G. W. F. Hegel: Lectures on the History of
Philosophy
THE POSITIVE ASPECT.
The affirmative content of this philosophy
certainly does not satisfy the requirements
of profundity. A leading characteristic
of
its teaching, which is found also with
the
Scottish philosophers and with ourselves,
is the assumption of primitive feelings
of
justice which man has in himself, as
for
example benevolence and social instincts
which should be cultivated. The positive
source of knowledge and of justice
is placed
in human reason and the common consciousness
of mankind, in the healthy human reason,
and not in the form of the Notion.
It is
certainly wonderful to find truths
expressed
in the form of universal thoughts,
respecting
which it is of infinite importance
that they
should be assumptions present in the
human
mind: that man has in his heart the
feeling
of right, of love to his fellow-creatures:
that religion and faith are not matters
of
compulsion; that merit, talent, virtue
are
the true nobility, &c. An important
question,
especially among the Germans, was what
is
the end and character of man, by which
was
meant the nature of his mind and spirit,
and certainly, as far as the spiritual
is
concerned, it is to this point that
we must
return. But in order to find the nature
of
spirit, to discover what this determination
is, a return was made to perception,
observation,
experience, to the existence of certain
impulses.
These are certainly determinations
in ourselves,
but we have not known them in their
necessity.
Such an impulse is besides taken as
natural,
and thus it is here indeterminate in
itself,
it has its limitation only as a moment
of
the whole. In regard to knowledge,
very abstract
thoughts are to be found - though of
a truth
they are quite as good as ours, and
more
ingenious - which according to their
content
ought to be concrete, and also were
so. But
so superficially were they comprehended
that
they soon showed themselves far from
sufficient
for what had to be derived from them.
They
said, for instance, that Nature is
a whole,
that all is determined by laws, through
a
combination of different movements,
through
a chain of causes and effects, and
so on;
the various properties, materials,
connections
of things bring everything to pass.
Those
are general phrases, with which one
can fill
whole books.
a. SYSTÈME DE LA NATURE. To this philosophy
belongs the Système de la Nature, the
leading
work on the subject, written in Paris
by
a German, Baron von Hollbach, who was
the
central figure of all those philosophers.
Montesquieu, d'Alembert, Rousseau,
were for
a time in his circle; however much
these
men were moved to indignation at the
existing
state of things, they were yet in other
respects
very different from one another. The
Système
de la Nature may very easily be found
tiresome
to read, because it treats discursively
of
general conceptions, which are often
repeated;
it is not a French book, for vivacity
is
lacking and the mode of presentation
is dull.
The great Whole of Nature (le grand
tout
de la nature) is the ultimate: "The
universe displays nothing but an immense
collection of matter and motion"
(as
with Descartes), "an unbroken
chain
of causes and effects, of which causes
some
directly affect our senses, while others
are unknown to us, because their effects,
which we perceive, are too remote from
their
causes. The different qualities of
these
materials, their manifold connections,
and
the effects which result therefrom,
constitute
essences for us. From the diversity
of these
essences arise the different orders,
species,
systems, under which things fall, and
whose
sum total, the great whole, is what
we call
Nature."(1) It is like what Aristotle
(vide Vol. I. p. 241) says of Xenophanes,
that he gazed into the blue, i. e.
into Being.
According to Hollbach all is movement,
matter
moves itself: beer ferments, the soul
is
moved by its passions.(2) "The
manifold
variety of natural phenomena, and their
incessant
rise and disappearance, have their
sole ground
in the variety of motions and of their
material."
Through different combinations and
modifications,
through a different arrangement, another
thing is originated. "Material
substances
have either a tendency to combine with
one
another, or else they are incapable
of so
combining. Upon this are based by physical
scientists the forces of attraction
and repulsion,
sympathy and antipathy, affinity and
relation;
and the moralists base thereon hatred
and
love, friendship and enmity."
Spirit,
the incorporeal, contradicts or opposes
itself
to motion, to a change of the relations
of
a body in space.(3)
b. ROBINET. Another work of importance
is
the still more "dangerous"
treatise,
De la Nature, by Robinet. In it there
reigns
quite a different and a deeper spirit;
one
is frequently struck by the depth of
earnestness
which the writer displays. He begins
thus:
"There is a God, i. e. a cause
of the
phenomena of that Whole which we call
Nature.
Who is God? We know not, and we are
so constituted
that we can never know in what order
of things
we have been placed. We cannot know
God perfectly,
because the means of doing so will
always
be lacking to us. We too might write
over
the doors of our temples the words
which
were to be read upon the altar which
the
Areopagite raised, 'To the unknown
God.'"
The very same thing is said nowadays:
there
can be no transition from the finite
to the
infinite. "The order which reigns
in
the universe is just as little the
visible
type of His wisdom, as our weak mind
is the
image of His intelligence." But
this
First Cause, God, is according to Robinet
a creative God, He has brought Nature
into
existence; so that for him the only
possible
knowledge is that of Nature. "There
is only One Cause. The eternal Cause,
who
so to speak had sown (engrainé) events
one
in the other, in order that they might
without
fail follow one upon another as He
chose,
in the beginning set in motion the
endless
chain of things. Through this permanent
impression
the Universe goes on living, moving
and perpetuating
itself. From the unity of cause there
follows
the unity of activity, for even it
does not
appear as something to be more or less
admitted.
By virtue of this single act all things
come
to pass. Since man has made Nature
his study,
he has found no isolated phenomenon,
and
no independent truth, because there
are not
and cannot be such. The whole sustains
itself
through the mutual correspondence of
its
parts."(4) The activity of Nature
is
one, as God is One.
This activity, more particularly regarded,
signifies that germs unfold themselves
in
everything: everywhere there are organic
Beings which produce themselves; nothing
is isolated, everything is combined
and connected
and in harmony. Robinet here goes through
the plants, the animals, and also the
metals,
the elements, air, fire, water, &c.;
and seeks from them to demonstrate
the existence
of the germ in whatever has life, and
also
how metals are organized in themselves.
"The
example of the polypus is convincing
as to
the animal nature (animalité) of the
smallest
portions of organized matter; for the
polypus
is a group of associated polypi, each
of
which is as much a true polypus as
the first.
It stands proved that from the same
point
of view the living consists only of
the living,
the animals of minute animals, every
animal
in particular of minute animals of
the same
kind, a dog of dog-germs, man of human
germs."
In proof of this Robinet states in
a "Recapitulation"
that "animal sperm swarms with
spermatic
animalcules." Since he then connects
every propagation properly so-called
with
the co-operation of both sexes, he
alleges
that every individual is inwardly or
also
in the external organs a hermaphrodite.
Of
the minerals he says: "Are we
not compelled
to regard as organic bodies all those
in
which we meet with an inward structure
such
as this? It presupposes throughout
a seed,
seed-granules, germs, of which they
are the
development." In the same way
the air
must have its germ, which does not
come to
reality until it is nourished by water,
fire,
&c. "The air, as principle,
is only
the germ of the air; as it impregnates
or
saturates itself in varying degrees
with
water and fire, it will gradually pass
through
different stages of growth: it will
become
first embryo, then perfect air."(5)
Robinet gives the name of germ to the
simple
form in itself, the substantial form,
the
Notion. Although he seeks to prove
this too
much from the sensuous side, he yet
proceeds
from principles in themselves concrete,
from
the form in itself.
He speaks also of the evil and good
in the
world. The result of his observation
is that
good and evil balance each other; this
equilibrium
constitutes the beauty of the world.
In order
to refute the assertion that there
is more
good than evil in the world, he says
that
everything to which we reduce the good
consists
only in an enjoyment, a pleasure, a
satisfaction;
but this must be preceded by a want,
a lack,
a pain, the removal of which constitutes
satisfaction.(6) This is not only a
correct
thought empirically, but it also hints
at
the deeper idea that there is no activity
except through contradiction.
Notes:
1. Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der
Philosophie,
Pt. VIII. pp. 62, 63: Système de la
Nature
par Mirabaud (Londres, 1770), T. I.
chap.
i. p. 10; chap. ii. p 28.
2. Buhle: Lehrbuch der Geschichte der
Philosophie,
Pt. VIII. pp. 63, 64. Système de la
Nature,
T. I. chap. ii. pp. 18, 16, 21, et
15.
3. Buhle, ibidem, pp. 64, 65, 70; Système
de la Nature, T. I. chap. ii, pp. 30,
31;
chap. iii, pp. 39, 40; chap. iv. pp.
45,
46; chap. vii, pp. 90, 91.
4. Robinet: De la Nature (Troisième
édition,
Amsterdam, 1766), T. I. P. I. chap.
iii.
iv. pp. 16, 17.
5. Robinet: De la Nature, T. I. P.
II. chap.
ii. pp. 156, 157; chap. vii. pp. 166,
168;
chap. ix.-xi.; chap. xv. pp. 202, 203;
chap.
xix. p. 217.
6. Robinet: De la Nature, T. I. P.
I. chap.
xxviii. p. 138; chap. xiii. p. 70.
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Evans Experientialism 
Lectures on the History of
Philosophy