as "organic." Between organized bodies and the State there is an analogy; every member of the body politic is to be at once means and end, at once helping to hold up the State, and itself dependent on the whole for its own support. But (he says) this idea of organic evolution goes beyond physical science; it is a metaphysical notion implying the unity of all organic forces in the world. This is a wide conception which science would rightly regard as inadmissible from its point of view." Teleology is excluded by science from its interpretations of facts; it is not "constitutive," though it is always present as an impulse and guide to the provisional inquiries; in other words, it is "regulative." Physical science is bound to explain by mechanical principles and experience. Experience tells us how things are and have been, but does not tell us that they cannot be otherwise in the future.* Rousseau had no such optimistic view of history. Kant, for whom Rousseau's writing had a magical attraction, differs from that author in his very startingpoint; "Rousseau proceeds synthetically and begins with the natural man; I proceed analytically, and begin with the civilized man." Kant considers that in civilization what is too often lost in simplicity is gained in opportunities of progress. The idea of the organic development of human powers was the form which the eighteenth century's conception of progress, such as we have seen it in Godwin, took in the case of Kant. He worked out no more than the bare outlines of a philosophy of history; but he and Herder had done enough to plant the idea in German philosophy. This service of theirs which seems remote from economics was in reality to be of great importance to that study. kraft, § 81, V. 436. In its modern sense it was as old as Leibnitz. See Prof. R. Eucken's Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart. Second Edition, 1892, p. 104. i Urtheilskraft, V. 387, note. 2 IV. 161. 3 Urtheilskraft, V. 391. 4 IV. 182. 5 VIII. 618. The relation of Kant to Rousseau is considered in Dietrich's Kant und Rousseau (1878) and Fester's Rousseau und die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie (1890), ch. iii. CHAPTER II. J. G. FICHTE (1762-1814). ECONOMISTS of the school of Adam Smith have been often blamed for putting wealth instead of man in the forefront of their inquiries. Fichte goes farther than most of these critics. In his essay on the Dignity of Man (1794) he puts the Ego in the centre of all philosophy, and explains that by the Ego he means the Man. It is the conception of a self-conscious spirit, or Man, that first shows to us that the world is a cosmos, and (he considers) the remark is true not only speculatively but practically and physically. "Man makes raw materials organize themselves after his ideal; he tames the wild animals and domesticates the wild plants." Science, first awakened by hard necessity, gradually knows and subdues Nature (Destiny of Man, 1800). Men in company with men become more truly human, and human society reveals and developes the true nature of humanity. Though all outward embodiments of his ideal decay, the ideal itself remains, ever tending to transform the material world to its own likeness, and it remains an elevating feature in the lowest forms of humanity; the down-trodden slave on American plantation is a temple of the Holy Ghost." Nothing could be more spiritual and less egoistic (in the vulgar sense of the term) than the teaching of Fichte with whom the modern socialism of Germany may be said to begin. “All progress," he says, "is due to unselfish devotion to ideas" (VII. 41). The State is no mere economic association (VII. 144, 157). Yet no modern socialist is more deeply dissatisfied with the condition of the labouring classes. "The majority of mankind are all their life long bowed down by hard toil to 1 Works, I. 412, 413. provide food for themselves and for the minority who do mechanism; and the goal itself towards which the union of spirits, of free human wills is striving, is a moral perfection, not a heaven beyond the grave, but a heaven here in this world. The kingdom of heaven is within us (283, cf. 289). Perfect external conditions are only desirable as a means to this higher spiritual perfection (285) which is no doubt never reachable by any individual, but is postulated by the moral law, and involves therefore an infinite progress to it-an. endless life for the human spirit (287). Without the law of duty there would not even be a present world: with it, there is also another world (288). In other words, the consciousness of a spiritual bond, of union with other men, is what constitutes our world; it is as real a fact as any in our experience, but it is not attested by the senses; it is spiritual, and its possibilities are all the greater (cf. 301, etc.). We need not follow Fichte into his further metaphysical conclusions on this head, drawn out as they are with an eloquence that helps us to understand Fichte's influence among his contemporaries. The general metaphysical principles of Fichte are important to us only in so far as they guided Hegel to his Dialectic. In his Doctrine of Knowledge (if we may so translate Wissenschaftslehre, (1794) Fichte carries out (as he thinks) the Kantian Criticism consistently to its furthest consequences. There remains no thing-in-itself; but all begins and ends in Ego. What corresponds, however, to a thing-in-itself is the element of distinction or opposition involved in an act of Knowledge, and bringing with it a perpetual effort to overcome it and to abolish the very existence of a non-Ego. In his practical life where man is active (as distinguished from his theoretical, where he is in a sense receptive and passive), this effort to conquer the non-Ego means the endeavour to bring the world into harmony with the spirit of man; and his progress, whether in knowledge or in moral action, has three stages-thesis (assertion of the Ego), antithesis (contrasted assertion of a non-Ego), and synthesis, or a harmonizing of the two. This law of three stages seems 1 This was Kant's view, Fractical Reason (1788), Works, V. 128. 2 (Cf. Spencer, Man v. the State, page 6). It may be added that one evidence of the reality is the effect produced by the loss of friends, in altering our whole world. to have helped Hegel to his idea of dialectic and development, an idea which has been of the greatest importance" even for the history of Economics. 2 Fichte had absorbed the spirit and not simply copied the letter of Kant; and it was not therefore surprising that Fichte's Principles of Natural Law1 should have anticipated many of Kant's thoughts on the subject, though preceding Kant's book by a year. Like Kant, Fichte separates the theory of Rights from the theory of Duties. He is even more rigid than Kant, for he will not allow that the former may be deduced from the latter. He holds that the only law of Nature is the moral law (VI.82, French Revol.). The notion of Duty depends on a categorical imperative; the notion of Right on a hypothetical im-1 perative. If there is to be a community of free beings, then each member of it must obey the maxim, "So limit thy freedom that it does not conflict with the freedom of others" (III. 10). In the world there may be anarchy, and logically this is the prior condition of humanity;3" but, if there is to be society, this maxim must be so followed that the organization of Society secures the obedience of its members (III. 108). The very notion of Law implies the possibility of action that diverges from the path pointed out by the law. The volonté de tous may be, as in trade, to get the better of one's neighbour; but in face of the facts it becomes the volonté générale, or united will that right should be done (III. 106 n., 109). Original "rights of man" in isolation there are none, though there may be property in isolation (ib., 116). But there are rights of men in communities or societies, existing prior to any political organization.* The distinction between Society and State is clearly laid down. Further, rights mean nothing except in relation to men's bodies, in the sensible world, where men are identified with their bodies. There is no "right to think," for there is no external means of preventing or compelling thought. The right of self-preservation is postulated 1 Grundlage des Naturrechts, 1796. 3 Priority does not mean historical priority. 4 III. 112 seq., cf. VI. 129 scq 2 Rechtslehre, 1797. |