Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/457

 PHILOSOPHY 443 fest themselves in inorganic nature. The ab- solutely real cannot be termed a transcendental object, since each object has its corresponding subject, and all objects are simply represen- tations in the subject, and hence phenomena. Weakened by internal contradictions, Schopen- hauer's system is most noted for its develop- ment of pessimism, in which the results of his subjective experience have been supposed to be reflected. Trendelenburg (died in 1872) rep- resents the new phase of German philosophy resulting from the reaction which followed the growing distrust of the absolute idealism of Hegel. He could accept no speculative prin- ciple from which the sciences could be de- veloped dialectically, by an a priori process. Hegel's "pure thought," without content, was impossible. To become a starting point at all, it must subsume a posteriori conceptions. The fancied demonstration of the identity of thought and being was unsound. From these (each of them nothing or repose) becoming, or motion, is assumed to be derived. But in this space and time are involved, yet it is successively assumed in Hegel's designation of the steps in the progress of pure thought. External motion is thus the postulate of a logic that would postulate nothing. With Kant also Trendelenburg joins issue, claim- ing, against his assumption, that time and space are not merely subjective, but objective and subjective at the same time. In the neg- lect of the history of philosophy, Trendelen- burg found one explanation of the unsound- ness of the views he opposed. With Plato he made philosophy the sentinel over the bounds of the sciences, developing their underlying unity. The existence of a real objective world does not need to be proved. It is the grounds of our belief in this reality that belong to phi- losophy. Now in cognition the antithesis of thought and being is involved. The principle that shall mediate between these must be one common to both. It must be active, primi- tive, simple. Let motion be hypothetically as- sumed as such principle. On examination, it meets the conditions required. It may be regarded as the prius of experience. From it result eight categories, the first of which is causality. If motion is the first energy of thought and being, the resulting categories ex- press relations at once objective and subjec- tive. The chasm between the real and the ideal is bridged over. The notion of purpose, for Trendelenburg the second fundamental no- tion in philosophy, enables him to pass from the physical into the organic and ethical realm. Thought takes motion into its service. The final cause controls the efficient cause in iden- tifying itself with it. The inadequacy of the efficient is the indirect proof of the designing cause. From these principles Trendelenburg develops his ethical and theistic doctrines. Ul- rici (born in 1806), one of the most eminent of living German philosophers, aims to con- struct a philosophy of idealism on a realistic basis. His object is almost identical witi Kant's. He agrees with Trendelenburg in pro- nouncing a delusion the pretension of Hegel that his philosophy assumed nothing. There are certain laws that control every mental op- eration, and to these the skeptic as well as the dogmatist is subject. Nothing can be known except as differentiated from something else. Hence all knowledge is relative. There are certain modes in which we must differentiate things, and these are the logical categories. These are the a priori conditions of knowl- edge, and are implicitly given in the nature of the mind itself. The notion of the absolute implies them, and hence cannot be the starting point of philosophy. In like manner, the ex- perience philosophy that would trace every- thing back in sensation is seen to be unten- able. But the modes of conception to which we are compelled by the laws of thought have not a merely subjective validity. There is an external world, forcing itself upon us through the senses, the existence of which no idealist can deny. External objects exist, and when we study them scientifically we are forced to dif- ferentiate and classify them according to the logical categories. We find laws of. thought, which are also laws of things, and yet neither derived from the other. Nature's methods are rational, and nature is intelligible only as the work of a rational mind. By this line of thought, Ulrici seeks to confute at once sensa- tional philosophy, atheism, and pantheism, and to establish the connection between the ob- jective reality and the cognizing mind. E. von Hartmann (born in 1840) has recently made a step in a new direction. He attempts to reach speculative results by inductions from physical science. He examines the phenomena of the unconscious, appearing in the actions of the body and soul of man, plants, and animals, and, taking the sum of the individual instances as the one principle underlying all, he designates by the term of " the unconscious " what Spinoza calls the sole substance of all things, Hegel the idea, and Schopenhauer the will. He employs the term only provisionally and temporarily, understanding the unconscious to be: 1, that which forms and maintains organisms, repairs their external and internal injuries, adapts their movements, and places them at the disposal of the conscious will ; 2, that which in the instinct is needed for the preservation of a being, and for which conscious thought is insufficient ; 3, that which preserves the species through sexual and maternal love, perfects them through se- lection in sexual love, and, leads mankind to the goal of the highest possible perfection ; 4, that which determines the actions of man through apprehensions and sentiments wherever he is not able to make a choice by conscious thought ; 5, that which assists the process of conscious thought through intuitions, and which _ ic mysticism aids man toward the apprehension of higher and supersensual unities; 6, that which blesses man with the sentiment for the