LECTURE II.

THE PERIODS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY; CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIRST PERIOD; ILLUSTRATION BY MEANS OF THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF SPINOZISM.

OUR general purpose in these lectures has now been defined. As we pass to the study of certain representative modern thinkers and problems, the difference between our method and that of a text-book, or of a regular course of academic lectures on the history of modern thought, must be well borne in mind. We wish to select certain tendencies especially characteristic of the spirit of modern philosophy. We shall therefore lay most stress upon what happened in the culminating period of modern thought, that from Kant to Schopenhauer, — and upon the problems that seem to me most permanent and significant in that period itself. In earlier periods our method will be one of the briefest sketching. Later we shall become more specific. Of no thinker before Kant shall we give any extended account. Several thinkers of first rank, such as Descartes, Malebranche, Leibnitz, we shall barely mention or wholly ignore. Always, even where we are fullest in statement, we shall select those aspects of the thinker in question that concern our own undertaking. What this undertaking will lead to will not become manifest until, in the second part of our course, we have suggested in outline a certain philosophical creed to which I wish to direct your attention.

It is in vain that one seeks, in the history of thought, to choose any perfectly satisfactory place of beginning for

the purpose of a course of lectures like this. Always one must run a risk of producing the illusion in your minds that the point where he chances to begin is somehow peculiarly significant as a beginning. But always, of course, if you should ever hereafter come to look deeper, you would find this point of beginning very arbitrary, and what immediately preceded it vastly important for the true understanding of the whole matter. My beginning, therefore, as I must warn you, will be indeed very arbitrary, just as my methods will have to be very different from those of a text-book.

I.

As to the general scope of our course, modern philosophy, our topic in what follows, is as wealthy and complex an evolution in its way as is the life which it depicts. What we call modern thought, in these matters, is a very recent affair, dating back only to the seventeenth century. Since then, however, philosophy has lived through several great periods, which for our purpose we may reduce to three.

The first period was one of what we may call naturalism, pure and simple. It belongs almost wholly to the seventeenth century. The philosophy of this first age lived in a world where two things seemed clear: first, that nature is full of facts which conform fatally to exact and irreversible law, and second, that man lives best under a strong, a benevolently despotic civil government. The philosophers of this time had left off contemplating the heaven of medieval piety, and were disposed to deify nature. They adored the rigidity of geometrical methods; they loved the study of the new physical science, which had begun with Galileo. Man they conceived as a mechanism. Human emotions, even the loftiest, they delighted in explaining by very simple and fundamental natural passions. There is often something merciless and cynical about their analysis of many things

sacred in human life. They are cold, formal, systematic, at least as to the outward shape of their doctrines. At heart, however, they are not without a deep piety of their own. The nature which they deify has its magnificent dignity. It is no respecter of our sentimentalities; but it does embody a certain awful justice. You would pray to it in vain; but you may interrogate it fearlessly, for it hides no charmed and magical secrets in its breast which an unlucky word might render dangerous to the inquirer. It notices no insult; it blasts no curious questioner for his irreverence. This nature is a wise nature. Her best

children are those who labor most patiently to comprehend her laws. The weak she crushes; but the thoughtful she honors. She knows no miracles; but her laws are an inexhaustible treasure house of resources to the knowing. In fact, knowledge of such laws is the chief end of man's life. God is n't any longer what he had often seemed in more clerical ages, a God that hides himself from the natural and unassisted intellect of man. He showed himself of old to the Greek geometers, to Euclid, to Archimedes. In these days of the seventeenth century he unveils new mysteries to the students of physics. In the world of such a ruler, fear is out of place; you may even doubt if you will. The incredulous are no longer public enemies; they are merely the learners. Descartes, a representative thinker of the century, and the one from whom our period is often dated, begins his reflection by doubting everything. As for the method of escaping from doubt, that consists in the use of reason and in the study of the facts of experience; nothing else serves. Revelation you treat with such respect as political and social considerations require; but for philosophy, in this age of the seventeenth century, the supernatural has only a secondary interest, if it has any interest at all. Religious conformity is a matter of policy; a noisy atheist would be, of course, a cause of scandal, and might even bring

philosophy into discredit. Besides, almost every serious philosopher of this our first period believes in God as in some sense the source of nature. It is, however, not well to tell the unlearned too much about what sort of God you believe in. The unlearned are gross, still dread witches, carry amulets, know nothing of geometry; best be cautious of speech to them. Philosophy makes no propaganda, appeals to philosophers, lets faith alone. Besides, loyalty to the state counsels some measure of religious conformity. Hobbes, the great Englishman, himself a speculative materialist, and, as I fancy, the most well-knit and highly organized thinker in the whole history of English philosophy, was clear that whatever a man's opinion might be, it was his duty to submit all matters of religious conformity to the judgment of the state. "I submit," he says in effect somewhere, "to the Church of England, because that is the church ordained for me by the will of my sovereign, the king of England." And this confession of Hobbes involves no hypocrisy. It is the frankest confession in the world. His conformity is openly a conformity to civil laws. Philosophy and religion are once for all separated. It is a matter of accident whether the philosopher has or has not a traditional creed left him by his philosophy. His thought is no longer the handmaid of his faith, as had generally been the case with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. But as for his faith itself, social and political considerations must decide how and in what way he shall give evidence of it to his fellows. His very loyalty, his good citizenship, his frank benevolence, counsel prudence of speech.

And here appears again another side of the philosophy of this first period. It is a loyal philosophy, a philosophy of good citizenship; it has a great respect for the highest political interests of man; it studies jurisprudence, statecraft, international law, natural justice; it founds its loyalty, indeed, upon reason, makes little of the divine right