HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Volume
II, Chapter 9B6, page 389—495. Philosophy and Religion.
CONTENTS
389
6. PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION (From Francis of Assisi to
Immanuel
Kant).
THE
TWO
COURSES
I have already given (p. 241)
a definition of philosophy (Weltanschauung), and in this book I
have frequently discussed religion; ‡ I have also called attention (p.
244) to the inseparability of the two ideas. I am far from
maintaining
the identity of philosophy and religion, for that would be a purely
logical
and formalistic undertaking, which is quite beyond my purpose; but I
see
that everywhere in our history philosophical speculation is rooted in
religion,
and in its full development aims at religion — and when on the one hand
I contemplate national idiosyncrasies and on the other pass a
succession
of pre-eminent men in review before my mind's eye, I discover a whole
series
of relations between philosophy and religion, which show me that they
are
closely and organically connected: where the one is absent the other
fails,
where the one is strong and vigorous, so is the
‡ See especially vol. i. pp. 213
f., 411 f., 471.
390 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
other: a
deeply
religious man is a true philosopher (in the living, popular sense of
the
word), and those choice minds that rise to comprehensive, clear,
philosophical
views — a Roger Bacon, a Leonardo, a Bruno, a Kant, a Goethe — are not
often ecclesiastically pious, but always strikingly “religious.“ We
see,
therefore, that philosophy and religion on the one hand further one
another,
and on the other hand are substitutes for, or complementary to, each
other.
On pp. 258-9 I wrote: In the want of a true religion springing from and
corresponding to our individuality I see the greatest danger for the
future
of the Teuton, that is in him the heel of Achilles, whoever wounds him
there, will lay him low. If we look closer, we shall see that the
inadequacy
of our ecclesiastical religion revealed itself, to begin with, in the
invalidity
of the philosophy which it presupposed; our earliest philosophers are
all
theologians and mostly honest ones, who pass through an inner struggle
for truth, and truth always means the sincerity of views as determined
by the special nature of the individual. Out of this struggle our
Teutonic
philosophy, which is absolutely new, gradually grew up. This
development
did not follow one straight line; the work was taken in hand
simultaneously
at most divergent points, as if in the building of a house, mason,
carpenter,
locksmith and painter each did his own work independently, troubling
himself
as little as possible about the others. It is the will of the architect
that unites the essentially different aims; in this case instinct of
race
is the architect; the homo europaeus can only follow definite
paths,
and he, as Master, to the best of his power forces his path upon others
who do not belong to him. I do not think that the structure is
complete;
I am not bound to any school, but take joy in the growth and
development
of the Teutonic work, and do what I can reverently to assimilate it. My
task in this section is, in the most general
391 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
outlines, to
show
the growth and present condition of this Teutonic work. Here history
again
comes to its own; for while civilisation only fastens on to the past in
order to destroy it and replace it by something new, and knowledge is,
as it were, of no special time, the philosophical and religious
development
of seven hundred years is still alive, and it is, indeed, impossible to
speak of to-day, without remembering that it is born of yesterday. Here
everything is still in process of development; our philosophy and,
above
all, our religion, is the most incomplete feature of our whole life.
Here,
then, the historical method is forced upon us; it alone can enable us
so
to pick up and follow the various threads that the web of the tissue,
as
it was made over to us by the year 1800, shall be clearly seen and
surveyed.
*
Ecclesiastical Christianity, purely as religion, consists, as I
endeavoured
to show in the seventh chapter, of unreconciled elements, so that we
found
Paul and Augustine involved in most serious contradictions. In
Christianity,
as a matter of fact, we are dealing not with a normal
* I shall not copy what is to be found in the text-books on the history
of philosophy, for the very reason that there is none that would suit
my
purpose here. But I should like once for all to refer to the
well-known,
excellent handbooks to which I owe much in my account. It is to be
hoped
that at no too distant date Paul Deussen's Allgemeine Geschichte
der
Philosophie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Religion will
be so far advanced as at least partially to fill the gap which has been
so keenly felt by me while writing this section. The very fact that he
takes religion also into account proves Deussen's capacity to perform
the
task and his long study of Indian thought is a further guarantee.
Meanwhile
I recommend to the less experienced reader the short Skizze
einer
Geschichte der Lehre vom Idealen und Realen
which
begins the first volume of Schopenhauer's Parerga und
Paralipomena;
in a few pages it offers a brilliantly clear survey of Teutonic thought
at its best, from Descartes to Kant and Schopenhauer. The best
introduction
to general philosophy that exists is in my opinion (and as far as my
limited
knowledge extends) Friedrich Albert Lange's Geschichte des
Materialismus:
this author takes a special point of view and hence the whole picture
of
European thought from Democritus to Hartmann becomes more vivid, and in
the healthy atmosphere of a frank partiality challenging contradiction
we breathe much more freely than under the hypocritical impartiality of
masked Academic authorities.
392 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
religious
philosophy,
but with an artificial philosophy forcibly welded into unity. Now as
soon
as genuine philosophic thought began to be active — which was never the
case with the Romans, but was bound to come with the advent of the
Teuton
— the nature of this faith full of contradictions violently asserted
itself;
and in fact it is a truly tragic spectacle to see noble minds like
Scotus
Erigena in the ninth, and Abelard in the twelfth century wriggle and
turn
in the hopeless struggle to bring the complex of faith which was forced
upon them into harmony with themselves and with the demands of honest
reason.
Inasmuch as the Church dogmas were regarded as infallible, philosophy
had
henceforth two parts to choose between; it could openly admit the
incompatibility
of philosophy and theology — that was the course of truth; or it could
deny the evidence of the senses, cheat itself and others, and by means
of countless tricks and devices force the irreconcilable to be
reconciled
— this was the course of falsehood.
THE
COURSE
OF TRUTH
The course of
truth
branches off almost from the first in different directions. It could
lead
to a daring, genuinely Pauline, anti-rationalistic theology, as Duns
Scotus
(1274-1308) and Occam (died 1343) show. It could bring about a
systematic
subordination of logic to intuitive feeling, and thus conduced to the
rich
variety of mystical philosophies, which, beginning with Francis of
Assisi
(1182-1226) and Eckhart (1260-1328), was to lead up to minds of such
different
character as Thomas à Kempis, the author of the Imitatio
Christi
(1380-1471), Paracelsus, the founder of scientific medicine
(1493-1541),
or Stahl, the founder of modern chemistry (1660-1734). * Or, on the
other
hand, this unswerving honesty could cause
* See p. 322.
393 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
men to turn
away
from all special study of Christian theology and spur them on to
acquire
a comprehensive, free cosmogony; we see an indication of this in the
encyclopaedist
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), it is then further developed in the
Humanists,
e.g.,
in Picus of Mirandola (1463-94), who considers the science of the
Hellenes
as divine a revelation as the books of the Jews, and consequently
studies
it with the fire of religious zeal. Finally, this path could lead the
most
profound philosophic intellects to test and reject the foundations of
the
theoretical philosophy then regarded as authoritative, in order to
proceed,
as free responsible men, to the construction of a new philosophy in
harmony
with our intellect and knowledge; this movement — the really
“philosophical“
one — always starts in our case from the investigation of nature; its
representatives
are philosophers who study nature, or philosophic investigators; it
begins
with Roger Bacon (1214-1294), then slumbers for a long time, repressed
by main force by the Church, but raises its head again when the natural
sciences have developed strength, and runs a glorious course, from
Campanella
(perhaps the first man who consciously propounded a scientific theory
of
perception, 1568-1639) and Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804)
at the threshold of the nineteenth century. So manifold were the new
paths
opened up to the human spirit when it once faithfully followed its true
nature. And by each of the courses mentioned a splendid harvest was
garnered.
Pauline theology gave birth to Church reform and political freedom;
mysticism
led to a deeper view of religion, and at the same time to reform and
brilliant
natural science; the awakened humanist desire for knowledge advanced
genuine
liberal culture, and the horizon of mankind was powerfully widened by
the
reconstruction of philosophy in the special sense on the basis of exact
observation and critical, free
394 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
thought; while
all scientific knowledge gained in depth and religious conceptions in
the
Teutonic sense began to undergo a complete transformation.
THE
COURSE
OF FALSEHOOD
The other method, which I have designated the course of falsehood,
remained
absolutely barren of results; for here arbitrary caprice and capricious
arbitrariness predominated. The very attempt to rationalise all
religion,
that is, to accommodate it to reason, and yet at the same time to bind
and put thought under the yoke of faith, is a double crime against
human
nature. For such an attempt to succeed the delusive belief in dogmatism
must first become a raving madness. A Church doctrine which had been
patched
together out of the most varying foreign alien elements, and which
contradicted
itself in the most essential points, had to be declared eternal, divine
truth; a fragmentary, badly translated, often totally misunderstood,
essentially
individualistic, pre-Christian philosophy had to be declared
infallible;
for without these prodigious acceptations the attempt would never have
succeeded. And so this theology and this philosophy, which had no
connection
with one another, were forced into wedlock and a monstrosity was
imposed
upon humanity as the absolute, all-embracing system to be
unconditionally
accepted. * In this path development followed a straight, short line;
for,
while divine truth is as manifold as the creatures in which it is
reflected,
the impious caprice of a human system, which lays down the law of
“truth“
and carries it out with fire and sword, soon reaches its limit, and any
further step would be a negation of itself. Anselm, who died in the
year
1109, can be regarded as the author of this method, which gags thought
and feeling; scarcely a hundred and fifty years after his death
* See p. 178.
395 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Thomas Aquinas
(1227-1274) and Ramon Lull (1234-1315) had brought the system to the
highest
perfection. Progress was in this case impossible. Such an absolute
theological
philosophy neither contained in itself the germ of any possible
development,
nor could it exercise a stimulating influence upon any branch of human
intellectual activity, on the contrary, it necessarily signified an
end.
* It becomes clear how irrefutable this assertion is when we look at
the
frequently mentioned Bull Aeterni Patris, of August 4, 1879,
which
represents Thomas Aquinas as the unsurpassed, solely authoritative
philosopher
of the Roman view of life even for the present day; and, to make
matters
more complete, some lovers of the Absolute have lately put Ramon Lull
with
his Ars Magna even above Thomas. For Thomas, who was a
thoroughly
honest Teuton, possessed of brilliant intellectual gifts, and who had
learned
all that he really knew at the feet of the great Swabian Albert von
Bollstadt,
expressly admits that some few of the highest mysteries — e.g.,
the Trinity and the Incarnation — are incomprehensible to human reason.
It is true he tries to explain this incomprehensibility by rational
means,
when he says that God intentionally made it so, that faith might be
more
meritorious. But he at least admits the incomprehensibility. Now Ramon
does not admit this, for this Spaniard had learned in a different
school,
that of the Mohammedans, and had there imbibed the fundamental doctrine
of Semitic religion that nothing can be incomprehensible, and so he
undertakes
to prove everything under the sun on grounds of reason. † He also makes
the boastful claim that from his method (of rotary differently coloured
disks with letters for the chief ideas)
* See the remarks on “not-knowing“ as the source of all
increase
of experience, p. 272,
and
on the sterilising effects of universalism, p.
276.
† Cf. vol. i. p. 414.
It is very important to note in addition that Thomas Aquinas also must
seek support from the Semites and in many passages links on to Jewish
philosophers
— Maimonides and others. See Dr. J. Guttmann: Das
Verhältnis
des Thomas von Aquino zum Judentum und zur jüdischen Litteratur
(Göttingen 1891).
396 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
all sciences
can
be derived without the necessity of studying them. Thus absolutism is
at
the same moment perfected in two ways, by the earnest, ethically
idealistic
system of Thomas and by the faultlessly logical and consequently absurd
doctrine of Ramon. I have already mentioned (p.
276) the judgment of the great Roger Bacon, who was a contemporary
of both these misguided men, upon Thomas Aquinas; similar and just as
much
to the point was the opinion of Cardanus, the doctor, mathematician and
philosopher, who had wasted much time on Ramon Lull — a marvellous
master!
he teaches all sciences without knowing a single one. *
There is nothing to be gained by lingering over these delusions,
although
the fact that at the close of the nineteenth century we were solemnly
called
upon to turn about and choose this insincere course lends them a
melancholy
present interest. We prefer to turn to that long, magnificent series of
splendid men who imposed no shackles on their inner nature, but in
simple
sincerity and dignity sought to know God and the world. I must,
however,
first make a remark on method.
SCHOLASTICISM
In the grouping, which I have sketched above (into theologians,
mystics,
humanists and scientists), the usual conception of a “scholastic
period“
completely disappears. And I really think that the notion may be
dispensed
with here, as being altogether superfluous, if not directly harmful,
for
the vivid comprehension of the philosophic and religious development of
the Teutonic world; it is contrary to the motto from Goethe which I
prefixed
to this “Historical Survey,“ in that it unites what is heterogeneous
and
at the same time rends links
* Here we are reminded of Rousseau's remark: “Quel plus
sûr
moyen de courir d'erreurs en erreurs que la fureur de savoir tout?“
(Letter to Voltaire, 10. 9. 1755).
397 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
that belong to
one single chain. Taken literally, scholastic means simply schoolman;
the
name should therefore be limited to men who derive their knowledge
solely
from books; in fact that is the sort of derogatory sense which the word
has acquired in common parlance. But we may define more exactly. A
predominance
of dialectical hair-splitting to the disadvantage of observation — of
the
Theoretical to the disadvantage of the Practical — is what we call
“scholastic“;
every abstractly intellectual, purely logical construction seems to us
to be “scholasticism,“ and every man who constructs such systems out of
his head, or, as the German popular saying is, “Out of his little
finger,“
is a scholastic. But when thus viewed the word has no historical value;
there have been such scholastics at all times and there is a rich crop
of them at the present day. From the historical point of view we
generally
regard the scholastics as a group of theologians, who for several
centuries
endeavoured to fix the relations between thought and the Church
doctrine,
which was now almost completely developed and rigidified. Such a
grouping
may be useful to the Church historian; it took the “Fathers“ a thousand
years of bitter struggle to fix the dogmas; then for five hundred years
there raged a violent dispute with regard to the manner in which these
Church doctrines could be reconciled with the surrounding world, and
especially
with the nature of man, so far as this could be derived from Aristotle.
Finally, however, the underground current of true humanity had
undermined
more and more seriously the rock of St. Peter, and the thunder of
Martin
Luther scattered the theologians; and so on one side and on the other a
third period, that of the practical testing of principles, was
introduced.
As I have said above, from the point of view of the Church historian
this
may give a useful idea of scholasticism, but from the philosophic
standpoint
I find it exceedingly misleading, and for the history of our Teutonic
culture
it is utterly
398 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
useless. What,
for example, is the sense of saying, as I find in all text-books, that
Scotus Erigena is the founder of scholastic philosophy? Erigena! one of
the greatest mystics of all times, who interprets the Bible, verse by
verse,
allegorically, who fastens directly on to Greek gnosticism * and like
Origenes
teaches that hell means the tortures of our own consciences, heaven
their
joys (De Divisione Naturae v. 36), that every man will at last
be
redeemed, “whether he has led a good or a wicked life“ (v. 39), that to
understand eternity we must realise that “space and time are false
ideas“
(iii. 9), &c. What connection is there between this daring Teuton †
and Anselm or Thomas? Even if we look more closely at Abelard, who, as
a pupil of Anselm and an incomparable dialectician, stands much nearer
to the doctors named, we must observe that though he is animated by the
same purpose — that of reconciling reason and theology — his method and
results are so very different that it is quite ridiculous to class such
contradictions together merely because of external points of contact. ‡
And what is the meaning of linking together Thomas Aquinas with Duns
Scotus
and Occam, the sworn opponents, the diametrical contradictions of the doctor
angelicus? What is the use of trying to persuade us that it is
merely
a question of fine metaphysical differences between realism and
nominalism?
On the contrary, these metaphysical subtleties are merely the external
shell, the real difference is the wide gulf that separates the one
intellectual
tendency from the other, the fact that different characters forge quite
different weapons from the same metal. It is the duty of the historian
to bring into evidence that which is not immediately clear to every
one;
to distinguish what seems uniform, while in reality it is essentially
antago-
* Cf. p. 129.
† Cf. vol. i. p. 325.
‡ As I do not wish to repeat myself, I refer the reader to vol. i. pp.
501
f. and 244, note on
Abelard.
399 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
nistic; to
unite
what seems contradictory but is fundamentally in agreement — as, for
example,
Duns Scotus and Eckhart. Martin Luther felt vividly and profoundly the
difference between these various doctors; in a passage of his Table-talk
he says: “Duns Scotus has written very well ... and has endeavoured to
teach with good system and correctly. Occam was an intelligent and
ingenious
man .... Thomas Aquinas is a gossiping old washerwoman.“ * And is it
not
perfectly ridiculous when a Roger Bacon, the inventor of the telescope,
the founder of scientific mathematics and philology, the proclaimer of
genuine natural science, is thrown into the same class as those who
pretended
to know everything and consequently stopped Roger Bacon's mouth and
threw
him into prison? Finally I should like to ask: if Erigena is a
scholastic
and Amalrich also, how is it that Eckhart, who is manifestly under the
power of both, is not one, although he is contemporary of Thomas and
Duns?
I know that the sole reason is the desire to form a new group, that of
the Mystics, which shall lead up to Böhme and Angelus Silesius;
and
with this object in view Eckhart is violently separated from Erigena,
Amalrich
and Bonaventura! And that nothing may be wanting to show the
artificiality
of the system, the great Francis of Assisi is excluded altogether; the
man who has exercised perhaps more influence upon the trend of thought
than any one, the man to whose order Duns Scotus and Occam belong, to
whom
Roger Bacon, the regenerator of natural science, confesses his
allegiance,
and who, by the power of his personality, did more than any other to
awaken
mysticism to new life! This man, who is a real force in
* I quote from the Jena edition, 1591, fol. 329; in the new wide-spread
selections we do not find this passage nor the others “dealing with the
Scholastics as a whole“ where Luther sighs when he thinks of his
student
days, when “fine, clever people were burdened with the hearing of
useless
teachings and the reading of useless books with strange, un-German,
sophistical
words....“
400 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
every field of
culture — since he has stimulated art as powerfully as philosophy — is
not even mentioned in the history of philosophy; this reveals the
faultiness
of the scheme which I am criticising, and at the same time the
untenability
of the idea that religion and philosophy are two fundamentally
different
things.
ROME
AND ANTI-ROME
My bridge will, I think, have been substantially advanced if I have
succeeded
in replacing this artificial scheme by a living discernment. Such a
discernment
must naturally in all cases be gained from living facts, not from
theoretical
deductions. We see here the very same struggle, the same revolt, as in
other spheres; on the one hand the Roman ideal which grew out of the
Chaos
of Peoples, on the other Teutonic individuality. I have shown already
that
Rome can be satisfied in philosophy as in religion with nothing less
than
the unconditionally Absolute. The sacrifizio dell' intelletto
is the first law which it imposes upon every thinking man. This too is
perfectly logical and justifiable. That moral pre-eminence is not
incompatible
with it is proved by Thomas Aquinas himself. Endowed with that
peculiar,
fatal gift of the Teuton to sink himself in alien views, and, thanks to
his greater capacities, to transfigure them and give them new life,
Thomas
Aquinas, who had drunk in the southern poison from childhood, devoted
Teutonic
science and power of conviction to the service of the Anti-Teutonic
cause.
In former ages the Teuton had produced soldiers and commanders to
conquer
their own nations, now they supplied the enemy with theologians and
philosophers;
for two thousand years this has steadily been going on. But every
unprejudiced
observer feels that such men as Thomas are doing violence to their own
nature. I do not assert that they consciously and intentionally lie,
though
401 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
that was and
is
often enough the case with men of lower calibre; but, fascinated by the
lofty (and for a noble, misguided mind, actually holy) ideal of the
Roman
delusion, they fall a prey to suggestion and plunge into that view of
life
which destroys their personality and their dignity, just as the
song-bird
throws itself into the serpent's jaw. That is why I call this the way
of
falsehood. For whoever follows it sacrifices what he received from God,
his own self; and in truth that is no trifle; Meister Eckhart, a good
and
learned Catholic, a Provincial of the Dominican Order, teaches us that
man should not seek God outside himself — “Got
ûzer
sich selber nicht ensuoche“;
* whoever therefore sacrifices his personality loses the God whom he
could
have found only within himself. Whoever, on the other hand, does not
sacrifice
his personality in his philosophy, manifestly follows the very opposite
path no matter to what manner of opinions his character may impel him,
and no matter whether he belong to the Catholic or to any other Church.
A Duns Scotus, for example, is an absolutely fanatical priest, wholly
devoted
to the essential doctrines of Rome, such as justification by works — a
hundred times more intolerant and onesided than Thomas Aquinas; yet
every
one of his words breathes the atmosphere of sincerity and of autonomous
personality. This doctor subtilis, the greatest dialectician of
the Church. exposes with contempt and holy indignation the whole tissue
of pitiful sophism upon which Thomas has built up his artificial
system.
It is not true, as he points out, that the dogmas of the Church stand
the
test of reason, much less that, as Thomas had taught, they can be
proved
by reason to be necessary truths; even the so-called proofs of the
existence
of God and of
* Pfeiffer's edition, 1857, p. 626. What is here uttered negatively is
expressed in the fifty-third saying, concerning the seven grades of
contemplative
life, as a positive theory: “Unde sôder Mensch
alsô
in sich selber gât, sô vindet er got in ime selber“
(“If so man then enters into himself, he findeth God in himself“).
402 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
the
immortality
of the soul are wretched sophistries (see the Quaestiones
subtilissimae); it is not the syllogism that
is of value in religion, but faith only; it is not the understanding
which
forms the centre of human nature, but the will; voluntas
superior
intellectu! However intolerant from the
ecclesiastical
point of view Duns Scotus might personally be, the path that he trod
led
to freedom. And why? Because this Anglo-Saxon is absolutely sincere. He
accepts without question all the doctrines of the Roman Church, even
those
which do violence to the Teutonic nature, but he despises all deceit.
What
Lutheran theologian of the eighteenth century would have dared to
declare
the existence of God to be incapable of philosophic proof? What
persecutions
had not Kant to suffer for this very thing? Scotus had long ago
asserted
it. And Scotus, by putting the Individual in the centre of his
philosophy
as “the one real thing,“ saves the personality; and that means the
rescue
of everything. Now this one example shows with special clearness that
all
those who follow the same path, the path of sincerity, are closely
connected
with one another; for what the theologian Scotus teaches is lived by
the
mystic Francis of Assisi: the will is the supreme thing, God is a
direct
perception, not a logical deduction, personality is the “greatest
blessing“;
Occam, on the other hand, a pupil of Scotus, and as zealous a dogmatist
as his master, found it not only necessary to separate faith still more
completely from knowledge, and to destroy rationalistic theology by
proving
that the most important Church dogmas are actually absurd, whereby he
became
a founder of the sciences of observation — but he also upheld the cause
of the Kings in opposition to the Papal stool, that is, he fought for
Teutonic
nationalism against Roman universalism; at the same time he also
stoutly
upheld the rights of the Church against the interference of the Roman
Pontifex
— and for this he was thrown into
403 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
prison. Here,
as we see, Politics, Science and Philosophy, in their later anti-Roman
development, are directly connected with Theology.
Even such hasty indications will, I think, suffice to convince the
reader
that the grouping which I suggest goes to the heart of the matter. This
division has one great advantage, namely, that it is not limited to a
few
centuries, but permits us to survey at one glance the history of a
thousand
years, from Scotus Erigena to Arthur Schopenhauer. In the second place,
derived as it is from living facts, it has the further advantage for
our
own practical life that it teaches us unlimited tolerance towards every
sincere, genuinely Teutonic view; we do not inquire about the What of a
particular Philosophy, but about the How; free or not free? personal or
not personal? It is solely thus that we learn to draw a clear line
between
our own selves and the alien, and to oppose the latter with all our
weapons
at once and at all times, no matter how noble and unselfish and
thoroughly
Teutonic he may pretend to be. The enemy worms his way into our very
souls.
Was that not the case with Thomas Aquinas? And do we not see a similar
phenomenon in the case of Leibniz and Hegel? The great Occam was called
doctor
invincibilis: may we live to see many doctores invincibiles
taking part in the struggle which threatens our culture on all sides!
THE
FOUR GROUPS
The ground is now,
I hope, sufficiently prepared to enable us to proceed methodically to
consider
the four groups of men who devoted their lives to the service of truth,
without laying the flattering unction to their souls that they
possessed
or could fully grasp it; by their combined efforts the new philosophy
of
life has gradually assumed a more and more definite shape.
404 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
These groups
are
the theologians, the mystics, the humanists and the natural scientists,
in which the last-named category the philosophers in the narrower sense
of the word are included. For the sake of convenience we shall retain
the
groups thus established, but we must avoid attaching to such a
definition
any wider significance than that of a convenient and practical handle
for
our purpose, for the four classes merge into each other at a hundred
points.
THE
THEOLOGIANS
Were it my intention to defend any artificial thesis, the group of the
theologians would trouble me considerably; indeed I should be tortured
with the feeling of my incompetence. But disregarding all technical
details
which may be beyond my comprehension, I need only open my eyes to see
theologians
of the character of Duns Scotus as direct pioneers of the Reformation,
and not only of the Reformation — for that remained from a religious
point
of view a very unsatisfactory piece of patchwork, or, as Lamprecht
optimistically
says, “a leaven for the religious attitude of the future,“ — but also
as
the pioneers of a far-reaching movement of fundamental importance in
the
building up of a new Philosophy. We know what metaphysical acumen Kant
employs in his Critique of Pure Reason to prove that “all
attempts
to establish a theology by the aid of speculation alone are fruitless
and
from their inner nature null and void“; * this proof was indispensable
for the foundation of his philosophy; it was Kant, the all-destroyer,
as
Moses Mendelssohn fitly named him, who first shattered the sham edifice
of Roman theology. The very earliest theologians, who followed the “way
of truth“ had
* See the section Critique of all Speculative Theology
and
also the last of the Prolegomena to every Future System of
Metaphysics.
405 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
undertaken the
same task. Duns Scotus and Occam were not of course in a position, as
Kant
was, to undermine the “sham edifice“ of the Church by the direct method
of natural science, but for all practical purposes they had with
adequate
power of conviction attained exactly the same end, by the reductio
ad
absurdum of the hypothesis which was opposed to them. This fact was
bound to lead with mathematical necessity to two immediate
consequences:
first, the freeing of reason with all that pertained to it from the
service
of theology, where it was of no use; secondly, the basing of religious
faith upon another principle, since that of reason had proved useless.
And in fact, as far as the freeing of reason is concerned, we already
see
Occam joining hands with Roger Bacon, a member of his own order, and
demanding
the empirical observation of nature; at the same time we see him enter
the sphere of practical politics to demand wider personal and national
freedom. This was a demand of freed reason, for fettered reason had
tried
to prove the universal Civitas Dei (in Occam's day by Dante's
testimony)
to be a divine institution. And in regard to the second point it is
clear
that, if the doctrines of religion find no guarantee in the reasoned
conclusions
of the brain, the theologian must endeavour with all the more energy to
find this guarantee elsewhere, and the only available source was in the
first place to be found in Holy Scripture. However paradoxical it may
at
first appear, it is nevertheless a fact that it was the violent,
intolerant,
narrow-minded orthodoxy of Scotus, in contrast to the occasionally
almost
free-thinking imperturbability of a Thomas, playing in a spirit of
superiority
with Augustinian contradictions, which pointed the way to emancipation
from the Church. For the tendency of Thomas's thought, which the Roman
Church so strongly supported, in reality emancipated it entirely from
the
doctrine of Christ.
406 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
The Church
with
its Church Fathers and Councils had already pressed itself so much into
the foreground that the Gospel had seriously lost credit; now it was
proved
that the dogmas of faith “had to be so,“ as reason could at any moment
demonstrate that this is a logical necessity. To refer further to Holy
Scripture would be just as foolish as if a captain, on going to sea,
were
to take a few pailfuls of water from the river that feeds the ocean and
throw them over the bowsprit, for fear he should not have sufficient
depth
of water. But even before Thomas Aquinas had started to build his Tower
of Babel, many profoundly sensitive minds had felt that this tendency
which
the Romish Church had introduced in practice and Anselm in theory,
meant
the death of all sincere religion; the greatest of these was Francis of
Assisi. Certainly this extraordinary man belongs to the group of the
Mystics,
but he also deserves mention here among the theologians, for it was
from
him that the champions of true Christian theology derived their
inspiration.
That, indeed, seems paradoxical, for no saint was less of a theologian
than Francis; but it is an historical fact, and the paradox disappears
when we see that it is his emphasising of the importance of the Gospel
and of Jesus Christ that forms the connection. This layman, who forces
his way into the Church, pushes the priesthood aside, and proclaims the
Word of Christ to all people, represents a violent reaction on the part
of men longing for religion, against the cold, incomprehensible,
argumentative
and stilted faith in dogma. Francis, who from youth had been subject to
Waldensian influence, doubtless knew the Gospel well; * we should
almost
have said it was a miracle, did we not know it was the merest accident,
that he was not burned as a heretic; his religion can be expressed in
the
words of Luther: “The law of Christ is not doctrine but life, not word
* See p. 132 and cf.
the conclusion of the note on p.
96.
407 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
but being, not
sign but fullness itself.“ * The Gospel which Francis rescued from
oblivion
became the rock of refuge to which the northern theologians retired,
when
they had convinced themselves that theological rationalism was
untenable
and dangerous. And they did so with the passion of combative
conviction,
urged on by the example of Francis. Duns teaches in direct contrast to
Thomas that the highest bliss of heaven will not be Knowing but Loving.
The influence which such a tendency must in time acquire is clear; we
have
already seen how highly Scotus and Occam were esteemed by Luther, while
he called Thomas a gossip. The recognition of the fundamental
importance
of the Biblical Word, the emphasising of the evangelical life in
contrast
to dogmatic doctrine must inevitably result. Even the more external
movement
of revolt against the pomp and greed and the whole worldly tendency of
the Curia was so self-evident a conclusion from these premises, that we
find even Occam attacking all these abuses, and Jacopone da Todi, the
author
of Stabat Mater, intellectually the most pre-eminent of the
Italian
Franciscans of the thirteenth century, calls upon men to revolt openly
against Pope Boniface VIII., and for so doing has to spend the best
years
of his life in an underground prison. And though Duns Scotus himself
emphasises
the importance of works almost more than any one else, while in
reference
to grace and faith he is not prepared to go even as far as Thomas, it
is
only a very superficial thinker who sees in this anything specifically
Roman, and does not realise that this very doctrine necessarily paves
the
way for that of Luther: for the whole aim of these Franciscans is to
make
will, and not formal orthodoxy, the central point of religion; this
makes
religion something lived, experienced, immediately present. As Luther
says,
“Faith is Will essentially good“; and in another
* Von dem Missbrauch der Messe, Part III.
408 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
passage,
“Faith
is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, so that it could not but
unceasingly
do good.“ * Now this “Will,“ this “Doing“ are the things upon which
Scotus
and Occam, taught by Francis, lay all emphasis, and that, too, in
contrast
to a cold, academic creed. Certain much-read authors of the present day
use the terms “faith“ and “good works“ in a most frivolous manner;
without
joining issue with those to whom the practice of falsehood seems a
“good
work,“ I ask every unbiased reader to consider Francis of Assisi and to
say what is the essence of this personality. Every one must answer “the
power of faith.“ He is faith incorporate: “not doctrine but life, not
word
but being.“ Read the history of his life. It was not priestly
admonition,
not sacramental consecration that led him to God, but the vision of the
Cross in a ruined chapel near Assisi and Christ's message in the
diligently
studied Gospel. † And yet Francis — as also the Order which he founded
— is rightly regarded by us as the special Apostle of good works. And
now
look at Martin Luther — the advocate of redemption by faith — and say
whether
he has done no works, whether on the contrary he did not consecrate his
life to working, whether indeed he was not the very man who revealed to
us the secret of good works, when he said they must be eitel freie
Werke,
“nothing but free works, done only to please God, not for the sake of
piety
... for wherever they contain the false supplement and wrong-headed
idea
that we wish by works to become pious and blessed, they are not good
but
utterly culpable, for they are not free.“ ‡ The learned may shake their
heads as they will, we laymen recognise the fact that a Francis of
Assisi
has led up to a Duns
* Cf. The Vorrede auf die Epistel Pauli an die
Römer.
† See,
for example, Paul Sabatier: Vie de S. François d'Assise,
1896, chap. iv.
‡ Von
der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen pp. 22, 25.
409 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Scotus and the
latter to a Martin Luther; for it is the impulse of freedom — the
freeing
of the personality that is at the root of this movement. The whole life
of Francis is a revolt of the individual — against his family, against
all society around him, against a thoroughly corrupt priesthood and a
Church
that had fallen away from Apostolic tradition; and while the priesthood
prescribes to him definite paths as alone conducing to bliss, he
undauntedly
goes his own way and as a free man holds commune directly with his God.
Such a view raised to the sphere of theological philosophy must needs
lead
to almost exclusive emphasising of freedom of will, and this is exactly
what took place in the case of Scotus. We are bound to admit that the
latter
with his one-sided emphasising of liberum arbitrium shows less
philosophic
depth than his opponent Thomas, but all the more profundity in religion
and (if I may so say) in politics. For hereby this theology succeeds —
in direct contrast to Rome — in making the individual the central point
in religion: “Christ is the door of salvation: it is for man to enter
in
or not!“ Now it is this accentuation of free personality that is the
only
important matter — not subtleties concerning grace and merit, faith and
good works. This path led to an anti-Roman, anti-sacerdotal conception
of the Church and to an altogether new religion which was spiritual,
not
historical and materialistic. That very soon became clear. Luther, the
political hero, did indeed close the door for a long time against this
natural and inevitable religious movement. Like Duns Scotus he too
enveloped
his healthy, strong, freedom-breathing perception in a tissue of
over-subtle
theological dogmas, and never freed himself from the historical and
therefore
intolerant conceptions of a faith which had grown out of Judaism; but
this
attitude gave him the right strength for the right work: in his
struggle
for the Fatherland and the dignity of the
410 PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Teutonic
peoples
he proved victorious, whereas his rigid, monkish theology broke like an
earthen pitcher, being too small to hold all that he himself had poured
into it. It was not till the nineteenth century that we again took
those
great theologians as our starting-point, to enable us to pursue the
path
to freedom even in the sphere of theology.
Let us not under-estimate the value of the theologians for the
development
of our culture! Whoever with more knowledge than I possess makes a
further
study of what has here been briefly sketched will, I think, find the
work
of these men even up to our own times manifoldly blessed. A learned
Roman
theologian, Abelard, exclaims even in the twelfth century, “Si
omnes
patres sic, at ego non sic!“ * and it would be a good thing if a
great
many theologians of our century possessed the same courage. See what a
Savonarola — the man whose fiery spirit inspired a Leonardo, a Michael
Angelo, a Raphael — does for freedom, when from the pulpit he cries: †
“Behold Rome, the head of the world, and from the head turn the eyes
upon
the limbs! from the sole of the foot to the crown of the head not one
part
is sound; we live among Christians, have interaction with them; but
they
are not Christians who are Christians in name only; it were truly
better
to live among the heathen!“ — this monk, I say, when he utters such
words
before thousands and seals them with his death at the stake, does more
for freedom than a whole academy of free-thinkers; for freedom asserts
itself not by opinions but by attitude, it is “not word, but being.“ So
too, in the nineteenth century, a pious, inwardly religious
Schleiermacher
has certainly done more in the interests of a living, religious
philosophy
than a sceptical David Strauss.
* Quoted from Schopenhauer: Über den Willen in der Natur
(Section
on Physische Astronomie).
† Sermon at the Feast of the Epiphany, 1492.
411
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
THE MYSTICS
The real High
School
of freedom from hieratic and historical shackles is mysticism, the philosophia
teutonica, as it was called. * A mystical philosophy, when
completely
worked out, dissolves one dogmatic theory after another as allegory;
what
remains is pure symbol, for religion is then no longer a creed, a hope,
a conviction, but an experience of life, an actual process, a direct
state
of mind. Lagarde
somewhere says, “Religion is an unconditional
present“;
† this is the view of a mystic. The most perfect expression of
absolutely
mystical religion is found among the Aryan Indians; but scarcely a
hair's-breadth
separates our great Teutonic mystics from their Indian predecessors and
contemporaries; only one thing really distinguishes them: Indian
religion
is genuinely Indo-Teutonic, mysticism finds in it a natural,
universally
recognised place, but there is no place for mysticism in such a
conjunction
as that of Semitic history with pseudo-Egyptian magic, and so it was
and
is at best merely tolerated, though mostly persecuted by our various
sects.
The Christian Churches are right from their point of view. Listen to
the
fifty-fourth saying of Meister Eckhart: “You know that all our
perfection
and all our bliss depends on this, that man should pass through and
over
all creation, all temporality and all being, and go into the depths
which
are unfathomable.“ That is essentially Indian and might be a quota-
*
Concerning
the German people as a whole Lamprecht testifies that “the basis of its
attitude to Christianity was mystical“ (Deutsche Geschichte, 2nd
ed. vol. ii. p. 197). This was absolutely true till the introduction by
Thomas Aquinas of obligatory rationalism, supplemented later by the
materialism
of the Jesuits.
† The
theologian Adalbert Merx says in his book, Idee und Grundlinien
einer
allgemeinen Geschichte der Mystik, 1893, p. 46: “One fact in
mysticism
is firmly established, that it so completely possesses, reveals and
represents
the fact or experience in religion, religion as a phenomenon ... that a
real philosophy of religion without historical knowledge of mysticism
is
out of the question.“
412
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
tion
from the
Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad.
No sophistry could succeed in proving a connection between this
religion
and Abrahamitic promises, and no honest man will deny that in a
philosophy
which rises above “creation“ and “temporality,“ the Fall and the
Redemption
must be merely symbols of an otherwise inexpressible truth of inner
experience.
The following passage from the forty-ninth Sermon of Eckhart is also
apposite:
“So long as I am this or that or have this or that, I am not all things
and have not all things; but as soon as you decide that you are not,
and
have not, this or that, then you are everywhere; as soon, therefore, as
you are neither this nor that, you are all things.“ * This is the
doctrine
of Ãtman, and to it the theology of Duns Scotus is just as
irrelevant
as that of Thomas Aquinas. Before leaving the subject, upon one thing I
must insist. The religion of Jesus Christ was just such a mystical
religion;
His deeds and words prove it. His saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is
within
you,“ † cannot be interpreted by empiricism or history.
Naturally, I cannot
here enter into a fuller exposition of mysticism, that would be seeking
in a few lines to fathom human nature where it is “unfathomable“; my
duty
consists solely in so presenting the subject that even the uninitiated
will at once perceive that it is the necessary tendency of mysticism to
free men from ecclesiastical tenets. Fortunately — I may well say so —
it is not the Teutonic nature to pursue thoughts to their last
consequences,
in other words, to let them tyrannise over us, and so we see Eckhart in
spite of his Ãtman doctrine remaining a good Dominican —
escaping
the Inquisition, it is true, by the skin of his teeth ‡ — but
*
Pfeiffer's
edition, p. 162.
† See
vol. i. p. 187.
‡ It
was not till after his death that his doctrines were condemned as
heretical
and his writings so diligently destroyed by the Inquisition that most
of
them are lost.
413
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
signing
all necessary orthodox
confessions,
and we never find that — in spite of all the recommendations of the sopor
pacis (the sleep of peace) by Bonaventura (1221—1274) and others —
quietism has with us as with the Indians drained the veins of life. For
that reason I shall limit myself to the narrow compass of this chapter,
and only briefly point out what a destructive influence the army of
Mystics
exercised on the alien traditional religion, and how on the other hand
they did so much to create and promote a new philosophy in keeping with
our individuality. Usually too little is made both of the negative and
of the positive activity of these men.
Very striking is,
in the first place, their dislike for Jewish doctrines of religion;
every
Mystic is, whether he will or not, a born Anti-Semite. Pious minds like
Bonaventura get over the difficulty by interpreting the whole Old
Testament
allegorically and giving a symbolical meaning to the borrowed mythical
elements — a tendency which we find fully developed five hundred years
earlier in Scotus Erigena, and which we may trace still further back,
to
Marcion and Origines. * But this does not satisfy those souls in their
thirst after true religion. The strictly orthodox Thomas à
Kempis
prays with pathetic simplicity to God, “Let it not be Moses or the
Prophets
that speak to me, but speak thyself ... from them I hear words indeed,
but the spirit is absent; what they say is beautiful, but it warms not
the heart.“ † This feeling we meet with in almost all the Mystics, but
nowhere so beautifully expressed as by the great Jacob Böhme
(1575—1624).
In regard to many passages in the Bible, after he has explained all
that
he can (e.g., the whole history of creation), symbolically and
allegorically,
and sees that he cannot proceed any further, he simply exclaims, “Here
the eyes of Moses are veiled,“
* See
pp. 44 and 89.
† De
Imitatione Christi, Book III, chap. ii.
414
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
and
goes on to interpret the matter
freely in his own way! * The contradiction is more serious when we come
to conceptions of heaven and especially of hell. To be quite candid, we
must admit that the conception of hell is really the blot of shame upon
ecclesiastical doctrine. Born amid the scum of raceless slaves in Asia
Minor, nurtured during the hopelessly chaotic, ignorant, bestial
centuries
of the declining and fallen Roman Empire, it was always repulsive to
noble
minds, though but few were able to rise so completely above it as
Origenes
and that incomprehensibly great mind, Scotus Erigena. † We can easily
comprehend
how few could do so, for ecclesiastical Christianity had gradually
grown
into a religion of heaven and hell; everything else was of little
moment.
Take up any old chronicles you like, it is the fear of hell that has
been
the most effectual, generally the sole religious motive. The immense
estates
of the Church, her incalculable incomes from indulgences and suchlike,
she owes almost solely to the fear of hell. At a later period the
Jesuits,
by frankly making this fear of hell the central point of all religion,
‡ acted quite logically and soon earned the reward of consistent
sincerity;
for heaven and hell, reward and punishment form to-day more than ever
the
real or at least the effectual basis of our Church ethics. §
“Ôtez la
crainte de l'enfer à un chrétien, et vous lui
* See,
for example, Mysterium magnum, oder Erklärung über das
erste
Buch Mosis, chap. xix. § 1.
† See
pp. 48 and 129.
The extraordinary popularity of Erigena's Division of Nature in
the thirteenth century (see pp. 274
and 341) shows how
universal
was the longing to get rid of this frightful product of Oriental
imagination.
Luther, in spite of all orthodoxy, is often inclined to agree with
Erigena,
he, too, writes in his Vierzehn Trostmittel i. I., “Man has
hell
within himself.“
‡ See
p. 111, &c.
§
The Jesuits are only more consistent than the others. I remember seeing
a German girl of twelve years of age lying in convulsions after a
lesson
on religion. The Lutheran Duodecimo-Pope had inspired the innocent
child
with such terror of hell. Teachers of this kind should be cited before
a criminal court.
415
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
ôterez
sa croyance“,
says
Diderot not quite unjustly. * If we take all these facts into
consideration,
we shall comprehend what en effect must have been produced by the
beautiful
doctrine of Eckhart: “Were there no Hell and no Kingdom of Heaven, yet
I would love God — Thee, Thou sweet father, and Thy sublime nature“;
and,
“The right, perfect essence of the Spirit is to love God for His own
goodness,
though there were no Heaven and no Hell.“ † Some fifty years later the
unknown author of the Theologia deutsch, that splendid monument
of German mysticism in Catholic garb, expresses himself still more
definitely,
for he entitles his tenth chapter, “How perfect men have lost their
fear
of hell and desire of heaven,“ and shows that perfection consists in
freedom
from these conceptions: “The freedom of those men is such that they
have
lost fear of pain or hell, and hope of reward or heaven, and live in
pure
submission and obedience to everlasting goodness, in the complete
freedom
of fervent love.“ It is scarcely necessary to prove that between this
freedom
and the “quaking fear,“ which Loyola holds to be the soul of religion,
‡ there is a gulf deeper and wider than that which separates planet
from
planet. There two radically different souls are speaking, a Teutonic
and
a non-Teutonic. § In the following chapter this “man of
Frankfort,“
as he is called, goes on to say that there is no hell in the ordinary,
popular sense of a future penitentiary, but that hell is a phenomenon
of
our present life. This priest is obviously
* Pensées
philosophiques, xvii.
† Cf.
the Twelfth Tractate and the glossary to it. Francis of Assisi also
laid
almost no stress on hell and very little on heaven (Sabatier, as above,
p. 308).
‡ See
vol. i. p. 569.
§
I remind the reader that Walfila could not translate the ideas hell and
devil into Gothic, since this fortunate language knew no such
conception
(p. 111). Hell was the name
of the friendly goddess of death, as also of her empire, and points
etymologically
to bergen (to hide), verhüllen (to conceal), but
by
no means to Infernum (Heyne); Teufel has been formed
from
Diabolus.
416
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
at
one with Origenes and Erigena and
comes to the conclusion that “hell passes away and heaven continues to
exist.“ One further remark most emphatically characterises his opinion.
He calls heaven and hell “two good, sure ways for man in this age,“ he
assigns to neither of these “ways“ any preference over the other and
expresses
the opinion that “in hell a man may be quite at his ease and as safe as
in heaven!“ This view, which we find in this form or in a similar form
among other Mystics, e.g., Eckhart's pupils Tauler and Seuse,
is
especially often and clearly expressed by Jacob Böhme: it is the
expression
of a philosophy which has pursued the thought further, and is on the
point
of passing from a negative conclusion to a positive conception. Thus to
the question, “Whither does the soul go when the body dies, be it
blessed
or condemned?“ he gives the answer, “The soul does not require to leave
the body, but the external, mortal life and the body separated
themselves
from it. The soul has previously had heaven and hell within it ... for
heaven and hell are everywhere present. It is merely a turning of the
will
towards the love of God or towards the wrath of God, and such may take
place while the body is still alive.“ * Here nothing remains vague; for
we manifestly stand with both feet on the foundation of a new religion;
it is not new in so far as Böhme can point in this case to the
words
of Christ: “The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward signs“; “The
world
of angels is within the place (in loco) of this world“; † but it
is a new religion as compared with all Church doctrines. In another
passage
he writes “The right, holy man, who is concealed in the visible man, is
in Heaven as
* Der
Weg zu Christo, Book VI. §§ 36, 37. This conception is
Indo-European
and proves at once the race of the author. When the Persian Omar
Khayyám
sent out his soul to get knowledge, it returned with the news, “I
myself
am Heaven and Hell“ (Rubáiyát).
† Mysterium
magnum 8, 18.
417
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
well
as God, and Heaven is in him.“
* And Böhme fearlessly goes further and denies the absolute
difference
between good and evil; the inner foundation of the soul, he says, is
neither
good nor bad, God himself is both: “He is himself all Existence, he is
Good and Evil, Heaven and Earth, Light and Darkness“; † it is the will
that first “distinguishes“ in the mass of indifferent actions, it is by
the will that the action of the doer becomes good or evil. This is pure
Indian doctrine; our theologians have long since and without difficulty
proved that it simply contradicts the doctrine of the Christian Church.
‡
While the mystics
already named and the incalculable number of others who held similar
views,
whether Protestants or Catholics, remained inside the Church, without
ever
thinking how thoroughly they were undermining that toilsomely erected
structure,
there were large groups of Mystics who perhaps did not go so far in
viewing
the essence of religion in the light of inward experience as the Theologia
deutsch and Jacob Böhme, or as the saintly Antoinette
Bourignon
(1616—80), who wished to unite all sects by abolishing the doctrines of
Scripture and emphasising only the longing for God: but these teachers
directly attacked all ecclesiasticism and priesthood, dogmas, scripture
and sacrament. Thus Amalrich of Chartres (died 1209), Professor of
Theology
in Paris, rejected the whole Old Testament and all sacraments, and
accepted
only the direct revelation of God in the heart of each individual. This
gave rise to the league of the “Brothers of the Free Spirit,“ which
was,
it seems, a rather licentious and outrageous society. Others again,
like
Johannes Wessel (1419—89) by greater moderation achieved greater
success;
Wessel is essentially a
* Sendbrief
dated 18.1.1618, § 10.
† Mysterium
magnum 8, 24.
‡ Cf.,
for example, the short work of Dr. Albert Peip: Jakob Böhme,
1860, p. 16 f.
418
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
mystic
and regards religion as an
inner,
present experience, but in the figure of Christ he sees the divine
motive
power of this experience, and far from wishing to destroy the Church,
which
has handed down this valuable legacy, he desires to purify it by
destroying
the chimeras of Rome. Staupitz, the protector of Luther, holds very
similar
views. Men like these, who imperceptibly merge into the class of the
theologians
like Wyclif and Hus, are vigorous pioneers of the Reformation.
Mysticism,
in fact, had in so far a great deal to do with the Reformation, as
Martin
Luther in the depths of his heart was a mystic: he loved Eckhart and
was
responsible for the first printed edition of the Theologia deutsch;
in particular, his central theory of present conversion by faith can
only
be understood through mysticism. On the other hand, he was annoyed by
the
“fanatics“ who would soon, he thought, have spoiled his life-work.
Mystics
like Thomas Münzer (1490—1525), who began by abusing the
“delicately
treading reformers“ and then openly revolted against all secular
authority,
have done more harm than anything else to the great political
Church-reform.
And even such noble men as Kaspar Schwenkfeld (1490—1561) merely
frittered
away their powers and awakened bitter passions by abandoning
contemplative
mysticism for practical Church reform. A Jacob Böhme, who quietly
remains in the Church, but teaches that the sacraments (baptism and
communion)
are “not essentials“ of Christianity, effects much more. * The sphere
of
the genuine mystic's influence is within not without. Hence in
*
Cf.
Der
Weg zu Christo, Book V. chap. viii., and Von Christi Testament
des
Heiligen Abendmahles, chap. iv. § 24. “A proper Christian
brings
his holy Church with him into the congregation. His heart is the true
Church,
where he should worship. Though I go to church for a thousand years and
to sacrament every week and be absolved daily: if I have not Christ in
me, all is false and useless vanity, a worthless, futile thing, and not
forgiveness of sins“ (Der Weg zu Christo, Book. V. chap. vi.
§
16). Concerning preaching he says:
419
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
the
sixteenth century we see the
good
Protestant tinker Bunyan and the pious Catholic priest Molinos doing
more
sound and lasting work than crowds of free-thinkers to free religion
from
narrowly ecclesiastical and coldly historical conceptions. Bunyan, who
never harmed a soul, spent the greater part of his life in prison, a
victim
of Protestant intolerance; the gentle Molinos, hounded like a mad dog
by
the Jesuits, submitted in silence to the penances imposed by the
Inquisition
and died from their severity. The influence of both lasted, raising to
a higher level the minds of religious men within the Churches; in this
way they surely paved the way for secession.
Now that I have
indicated
how mysticism in countless respects broke up and destroyed the
un-Teutonic
conceptions which had been forced upon us, it remains for me to
indicate
how infinitely stimulating and helpful the Mystics at all times were in
the building up of our new world and our new Philosophy.
Here we might be
inclined to distinguish with Kant — who, like Luther, is closely bound
up with the Mystics, though he might not wish to have much to do with
them,
— between “dreamers of reason“ and “dreamers of feeling.“ * For as a
matter
of fact, two distinct leading tendencies are noticeable, the one
towards
the Moral and Religious, the other rather to the Metaphysical. But it
would
be difficult to follow out the distinction, for metaphysics and
religion
can never be fully separated in the mind of the Teuton. How important,
for example, is the complete transference of Good and Evil to the will,
which on close inspection we find already indicated in Duns Scotus and
clearly expressed in Eckhart and Jacob Böhme. For this the will
must
be free. Now
“The Holy Ghost
preaches
to the holy hearer from all creatures; in all that he sees he beholds a
preacher of God“ (§ 14).
* Traüme
eines Geistersehers, &c., Part I. 3.
420
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
the
feeling of necessity comes into
all mysticism, since mysticism is closely bound up with nature, in
which
necessity is everywhere seen at work. * Hence Böhme at once calls
nature “eternal,“ and denies its creation out of nothing: there he
reasoned
like a philosopher. But how to save freedom? Here, clearly, a moral and
a metaphysical problem clutch at each other like two men drowning: and
in fact things looked black till the great Kant, in whose hands the
various
threads which we are following — theology, mysticism, humanism and
natural
science — were joined, came to the rescue. It is only by the perception
of the transcendental ideality of time and space that we can save
freedom
without fettering reason, that is, we can do so only by realising that
our own being is not completely exhausted by the world of phenomena
(including
our own body), that rather there is a direct antagonism between the
most
indubitable experiences of our life and the world which we grasp with
the
senses and think with the brain. For example, in reference to freedom,
Kant has laid down once for all the principle that “no reason can
explain
the possibility of freedom“; † for nature and freedom are
contradictions;
he who as an inveterate realist denies this will find that, if he
follows
out the question to its final consequences, “neither nature nor freedom
remains.“ ‡ In presence of nature, freedom is simply unthinkable. “We
understand
quite well what freedom is in a practical connection, but in theory, so
far as its nature is concerned, we cannot without contradiction even
think
of trying to understand it“; § for, “the fact that my will moves
my
arm is not more comprehensible to
* Cf.
the remarks on p. 240 f.
(vol.
i.)
† Über
die Fortschritte der Metaphysik III.
‡ Critique
of Pure Reason (Explanation of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom).
§
Religion
innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Part 3, Div. 2, Point 3
of the General Note.
421
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
me
than if some one were to say that
my will could also hold back the moon in its course; the difference is
merely this, that I experience the former, while the latter has never
occurred
to my senses.“ * But the former — the freedom of my will to move my arm
— I experience, and hence in another passage Kant comes to the
irrefutable
conclusion: “I say now, every being that cannot act but under the idea
of freedom is for that very reason practically and really free.“ † In
such
a work as this I must, of course, avoid all minute metaphysical
discussion,
though indeed nothing short of that would make the matter really clear
and convincing, but I hope that I have said enough to make every one
feel
how closely religion and philosophy are here connected. Such a problem
could never suggest itself to the Jews, since their observation of
nature
and of their own selves was never more than skin-deep, and they
remained
on the childish standpoint of empiricism hooded on both sides with
blinkers;
much less need we mention the refuse of humanity from Africa, Egypt and
elsewhere, which helped to build up the Christian Church. In this
sphere
therefore — where the deepest secrets of the human mind were to be
unlocked
— a positive structure had to be built from the very foundations; for
the
Hellenes had contributed little ‡ to this purpose and the Indians were
as yet unknown. Augustine — in his true nature a genuine mystic — had
pointed
the way by his remarks on the nature of time (p.
78), and likewise Abelard in regard to space (vol. i. p.
502), but it was the Mystics proper who first went to the root of
the
matter. They never grow tired of emphasising the ideality of time and
space.
“The moment contains eternity,“ says Eckhart more than once. Or again:
“Everything that is in God is a present moment, without renewal
* Träume
eines Geistersehers, Teil 2, Hauptstück 3.
† Grundlegung
zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 3rd section.
‡ See
vol. i. p. 85 f.
422
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
or
future creation.“ * Here, as so
often,
the Silesian shoemaker is especially convincing, for with him such
perceptions
have lost almost all their abstract flavour and speak directly from the
mind to the mind. If time is only a conditional form of experience, if
God is in no way “subject to space“ † then Eternity is nothing future,
we already grasp it perfectly and completely, and so Böhme says in
his famous lines:
- Weme ist Zeit wie Ewigkeit
- Und Ewigkeit wie diese Zeit,
- Der ist befreit von allem Streit. ‡
The
other closely related problem of the
simultaneous sway of freedom and necessity was likewise always present
to the Mystics; they speak often of their “own“ mutable will in
contrast
to the “everlasting“ immutable will of necessity, and so forth; and
though
it was Kant who first solved the riddle, yet a contemporary of Jacob
Böhme,
the great “dreamer of feeling,“ approached very near to it. Giordano
Bruno
(1548—1600), one of the greatest “dreamers of reason“ of all times,
propounds
the paradox that freedom and necessity are synonymous! Here we see the
audacity of true mystical thought; it is not restrained by the halter
of
purely formal logic, it looks outwards with the eye of the genuine
investigator
and admits that the law of nature is necessity, but then it probes its
own inner soul and asserts “my law is freedom.“ § So much for the
positive contribution of the Mystics to modern metaphysics.
*
Sermon
95, in Pfeiffer's edition.
† Beschreibung
der drei Prinzipien göttlichen Wesens, chap. xiv. § 85.
‡
Whoever
regards time as eternity and eternity as present time is freed from all
conflict.
§
Cf. De immenso et innumerabilibus I. II., and Del infinito,
universo
e mondi, towards the end of the First Dialogue. Here by the
intuition
of genius the same thing is discovered as was established two hundred
years
later by the brilliant critical judgment of Kant, who says: “Nature and
freedom can be attributed without contradiction to the same thing, but
in different connections, at one time to the thing as it appears at
another
to the thing itself.“ (Prolegomena, § 53).
423
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Still more
important
is the part they played in the establishment of a pure doctrine of
morals.
The most essential points have been already mentioned: ethical merit
centred
in Will, purely as such; religion not a matter of future reward and
future
punishment, but a present act, a grasping of Eternity at the present
moment.
This gives rise to an utterly different idea of sin, and consequently
of
virtue, from that which the Christian Church has inherited from
Judaism.
Thus Eckhart, for example, says: “That man cannot be called virtuous
who
does works as virtue commands, but only the man who does these works
out
of virtue; not by prayer can a heart become pure, but from a pure heart
the pure prayer flows.“ * We find this thought in all Mystics in
countless
passages, it is the central point of their faith; it forms the kernel
of
Luther's religion; † it was most completely expressed by Kant, who
says:
“There is nothing in the world nor anything outside of it which can be
termed absolutely and altogether good, except a good Will. A good Will
is esteemed to be so not by the effect which it produces nor by its
fitness
for accomplishing any given end, but by its mere good volition, that
is,
it is good in itself ... even though it should happen that, owing to an
unhappy conjunction of events or the scanty endowment of unkind nature,
this good volition should be deprived of power to execute its benign
intent,
executing nothing and only retaining the good Will, still it would
shine
like a jewel in itself and by virtue
* Spruch
43. Cf., too, Sermon 13, where he says that all works shall be
done
“without any why.“ “I say verily, as long as you do works not from an
inward
motive but for the sake of heaven or God or your eternal salvation, you
are acting wrongly.“
† Cf.
the whole work on Die Freiheit eines Christenmenschen. How new
and
directly anti-Roman this thought appeared is very clear from Hans
Sachs'
Disputation
zwischen einem Chorherrn und Schuchmacher (1524), in which the
shoemaker
especially defends, as being “Luther's idea,“ the doctrine that “good
works
are not done to gain heaven or from fear of hell.“
424
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
of
its native lustre. The usefulness
or fruitlessness of acts cannot add to or detract from this lustre.“ *
Unfortunately, I must limit myself to this central point of Teutonic
ethics;
everything else is derived from it.
But I must mention
one thing more before taking leave of the Mystics — their influence
upon
natural science. Passionate love of nature is strongly marked in most
of
the Mystics, hence the extraordinary power of intuition which we notice
in them. They frequently identify nature with God, often they put
nature
alongside of God as something Eternal, but they hardly ever fall into
the
hereditary error of the Christian Church, that of teaching men to
despise
and hate nature. It is true that Erigena is still so much under the
influence
of the Church Fathers that he regards the admiration of nature as a sin
comparable to breach of marriage vows, † but how different is the view
of Francis of Assisi! Read his famous Hymn to the Sun, which he wrote
down
shortly before his death as the last and complete expression of his
feelings,
and sang day and night till he died, to such a bright and cheerful
melody
that ecclesiastically pious souls were shocked at hearing it from a
death-bed.
‡ Here he speaks of “mother“ earth, of his “brothers“ the sun, wind and
fire, of his “sisters“ the moon, stars and water, of the many-coloured
flowers and fruits, and lastly of his dear “sister,“ the morte
corporale,
and the whole closes with praise, blessing and thanks to the altissimu,
bon signore. § In this last, most heartfelt hymn of praise
* Grundlegung
zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Division 1. Cf., too, the
concluding
part of the Träume eines Geistersehers, and especially the
beautiful interpretation of the passage in Matthew XXV. 35-40,
a
proof that in the eyes of God only those actions have a value which a
man
performs without thinking of the possibility of reward. This
interpretation
is found in his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen, Section 4, Part
I., close of first division.
† De
divisione naturae 5, 36.
‡
Sabatier,
loc.
cit. p. 382.
§
By this song Francis proves himself a pure Teuton in absolute
425
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
this
holy man does not touch upon a
single dogma of the Church. Few things are more instructive than a
comparison
between these outpourings of a man who had become altogether religious
and now gathers his sinking strength to sing exultingly to all nature
this
rapturous unecclesiastical tat tvam asi * and the orthodox,
soulless,
cold confession of faith of the learned, experienced politician and
theologian
Dante in the twenty-fourth canto of his Paradiso. † Dante with
his
song closed an old, dead age, Francis began a new one. Jacob Böhme
puts nature above Holy Scripture: “There is no book in which you will
find
more of divine wisdom than the book of nature spread before you in the
form of a green and growing meadow; there you will see the wondrous
power
of God, you will smell and taste it, though it be but an image ... but
to the searcher it is a beloved teacher, he will learn very much from
it.“
‡ This tendency of mind revolutionised our natural science. I need only
refer to Paracelsus, whose importance in almost all the natural
sciences
is daily becoming more and more recognised. The great and enduring part
of this remarkable man's work is not the discovery of facts — by his
unfortunate
connection with magic and alchemy he spread many absurd ideas — but the
spirit with which he inspired natural science. Virchow, who is
certainly
not prejudiced in favour of mysticism, and who shows poor courage in
calling
Paracelsus a “charlatan,“ nevertheless expressly declares that it was
he
who delivered
contrast to Rome.
Among
the Aryan Indians we find farewell songs of pious men, which correspond
almost word for word to that of Francis. Cf. the one translated
by Herder in his Gedanken einiger Brahmanen:
- Earth, thou my
mother, and
thou father, breath of the air,
- And thou fire, my
friend,
thou kinsman of mine, O stream,
- And my brother,
the sky, to
all I with reverence proclaim
- My warmest thanks,
&c.
*
“That
thou art also“: i.e., man's recognition of himself.
† Cf.,
too, p. 106, note 2.
‡ Die
drei Principien göttlichen Wesens, chap. viii. § 12.
426
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
the
death-blow to ancient medicine
and
gave science the “idea of life.“ * Paracelsus is the creator of real
physiology,
neither more nor less; and that is so very high an honour that a
soberly
scientific historian of medicine speaks of “the sublimely radiant
figure
of this hero.“ † Paracelsus was a fanatical mystic; he said that “the
inner
light stands high above bestial reason“; hence his extreme
one-sidedness.
He would, for example, have little to do with anatomy; it seemed to him
“dead,“ and he said that the chief thing was “the conclusion to be
drawn
from great nature — that is to say, the outward man — concerning the
little
nature of the individual.“ But in order to get at this outward man, he
established two principles which have become essential in all natural
science
— observation and experiment. In this way he succeeded in founding a
rational
system of pathology: “Fevers are storms, which cure themselves,“
&c.;
likewise rational therapeutics: “The aim of medicine should be to
support
nature in her efforts to heal.“ And how beautiful is his admonition to
young doctors: “The loftiest basis of medicine is love ... it is love
which
teaches art and outside of love no doctor is born.“ ‡ One more service
of this adventurous mystic should be mentioned: he was the first to
introduce
the German language into the University! “Truth and freedom“ was, in
fact,
the motto of all genuine mysticism; for that reason its apostles
banished
the language of privileged hypocritical learning from the lecture-rooms
and firmly refused to wear the red livery of the faculty:
*
Croonian
Lecture, delivered in London on March 16, 1893.
†
Hirschel,
Geschichte
der Medicin, 2nd ed. p. 208. Here the reader will find a detailed
appreciation
of Paracelsus, from which some of the following facts are taken.
‡ Cf.
Kahlbaum: Theophrastus Paracelsus, Basel, 1894, p. 63. This
lecture
brings to light much new material which proves how false were the
charges
brought against the great man — drunkenness, wild life, &c. The
fable
that he could not write and speak Latin fluently is also disproved.
427
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
“the
universities supply only the
red
cloak, the trenchercap and a four-cornered fool.“ * Mysticism achieved
a great deal more, especially in the sphere of medicine and chemistry.
Thus the mystic van Helmont (1577—1644) discovered laudanum to deaden
pain,
and carbonic acid; he was the first to recognise the true nature of
hysteria,
catarrh, &c. Glisson (1579—1677), who by his discovery of the
irritability
of living tissue very greatly advanced our knowledge of the animal
organism,
was a pronounced mystic, who said of himself that “inner thought“
guided
the scalpel. † We could easily add to the above list, but all that we
require
is to point to the fact. The mystic has — as we see in the case of
Stahl
with his phlogiston ‡ and of the great astronomer Kepler, an equally
zealous
mystic and Protestant — thrown many flashes of genius upon the path of
natural science and the philosophy based thereon. The mystic was
neither
a reliable guide nor a reliable worker; but yet his services are not to
be overlooked. Not only does he discover much, as we have just seen,
not
only does he fill with his wealth of ideas the frequently very empty
arsenal
of the so-called empiricists (Francis Bacon, for example, copies
chapter
after chapter from Paracelsus without any acknowledgment); but he
possesses
a peculiar instinct of his own, which nothing in the world can replace
and which more cautious men must know how to turn to account. The
philosopher
Baumgarten recognised even in the eighteenth century that “vague
perception
often carries within it the germs of clear perception.“ § Kant has
made a profound remark in this connection.
*
It
is noteworthy that the idea and term “Experience“ (Erfahrung)
were
introduced into German thought and the German language by Paracelsus,
the
mystic (cf. Eucken: Terminologie, p. 125).
† In
the lecture mentioned above Virchow proves that Glisson and not Haller
originated the doctrine of irritability.
‡ Cf.
p. 322 f.
§
Quoted from Heinrich von Stein: Entstehung der neueren Aesthetik,
1886, p. 353 f.
428
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
As is
well known, this philosopher
recognises
no interpretation of empirical phenomena but the mechanical, and that,
as he convincingly proves, because “only those causes of
world-phenomena
which are based upon the laws of motion of mere matter are capable of
being
comprehended“; but this does not prevent him from making the remark,
which
is worth taking to heart, concerning Stahl's nowadays much ridiculed
idea
of life-power: “Yet I am convinced that Stahl, who is fond of
explaining
the animal changes organically, is often nearer the truth than Hofmann,
Boerhaave and others, who leave out of account the immaterial forces
and
cling to the mechanical causes.“ * And so it seems to me that these men
who are “nearer the truth“ have done great service in the building up
of
modern science and philosophy, and we cannot afford to neglect them
either
now or in the future.
From this point there
runs a narrow path along the loftiest heights — accessible only to the
elect — leading over to that artistic intuition closely related to the
mystical, the importance of which Goethe revealed to us before the end
of the eighteenth century. His discovery of the intermaxillary bone was
made in the year 1784, the metamorphosis of plants appeared in 1790,
the
introduction to comparative anatomy 1795. Here that gushing enthusiasm
which had awakened Luther's scorn, that “raving with reason and
feeling“
which so angered the mild-tempered Kant, were elevated and purified to
“seeing,“ after a night lit up by will-o'-the-wisps, a new day had
dawned,
and the genius of the new Teutonic philosophy could print together with
his Comparative Anatomy the splendid poem which begins:
- Wagt ihr, also bereitet, die
letzte Stufe
zu steigen
- Dieses Gipfels, so reicht mir die
Hand und
offnet den freien
- Blick ins weite Feld der Natur....
* Träume
eines Geistersehers, Teil i. Hauptst. 2.
429
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
and closes
with
the words:
- Freue dich,
höchstes
Geschöpf der Natur; du fühlest dich fähig,
- Ihr den
höchsten
Gedanken, zu dem sie schaffend sich aufschwang,
- Nachzudenken.
Hier
stehe nun still und wende die Blicke
- Rückwärts,
prüfe, vergleiche, und nimm vom Munde der Muse,
- Dass du
schauest,
nicht schwärmst, die liebliche, volle Gewissheit. *
THE
HUMANISTS
It is self-evident that the Humanists, in a certain sense, form a
direct
contrast to the Mystics; yet there is no real contradiction between
them.
Thus Böhme, though not a learned man, has a very high opinion of
the
heathen, in so far as they are “children of free will,“ and says that
“in
them the spirit of freedom has revealed great wonders, as we see from
the
wisdom which they have bequeathed to us;“ † indeed, he boldly asserts
that
“in these intelligent heathens the inner sacred kingdom is reflected.“
‡ Almost all genuine Humanists, when they have the necessary courage,
devote
much thought to the already discussed central problem of all ethics and
are all without exception of the opinion of Pomponazzi (1462—1525) that
a virtue which aims at reward is no virtue; that to regard fear and
hope
as moral motives is childish and worthy only of the uneducated mob;
that
the idea of immortality should be considered from a purely
philosophical
standpoint and has nothing to do with the theory of morals, &c.
§
The Humanists are just as eager as the Mystics to
* If ye dare, thus armed, to ascend the last pinnacle of this height
give
me your hand and open your eyes freely to survey the wide field of
nature....
Rejoice, thou sublimest of nature's creatures! Thou feelest the power
to
follow her in the loftiest thought to which she soared in the act of
Creation.
Here pause in peace, turn back thine eyes, probe, compare, and take
from
the lips of the muse the sweet full certainty that thou seest and art
no
dreamer of dreams.
† Mysterium pansophicum 8, Text, § 9.
‡ Mysterium magnum, chap. xxxv. § 24.
§ Tractatus de immortalitate animae. (I quote from F. A.
Lange.)
430
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
tear down the
philosophy of religion imposed upon us by Rome and to build up a new
one
in its place, but their chief interests and efforts lie in a different
direction. Their weapon of destruction is scepticism; that of the
Mystics
was faith. Even when humanism did not lead to frank scepticism, it
always
laid the foundation of very independent judgment. * Here we should at
once
mention Dante, who honours Virgil more than any of the Church Fathers,
and who, far from teaching seclusion and asceticism, considers man's
real
happiness to lie in the exercise of his individual powers. † Petrarch,
who is usually mentioned as the first real humanist, follows the
example
of his great predecessor: he calls Rome an “empia Babilonia“
and
the Church an “impudent wench:“
- Fondata in
casta et
humil povertate,
- Contra i
tuoi fondatori
alzi le corna,
- Putta
sfacciata!
Like Dante he
upbraids
Constantine, who by his fatal gift, mal nate ricchezze, has
transformed
the once chaste, unassuming bride of Christ into “a shameless
adulteress.“
‡ But scepticism soon followed so inevitably in the train of humanistic
culture that it filled the College of Cardinals and even ascended the
Papal
stool; it was the Reformation in league with the narrow Basque mind
that
first brought about a pietistic reaction. Even at the beginning of the
sixteenth century the Italian humanists establish the principle, intus
ut libet, foris ut moris est, and Erasmus publishes his immortal Praise
of Folly, in which churches, priesthood, dogmas, ethical doctrine,
in
* Cf. especially Paulsen: Geschichte des gelehrten
Unterrichts,
2nd ed. i. 73 f.
† De Monarchia iii, 15.
‡ Sonetti e canzoni (in the third part). The first to prove the
invalidity of the pretended gift of Constantine were the famous
humanist
Lorenzo Valla and the lawyer and theologian Krebs (see vol. i. p.
562). Valla also denounced the secular power of the Pope in
whatever
form, for the latter was vicarius Christi et non etiam
Caesaris
(see Döllinger: Papstfabeln,
2nd
ed. p. 118).
431
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
short, the
whole
Roman structure, the whole “foul-smelling weeds of theology,“ as he
calls
them, are so denounced that some have been of opinion that this one
work
contributed more than anything else to the Reformation. * Similar
methods
and equal ability are revealed with as much force in the eighteenth
century
by Voltaire.
The most important contribution of the Humanists towards the
construction
of a new Teutonic philosophy is the relinking of our intellectual life
to that of the related Indo-Europeans, in particular to that of the
Hellenes,
† and as a result of this the gradual development of the conception
“man.“
The Mystics had destroyed the idea of time and so of history — a
perfectly
justifiable reaction against the abuse of history by the Church; it was
the task of the Humanists to build up true history anew, and so to put
an end to the evil dream which the Chaos had conjured up. From Picus of
Mirandola, who sees the divine guidance of God in the intellectual
achievement
of the Hellene, down to that great Humanist Johann Gottfried Herder,
who
asks himself “whether God might not after all have a plan in the
vocation
and institution of the human race,“ and who collects the “Voices“ of
all
peoples, we see the historical horizon being extended, and we notice
how
this contact with the
* All the first great Humanists of Germany are anti-scholastic —
(Lamprecht,
as above, iv. p. 69). It is not right to reproach men like Erasmus,
Coornhert,
Thomas More, &c., for not joining the Reformation later. For such
men
were in consequence of their humanistic studies intellectually far too
much in advance of their time to prefer a Lutheran or Calvinistic
dogmatism
to the Romish. They rightly felt that scepticism would always come to
terms
more easily with a religion of good works than with one of faith; they
anticipated — correctly as it turned out — a new era of universal
intolerance,
and thought that it would be more feasible to destroy one single
utterly
rotten Church from within than several Churches which from the
humanistic
standpoint were just as impossible, but had been steeled by conflicts.
Regarded from this high watch-tower the Reformation meant a new lease
of
life to ecclesiastical error.
† The Indologists were the real humanists of the nineteenth century. Cf.
my small work Arische
Weltanschauung, 1905.
432
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Hellenes led
to
a more and more distinct endeavour to arrange and thus give shape to
experiences.
And while the Humanists, in thus seeking inspiration outside, certainly
over-estimated their own capacity just as much as the Mystics did in
seeking
it inwardly, yet many splendid results were achieved in both cases. I
have
shown how introspection led the Mystics to discoveries in outward
nature
— an unexpected, paradoxical result; the Humanists struck out in the
opposite
direction, but with equal success; in their case it was the study of
mankind
around them that conduced to the strict delimitation of national
individuality
and to the decisive emphasising of the importance of the individual
personality.
It was philologists, not anatomists, who first propounded the theories
of absolutely different human races, and though there may be a reaction
at the present day, because the linguists have been inclined to lay too
much stress on the single criterion of language, * yet the humanistic
distinctions
still hold and always will hold good; for they are facts of nature,
facts,
moreover, which can be more surely derived from the study of the
intellectual
achievements of peoples than from statistics of the breadth of skulls.
So too out of the study of the dead languages there resulted a better
knowledge
of the living ones. We have seen how in India scientific philology was
the outcome of a fervent longing to understand a half-forgotten idiom
(vol.
i. p. 432); the same thing
took
place among ourselves. A thorough knowledge of foreign, but related
languages
led to an ever more and more exact knowledge of the thorough
development
of our own. It must be confessed that this led, in so far as language
is
concerned, to a dark period of transition; the strong primal instinct
of
the people became awakened and, as usual, pedantic learning played
havoc
with this most sacred heritage, yet on the whole our languages came
forth
in purer beauty from the classical furnace;
* Cf. vol. i. p. 264.
433
PHILOSOPHY
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they were less
powerful perhaps than before, but more pliant, more flexible and thus
more
perfect instruments for expressing the thoughts of a more advanced
culture.
The Roman Church, not the Humanists, as is so often ignorantly
asserted,
was the enemy of our language; on the contrary, it was the Humanists
who,
in league with the Mystics, introduced the native languages into
literature
and science; from Petrarch, the perfecter of the poetical language of
Italy,
and Boccaccio (one of the greatest of the early Humanists), the founder
of Italian prose, to Boileau and Herder, we see this everywhere, and in
the universities it was, in addition to Mystics, like Paracelsus,
pre-eminent
Humanists, like Christian Thomasius, who forcibly introduced the
mother-tongues,
and thus rescued them, even in the circles of learning, from that
contempt
into which they had fallen owing to the enduring influence of Rome. We
can scarcely estimate what this means for the development of our
philosophy.
The Latin tongue is like a lofty dam which dries up the intellectual
field
and shuts out the element of metaphysics; it has no sense of the
mysterious,
there is no walking on the boundary between the two realms of the
Explorable
and the Inexplorable; it is a legal and not a religious language.
Indeed
we can boldly assert that without the vehicle of our own Teutonic
languages
we should never have succeeded in giving shape and expression to our
philosophy.
*
But however great this service may be, it by no means
* It would be extremely profitable and illuminating, though out of
place
here, to consider how inevitably our various modern languages have
influenced
the philosophies which are expressed by them. The English language, for
example, which is richer almost than any other in poetical suggestive
power,
cannot follow a subtle thought into its most secret windings; at a
definite
point it fails, and so proves itself suitable only for sober, practical
empiricism or poetical raptures; on both sides of the line separating
these
two spheres it remains too far from the boundary-line itself to be able
to pass easily, to float backwards and forwards, from the one to the
other.
The German
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PHILOSOPHY
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exhausts the
contribution
of the Humanists to our work of culture. This emphatic — I might almost
say sculptural — chiselling of the distinct, this assertion of the
justification,
or I may say of the sacred character of the Individual, led for the
first
time to the conscious acknowledgement of the value of personality. It
is
true that this fact was already implicitly embodied in the tendency of
thought of a Duns Scotus (p. 409); but it only became common property
through
the works of the Humanists. The idea of Genius — that is, of
personality
in its highest potentiality — is what is essential. The men whose
knowledge
embraced a wide sphere gradually noticed in how various a degree the
personality
reveals itself autonomously, and so as absolutely original and
creative.
From the beginning of the Humanistic movement we can trace the dawn of
this inevitable perception, till in the Humanists of the eighteenth
century
it became so dominant that it found expression on all sides and in the
most varying forms, from Winckelmann's brilliant intuition, which
confined
itself to the most clearly visible works, to Hamann's endeavours to
descend
by dark paths to the innermost souls of creative spirits. The finest
remark
was made by Diderot in that monument of Humanism, the great French
Encyclopaedia:
it is, he says, l'activité de l'âme — i.e.,
the higher activity of the soul — which makes up genius. What in the
case
of others is remembrance, is in the case of genius actual intuitive
perception;
in genius everything springs into life and remains living.
language, though less
poetical
and compact, is an incomparably better instrument for philosophy; in
its
structure the logical principle is more predominant, and its wide scale
of shades of expression allows the finest distinctions to be drawn; for
that reason it is suited both for the most accurate analysis and the
indications
of perceptions that cannot be analysed. In spite of their brilliant
talents
the Scottish philosophers have never risen above the negative criticism
of Hume; Immanuel Kant, of Scottish descent, received the German
language
as his birthright and could thus create a philosophy which no skill can
translate into English (cf. vol. i. p.
298).
435
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
“If genius has
passed by, it is as if the essence of things were transformed, for
genius
diffuses its character over everything that it touches.“ * Herder makes
a similar remark: “The geniuses of the human race are the friends and
saviours,
guardians and helpers of the race. A beautiful act, which they inspire,
exercises an endless and indelible effect.“ † Diderot and Herder
rightly
distinguish between genius and the greatest talent. Rousseau also
distinguishes
genius from talent and intellect, but he does it, after his fashion, in
a more subjective way, by expressing the opinion that he who does not
possess
genius himself will never understand wherein it consists. One of his
letters
contains a profound remark: “C'est le génie qui rend le
savoir
utile.“ ‡ Besides this, Rousseau has devoted a whole essay to the
Hero,
who is the brother of the genius, and like him a triumph of
personality;
Schiller indicates the affinity of the two by characterising the ideas
of the genius as “heroic.“ “Without heroes no people,“ cried Rousseau,
and thereby gave powerful expression to the Teutonic view of life. And
what stamps a man as a hero? It is pre-eminence of Soul; not animal
courage
— he emphasises this in particular — but the power of personality.
§
Kant defines genius as “the talent to discover that which cannot be
taught
or learned. ¶ It would be easy to multiply these few quotations by
the hundred, to such an extent had humanistic culture gradually brought
into the foreground of human interest the question of the importance of
personality in contrast to the tyranny of so-called super-personal
revelations
and laws. It was distinction between
* See the article Génie in the Encyclopédie:
one must read the whole six pages of the article. Interesting remarks
on
the same subject in Diderot's essay De la Poésie dramatique.
† Kalligone, Part II. v. 1.
‡ Lettre à M. de Scheyb, 15 Juillet 1756.
§ Dictionnaire de musique and Discours sur la
vertu
la plus nécessaire aux héros.
¶ Anthropologie § 87c.
435
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
individuals (a
matter absolutely unknown to mysticism) which first revealed the full
importance
of pre-eminent personalities as the true bearers of a culture, genuine,
liberal, and capable of development; that is why this distinction was
one
of the most beneficial achievements of the rise and for the rise of our
new culture; for it put really great men on the pedestal to which they
rightly belong, and where every one can clearly see them. Nothing short
of this is freedom — unconditionally to acknowledge human greatness, in
whatever way it may arise. This “greatest bliss,“ as Goethe called it,
the Humanists won back for us; henceforth we must strive with all our
power
to keep it. Whoever would rob us of it, though he came down from
heaven,
is our mortal foe.
I do not intend to say anything more about the Humanists, for what I
could
say would only be a repetition of what is universally known; in their
case
I may take it for granted, as I could not in the case of the Mystics,
that
the facts, as also their importance, are on the whole correctly
estimated;
it was only necessary to emphasise that brilliant central point — the
emancipation
of the individual — because it is generally overlooked; it is only by
the
eye of genius that we can attain a bright and radiant philosophy, and
it
is only in our own languages that it can win its full expression.
THE
NATURALIST-PHILOSOPHERS
All men of culture
are equally familiar with this last group of men struggling for a new
philosophy
— the Naturalist-Philosophers. In their case, too, I can limit myself
to
the indications demanded by the nature and aim of this chapter. I am,
however,
forced to a certain detail because it is essential that I should, more
emphatically and clearly than is usual, bring home to the reader who is
not widely read in philosophy, the
437
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
importance of
this essential feature of our culture; this detail will, I hope, serve
as an enlightenment of our understanding.
The essential point is this, that men, in their desire to understand
the
world, are no longer satisfied with authoritative, superhuman claims,
but
turn once more to the world itself and question it; for centuries that
had been forbidden. If we examine the matter closely, we shall see that
this is a peculiarity common to all the groups which represent the
awakening
of Teutonism. For the Mystic absorbs himself into the world of his own
mind, and also, therefore, into the great world — and grasps with such
might the direct presence of his individual life that testimony of
Scripture
and doctrine of faith fade into something subsidiary; his method might
be described as the rendering of the subjectively given material of the
world into something objective. The task of the Humanist, on the other
hand, is to collect and test all the different human evidences — truly
a weighty document of the world's history; the mere endeavour proves an
objective interest in human nature as a whole, and no other method
could
more quickly undermine the false pretensions of so-called authority.
Even
in the case of theology this new tendency had asserted itself; for Duns
Scotus, by desiring completely to separate reason and world from faith,
freed them and gave them independent life, while Roger Bacon, a brother
of the same order, demanded a study of nature fettered by no
theological
considerations, and thereby gave the first impulse to true naturalist
philosophy.
I say “naturalist philosophy,“ not “nature philosophy,“ for the latter
expression is claimed by definite systems, whereas I wish merely to lay
stress upon a method. *
* By “nature philosophy“ we understand in the first place the childlike
and childish materialism, the use of which, “as manure to enrich the
ground
for philosophy“ (Schopenhauer), cannot be denied, and in the second
place
its opposite, the transcendental idealism of Schelling, the good of
which
is, I suppose, to be estimated according to
438
PHILOSOPHY
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But this
method
is a matter of primary importance, inasmuch as it forms the bond of
union,
and has enabled our philosophy, in spite of differences of aim and of
attempted
solutions, to develop itself on the whole as a combined entity and to
become
a genuine element of culture, because it has paved the way for, and, to
a certain degree, has already established, a new philosophy. The
essence
of this method is observation of nature, wholly disinterested
observation,
aiming solely at the discovery of truth. Such philosophy as this is
philosophy
in the shape of science; this it is which distinguishes it not only
from
theology and mysticism, but also — as we should be careful to note —
from
that dangerous and ever barren type, philosophy in the shape of logic.
Theology is justified by the fact that it serves either a great idea or
a political purpose, mysticism is a direct phenomenon of life; but to
apply
mere logic to the interpretation of the world (the outer and the
inner);
to raise logic, instead of intuition or experience, to the position of
lawgiver, means nothing but fettering truth with manacles, and betokens
(as I have tried to prove in the first chapter) nothing less than a new
outbreak of superstition. That is why we see the new period of
naturalist
philosophy start with a general revolt against Aristotle. The Greek had
not only analysed the formal laws of thought and so made their use more
sure, for which he deserved the gratitude of all future generations,
but
he had also undertaken to solve all problems, even those which it might
be impossible to investigate, by means of logic; this had rendered
science
impossible. * For the silent assumption of logic as law-giver is, that
man is the measure of all things, whereas in reality, as a merely
logical
being, he is not even the measure of himself. Telesius
the
old aesthetic dogma, that a work of art is to be valued the more highly
the less it serves any conceivable purpose.
* Cf. the remarks on p.
89
(vol. i.) and under “Science,“ p.
303 f. (vol. ii.).
439
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
(1508-86), a
great
Neapolitan mathematician and naturalist, a forerunner of Harvey as
regards
the discovery of the circulation of the blood, was perhaps the first to
make it his special task to clear the hapless human brain of this
Aristotelian
cobweb. Roger Bacon had, it is true, already made a timid start, and
Leonardo,
with the coolness of genius had called Aristotle's doctrine of soul and
of God a “lying science“ (vol. i. p.
82); Luther, too, in his early days, while still within the fold of
the Roman Church, is said to have been a violent opponent of Aristotle,
and to have intended to purge philosophy from his influence; * but now
there came forward men who had the courage with their own hands to
sweep
aside the falsehood, in order to find room for the truth. They
contended
not solely and not chiefly against Aristotle, but against the whole
prevailing
system, according to which logic, instead of being a handmaid, sat as
Queen
upon the throne. Campanella, with his theory of perception, and
Giordano
Bruno were the immediate disciples of Telesius; both helped bravely to
hurl down the logical idol with the feet of clay. Francis Bacon, who,
although
not to be compared with these two as a philosopher, yet exercised a
much
wider influence, was directly dependent upon Telesius on the one hand
and
Paracelsus on the other, that is, upon two sworn Anti-Aristotelians.
With
his criticism of all Hellenic thought he certainly shot far beyond the
mark, but precisely by this he succeeded in more or less making tabula
rasa for genuine science and scientific philosophy, that is, for
the
only correct method which he has brilliantly characterised in the
introduction
to his Instauratio Magna as inter empiricam et rationalem
facultatem
conjugium verum et legitimum. It was not long
* This assertion I take from the Discours de la
conformité
de la foi avec la raison, § 12, of
Leibniz.
At a later period Luther expressed the opinion: “I venture to say that
a potter has more knowledge of the things of nature than is to be found
in those books (ot Aristotle).“ See his Sendschreiben
an den Adel, Punkt 25.
440
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
before out of
the fold of the Roman Church a Gassendi (1592-1655) appeared, whose Anti-Aristotelian
Exercises are described by Lange as “one of the keenest and most
exultant
attacks upon Aristotelian philosophy“; though the young priest
considered
it more prudent to leave only fragments of his book unburnt, it still
remains
a sign of the times, and all the more so, as Gassendi became one of the
principal stimulators of the sciences of observation and of the
strictly
mathematical and mechanical interpretation of natural phenomena.
Aristotle
had taken the fatal step from observation of nature to theology; now
comes
a theologian who destroys the Aristotelian sophisms and leads the human
mind back to pure contemplation of nature.
THE
OBSERVATION
OF NATURE
The principal point in the new philosophical efforts — from Roger Bacon
in the thirteenth century to Kant at the beginning of the nineteenth —
is therefore the systematic emphasising of observation as the source of
knowledge. From this time forth the practice of faithful observation
became
the criterion of every philosopher who is to be taken seriously. The
word
nature must of course be taken in the most comprehensive sense. Hobbes,
for example, studied chiefly human society, not physics or medicine,
but
in this division of nature he has proved his capacity of observation
and
shown that he is scientific by the fact that he confined himself almost
exclusively to the subject with which he was best acquainted, namely,
the
State. Yet it is a fact that all our epoch-making philosophers have won
their spurs in the “exact“ sciences, and they possess in addition an
extensive
culture, that is to say, they are masters of method, and of the
material
dealt with. Thus René Descartes (1596-1650) is essentially a
mathematician,
and that meant in those days, when mathematics were being daily
developed
out
441
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
of the needs
of
the discoverers, a natural scientist and astronomer. Nature, therefore,
in her phenomena of motion was familiar to him from his youth. Before
he
began to philosophise, he became in addition a keen anatomist and
physiologist,
so that he was able not only as a physicist to write a treatise on the
Nature
of Light, but also as embryologist one on the Development of the
Foetus.
Moreover, he had with philosophic intent “read diligently the great
book
of the world“ (as he himself tells us); he had been soldier, man of the
world, courtier; he had practised the art of music so successfully that
he was impelled to publish an Outlines of Music; he so applied
himself
to swordsmanship that he was able to issue a Theory of Fencing;
and he did all this, as he expressly tells us, in order to be able to
think
more correctly than the scholars who spend all their lives in their
study.
* And now, disciplined by the accurate observation of outward nature,
this
rare man turned his glance inwards and observed nature in his own self.
This attitude is henceforth — in spite of divergences in the individual
— typical. Leibniz, it is true, was little more than a mathematician,
but
this made it impossible for him — in spite of the scholasticism with
which
he was from youth imbued — to depart from the mechanical interpretation
of natural phenomena; it is all very well for us to-day to laugh at the
“pre-established harmony,“ but we should not forget that this monstrous
supposition proves loyal adherence to natural scientific method and
perception.
†
* Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et
chercher
la vérité dans les sciences, Part I.
† The system of Leibniz is a last heroic effort to enlist scientific
method
in the service of an historical, absolute theory of God, which in
reality
destroys all scientific knowledge of nature. In contrast to Thomas
Aquinas,
this attempt to reconcile faith and reason proceeds from reason, not
from
faith. However, reason here means not only logical ratiocination, but
great
mathematical principles of true natural science; and it is just because
there is in Leibniz an insuperable
442
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Locke was led to philosophic speculation by medical studies; Berkeley,
though a minister, in his youth made a thorough study both of chemistry
and physiology, and his brilliant Theory of Vision intuitively
divines
much that was later confirmed by exact science, thus testifying to the
success of the correct scientific method when supported by great
talents.
Wolf was a remarkably capable man, not only in the sphere of
mathematics,
but likewise in that of physics, and he had also mastered the other
natural
sciences of his time. Hume certainly, so far as I know, read more
diligently
in “the book of the world,“ as Descartes calls it, than in that of
nature;
history and psychology — not physics or physiology — were the field of
his exact studies; this very fact has cramped his philosophical
speculation
in certain directions; he who has a keen eye for such things will soon
observe that the fundamental weakness of Hume's thought is, that it is
fed not from without, but only from within, and this always
element of empirical,
irrefutable
truth, while Thomas operates only with shadows, that the absurdity of
Leibniz'
system is more apparent. A man who was so absolutely ignorant of nature
as Thomas could mislead himself and others by sophisms; but Leibniz was
forced to show that the supposition of a double kingdom — Nature and
Supernature
— is altogether impossible, and that simply because he was familiar
with
the mathematical and mechanical interpretation of natural phenomena.
Thereby
the brilliant attempt of Leibniz became epoch-making. As a
metaphysician
he belongs to the great thinkers; that is proved by the one fact that
he
asserted the transcendental ideality of space and sought to prove it by
profound mathematical and philosophical arguments (see details
in
Kant: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft,
2nd
Section, Theorem 4, Note 2). His greatness as a thinker in pure natural
science is proved by his theory that the sum of forces in nature is
unchangeable,
whereby the so-called law of Conservation of Energy, of which we are so
proud as an achievement of the nineteenth century, was really
enunciated.
No less significant is the extremely individualistic character of his
philosophy.
In contrast to the All-pervading Unity of Spinozism (an idea which was
repugnant to him), “individuation,“ “specification“ is for him the
basis
of all knowledge. “In the whole world there are not two beings
incapable
of being distinguished,“ he says. Here we see the genuine Teutonic
thinker.
(Particularly well discussed in Ludwig Feuerbach's Darstellung der
Leibnizschen
Philosophie, § 3).
443
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
means a
predominance
of logic at the cost of constructive, gropingly inventive imagination,
and explains Hume's purely negative result in spite of his
extraordinary
intellectual powers; as a personality he is incomparably greater than
Locke,
yet I do not think I err in saying that the latter gave birth to many
more
constructive ideas. And yet we count him among the natural
investigators,
for within the purely human sphere he has observed more acutely or
truly
than any of his predecessors, and never departed from the method which
he propounded in his first work: observation and experiment. * Finally,
in the case of Kant, comprehensive knowledge in all branches and
thorough
study of natural science during a whole long life form features which
are
too often overlooked. Herder, his pupil, tells us: “The history of man,
of races, of nature, physics, mathematics and experience were the
sources
from which he drew the inspiration which revealed itself in his
lectures
and conversation; nothing worth knowing was indifferent to him.“ Kant's
literary work in the service of science stretches from his twentieth to
his seventieth year, from his Gedanken von der wahren
Schätzung
der lebendigen Kräfte, which he began to work out in the year
1744, to his essay: Etwas über den Einfluss des Mondes auf die
Witterung, which appeared in 1794. For thirty years his most
popular
lectures were those which he delivered in winter on anthropology and in
summer on physical geography; and his daily companion in his last
years,
Wasianski, tells us that to the very last Kant's animated conversation
at table dealt chiefly with meteorology, physics, chemistry, natural
history
* We must also note the fact that Hume would scarcely have attained his
philosophical results without the achievements of the philosophical
thought
around him, particularly those of the French scientific “sensualists“
of
his time. In many ways Hume seems to me to have more affinity with such
Italian Humanistic sceptics as Pomponazzi and Vanini than with the
genuine
group of those who observe nature and draw their philosophy therefrom.
444
PHILOSOPHY
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and politics.
* It is true that Kant was only a thinker about natural observations,
not
(so far as I know) himself an observer and experimenter, as Descartes
had
been; but he was an excellent indirect observer, as is proved by such
writings
as his description of the great earthquake of November 1, 1755; his
thoughts
on the volcanoes of the moon, on the theory of winds and many other
things;
and I need hardly remind the reader that Kant's philosophic thoughts in
cosmic nature have produced two immortal works, the Allgemeine
Naturgeschichte
und Theorie des Himmels oder Versuch von der Verfassung und dem
mechanischen
Ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebäudes (1755), dedicated to
Frederick
the Great, and the Die Metaphysischen Anfangsgründe der
Naturwissenschaft
(1786). The method which Kant learnt from successful observation of
nature
and which had been perfected by the same observation penetrates all his
life and thought, so that he has been compared as a discoverer with
Copernicus
and Galilei (p. 292 note).
In his Critique of Pure Reason he says that his method of
analysing
human reason is “a method copied from that of the naturalist,“ † and in
another passage he says: “The true method of metaphysics is
fundamentally
the same as that which Newton introduced into natural science, and was
so useful there.“ And what is this method? “By sure experiences to seek
the rules which govern certain phenomena of nature“; in the sphere of
metaphysics
therefore, “by sure, inner experience.“ ‡ What I have here made it my
endeavour
to trace in general and rough outlines can be worked out in the most
minute
detail by every thinking person. Thus, for example, the central point
of
Kant's whole activity
* Immanuel Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren, 1804, p.
25; new edition by Alfons Hoffmann, 1902, p. 298.
† Note in the Preface to the second edition.
‡ Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der
Grundsätze
der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral, second Thought.
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PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
is the
question
of the moral nucleus of individuality: to get at that, he first of all
analyses the mechanism of the surrounding cosmos; afterwards, by
twenty-five
more years of continuous work, he analyses the inner organism of
thought;
then he devotes twenty more years to the investigation of the human
personality
thus revealed. Nothing could show more clearly how far observation is
here
the informing principle than Kant's high estimate of human
individuality.
The Church Fathers and scholastics had never been able to find words
enough
to express their contempt of themselves and of all men; it had already
been an important symptom when, three hundred years before Kant,
Mirandola,
that star in the dawn of the new day, wrote a book entitled On the
Dignity
of Man; helpless mankind had under the long sway of the Empire and
the Pontificate forgotten that he possessed such a dignity; in the
meantime,
he himself, his achievements and his independence had grown, and a
Kant,
who lived in the society of a very few and not very notable people in
distant
Königsberg, and whose only other intercourse was with the
sublimest
minds of humanity and above all with his own, formed for himself from
direct
observation of his own soul a high conception of inscrutable human
personality.
This conviction we meet everywhere in his writings, and thereby get a
glimpse
into the depths of this wonderful man's heart. Already in that Theorie
des Himmels which is intended to reveal only the mechanism of the
structure
of the world, he exclaims: “With what reverence should the soul not
regard
its own being!“ * In a later passage he speaks of the “sublimity and
dignity
which we conceive as belonging to that person who fulfils all duties.“
† But ever profounder becomes the thought of the thinker:
* Teil 2, Hauptstück 7.
‡ Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Abschnitt 2,
Teil
1.
446
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
“In man there
is revealed a profundity of divine qualities which make him feel a
tremor
of holy awe at the greatness and sublimity of his own true calling.“ *
And in his seventieth year, as an old man he writes: “The feeling of
the
sublimity of our own vocation enraptures us more than all beauty.“ †
This
I quote only as an indication of what the scientific method leads to.
As
soon as in Kant it had revealed to reason a new philosophy which had
grown
out of, and was therefore in keeping with, natural investigation, it at
the same time gave the heart a new religion — that of Christ and of the
Mystics, the religion of experience.
But now we must look at this characteristic of our new philosophy, the
complete devotion to nature, from another point of view: we must regard
it purely theoretically, in order not only to recognise the fact but
also
to comprehend its importance.
EXACT
NOT-KNOWING
A specially capable and thoroughly matter-of-fact modern scientist
writes:
“The boundary-line between the Known and the Unknown is never so
clearly
perceived as when we accurately observe facts, whether as directly
offered
by nature, or in an artificially arranged experiment.“ ‡
These words are spoken without any philosophical reserve, but they will
contribute towards giving us a first insight which may be gradually
deepened.
Any man who has busied himself with practical scientific work must in
the
course of a long life have noticed that even naturalists have no clear
idea of what they do not
* Über den Gemeinsprüch: das mag in der
Theorie
richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis, 1.
† Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen
Vernunft,
St. 1 (Note to Introduction).
‡ Alphonse de Candolle: Histoire des sciences et
des savants
depuis deus siècles, 1885, p. 10.
447
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
know,
till in each case exact
investigation
has shown them how far their knowledge extends. That sounds very simple
and commonplace, but it is by no means self-evident and so difficult to
introduce into practical thought that I do not believe that any one who
has not gone through the discipline of natural science will fully
appreciate
De Candolle's remark. * For in every other sphere self-deception may go
so far as to become complete delusion; the facts themselves are mostly
fragmentary or questionable, they are not durable or unchangeable,
repetition
is therefore impossible, experiment out of the question — passion rules
and deception obeys. Moreover, the knowledge of knowledge can never
replace
knowledge of a fact of nature; the latter is knowledge of quite a
different
kind; for here man finds himself face to face not with man, but with an
incommensurable being, over which he possesses no power, a being which
we can designate, in contrast to the ever-combining, confusing,
anthropomorphically
systematising human brain, as unvarnished, naked, cold, eternal truth.
What manifold advantages, positive and negative, such interaction would
have
*
In
a company of university teachers some years ago I heard a discussion on
psychological-physiological themes; starting from the localisation of
the
functions of speech in Broca's brain convolution, one learned gentleman
expressed the opinion that every single word was “localised in a
particular
cell“; he ingeniously compared this arrangement with a cupboard
possessing
some few thousand drawers, which could be opened and shut at will
(something
like the automatic restaurants to-day). It sounded quite charming and
not
a bit less plausible than the command in the fairy-tale, “Table, be
spread.“
As my positive knowledge in regard to histology of the brain was
derived
from lectures and demonstrations attended years before, and was
consequently
very limited, and as I had made a practical study only of the rough
outlines
of the anatomy of this organ, I begged the gentleman in question to
give
me more definite information, but it turned out that he had never been
in a dissecting hall in his life, and had never seen a brain (except in
the pretty woodcuts of text-books): hence he had no idea at all of the
boundary-line between the known and the unknown.
448
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
for the
widening
and development of the human mind is self-evident. I have already
proved
that the natural investigator, in particular, in the empirical sphere
takes
the first step towards increase of knowledge by exactly defining what
he
does not know; * but we can easily comprehend what an influence such a
schooling must exercise upon philosophic thought; a serious man will no
longer with Thomas Aquinas talk of the condition of bodies in hell,
since
he must admit that he knows almost nothing about the condition of the
human
body upon earth. Still more important are the positive gains — to which
I have already referred (p.
261) — and the explanation of this is that nature alone is
inventive.
As Goethe says: “It is only creative nature that possesses unambiguous
certain genius.“ † Nature gives us material and idea at the same time;
every form testifies to that. And if we take nature not in the narrow
nursery
sense of astronomy and zoology, but in the wider application to which I
have referred when discussing the individual philosophers, we shall
find
Goethe's remark everywhere confirmed; nature is the unambiguous genius,
the real inventor. But here we should carefully note the following
fact:
Nature reveals herself not only in the rainbow or in the eye which
perceives
the rainbow, but also in the mind which admires it and in the reason
which
thinks about it. However, in order that the eye, the mind, the reason
may
consciously see and appropriate to themselves the genius of nature, a
particular
faculty and special schooling are required. Here, as elsewhere, the
important
thing is the direction given to the intellect; ‡ if this is settled,
time
and practice will accomplish the rest. Here we may say with Schiller:
“The
direction is at the same time the accomplishment,
* See p. 279.
† Vorträge zum Entwurf einer Einleitung in die
vergleichende
Anatomie, ii.
‡ See
pp. 182, 277.
449
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
and the
journey
is ended as soon as begun.“ * Thus Locke's life-work, the Essay on
the
Human Understanding, might have been written at any time during the
preceding two thousand five hundred years, if only some one had felt
inclined
to apply himself to nature. Learning, instruments, mathematical or
other
discoveries are not required, but only faithful observation of Self,
questioning
of Self in the same way as we should observe and question any other
phenomenon
of nature. What hindered the much greater Aristotle from achieving this
but the anthropomorphic superficiality of Hellenic observation of
nature,
which, like a comet following a hyperbolic course approached every
given
fact with frenzied speed, soon afterwards to lose sight of it for ever?
What hindered Augustine, who possessed profound philosophical gifts,
but
his systematic contempt of nature? What Thomas Aquinas but the delusion
that he knew everything without observing anything? This turning
towards
nature — this new goal of the intellect, an achievement of the Teutonic
soul — signifies, as I have said, a mighty, indeed almost incalculable,
enrichment of the human mind: for it provides it constantly with
inexhaustible
material (i.e., conceptions) and new associations (i.e.,
ideas). Now man drinks directly from the fountain of all invention, all
genius. That is an essential feature of our new world, which may well
inspire
us with pride and confidence in ourselves. Formerly man resembled the
pump-driving
donkeys of Southern Europe. He was compelled all day long to turn round
in the circle of his own poor self, merely to provide some water for
his
thirst; now he lies at the breasts of Mother Nature.
We have already advanced further than the remark of Alphonse de
Candolle
seemed to lead us; the knowledge of our ignorance introduced us to the
inexhaustible
* Über die ästhetische Erziehung des
Menschen,
Bf. 9.
450
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
treasure-house
of nature and showed us the lost path to the ever-bubbling source of
all
invention. But now we must follow the thorny path of pure philosophy
and
here also we shall find that the same principle of exact distinction
between
the Known and the Unknown will be of essential service.
When Locke observes and analyses his understanding, he gets out of
himself,
so to speak, in order to be able to regard himself as a piece of
nature;
but here, there clearly lies an insurmountable obstacle in the way.
With
what shall he observe himself? After all it is a case of nature looking
at nature. Every one at once comprehends, or at least dimly feels, how
correct and far-reaching this consideration is. But a second
consideration,
requiring a little more reflection, must be added to the first before
it
really bears fruit. Let me give an example. When that other profound
thinker,
Descartes, in contrast to Locke, regards not himself, but surrounding
nature
— from the revolving planet to the pulsating heart of the newly
dissected
animal — and discovers everywhere the law of mechanism, so that he
teaches
the doctrine that even mental phenomena must be caused by movements, *
very little reflection is required to con-
* The fact that Descartes, who “explains by principles of physics all
mental
phenomena of animal life“ (see Principia Philosophiae, Part II.
64, as also the first paragraph), ascribed for reasons of orthodoxy a
“soul“
to man, signifies all the less for his system of philosophy, as he
postulates
the complete separation of body and soul, so that there is no
connection
of any kind between them, and man, like every other phenomenon of
sense,
must be able to be explained mechanically. It is time that commentators
stopped their wearisome prating about “Cogito, ergo sum“; it is
not psychological analysis, that is Descartes' strong point; on the
contrary,
he has here, with the unblushing assurance of genius, to the
never-ceasing
terror of all logical nonentities, pushed aside right and left the
things
that might make a man pause, and so forced his way to the one great
principle
that all interpretation of nature must necessarily be mechanical, at
least
if it is to be comprehensible to the brain of man (at any rate of the homo
europaeus). (For more details I refer the reader to the essay on
Descartes
in my Immanuel Kant.)
451
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
vince us that
the old obstacle here again meets us, and that we cannot accept his
conclusion
as absolutely valid; for the thinker Descartes does not stand apart as
an isolated observer, but is himself part and parcel of nature: here
again
it is a case of nature observing nature. We may look wherever we like,
we always look inwards. Of course, if, with the Jews and the Christian
scholastics, we ascribe to man a supernatural origin and a being
outside
of nature, then this dilemma does not exist, man and nature then stand
opposite each other like Faust and Helena, and can join hands “over the
cushioned glory of the throne,“ Faust, the really living one, the human
being, Helena, the apparently living, apparently comprehending,
apparently
speaking and loving shadowy form, Nature. * This is the central point;
here world is separated from world, the science of the Relative from
the
dogmatism of the Absolute; here too (as we see, if not blinded by
self-deception)
begins the final separation between the religion of experience and all
historical religion. Now if we adopt the Teutonic standpoint and can
see
the absolute necessity of Descartes's view — by which alone natural
science
as a connected whole is possible — then we must be struck by the
following
fact: when Locke desires to analyse his own understanding in regard to
its origin and working, he is after all a portion of nature and in so
far
consequently a machine; he therefore, if I may say
* Thomas Aquinas actually ascribes such a shadowy existence to animals.
He says: “The unreasoning animals possess an instinct implanted in them
by divine reason, and through it they have inner and outer impulses
resembling
reason.“ We see what a gulf separates these automata of Thomas from
those
of Descartes; for Thomas — like his followers of to-day, the Jesuit
Wasmann,
and the whole Catholic theory of nature — endeavours to make animals
out
to be machines, in order that it may still be possible to maintain the
Semitic delusion that nature was created solely for man, whereas
Descartes
stands for the great conception, that every event must be interpreted
as
a mechanical process, the vital phenomena of animals and men no less
than
the life of the sun.
452
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
so, resembles
a steam-engine that would desire to take itself to pieces in order to
comprehend
its own working; we can hardly suppose that such an undertaking would
be
quite successful; for that it may not cease to be, the locomotive must
remain in activity, it could therefore only test a part of its
apparatus,
now in one place, now in another, or it might take to pieces some
unimportant
parts, but the really important things it could not touch; its
knowledge
would be a superficial description rather than a thorough insight, and
even this description (i.e., the locomotive's view of its own
being)
would not exhaust and fully master the object; it would be essentially
limited and determined by the structure of the locomotive. I know that
the comparison is very lame, but, if it helps us, that is all that is
wanted.
In any case we have seen that Descartes' looking outwards is likewise
mere
contemplation of nature by nature, that is, looking inwards, so that
the
objection formerly urged applies also to his case. From this it is
clear
that we shall never be able to solve the problem, whether the
interpretation
of nature as mechanism is merely a law of the human intellect or also
an
extra-human law. Locke with his acuteness comprehended this and
expressly
admits that, “whatsoever we can reach with our thoughts is but a point,
almost nothing.“ * The reader who pursues this train of thought
further,
as I cannot do for lack of space, will, I think, understand what I mean
when I summarise the result of the discussion thus: Our knowledge of
nature
(natural science in the most comprehensive sense of the word and
including
scientific philosophy) is the ever more and more detailed exposition of
something Unknowable.
But all this only deals with one side of the question. Our
investigation
of nature undoubtedly contributes to the “extension“ of our knowledge;
we are ever
* Essay on the Human Understanding, Book iv,
chap.
3, § 23.
453
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
seeing more,
and
we are ever seeing more accurately, but that does not mean an
“intensive“
increase of knowledge, that is, we certainly know more than we did, but
we are not wiser, we have not penetrated one hand's-breadth further
into
the heart of the riddle of the world. Yet the true benefit derived from
our study of nature has been ascertained: it is an inner benefit, for
it
really directs us inwards, teaching us not to solve, but to grasp the
world's
riddle; that in itself is a great deal, for that alone makes us, if not
more learned, at least more wise. Physics are the great, direct
teachers
of metaphysics. It is only by the study of nature that man learns to
know
himself. But in order to grasp this truth more fully we must now sketch
in stronger outlines what has already been indicated.
I must remind the reader of what De Candolle said, that it is only by
exact
knowledge that the boundary between the Known and the Unknown can be
perceived.
In other words, it is only by exact knowledge that we clearly perceive
what we do not know. I think that the above discussion has confirmed
this
in a surprising manner. It was the movement in the direction of exact
investigation
that first revealed to thinkers the inscrutability of nature, of which
no one previously had had the slightest notion. Everything had seemed
so
simple that we only needed to lay hands upon it. I think we could
easily
prove that before the era of the great discoveries men were actually
ashamed
to observe and experiment: it seemed to them childish. How little
notion
they had of there being any mystery is seen from the first efforts of
natural
investigation, such as those of Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon:
scarcely
had they noted a phenomenon than they at once proceeded to explain it.
Two hundred years later Paracelsus does experiment and observe
diligently;
he
454
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
even has the
feverish
mania for collecting new facts and he is penetrated with the sense of
our
boundless ignorance in regard to them; but he too is never for a moment
at a loss for reasons and explanations. But the nearer we came to
Nature,
the further she retreated, and when our ablest philosophers wished
fully
to fathom Nature, the fact was established that she was inscrutable.
That
was the development from Descartes to Kant. Even Descartes, that
profound
master of mechanics, felt the need of devoting a whole essay to the
question,
“Do material things really exist?“ Not that he seriously doubted the
fact;
but his consistently developed theory that all science had to deal with
motion had forced upon him the conviction, which before his time had
appeared
only here and there in the form of sophistical trifling, that “from
corporeal
nature no single argument can be derived, which necessarily permits us
to draw the conclusion that a body exists.“ And he himself was so
startled
at the irrefutable truth of this scientific result that he had, in
order
to get out of the difficulty, to have recourse to theology. As he says:
“Since God is not a deceiver, I must conclude that He has not deceived
me in reference to things corporeal.“ * Fifty years later Locke arrived
by a different method at an absolutely analogous conclusion. “There can
be no knowledge of the bodies that fall under the examination of our
senses.
How far soever human industry may advance useful and explicit
philosophy
in physical things, scientific knowledge will still be out of our
reach,
because we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very bodies which
are
nearest to us and most under our command ... we shall never be able to
discover general, instructive, unquestionable truth concerning them.“ †
Locke also got out of
* Méditations métaphysiques, 6. The first
quotation
is from the 2nd section, the second from the last.
† Loc. cit. Book IV. chap. iii. § 26, and chap. xix.
§
4. In these
455
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
the difficulty
by evading the problem and taking refuge in the arms of theology:
“Reason
is natural revelation whereby the eternal Father communicates to
mankind
a portion of truth,“ &c. The difference between Descartes and Locke
consists only in this, that the mechanical thinker (Descartes) feels
keenly
the impossibility of proving by science the existence of bodies,
whereas
the psychologist (Locke) grasps less fully the force of the mechanical
considerations, but is struck by the psychological impossibility of
concluding
that a thing has being from the fact that he perceives its qualities.
The
new philosophy grew and deepened; but this conclusion remained
irrefutable.
Kant too had to testify that all philosophical attempts to explain the
mathematical-mechanical theory of bodies “ends with the Empty and
therefore
Incomprehensible.“ * Exact science has, therefore, not only in the
sphere
of empiricism done us the very great service of teaching us to
distinguish
exactly between what we know and what we do not know, but the
philosophical
deepening of exact science has also drawn a clear line between
Knowledge
and Non-knowledge: the whole world of bodies cannot be “known.“
theological
subterfuges
of the first pioneers of the new Teutonic philosophy lies the germ of
the
later dogmatic assumption of Schelling and Hegel of the identity of
thought
and being. What in the case of these pioneers had only been a rest by
the
wayside and at the same time a way of escape from the persecution of
fanatical
priests, was now made the corner-stone of a new absolutism.
* Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft,
last paragraph.
456
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
IDEALISM
AND MATERIALISM
Lest the reader should fall into similar blunders, I must incidentally
refer to two errors — idealism and materialism — which spring from the
first result of the philosophical investigation of nature by Descartes
and Locke. Though the world of bodies cannot be “known,“ it is
ingenious
but ridiculous trifling to deny its existence, as Berkeley does
(1685-1753);
that is equivalent to asserting that, because I perceive the world of
sense
by my senses and have no other guarantee for its existence, therefore
it
does not exist; because I smell the rose only by means of my nose,
therefore
there is a nose (at least an ideal one) but no rose. Just as untenable
is the other conclusion, which was drawn by thinkers inclined to take a
too superficial view, and expressed most clearly by Lamettrie (I709-51)
and Condillac (1715-80): as my senses only perceive things of sense,
therefore
only things of sense exist; because my intellect is a mechanism, which
can grasp only “mechanically“ what is perceived by my senses, therefore
mechanism is complete world-wisdom. Both idealism and materialism are
palpable
delusions — delusions which base themselves on Descartes and Locke, and
yet contradict the clearest results of their works. Moreover, these two
views completely overlook an essential part of the philosophy of
Descartes
and Locke: for Descartes did not mechanically interpret the whole
world,
but only the world of phenomena; Locke analysed not the whole world but
only the soul, when he expressed the opinion that there can be no
science
of bodies. The great men of genius have always been liable to be thus
misunderstood;
let us, therefore, leave these misapprehensions on one side and see how
our new philosophy continued to develop on the true heights of thought.
457
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
THE
FIRST
DILEMMA
I have already remarked that nature includes not only the rainbow and
the
eye that beholds it, but also the mind that is moved by the spectacle
and
the thought that reflects upon it. This consideration is so obvious
that
a Descartes and a Locke must have perceived it, but these great men had
still a heavy burden to carry in the hereditary conception of a
special,
bodiless soul; this load clung to them as fast as the child that grew
into
a giant clung to the shoulders of St. Christopher, and it often caused
their reasoning to stumble; they were, besides, so much occupied with
analysis
that they lost the power of comprehensive synthesis. Yet we find in
them,
under all kinds of systematic and systemless guises, very profound
thoughts,
which pointed the way to metaphysics. As I said before, both had become
convinced that the existence of things cannot be deduced from our
conceptions;
our conceptions of the qualities of things are no more like things than
pain is like the sharp dagger, or the feeling of tickling like the
feather
which causes it. * Descartes pursues this thought further and comes to
the conclusion that human nature consists of two completely separated
parts,
only one of which belongs to the realm of otherwise all-prevailing
mechanism,
while the other — to which he gives the name of soul — does not.
Thoughts
and passions form the soul. † Now it is a proof not only of Descartes'
profundity, but also of his genuinely scientific way of thinking, that
he always strongly supported the absolute, unconditional separation of
soul and body; we must not regard this conviction, which he so
frequently
and passionately asserted, as religious prejudice; no, more than
*
Descartes:
Traité
du monde ou de la lumière, chap. i.
† See
especially the 6th Méditation, and in Les passions
de
l'âme, §§ 4, 17, &c.
458
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
one hundred
years
later Kant clearly pointed out why we are compelled in practice “to
conceive
phenomena in space as quite different from the actions of thought,“ and
in so far “to accept the view that there is a double nature, the
thinking
and the corporeal.“ * Descartes elected to put this view in the form
available
to him, and thereby clearly promulgated two fundamental facts of
knowledge,
the absolute mechanism of corporeal nature and the absolute
non-mechanism
of thinking nature. But this view required a supplement. Locke, who was
no mechanician or mathematician, had a better chance of hitting upon
it.
He, too, had thought that he was bound to presuppose the soul as a
special,
separate entity; but he found this constantly in his way, and as a mere
psychologist — as a scientific dilettante, if I may use the word with
no
signification of reproach — he did not feel the impelling force of
Descartes'
strictly scientific and formal anxiety; altogether he was far from
being
so profound a mind as Descartes, and so with the most innocent air in
the
world he asked the question, Why should not body and soul be identical,
and thinking nature be extended, corporeal? † For the reader who has
not
been schooled in philosophy, the following may serve as explanation:
from
a strictly scientific point of view thought is derived solely from
personal,
inner experience; every phenomenon, even such as I from analogy ascribe
with the greatest certainty to the thought and feeling of others, must
be able to be interpreted mechanically; to have established this is
Descartes'
eternal service. Now comes Locke and makes the very fine remark (which,
in order to make the connection clear, I must translate from the
somewhat
loose psychological manner of Locke
* Critique of Pure Reason (Concerning the Final Aim of the
Natural
Dialectics of the Human Reason).
† Essay, Book II. chap. xxvii. § 27, but especially Book
IV.
chap. ii. § 6.
459
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
into the
scientific
manner of Descartes): Since we can explain all phenomena — even such as
seem to spring from activity of reason — even without having to
presuppose
thought, but know from personal experience that in some cases the
mechanical
process is accompanied by thought, who can prove to us that every
corporeal
phenomenon does not contain thought, and that every mechanical process
may not be accompanied by thoughts? * It is evident that Locke had no
idea
of what he was destroying by this notion, or, on the other hand, for
what
he had paved the way; he goes on to distinguish between two natures
(how
could he as a sensible man do otherwise?), not, however, between a
thinking
and a corporeal nature, but only between a thinking and a non-thinking
nature. With this Locke leaves the empirical sphere, the sphere of
genuine
scientific thought. For if I say of a phenomenon it is “corporeal,“ I
express
what experience teaches me, but if I say it is “non-thinking,“ I
predicate
something which I cannot possibly prove. The very man who, a moment
ago,
made the fine remark that thought may be a quality of matter
altogether,
wishes here to distinguish between thinking and non-thinking bodies!
Little
wonder that the two delusions, an Idealism which is absolute (and
consequently
purely materialistic) and a Materialism which springs from a symbolical
hypothesis (and is therefore purely “ideal“), are linked on here where
Locke stumbled so terribly.
* We must not identify this scientific philosophical thought (as
accepted
by Kant and others, see above, vol. i. p.
90) with the ravings of a Schelling concerning “spirit“ and
“matter;“
for thought is a definite fact of experience, which is known to us only
in association with equally definite, perceptible, organic mechanical
processes;
on the other hand, “spirit“ is so vague a conception that any one can
use
it for all kinds of charlatanism. When Goethe (evidently under
Schelling's
influence) on March 24, 1828, writes to Chancellor von Müller,
“Matter
can never exist without spirit, nor spirit without matter,“ it would be
well to make the same comment as Uncle Toby, “That's more than I know,
sir!“
460
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
But Locke
recovered
himself in a manner which very many of his followers up to the present
day have not been able to imitate, and, with the simplicity of genius,
proceeded to one of his most brilliant achievements, namely, the proof
that from non-thinking matter, however richly endowed it may be with
motion,
thought never can arise; it is just as impossible, he says, as that
something
should come out of nothing. * Here we see Locke once more join hands
with
Descartes (i.e., with the principles of strictly scientific
thought).
Now Locke's peculiar and individual line of thought, in spite of all
its
weaknesses, † exercised far-reaching influence, for it was just suited
to destroy the last remnant of supernatural dogmatism, and it awakened
to full consciousness the philosopher who addresses himself to nature.
The latter must now either give up all hope of further progress, regard
his undertaking as wrecked and surrender to the Absolutist, or he must
grasp the problem in all its profundity, and that would mean that he
must
of necessity enter the field of metaphysics.
THE
METAPHYSICAL
PROBLEM
The term “metaphysics“ has met with so much just disapproval that one
does
not care to use it; it has the effect of a scarecrow. We really do not
need the word — or at any rate we should not need it, if it were agreed
that the old metaphysics have no longer a right to existence, and the
new
— that of the naturalist — are simply “philosophy.“ Aristotle called
that
part of his system, which was afterwards termed metaphysics, theology;
that was the correct word, for it was the doctrine of Theos in
contrast
to that of Physis, God as contrast to nature. From
* Book IV. chap. x. § 10.
† “C'est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du
génie
qui ouvre une carrière, de faire impunément de grandes
fautes“
(Voltaire).
461
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
him to Hume
the
science of metaphysics was theology, that is, it was a collection of
unproved,
apodeictic theorems, derived either from direct, divine Revelation or
from
indirect Revelation, in that men proceeded from the supposition that
the
human reason was itself supernatural and could therefore, by virtue of
its own reflection, discover every truth; metaphysics were therefore
never
directly based upon experience, nor did they refer to it; they were
either
inspiration or ratiocination, either suggestion or pure reasoned
conclusion.
Now Hume (1711-1776), powerfully stimulated by Locke's paradoxical
results,
expressly demanded that metaphysics should cease to be theology and
should
become science. * He himself did not quite succeed in carrying out this
programme, for his talent lay rather in destroying false science than
in
building up the true; but the stimulus he gave was so great that he
“wakened“
Immanuel Kant “from dogmatic slumber.“ Henceforth the word metaphysics
has quite a different interpretation. It does not mean a contrast to
experience,
but reflection on the facts given by experience, and their association
to form a definite philosophy of life. Four words of Kant contain the
essence
of what metaphysics now mean; metaphysics are the answer to the
question,
How is experience possible? This problem was the direct result of the
dilemma
described above, to which honest, naturalist philosophy had led. If our
zeal for an exact science of bodies forces us to separate thought
completely
from the corporeal phenomenon, how then does thought arrive at
experience
of corporeal things? Or, on the other hand, if I attack the problem
* A Treatise of Human Nature. Introduction. The dilemma of
Descartes
and Locke is adopted by Hume in his introduction as an evident result
of
exact thinking, and he says that every hypothesis which undertakes to
reveal
the last grounds of human nature is to be at once rejected as
presumptuous
and chimerical. Instead of attempting, as they did, a hypothetical
solution,
he remains systematically sceptical regarding these “grounds.“
462
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
as a
psychologist
and assign thought as an attribute to the corporeal, which obeys
mechanical
laws, do I not at a blow destroy genuine (i.e., mechanical)
science,
without contributing in the least to the solution of the problem?
Reflection
concerning this will lead us to reflection concerning ourselves, since
these various judgments are rooted within ourselves, and it will be
impossible
to answer the question, How is experience possible? without at the same
time sketching the main outlines of a philosophical system. Perhaps the
question will admit, within certain limits, of various answers, but the
cardinal difference will henceforth always be: whether the problem
which
has resulted from purely natural-scientific considerations will be
scientifically
answered, or, after the manner of the old theologians, simply hacked in
two in favour of some dogma of reason. * The former method furthers
both
science and religion, the latter destroys both; the former enriches
culture
and knowledge, no matter whether or not we accept as valid all the
conclusions
of a definite philosopher (e.g., Kant) — the latter is
anti-Teutonic
and fetters science in all its branches, just as in its time the
theology
of Aristotle had done.
For the comprehension of our new world, and of the
* As Kant is the pre-eminent representative of the purely scientific
mode
of answering, and ignorant or malicious scribes still mislead the
public
by asserting that the philosophy of Fichte and Hegel is organically
related
to Kant's, whereby all true comprehension and all serious deepening of
our philosophy becomes impossible, I call the attention of the
unphilosophic
reader to the fact that Kant in a solemn declaration in the year 1799
designated
Fichte's doctrine as a “perfectly untenable system,“ and shortly
afterwards
also declared that between his “critical philosophy“ (critical
reflection
upon the results acquired by scientific investigation of corporeal and
of thinking nature) and such “scholasticism“ (so he terms Fichte's
philosophy)
there is no affinity whatever. Long before Fichte began to write, Kant
had provided the philosophical refutation of this neo-scholasticism,
for
it breathes from every page of his Critique of Pure Reason; see
especially § 27 of the Analytik der Begriffe, and cf.
the splendid little book, dated 1796, Von einem neuerdings
erhobenen
vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie.
463
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
whole
nineteenth
century, it was absolutely necessary to show clearly how from a new
spirit
and a new method new results were derived, and how these in turn were
bound
to lead to a perfectly new philosophical problem. Some diffusiveness
has
been unavoidable, for the delusion of “humanity“ and “progress“ causes
historians to represent our philosophy as gradually growing out of the
Hellenic and the Scholastic, and that is nothing but a chimera. Our
philosophy
has rather developed in direct antagonism to the Hellenic and the
Christo-Hellenic;
our theologians openly revolted against Church philosophy; our mystics
shook off historical tradition, as far as they could, in order to
concentrate
their thoughts on the experience of their own selves; our humanists
denied
the Absolute, denied progress, returned wistfully to the disparaged
past
and taught us to distinguish and appreciate the Individual in its
various
manifestations; finally, our thinkers who investigated nature directed
all their thought to the results of a science hitherto unanticipated
and
unattempted; a Descartes, a Locke are from the soles of their feet to
the
crowns of their heads new phenomena, they are not bound up with
Aristotle
and Plato, but energetically break away from them, and the
scholasticism
of their time which still clings to them is not the essential but the
accidental
part of their system. I hope I have convinced the reader of this; I
feel
it was worth my while to devote a few pages to the point. It was only
thus
that I could make the reader understand that the Dilemma in which
Descartes
and Locke suddenly found themselves was not an old warmed-up
philosophical
question, but a perfectly new one, resulting from the honest endeavour
to be led by experience alone, by nature alone. The problem which now
came
into the foreground may well have had some affinity with other problems
which engaged the attention of other philosophers at other times, but
there
is no genuine connection; and the special way in
464
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
which it here
appeared is new. Here historical clearness can be secured only by
separating,
not by uniting.
Now I must beg the reader's attention for a moment longer. I must
attempt,
as far as it is possible without plunging into the depths of
metaphysics,
to explain that metaphysical problem which is at the basis of our
specifically
Teutonic philosophy, so far at least that every reader may see what
justification
I had for my assertion that the investigation of nature teaches man to
know himself — that it leads him into the inner world. It is only in
this
way that we can clearly show the connection with religion which was
thoroughly
and passionately studied by all the philosophers named. Even Hume, the
sceptic, is at heart profoundly religious. The violent rage with which
he attacks historical religions as “the phantastic structures of
half-human
apes,“ * proves how serious he was in the matter; and such chapters as
that of the Immateriality of the Soul † proves Hume to be the
genuine
predecessor of Kant in the field of religion, as in that of philosophy.
No man, without having recourse to the supernatural, can answer the
question,
“How is experience possible?“ in any other way than by a critical
examination
of the whole capacity of his consciousness. Critique comes from κρίνειν,
which originally means to separate, to distinguish. But if I
distinguish
rightly, I shall also bring together what is connected, i.e., I
shall also correctly unite. The true critical process consists,
therefore,
as much in uniting as in distinguishing; it is just as much synthesis
as
analysis. Reflection concerning the double dilemma characterised above
soon proved that Descartes had not correctly separated, while Locke had
not correctly united. For Descartes had for formal reasons separated
body
and soul and then he came to a deadlock, as he found
* Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
†
A Treatise of Human Nature, I. 4. 5.
465
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
them
inseparably
united in himself; Locke, on the other hand, had sprung like a second
Curtius
with his whole intellect into the yawning gulf; but science is no
fairy-tale,
and the gulf still yawned as wide as ever. A first great error is
easily
discovered. These early naturalist-philosophers were not yet daring
enough;
they were afraid of calmly drawing all nature into the circle of their
investigations; something always remained outside, something which they
called God and soul and religion and metaphysics. This is especially
true
of religion; the philosophers leave it out of account, that is, they
speak
of it, but look upon it as something by itself, which has to stand
outside
all science, as something which is certainly essential for man, but of
altogether subordinate importance for the knowledge of nature. It would
be superficial to put this down to the influence of ecclesiastical
ideas;
on the contrary, the mistake arises rather from insufficient importance
being attached to the religious element. For this “something,“ which
they
almost treated as of no account, embraces the most important part of
their
own human personality, namely, the most direct of their experiences,
and
consequently, we may be sure, a weighty portion of nature. They simply
put aside the profoundest observations, as soon as they do not know
where
they are to insert them in their empirical and logical system. Thus
Locke,
for example, has such a keen appreciation of the value of intuitive or
visual perception that he might in this connection be actually called a
forerunner of Schopenhauer; he calls intuition “the bright sunshine“ of
the human mind; he says that knowledge is only in so far valuable as it
can be traced back directly or indirectly to intuitive perception (and
that means, as Locke expressly states, a perception acquired without
the
intervention of judgment). And how does he in his investigations employ
this “fountain of truth, in which there is more binding power of
conviction
than
466
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
in all the
conclusions
of reason,“ as he himself says? He makes no use of it whatever. Not
even
the obvious fact that mathematics depend on intuition stimulates him to
deeper thoughts, and finally the whole subject is, with many good
wishes
for its further investigation, recommended “to the angels and the
spirits
of just men in a future state“ (sic)! We helpless mortals are
taught
that “general and certain truths are only founded in the relations of
abstract
ideas“; and this is said by a philosopher who studies nature! * It is
the
same with facts of morality. Here for a brief moment Locke even flashes
forth as a forerunner of Kant and his ethical autonomy of man. He says:
“Moral ideas are not less true and not less real, because they are of
our
own making“; here we fancy we shall see open for us the great chapter
of
inner experience, but no, the author says shortly afterwards, when
speaking
Of
Truth in General: “For our present subject this consideration is
without
great importance; to have named it is sufficient.“ † There, too, where
metaphysical considerations would have been very much to the point,
Locke
comes very near a critical treatment, but does not enter upon it. Thus
he says concerning the idea of space, “I will tell you what space is
when
you tell me what extension is,“ and in more than one passage he then
asserts
that extension is something “simply incomprehensible.“ ‡ But he does
not
venture to go any deeper; on the contrary, this simply unthinkable
thing
— the Extended — is made by him at a late point to be the bearer of
thought!
I think this one example clearly shows what these epoch-making thinkers
still lacked — complete philosophical impartiality. After all they
still
stood, like the theologians, outside of nature, and thought they could
observe and
* Essay, Book IV. chap. ii. §§ 1 and 7; chap.
xvii.
§ 14; chap. xii. § 7.
† Essay, Book IV. chap. iv. § 9 f.
‡ Essay, Book II. chap. xiii. § 15; chap. xxiii.
§§
22 and 29.
467
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
comprehend it
from that standpoint. They did not yet understand,
- Natur in
sich,
sich in Natur zu hegen.
Hume took the
decisive
step towards it; he put aside this artificial division of self into two
parts, the one of which we pretend to desire to explain fully, while
the
other is completely neglected and reserved for angels and the dead.
Hume
took the standpoint of a man consistently questioning nature — in Self
and outside of Self; he was the first to approach in real earnest the
metaphysical
problem, How is experience possible? He adduced the critical objections
one after another and arrived at the paradoxical conclusion, which can
be summarised in the following words: Experience is impossible. In a
certain
sense he was perfectly right, and his brilliant paradox must only be
taken
as irony. If we persistently maintained the standpoint of a Descartes
and
a Locke and yet put aside their deus ex machina, the whole
structure
would immediately collapse. And it did collapse all the more
completely,
as their one-sidedness consisted not only in leaving out of account a
large
and most important part of the material of our experience, but also —
and
I beg the reader to note this specially — in unhesitatingly assuming as
possible a faultless, logical explanation of the other part. That was
an
inheritance from the schoolmen. Who told them forsooth that nature
would
be able to be understood, explained? Thomas Aquinas might indeed do
that,
for this dogma is his starting-point. But how does the mathematician
Descartes
come to that? The man who had expressed a desire to banish every
traditional
doctrine from his mind! How did John Locke, Gentleman, come to
it,
after declaring at the beginning of his investigation that he merely
desired
to fix the boundaries of the human understanding? Descartes answers:
God
is no betrayer, hence my understanding must penetrate
468
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
to the root of
things; Locke answers: Reason is divine Revelation, hence it is
infallible,
as far as it goes. That is not genuine investigation of nature, but
only
an attempt at it, hence the defectiveness of the result.
In the interests of the unphilosophical reader I have sketched from the
negative side the condition of our young, developing philosophy at that
time. In this way he will be better able to understand what had now to
be done to save and improve it. To begin with, it had to be purified,
purged
of the last traces of alien ingredients; in the second place, the
scientific
philosopher had to have the full courage of his convictions; he had,
like
Columbus, to trust himself unhesitatingly to the ocean of nature, and
not
fancy, as the crew did, that he was lost as soon as the spire of the
last
church-tower disappeared below the horizon. But this required not
merely
courage, such as the foolhardy Hume possessed, but also the solemn
consciousness
of great responsibility. Who had the right to lead men away from the
sacred
ancestral home? Only he who possesses the power to lead them to a new
one.
That is why it was only by a man like Kant that the work could be
executed,
for he not only possessed phenomenal intellectual gifts, but a moral
character
which was equally great. Kant is the true rocher de bronze of
our
new philosophy. Whether we agree with all his philosophical conclusions
is a matter of indifference; he alone possessed the power to tear us
away,
he alone possessed the moral justification for doing so, he, whose long
life was a model of spotless honour, strict self-control and complete
devotion
to an aim which he regarded as sacred. When just over twenty years of
age
he wrote: “I believe it is sometimes advisable to have a certain noble
confidence in one's own powers. On this I take my stand. I have already
mapped out the course which I wish to follow. I shall make a start and
nothing shall prevent me from
469
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
continuing as
I have begun.“ * This promise he kept. This confidence in his own
powers
was at the same time a realisation that we were on the right path, and
he immediately began — a second Luther, a second Copernicus — to clear
away all that is alien to us:
- Was euch das
Innere
stört,
- Dürft
ihr nicht
leiden! †
Nothing can be more foolish than to attempt, as is so common, to know
Kant
from one or two metaphysical works; everybody quotes them, and scarcely
one among ten thousand understands them, not because they are
incomprehensible
but because such a personality as Kant's can only be understood in
connection
with its whole activity. Whoever attempts to understand him thus will
soon
see that his philosophy is to be found in all his writings, and that
his
metaphysics can be understood only by those who have a familiar
acquaintance
with his natural science. ‡ For Kant is at all times and in all places
an investigator of nature. And thus we behold him, at the very
beginning
of his career, in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte des Himmels,
busily
engaged in ruling out of our natural philosophy the God of Genesis and
the tenacious Aristotelian theology. He there clearly proves that the
ecclesiastical
conception of God involves “the converting of all nature into
miracles“;
in that case nothing would remain for natural science, which had worked
so laboriously for centuries, but to repent and “solemnly recant at the
judgment stool of religion.“
* Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen
Kräfte,
Preface, § 7.
† That which disturbs your soul / You must not suffer!
‡ See on this subject Kant's remarks against Schlosser in the
2nd
Division of the Traktat zum ewigen Frieden in der Philosophie:
“He
objected to critical philosophy, which he fancies he knows, although he
has only looked at its final conclusions, which he was bound to
misunderstand,
because he had not diligently studied the steps that led up to them.“
470
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
“Nature will
then
no longer exist; all the changes in the world will be brought about by
a mere Deus ex machina.“ Kant evidently gives us the choice:
God
or Nature. In the same passage he attacks “that rotten world-wisdom,
which
under a pious exterior seeks to conceal the ignorance due to laziness.“
* So much for the work of purging, by means of which our thought at
last
became free, free to be true to itself. But that was not enough; it was
not sufficient merely to remove the Alien, the whole sphere of what is
our own had to be taken possession of, and this implied two things in
particular:
a great extension of the conception “nature“ and profound study of our
own “Ego.“ To these two things Kant's positive life-work was devoted.
He
did not work alone, but, like every great man, he laboured to bring
into
the fullest light of truth the unconscious and contradictory tendencies
of his contemporaries.
NATURE
AND THE EGO
The extension of the conception “Nature“ necessarily led to the
deepening
of the idea of the “Ego“; the one implied the other.
We cannot make the extension of the conception “Nature“ too
comprehensive.
At the very moment when Kant finished his Critique of Pure Reason,
Goethe wrote: “Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her; men are
all
in her and she in all; even the most unnatural thing is nature, even
the
coarsest philistinism has something of her genius. He who does not see
her
* In the above-mentioned work, Part II. § 8. I scarcely need say
that
Kant neither attacks faith in God nor religion, the book in question
and
all his later work prove the contrary; from the historical Jahve of the
Jews, however, he here once for all dissociates himself. As far as
anhistorical
creation is concerned, Kant has expressed himself clearly enough: “A
creation
as one event among other phenomena cannot be admitted, as its
possibility
would at once destroy the unity of experience“ (Critique of Pure
Reason,
second analogy of experience).
471
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
everywhere
sees
her rightly nowhere.“ * From this consideration we may conclude how
powerfully
at this very point our intellectual powers, developed as they were in
various
directions, could contribute to the elucidation and deepening of our
new
philosophy. Here in fact unification was effected. The Humanists (in
the
wide sense, which I gave to this word above) here joined hands with the
philosophers. What I have already pointed out, in a former part of this
section, regarding the purely philosophical influence of this group,
was
a very considerable contribution. † To this were added great
achievements
in the spheres of history, philology, archaeology, description of
nature.
For nature, which immediately surrounds us from our very youth — human
nature, and the nature which is outside of man — we do not, to begin
with,
perceive as “nature.“ It was the mass of new material, the great
extension
of our conceptions, which thus awakened reflection concerning ourselves
and the relation of man to nature. A Herder might, in the last years of
his life, in the impotent rage of misconception, rise up against a
Kant;
yet he himself had contributed very much to the extension of the
conception
“nature“; the whole first part of his Ideas for the History of
Humanity
perhaps did more than anything else to spread this anti-theological
view;
the whole efforts of this noble and brilliant man are directed towards
placing man in the midst of nature, as an organic part of her, as one
of
her creatures still in the process of development; and though in his
preface
he makes a side-thrust at “metaphysical speculations,“ which,
“separated
from experiences and analogies of nature, are like a pleasure-trip,
which
seldom leads to a definite goal,“ he has no idea how much he himself is
influenced by the new philosophy, and how much his own views would have
gained
* Die Natur (from the series Zur Naturwissenschaft
im
Allgemeinen).
† P. 433 f.
472
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
in depth and
accuracy
(perhaps at the cost of popularity), if he had more thoroughly studied
that science of metaphysics which had been opened up by faithful
observation
of nature. This man, worthy of all honour, may stand as the most
brilliant
representative of a whole tendency. We meet another tendency in men
like
Buffon. Of this describer of nature Condorcet writes: “Il
était
frappé d'une sorte de respect religieux pour les grands
phénomènes
de l'univers.“ So it is nature herself that inspires Buffon with
the
reverence of religion. The encyclopaedic naturalists like him (in the
nineteenth
century their work was carried to great lengths by Humboldt) did a very
great deal, if not to extend, yet to enrich the conception “nature,“
and
the fact that they felt, and knew how to communicate, religious
reverence
for it, was, from the point of view of philosophy, of importance. This
movement to extend the idea “nature“ might be traced in many spheres.
Even
a Leibniz, who still tries to save theological dogmatism, liberates
nature
in the most comprehensive sense, for by his pre-established harmony
everything
in truth becomes super-nature, but at the same time everything without
exception is nature. But the most important and decisive step was the
great
extension of the term by the complete incorporation of the inner Ego.
Why
indeed should this remain excluded? How was it justifiable? How could
we
continue to do as Locke and Descartes did, namely, neglect the surest
facts
of experience under the pretext that they were not mechanical, could
not
be comprehended, and so should be excluded from consideration?
Scientific
method and honesty made the simple conclusion inevitable, that not
everything
in nature is mechanical, that not every experience can be forged into a
logical chain of ideas. How could any one be satisfied with Herder's
half-measure:
first of all to identify man completely with nature, and finally to
conjure
473
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
him out of it
again, not in truth the whole man, but his “spirit,“ thanks to the
supposition
of extra-natural powers and supernatural Providence? * Here, too, it
was
really a question simply of the goal which the intellect aimed at; this
aim, however, determined the whole philosophy. For as long as man was
not
fully included in nature, they stood opposed and alien to each other,
and,
if man and nature are in reality alien, our whole Teutonic aim and
method
is an error. But it is not an error, and for that reason the decisive
incorporation
of the Ego in nature was immediately followed by a great deepening of
metaphysics.
Here the mystics rendered good service. When Francis of Assisi
addresses
the sun as messor lo frate sole, he says: All nature is related
to me, I sprang from her lap, and if once my eyes no longer see that
brightly
shining “brother“ then it is my “sister“ — death — that lulls me to
sleep.
Little wonder that this man preached to the birds in the wood the best
that he knew — the gospel of the dear Saviour. The philosophers
required
half a millennium to reach the standpoint upon which that wonderful man
in all his simplicity had stood. However, let us not exaggerate:
mysticism
has opened up many profound metaphysical questions in reference to the
innermost life of the Ego; it contributed splendidly not only to the
advancement
of scientific thought, but also to the necessary extension of the
conception
“nature;“ † but it did not accomplish the real deepening, the
philosophical
deepening; for that needed a scientific mind, a kind of mind seldom
found
in conjunction with mysticism. In general, mysticism deepens the
character,
not the thought, and even a Paracelsus is deluded by his “inner light“
into proclaiming as wisdom a vast amount of
* See Kant's three masterly Recensionen von Herder's Ideen
zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit.
† See pp. 419, 424.
474
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
nonsense. Upon
vaguely divining mystical ecstasy a more exact method of thinking had
to
be grafted. And that was done within the circle influenced by Francis
of
Assisi. The theology of the Franciscans in its best days had in fact
done
much preliminary work towards amalgamating the otherwise so carefully
separated
ideas “Nature“ and “Ego“; indeed, they had done almost more than was
desirable,
for thereby many a purely abstract system had become crystallised to
the
prejudice of inquiry into nature, so that even a Kant found himself in
many ways hampered by it. Yet it deserves mention that Duns Scotus
himself
had energetically protested, in reference to our perception of
surrounding
objects, against the dogma that this process was a mere passive
receiving,
that is to say, a mere reception of impressions of sense, leading to
the
immediate conclusion that these sense-impressions, with the conceptions
resulting therefrom, corresponded exactly to things — that they were,
as
we might say in vulgar parlance, a photograph of actual reality. No, he
said, the human mind in receiving impressions (which then, united
according
to reason, &c., form perception) is not merely passive, but also
active,
that is, it contributes its own quota, it colours and shapes what it
receives
from the outer world, it remodels it in its own way and transforms it
into
something new; in short, the human mind is, from the very outset,
creative,
and what it perceives as existing outside of itself is partly, and in
the
special form in which it is perceived, created by itself. Every layman
must immediately grasp the one fact: if the human mind in the reception
and elaboration of its perceptions is itself creatively active, it
follows
of necessity that it must find itself again everywhere in nature; this
nature, as the mind sees it, is in a certain sense, and without its
reality
being called in question, its work. Hence Kant too comes to the
conclusion:
“It sounds at first singular,
475
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
but is none
the
less certain, that the understanding does not derive its laws from
nature,
but prescribes them to nature ... the supreme legislation of nature
lies
in ourselves, that is, in our understanding.“ * The realisation of this
fact made the relation between man and nature (in its most primary and
simple sense) clear and comprehensible. It now became manifest why
every
investigation of nature, even the strictly mechanical, finally leads
back
in all cases to metaphysical questions, that is, questions directed to
man's being; this was what had so hopelessly perplexed Descartes and
Locke.
Experience is not something simple, and can never be purely objective,
because it is our own active organisation which first makes experience
possible, in that our senses take up only definite impressions,
definitely
shaped, moreover, by themselves, † while our understanding also sifts,
arranges and unites the impressions according to definite systems. And
this is so evident to every one who is at the same time an observer of
nature and a thinker, that even a Goethe — whom no one will charge with
particular liking for such speculations — is driven to confess: “There
are many problems in the natural sciences on which we cannot with
propriety
speak, if we do not call in the aid of metaphysics.“ ‡ On the other
hand,
it now becomes clear how justified the Mystics were in claiming to see
everywhere in outer nature the inner essence of man: this nature is, in
fact, the opened, brightly illuminated book of our understanding; I do
not mean that it is an unreal phantom of that understanding, but it
shows
us our understanding at work and teaches us its peculiar individuality.
As the mathematician and astronomer Lichtenberg says: “We must never
lose
sight of the fact that we are always merely
* Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik,
§
36.
† We may stimulate the optical nerve as we will, the impression is
always
“light,“ and so in the case of the other senses.
‡ Sprüche in Prosa, über Naturwissenschaft, 4.
476
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
observing
ourselves
when we observe nature and especially our views of nature.“ *
Schopenhauer
has given expression to the great importance of this fact: “The most
complete
perception of nature is the proper basis for metaphysical speculation,
hence no one should presume to attempt this, without having first
acquired
a thorough (though only general) and clear, connected knowledge of all
branches of natural science.“ †
THE
SECOND DILEMMA
As the reader sees, as soon as this new phase of thought was traversed,
the philosopher found himself face to face with a new dilemma analogous
to the former; it was, indeed, the same dilemma, but this time it was
grasped
more profoundly and viewed in a more correct perspective. The study of
nature necessarily leads man back to himself; he himself finds his
understanding
displayed in no other place than in nature perceived and thought. The
whole
revelation of nature is specifically human, shaped therefore by active
human understanding, as we perceive it; on the other hand, this
understanding
is nourished solely from outside, that is, by impressions received: it
is as a reaction that our understanding awakes, that is, as a reaction
against something which is not man. A moment ago I called the
understanding
creative, but it is only so in a conditional sense; it is not able,
like
Jahve, to create something out of nothing, but only to transform what
is
given; our intellectual life consists of action and reaction: in order
to be able to give, we must first have received. Hence the important
fact
to which I have frequently called attention, ‡ quoting on the last
occasion
Goethe's words: “Only creative nature possesses unambiguous genius.“
But
how am I
* Schriften, ed. 1844, vol. ix. p. 34.
† Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. ii, chap.
xvii.
‡ See especially vol. i. p.
267, vol. ii. pp. 273,
326.
477
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
to escape from
this dilemma? What is the answer to the question: “How is experience
possible?“
The object points me back to the subject, the subject knows itself only
in the object. There is no escape, no answer. As I said before: our
knowledge
of nature is the ever more and more detailed exposition of something
unknowable;
to this unknowable nature belongs in the first place our own
understanding.
But this result is by no means to be regarded as purely negative; not
only
have the steps leading up to it made clear the mutual relation of
subject
and object, but the final result means the rejection, once for all, of
every materialistic dogma. Now Kant was in a position to utter the
all-important
truth: “A dogmatic solution of the cosmological problem is not merely
uncertain
but impossible.“ What thinking men at all times had vaguely felt —
among
the Indians, the Greeks, here and there even among the Church Fathers (p.
78) and schoolmen — what the Mystics had regarded as self-evident
(p.
421) and the first scientific thinkers, Descartes and Locke, had
stumbled
upon without being able to interpret (p. 454), viz., that time and
space
are intuitive forms of our animal sense-life, was now proved by natural
scientific criticism. Time and space “are forms of sentient perception,
whereby we perceive objects only as they appear to us (our senses), not
as they may be in themselves.“ * Further, criticism revealed that the
unifying
work of the understanding whereby the conception and the thought
“nature“
arise and exist (or to quote Böhme, “are mirrored“), that is to
say,
the systematic uniting of phenomena to cause and effect, are to be
traced
back to what Duns Scotus vaguely conceived, namely, the active
elaboration
of the material of experience by the human mind. Hereby the cosmogonic
conceptions of the Semites which hung, and still hang, heavily on our
science
of religion,
* Prolegomena, § 10.
478
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
fell to the
ground.
What is the use to me of an historical religion if time is merely an
intuitive
form of my sense-mechanism? What is the use of a Creator as explanation
of the world, as first cause, if science has shown me that “causality
has
no meaning at all, and no sign of its use, except in the world of
sense,“
* while this idea of cause and effect, “when used only speculatively
(as
when we conceive a God-creator), loses every significance the objective
reality of which could be made comprehensible in concreto“? †
The
realisation of this fact shatters an idol. In a former chapter I called
the Israelites “abstract worshippers of idols“; ‡ I think the reader
will
now understand why. And he will comprehend what Kant means when he says
that the system of criticism is “indispensable to the highest purposes
of humanity“; § and when he writes to Mendelssohn: “The true and
lasting
well-being of the human race depends upon metaphysics.“ Our Teutonic
metaphysics
free us from idolatry and in so doing reveal to us the living Divinity
in our own breast.
Here, it is plain, we do not merely touch upon the chief theme in this
division — the relation between philosophy and religion — but we are in
the very heart of it; at the same time what has just been said connects
itself with the conclusion of the section on “Discovery,“ where I
already
hinted that the victory of a scientific, mechanical view of nature
necessarily
meant the complete downfall of all materialistic religion. At the same
time I said: “Consistent mechanism, as we Teutons have created it,
admits
only of a purely ideal, that is, transcendent religion, such as Jesus
Christ
taught: 'The Kingdom of
* Critique of Pure Reason. (Of the impossibility of a
cosmological
proof of the existence of God.) Twenty years before Kant had written:
“How
am I to understand that, because something is, something else should
be?
I am not going to be satisfied with the words Cause and Effect“ (Versuch,
den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit
einzuführen,
Division 3, General Note).
† Loc. cit. (Critique of all speculative theology.)
‡ Vol. i. p. 240.
§ Erklärung gegen Fichte (conclusion).
479
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
God is within
you.' “ We must now proceed to the discussion of this last and
profoundest
point.
SCIENCE
AND RELIGION
Goethe proclaims: “Within thee there is a universe as well!“
It was one of the inevitable results of scientific thinking that this
inner
universe was now for the first time brought into the foreground. For
the
philosopher, by unreservedly including the whole human personality in
nature,
that is, by learning to regard it as an object of nature, gradually
awoke
to a realisation of two facts, first, that the mechanism of nature has
its origin in his own human understanding, and secondly, that mechanism
is not a satisfactory principle for the explanation of nature, since
man
discovers in his own mind a universe which remains altogether outside
of
all mechanical conceptions. Descartes and Locke, who imagined there was
danger for strictly scientific knowledge in this perception, thought to
overcome it by regarding this unmechanical universe as something
outside
of and above nature. With so lame and autocratic a compromise, there
was
no possibility of arriving at a living philosophy. Scientific
schooling,
the custom of drawing a strict separating-line between what we know and
what we do not know, simply demanded the explanation: from the most
direct
experience of my own life I perceive — in addition to mechanical nature
— the existence of an unmechanical nature. For clearness we may call it
the ideal world, in contrast to the real; not that it is less real or
less
actual — on the contrary, it is the surest thing that we possess, the
one
directly given thing, and in so far the outer world ought really to be
called the “ideal“ one; but the other receives this name because it
embodies
itself in ideas, not in objects. Now
480
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
if man
perceives
such an ideal world — not as dogma but from experience, — if
introspection
leads to the conviction that he himself is not merely and not even
predominantly
a mechanism, if rather he discovers in himself what Kant calls “the
spontaneity
of freedom,“ something utterly unmechanical and anti-mechanical, a
whole,
wide world, which we might in a certain sense call an “unnatural“
world,
so great a contrast does it present to that mechanical rule of law with
which we have become acquainted by exact observation of nature; how
could
he help projecting this second nature, which is just as manifest and
sure
as the first, upon that first nature, since science has taught him that
the latter is intimately connected with his own inner world? When he
does
that, there grows out of the experienced fact of freedom a new idea of
the Divine, and a new conception of a moral order of the world, that is
to say, a new religion. It was, indeed, no new thing to seek God within
our own breast and not outside among the stars, to believe in God not
as
an objective necessity, but as a subjective command, to postulate God
not
as mechanical primum mobile but to experience him in the heart
—
I have already quoted Eckhart's admonition, “Man shall not seek God
outside
himself“ (p. 401), and from that to Schiller's remark, “Man bears the
Divine
in himself,“ the warning has frequently been uttered — but here, in the
regular course of the development of Teutonic philosophy, this
conviction
had been gained in a special way as one of the results of an
all-embracing
and absolutely objective investigation of nature. Man had not made God
the starting-point, but had come to him as the final thing; religion
and
science had grown inseparably into each other, the one had not to be
shaped,
and interpreted to suit the other, they were, so to speak, two phases
of
the same phenomenon: science, that which the world gives me, religion,
that which I give to the world.
481
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
Here, however,
a far-reaching remark must be made, otherwise the advantage gained in
the
way of introspection is liable to evaporate, and it is the business of
science to hinder that. No one can, of course, answer the question,
what
nature may be outside of human conception, or what man may be outside
of
nature, hence over-enthusiastic, unschooled minds are inclined
uncritically
to identify both. This identification is dangerous, as may be seen from
the following consideration. While the investigation of nature enables
us to perceive that all knowledge of bodies, though proceeding from the
apparently Concrete, the Real, yet ends with the absolutely
Incomprehensible,
the process in the unmechanical world is the reverse: the
Incomprehensible,
when we reflect upon it philosophically, lies here, not at the end of
the
course but immediately at the beginning. The notion and the possibility
of freedom, the conceivability of being outside of time, the origin of
the feeling of moral responsibility and duty, &c., cannot of
themselves
force their way in at the door of understanding, yet we grasp them
quite
well the further we follow them out into the sphere of actual and
hourly
experience. Freedom is the surest of all facts of experience; the Ego
stands
altogether outside of time, and notices the progress of time only from
outer phenomena; * conscience, regret, feeling of duty, are stricter
masters
than hunger. Hence the tendency of the man who is not gifted with the
metaphysical
faculty to overlook the difference between the two worlds — nature from
without and nature from within, as Goethe calls them; his tendency to
project
freedom into the world of phenomena (as cosmic God, miracle, &c.),
to suppose a beginning (which destroys the idea of time), to found
morals
upon definite,
* Growing older is noted only by seeing others grow old or by the
coming
on of feebleness, i.e., by something outward; hours can pass as
a moment, a few seconds may unfold the complete image of a lifetime.
482
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
historically
issued
and therefore at all times revocable commands (which make an end of
ethical
law), &c. Metaphysically inclined races, such as the Aryans, never
fell into this error: * their mythologies reveal a wonderful divination
of metaphysical perception, or, as we may say with the same justice,
scientific
metaphysics signify the awakening into new life of far-seeing
mythology;
but, as history shows, this higher divination has not been able to
prevail
against the forcible assertions of less gifted human beings, who
conclude
from mere semblance, and are sunk in blind historical superstition, and
there is but one antidote powerful enough to save us: our scientific
philosophy.
This uncritical identification leads to other shallow and therefore
injurious
systems, as soon as, for example, in place of projecting inner
experience
into the world of phenomena, the latter with all its mechanism is
brought
into the inner world. Thus so-called “scientific“ monism, materialism,
&c., have arisen, doctrines which will certainly never acquire the
universal importance of Judaism — since it is too much to expect of
most
men that they will deny what they know most surely — but which have
nevertheless
in the nineteenth century produced so much confusion of thought. †
* See vol. i. pp. 229,
437,
vol. ii. p. 23.
† It is remarkable how affinity between these two errors — uncritically
projecting inner experience into the world of phenomena and bringing
the
outer world into inner experience — manifests itself in life: theists
become
in the twinkling of an eye atheists, a strikingly common thing in the
case
of Jews, since, if they are orthodox (and even when they have become
Christians)
they are convinced, genuine theists, whereas with us God is always in
the
background and even the orthodox mind is filled by the Redeemer or the
Mother of God, the saints or the sacrament. I should never have dreamt
that theistic conviction could be so firmly rooted in the brain had I
not
had occasion, in the case of a friend, a Jewish scholar, to observe the
genesis and obstinacy of the apparently opposite “atheistical“
conception.
It is absolutely impossible ever to bring home to such a man what we
Teutons
understand by Godhead, religion, morality. Here lies the hard insoluble
kernel of the “Jewish problem.“ And this is the reason why an impartial
man, without a trace of contempt for the
483
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
In view of all this — and in contrast to all mystical pantheism and
pananthropism
— it is our duty to adhere to and emphasise the division into two
worlds,
as it results from strictly scientifically treated experience. But the
boundary-line must be drawn at the right place: to have accurately
determined
this place is one of the greatest achievements of our new philosophy.
We
must, of course, not draw that line between man and world; all that I
have
said proves the impossibility of this; man may turn whither he will, at
every step he perceives nature in himself and himself in nature. To
draw
the line between the world of phenomena and the hypothetical “thing in
itself“ (as one of Kant's famous successors undertook to do) would from
the purely scientific standpoint also be very disputable, for in that
case
the boundary runs outside of all experience. In so far as the
unmechanical
world is derived purely from inner, individual experience, which only
by
analogy is transferred to other individuals, we may well, for
simplicity
of expression, distinguish between a world in us and a world outside
us, but we must carefully note that the world “outside us“
comprises
every “phenomenon,“ hence also our own body, and not it alone but also
the understanding which perceives the world of bodies and thinks. This
expression “in us“ and “outside us“ is often met with in Kant and
others.
But even he is open to objection; for in the first place we are — as I
said above — involuntarily impelled, if not to transform this inner
world
as the Jew does to an outer cause, yet to attribute
in
many respects worthy and excellent Jews, can and must regard the
presence
of a large number of them in our midst as a danger not to be
under-estimated.
Not only the Jew, but also all that is derived from the Jewish mind,
corrodes
and disintegrates what is best in us. And so Kant rightly reproached
the
Christian Churches for making all men Jews, by representing the
importance
of Christ as lying in this, that He was the historically expected
Jewish
Messiah. Were Judaism not thus inoculated into us, the Jews in flesh
and
blood would be much less dangerous for our culture than they are.
484
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
it to all
phenomena
as their inner world, and then it is not quite easy to see how we shall
be able to divide our thinking brain into two parts; for it is this
very
brain which also perceives the unmechanical world and reflects upon it.
It is certain that the unmechanical world is not presented from outside
to the organ of understanding by a perception of the senses, but solely
by inner experience, and hence it is impossible for the understanding,
in view of its total lack of inventive power, to raise perception to
the
level of conception, and all talk on this subject must necessarily
remain
symbolical, that is, talk by pictures and signs: however, have we not
seen
that even the world of phenomena indeed gave us conceptions, but
equally
only symbolical ones? The “in us“ and “outside us“ is therefore a
metaphorical
way of speaking. The boundary can only be drawn scientifically, when we
do not move one iota from what experience gives us. Kant seeks to
attain
this by the differentiation which he makes in his Critique of
Practical
Reason (1, 1, 1, 2) between a nature “to which the will is
subordinate“
and a nature “which is subordinate to a will.“ This definition is
exactly
in keeping with the above-named condition, but has the disadvantage of
being somewhat obscure. We do better to hold to what is obvious, and
then
we should have to say: what experience presents to us is a world
capable
of mechanical interpretation and a world which is incapable of
mechanical
interpretation; between these two runs a boundaryline which separates
them
so completely that every crossing of it means a crime against
experience:
but crimes against facts of experience are philosophical lies.
RELIGION
Following up the differentiation Kant was enabled to make the
epoch-making
assertion: “Religion we
485
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
must seek in
ourselves,
not outside ourselves.“ * That means, when we change it to the terms of
our definition: Religion we must seek only in the world which cannot be
interpreted mechanically. It is not true that we find in the world of
phenomena
that can be interpreted mechanically anything that points to freedom,
morality,
Divinity. Whoever carries the idea of freedom over into mechanical
nature
destroys both nature and the true significance of freedom (p. 420); the
same holds good with regard to God (p. 470); and as far as morality is
concerned an unprejudiced glance suffices — in spite of all heroic
efforts
of the apologists from Aristotle to Bishop Butler's famous book on the
Analogy
between Revealed Religion and the Laws of Nature — to show that
nature
is neither moral nor sensible. The ideas of goodness, pity, duty,
virtue,
repentance, are just as strange to her as sensible, symmetrical,
appropriate
arrangement. Nature capable of mechanical interpretation is evil,
stupid,
feelingless; virtue, genius and goodness belong only to nature which
cannot
be mechanically interpreted. Meister Eckhart knew that well and
therefore
uttered the memorable words: “If I say, God is good, it is not true;
rather
I am good, God is not good. If I say also God is wise, it is not true:
I am wiser than he.“ † Genuine natural science could leave no doubt
concerning
the correctness of this judgment. We must seek religion in that nature
which cannot be mechanically interpreted.
I shall not attempt to give an account of Kant's theory of morals and
religion;
that would take me too far and has, besides, been done by others; I
think
I have performed my special task if I have succeeded in clearly
representing
on the most general lines the genesis of our new philosophy; that
prepares
the ground for a clear-sighted, sure judgment of the philosophy of the
* Religion, 4. Stück, 1. Teil, 2. Abschnitt.
† Predigt, 99.
486
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
eighteenth
century.
Only towards the end of the nineteenth century has Kant been made
really
comprehensible to us, and that, in characteristic fashion, especially
by
the stimulus of brilliant natural investigators; and the view of
religion,
which was not yet perfectly, indeed in many ways invalidly, but at any
rate for the first time clearly expressed by him, was so much beyond
the
comprehensive powers of his or our contemporaries, and anticipated to
such
a degree the development of Teutonic intellectual gifts, that an
appreciation
of it belongs rather to the division dealing with the future than to
that
dealing with the past. Let me add a few words only by way of general
guidance.
*
Science is the method, discovered and carried out by the Teutons, of
mechanically
looking
at the world of phenomena; religion is their attitude towards that part
of experience which does not appear in the shape of phenomena and
therefore
is incapable of mechanical interpretation. What these two ideas —
science
and religion — may mean to other men does not here matter. Together
they
form our philosophy. In this philosophy which rejects as senseless all
seeking after final causes, the basis of the attitude of man towards
himself
and others must be found in something else than in obedience to a
world-ruling
monarch and the hope of a future reward. As I have already hinted (p.
290) and now have proved, side by side with a strictly mechanical
theory
of nature there can only be a strictly ideal religion, a religion, that
is, which confines itself absolutely to the ideal world of the
Unmechanical.
However limitless this world of the unmechanical may be — a world the
stroke
of whose pinions frees us from the impotence of appearance and soars
higher
than the stars, whose
* I refer for supplementary facts to my book: Immanuel Kant,
die Persönlichkeit als Einführung in das Werk, 1905,
Bruckmann.
487
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
powers enable
us with a smile to face the most painful death, which imparts to a kiss
the charm of eternity, and in a flash of thought bestows redemption —
it
is nevertheless confined to a definite sphere, namely, our inner self,
the boundaries of which it may never cross. Here, therefore, in our own
heart, and nowhere else, must the foundations of a religion be sought.
“To have religion is the duty of man to himself,“ says Kant. * From
considerations
which I cannot here repeat, Kant warmly cherishes, as every one knows,
the thought of a Godhead, but he lays great stress on this, that man
has
to regard his duties not as duties towards God, which would be but a
broken
reed on which to lean, but as duties towards himself. What in our case
unites science and religion to a uniform philosophy of life is the
principle
that it is always experience that commands; now God is not an
experience,
but a thought, and in fact an undefinable thought which can never be
made
comprehensible, whereas man is to himself experience. Here therefore
the
source has to be sought, and so the autonomy of will (i.e., its
free independence) is the highest principle of all morality. † An
action
is moral only in so far as it springs solely from the innermost will of
the subject and obeys a self-given law; whereas hope of reward can
produce
no morality nor can it ever restrain from the worst vice and crime, for
all outward religion has mediations and forgivenesses. The “born
judge,“
that is to say man himself, knows quite well whether the feeling of his
heart is good or bad, whether his conduct is pure or not, hence “that
self-judgment
which seeks to penetrate to the deeper recesses or to the very bottom
of
the heart, and the knowledge of self thus to be gained are the
beginning
of all human wisdom ....
* Tugendlehre, § 18.
† Kant defines: “Autonomy of will is that quality of will by which a
will
(independently of any object willed) is a law to itself.“ See Grundlegung
zur Metaphysik der Sitten II. 2.
488
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
It is only the
descent into the hell of self-knowledge that paves the way for the
ascent
into heaven.“ *
In regard to this autonomy of will and this ascension into heaven, I
beg
the reader to refer to the passage in the chapter on the Entrance of
the
Teutons into the History of the World (see vol. i. p.
549 f.), where I briefly alluded to Kant's gloriously daring idea.
But there is still a link wanting in the chain, to enable us to grasp
the
religious thought completely. What is it that has given me so high an
opinion
of that which I discovered on my descent into the abyss of the heart?
It
is the perception of the high dignity of man. For the first step
necessary
to bring us to the truly moral standpoint is to root out all the
contempt
of Self and of the human race which the Christian Church — in contrast
to Christ — (see vol. i. p.
7) has nurtured. The inborn evil in the heart of man is not
destroyed
by penance, for that again clings to the outer world of appearance, but
by fixing our attention on the lofty qualities in our own hearts. The
dignity
of man grows with his consciousness of it. It is of great importance
that
Kant is here in exact agreement with Goethe. Well known is Goethe's
theory
of the three reverences — for what is above us, for what is equal to
us,
and for what is below us — from which arise three kinds of genuine
religion;
but true religion arises from a fourth “highest reverence,“ that is,
reverence
for Self; it is only when he has reached this stage that man, according
to Goethe, attains the highest pinnacle that he is capable of
attaining.
† I have
* Kant writes not “zur Himmelfahrt“ but “zur
Vergötterung,“
but owing to the common usage of this word in ordinary speech
misunderstanding
might easily arise. Schiller says, “The moral will makes man divine“ (Anmut
und Würde; and Voltaire, “Si Dieu n'est pas dans nous, il
n'exista
jamais“ (Poème sur la Loi Naturelle). Profound is
also
Goethe's thought: “Since God became man, in order that we poor
creatures
of sense might grasp and comprehend Him, we must see to it especially
that
we do not again make Him God.“ (Brief des Pastors zu *** an den
neuen
Pastor zu ***.)
† Wanderjahre, Bk II, chap. i.
489
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
referred to
this
theme in the passage mentioned above, at the same time also quoting
Kant;
I must now supplement what was there said by one of the greatest and
most
glorious passages of all Kant's writings; it forms the only worthy
commentary
to Goethe's religion of reverence for Self. “Now I set forth man as
asking
himself: What is that in me which enables me to sacrifice the inmost
lures
of my impulses and all wishes that proceed from my nature, to a law
which
promises me no advantage in return and no penalty if I transgress it;
which
indeed, the more sternly it commands and the less it offers in return,
the more I reverence it? This question stirs our whole soul in amazed
wonder
at the greatness and sublimity of the inner faculty in man and the
insolubility
of the mystery which it conceals (for the answer: 'it is freedom,'
would
be tautological, because it is freedom itself that creates the
mystery).
We can never tire of directing our attention to it and admiring in
ourselves
a power which yields to no power of nature .... Here is what Archimedes
wanted, but did not find: a firm point on which reason could place its
lever, and that without applying it to the present or to a future
world,
but merely to its inner idea of freedom (which immovable moral law
provides
as a sure foundation) in order by its principles to set in motion the
human
will, even in opposition to all nature.“ * It is manifest that this
religion
presents a direct contrast to the mechanical view. † Teutonic science
teaches
the most painfully exact fixing of that which is present and bids us be
satisfied with that, since it is not by hypothesis or tricks of magic
that
we can learn to master the world of phenomena but only by accurately,
indeed
slavishly, adapting ourselves to it; Teutonic religion, on the other
hand,
opens up a wide realm, which slumbers as a sub-
* From the book: Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in
der
Philosophie (1796).
† Naturally also to Ethics as “science“; on this see p. 64
note.
490
PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
lime ideal in
our inmost soul, and teaches us: here you are free, here you are
yourselves
nature — creative, legislative; the realm of ideals of itself has no
existence,
but by your efforts it can truly come into life; as “phenomenon“ you
are
indeed bound to the universal law of faultless mechanical necessity,
but
experience teaches you that you possess autonomy and freedom in the
inner
realm; — use them! The connection between the two worlds — the seen and
the unseen, the temporal and the eternal — otherwise undiscoverable,
lies
in the hearts of you men yourselves, and by the moral conception of the
inner world the significance of the outer world is determined;
conscience
teaches you that every day; it is the lesson taught by art, love, pity,
and the whole history of mankind; here you are free, as soon as you but
know and will it; you can transfigure the visible world, become
regenerate
yourselves, transform time to eternity, plough the Kingdom of God in
the
field — Be this then your task! Religion shall no longer signify for
you
faith in the past and hope for something future, nor (as with the
Indians)
mere metaphysical perception — but the deed of the present! If you but
believe in yourselves, you have the power to realise the new “possible
Kingdom“; wake up then, for the dawn is at hand!
CHRIST
AND KANT
Who could fail to be at once struck with the affinity between the
religious
philosophy of Kant — won by faithful, critical study of nature — and
the
living heart of the teaching of Christ? Did not the latter say, the
Kingdom
of God is not outside you, but within you? But the resemblance is not
limited
to this central point. Whoever studies Kant's many writings on religion
and moral law will find the resemblance in many places; for example,
take
their attitude to the officially recognised
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PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
form of
religion.
We find in both the same reverential clinging to the forms regarded as
sacred, united to complete independence of intellect, which, breathing
upon a thing that is old, transforms it into a thing that is new. * For
example, Kant does not reject the Bible, but he values it not on
account
of what we “take out“ of it, but because of what we “put into it with
moral
thought.“ † And though he has no objections to Churches “of which there
are several equally good forms,“ yet he has the courage frankly to say:
“To look upon this statutory service (the historical methods of praise
and Church dogmas) as essential to the service of God and to make it
the
first condition of divine pleasure in man is a religious delusion, the
adherence to which is a false service, i.e., a worship of God
directly
contrary to that true service demanded of Him.“ ‡ Kant, therefore,
demands
a religion “in spirit and in truth,“ and faith in a God “whose kingdom
is not of this world“ (that is, not of the world of phenomena). He was,
moreover, well aware of this agreement. In his book on religion, which
appeared in his seventieth year, he gives in about four pages a concise
and beautiful exposition of the teaching of Christ, exclusively
according
to the Gospel of St. Matthew, and concludes: “Here now is a
complete
religion ... illustrated moreover by an example, although neither the
truth
of the doctrines nor the dignity and nobility of the teacher needed any
further attestation.“ § These few words are very significant. For
however sublime and elevating everything which Kant has achieved,
* See vol. i. p.
221.
† Der Streit der Fakultäten, I. Division, supplement.
‡ Die Religion, u.s.w. Section 4, Part 2, Introduction. The
title
of the 3rd section of this part is amusing: “Concerning Priesthood as a
Regiment in the False Service of the Good Principle.“
§ Section 4, Part 1, Division 1. In this exposition there is an
interpretation
which will not be very acceptable to the “regiment of false service“;
the
words, “wide is the gate and broad is the path that leadeth to
destruction,
and they are many that walk thereon,“ he interprets as referring to the
Churches.
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PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
in this
direction,
may be, it resembles more, I think, the energetic, undaunted
preparation
for a true religion than the religion itself; it is a weeding out of
superstition
to give light and air to faith, a sweeping aside of false service to
make
true service possible. There is an absence of any visible picture, of
any
parable. Such a title even as Religion within the Limits of mere
Reason
makes us fear that Kant is on the wrong track. As Lichtenberg warns us:
“Seek to make your account with a God whom reason alone has set upon
the
throne! You will find it is impossible. The heart and the eye demand
their
share in Him.“ * And yet Kant himself had said: “To have religion is
the
duty of man to himself.“ But as soon as he points to Christ and says:
“See,
here you have a complete religion! Here you behold the eternal
example!“
— the objection no longer holds good; for then Kant is, as it were, a
second
John, “who goes before the Lord and prepares the way for Him.“ It was
to
this — to a purified Christianity — that the new Teutonic philosophy at
the end of the eighteenth century impelled all great minds. For Diderot
I refer to vol. i p. 336;
Rousseau's
views are well known; Voltaire, the so-called sceptic, writes:
- Et pour nous
élever,
descendons dans nous-mêmes!
I have already
referred
to Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre; Schiller wrote in the year
1795
to Goethe: “I find in the Christian religion virtualiter the
framework
of all that is Highest and Noblest, and the various manifestations of
it
which we see in life appear to me to be so repellent and absurd,
because
they are unsuccessful representations of this Highest.“ Let us honestly
admit the fact; between Christianity, as forced upon us by the Chaos of
Peoples, and the innermost soul-faith of the Teutons there has
* Politische Bemerkungen.
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PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
never been any
real agreement, never. Goethe could sing boldly:
- Den
deutschen Mannen
gereicht's zum Ruhm,
- Dass sie
gehasst das
Christentum. *
And now comes
forward
an experienced pastor and assures us — as we had long suspected — that
the German peasant has really never been converted to Christianity. † A
Christianity such as we cannot accept has only now become possible; not
because it needed a philosophy, but because false doctrines had to be
swept
aside, and a great all-embracing, true philosophy of life founded — a
philosophy
from which each will take as much as he can, and in which the example
and
the words of Christ will be within the reach of the meanest as well as
of the cleverest.
With this I look upon my makeshift bridge, as far as philosophy of life
including religion is concerned, as finished. My exposition has been
comparatively
minute, because upon such points the utmost clearness could alone help
the reader and keep his attention on the alert. In spite of its length
the whole is only a hasty sketch in which, as has been seen, science on
the one hand and religion on the other have claimed all our interest;
these
two together make up a living philosophy of life, and without that we
possess
no culture; pure philosophy, on the contrary, as a discipline and
training
of the reason, is merely a tool, and so there is no place for it here.
As regards the prominence given at the end to Immanuel Kant, I have
been
influenced by my desire to be as simple and clear as possible. I think
I shall have convinced the
* It redounds to the honour of the Germans to have hated Christianity!
† Paul Gerade: Meine Beobachtungen und Erlebnisse als
Dorfpastor,
1895. In an essay in the Nineteenth Century, January 1898,
entitled
The
Prisoners of the Gods, by W. B. Yeats, it is clearly proved that in
all Catholic Ireland the belief in the (so-called heathen) gods is
still
alive; the peasants, however, mostly fear to utter the word “Gods“;
they
say “the others“ or simply “they,“ or “the royal
gentry,“ seldom does one hear the expression “the spirits.“
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PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
reader that
our
Teutonic philosophy is not an individual caprice, but the necessary
result
of the powerful development of our racial qualities; never will a
single
individual, however great, really “complete“ such a universal work,
never
will the anonymous power of a single personality, working with the
inevitableness
of nature, show such all-round perfection that every one must recognise
such an individual as a paragon and prophet. Such an idea is Semitic,
not
Teutonic; to us it seems self-contradictory, for it presupposes that
personality
in its highest potentiality — genius — becomes impersonal. The man who
really reverences pre-eminent intellectual greatness will never be a
slave
to party, for he lives in the high school of independence. Such a
gigantic
life-work as that of Kant, “the Herculean work of self-knowledge,“ as
he
calls it himself, demanded special gifts and made specialisation
necessary.
But what does that signify? The man who thinks Kant's talent one-sided,
* must really be in possession of an exceptionally many-sided
intellect.
Goethe once said that he felt, when reading Kant, as if he were
entering
a bright room; truly very great praise from such lips. This rare
luminous
power is a consequence of his remarkable intensity of thought. When we
intellectual pigmies walk in the brilliant light created
* I should here like to defend Kant against the reproach of repellent
one-sidedness
which has been spread by Schopenhauer's writings. Schopenhauer asserts
in his Grundlage der Moral, § 6, that Kant will have
nothing
to do with pity, and quotes passages which Kant certainly meant to
express
something different, since they are directed solely against pernicious
sentimentality. Kant may have underestimated the principle of pity upon
which J. J. Rousseau, and, following him, Schopenhauer, laid such
stress,
but he has by no means failed to recognise it. The touchstone in this
case
is his attitude to animals. In the Tugendlehre, § 17, we
read
that violence and cruelty to animals “is quite contrary to the duty of
man towards himself, for thereby sympathy with the sufferings of
animals
is blunted in man.“ This standpoint of kindness to animals as a duty to
self and the principle inculcated, that of “gratitude“ towards domestic
companions, seems to me very lofty. Concerning vivisection, this
so-called
“loveless, indifferent“ and certainly strictly scientific man says,
“Painful
physical experiments merely for the sake of speculation are abhorrent.“
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PHILOSOPHY
AND RELIGION
by Kant, it is
easy enough to note the boundary of the shadow that is not yet
illuminated;
however, but for this one incomparable man we should even to-day look
upon
the shadow as daylight. I had another reason for specially emphasising
Kant. The unfolding of our Teutonic culture, that is, the sum of our
work
from 1200 to 1800, has found in this man a specially pure,
comprehensive
and venerable expression. Equally important as natural philosopher,
thinker,
and teacher of morals — whereby he unites in his own person several
great
branches of our development — he is the first perfect pattern of the
absolutely
independent Teuton who has put aside every trace of Roman absolutism,
dogmatism,
and anti-individualism. And just as he has emancipated us from Rome, so
he can — whenever we please — emancipate us from Judaism; not by
bitterness
and persecution, but by once for all destroying every historical
superstition,
every cabalisticism of Spinoza, every materialistic dogmatism (dogmatic
materialism is only the converse of the same thing). Kant is a true
follower
of Luther; the work which the latter began Kant has continued.
Last update:
June 14th, 2004
