PHILOSOPHY
29
PHILOSOPHY
to indicate this attitude of reserve towards the super-
sensible. Rationalism (from ralio, reason), or Spirit-
ualism, establishes the existence in us of concepts
higher than sensations, i. e. of abstract and general
concepts (Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, the Scholas-
tics, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Cousin etc.). Ideo-
logic Spiritualism has won the adherence of human-
ity's greatest thinkers. Upon the spirituality, or
immateriality, of our higher mental operations is based
the proof of the spirituality of the principle from
which they proceed and, hence, of the immortality
of the soul.
G. Scepticism, Dogmatism, and Criticism. — So many answers have been given to the question: whether man can attain truth, and what is the foundation of certitude, that we will not attempt to enumerate them all. Scepticism declares reason incapable of arri\-ing at the truth, and holds certitude to be a purely subjective affair (Sextus Empiri- cus, ^Enesidemus). Dogmatism asserts that man can attain to truth, and that, in measure to be further determined, our cognitions are certain. The motive of certitude is, for the Traditionalists, a Divine rev- elation, for the Scotch School (Reid) it is an in- clination of nature to affirm the principles of com- mon sense; it is an irrational, but social, necessity of admitting certain principles for practical dogma- tism (Balfour in his "Foundations of Belief" speaks of "non-rational impulse", while Mallock holds that "certitude is found to be the child, not of reason but of custom" and Brunetiere writes about "the bank- ruptcy of science and the need of belief"); it is an affective sentiment, a necessity of wishing that cer- tain things may be verities (Voluntarism; Kant's Moral Dogmatism), or the fact of living certain verities (contemporary Pragmatism and Humanism; William James, Schiller). But for others — and this is the theory which we accept — the motive of certitude is the verj' evidence of the connexion which appears between the predicate and the sub- ject of a proposition, an evidence which the mind perceives, but which it does not create (Moderate Dogmatism). Lastly for Criticism, which is the Kantian solution of the problem of knowledge, evidence is created by the mind by means of the structural functions with which every human in- tellect is furnished (the categories of the understand- ing). In conformity with these functions we con- nect the impressions of the senses and construct the world. Knowledge, therefore, is valid only for the world as represented to the mind. Kantian Crit- icism ends in excessive Idealism, which is also called Subjectivism, or PhenomenalLsm, and accord- ing to which the mind draws all its representations out of itself, both the sensorj' impressions and the categories which connect them: the world becomes a mental poem, the object is created by the subject as representation (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel).
H. Nominalism, Realism, and Conceptualism are various answers to the question of the real objectiv- ity of our predications, or of the relation of fidelity existing between our general representations and the external world (see Nominalism, Realism, Con'- ceptuali.sm).
I. Determinism and Indeterminism. — Has every phenomenon or fact its adequate cause in an ante- cedent phenomenon or fact (Cosmic Determinism)? And, in respect to acts of the will, are they likewise determined in all their constituent elements (Moral Determinism, Stoicism, Spinoza)? If so, then liberty disappears, and with it human responsibility, merit, and demerit. Or, on the contrary, is there a cate- gory of volitions which are not necessitated, and which depend upon the discretionary power of the will to act or not to act and in acting to follow a freely chosen direction? Does liberty exi.st? Most Spiritualists of all schools have adopted a liber-
tarian philosophy, holding that liberty alone
gives the moral hfe an acceptable meaning; by
various arguments they have confirmed the testimony
of conscience and the data of common consent. In
physical nature causation and determinism rule;
in the moral life, liberty. Others, by no means
numerous, have even pretended to discover cases of
indeterminism in physical nature (the so-called
Contingentist theories, e. g. Boutroux).
J. Utilitarianism and the Morality of Obligation. — What constitutes the foundation of morality in our actions? Pleasure or utiUty say some, personal or egoistic pleasure (Egoism — Hobbes, Bentham, and "the arithmetic of pleasure"); or again, in the pleasure and utility of all (Altruism — John Stuart Mill). Others hold that morality consists in the performance of duty for duty's sake, the obser\'ance of law because it is law, independently of personal profit (the Formalism of the Stoics and of Kant). .\ccording to another doctrine, which in our opinion is more correct, utihty, or personal advantage, is not incompatible with duty, but the source of the obligation to act is in the last analysis, as the very exigencies of our nature tell us, the ordinance of God.
IV. Philosophical Methods. — Method (m<*' <>S6s) means a path taken to reach some objective point. By philosophical method is understood the path leading to philosophy, which, again, may mean either the process employed in the construction of a philosophy (constructive method, method of in- vention), or the way of teaching philosophy (method of teaching, didactic method). We will deal here with the former of these two senses; the latter will be treated in section XL Three methods can be, and have been, applied to the construction of philosophy.
A. Experimental (Empiric, or Analytic) Method. — The method of all Empiric philosophers is to observe facts, accumulate them, and co-ordinate them. Pushed to its ultimate consequences, the empirical method refuses to rise beyond observed and observ- able fact; it abstains from investigating anything that is absolute. It is found among the Materialists, ancient and modern, and is most unreser\'edly applied in contemporary Positivism. Comte opposes the "positive mode of thinking", based solelj- upon observation, to the theological and metaphysical modes. For Mill, Huxley, Bain, Spencer, there is not one philosophical proposition but is the product, pure and simple, of experience: what we take for a general idea is an aggregate of sensations; a judgment is the union of two sensations; a syllogism, the passage from particular to particular (^Iill, "A Svstem of Logic, Rational and Inductive", ed. Lubbock, 1892; Bain, "Logic", New York, 1874). Mathematical propositions, fundamental axioms such as a=a, the principle of contradiction, the prin- ciple of causality are only "generalizations from facts of experience" (Mill, op. cit., vii, §5). According to this author, what we believe to be superior to ex- perience in the enunciation of scientific laws is derived from our subjecti\-e incapacity to conceive its con- tradictory; according to Spencer, this inconceivabil- ity of the negation is developed by heredity.
Applied in an exaggerated and exclu.sive fashion, the experimental method mutilates facts, since it is powerless to ascend to the causes and the laws which govern facts. It suppresses the character of objective necessity which is inherent in scientific judgments, and reduces them to collective formula^ of facts obser\'ed in the past. It forbids our asserting, e. g., that the men who will be bom after us will be subject to death, seeing that all certitude rests on experience, and that by mere observation we cannot reach the unchangeable nature of things. The empirical method, left to ita own resources, checks the upward
