Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/111

Rh METAPHYSIC 101 social life of his own is the negation of this contingency and externality. In all this process he is showing himself to be a being who can only know himself as he knows the objective world, and who can only realize himself as he makes himself the agent of a Divine purpose, to which all things are contributing. Such an idea of man s relation to the world is necessarily involved in any theory that goes beyond that subjective idealism or sensationalism which denies to him every object of knowledge except his own states of feeling, and every end of action except his own pleasures and pains. Recent speculation, indeed, has suggested a compromise by which this dilemma is supposed to be evaded, and mankind are represented as forming an organic unity in themselves, though they are still conceived as standing in an external and accidental relation to nature, the forces of which by their knowledge and skill they have subdued and are more and more subduing to their service. Such a compromise we find in the philosophy of Comte, the first writer who, starting from an apparently empirical basis, was able to break through the individualistic prejudices of the school of Locke. In the latter volumes of his Positive Philosophy, still more in his Positive Politics, Comte so far transcends individualism as to deny the externality of men to each other, and to declare that &quot; the individual, as such, is an abstraction,&quot; and that in reality he cannot be separated from the social organism, which is thus not merely an extraneous condition of his development, but essential to his very existence as man. Thus individual men exist only through the universal through the spirit of the family, of the nation, of humanity, which manifests itself in them as a principle of life and development. Yet this organic unity, according to Comte, is in contact with a world which in relation to it is external and contingent. Nature has not its final cause in man, but on the contrary is, at first, rather his enemy ; and it is to humanity itself that the praise is due if to a certain extent the enemy has been turned into a servant. The unity of life which manifests itself in humanity cannot therefore be considered as a universal principle, as the principle of the whole universe, but simply as the principle of the limited existence of man, which is hemmed in on every side by external and, in the main, unknown conditions. If humanity therefore is an organism, it is an organism existing in a medium which in reference to it is inorganic, i.e., in a medium which has no essential relation to the life which animates man. It is obvious, however, that this theory is an illogical attempt to find a standing ground between two opposite philosophies, between the philosophy which treats man merely as a natural individual, placed among other individual beings and things, and which therefore regards his relation to them as something accidental and external, and the philo sophy which treats him as a spiritual subject, a conscious and self-conscious being, and regards him therefore as having no merely external relations either to other men or to nature. Comte shrinks from regarding the world without us as the manifestation of that spiritual principle which is also within us, which constitutes our very nature as individual men, and therefore connects us with the world at the same time that it separates us from it. Yet he recognizes the existence in us of a principle which is so far universal that it constitutes a community between all men. He thinks that the individual can transcend himself, so far as to see all things, not indeed from a Divine point of view, sub specie xternitatis, but from the point of view of universal humanity, and that in conformity with this theoretical consciousness, he can live a practical life of altruism, i.e., a life in which he identifies his own good with the good of humanity. But the philosophy that has gone so far must logically go further. It is impossible to treat humanity as an organism without extending the organic idea to the con ditions under which the social life of humanity is developed. The medium by aid of which, or in reacting against which, the organized being maintains itself is an essential part of its life ; it remains organic only in so far as it can mould itself to its conditions, and its conditions to itself. This is true even of the animal organism in relation to its small circle of conditions, which, however, is part of a larger circle to which the animal has no relation. But a conscious being is a universal centre of relations ; there is nothing which it, as conscious, cannot make part of its own life. Hence the application of the organic idea to it in volves its application to the whole world. And, if the recognition of a universal principle manifested in humanity naturally led Comte to the idea of the worship of humanity, the recognition of a universal principle manifested in man and nature alike must lead to the idea of the worship of God. The rationality of religion, then, rests on the possibility of an ultimate synthesis in which man and nature are regarded as the manifestation of one spiritual principle. For religion involves a faith that, in our efforts to realize the good of humanity, we are not merely straining after an ideal beyond us, which may or may not be realized, but are animated by a principle which within us and without us is necessarily realizing itself, because it is the ultimate principle by which all things are, and are known. This absolute certitude that we work effectually because all the universe is working with us, or, in other words, because God is working in us, can find its explanation and defence only in a philosophy for which &quot; the real is the rational, and the rational is the real.&quot; And such a philosophy, beginning with the Kantian doctrine that existence means existence for a spiritual or thinking subject, must go on to prove that that only can exist for such a subject which is the manifestation of thought or spirit ; and, conversely, that spirit or intelligence is essentially self -manifesting, or, in other words, that it cannot be conceived except aa standing in essential relation to an external and material world. Finally, if nature be thus regarded as a necessary manifestation of spirit, it can be opposed to spirit only in so far as spirit in its realization becomes opposed to itself. In other words, nature must be regarded as, from a higher point of view, included in spirit. Nature exists that it may show itself to be spiritual in and to man, who transcends it yet implies it, who finds in it the necessary basis of his thought and action, but only that he may build upon it a higher spiritual life. Nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean : so over the art Which, you say, adds to nature is an art Which nature makes. &quot; Only the order of precedence suggested by these words must be inverted. For, as nature only is for spirit, so the spiritual energy which reacts upon nature is that which manifests for the first time what nature in reality is. It is the consciousness of this i.e., of the identity of that which is realizing itself within and without us, the consciousness that the necessity which is the precondition of our freedom is the manifestation of the same spirit which makes us free which turns morality into religion. For it is this alone which enables us to regard the realization of the highest ends of human life as no mere happy accident, or as a conquest to be won by the cunning of man from an unfriendly or indifferent destiny, but as the result towards which all things are working. In this philosophy, which finds its most adequate expression in the works of Hegel, there are two things which may be distinguished the general idealistic view o the world, and the dialectical movement of thought in