Mr. Bray's theory is embodied in the title of the work under review, and its key-note is "order in nature." His object is to show "that the mind of man is not an exception to nature's other works; that like everything else it has received a determinate character; that all our knowledge of it is precisely of the same kind as that of material things, and consists in the observation of its order of action, or of the relation of cause and effect." According to this view we can know the real nature of neither matter nor mind, Nature herself having fixed the boundaries beyond which human knowledge cannot extend. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that Mr. Bray regarded Nature as something apart, giving to man laws from the operation of which it is itself free. A little consideration shows that such is not his idea. Nature is with Mr. Bray only another name for God. Moreover, man is nothing, God is all; "individuality, or anything separate from Him, is a mode of thought, and has no real existence." Electricity, heat, light, and other forces of nature are modes of the Unknowable, and are transformable into each other and into the other modes which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, thought. The qualities or properties of matter are mere force or power, and as they are qualities of God, the assumption of the existence of matter is not necessary. God "is the Universal Being, of which all things are the manifestations. Every thing is a mode of God's attribute of extension; every thought, wish, or feeling, is a mode of His attribute of thought."
To Mr. Bray the only reality is God, the great Unknown, and as He is also the Unknowable, we have in the Philosophy of Necessity a system of Agnosticism. And yet Mr. Bray is hardly consistent with himself. For, unlike Mr. Herbert Spencer, he speaks of God in terms of Spirit, which becomes in his system identical with force. When, moreover, he declares that "the whole sensitive existence is but the innumerable individual eyes with which the Infinite World Spirit beholds Himself," we have a kind of Monism. This view however recognises God as "the only real and efficient power in the universe," and, as the Great First Cause and the Great Last Cause of all things, a Divine Being. Mr. Bray does not enter into the question of the personality of God, but that he supposes the Deity to possess consciousness is evident from his reference to the Great Soul of Nature, and his statement that the operation of its forces is governed by thought. His ideas are summed up in the words, "we feel ourselves a part
"Of that stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the Soul."
Holding this opinion, Mr. Bray could not be otherwise than a Necessitarian and an Utilitarian in his practical views. These are well shown in his treatment of the question of the freedom of will, as to which he accepts the opinion of Locke that a man is free within the range of the preferences or directions of his own mind. Mr. Bray's own conclusion is: "Since, then, the only freedom we have is limited to action in accordance with our natural powers and capacities, our aim must be to develop fully these powers and capacities, and to remove all impediments, external and internal, to their free and complete action. There must be no external compulsion from physical impediment, or internal compulsion from defect in the mind itself; no obstacle to the full exercise of our natural powers both of body and mind. Education in its full meaning is the developing and perfecting of all these powers."
Ω
GESCHICHTE DER ETHIK IN DER NEUEREN PHILOSOPHIE. By Friedrich
Jodl. Volume II. Kant and the Ethics of the Nineteenth Century.
Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta.
In this volume Professor Jodl continues his history of theoretical ethics; starting with Kant and coming down to contemporary philosophers. His work is thus mainly concerned with the classical philosophy of Germany till Feuerbach's time, and the spiritualistic and positivist philosophy of France and England down to the time of Cousin, Jouffroy, and Mill. Professor Jodl has been obliged to forego his original intention of appending to his work an epitome of the logical constructive results of his investigations, and has exclusively applied himself to the investigation and historical presentment of the fundamental and central principles of the ethical thought of the past century. He has therefore ever held in view the economical and historical purpose of his work, and avoided on the one hand an exposition of all systems in which originality of principles is lacking, and on the other abstained from the critical examination of the systems of his contemporaries. Thus he has aspired, by the constant emphasis of central basal principles and of the points whereon all have agreed, to refute the belief that the history of his science is a chaotic mass of contradictory views, and that ethical opinion presents in its historical expression only diversity, and never community of mental possession. Professor Jodl has only collaterally dealt with the non-ethical literature and tendencies of the times of which he treats, and he has disclaimed all intention of portraying the effects and influence that ethical systems have produced and exerted in practical spheres; France and England being the only instances in which, for manifest reasons, the discussion of literature and politics has preceded the criticism and analysis of philosophies. Nevertheless, his work throughout is interspersed with many well-judged and apposite thoughts upon the effective, though not always apparent, influence of a nation's intellectual activity upon its practical conduct of affairs; as well as, also, regarding the lamentable fact that, often, a people are violently and dangerously engaged in the solution of questions that their thinkers have solved decades before.
Let us look at Professor Jodl's examination of the historical position of Kantian Ethics. The element of non-interest in ethical judgment we find not to have been first emphasised by Kant. Whatever the success and worth of their speculations, a great many of Kant's predecessors sought to realise this very factor in their systems; thus it was with Plato as opposed to Protagoras, with Shaftesbury and Butler as opposed to Hobbes, Locke, and Hume; while Cudworth, Clarke, Wollaston, and Price were similarly actuated by the purely speculative consideration. Kant's real and original advance upon previous systems of ethics, was his emphasis of the element of conscious volition in ethical judgment and the statement of its imperative character. It was just in this last respect that his ethical philosophy formed so marked a contrast to the eudæmonism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The imperative and absolute nature of duty, eudæmonism neglected to inculcate; Kant aroused the conscience of his time, and presented in contrast to the moral weakness then prevalent the strength and earnest grandeur of an absolute conception of duty.
So too in the conflict between the metaphysics of ethics and the practical postulates, wherein the great philosopher displayed so much ingenuity, Professor Jodl is unable to distinguish Kant's position very sharply from that of the English intellectualists when in a similar plight. Not that the idea of the practical postulates is valueless; this Professor Jodl afterwards explains. Our historian merely shows that Kant had not yet gotten clear of the ancient conflict that had agitated the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages as well as the utilitarian and rationalistic theologians of more modern times. Yet despite the mysticism that inheres in Kant's argument for the practical existence of God, the kernel of the truth he emphasises in the alliance of ethics with religion still remains; namely that religious ideas are essentially ethical, that in this relation only have they meaning, and that religious ideas which are ethically valueless are to be uncompromisingly discarded.
Especial attention should be called to Professor Jodl's estimate of Feuerbach, whose merits have been strangely neglected. Feuerbach's ethical system, in perfect form, has not been independently set forth in his works, but is intermingled with the subjects dealt with in his religious treatises. Yet he left few of the fundamental questions of ethics untouched and his works contain a great store of most excellent and pertinent thoughts which must be characterised, says our author, in the widest sense of the term, as the real foundation in ethics of modern scientific empiricism.