Universe,” but the Platonic ideas expressed are often in a clumsy form and mingled with the Christian conceptions of God and angels—all regarded as particular existent things. What in Plato is mythical, is here taken as reality in the form of existence; this is reasoned about just as we reason respecting a matter of ordinary fact, such as whether it is probable that the French seek to effect a landing in England, and if so, whether they will successfully accomplish it. The Christian intellectual world is dragged down to the form of ordinary actuality, and consequently it is ruined.
The name of Clarke is likewise famous in connection with his proof of the existence of God. There were quite a number of other English philosophers, whom we do not, however, require to notice; for Clarke, Wollaston, and others carry on their speculations within forms such as belong to a very commonplace metaphysic of the understanding. The manifold systems of moral philosophy which we find taking their rise in England are drawn up from this same mental standpoint; in them the implicitude of mind appears in a form of natural existence, namely, of desires and feelings. Their principles are found in moral sentiments, benevolent desires, sympathy, &c. That form alone is worthy of notice which, on the one hand, represents duty as something which is not foreign, given, commanded, but as clearly belonging to self-consciousness, even while, on the other hand, it represents this property as a natural, unconscious, unspiritual, and irrational existence. Impulse is blind, a solid existence which cannot get beyond itself like thinking self-consciousness. It is indeed true of impulse that its pure activity or its process, and the content, are, as in thought, immediately posited as the same; it has its content in itself, and this is not dead and passive, but self-acting and impelling. But that unity has the form of immediacy only as existent; in the first place it is not a knowledge, it is not necessary, for it is only taken from inward perception; in the second place, it is a determinate which does not abrogate itself, beyond which we cannot get, and which thus is not a universal. Impulse is no more an infinite than is the fixed category of force. Such reasoning takes the impulses in their determinate character from experience, and expresses the appearance of necessity in the same as an inward existence, as a force. For instance, the social instinct is a moment which is found in experience, because man derives all manner of utility from society. Wherein does the necessity of the State, of society, find its basis? In a social desire. This is cause, just as in the physical world a formal interpretation such as this is always to be found. The necessity of any existent fact, such as what pertains to electrical phenomena, finds its basis in a force which brings it forth; it is merely the form of returning from the external to an inward, of passing from the existent to what is thought, which is again in turn represented as an existent. Force is necessitated by reason of the manifestation, we must argue from the latter to the former. On the other hand, the manifestation takes place through the force, for it is the cause of the manifestation; we hence have force in one place as reason, and in another as cause. But in all this there is no realization of the fact that in respect of form there is a transition from the Notion into Being and the other way, while in respect of content there is a perfect contingency of manifestation; we look at electricity in the same way as we look at the fact that men have social instincts, sympathetic inclinations, and so on.
[5. Puffendorf.]
In the struggle to give to just and equitable relations in the State an independent basis of their own, and to found a judicial system of government, reflective thought put forth its efforts; and this became to it a real interest and concern. And, as in the case of Grotius, it was also true of Puffendorf, that the instinct of mankind—that is, the social instinct, &c.—was made the principle. Samuel von Puffendorf was born in 1632 in Saxony; he studied public law, philosophy, and mathematics at Leipzig and Jena; in 1661, as a professor at Heidelberg, he made natural and civil law for the first time academic studies; in 1668 he became tutor in a Swedish family, which office he later on exchanged for the service of the House of Brandenburg, and in 1694 he died at Berlin as a privy councillor. He wrote several works on political law and history; we must specially mention his work, De jure naturæ et gentium, Libr. viii., Londin. Scan. 1672, 4; and also his compendium De officio hominis, published at the same place in 1673, 8, and Elementa jurisprudentiæ universalis.[238] While the divine right of kings was here still recognized—whereby they rendered account to God alone, or, at all events, were still bound to take counsel of the Church—the impulses and necessities present in mankind were now considered as well. These were regarded as the inward principles for private and political law, and from them the duties both of the government and of rulers were deduced, so that the freedom of mankind might not be interfered with. The basis of the state in Puffendorf’s view is the social instinct: the highest end of the state is the peace and security of social life through the transformation of inward duties as prescribed by conscience into external duties as compelled by law.[239]
[6. Newton.]
The other side is that thought likewise applied itself to nature, and in this connection Isaac Newton is famous by reason of his mathematical discoveries and his work in physics. He was born in 1642 at Cambridge, made a special study of mathematics, and became professor of the same at Cambridge; later on he was made president of the Royal Society in London, and he died in 1727.[240]
Newton was indisputably the chief contributor to the popularity of the philosophy of Locke, or the English method of treating of Philosophy, and more especially did he promote its application to all the physical sciences. “Physics, beware of metaphysics,” was his maxim,[241] which signifies, Science, beware of thought; and all the physical sciences, even to the present day, have, following in his wake, faithfully observed this precept, inasmuch as they have not entered upon an investigation of their conceptions, or thought about thoughts. Physics can, however, effect nothing without thought; it has its categories and laws through thought alone, and without thought it does not effect any progress. Newton was mainly instrumental in introducing to physics the determinations respecting forces, which pertain to reflection; he raised science to the standpoint of reflection, and set the laws of forces in the place of the laws of phenomena. Regarding matters as he did, Newton derived his conclusions from his experiences; and in physics and the theory of colour-vision, he made bad observations and drew worse conclusions. He passed from experiences to general points of view, again made them fundamental, and from them constructed the individual; this is how his theories are constructed. The observation of things, the discovery of the law immanent therein, and the universal which is found within them, has become the real point of interest. In this way, Newton is so complete a barbarian as regards his conceptions that his case is like that of another of his countrymen who was surprised and rejoiced to learn that he had talked prose all his life, not having had any idea that he was so accomplished. This Newton, like all the Physicists, indeed, never learned; he did not know that he thought in, and had to deal with Notions, while he imagined he was dealing with physical facts: and he presented the extremest contrast to Boehme, who handled sensuous things as Notions, and, by sheer force of mind, obtained entire possession of their actuality and subjugated them. Instead of this Newton treated Notions like sensuous things, and dealt with them just as men deal with wood and stone. And this is even now the case. In the beginnings of physical science we read of the power of inertia, for instance, of the force of acceleration, of molecules, of centripetal and centrifugal force, as of facts which definitely exist; what are really the final results of reflection are represented as their first grounds. If we ask for the cause of there being no advance made in such sciences, we find that it is because men do not understand that they should apply themselves to Notions, but make up their minds to adopt these determinations without sense or understanding. Hence in Newton’s Optics, for instance, there are conclusions derived from his experience which are so untrue and devoid of understanding, that while they are set forth as the finest example of how men can learn to know nature by means of experiments and conclusions derived from experiments, they may also serve as an example of how we should neither experiment nor draw conclusions, of how nothing at all can be learned. A miserable kind of experience like this itself contradicts itself through nature, for nature is more excellent than it appears in this wretched experience: both nature itself and experience, when carried a little further, contradict it. Hence, of all the splendid discoveries of Newton in optics, none now remain excepting one—the division of light into seven colours. This is partly because the conception of whole and part come into play, and partly from an obdurate closing of the eyes to the opposite side. From this empirical method in Philosophy, we shall now pass on to Leibnitz.
[C. Third Section.]
The third development of the philosophy of the understanding is that represented by Leibnitz and Wolff. If Wolff’s metaphysics is divested of its rigid form, we have as a result the later popular philosophy.