transmitted to a distributing centre, whence the nerves convey them to the muscles. The medium of conduction is, Galvanism seems to show, electricity. The sympathetic connection of the parts of the organism with one another through the nervous system renders preposterous the 99 statue of Condillac. The operations of the organism by which perceptions, conceptions, judgments, determinations. of will, are brought about, instead of occurring singly and without affecting one another, occur in connection with one another and modify one another. From the motions of the brain resulting from external or internal impressions conveyed to it, arise all operations of the soul or mind; from the impressions of outer sense arise ideas; from those of inner sense or feelings in the internal bodily organs, instincts, — as, for example, the maternal instinct, which arises from the action of inner organs during the period of gestation. Through the brain (and nerves) also the mind acts on the body. Les nerfs, voilà tout l'homme! In the nervous system and especially the brain is the identity of the physical and moral which the method of natural science postulates. Cabanis outgrew (if we may say so) this pure materialism, and held to the belief in a universal intelligence and will above the physical world. His earlier doctrine is a complete anticipation in many respects of the physiological psychology of the present moment.

§ 91.

The German "Illumination" (Aufklärung).1 — There were in the conditions of the age in which the LeibnitzoWolffian philosophy flourished, reasons why that philosophy should (in general) give place to a philosophy the object of whose interest should be, not truth in general and for its own sake, but a limited aspect of it and for utility's sake, why, in other words, that would-be universalistic, scientific rationalism should give place to a pronouncedly limited, merely humanistic, and even individualistic one. There

1 Zeller, Erdmann, Noack.

was in the very spirit of the age in Germany a distinct subjectivism which revolted against custom, authority, and law in all matters, and sought to determine everything anew and from inner original sources. This was reinforced, as regards philosophy, by an influx of French materialism (particularly at the court of the gallicized Frederick the Great) and of English empirical psychology, deism, and moral philosophy. Even in the Leibnitzo-Wolffian philosophy, indeed, there was an element that was entirely in harmony with all this. To say nothing of a certain individualism implied in its doctrine of monads, its insistence upon common intelligibility and practicality as prime requisites of a sound philosophy, upon the paramount importance of an "enlightened understanding" as a condition to human welfare and happiness, was calculated to throw the weight of its influence with the common mind entirely in the direction of a rather narrow rationalism, much narrower than the system of Wolff (as a system which professed to take all knowledge for its province) would admit of,—a rationalism that despised "metaphysics" and "mysticism," and extolled "common sense " and "sound understanding." It was therefore in every way natural that the prime object of interest in philosophy should be man, and the question of his present and future welfare and happiness, that thought should centre upon his inner experiences and his faculties; that self-contemplation and diaries, confessions, autobiographies, etc., resulting from it should become a fashion; that philosophical discussion should run mainly along the lines of empirical psychology, æsthetics (utilitarian), moral philosophy (equally utilitarian), natural theology, and should be. unsystematic and not altogether profound. Such at least was the case. By far the most important thinkers of the Enlightenment, as it is usually termed, are Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing. Besides these two should be mentioned here: Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), a pronounced Woffian (except as to the doctrine of pre-established harmony), who sharply opposed to the ruling orthodox theology the teachings of a rationalistic natural theology

(containing a distinction of teleology into internal and external which was adopted by Kant), and taught a pronounced eudæmonism; Johann Georg Sulzer (17201779), noted chiefly as a writer in æsthetics, but author of an ethico-physical treatise in which the ground is taken (for example) that the divine goodness appears in the fact that cherries do not ripen in the winter, because then they would not taste so well as in the summer, an instance of the superficially anthropomorphic teaching in the teleology of this period; Nicolaus Tetens (1736-1805), a LeibnitzoLockian, who was one of the "first to co-ordinate feeling as a fundamental faculty with understanding and will,” and was esteemed and followed by Kant as a psychologist, and was in turn capable of appreciating and being influenced by Kant; Johann Georg Heinrich Feder (1740-1820), a representative eclectic of the "common sense," utilitarian type, who, together with Christoph Meiners, established a "Philosophical Library" for the purpose of combating the Kantian Criticism; Johann Bernhard Basedow (17231790), a successful popular pedagogist, one of whose doctrines may here be mentioned because of the contrasts it offers to a corresponding one of Kant's, viz., that the doctrines of the existence of God and the immortality of the soul must be true because belief in them is morally beneficial.1 We may now turn to the two most important Illuminationists, Mendelssohn and Lessing.

$ 92.

Moses Mendelssohn2 (1729–1786). — Moses Mendelssohn was the son of a Jewish teacher and author, of Dessau. He went to Berlin at the age of fourteen, and in the face of many and great difficulties gained a livelihood (as a private teacher, and as a book-keeper and manager of a silk establishment), carried on his studies, and won the recognition of thinkers and scholars. Early educated as a Jew, he was always at heart a Jew, and labored most nobly for the elevation of his race, translating portions of the Old Testament

1 See Erdmann, § 300, II.

2 Zeller, Erdmann, Noack.

into German, preparing a Jewish ritual, championing the cause of free thought and universal toleration, and emphasizing certain central truths of universal religion. In the formation of his philosophical opinions he was much influenced by personal intercourse with Lessing and Nicolaï, both pronounced Illuminationists, and by a study of the works of Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, the Scotch school, Rousseau, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Wolff, nearly all thinkers of a rationalistic type, and instrumental in bringing about the philosophical Illumination throughout Germany in the eighteenth century.

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Works.-Works of Mendelssohn are: "Philosophische Gespräche" (Philosophical Dialogues), (1755); "Briefe über die Empfindungen" (Letters on the Sensations), (1755); 'Phædon, oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele "(Phædo, or on the Immortality of the Soul), (1767); "Morgenstunden, oder Vorlesungen über das Dasein Gottes" (Morning Hours, or Lectures on the Existence of God), (1785).

Philosophy. The only worthy end of human endeavor is the happiness and perfection of human individuals. "Humanity" is a mere dead, fixed abstraction.

"Science,"

as such merely, is likewise an empty abstraction. The prime requisite for the attainment of human happiness is a knowledge of human nature, which is gained only by a careful psychological investigation. This investigation must be conducted, first of all, observation-wise; reason (the reasoning faculty) of itself is liable to err, and must be controlled by the more primitive understanding, whose material is sensations and intuitions. The final criterion of truth is practical need, -the heart. Between (and co-ordinate with) cognition and desire lies feeling, which is either pleasurable or painful. A pleasurable feeling results from the idea of perfection, a painful one from the opposite. A feeling produced by perfection in a sensible form is a sensation of sensible beauty. The impulse towards the realization of the idea of perfection is the fundamental impulse in human

nature, and the highest law of our will. Stated as an injunction, this law is: "Make the inner and outer condition of thyself and others as faultless as thou canst." Indispensable for the fulfilment of this injunction and the realization of the idea of perfection is a rational faith in God, in the divine government of the world, and in the immortality of the soul. Now, the existence of God follows for us from the idea of the most perfect being: the idea is self-contradictory unless God be. The being of God follows, further, from the contingent nature of the world. That the soul is immortal follows from such considerations as that: Nature knows no real annihilation; a rational being, striving by the necessity of its nature towards perfection, cannot reasonably be hindered in its destiny; the rational necessity of retribution is not satisfied in the present existence; without the hope of immortality human life must be a life of stupefaction and despair. But if the soul endures, so must its chief attributes, thought and will; and its existence must be a happy one, since it is impossible that God, the perfect being, could destine it for eternal wretchedness. These principles relative to human happiness, God, and immortality are for Mendelssohn almost, if not quite, axiomatic. Metaphysics he deems to have every whit the evidence, i. e., the certainty and comprehensibility, that mathematics boasts; it is only because mathematics has a system of well-chosen symbols, is not concerned with the existence of objects, and does not immediately affect our interests, that a prejudice in its favor exists. Descartes, indeed, showed clearly and distinctly the mathematical certainty and intelligibility of metaphysics in his demonstrations. of the existence of the ego and of God. Without this certainty and intelligibility metaphysics were of course valueless.

§ 93.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing1 (1729-1781). — Lessing, the most original and profound of the Illuminationists, or 1 Zeller, Erdmann, Noack; Works of Lessing.