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?”
[3] Essay published later (1876) in his Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques. Cf. especially pp. 265-266.
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.