The Approach to Philosophy Part 11

[Sidenote: Transition from Cla.s.sification by Problems to Cla.s.sification by Doctrines. Naturalism. Subjectivism. Absolute Idealism. Absolute Realism.]

- 101. Reminding ourselves anew that philosophical problems cannot be treated in isolation from one another, we shall hereinafter seek to become acquainted with general stand-points that give systematic unity to the issues which have been enumerated. Such stand-points are not clearly defined by those who occupy them, and they afford no clear-cut cla.s.sification of all historical philosophical philosophies. But system-making in philosophy is commonly due to the moving in an individual mind of some most significant idea; and certain of these ideas have reappeared so frequently as to define more or less clearly marked tendencies, or continuous strands, out of which the history of thought is forever weaving itself. Such is clearly the case with _naturalism_. From the beginning until now there have been men whose philosophy is a summation of the natural sciences, whose entire thought is based upon an acceptance of the methods and the fundamental conceptions of these disciplines. This tendency stands in the history of thought for the conviction that the visible and tangible world which interacts with the body is veritable reality. This philosophy is realistic and empirical to an extent entirely determined by its belief concerning being. But while naturalism is only secondarily epistemological, _subjectivism_ and _absolute idealism_ have their very source in the self-examination and the self-criticism of thought.

Subjectivism signifies the conviction that the knower cannot escape himself. If reality is to be kept within the range of possible knowledge, it must be defined in terms of the processes or states of selves. _Absolute idealism_ arises from a union of this epistemological motive with a recognition of what are regarded as the logical necessities to which reality must submit. Reality must be both knowledge and rational knowledge; the object, in short, of an absolute mind, which shall be at once all-containing and systematic. This rationalistic motive was, however, not originally a.s.sociated with an idealistic epistemology, but with the common-sense principle that being is discovered and not const.i.tuted by thought. Such an _absolute realism_ is, like naturalism, primarily metaphysical rather than epistemological; but, unlike naturalism, it seeks to define reality as a logical or ethical necessity.

Under these several divisions, then, we shall meet once more with the special problems of philosophy, but this time they will be ranged in an order that is determined by some central doctrine. They will appear as parts not of the general problem of philosophy, but of some definite system of philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[180:1] Cf. - 68.

[182:2] The Socratic distinction between the logical and the psychological treatment of belief finds its best expression in Plato's _Gorgias_, especially, 454, 455. Cf. also - 29.

[182:3] Thus, e. g. Hegel. See - 179. Cf. also -- 199, 200.

[183:4] Cf. - 84.

[184:5] See - 69, _note_.

[184:6] The reader will find a good ill.u.s.tration of eristic in Plato's _Euthydemus_, 275.

[187:7] The reader can find these rules, and the detail of the traditional formal logic, in any elementary text-book, such as, e. g., Jevons: _Elements of Logic_.

[189:8] What is called "the algebra of logic" seeks to obtain an unequivocal symbolic expression for these truths.

[192:9] Plato: _Protagoras_, 351. Translation by Jowett.

[194:10] Plato: _Apology_, 41. Translation by Jowett.

[195:11] Quoted by Paulsen in his _System of Ethics_. Translation by Thilly, p. 69.

[198:12] Cf. - 160.

[198:13] Cf. - 177.

[199:14] Concerning the duty of philosophy to religion in these matters, cf. Descartes: _Meditations_, _Dedication_. Translation by Veitch, p.

81.

[201:15] The school-philosophy that flourished from the eleventh to the fifteenth century, under the authority of the church.

[209:16] Especially in the _Phaedo_.

[211:17] Schopenhauer is a notable exception. Cf. -- 135, 138.

[213:18] It is interesting, however, to observe that current spiritualistic theories maintain a naturalistic theory of immortality, verifiable, it is alleged, in certain extraordinary empirical observations.

[215:19] Translation by Pillsbury and t.i.tchener, p. 59.

PART III

SYSTEMS OF PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER VIII

NATURALISM[223:1]

[Sidenote: The General Meaning of Materialism.]

- 102. The meaning conveyed by any philosophical term consists largely of the distinctions which it suggests. Its peculiar quality, like the physiognomy of the battle-scarred veteran, is a composite of the controversies which it has survived. There is, therefore, an almost unavoidable confusion attendant upon the denomination of any early phase of philosophy as _materialism_. But in the historical beginnings of thought, as also in the common-sense of all ages, there is at any rate present a very essential strand of this theory. The naive habit of mind which, in the sixth century before Christ, prompted successive Greek thinkers to define reality in terms of water, air, and fire, is in this respect one with that exhibited in Dr. Samuel Johnson's smiting the ground with his stick in curt refutation of Bishop Berkeley's idea-philosophy. There is a theoretical instinct, not accidental or perverse, but springing from the very life-preserving equipment of the organism, which attributes reality to _tangible s.p.a.ce-filling things encountered by the body_. For obvious reasons of self-interest the organism is first of all endowed with a sense of contact, and the more delicate senses enter into its practical economy as means of antic.i.p.ating or avoiding contact. From such practical expectations concerning the proximity of that which may press upon, injure, or displace the body, arise the first crude judgments of reality. And these are at the same time the nucleus of naive philosophy and the germinal phase of materialism.

[Sidenote: Corporeal Being.]

- 103. The first philosophical movement among the Greeks was a series of attempts to reduce the tangible world to unity, and of these the conception offered by Anaximander is of marked interest in its bearing upon the development of materialism. This philosopher is remarkable for having _defined_ his first principle, instead of having chosen it from among the different elements already distinguished by common-sense. He thought the unity of nature to consist in its periodic evolution from and return into one infinite sum of material (t? ?pe????), which, much in the manner of the "nebula" of modern science, is conceived as both indeterminate in its actual state and infinitely rich in its potentiality. The conception of matter, the most familiar commonplace of science, begins to be recognizable. It has here reached the point of signifying a common substance for all tangible things, a substance that in its own general and omnipresent nature is without the special marks that distinguish these tangible things from one another. And in so far the philosophy of Anaximander is materialistic.

[Sidenote: Corporeal Processes. Hylozoism and Mechanism.]

- 104. But the earliest thinkers are said to be _hylozoists_, rather than strict materialists, because of their failure to make certain distinctions in connection with the _processes_ of matter. The term hylozoism unites with the conception of the formless material of the world (???), that of an animating power to which its formations and transformations are due. Hylozoism itself was not a deliberate synthesis of these two conceptions, but a primitive practical tendency to universalize the conception, of life. Such "animism" instinctively a.s.sociates with an object's bulk and hardness a capacity for locomotion and general initiative. And the material principles defined by the philosophers retain this vague and comprehensive attribute as a matter of course, until it is distinguished and separated through attempts to understand it.

That aspect of natural process which was most impressive to Greek minds of the reflective type was the alternation of "generation and decay." In full accord with his more ancient master, Epicurus, the Latin poet Lucretius writes:

"Thus neither can death-dealing motions keep the mastery always, nor entomb existence forevermore; nor, on the other hand, can the birth and increase giving motions of things preserve them always after they are born. Thus the war of first beginnings waged from eternity is carried on with dubious issue: now here, now there, the life-bringing elements of things get the mastery and are o'ermastered in turn: with the funeral wail blends the cry which babies raise when they enter the borders of light; and no night ever followed day, nor morning night, that heard not, mingling with the sickly infant's cries, wailings of the attendants on death and black funeral."[226:2]

In a similar vein, the earliest conceptions of natural evolution attributed it to the coworking of two principles, that of Love or union and that of Hate or dissolution. The process is here distinguished from the material of nature, but is still described in the language of practical life. A distinction between two aspects of vital phenomena is the next step. These may be regarded in respect either of the motion and change which attend them, or the rationality which informs them. Life is both effective and significant. Although neither of these ideas ever wholly ceases to be animistic, they may nevertheless be applied quite independently of one another. The one reduces the primitive animistic world to the lower end of its scale, the other construes it in terms of a purposive utility commensurable with that of human action. Now it is with _mechanism_, the former of these diverging ways, that the development of materialism is identified. For this philosophy a thing need have no value to justify its existence, nor any acting intelligence to which it may owe its origin. Its bulk and position are sufficient for its being, and the operation of forces capable of integrating, dividing, or moving it is sufficient for its derivation and history. In short, there is no rhyme or reason at the heart of things, but only actual matter distributed by sheer force. With this elimination of the element of purposiveness from the hylozoistic world, the content and process of nature are fitted to one another. Matter is that which is moved by force, and force is the determining principle of the motions of matter.

Materialism is now definitely equipped with its fundamental conceptions.

[Sidenote: Materialism and Physical Science.]

- 105. The central conceptions of materialism as a philosophical theory differ from those employed in the physical sciences only in what is demanded of them. The scientist reports upon physical phenomena without accepting any further responsibility, while those who like Lucretius maintain a physical metaphysics, must, like him, prove that "the minute bodies of matter from everlasting continually uphold the sum of things."

But, though they employ them in their own way, materialists and all other exponents of naturalism derive their central conceptions from the physical sciences, and so reflect the historical development through which these sciences have pa.s.sed. To certain historical phases of physical science, in so far as these bear directly upon the meaning of naturalism, we now turn.

[Sidenote: The Development of the Conceptions of Physical Science. s.p.a.ce and Matter.]

- 106. From the earliest times down to the present day the groundwork of materialism has most commonly been cast in the form of an _atomic theory_. Democritus, the first system-builder of this school, adopted the conception of indivisible particles (?t???), impenetrable in their occupancy of s.p.a.ce, and varying among themselves only in form, order, and position. To provide for the motion that distributes them he conceived them as separated from one another by empty s.p.a.ce. From this it follows that the void is as real as matter, or, as Democritus himself is reputed to have said, "thing is not more real than no-thing."

But atomism has not been by any means universally regarded as the most satisfactory conception of the relation between s.p.a.ce and matter. Not only does it require two kinds of being, with the different attributes of extension and hardness, respectively,[229:3] but it would also seem to be experimentally inadequate in the case of the more subtle physical processes, such as light. The former of these is a speculative consideration, and as such had no little weight with the French philosopher Descartes, whose divisions and definitions so profoundly affected the course of thought in these matters after the sixteenth century. Holding also "that a vacuum or s.p.a.ce in which there is absolutely no body is repugnant to reason," and that an indivisible s.p.a.ce-filling particle is self-contradictory, he was led to _identify s.p.a.ce and matter_; that is, to make matter as indispensable to s.p.a.ce as s.p.a.ce to matter. There is, then, but one kind of corporeal being, whose attribute is extension, and whose modes are motion and rest. The most famous application of the mechanical conceptions which he bases upon this first principle, is his theory of the planets, which are conceived to be embedded in a transparent medium, and to move with it, vortex fas.h.i.+on, about the sun.[230:4]

But the conception of the s.p.a.ce-filling continuity of material substance owes its prominence at the present time to the experimental hypothesis of _ether_. This substance, originally conceived to occupy the intermolecular s.p.a.ces and to serve as a medium for the propagation of undulations, is now regarded by many physicists as replacing matter. "It is the great hope of science at the present day," says a contemporary exponent of naturalism, "that hard and heavy matter will be shown to be ether in motion."[231:5] Such a theory would reduce bodies to the relative displacements of parts of a continuous substance, which would be first of all defined as s.p.a.cial, and would possess such further properties as special scientific hypotheses might require.

Two broadly contrasting theories thus appear: that which defines matter as a continuous substance coextensive with s.p.a.ce; and that which defines it as a discrete substance divided by empty s.p.a.ce. But both theories are seriously affected by the peculiarly significant development of the conception of force.

[Sidenote: Motion and its Cause. Development and Extension of the Conception of Force.]