THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GERMANY


The great reconstructors of the world, analogous to the
first philosophers of antiquity.

Great general systems: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc.


FICHTE.--Fichte, embarrassed by what remained of experience in the
ideas of Kant, by the part, restricted though it was, which Kant left to
things in the external world, completely suppressed the external world,
like Berkeley, and affirmed the existence of the human _ego_
alone. Kant said that the world furnished us with the matter of the idea
and that we furnished the form. According to Fichte, form and matter alike
came from us. What then is sensation? It is nothing except the pause of the
_ego_ encountering what is not self, the impact of the _ego_
against what limits it.--But then the external world does exist, for how
could our mind be encountered by nothing and there be an impact of our mind
against nothing?--But this non-self that encounters self is precisely a
product of self, a product of the imagination which creates an object,
which projects outside us an appearance before which we pause as before
something real which should be outside us.

This theory is very difficult to understand, but indicates a very fine
effort of the mind.

Yet outside ourselves is there anything? There is pure spirit, God. What
is God? For Fichte He is moral order (a very evident recollection of
Kant). Morality is God and God is morality. We are in God, and it is the
whole of religion, when we do our duty without any regard to the
consequences of our actions; we are outside God, and it is atheism, when we
act in view of what results our actions may have. And thus morality and
religion run into one another, and religion is only morality in its
plenitude and complete morality is the whole of religion. "The holy, the
beautiful, and the good are the immediate apparition [if it could be] in us
of the essence of God."

SCHELLING.--Schelling desired to correct what, according to him, was
too radical in the idealism of Fichte. He restored the external world; for
him the _non-ego_ and the _ego_ both exist and the two are
_nature_, nature which is the object in the world regarded by man, the
subject when it regards man, subject and object according to the case; in
itself and in its totality neither subject nor object, but absolute,
unlimited, indeterminate. Confronting this world (that is nature and man)
there is another world which is God. God is the infinite and the perfect,
and particularly the perfect and infinite will. The world that we know is a
debasement from that without our being able to conceive how the perfect can
be degraded, and how an emanation of the perfect can be imperfect and how
the non-being can come out of being, since relatively to the infinite, the
finite has no existence, and relatively to perfection, the imperfect is
nothing.

It appears however that it is thus, and that the world is an emanation of
God in which He degrades Himself and a degradation of God such that it
opposes itself to Him as nothing to everything. It is a fall. The fall of
man in the Scriptures may give an idea, however distant, of that.

HEGEL.--Hegel, a contemporary of Schelling, and often in
contradiction to him, is the philosopher of "_becoming_" and of the
idea which always "becomes" something. The essence of all is the idea, but
the idea in progress; the idea makes itself a thing according to a rational
law which is inherent in it, and the thing makes itself an idea in the
sense that the idea contemplating the thing it has become thinks it and
fills itself with it in order to become yet another thing, always following
the rational law; and this very evolution, all this evolution, all this
becoming, is that absolute for which we are always searching behind things,
at the root of things, and which is _in_ the things themselves.

The rationally active is everything; and activity and reality are synonyms,
and all reality is active, and what is not active is not real, and what is
not active has no existence.

Let not this activity be regarded as always advancing forward; the becoming
is not a river which flows; activity is activity and retro-activity. The
cause is cause of the effect, but also the effect is cause of its cause.
In fact the cause would not be cause if it had no effect; it is therefore,
thanks to its effect, because of its effect, that the cause is cause; and
therefore the effect is the cause of the cause as much as the cause is
cause of the effect.

A government is the effect of the character of a people, and the character
of a people is the effect also of its government; my son proceeds from me,
but he reacts on me, and because I am his father I have the character which
I gave him, more pronounced than before, etc.

Hence, all effect is cause as all cause is effect, which everybody has
recognized, but in addition all effect is cause of its cause and in
consequence, to speak in common language, all effect is cause forward and
backward, and the line of causes and effects is not a straight line but a
circle.

THE DEISM OF HEGEL.--God disappears from all that. No, Hegel is very
formally a deist, but he sees God in the total of things and not outside
things, yet distinct. In what way distinct? In this, that God is the
totality of things considered not in themselves but in the spirit that
animates them and the force that urges them, and because the soul is of
necessity in the body, united to the body, that is no reason why it should
not be distinct from it. And having taken up this position, Hegel is a
deist and even accepts proofs of the existence of God which are regarded by
some as hackneyed. He accepts them, only holding them not exactly as
proofs, but as reasons for belief, and as highly faithful descriptions of
the necessary elevation of the soul to God. For example, the ancient
philosophers proved the existence of God by the contemplation of the
marvels of the universe: "That is not a 'proof,'" said Hegel, "that is not
a proof, but it is a great reason for belief; for it is an exposition, a
very exact although incomplete account rendered of the fact that by
contemplation of the world the human mind rises to God." Now this fact is
of singular importance: it indicates that it is impossible to think
strongly without thinking of God. "When the passage [although
insufficiently logical] from the finite to the infinite does not take
place, it may be said that there is no thought." Now this is a reason for
belief.'

After the same fashion, the philosophers have said "from the moment that we
imagine God, the reason is that He is." Kant ridiculed this proof. Granted,
it is not an invincible proof, but this fact alone that we cannot imagine
God without affirming His existence indicates a tendency of our mind which
is to relate finite thought to infinite thought and not to admit an
imperfect thought which should not have its source in a perfect thought;
and that is rather an invincible belief than a proof, but that this belief
is invincible and necessary in itself is an extremely commanding proof,
although a relative one.

HIS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.--The philosophy of the human mind and
political philosophy according to Hegel are these. Primitive man is mind,
reason, conscience, but he is so only potentially, as the philosophers
express it; that is to say, he is so only in that he is capable of becoming
so. Really, practically, he is only instincts: he is egoist like the
animals [it should be said like the greater part of the animals], and
follows his egoistical appetites. Society, in whatever manner it has
managed to constitute itself, transforms him and his "becoming" commences.
From the sexual instinct it makes marriage, from capture it forms regulated
proprietorship, out of defence against violence it makes legal punishment,
etc. Hence-forth, and all his evolution tends to that, man proceeds to
substitute in himself the general will for the particular will; he tends to
disindividualize himself. The general will, founded upon general utility,
is that the man be married, father, head of a family, good husband, good
father, good relative, good citizen. All that man ought to be in
consideration of the general will which he has put in the place of his own,
and which he has made his own will. That is the first advance.

It is realized (always imperfectly) in the smallest societies, in the
cities, in the little Greek republics, for example.

Here is the second advance. By war, by conquest, by annexations, by more
gentle means when possible, the stronger cities subdue the weaker, and the
great State is created. The great State has a more important part than the
city; it continues to substitute the general will for the particular wills;
but, _in addition,_ it is an idea, a great civilizing idea,
benevolent, elevating, aggrandizing, to which private interests must and
should be sacrificed. Such were the Romans who considered themselves, not
without reason, as the legislators and civilizers of the world.

THE IDEAL FORM OF STATE.--Putting aside for a while the continuation
of this subject, what political form should the great State take to conform
to its destiny? Assuredly the monarchical form; for the republican form is
always too individualist. To Hegel, the Greeks and even the Romans seem to
have conceded too much to individual liberty or to the interests of class,
of caste; they possessed an imperfect idea of the rights and functions of
the State. The ideal form of the State is monarchy. It is necessary for the
State to be contracted, gathered up, and personified in a prince who can be
personally loved, who can be reverenced, which is precisely what is
needed. These great States are only really great if they possess strong
cohesion; it is therefore necessary that they should be nationalities, as
it is called--that is, that they should be inwardly very united and highly
homogeneous by community of race, religion, customs, language, etc. The
idea to be realized by a State can only be accomplished if there be a
sufficient community of ideas in the people constituting it. However the
great State will be able to, and even ought to, conquer and annex the small
ones in order to become stronger and more capable, being stronger, of
realizing its idea. Only this should be done merely when it is certain or
clearly apparent that it represents an idea as against a people which does
not, or that it presents a better, greater, and nobler idea than that
represented by the people it attacks.

WAR.--But, as each people will always find its own idea finer than
that of another, how is this to be recognized?--By victory itself. It is
victory which proves that a people ... was stronger than another!--Not
only stronger materially but representing a greater, more practical, more
fruitful idea than the other; for it is precisely the idea which supports a
people and renders it strong. Thus, victory is the sign of the moral
superiority of a people, and in consequence force indicates where right is
and is indistinguishable from right itself, and we must not say as may
already perhaps have been said: "Might excels right," but "Might is right"
or "Right is might."

For example [Hegel might have said], France was "apparently" within her
rights in endeavouring to conquer Europe from 1792 to 1815; for she
represented an idea, the revolutionary idea, which she might consider, and
which many besides the French did consider, an advance and a civilizing
idea; but she was beaten, _which proves_ that the idea was false; and
before this demonstration by events is it not true that the republican or
Caesarian idea is inferior to that of traditional monarchy? Hegel would
certainly have reasoned thus on this point.

Therefore war is eternal and must be so. It is history itself, being the
condition of history; it is even the evolution of humanity, being the
condition of that evolution; there-fore, it is divine. Only it is purifying
itself; formerly men only fought, or practically always, from ambition; now
wars are waged for principles, to effect the triumph of an idea which has a
future, and which contains the future, over one that is out of date and
decayed. The future will see a succession of the triumphs of might which,
by definition, will be triumphs of right and which will be triumphs of
increasingly fine ideas over ideas that are barbarous and justly condemned
to perish.

Hegel has exercised great influence on the ideas of the German people both
in internal and external politics.

ART, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION.--The ideas of Hegel on art, science, and
religion are the following: Under the shelter of the State which is
necessary for their peaceful development in security and liberty, science,
literature, art, and religion pursue aims not superior to but other than
those of the State. They seek, without detaching the individual from the
society, to unite him to the whole world. Science makes him know all it
can of nature and its laws; literature, by studying man in himself and in
his relations with the world, imbues him with the sentiment of the possible
concordance of the individual with the universe; the arts make him love
creation by unravelling and bringing into the light and into relief all
that is beautiful in it relatively to man, and all that in consequence
should render it lovely, respected, and dear to him; religion, finally,
seeks to be a bond between all men and a bond between all men and God; it
sketches the plan of universal brotherhood which is ideally the last state
of humanity, a state which no doubt it will never attain, but which it is
essential it should imagine and believe to be possible, without which it
always would be drawn towards animality more and much more than it is.

The Hegelian philosophy has exercised an immense influence throughout
Europe not only on philosophic studies, but on history, art, and
literature. It may be regarded as the last "universal system" and as the
most daring that has been attempted by the human mind.

SCHOPENHAUER.--Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the
will. Persuaded, like Leibnitz, that man is an epitome and a picture of the
world, and that the world resembles us (which is hypothetical), he takes up
the thought of Leibnitz, changing and transforming it thus: All the
universe is not thought, but all the universe is will; thought is only an
accident of the will which appears in the superior animals; but the will,
which is the foundation of man, is the foundation of all; the universe is a
compound of wills that act. All beings are wills which possess organs
conformed to their purpose. It is _the will to be_ which gave claws to
the lion, tusks to the boar, and intelligence to man, because he was the
most unarmed of animals, just as to one who becomes blind it gives
extraordinarily sensitive and powerful sense of hearing, smell, and
touch. Plants strive towards light by their tops and towards moisture by
their roots; the seed turns itself in the earth to send forth its stalk
upwards and its rootlet downward. In minerals there are "constant
tendencies" which are nothing but obscure wills; what we currently term
weight, fluidity, impenetrability, electricity, chemical affinities, are
nothing but natural wills or inconscient wills. Because of this, the
diverse wills opposing and clashing with one another, the world is a war of
all against all and of _everything_ literally against _everything_; and
the world is a scene of carnage.

The truth is that will is an evil and is the evil. What is needed for
happiness is to kill the will, to destroy the wish to be.--But this would
be the end of existence?--And in fact to be no more or not to be at all is
the true happiness and it would be necessary to blow up the whole world in
an explosion for it to escape unhappiness. At least, as Buddhism desired
and, in some degree, though less, Christianity also, it is necessary to
make an approach to death by a kind of reduction to the absolute minimum of
will, by detachment and renunciation pushed as far as can be.

NIETZSCHE.--A very respectful but highly independent and untractable
pupil of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche "turns Schopenhauer inside out" as it
were, saying: Yes, assuredly the will to be is everything; but precisely
because of that it is essential not to oppose but to follow it and to
follow it as far as it will lead us. But is it not true that it will lead
to suffering? Be sure of that, but in suffering there is an intoxication of
pain which is quite comprehensible; for it is the intoxication of the will
in action; and this intoxication is an enjoyment too and in any case a good
thing; for it is the end to which we are urged by our nature composed of
will and of hunger for existence. Now wisdom, like happiness, is to follow
our nature. The happiness and wisdom of man is to obey his will for power,
as the wisdom and happiness of water is to flow towards the sea.

From these ideas is derived a morality of violence which can be
legitimately regarded as immoral and which, in any case, is neither
Buddhist nor Christian, but which is susceptible of several
interpretations, all the more so because Nietzsche, who was a poet, never
fails, whilst always artistically very fine, to fall into plenty of
contradictions.