The Position Reached.—And with the full publication of Darwin's theories a point was reached when a more or less consistently materialistic position seemed possible. The foundations of such a position had been strengthened by the scientific atomism of Dalton, and the results of German research in the field of organic chemistry seemed to open up possibilities of expressing even life in terms of matter. And, finally, the evolutionary hypothesis had reduced some of the most obscure biological problems to manageable proportions. The prospects for a purely naturalistic philosophy were phenomenally bright.
MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM
From Science to Philosophy.—The record of certain important scientific discoveries has occupied us in two recent chapters, and it is now time to examine the philosophic results that were drawn from them. It is true that the generalisations drawn from the results of scientific research were sometimes hasty, and not always sanctioned by the gifted minds to whom these results were due; yet they were assured a popular reception, and exercised an immense influence. It is not always the most accurate thinkers whose ideas gain the widest currency.
Discredit of Romanticism.—The Idealistic movement in philosophy which we have seen flourishing in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had begun, after the lapse of a generation, to decline.[39] The causes of decline, as often happens, were in part, at least, other than intellectual. Hegelianism had become associated with political reaction, and "a philosophy has lost its charm when it enters the service of absolutism." And a rising spirit of enterprise in commerce and industry also contributed to a change of attitude, for as material interests develop, men have less leisure for speculation, and often lose their taste for ideals. Probably there should also be taken into account the sentimentality that had attached itself to Romanticism and with which men were sated. This revolt has its most pointed expression in the prose writings of the poet Heine, who attacks with satiric bitterness "the new troubadours, so morbid and somnambulistic, so high-flown and aristocratic, and altogether so unnatural."
Metaphysics Rejected.—The reaction against the philosophy of Romanticism took the form of a complete revolt against speculative philosophy. But instead of going back to Kant, and taking up a vigorously critical attitude, it took refuge in the prejudices of "common sense." The new movement must be associated in the first place with a French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who made the attempt to substitute scientific and positive knowledge for the vague speculations which had hitherto passed for philosophy. He was, in fact, the founder of that system of ideas known as Positivism, which (as we shall see) gained great vogue later, especially in England. Comte's doctrine was that, all spheres of Nature now being brought under the sway of positive science, the time had arrived for men, when constructing their conceptions of life and the world, to reject all but such ideas as positive science can accept. The age of theology and speculation was past; the new age of positive science, where both imagination and argumentation should be subordinate to observation, was at hand. Comte, as is well known, became the founder of what he hoped might develop into a new Catholicism—the "Religion of Humanity," and an atmosphere of moral idealism permeates his thought.
German Extremists.—In Germany, the home of Romanticism, the revolt took a radical shape in the hands of writers like Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) and Büchner. "I unconditionally repudiate absolute, self-sufficing speculation—speculation which draws its material from within," says the former, in the Introduction to his Essence of Christianity[40] (1841) and asserts that he "places philosophy in the negation of philosophy." Büchner, a far less acute thinker than Feuerbach, adopts a similar attitude, protests against pedantry, and appeals (the appeal is always dangerous) to common sense:
"Expositions which are not intelligible to an educated man are scarcely worth the ink they are printed with. Whatever is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed."