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THE year 1851 was one of remarkable importance for France; a crisis then occurred in its political and intellectual life. The hopes and aspirations to which the Revolution of 1848 had given rise were shattered by the coup d'état of Louis Napoleon in the month of December. The proclamation of the Second Empire heralded the revival of an era of imperialism and reaction in politics, accompanied by a decline in liberty and a diminution of idealism in the world of thought. A censorship of books was established, the press was deprived of its liberty, and the teaching of philosophy forbidden in lycées.*
[Footnote * : The revival of philosophy in the lycées began when Victor Drury reintroduced the study of Logic.]
Various ardent and thoughtful spirits, whose minds and hearts had been uplifted by the events of 1848, hoping to see the dawn of an era expressing in action the ideals of the first Revolution, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, were bitterly disappointed. Social ideals such as had been created by Saint-Simon and his school received a rude rebuff from force, militarism and imperialism. So great was the mingled disappointment and disgust of many that they left for ever the realm of practical politics to apply themselves to the arts, letters or sciences. Interesting examples of this state of mind are to be found in Vacherot, Taine, Renan and Renouvier, and, we may add, in Michelet, Victor Hugo and Edgar Quinet. The first of these, Vacherot, who had succeeded Cousin as Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne, lost his chair, as did Quinet and also Michelet, who was further deprived of his position as Archivist. Hugo and Quinet, having taken active political part in the events of 1848, were driven into exile. Disgust, disappointment, disillusionment and pessimism characterise the attitude of all this group of thinkers to political events, and this reacted not only upon their careers but upon their entire philosophy. "With regard to the Second Empire," we find Renan saying,* "if the last ten years of its duration in some measure repaired the mischief done in the first eight, it must never be forgotten how strong this Government was when it was a question of crushing the intelligence, and how feeble when it came to raising it up."
[Footnote *: In his Preface to Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse.]
The disheartening end of the Empire in moral degeneracy and military defeat only added to the gloominess, against which the Red Flag and the red fires of the Commune cast a lurid and pathetic glow, upon which the Prussians could look down with a grim smile from the heights of Paris. Only with the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, and its ratification a few years later, does a feeling of cheerfulness make itself felt in the thought of the time. The years from 1880 onwards have been remarkable for their fruitfulness in the philosophic field--to such an extent do political and social events react upon the most philosophical minds. This is a healthy sign; it shows that those minds have not detached themselves from contact with the world, that the spirit of philosophy is a living spirit and not merely an academic or professional product divorced from the fierce realities of history.
We have already indicated, in the treatment of the "Antecedents" of our period, the dominance of Eclecticism, supported by the powers of officialdom, and have remarked how Positivism arose as a reaction against Cousin's vague spiritualism. In approaching the second half of the century we may in general characterise its thought as a reaction against both eclecticism and positivism. A transitional current can be distinguished where positivism turns, as it were, against itself in the work of Vacherot, Taine and Renan. The works of Cournot and the indefatigable Renouvier with his neo-criticism mark another main current. Ultimately there came to triumph towards the close of the century a new spiritualism, owing much inspiration to De Biran, but which, unlike Cousin's doctrines, had suffered the discipline of the positivist spirit. The main contributors to this current are Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouillée and Guyau, Boutroux, Bergson, Blondel and Weber. Our study deals with the significance of these three currents, and having made this clear we shall then discuss the development of thought in connection with the various problems and ideas in which the philosophy of the period found its expression.
In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant endeavoured, at a time when speculation of a dogmatic and uncritical kind was current, to call attention to the necessity for examining the instrument of knowledge itself, and thereby discovering its fitness or inadequacy, as the case might be, for dealing with the problems which philosophy proposes to investigate. This was a word spoken in due season and, however much subsequent philosophy has deviated from the conclusions of Kant, it has at least remembered the significance of his advice. The result has been that the attitude adopted by philosophers to the problems before them has been determined largely by the kind of answer which they offer to the problems of knowledge itself. Obviously a mind which asserts that we can never be sure of knowing anything (or as in some cases, that this assertion is itself uncertain) will see all questions through the green-glasses of scepticism. On the other hand, a thinker who believes that we do have knowledge of certain things and can be certain of thiss, whether by objective proof or a subjective intuition, is sure to have, not only a different conclusion about problems, but, what is probably more important for the philosophic spirit, a different means of approaching them.
Writing in 1860 on the general state of philosophy, Renan pointed out, in his Essay La Métaphysique el son Avenir,* that metaphysical speculation, strictly so-called, had been in abeyance for thirty years, and did not seem inclined to continue the traditions of Kant, Hegel, Hamilton and Cousin. The reasons which he gave for this depression of the philosophical market were, firstly, the feeling of the impossibility of ultimate knowledge, a scepticism of the instrument, so far as the human mind was concerned, and secondly, the rather disdainful attitude adopted by many minds towards philosophy owing to the growing importance of science--in short, the question, "Is there any place left for philosophy; has it any raison d'être?"
[Footnote *: Essay published later (1876) in his Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques. Cf. especially pp. 265-266.]
The progress of the positive sciences, and the assertions of many that philosophy was futile and treacherous, led philosophy to give an account of itself by a kind of apologia pro vita sua. In the face of remarks akin to that of Newton's "Physics beware of metaphysics," the latter had to bestir itself or pass out of existence. It was, indeed, this extinction which the more ardent and devoted scientific spirits heralded, re-iterating the war-cry of Auguste Comte.
It was a crisis, in fact, for philosophy. Was it to become merely a universal science? Was it to abandon the task of solving the problems of the universe by rapid intuitions and a priori constructions and undertake the construction of a science of the whole, built up from the data and results of the science of the parts--i.e., the separate sciences of nature? Was there, then, to be no place for metaphysics in this classification of the sciences to which the current of thought was tending with increasing impetuosity? Was a science of primary or ultimate truths a useless chimera, to be rejected entirely by the human mind in favour of an all-sufficing belief in positive science? These were the questions which perplexed the thoughtful minds of that time.
We shall do well, therefore, in our survey of the half century before us, to investigate the two problems which were stressed by Renan in the essay we have quoted, for his acute mind possessed a unique power of sensing the feeling and thought of his time. Our preliminary task will be the examination of the general attitude to knowledge adopted by the various thinkers and schools of thought, following this by an inquiry into the attitude adopted to science itself and its relation to philosophy.
With these considerations in mind, let us examine the three currents of thought in our period beginning with that which is at once a prolongation of positivism and a transformation of it, a current expressed in the work of Vacherot, Taine and Renan.
Etienne Vacherot (1809-1897) was partially a disciple of Victor Cousin and a representative also of the positivist attitude to knowledge. His work, however, passed beyond the bounds indicated by these names. He remained a convinced naturalist and believer in positive science, but, unlike Comte, he did not despise metaphysical inquiry, and he sought to find a place for it in thought. Vacherot, who had won a reputation for himself by an historical work on the Alexandrian School, became tne director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, an important position in the intellectual world. He here advocated the doctrines by which he sought to give a to metaphysics. His most important book, La Métaphysique et la Science, in three volumes, appeared in 1858. He suffered imprisonment the following year for His liberal principles under the Empire which had already deprived him of his position at the Sorbonne.
The general attitude to knowledge adopted by Vacherot recalls in some respects the metaphysical doctrines of Spinoza, and he endeavours to combine the purely naturalistic view of the world with a metaphysical conception. The result is a profound and, for Vacherot, irreconcilable dualism, in which the real and the ideal are set against one another in rigorous contrast, and the gap between them is not bridged or even attempted to be filled up, as, at a later date, was the task assumed by Fouillee in his philosophy of idées-forces. For Vacherot the world is a unity, eternal and infinite, but lacking perfection. Perfection, the ideal, is incompatible with reality. The real is not at all ideal, and the ideal has no reality.* In this unsatisfactory dualism Vacherot leaves us. His doctrine, although making a superficial appeal by its seeming positivism on the one hand, and its maintenance of the notion of the ideal or perfection on the other, is actually far more paradoxical than that which asserts that ultimately it is the ideal only which is real. While St. Anselm had endeavoured to establish by his proof of the existence of God the reality of perfection, Vacherot, by a reversal of this proof, arrives at the opposite conclusion, and at a point where it seems that it would be for the ideal an imperfection to exist. The absolute existence of all things is thus separated from the ideal, and no attempt is made to relate the two, as Spinoza had so rigorously done, by maintaining that reality is perfection./-
[Footnote *: It is interesting to contrast this with the attitude of the new spiritualists, especially Fouillée's conception of idees-forces, of ideas and ideals realising themselves. See also Guyau's attitude."L'idéal n'est-il pas, sur la terre où nous sommes
Plus fécond et plus beau que la réalité?"
--Illusion féconde.]
[Footnote /- : Vacherot contributed further to the thought of his time, notably by a book on religion, 1869, and later in life seems to have become sympathetic to the New Spiritualism, on which he also wrote a book in 1884.]
The influence of Vacherot was in some measure continued in that of his pupil, Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), a thinker who had considerable influence upon the development of thought in our period. His ability as a critic of art and literature was perhaps more marked than his purely philosophical influence, but this is, nevertheless, important, and cannot be overlooked.
Taine was a student of the Ecole Normale, and in 1851 was appointed to teach philosophy at Nevers. The coup d'état, however, changed his career, and he turned to literature as his main field, writing a work on La Fontaine for his doctorate in 1853. In the year of Comte's death (1857) Taine published his book, Les Philosophes français du XIXe Siècle, in which he turned his powerful batteries of criticism upon the vague spiritualism professed by Cousin and officially favoured in France at that time.* By his adverse criticism of Cousin and the Eclectic School, Taine placed his influence upon the side of the positivist followers of Comte. It would, however, be erroneous to regard him as a mere disciple of Comte, as Taine's positivism was in its general form a wider doctrine, yet more rigorously scientific in some respects than that of Comte. There was also an important difference in their attitude to metaphysics. Taine upheld strongly the value, and, indeed, the necessity, of a metaphysical doctrine. He never made much of any debt or allegiance to Comte.
[Footnote * : See his chapter xii. on "The Success of Eclecticism," pp. 283-307. Cousin, he criticises at length; De Biran, Royer-Collard and Jouffroy are included in his censures. We might mention that this book was first issued in the form of articles in the Revue de l'Instruction publique during the years 1855, 1856.]
In 1860 a volume dealing with the Philosophy of Art appeared from his pen, in which he not only endeavoured to relate the art of a period to the general environment in which it arose, but, in addition, he dealt with certain psychological aspects of the problem. Largely as a result of the talent displayed in this work, he was ap-* *pointed in 1864 to tne chair of the History of Art and Æsthetics in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Taine's interest in philosophy, and especially in psychological problems, was more prominently demon strated in his book De l'Intelligence, the two volumes of which appeared in 1870. In this work he takes a strict view of the human intelligence as a mechanism, the workings of which he sets forth in a precise and cold manner. His treatment of knowledge is akin, in some respects, to the doctrines of the English Utilitarian and Evolutionary School as represented by John Stuart Mill, Bain and Spencer. The main feature of the Darwinian doctrine is set by Taine in the foreground of epistemology. There is, according to him, "a struggle for existence" in the realm of the individual consciousness no less than in the external world. This inner conflict is between psychical elements which, when victorious, result in sense-perception. This awareness, or hallucination vraie, is not knowledge of a purely speculative character; it is (as, at a later date, Bergson was to maintain in his doctrine of perception) essentially bound up with action, with the instinct and mechanism of movement.
One of the most notable features of Taine's work is his attitude to psychology. He rejects absolutely the rather scornful attitude adopted with regard to this science by Comte; at the same time he shatters the flimsy edifice of the eclectics in order to lay the foundation of a scientific psychology. "The true and independent psychology is," he remarks, "a magnificent science which lays the foundation of the philosophy of history, which gives life to physiology and opens up the pathway to metaphysics."* Our debt to Taine is immense, for he initiated the great current of experimental psychology for which his country has since become famous. It is not our intention in this present work to follow out in any detail the purely psychological work of the period. Psychology has more and more become differentiated from, and to a large degree, independent of, philosophy in a strictly metaphysical meaning of that word. Yet we shall do well in passing to note that through Taine's work the scientific attitude to psychologv and its many problems was taken up and developed by Ribot, whose study of English Psychology appeared in the same year as Taine's Intelligence. Particularly by his frequent illustrations drawn from abnormal psychology, Taine "set the tone" for contemporary and later study of mental activity of this type. Ribot's later books have been mainly devoted to the study of "the abnormal,"and his efforts are characteristic of the labours of the Paris School, comprising Charcot, Paulhan, Binet and Janet.* French psychology has in consequence become a clearly defined "school," with characteristics peculiar to itself which distinguish it at once from the psychophysical research of German workers and from the analytic labours of English psychologists. Its debt to Taine at the outset must not be forgotten.
[Footnote * : De l'Intelligence, Conclusion.]
[Footnote * : By Charcot (1825-1893), Leçons sur les Maladies du Système nerveux faites à la Salpêtrière and Localisation dans les Maladies du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, 1880.By Ribot (1839-1916), Hérédité, Etude psychologique, 1873, Eng. trans., 1875; Les Maladies de la Mémoire, Essai dans la Psychologie positive, 1881, Eng. trans., 1882; Maladies de la Volonté, 1883, Eng. trans., 1884; Maladies de la Personnalité, 1885, Eng. trans., 1895. Ribot expressed regret at the way in which abnormal psychology has been neglected in England. See his critique of Bain in his Psychologie anglaise contemporaine. In 1870 Ribot declared the independence of psychology as a study, separate from philosophy. Ribot had very wide interests beyond pure psychology, a fact which is stressed by his commencing in 1876 the periodical La Revue philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger.
By Binet (1857-191!), Magnétisme animal, 1886; Les Altérations de la personnalité, 1892; L'Introduction à la Psychologie expérimentale, 1894. He founded the review L'Année psychologique in 1895.
By Janet (Pierre), born 1859 now Professeur at the Collège de France, L'Automatisme psychologique, 1889; Etat mental des Hystériques, 1894; and Neuroses et Idées-fixes, 1898. He founded the Journal de Psychologie.
By Paulhan, Phénomenes affectifs and L'Activité mentale.
To the fame of the Paris School of Psychology must now be added that of the Nancy School embracing the work of Coué.]
The War and the subsequent course of events in France seemed to deepen the sadness and pessimism of Taine's character. He described himself as naturellement triste, and finally his severe positivism developed into a rigorous stoicism akin to that of Marcus Aurelius and Spinoza. This attitude of mind coloured his unfinished historical work, Les Origines de la France contemporaine, upon which he was engaged for the last years of his life (1876-1894). It may be noticed for its bearing upon the study of sociological problems which it indirectly encouraged. Just as Taine had regarded a work of art as the product of social environment, so he looks upon historical events. This history bears all the marks of Taine's rigid, positive philosophy, intensified by his later stoicism. The Revolution of 1789 is treated in a cold and stern manner devoid of enthusiasm of any sort. He could not make historical narrative live like Michelet, and from his own record the Revolution itself is almost unintelligible. For Taine, however, we must remember, human nature is absolutely the product of race, environment and history.*
[Footnote *: Michelet (1798-1874), mentioned here as an historian of a type entirely different from Taine, influenced philosophic thought by his volumes Le Peuple, 1846; L'Amour, 1858; Le Prêtre, La Femme et la Famille, 1859; and La Bible de l'Humanité, 1864. He and his friend Quinet (1803-1875), who was also a Professor at the College de France, and was the author of Génie des Religions, 1842, had considerable influence prior to 1848 of a political and religious character. They were in strong opposition to the Roman Catholic Church and had keen controversies with the Jesuits and Ultramontanists.]
In the philosophy of Taine various influences are seen at work interacting. The spirit of the French thinkers of the previous century--sensualists and ideologists--reappears in him. While in a measure he fluctuates between naturalism and idealism, the predominating tone of his work is clearly positivist. He was a great student of Spinoza and of Hegel, and the influence of both these thinkers appears in his work. Like Spinoza, he believes in a universal determination; like Hegel, he asserts the real and the rational to be identical. In his general attitude to the problems of knowledge Taine criticises and passes beyond the standpoints of both Hume and Kant. He opposes the purely empiricist schools of both France and England. The purely empirical attitude which looks upon the world as fragmentary and phenomenal is deficient, according to Taine, and is, moreover, incompatible with the notion of necessity. This notion of necessity is characteristic of Taine's whole work, and his strict adherence to it was mainly due to his absolute belief in science and its methods, which is a mark of all the positivist type of thought.
While he rejected Hume's empiricism he also opposed the doctrines of Kant and the neo-critical school which found its inspiration in Kant and Hume. Taine asserted that it is possible to have a knowledge of things in their objective reality, and he appears to have based his epistemology upon the doctrine of analysis proposed by Condillac. Taine disagreed with the theory of the relativity of human knowledge and with the phenomenal basis of the neo-critical teaching, its rejection of "the thing in itself." He believed we had knowledge not merely relative but absolute, and he claimed that we can pass from phenomena and their laws to comprehend the essence of things in themselves. He endeavours to avoid the difficulties of Hume by dogmatism. While clinging to a semi-Hegelian view of rationality he avoids Kant's critical attitude to reason itself. We have in Taine not a critical rationalist but a dogmatic rationalist. While the rational aspect of his thought commands a certain respect and has had in many directions a very wholesome influence, notably, as we have remarked, upon psychology, yet it proves itself in the last analysis self-contradictory, for a true rationalism is critical in character rather than dogmatic.
In Taine'a great contemporary, Ernest Renan (1823-1892), a very different temper is seen. The two thinkers both possessed popularity as men of letters, and resembled one another in being devoted to literary and historical pursuits rather than to philosophy itself.
Renan was trained for the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. He has left us a record of his early life in Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse. We there have an autobiography of a sincere and sensitive soul, encouraged in his priestly career by his family and his teachers to such a degree that he had conceived of no other career for himself, until at the age of twenty, under the influence of modern scientific doctrines and the criticism of the Biblical records, he found himself an unbeliever, certainly not a Roman Catholic, and not, in the ordinary interpretation of that rather vague term, a Christian. The harsh, unrelenting dogmatism of the Roman Church drove Renan from Christianity. We find him remarking that had he lived in a Protestant. country he might not have been faced with the dilemma.* A via media might have presented itself in one of the very numerous forms into which Protestant Christianity, is divided. He might have exercised in such a sphere, his priestly functions as did Schleiermacher. Renan's break with Rome emphasises the clear-cut division which exists in France between the Christian faith (represented, almost entirely by the Roman Church) and libre-pensée, a point which will claim our attention later, when we come to treat of the Philosophy of Religion.
[Footnote * : Cf. his Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 292.]
Having abandoned the seminary and the Church, Renan worked for his university degrees. The events of 1848-49 inspired his young heart with great enthusiasm, under the influence of which he wrote his Avenir de la Science. This book was not published, however, until 1890, when he had lost his early hopes and illusions. In 1849 he went away upon a mission to Italy. "The reaction of 1850-51 and the coup d'état instilled into me a pessimism of which I am not yet cured," so he wrote in the preface to his Dialogues et Fragments philosophiques.* Some years after the coup d'état he published a volume of essays (Essais de Morale et de Critique), and he showed his acquaintance with Arabic philosophy by an excellent treatise on Averroes et l'Averroisme (1859). The following year he visited Syria and, in 1861, was appointed Professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France. He then began his monumental work on Les Origines du Christianisme, of which the first volume, La Vie de Jésus, appeared in 1863. Its importance for religious thought we shall consider in our last chapter; here it must suffice to observe its immediate consequences. These were terrific onslaughts from the clergy upon its author, which, although they brought the attention of his countrymen and of the world upon Renan, resulted in the Imperial Government suspending his tenure of the chair. After the fall of the Empire, however, he returned to it, and under the Third Republic became Director of the Collège de France.
[Footnote * : Published only in 1895. The preface referred to is dated 1871.]
Renan, although he broke off his career in the Church and his connection with organised religion, retained, nevertheless, much of the priestly character all his life, and he himself confesses this: "I have learned several things, but I have changed in nowise as to the general system of intellectual and moral life. My habitation has become more spacious, but it still stands on the same ground. I look upon my estrangement from orthodoxy as only a change of opinion concerning an important historical question, a change which does not prevent me from dwelling on the same foundations as before." He indeed found it impossible to reconcile the Catholic faith with free and honest thought. His break with the Church made him an enemy of all superstition, and his writings raised against him the hatred of the Catholic clergy, who regarded him as a deserter. In the cus-* *tomary terms of heated theological debate he was styled an atheist. This was grossly unfair or meaningless. Which word we use here depends upon our definition of theism. As a matter of fact, Renan was one of the most deeply religious minds of his time. His early religious sentiments remained, in essence if not in form, with him throughout his life. These were always associated with the tender memories he had of his mother and beloved sister and his virtuous teachers, the priests in the little town of Brittany, whence he came. Much of the Breton mysticism clung to his soul, and much of his philosophy is a restated, rationalised form of his early beliefs.
As a figure in the intellectual life of the time, Renan is difficult to estimate. The very subtilty of his intellect betrayed him into an oscillation which was far from admirable, and prevented his countrymen in his own day from "getting to grips" with his ideas. These were kaleidoscopic. Renan seems a type, reflecting many tendencies of the time, useful as an illustration to the historian of the ideas of the period; but for philosophy in the special sense he has none of the clearly defined importance of men like Renouvier, Lachelier, Guyau, Fouillée, Bergson or Blondel. His humanism keeps him free from dogmatism, but his mind fluctuates so that his general attitude to the ultimate problems is one of reserve, of scepticism and of frequent paradox and contradiction. Renan seems to combine the positivist scorn of metaphysics with the Kantian idealism. At times, however, his attitude is rather Hegelian, and he believes in universal change which is an evolving of spirit, the ideal or God, call it what we will. We need not be too particular about names or forms of thought, for, after all, everything "may be only a dream." That is Renan's attitude, to temper enthusiasm by irony, to assert a duty of doubt, and often, perhaps, to gain a literary brilliance by contradictory statements. "The survey of human affairs is not complete," he reminds us, "unless we allot a place for irony beside that of tears, a place for pity beside that of rage, and a place for a smile alongside respect."*
[Footnote *: Preface to his Drames philosophiques, 1888.]
It was this versatility which made Renan a lover of the philosophic dialogue. This literary and dramatic form naturally appealed strongly to a mind who was so very conscious of the fact that the truths with which philosophy deals cannot be directly denied or directly affirmed, as they are not subject to demonstration. All the high problems of humanity Renan recognised as being of this kind, as involving finally a rational faith; and he claimed that the best we can do is to present the problems of life from different points of view. This is due entirely to the peculiar character of philosophy itself, and to the distinction, which must never be overlooked, between knowledge and belief, between certitude and opinion. Geometry, for example, is not a subject for dialogues but for demonstration, as it involves knowledge and certitude. The problems of philosophy, on the contrary, involve "une nuance de foi," as Renan styles it. They involve willed adhesion, acceptance or choice; they provoke sympathy or hate, and call into play human personality with its varying shades of colour.
This state of nuance Renan asserts to be the one of the hour for philosophy. It is not the time, he thinks, to attempt to strengthen by abstract reasoning the "proofs" of God's existence or of the reality of a future life. "Men see just now that they can never know anything of the supreme cause of the universe or of their own destiny. Nevertheless they are anxious to listen to those who will speak to them about either."/-
[Footnote /-: From his Preface to Drames philosophiques.]
Knowledge, Renan maintained, lies somewhere between the two schools into which the majority of men are divided. "What you are looking for has long since been discovered and made clear," say the orthodox. "What you are looking for is impossible to find," say the practical positivists, the political "raillers" and the atheists. It is true that we shall never know the ultimate secret of all being, but we shall never prevent man from desiring more and more knowledge or from creating for himself working hypotheses or beliefs.
Yet although Renan admits this truth he never approaches even the pragmatist position of supporting "creative beliefs." He rather urges a certain passivity towards problems and opinions. We should, he argues in his Examen de Conscience philosophique,* let them work themselves out in us. Like a spectator we must let them modify our "intellectual retina"; we must let reality reflect itself in us. By this he does not mean to assert that the truth about that reality is a matter of pure indifference to us-far from it. Precisely because he is so conscious of the importance of true knowledge, he is anxious that we should approach the study of reality without previous prejudices. "We have no right," he remarks, "to have a desire when reason speaks; we must listen and nothing more."
[Footnote: Feuilles détachées, p. 402.]
[Footnote *: In his Feuilles detachées, pp. 401-443.]
It must be admitted, however, that Renan's attitude to the problems of knowledge was largely sceptical. While, as we shall see in the following chapter, he extolled science, his attitude to belief and to knowledge was irritating in its vagueness and changeableness. He appeared to pose too much as a dilettante making a show of subtle intellect, rather than a serious thinker of the first rank. His eminence and genius are unquestioned, but he played in a bewitching and frequently bewildering manner with great and serious problems, and one cannot help wishing that this great intellect of his--and it was unquestionably great--was not more steady and was not applied by its owner more steadfastly and courageously to ultimate problems. His writings reflect a bewildering variety of contradictory moods, playful, scathing, serious and mocking. Indeed, he replied in his Feuilles detachées (1892) to the accusations of Amiel by insisting that irony is the philosopher's last word. For him as for his brilliant fellow-countryman, Anatole France, ironical scepticism is the ultimate product of his reflection upon life. His Examen de Conscience philosophique is his Confession of Faith, written four years before his death, in which he tries to defend his sceptical attitude and to put forward scepticism as an apology for his own uncertainty and his paradoxical changes of view. Irony intermingles with his doubt here too. We do not know, he says, ultimate reality; we do not know whether there be any purpose or end in the universe at all. There may be, but on the other hand it may be a farce and fiasco. By refusing to believe in anything, rejecting both alternatives, Renan argues, with a kind of mental cowardice, we avoid the consequence of being absolutely deceived. He recommended an adoption of mixed belief and doubt, optimism and irony.
This is a surprising attitude in a philosopher and is not characteristic of great modern thinkers, most of whom prefer belief (hypothetical although that be) to non-belief. Doubtless Renan's early training had a psychological effect which operated perhaps largely unconsciously throughout his life, and his literary and linguistic ability seems to have given him a reputation which was rather that of a man of letters than a philosopher. He had not the mental strength or frankness to face alternatives squarely and to decide to adopt one. Consequently he merited the application of the old proverb about being between two stools. This application was actually made to Renan's attitude in a critical remark by Renouvier in his Esquisse d'une Classification des Doctrines philosphiques.* Renouvier had no difficulty in pointing out that the man who hesitates deprives himself of that great reality, the exercise of his own power of free choice, in itself valuable and more akin to reality (whatever be the choice) than a mere "sitting on the fence," an attitude which, so far from assuring one of getting the advantages of both possibilities as Renan claims, may more justly seem to deprive one of the advantages in both directions. The needs of life demand that we construct beliefs of some sort. We may be wrong and err, but pure scepticism such as Renan advocated is untenable. Life, if it is to be real and earnest, demands of us that we have faith in some values, that we construct some beliefs, some hypotheses, by which we may work.
[Footnote: Vol. ii., p. 395.]
Both Renan and Taine exercised a considerable influence upon French thought. While inheriting the positivist outlook they, to a great degree, perhaps unconsciously, undermined the positive position, both by their interest in the humanities, in art, letters and religion and in their metaphysical attitude. Taine, beginning with a rigid naturalism, came gradually to approach an idealistic standpoint in many respects, while Renan, beginning with a dogmatic idealism, came to acute doubt, hypotheses, "dreams" and scepticism. Taine kept his thoughts in too rigid a mould, solidified, while those of Renan seem finally to have existed only in a gaseous state, intangible, vague and hazy. We have observed how the positivist current from Comte was carried over by Vacherot to Taine. In Renan we find that current present also, but it has begun to turn against itself. While we may say that his work reflects in a very remarkable manner the spirit of his time, especially the positivist faith in science, yet we are also able to find in it, in spite of his immense scepticism, the indications of a spiritualist or idealist movement, groping and shaping itself as the century grows older.
While the positivist current of thought was working itself out through Vacherot, Taine and Renan to a position which forms a connecting link between Comte and the new spiritualism in which the reaction against positivism and eclecticism finally culminated, another influence was making itself felt independently in the neo-critical philosophy of Renouvier.
We must here note the work and influence of Cournot (1801-1877), which form a very definite link between the doctrines of Comte and those of Renouvier. He owed much to positivism, and he contributed to the formation of neo-criticism by his influence upon Renouvier. Cournot's Essai sur le Fondement de nos Connaissances appeared in 1851, three years before Renouvier gave to the world the first volume of his Essais de Critique générale. In 1861 Cournot published his Traité de l'Enchaînement des Idées, which was followed by his Considerations sur le Marche des Idées (1872) and Matérialisme, Vitalisme, Rationalisme (1875). These volumes form his contribution to philosophical thought, his remaining works being mainly concerned with political economy and mathematics, a science in which he won distinction.
Like Comte, Cournot opposed the spiritualism, the eclecticism and the psychology of Cousin, but he was possessed of a more philosophic mind than Comte; he certainly had greater philosophical knowledge, was better equipped in the history of philosophy and had much greater respect for metaphysical theory. He shared with Comte, however, an interest in social problems and biology; he also adopted his general attitude to knowledge, but the spirit of Cournot's work is much less dogmatic than that of the great positivist, and he made no pretensions to be a "pontiff" such as Comte aspired to be. Indeed his lack of pretensions may account partly for the lack of attention with which his work (which is shrewd, thoughtful and reserved) has been treated. He aimed at indicating the foundations of a sound philosophy rather than at offering a system of thought to the public. This temper was the product of his scientific attitude. It was by an examination of the sciences and particularly of the principles upon which they depend that he formulated his group of fundamental doctrines.
He avoided hasty generalisations or a priori constructions and, true to the scientific spirit, based his thought upon the data afforded by experience. He agreed heartily with Comte regarding the relativity of our knowledge. An investigation of this knowledge shows it to be based on three principles--order, chance, and probability. We find order existing in the universe and by scientific methods we try to grasp this order. This involves induction, a method which cannot give us absolute certainty, although it approximates to it. It gives us probability only. There is therefore a reality of chances, and contingency or chance must be admitted as a factor in evolution and in human history.
Cournot foreshadows many of the doctrines of the new spiritualists as well as those of the neo-critical school. Much in his work heralds a Bergson as well as a Renouvier. This is noticeable in his attitude to science and to the problem of contingency or freedom. It is further seen in his doctrine that the vivant is incapable of demonstration, in his view of the soul or higher instinct which he distinguished from the intelligence, in the biological interest displayed in his work (due partly to the work of Bichat*), and in his idea of a Travail de Création. Unlike Bergson, however, he admits a teleology, for he believed this inseparable from living beings, but he regards it as a hazardous finality, not rigid or inconsistent with freedom.
[Footnote * : Bichat (1771-1802) was a noted physiologist and anatomist. In 1800 appeared his Recherches physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort, followed in 1801 by Anatomie générale, appliquée à la Physiologie et à la Médecine.]
The immediate influence of Cournot was felt by only a small circle, and his most notable affinity was with Renouvier, although Cournot was less strictly an intellectualist. Like Renouvier he looked upon philosophy as a "Critique générale." He was also concerned with the problem of the categories and with the compatibility of science and freedom, a problem which was now assuming a very central position in the thought of the period.
Renouvier, in the construction of his philosophy, was partly influenced by the work of Cournot. In this lone, stern, indefatigable worker we have one of the most powerful minds of the century. Charles Renouvier shares with Auguste Comte the first honours of the century in France so far as philosophical work is concerned. Curiously enough he came from Comte's birth-place, Montpellier. When Renouvier was born in 1815, seventeen years later than Comte, the great positivist was in his second year of study at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. To this great scientific and mathematical institution came Renouvier, to find Comte as Répétiteur of Higher Mathematics. He was not only a keen student of the mathematical sciences but also an ardent follower of Saint-Simon, and although in later life he lost many of the hopes of his youth the Saint-Simon spirit remained with him, and he retained a keen interest in social ethics and particularly in the ideas of Fourier, Proudhon and Blanc. At the Ecole he met as fellow-pupils Jules Lequier and Felix Ravaisson.
Instead of entering the civil service Renouvier then applied himself to philosophy and political science, influenced undoubtedly by Comte's work. The year 1848, which saw the second attempt to establish a republic, gave Renouvier, now a zealous republican, an opportunity, and he issued his Manuel républicain de l'Homme et du Citoyen. This volume, intended for schoolmasters, had the approval of Carnot, Minister of Education to the Provisionary Government. Its socialist doctrines were so criticised by the Chamber of 1849 that Carnot, and with him the Government, fell from power. Renouvier went further in his Gouvernement direct et Organisation communale et centrale de la République, in which he collaborated with his socialist friends in outlining a scheme of communism, making the canton a local power, a scheme which contained the germ-idea of the Soviet of Bolshevik Russia. Such ideas were, however, far too advanced for the France of that date and their proposal did more harm than good to the progressive party by producing a reaction in wavering minds. Renouvier, through the paper Liberté de penser, launched attacks upon the policy of the Presidency, and began in the Revue philosophique a serial Uchronie, a novel of a political and philosophical character. It was never finished. Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, came, on December and, the coup d'état. The effect of this upon Renouvier was profound. Disgusted at the power of the monarchy, the shattering of the republican hopes, the suppression of liberty and the general reaction, he abandoned political life entirely. What politics lost, however, philosophy has gained, for he turned his acute mind with its tremendous energy to the study of the problems of the universe.
Three years after the coup d'état, in the same year in which Comte completed his Système de Politique positive, 1854, Renouvier published the first volume of his magnum opus, the Essais de Critique générale.* The appearance of this work is a notable date in the development of modern French philosophy. The problems therein discussed will concern us in later chapters. Here we must point out the indefatigable labour given to this work by Renouvier. The writing and revision of these essays covered almost the whole of the half century, concluding in 1897. In their first, briefer form they occupied the decade 1854-64, and consisted of four volumes only, which on revision became finally thirteen.* These Essays range over Logic, Psychology, the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Philosophy of History.
[Footnote * : It is interesting for the comparative study of the thought of the century to observe that the great work of Lotze in Germany, Mikrocosmos, was contemporaneous with the Essais of Renouvier. Lotze's three volumes appeared in 1856, 1858 and 1864. The Logik and Metaphysik of Lotze should also be compared with Renouvier's Essais. Further comparison or contrast may be made with reference to the Logic of both Bradley and Bosanquet in England.]
[Footnote * : Since 1912 the Essais de Critique générale are available in ten volumes, owing to the publications of new editions of the first three Essays by A. Colin in five volumes. For details of the original and revised publication of the work, see our Bibliography, under Renouvier (pp. 334-335).]
Having thus laid the foundations of his own throught, Renouvier, in conjunction with his scholarly friend Pillon, undertook the publication of a monthly periodical, L'Année philosophique, to encourage philosophic thought in France. This appeared first in 1867, the same year in which Ravaisson laid the foundations of the new spiritualism by his celebrated Rapport. In 1869 Renouvier published his noteworthy treatise upon Ethics, in two volumes, La Science de la Morale.
The war of 1870 brought his monthly periodical to an untimely end. The conclusion of the war in 1871 resulted in the establishment, for the third time, of a republic, which in spite of many vicissitudes has continued even to this day. With the restoration of peace and of a republic, Renouvier felt encouraged to undertake the ambitious scheme of publishing a weekly paper, not only philosophical in character but political, literary and religious. He desired ardently to address his countrymen at a time when they were rather intellectually and morally bewildered. He felt he had something constructive to offer, and hoped that the "new criticism," as he called it, might become the philosophy of the new republic. Thus was founded, in 1872, the famous Critique philosophique, which aimed primarily at the consolidation of the republic politically and morally,/- This paper appeared as a weekly from its commencement until 1884,then continued for a further five years as a monthly. Renouvier and his friend Pillon were assisted by other contributors, A. Sabatier, L. Dauriac, R. Allier, who were more or less disciples of the neo-critical school. Various articles were contributed by William James, who had a great admiration for Renouvier. The two men, although widely different in temperament and method, had certain affinities in their doctrine of truth and certitude.*
[Footnote /- : In the early numbers, political articles, as was natural in the years following 1871, were prominent. Among these early articles we may cite the one, "Is France morally obliged to carry out the terms of the Treaty imposed upon her by Prussia?"]
[Footnote * : On this relationship see James's Will to Believe, p. 143, 1897, and the dedications in his Some Problems of Philosophy (to Renouvier), and his Principles of Psychology (to Pillon), also Letters of William James, September i8th, 1892.]
Renouvier's enthusiasm for his periodical did not, however, abate his energy or ardour for more lasting work. He undertook the task of revising and augmenting his great work, the Essais de Critique générale, and added to the series another (fifth) Essay, in four volumes. He also issued in 1876 the curious work Uchronie, a history of "what might have been" (in his view) the development of European civilisation. Together with Pillon he translated Hume's Treatise on Human Nature.
Meanwhile the Critique philosophique continued to combat any symptoms of a further coup d'état, and "to uphold strictly republican principles and to fight all that savoured of Caesar or imperialism." In 1878 a quarterly supplement La Critique religieuse was added to attack the Roman Catholic Church and to diminish its power in France./-
[Footnote /- : The significance of this effort is more fully dealt with in our last chapter.]
Articles which had appeared in this quarterly were published as Esquisse d'une Classification systématique des Doctrines philosophiques in 1885 in two volumes, the second of which contained the important Confession of Faith of Renouvier, entitled, How I arrived at this Conclusion.
His thought assumed a slightly new form towards the close of the century, at the end of which he published, in conjunction with his disciple Prat, a remarkable volume, which took a prize at the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, to which rather late in the day he was admitted as a member at the age of eighty-five. In its title La Nouvelle Monadologie, and method it reveals the influence of Leibnitz.
The close of the century shows us Renouvier as an old man, still an enormous worker, celebrating his eighty-sixth birthday by planning and writing further volumes (Les Dilemmes de la Métaphysique pure and its sequel, Histoire et Solution des Problèmes métaphysiques). This "grand old man" of modern French philosophy lived on into the early years of the twentieth century, still publishing, still writing to the last. His final volume, Le Personnalisme, was a restatement of his philosophy, issued when he was in his eighty-ninth year. He died "in harness" in 1903, dictating to his friend Prat a résumé of his thought on important points and leaving an unpublished work on the philosophy of Kant.*
[Footnote * : The résumé was published by Prat a couple of years later as Derniers Entretiens, the volume on the Doctrine de Kant, followed in 1906.]
Renouvier's career is a striking one and we have sketched it somewhat fully here because of its showing more distinctly than that of Taine or Renan the reflections of contemporary history upon the thinking minds who lived through the years 1848-51 and 1870-71. Renouvier was a young spirit in the year of the revolution, 1848, and lived right on through the coup d'état, the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, the Third Republic, and he foresaw and perhaps influenced the Republic's attitude to the Roman Church. His career is the most significant and enlightening one to follow of all the thinkers who come within our period. Let us note that he never held any academic or public teaching appointment. His life was in the main a secluded one and, like Comte, he found the University a limited preserve closed against him and his philosophy, dominated by the declining eclecticism which drew its inspiration from Cousin. Only gradually did his influence make itself felt to such a degree that the University was compelled to take notice of it. Now his work is more appreciated, but not as much as it might be, and outside his own country he is little known. The student finds his writings somewhat difficult owing to the author's heavy style. He has none of the literary ease and brilliance of a Renan. But his work was great and noble, animated by a passion for truth and a hatred of philosophical "shams" and a current of deep moral earnestness colours all his work. He had considerable power as a critic, for the training of the Ecole Polytechnique produced a strictly logical temper in his work, which is that of a true philosopher, not that of a merely brilliant litterateur or dilettante, and he must be regarded as one of the intellectual giants of the century.
While we see in Positivism a system of thought which opposed itself to Eclecticism, we find in the philosophy of Renouvier a system of doctrine which is opposed to both Eclecticism and Positivism. Indeed Renouvier puts up a strong mental fight against both of these systems; the latter he regarded as an ambitious conceit. He agreed, however, with Comte and with Cournot upon the relativity of our knowledge. "I accept," he says, "one fundamental principle of the Positivist School--namely, the reduction of knowledge to the laws of phenomena."* The author of the Essais de Critique générale considered himself, however, to be the apostolic successor, not of Comte, but of Kant. The title of neo-criticisme/- which he gave to his philosophy shows his affinity with the author of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. This is very noticeable in his method of treating the problem of knowledge by criticising the human mind and especially in his giving a preference to moral considerations.* It would be, however, very erroneous to regard Renouvier as a disciple of Kant, for he amends and rejects many of the doctrines of the German philosopher. We have noted the fact that he translated Hume; we must observe also that Hume's influence is very strongly marked in Renouvier's "phenomenalism."/- "Renouvier is connected with Hume," says Pillon, in the preface he contributed to the translation,/= "as much as with Kant. . . . He reconciles Hume and Kant. . . . Something is lacking in Hume, the notion of law; something is superfluous in Kant, the notion of substance. It was necessary to unite the phenomenalism of Hume with the a priori teaching of Kant. This was the work accomplished by Renouvier."
[Footnote * : Preface to Essais de Critique générale.]
[Footnote /- : The English word "criticism" is, it should be noted, translated in French by "critique" and not by the word "criticisme," a term which is used for the philosophy of the Kritik of Kant.]
[Footnote * : In recognising the primacy of the moral or practical reason in Kant, Renouvier resembles Fichte.]
[Footnote * : Renouvier's phenomenalism should be compared with that of Shadworth Hodgson, as set forth in the volumes of his large work on The Metaphysic of Experience, 1899. Hodgson has given his estimate of Renouvier and his relationship to him in Mind (volume for 1881).]
[Footnote /= : Psychologie de Hume : Traité de la Nature humaine, Renouvier Préface par Pillon, p. lxviii.]
It may be doubted whether Pillon's eulogy is altogether sound in its approval of the "reconciliation" of Hume and Kant, for such a reconciliation of opposites may well appear impossible. Renouvier himself faced this problem of the reconciliation of opposites when at an early age he inclined to follow the Hegelian philosophy, a doctrine which may very well be described as a "reconciliation of opposites," par excellence. Dissatisfied, however, with such a scheme Renouvier came round to the Kantian standpoint and then passed beyond it to a position absolutely contrary to that of Hegel. This position is frankly that opposites cannot be reconciled, one or the other must be rejected. Renouvier thus made the law of contradiction the basis of his philosophy, as it is the basis of our principles of thought or logic.
He rigorously applied this principle to that very interesting part of Kant's work, the antinomies, which he held should never have been formulated. The reasons put forward for this statement were two: the principle of contradiction and the law of number. Renouvier did not believe in what mathematicians call an "infinite number." He held it to be an absurd and contradictory notion, for to be a number at all it must be numerical and therefore not infinite. The application of this to the Kantian antinomies, as for example to the questions, "Is space infinite or finite? Had the world a beginning or not?" is interesting because it treats them as Alexander did the Gordian knot. The admission that space is infinite, or that the world had no beginning, involves the admission of an "infinite number," a contradiction and an absurdity. Since, therefore, such a number is a pure fiction we must logically conclude that space is finite,* that the world had a beginning and that the ascending series of causes has a first term, which admission involves freedom at the heart of things.
[Footnote: It is interesting to observe how the stress laid by Renouvier upon the finiteness of space and upon relativity has found expression in the scientific world by Einstein, long after it had been expressed philosophically.]
As Renouvier had treated the antinomies of Kant, so he makes short work of the Kantian conception of a world of noumena (Dinge an sich) of which we know nothing, but which is the foundation of the phenomena we know. Like Hume, he rejects all notion of substance, of which Kant's noumenon is a survival from ancient times. The idea of substance he abhors as leading to pantheism and to fatalism, doctrines which Renouvier energetically opposes, to uphold man's freedom and the dignity of human personality.
In the philosophy of Kant personality was not included among the categories. Renouvier draws up for himself a new list of categories differing from those of Kant. Beginning with Relation they culminate in Personality. These two categories indicate two of the strongholds of Renouvier's philosophy. Beginning from his fundamental thesis "All is relative," Renouvier points out that as nothing can possibly be known save by or in a relation of some sort it is evident that the most general law of all is that of Relation itself. Relation is therefore the first and fundamental category embracing all the others. Then follow, Number, Position, Succession, Quality. To these are added the important ones, Becoming, Causality, Finality proceeding from the simple to the composite, from the abstract to the concrete, from the elements most easily selected from our experience to that which embraces the experience itself, Renouvier comes to the final category in which they all find their consummation-Personality. The importance which he attaches to this category colours his entire thought and particularly determines his attitude to the various problems which we shall discuss in our following chapters.
As we can think of nothing save in relation to consciousness and consequently we cannot conceive the universe apart from personality, our knowledge of the universe, our philosophies, our beliefs are "personal" constructions. But they need not be on that account merely subjective and individualistic in character, for they refer to personality in its wide sense, a sense shared by other persons. This has important consequences for the problem of certitude in knowledge and Renouvier has here certain affinities to the pragmatist standpoint.
His discussion of certitude is very closely bound up with his treatment of the problem of freedom, but we may indicate here Renouvier's attitude to Belief and Knowledge, a problem in which he was aided by the work of his friend Jules Lequier,* whom he quotes in his second Essai de Critique générale. Renouvier considers it advisable to approach the problem of certitude by considering its opposite, doubt. In a famous passage in his second Essai he states the circumstances under which we do not doubt--namely, "when we see, when we know, when we believe." Owing to our liability to error (even seeing is not believing, and we frequently change our minds even about our "seeing"), it appears that belief is always involved, and more correctly "we believe that we see, we believe that we know." Belief is a state of consciousness involved in a certain affirmation of which the motives show themselves as adequate. Certitude arises when the possibility of an affirmation of the contrary is entirely rejected by the mind. Certitude thus appears as a kind of belief. All knowledge, Renouvier maintains, involves an affirmation of will. It is here we see the contrast so strongly marked between him and Renan, who wished us to "let things think themselves out in us." "Every affirmation in which consciousness is reflective is subordinated, in consciousness, to the determination to affirm." Our knowledge, our certitude, our belief, whatever we prefer to call it, is a construction not purely intellectual but involving elements of feeling and, above all, of will. Even the most logically incontrovertible truth are sometimes unconvincing. This is because certitude is not purely intellectual; it is une affaire passionnelle.* Renouvier here not only approaches the pragmatist position, but he recalls the attitude to will, assumed by Maine de Biran. For the Cartesian formula De Biran had suggested the substitution of Volo, ergo sum. The inadequacy of the the Cogito, ergo sum is remarked upon by Lequier, whose treatment of the question of certainty Renouvier follows. As all demonstration is deductive in character and so requires existing premises, we cannot expect the première vérité to be demonstrable. If, from the or certainty, we must turn to the will to create belief, or certainty, we must turn to the will to create beliefs*, for no evidence or previous truths exist for us. The Cogito, ergo sum really does not give us a starting point, as Descartes claimed for it, since there is no proper sequence from cogito to sum. Here we have merely two selves, moi-pensée and moi-objet. We need a live spark to bridge this gap to unite the two into one complete living self; this is found in moi-volonté, in a free act of will. This free act of will affirms the existence of the self by uniting in a synthetic judgment the thinking-self to the object-self. "I refuse," says Renouvier, quoting Lequier, "to follow the work of a knowledge which would not be mine. I accept the certainty of which I am the author." The première vérité is a free personal act of faith. Certainty in philosophy or in science reposes ultimately upon freedom and the consciousness of freedom.
[Footnote *: Jules Lequier was born in 1814 and entered the Ecole polytechnique in 1834, leaving two years later for a military staff appointment. This he abandoned in 1838. He died in 1862 after having destroyed most of his writings. Three Years after his death was published the volume, La Recherche d'une première Vérité, fragments posthumes de Jules Lequier. The reader should note the very interesting remarks by Renouvier at the end of the first volume of his Psychologie rationnelle, 1912 ed., pp. 369-393, on Lequier and his Philosophy, also the Fragments reprinted by Renouvier in that work, Comment trouver, comment chercher, vol. i., on Subject and Object (vol. ii.), and on Freedom.]
[Footnote *: Lotze employs a similar phrase, eine Gemüths-sache.]
Here again, as in the philosophy of Cournot, we find the main emphasis falling upon the double problem of the period. It is in reality one problem with two aspects--the relation of science to morality, or, in other words, the place and significance of freedom.
The general influence of Renouvier has led to the formation of a neo-critical "school" of thought, prominent members of which may be cited: Pillon and Prat, his intimate friends, Séailles and Darlu, who have contributed monographs upon their master's teaching, together with Hamelin, Liard and Brochard, eminent disciples. Hamelin (1856-1907), whose premature and accidental death deprived France of a keen thinker, is known for his Essai sur les Eléments principaux de la Représentation (1907), supplementing the doctrines of Renouvier by those of Hegel.
In the work of Liard (1846-1917), La Science positive et la Métaphysique (1879), we see a combination of the influence of Vacherot, Renouvier and Kant. He was also perplexed by the problem of efficient and final causes as was Lachelier, whose famous thesis De l'Induction appeared eight years earlier. While Lachelier was influenced by Kant, he, none the less, belongs to the current of the new spiritualism which we shall presently examine. Liard, however, by his adherence to many critical and neo-critical standpoints may be justly looked upon as belonging to that great current of which Renouvier is the prominent thinker.
Brochard (1848-1907) is mainly known by his treatise De l'Erreur (1879) and his volumes on Ethics, De la Responsabilité morale (1876), and De l'Universalité des Notions morales (1876), in all of which the primacy of moral considerations is advocated in a tone inspired by Renouvier's strong moral standpoint. The work De l'Erreur emphasises the importance of the problem of freedom as being the crux of the whole question involved in the relation of science and morality. Adhering to the neo-critical doctrines in general, and particularly to the value of the practical reason, Brochard, by his insistence upon action as a foundation for belief, has marked affinities with the doctrines of Blondel (and Olle-Laprune), the significance of whose work will appear at the end of our next section.
The phenomenalism of Renouvier was followed up by two thinkers, who cannot, however, be regarded as belonging to his neo-critical school. In 1888 Gourd published his work entitled Le Phénomène, which was followed six years later by the slightly more coherent attempt of Boirac to base a philosophy upon the phenomenalism which expresses itself so rigidly in Hume. In his book L'Idée du Phénomène (1894), he had, however, recourse to the Leibnitzian doctrines, which had finally exercised a considerable influence over Renouvier himself.
The reaction against positivism and against eclecticism took another form quite apart from that of the neocritical philosophy. This was the triumphant spiritualist philosophy, as we may call it, to give it a general name, represented by a series of great thinkers--Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouillée, Guyau, Boutroux, Bergson and, we may add, Blondel. These men have all of them had an influence much greater than that of Renouvier, and this is true of each of them separately. This is rather noteworthy for, if we exclude Fouillee, whose writings are rather too numerous, the works of all the other men together do not equal in quantity the work of Renouvier. There is another point which is worthy of notice. While Renouvier worked in comparative solitude and never taught philosophy in any college or university, being, in fact, neglected by the University of Paris, all the company--Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouillée, Guyau, Boutroux and Bergson--had a connection with the University of Paris in general, being associated with the Sorbonne, the Collège de France or the important Ecole Normale Supérieure.
The initiator of the spiritualistic philosophy was Ravaisson (1815-1900), who himself drew inspiration from Maine de Biran, to whose work he had called attention as early as 1840 in a vigorous article contributed to the Revue des Deux Mondes. This roused the indignation of Victor Cousin and the eclectics, who in revenge excluded Ravaisson from the Institute. His independent spirit had been shown in his thesis De l'Habitude (1838)* and his remarkable study of the metaphysics of Aristotle (1837-1846).
[Footnote *: Reproduced in 1894 in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale.]
Ravaisson's chief title to fame, however, lies in his famous philosophic manifesto of 1867, for such, in fact, was his Rapport sur la Philosophie en France au XIXè Siècle. This Report, prepared for the Exposition universelle at the request of the Ministry of Education, marks an epoch, for with it began the current of thought which was to dominate the close of the century. The "manifesto" was a call to free spirits to assert themselves in favour of a valid idealism. It, in itself, laid the foundations of such a philosophy and dealt a blow to both the Eclectic School of Cousin and the followers of Auguste Comte. Ravaisson wrote little, but his influence was powerful and made itself felt in the University, where in his office of president of the agrégation en philosophie he exercised no little influence over the minds of younger men. His pupils, among whom are to be found Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson, have testified to the profound and inspiring influence which this thinker exercised. A notable tribute to his memory is the address given by Bergson when he was appointed to take Ravaisson's place at the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques in 1904.
Various influences meet in Ravaisson and determine his general attitude to thought. He reverts, as we have said, to Maine de Biran, whose insistence upon the inner life he approves. We must examine human consciousness and make it our basis. We have in it powers of will, of desire and of love. Ravaisson blends the Aristotelian insistence upon Thought with the Christian insistence upon Love. In his method he manifests the influence of the German philosopher, Schelling, whose lectures he attended at Munich in company with the young Swiss thinker, Secretan.* This influence is seen in his doctrine of synthesis and his intellectual intuition. Science continues to give us analyses ever more detailed, but it cannot lead us to the absolute. Our highest, most sublime knowledge is gained by a synthesis presented in and to our consciousness, an intuition. Further, he argues that efficient causes, about which science has so much to say, are really dependent upon final causes. Spiritual reality is anterior to material reality, and is characterised by goodness and beauty. Himself an artist, imbued with a passionate love of the beautiful (he was guardian of sculptures at the Louvre), he constructs a philosophy in the manner of an artist. Like Guyau, he writes metaphysics like poetry, and although he did not give us anything like Vers d'un Philosophe, he would have endorsed the remarks which Guyau made on the relation of poetry and philosophy if, indeed, it is not a fact that his influence inspired the younger man.
[Footnote * : Charles Secretan (1815-1895), a Swiss thinker with whom Renouvier had interesting correspondence. His Philosophie de la Liberté appeared in 1848-1849, followed by other works on religious philosophy. Pillon wrote a monograph upon him.]
After surveying the currents of thought up to 1867 Ravaisson not only summed up in his concluding pages the elements of his own philosophy, but he ventured to assume the role of prophet. "Many signs permit us to foresee in the near future a philosophical epoch of which the general character will be the predominance of what may be called spiritualistic realism or positivism, having as generating principle the consciousness which the mind has of itself as an existence recognised as being the source and support of every other existence, being none other than its action."* His prophecy has been fulfilled in the work of Lachelier, Guyau, Fouillée, Boutroux, Bergson, Blondel and Weber.
[Footnote * : Rapport, 2nd ed., 1885, p. 275.]
After Ravaisson the spiritualist philosophy found expression in the work of Lachelier (1832-1918), a thinker whose importance and whose influence are both quite out of proportion to the small amount which he has written./- A brilliant thesis of only one hundred pages, Du Fondement de l'Induction, sustained in 1871, together with a little study on the Syllogism and a highly important article on Psychologie et Métaphysique, contributed to the Revue philosophique in May of 1885, constitute practically all his written work.* It was orally that he made his influence felt; by his teaching at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (1864-1875) he made a profound impression upon the youth of the University and the Ecole by the dignity and richness of his thought, as well as by its thoroughness.
[Footnote /- : Dr. Merz, in his admirable History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century, is wrong in regard to Lachelier's dates; he confuses his resignation of professorship (1875) with his death. This, however, did not occur until as late as 1918. See the references in Mertz, vol. iii., p. 620, and vol. iv., p. 217.]
[Footnote * : The thesis and the article have been published together by Alcan, accompanied by notes on Pascal's Wager. The Etude sur le Syllogisme also forms a volume in Alcan's Bibliothèque de Philosophie contemporaine.]
Lachelier was a pupil of Ravaisson, and owes his initial inspiration to him. He had, however, a much more rigorous and precise attitude to problems. This is apparent in the concentration of thought contained in his thesis. It is one of Lachelier's merits that he recognised the significance of Kant's work in a very profound manner. Until his thesis appeared the influence of Leibnitz had been more noticeable in French thought than that of Kant. It was noticeable in Ravaisson, and Renouvier, in spite of his professed adherence to Kant, passed to a Leibnitzian position in his Nouvelle Monadologie.
The valuable work Du Fondement de l'Induction is concerned mainly with the problem of final causes, which Lachelier deduces from the necessity of totality judgments over and above those which concern merely efficient causes. On the principle of final causes, or a ideological conception of a rational unity and order, he founds Induction. It cannot be founded, he claims, upon a mere empiricism. This is a point which will concern us later in our examination of the problem of science.
Lachelier was left, however, with the dualism of mechanism, operating solely by efficient causes, and teleology manifested in final causes, a dualism from which Kant did not manage to escape. In his article Psychologic et Métaphysique he endeavoured to interpret mechanism itself as a teleological activity of the spirit.* He indicates the absolute basis of our life and experience, indeed of the universe itself, to be the absolute spontaneity of spirit. In spirit and in freedom we live and move and have our being. We do not affirm ourselves to be what we are, but rather we are what we affirm ourselves to be. We must not say that our present depends upon our past, for we really create all the moments of our life in one and the same act, which is both present to each moment and above them all./- Here psychology appears as the science of thought itself and resolves itself into metaphysics. Here, too, we find the significance of the new spiritualism; we see its affinity with, and its contrast to, the doctrines of the older spiritualism as professed by Cousin. Lachelier here strikes the note which is so clearly characteristic of this current of thought, and is no less marked in his work than in that of Bergson--namely, a belief in the supremacy of spirit and in the reality of freedom.
[Footnote * : It is interesting to compare this with the attitude taken by Lotze in Germany.]
[Footnote /- : Psychologie et Métaphysique, p. 171.]
The notion of freedom and of the spontaneity of the spirit became watchwords of the new spiritualist philosophers. Under the work and influence of Boutroux (1845-1921) these ideas were further emphasised and worked out more definitely to a position which assumes a critical attitude to the dogmatism of modern science and establishes a contingency in all things. Boutroux's thesis De la Contingence des Lois de la Nature appeared in 1874 and was dedicated to Ravaisson. His chief fame and his importance in the development of the spiritualist philosophy rest upon this book alone. In 1894 he published a course of lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1892-3, Sur l'Idée de Loi naturelle, which supplements the thesis. Outside his own country attention has been more readily bestowed upon his writings on the history of philosophy, of which subject he was Professor. In his own country, however, great interest and value are attached to his work on The Contingency of the Laws of Nature. In this Boutroux combines the attitude of Ravaisson with that of Lachelier. The totality of the laws of the universe manifests, according to him, a contingency. No explanation of these laws is possible apart from a free spiritual activity. The stress laid upon contingency in the laws of nature culminates in the belief in the freedom of man.
The critique of science which marked Boutroux's work has profoundly influenced thinkers like Hannequin, Payot and Milhaud,* and in the following century appears in the work of Duhem and of Henri Poincaré, the noted mathematician, whose books on La Science et l'Hypothèse (1902), La Valeur de la Science (1905), and Science et Méthode (1909) have confirmed many of Boutroux's conclusions./-
[Footnote * : Hannequin's notable work is the Essai critique sur I'Hypothèse des Atomes (1896). Payot's chief book is La Croyance (1896). Milhaud's critique of science is contained in his Essai sur les Conditions et les Limites de la Certitude logique (1894), and in Le Rationnel (1898). Duhem's book is La Théorie physique (1906).]
[Footnote /-: It is interesting to note that Boutroux married Poincaré's sister, and that his son, Pierre Boutroux, whose education was guided by both his uncle and his father, is now Professor at the Collège de France. Emile Boutroux was a pupil of Zeller, whose lectures on Greek philosophy he attended in Heidelberg, 1868. He expressed to the writer his grief at the later prostitution of German thought to nationalist and materialist aims. He was Professor of the History of Philosophy in Paris from 1888, then Honorary Professor of Modern Philosophy. In 1914 he gave the Hertz Lecture to the British Academy on Certitude et Vérité. He was until his death Directeur de la Fondation Thiers, a college for post-graduate study, literary, philosophical and scientific.]
While the new spiritualist current was thus tending to a position far removed from that of Taine, at the commencement of our period, a wavering note was struck by the idealist Fouillée (1838-1912), who, while maintaining a general attitude in harmony with the new doctrines endeavoured to effect a reconciliation with the more positive attitude to science and philosophy. In his philosophie des ideés-forces* he endeavoured to combine and reconcile the diverging attitudes of Plato and of Comte. He shows a scorn of the neo-critical though of Renouvier. He wrote in his shorter life more books than did Renouvier, and he is conspicuous among this later group of thinkers for his mass-production of books, which appeared steadily at the rate of one per annum to the extent of some thirty-seven volumes, after he gave up his position as maître de conférence at the Ecole Normale owing to ill-health./-
[Footnote * : His Evolutionnisme des Idées-forces appeared in 1890, La Psychologie des Idées-forces three years later. His Morale des Idées-forces belongs to the next century (1907), but its principles were contained already in his thesis Liberté et Déterminisme.]
[Footnote /- : He only held this for three years, 1872-75.]
Fouillée, with the noblest intentions, set himself to the solution of that problem which we have already indicated as being the central one of our period, the relation of science and ethics, or, in brief, the problem of freedom. This was the subject of his thesis, undoubtedly the best book he ever wrote, La Liberté et le Déterminisme, which he sustained in 1872./= The attitude which he takes in that work is the keynote to his entire philosophy. Well grounded in a knowledge of the history of systems of philosophy, ancient and modern, he recognises elements of truth in each, accompanied by errors due mainly to a one-sided perspective.§ He recalls a statement of Leibnitz to the effect that most systems are right in their assertions and err in their denials. Fouillée was convinced that there was reconciliation at the heart of things, and that the contradictions we see are due to our point of view. Facing, therefore, in this spirit, the problems of the hour, he set himself "to reconcile the findings of science with the reality of spirit, to establish harmony between the determinism upheld by science and the liberty which the human spirit acclaims, between the mechanism of nature and the aspirations of man's heart, between the True which is the object of all science and the Good which is the goal of morality."*
[Footnote /= : This work created quite a stir in the intellectual and political world in France just after the war. Fouillée's book led to an attack on the ministry, which did not go so far as that occasioned by Renouvier's volume in 1849. (See p. 61.)]
[Footnote § : Fouillée stands in marked contrast to Comte in his general acquaintance with the history of ideas. Comte, like Spencer, knew little of any philosophy but his own. Fouillée, however, was well schooled, not only in Plato and the ancients, but had intimate knowledge of the work of Kant, Comte, Spencer, Lotze, Renouvier, Lachelier, Boutroux and Bergson.]
[Footnote * : This is also the idea expressed at length in his Avenir de la Métaphysique, 1889.]
Fouillée had no desire to offer merely another eclecticism à la mode de Cousin; he selects, therefore, his own principle of procedure. This principle is found in his notion of idée-force. Following ancient usage, he employs the term "idea" for any mental presentation. For Fouillée, however, ideas are not idées-spectacles, merely exercising a platonic influence "remote as the stars shining above us." They are not merely mental reproductions of an object, real or hypothetical, outside the mind. Ideas are in themselves forces which endeavour to work out their own realisation. Fouillée opposes his doctrine to the evolutionary theory of Spencer and Huxley. He disagrees with their mechanism and epiphenomenalism, pointing out legitimately that our ideas, far from being results of purely physical and independent causes, are themselves factors, and very vital factors, in the process of evolution. Fouillée looks upon the mechanistic arrangement of the world as an expression or symbol of idea or spirit in a manner not unlike that of Lotze.
He bears out his view of idées-forces by showing how a state of consciousness tries to realise its object. The idea of movement is closely bound up with the physiological and physical action, and, moreover, tends to produce it. This realisation is not a merely mechanistic process but is teleological and depends on the vital unity between the physical and the mental. On this fundamental notion Fouillée constructs his psychology, his ethic, his sociology and his metaphysic. He sees in the evolutionary process ideas at work which tend to realise themselves. One of these is the idea of freedom, in which idea he endeavours to find a true reconciliation of the problem of determinism in science and the demands of the human spirit which declares itself free. The love of freedom arising from the idea of freedom creates in the long run this freedom. This is Fouillée's method all through. "To conceive and to desire the ideal is already to begin its realisation." He applies his method with much success in the realm of ethics and sociology where he opposes to the Marxian doctrine of a materialist determination of history that of a spiritual and intellectual determination by ideas. Fouillée's philosophy is at once intellectual and voluntarist. He has himself described it as "spiritualistic voluntarism." It is a system of idealism which reflects almost all the elements of modern thought. In places his doctrine of reconciliation appears to break down, and the psychological law summed up in idées-forces is hardly sufficient to bear the vast erection which Fouillée builds upon it. The idea is nevertheless a valuable and fruitful one. Fouillée's respect for positive science is noteworthy, as is also his great interest in social problems.*
[Footnote * : At the end of the century these problems received highly specialised attention in the work of the sociologists inspired by Comte's influence. Works of special merit in this direction are: tspmas, with his Société's animales (1876) and Tarde, predecessor of Bergson at the Collège de France (1843-1907), with his Criminalité comparée (1898) and Les Lois de l'Imitation (1900), also Durkheim's work De la Division du Travail social (1893) and Les Régles de la Méthode sociologique (1894), and Izoulet, with his La Cité moderne (1894). Note those of Levy-Bruhl, Bouglé, and Le Bon.]
The importance of the sociological aspect of all problems was emphasised in a brilliant manner by Guyau (1854-1888), the step-son of Fouillée. Guyau was a gifted young man, whose death at the early age of thirty-four was a sore bereavement for Fouillée and undoubtedly a disaster for philosophy. Guyau was trained by his step-father,* and assisted him in his work. When ill-health forced both men from their professorships,/- they lived in happy comradeship at Mentone at the same time, it is interesting to note, that Nietzsche was residing there. Equally interesting is it to observe that although Guyau and Fouillée were unaware of the German thinker's presence or his work, Nietzsche was well acquainted with theirs, particularly that of Guyau. Doubtless he would have been pleased to meet the author of the Esquisse d'une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction (1885) and L'Irreligion de l'Avenir (1887). Editions of these books exist in the Nietzsche-Archiv bearing Nietzsche's notes and comments.
[Footnote * : Some authorities are of opinion that Fouillée was actually the father of Guyau. Fouillée married Guyau's mother.]
[Footnote /- : Guyau taught at the Lycée Condorcet (1874) where young Henri Bergson was studying (1868-1878).]
Guyau himself has a certain affinity with Nietzsche, arising from his insistence upon Life and its power; but the author of the delightful little collection Vers d'un Philosophe (1881) is free from the egoism expressed in Der Wille zur Macht. Guyau posits as his idée-directrice the conception of Life, both individual and social, and in this concept he professes to find a basis more fundamental than that of force, movement or existence. Life involves expansion and intension, fecundity and creation. It means also consciousness, intelligence and feeling, generosity and sociability. "He only lives well who lives for others." Life can only exist by extending. It can never be purely egoistic and endure; a certain giving of itself, in generosity and in love, is necessary for its continuance. Such is the view which the French philosopher-poet expresses in opposition to Nietzsche, starting, however, from the concept of Life did Nietzsche. Guyau worked out a doctrine of ethics and of religion based upon this concept which will demand our special attention in its proper place, when we consider the moral and religious problem. He strove to give an idealistic setting to the doctrines of evolution, and this alone would give him a place among the great thinkers of the period.
In his doctrine of the relation of thought and action Guyau followed the philosophie des idées-forces. On the other hand there are very remarkable affinities between the thought of Guyau and that of Bergson. Guyau is not so severely intellectual as Fouillée; his manner of thought and excellence of style are not unlike Bergson. More noticeably he has a conception of life not far removed from the élan vital. His "expansion of life" has, like Bergson's évolution créatrice, no goal other than that of its own activity. After Guyau's death in 1888 it was found that he had been exercised in mind about the problem of Time, for he left the manuscript of a book entitled La Genèse de l'Idée de Temps.* He therein set forth a belief in a psychological, heterogeneous time other than mathematical time, which is really spatial in character. In this psychological time the spirit lives. The year following Guyau's death, but before his posthumous work appeared, Bergson published his thesis Les Données immédiates de la Conscience (1889), which is better described by its English title Time and Free Will, and in which this problem which had been present to Guyau's mind is taken up and treated in an original and striking manner. In Guyau, too, is seen the rise of the conception of activity so marked in the work of Bergson and of Blondel. "It is action and the power of life," he insists, "which alone can solve, if not entirely at least partially, those problems to which abstract thought gives rise."/-
[Footnote * : This work was edited and published by Fouillée two years after Guyau's death, and reviewed by Bergson in the Revue philosophique in 1891]
[Footnote /-: Esquisse d'une Morale sans Obligation ni Sanction, p. 250.]
Bergson, born in 1859, Professor at the Collège de France from 1901 to 1921, now retired, has had a popularity to which none of the other thinkers of this group, or indeed of our period, has attained. He is the only one of the new idealists or spiritualists who is well known outside his own country. For this reason foreigners are apt to regard him as a thinker unrelated to any special current of thought, an innovator. Although much is original and novel in his philosophy, his thought marks the stage in the development to which the spiritualist current has attained in contemporary thought. The movement of which he forms a part we can trace back as far as Maine de Biran, to whom Bergson owes much, as he does also to Ravaisson, Lachelier, Boutroux and Guyau.
Two important books by Bergson came prior to 1900, his Time and Free Will (1889) and his Matter and Memory (1896). His famous Creative Evolution appeared in 1907. It is but his first work "writ large," for we have in Time and Free Will the essentials of his philosophy.
He makes, as did Guyau, a central point of Change, a universal becoming, and attacks the ordinary notion of time, which he regards as false because it is spatial. We ourselves live and act in durée, which is Bergson's term for real time as opposed to that fictitious time of the mathematician or astronomer. He thus lays stress upon the inward life of the spirit, with its richness and novelty, its eternal becoming, its self-creation. He has his own peculiar manner of approaching our central problem, that of freedom, of which he realises the importance. For him the problem resolves itself into an application of his doctrine of la durée, to which we shall turn in due course.
Bergson insists with Guyau and Blondel upon the primary significance of action. The importance attached to action colours his whole theory of knowledge. His epistemology rests upon the thesis that "the brain is an instrument of action and not of representation," and that "in the study of the problems of perception the starting- point should be action and not sensation." This is a psychology far different from that of Condillac and Taine, and it is largely upon his merit as a psychologist that Bergson's fame rests. He devoted his second work, Matter and Memory, to showing that memory is something other than a function of the brain. His distinction between "pure" memory and mere memorising power, which is habit, recalls the mémoire of Maine de Biran and of Ravaisson upon Habit. Bergson sees in memory a manifestation of spirit, which is a fundamental reality, no mere epiphenomenon. Spirit is ever striving against matter, but in spite of this dualism which he cannot escape, he maintains that spirit is at the origin of things. This is a difficulty which is more clearly seen in his later book, Creative Evolution. Matter is our enemy and threatens our personality in its spiritual reality by a tendency to lead us into habit, away from life, freedom and creativeness.
Further we must, he claims, endeavour to see things sub specie durationis in a durée, in an eternal becoming. We cannot expect to grasp all the varied reality of life in a formula or indeed in any purely intellectual manner. This is the chief defect of science and of the so-called scientific point of view. It tries to fix in concepts, moulds and solid forms a reality which is living and moving eternally. For Bergson all is Change, and this eternal becoming we can only grasp by intuition. Intuition and intellect do not, however, oppose one another. We are thus led to realise that Life is more than logic. The Bergsonian philosophy concludes with intuitionism and contingency, which drew upon it the severe criticisms of Fouillée,* who termed it a philosophy of scepticism and nihilism. Of all the spiritualist group Fouillée stands nearest the positive attitude to science, and his strong intellectualism comes out in his criticism of Bergson, who well represents, together with Blondel, the tendency towards non-intellectual attitudes inherent in the spiritualist development. Blondel has endeavoured to treat the great problems, a task which Bergson has not attempted as yet, partly because he (Bergson) shares Renan's belief that "the day of philosophic systems has gone," partly because he desires to lay the basis of a philosophy of the spirit to which others after him may contribute, and so he devotes his attention to method and to those crucial points, such as the problem of freedom upon which a larger doctrine must necessarily rest.*
[Footnote * : Particularly in his work Le Mouvement idéaliste et la Réaction contre la Science positive (cf. .206), 1896, and later in La Pensée et les nouvelles Ecoles anti-intellectualistes, 1910.]
[Footnote * : For a fuller appreciation of the Bergsonian doctrines than is possible in such a survey as this, the reader is referred to the author's monograph, Bergson and His Philosophy, Methuen and Co., 1920.]
The current of the new idealism or spiritualism reaches a culminating point in the work of Blondel (born about 1870), whose remarkable and noteworthy book L'Action appeared in l893./- The fundamental thesis of the Philosophy of Action/= is that man's life is primarily one of action, consequently philosophy must concern itself with the active life and not merely with thought. By its nature, action is something unique and irreducible to other elements or factors. It is not the result of any synthesis: it is itself a living synthesis, and cannot be dealt with as the scientist deals with his data. Blondel lays emphasis, as did Bergson, upon "the living" being unique and inexpressible in formulae. Intellect cannot grasp action; "one penetrates the living reality only by placing oneself at the dynamic point of view of the will."* His words recall Bergson's attitude to the free act. "The principle of action eludes positive knowledge at the moment at which it makes it possible, and, in a word that needs to be better defined, it is subjectivity."/-
[Footnote /- : The same year in which the philosophic interest in France, growing since 1870, and keener in the eighties, led to the foundation of the famous Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale by Xavier Léon. In 1876 (the same year in which Professor Croom Robertson in England established the periodical Mind) Ribot had founded the Revue philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger. These journals, along with the teaching in the Lycées, have contributed to make the French people the best educated, philosophically, of any people.]
[Footnote /= : It is interesting to note that this designation has been used by its author to replace his original term "pragmatisme," which he employed in 1888 and abandoned upon becoming acquainted with the theory of Peirce and James, and with their use of the term in another manner, with which he did not agree. See Bulletin de la Société française de Philosophie, 1902.]
[Footnote * : L' Action, p. 100.]
[Footnote * : Ibid., p. 87.]
Blondel, however, leads us beyond this subjectivity, for it is not the will which causes what is. Far from that, he maintains that in so far as it wills it implies something which it does not and cannot create of itself; it wills to be what it is not yet. We do not act for the mere sake of acting, but for some end, something beyond the particular act. Action is not self-contained or self- sufficing: it is a striving to further attainment or achievement. It therefore pre-supposes some reality beyond itself. Here appear the elements of "passion" and "suffering" due to resistance, for all action involves some opposition. In particular moral action implies this resistance and a consciousness of power to overcome the resistance, and it therefore involves a reality which transcends the sphere in which we act.
Owing to this inequality between the power and the wish, we are obliged to complete our actions or our activity in general by a belief in a Reality beyond. It is, however, "a beyond that is within," a Divine power immanent in man. This view, Blondel claims, unites the idea of God "transcendent" with the idea of God as "immanent." Man's action partakes of both, for in so far as it results from his own will it is immanent; transcendence is, however, implied in the fact that the end of man's action as a whole is not "given." Blondel leads us to a conception of a religious idealism in which every act of our ordinary existence leads ultimately to a religious faith. Every action is sacramental. Blondel and his follower Laberthonnière, who has taken up this idea from his master in his volume of Essais de Philosophie réligieuse (1901), go beyond a purely pragmatist or voluntarist position by finding the supreme value of all action, and of the universe, not in will but in love. For Blondel this word is no mere sentiment or transient feeling, but a concrete reality which is the perfection of will and of intellect alike, of action and of knowledge. The "Philosophy of Action," asserts Blondel, includes the "Philosophy of the Idea." In the fact of love, he claims, is found the perfect unity between the self and the non-self, the ground of personality and its relation to the totality of persons, producing a unity in which each is seen as an end to others as well as to himself. "Love," says Laberthonnière, "is the first and last word of all. It is the principle, the means and the end. It is in loving that one gets away from self and raises oneself above one's temporal individuality. It is in loving that one finds God and other beings, and that one finds oneself." It is, in short, these idealists claim, the Summum Bonum; in it is found the Absolute which philosophers and religious mystics of all ages have ever sought.
The "philosophy of action" is intimately bound up with the "philosophy of belief," formulated by Ollé-Laprune, and the movement in religious thought known generally as Modernism, which is itself due to the influence of modern philosophic thought upon the dogmas of the Christian religion, as these are stated by the Roman Church. Both the Philosophy of Belief and Modernism are characterised by an intense spirituality and a moral earnestness which maintain the primacy of the practical reason over the theoretical reason. Life, insists Ollé-Laprune in his book Le Prix de la Vie (l885),* is not contemplation but active creation. He urges us to a creative evolution of the good, to an employment of idées-forces. "There are things to be made whose measure is not determined; there are things to be discovered, to be invented, new forms of the good, ideas which have never yet been received--creations, as it were, of the spirit that loves the good." This dynamism and power of will is essential. We must not lose ourselves in abstractions; action is the supreme thing: it alone constitutes reality.
[Footnote * : This has been followed in the new century by La Raison et le Rationalisme, 1906. As early as 1880, however, he issued his work La Certitude morale, which influenced Blondel, his pupil.]
A similar note is sounded by the Modernists or Neo-Catholics, particularly by the brilliant disciple and successor of Bergson, Le Roy, who in Dogme et Critique (1907) has based the reality of religious dogma upon its practical significance. We find Péguy (who fell on the field of battle in 1914) applying Bergsonian ideas to a fervid religious faith. Wilbois unites these ideas to social ethics in his Devoir et Durée (1912). In quite different quarters the new spiritualism and philosophy of action have appeared as inspiring the Syndicalism of Sorel, who endeavours to apply the doctrines of Bergson, Ollé-Laprune and Blondel to the solution of social questions in his Réflexions sur la Violence (1907) and Illusions du Progrès (1911).
It would be erroneous to regard Bergson's intuitional philosophy as typical of all contemporary French thought. Following Renouvier, Fouillée and Boutroux, there prevail currents of a more intellectualist or rationalist type, to which we are, perhaps, too close to see in true and historical perspective. The élan vital of French thought continues to manifest itself in a manner which combines the work of Boutroux and Bergson with Blondel's idealism. A keen interest is being taken in the works of Spinoza, Kant and Hegel, and this is obviously influencing the trend of French philosophy at the moment, without giving rise to a mere eclecticism. French thought is too original and too energetic for that. In addition to these classical studies we should note the great and growing influence of the work of Durkheim and of Hamelin, both of whom we have already mentioned. The former gave an immense impetus to sociological studies by his earlier work. Further interest arose with his Formes élémentaires de la Vie religieuse in 1912. Hamelin indicated a turning-point from neo-criticisme through the new spiritualist doctrines to Hegelian methods and ideas. Brunschwicg, who produced a careful study of Spinoza, wrote as early as 1897 on La Modalité du Jugement, a truly Kantian topic. This thinker's later works, Les Etapes de la Philosophie mathematique (1912) and the little volume La Vie de l'esprit, illustrate a tendency to carry out the line taken by Boutroux--namely, to arrive at the statement of a valid idealism disciplined by positivism. The papers of Berthelot in his Evolutionnisme et Platonisme are a further contribution to this great end. In the work of Evellin, La Raison pure et les Antinomies (1907), the interest in Kant and Hegel is again seen. Noël, who contributed an excellent monograph on Lachelier to the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (that journal which is an excellent witness in itself to the vitality of contemporary French philosophy), produced a careful study of Hegel's Logik in 1897. Since that date interest has grown along the lines of Boutroux, Bergson and Blondel in an attempt to reach a positive idealism, which would combine the strictly positivist attitude so dear to French minds with the tendency to spiritualism or idealism which they also manifest. This attempt, which in some respects amounts to an effort to restate the principles of Hegel in modern or contemporary terms, was undertaken by Weber in 1903 in his book entitled Vers le Positivisme absolu par l'Idéalisme. Philosophy in France realises to-day that the true course of spiritual development will be at once positive and idealistic.
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