International Congress of Arts and Science, Volume 1 / Philosophy and Metaphysics

by Unknown

Not all the philosophy of the last century, however, was born and developed in academical centres and under academical influences. In Germany, Great Britain, and France, the various so-called "Academies" or other unacademical associations of men of scientific interests and attainments—notably, the Berlin Academy, which has been called "the seat of an anti-scholastic popular philosophy"—were during the first half of the nineteenth century contributing by their conspicuous failures as well as by their less conspicuous successes, important factors to the constructive new thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. In general, although these men decried system and were themselves inadequately prepared to treat the problems of philosophy, whether from the historical or the speculative and critical point of view, they cannot be wholly neglected in estimating its development. Clever reasoning, and witty and epigrammatic writing on scientific or other allied subjects, cannot indeed be called philosophy in the stricter meaning of the word. But this so-called "popular philosophy" has greatly helped in a way to free thought from its too close bondage to scholastic tradition. And even the despite of philosophy, and sneering references to its "barrenness," which formerly characterized the meetings and the writings of this class of its critics, but which now are happily much less frequent, have been on the whole both a valuable check and a stimulus to her devotees. He would be too narrow and sour a disciple of scholastic metaphysics and systematic philosophy, who, because of the levity or scorning of "outsiders," should refuse them all credit. Indeed, the lesson of the close of the nineteenth century may well enough be the motto for the beginning of the twentieth century: In philosophy—since to philosophize is natural and inevitable for all rational beings—there really are no outsiders.

In this connection it is most interesting to notice how men of the type just referred to, were at the end of the eighteenth century found grouped around such thinkers as Mendelssohn, Lessing, F. Nicolai,—representing a somewhat decided reaction from the French realism to the German idealism. The work of the Academicians in the criticism of Kant was carried forward by Jacobi, who, at the time of his death, was the pensioned president of the Academy at Munich. Some of these same critics of the Kantian philosophy showed a rather decided preference for the "commonsense" philosophy of the Scottish School.

But both inside and outside of the Universities and Academies the scientific spirit and acquisitions of the nineteenth century have most profoundly, and on the whole favorably, affected the development of its philosophy. In the wider meaning of the word, "science,"—the meaning, namely, in which science = Wissenschaft,—philosophy aims to be scientific; and science can never be indifferent to philosophy. In their common aim at a rational and unitary system of principles, which shall explain and give its due significance to the totality of human experience, science and philosophy can never remain long in antagonism; they ought never even temporarily to be divided in interests, or in the spirit which leads each generously to recognize the importance of the other. The early part of the last century was, indeed, too much under the influence of that almost exclusively speculative Natur-philosophie, of which Schelling and Hegel were the most prominent exponents. On the other hand, the conception of nature as a vast interconnected and unitary system of a rational order, unfolding itself in accordance with teleological principles,—however manifold and obscure,—is a noble conception and not destined to pass away.

On the continent—at least in France, where it had attained its highest development—the scientific spirit was, at the close of the eighteenth century, on the whole opposed to systematization. The impulse to both science and philosophy during both the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, over the entire continent of Europe, was chiefly due to the epoch-making work of that greatest of all titles in the modern scientific development of the Western World, the Principia of Newton. In mathematics and the physical sciences, during the early third or half of the last century, Great Britain also has a roll of distinguished names which compares most favorably with that of either France or Germany. But in England, France, and the United States, during the whole century, science has lacked the breadth and philosophic spirit which it had in Germany during the first three quarters of this period. During all that time the German man of science was, as a rule, a scholar, an investigator, a teacher, and a philosopher. Science and philosophy thrived better, however, in Scotland than elsewhere outside of Germany, so far as their relations in interdependence were concerned. Into the Scottish universities Playfair introduced some of the continental suggestions toward the end of the eighteenth century, so that there was less of exclusiveness and unfriendly rivalry between science and philosophy; and both profited thereby. In the United States, during the first half or more of the century, so dominant were the theological and practical interests and influences that there was little free development of either science or philosophy,—if we interpret the one as the equivalent of Wissenschaft and understand the other in the stricter meaning of the word.

The history of the development of the scientific spirit and of the achievements of the particular sciences is not the theme of this paper. To trace in detail, or even in its large outlines, the reciprocal influence of science and philosophy during the past hundred years, would itself require far more than the space allotted to me. It must suffice to say that the various advances in the efforts of the particular sciences to enlarge and to define the conceptions and principles employed to portray the Being of the World in its totality, have somewhat steadily grown more and more completely metaphysical, and more and more of positive importance for the reconstruction of systematic philosophy. The latter has not simply been disciplined by science, compelled to improve its method, and to examine all its previous claims. But philosophy has also been greatly enriched by science with respect to its material awaiting synthesis, and it has been not a little profited by the unsuccessful attempts of the current scientific theories to give themselves a truly satisfactory account of that Ultimate Reality which, to understand the better, is no unworthy aim of their combined efforts.

During the nineteenth century science has seen many important additions to that Ideal of Nature and her processes, to form which in a unitary and harmonizing but comprehensive way is the philosophical goal of science. The gross mechanical conception of nature which prevailed in the earlier part of the eighteenth century has long since been abandoned, as quite inadequate to our experience with her facts, forces, and laws. The kinetic view, which began with Huygens, Euler, and Ampère, and which was so amplified by Lord Kelvin and Clerk-Maxwell in England, and by Helmholtz and others in Germany, on account of its success in explaining the phenomena of light, of gases, etc., very naturally led to the attempt to develop a kinetic theory, a doctrine of energetics, which should explain all phenomena. But the conception of "that which moves," the experience of important and persistent qualitative differentiae, and the need of assuming ends and purposes served by the movement, are troublesome obstacles in the way of giving such a completeness to this theory of the Being of the World. Yet again the amazing success which the theory of evolution has shown in explaining the phenomena with which the various biological sciences concern themselves, has lent favor during the latter half of the century to the vitalistic and genetic view of nature. For all our most elaborate and advanced kinetic theories seem utterly to fail us as explanatory when we, through the higher powers of the microscope, stand wondering and face to face with the evolution of a single living cell. But from such a view of the essential Being of the World as evolution suggests to the psycho-physical theory of nature is not an impassable gulf. And thus, under its growing wealth of knowledge, science may be leading up to an Ideal of the Ultimate Reality, in which philosophy will gratefully and gladly coincide. At any rate, the modern conception of nature and the modern conception of God are not so far apart from each other, as either of these conceptions is now removed from the conceptions covered by the same terms, some centuries gone by.

There is one of the positive sciences, however, with which the development of philosophy during the last century has been particularly allied. This science is psychology. To speak of its history is not the theme of this paper. But it should be noted in passing how the development of psychology has brought into connection with the physical and biological sciences the development of philosophy. This union, whether it be for better or for worse,—and, on the whole, I believe it to be for better rather than for worse,—has been in a very special way the result of the last century. In tracing its details we should have to speak of the dependence of certain branches of psychology on physiology, and upon Sir Charles Bell's discovery of the difference between the sensory and the motor nerves. This discovery was the contribution of the beginning of the century to an entire line of discoveries, which have ended at the close of the century with putting the localization of cerebral function upon a firm experimental basis. Of scarcely less importance has been the cellular theory as applied (1838) by Matthias Schleiden, a pupil of Fries in philosophy, to plants, and by Theodor Schwann about the same time to animal organisms. To these must be added the researches of Johannes Müller (1801-1858), the great biologist, a listener to Hegel's lectures, whose law of specific energies brings him into connection with psychology and, through psychology, to philosophy. Even more true is this of Helmholtz, whose Lehre von den Tonempfindungen (1862) and Physiologische Optik (1867) placed him in even closer, though still mediate, relations to philosophy. But perhaps especially Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), whose researches in psycho-physics laid the foundations of whatever, either as psychology or as philosophy, goes under this name; and whether the doctrine have reference to the relation of man's mind and body, or to the wider relations of spirit and matter.

In my judgment it cannot be affirmed that the attempts of the latter half of the nineteenth century to develop an experimental science of psychology in independence of philosophical criticism and metaphysical assumption, or the claims of this science to have thrown any wholly new light upon the statement, or upon the solution of philosophical problems, have been largely successful. But certain more definitely psychological questions have been to a commendable degree better analyzed and elucidated; the new experimental methods, where confined within their legitimate sphere, have been amply justified; and certain quasi-metaphysical views respecting the nature of the human mind, and even, if you will, the nature of the Spirit in general—have been placed in a more favorable and scientifically engaging attitude toward speculative philosophy. This seems to me to be especially true with respect to two problems in which both empirical psychology and philosophy have a common and profound interest. These are (1) the complex synthesis of mental functions involved in every act of true cognition, together with the bearing which the psychology of cognition has upon epistemological problems; and (2) the yet more complex and profound analysis, from the psychological point of view, of what it is to be a self-conscious and self-determining Will, a true Self, together with the bearing which the psychology of selfhood has upon all the problems of ethics, æsthetics, and religion.

The more obvious and easily traceable influences which have operated to incite and direct the philosophical development of the nineteenth century are, of course, dependent upon the teachings and writings of philosophers, and the schools of philosophy which they have founded. To speak of these influences even in outline would be to write a manual of the history of philosophy during that hundred of years, which has been of all others by far the most fruitful in material results, whatever estimate may be put upon the separate or combined values of the individual thinkers and their so-called schools. No fewer than seven or eight relatively independent or partially antagonistic movements, which may be traced back either directly or more indirectly to the critical philosophy, and to the form in which the problems of philosophy were left by Kant, sprung up during the century. In Germany chiefly, there arose the Faith-philosophy, the Romantic School, and Rational Idealism; in France, Eclecticism and Positivism (if, indeed, the latter can be called a philosophy); in Scotland, a naïve and crude form of Realism, which served well for the time as an antagonist of a skeptical idealism, but which itself contributed to an improved form of Idealism; and in the United States, or rather in New England, a peculiar kind of Transcendentalism of the sentimental type. But all these movements of thought, and others lying somewhere midway between, in a pair composed of any two, together with a steadfast remainder of almost every sort of Dogmatism, and all degrees and kinds of Skepticism, have been intermixed and contending with one another, in all these countries. Such has been the varied, undefinable, and yet intensely stimulating and interesting character of the development of systematic and scholastic philosophy, during the nineteenth century.

The early opposition to Kant in Germany was, in the main, twofold:—both to his peculiar extreme analysis with its philosophical conclusions, and also to all systematic as distinguished from a more popular and literary form of philosophizing. Toward the close of the eighteenth century a group of men had been writing upon philosophical questions in a spirit and method quite foreign to that held in respect by the critical philosophy. It is not wholly without significance that Lessing, whose aim had been to use common sense and literary skill in clearing up obscure ideas and improving and illumining the life of man, died in the very year of the appearance of Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Of this class of men an historian dealing with this period has said, "There is hardly one who does not quote somewhere or other Pope's saying, 'The proper study of mankind is man.'" To this class belong Hamann (1730-1788), the inspirer of Herder and Jacobi. The former, who was essentially a poet and a friend of Goethe, controverted Kant with regard to his doctrine of reason, his antithesis between the individual and the race, and his schism between things as empirically known and the known unity in the Ground of their being and becoming. Herder's path to truth was highly colored with flowers of rhetoric; but the promise was that he would lead men back to the heavenly city. Jacobi, too, with due allowance made for the injury wrought by his divorce of the two philosophies,—that of faith and that of science,—and his excessive estimate of the value-judgments which repose in the mist of a feeling-faith, added something of worth by way of exposing the barrenness of the Kantian doctrine of an unknowable "Thing-in-itself."