merz - history european thought in 19thc. 1

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EUKOPEAN THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTHCENTURY


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Totovros ow yu.ot 6 crvyypas earco, . . .evos cv TOI? /3c)8Xi'ois fai aTroXi?.

LUCIAN.


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ALHISTOKY

OP

EUBOPEAN THOUGHTIN THE

NINETEENTH CENTUEY

BY

JOHN THEODORE MERZ

VOL. I.

THIRD UNALTERED EDITION

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONSEDINBURGH AND LONDONMCMVII


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PREFACE.

As the plan of this work is fully given in the Introduction,only a few points, chiefly of a personal character, remain tobe touched on here.The first refers to the motive which led me to a course

of studies, extending over more than thirty years, of whichthis book is the outcome.The object of the book is philosophical, in the sense now

accepted by many and by divergent schools i.e., it desiresto contribute something towards a unification of thought.When in the beginning of my philosophical studies I be-came convinced that this is the task of philosophy, I feltthe necessity of making myself acquainted, at first hand,.with the many trains of reasoning by which, in theseparate domains of science, of practical and of individualthought, such a unification has been partially and success-fully attempted. Such a survey seemed to me indispens-able. The possession of a map showing the many lines ofthought which our age has cultivated seemed to me thefirst requisite, the basis from which a more complete


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VI PREFACE.unification would have to start. The following pagescontain the result of this survey. Like every survey, itcan claim to be merely an approximation. It gives outlineswhich closer scrutiny will have to correct and fill up.My original intention was to complete this survey in

three volumes, corresponding to the three divisions of thesubject set out in the Introduction.Some of my friends, who desired that the publication

of the book should not be unduly delayed, considered thatthe Introduction and the earlier chapters of the work wouldgive something intelligible in themselves, and urged theadvantage of smaller volumes. I therefore decided to com-plete the first part of the history, which deals with scientificthought, in two volumes instead of in one.

For the information of my readers, I mention here thatthe two last chapters of this volume, which treat of theastronomical and of the atomic views of Nature, will befollowed in the second volume by similar chapters onthe mechanical, the physical, the biological, the statistical,and the psychophysical views of Nature, and that it is myintention to close the first part of my subject by an attemptto trace concisely the development of mathematical thoughtin this century.My thanks are due to many friends who have supportedme with assistance and encouragement.

I consider myself fortunate in having secured for therevision of the whole volume the invaluable aid of MrThomas Whittaker, B.A., whose profound erudition, know-


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PREFACE. Vll

ledge of ancient and modern literature, and great editorialexperience, were well known to my late friend ProfessorGroom Eobertson, during his successful editorship of thefirst series of 'Mind.'Mr S. Oliver Eoberts, M.A., of the Merchant Taylors'

School, has kindly read over the fourth, and ProfessorPhillips Bedson, of the Durham College of Science of thiscity, the last, chapter of this volume. The Introduction hasgreatly benefited by a thorough revision by my brother-in-law, Dr Spence Watson, a master of the English language.

I must also thank him and Dr Thomas Hodgkin forhaving given me what I value as much as assistancenamely, encouragement.One indeed to whom I am in this respect more indebted,

perhaps, than to any one else whom to have known hasmeant, for many, a revelation of the power of mind andthe reality of spirit is no more : Ernst Curtius. WhileI was writing the last pages of this volume, in which hetook a warm interest, the tidings arrived that he had passedaway. But she who was nearest and dearest to him isstill with us a true priestess of the higher life, who haskept burning in the soul of many a youthful friend thespiritual fire when it was in danger of being quenched bythe growing materialism of our age.

J. THEO. MEEZ.THE QUARRIES,

NBWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, November 1896.


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CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME,

INTRODUCTION.I. Thought, the hidden world, 1 ; The only moving principle, 2 ; History ofNature, how to be understood, 2 ; Not intelligible without intellect, 2 ;

History of savage tribes, what is it ? 3 ; Two ways in which thought entersinto history, 4 ; Definition of thought impossible, 4 ; Relation of outerand inner worlds undefined, 5 ; Many meanings of thought, 5 ; Thoughtof the present age, 6 ; Contemporary history, to what extent possibleand valuable, 6 ; Supposed objectivity of historians, 7 ; Value of contem-porary records, 8 ; Mystery of the life of thought, 8 ; Latent thought thematerial for genius, 8 ; Contemporary record of thought more faithful,10 ; Events of the immediate past, 10 ; Changes of language, 11 ; Coiningof new words, 12 ; Object of this work, 13 ; Not a political history, nor ahistory of science, literature, and art, 13 ; Influences which have a resulton our inner life, 14 ; Personal knowledge necessary, 14 ; American influ-ence only touched upon, 14 ; Only French, German, and English thoughttreated, 15 ; Unity of thought, a product of this century, 16 ; Voltaire,16; Adam Smith, 16; Coleridge and Wordsworth, 17; Mme. de Stael,17 ; Paris the focus of science, 17 ; Babbage, Herschel, and Peacock, 18 ;Liebig's laboratory, 18 ; Comte's philosophy, 18 ; Constable's influence inFrance, 19 ; Science become international, 19 ; The light which etymologythrows on the history of thought, 20 ; Goethe, 22 ; Peculiarity of theGerman language, 22 ; New thought has found new words, 23 ; De Bon-aid and Max Miiller, 23 ; Thought, how expressed in French and Ger-man, 24 ; Philosophy of history, 25 ; Want of precise terms in Germanand French, 26 ; Carlyle, 26.


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X CONTENTS.II. The two factors of intellectual progress, 27 ; Object of the book, 28 ;

Nineteenth century, what it has achieved : (a) Method of knowledge ; (6)Unity of knowledge, 29 ; Search after truth, 29 ; Method of science, prac-tised by Galileo, &c., defined by Bacon, &c., 30 ; Disintegration of learn-ing, 30 ; Apparent distance between science and poetry, 31 ; Closer con-nection between science and life, 31 ; What has nineteenth century donefor the ideals ? 32 ; Deeper conception of the unity of human interests,33 ; Different terms for expressing this unity, 33 ; Definition of thought,33 ; Age of encyclopaedic treatment of learning, 34 ; Unity of knowledgegradually lost sight of, 35 ; Lectures- on

Encyclopadie

in Germany, 37;Encyclopedias did not fulfil their promise, 39 ; French were masters inscience in beginning of the century, 41 ; Reaction in Germany againstmetaphysics, 43 ; Reform in school literature, 44 ; Germany has takenthe lead in studying the life of thought, 46 ; Transition from meta-physical to historical method, 47 ; Herbert Spencer, 48 ; Lotze, 48 ;Herder's 'Ideen,' 50 ; Humboldt's 'Kosmos,' 51 ; Lotze's ' Microcosmus,'52 ; What the mental life of mankind consists of, 55 ; Methods havetheir day and cease to be, 56.

III. Necessity of choosing a road, 57 ; No central event in our age, 58 ; Ishistory of thought history of philosophy ? 60 ; Goethe's work involvesthe deepest thought of the century, 61 ; Philosophy retrospective, 62 ;Two questions, 63 ; Speculation, 64 ; Philosophy defined, 65 ; Divisionof the book, 65 ; Neither science nor philosophy exhausts thought, 66 ;Thought also hidden in literature and art, 66 ; Goethe's and Words-worth's influence, 67 ; Unmethodical thought, 68 ; Summed up in term religious thought, 69 ; Science is exact, 69 ; Subjective interests, 70 ;Philosophy intermediate between exact science and religion, 71 ; Three-fold aspect of thought : scientific, philosophical, individual, 72 ; Difficultto separate the three aspects, 74 ; French thought centred in science,75 ; State of philosophy in England, 75 ; Goethe's ' Faust ' representativeof the thought of the century, 76 ; A period of ferment, 76 ; Caused bythe Revolution, 77 ; Thought of century partly radical, partly reactionary,77 ; Byronic school, 78 ; Revolutionary theories, 79 ; Thought to be con-sidered as a constructive power, 80 ; Darwin, Spencer, and Lotze, 81 ;Romanticism, 82 ; Scientific thought to be dealt with first, 84 ; Hegel'sdoctrine, 85.


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CONTENTS. XI

PAKT L SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT.Three chapters on the growth and the diffusion of the scientific spirit

in the first half of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER I.THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN FRANCE.

Our century the scientific century, 89 ; Difference of English and Continentalnotions of science, 91 ; Relation of science and life, 92 ; Foreseen byBacon, 93 ; Defect in Bacon's Philosophy, 94 ; Corrected by Newton, 95 ;Bacon's and Newton's ideas taken up by French philosophers : Bacon andNewton compared, 96 ; Laplace's work, 97 ; French Academy of Sciences,99 ; Continental methods in mathematics, 100 ; Modern analyticalmethods, 102 ; Older synthetical methods, 103 ; Influence of scienceon French literature, 104 ; Absence of this influence in England andGermany, 106 ; Schools of science in Paris, 106 ; Promoted by Govern-ments of Revolution, 108 ; Condorcet, 110 ; Lakanal, 111 ; Ecole normale,Ecole polytechnique, 112 ; Monge's 'Descriptive Geometry,' 114 ; Scienceof Chemistry, 114 ; New mathematical sciences, 116 ; Crystallography,116 ; Theory of probability, 118 ; Laplace gained his results by dis-regarding individuality, 124 ; The centre of interest in the sciences oflife, 125 ; Into this centre Cuvier carried exact research, 128 ; Cuvier'straining, 133 ; Cuvier the greatest representative of the Academic system,136 ; Science during the Revolution and First Empire, 138 ; Popular-isation of science in France, 142 ; Literary and national popularisation,142 ; Dangers of the former, 143 ; The Revolution added the practicalpopularisation, 145 ; Influence of the first Napoleon on science, 149 ;Napoleon favoured the mathematical sciences, 151 ; Discountenanced'Contemporary philosophy, 152; Used statistical methods, 153; Promi-nence given deservedly to French names by Cuvier, 155.

CHAPTER II.THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN GERMANY.

Foundation of German universities, 158 ; Development of the universities bythe people, 159 ; Geographical distribution of the universities, 162 ; Fulldevelopment of the German university system, 163 ; Philosophical fac-ulty, 164 ; University of Gottingen, 164 ; Relation of universities and


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Xll CONTENTS.high schools, 166 ; The university a training-school for research, 167 ;The ideal of Wissenschaft, 168 ; Developed under the German universitysystem, 170 ; Reception of exact science in Germany, 174 ; Science notyet domiciled during the eighteenth century, 178 ; Scientific periodicals,180 ; Gauss's mathematical researches, 181 ; Scientific spirit enters theuniversities in second quarter of century, 183 ; Jacobi's mathematicalschool, 185 ; Chemical laboratories established in 1826 through Liebig,188 ; Cosmopolitan character of German science, 189 ; Liebig's organicanalysis, 191 ; Biology a German science, 193 ; Cellular theory ofSchleiden, 194 ; and Schwann, 195 ; Ernst Heinrich Weber, 196 ; andJohannes Muller, 197 ; Psychophysics, 198 ; Spirit of exact research andWissenschaft, 202 ; Encyclopaedic view necessary in philosophy andhistory, 203 ; Philosophy of Nature, 204 ; Conflict between the scientificand the philosophical views, 205 ; A. von Humboldt, 206 ; Influence ofBerzelius on German science, 208 ; Philosophy of Nature and medicalscience, 209 ; Science for its own sake, 211 ; Bequest of the classical andphilosophical school, 211 ; Completeness and thoroughness of research,213 ; Combination of research and teaching, 214 ; Combination of scienceand philosophy, 215 ; Biology grown out of science and philosophy com-bined, 216 ; Du Bois-Reymond on Muller, 217 ; Vital force abandoned,218 ; Mechanical view in biology, 219 ; Criticism of principles of mathe-matics, 221 ; The exact, the historical, and the critical habits of thought,222.

CHAPTER III.THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND.

Scientific organisation abroad, 226 ; Similar institutions in Great Britain, 227 ;English science in the early part of the century, 229 ; Alleged decline ofscience in England, 230 ; Criticisms of Playfair, 231 ; Babbage's criti-cisms, 233 ; Foreign opinions on English science, 235 ; English replies toBabbage, 238 ; Foundation of the British Association, 238 ; Character-istics of higher mental work in England, 239 ; Academies and universitiesnot always impartial, 240 ; Fourier, 241 ; Fresnel, 241 ; Plucker,242 ; Grassmann, 243 ; Central organisation wanting in England, 243 ;Thomas Young, 244 ; Dalton, 245 ; Faraday, 246 ; Green, 246 ; Boole,247 ; Babbage, 248 ; Characteristics of English thought, 249 ; Absence ofschools of scientific thought, 250 ; Individual character and practicaltendency of English science, 251 ; English peculiarities more pronouncedduring earlier part of the century, 252 ; Unique character of Englishuniversities, 254 ; Ideal of liberal education, 255 ; Union of educationand instruction, 258 ; Educational organisations in England, 262 ; The


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CONTENTS. XlllRoyal Institution, 264 ; Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society,265 ; John Dawson of Sedbergh, 267 ; The Scotch Universities, 267 ; TheRoyal Society of Edinburgh, 269; The 'Edinburgh Review,' 270; TheAnalytical Society of Cambridge, 271 ; University life in Scotland, 271 ;The Dublin Mathematical School, 274 ; Importance of British contribu-tions to science, 276 ; Diffusion of scientific knowledge on the Continent,276 ; Isolation of English men of science, 277 ; Individualism of theEnglish character, 279 ; Changes during the last fifty years, 280 ; Britishcontributions to biology, 282 ; Jenner, 284 ; English love of nature, 284 ;Union of individualism and naturalism in England, 286 ; White of Sel-borne, 288 ; The Geological Society, 290 ; William Smith, 291 ; CharlesBell, 292 ; Historical Geography, 294 ; Martin William Leake, 296 ; Workof the three nations compared, 298.

CHAPTER IV.THE ASTRONOMICAL VIEW OF NATURE.

The scientific spirit in the first and second half of the century, 302 ; Sciencebecome international, 303 ; Disappearance of national differences, 305 ;Special scientific ideas, 306 ; Philosophy of science, 306 ; Whewell's'History' and 'Philosophy,' 309 ; Philosophy and science, 311 ; Leadingscientific ideas mostly very ancient, 312 ; Mathematical spirit, 314 ;When first introduced into science, 317 ; Newton's 'Principia,' 318 ; Thegravitation formula, 319 ; Lines of thought emanating from it, 321 ;Element of error, 323 ; Laplace and Newton, 326 ; Several interestswhich promote science, 326 ; Insufficiency of observation, 328 ; Practicalinterest, 328 ; Focalising effect of mathematical formulae, 332 ; Matterand force mathematically defined, 334 ; Weight and mass, 336 ; Gravi-tation not an ultimate property of matter, 338 ; Attraction and repulsion,342 ; Electrical and magnetic action, 344 ; Law of emanations, 344 ;Molecular action, 346 ; The astronomical view : Cosmical, molar, andmolecular phenomena, 348 ; Special interest attached to molar dimen-sions, 350 ; Geometrical axioms, 352 ; Difficulty of measuring gravitationdirectly, 353 ; Astronomical view of molecular phenomena, 354 ; Capil-lary attraction, 356 ; Boscovich's extension of the Newtonian formula,357 ; Coulomb's measurements, 360 ; Extended by Gauss and Weber,360 ; Davy and Faraday, 363 ; Ampere and Weber develop the astro-nomical view, 366 ; Weber's fundamental measurements, 368 ; Necessityof developing the infinitesimal methods, 373 ; Newtonian formula thebasis of physical astronomy, 375 ; The Newtonian formula unique as touniversality and accuracy, 377 ; Is it an ultimate law ? 378 ; Laplace'sopinion, 378 ; Opposition to the astronomical view of nature, 381.


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XIV CONTENTS.

CHAPTER V.THE ATOMIC VIEW OF NATURE.

Recapitulation, 382 ; Atomic theory, 385 ; Lavoisier, 386 ; Phlogistic theory,388 ; Theory of combustion, 389 ; Rule of fixed proportions, 392 : J.Benjamin Richtr, 393 ; Dalton, 394 ; Berzelius, 396 ; Atomic theoryand gravitation compared, 396 ; Wollaston's prophecy, 397 ; Rule ofmultiple proportions, 398; Equivalents, 399; Simplex sigillum veri,401 ; Prout's hypothesis, 402 ; Discovery of Isomerism, 405 ; OrganicChemistry, 407; Liebig's definition of same, 409; Type theory, 411;Uncertainty in chemical theory about middle of century, 413 ; Twoaspects of the atomic theory, 415 ; A convenient symbolism, 417 ;Neglect of the study of affinity, 420; Kopp on chemical theory in 1873,421 ; The periodic law, 422 ; Difference between chemical and physicalreasoning, 424 ; The kinetic theory of gases, 425 ; Avogadro's hypothesis,427; Neglect of same, 429; Development of the atomic view, 431;Pasteur's discovery of Chirality, 431; Atom and molecule, 432;Joule's calculations, 434 ; Clausius's first memoir, 435 ; Internal energyof molecules, 436 ; The atomic theory accepted as a physical theoryabout 1860, 437 ; Clerk Maxwell : The statistical view of nature, 438 ;Doctrine of averages, 440 ; Geometrical arrangement of atoms, 441 ;Crystallography, 441 ; Analogy between crystallographic and atomiclaws, 444 ; Isomorphism, 444 ; Polymorphism, 446 ; Structural andstereo-chemistry, 447 ; Valency, 447 ; Atomic linkage, 449 ; The carbontetrahedron, 450 ; Defects and insufficiency of the atomic view, 451 ;Theories of chemical affinity, 452 ; Practical influences, 453 ; Change indefinition of organic chemistry, 454 ; Criticisms of the atomic view, 455.


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A HISTOEY OF EUKOPEAN THOUGHTIN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY,

INTKODUCTION.I.

BEHIND the panorama of external events and changes i-Thought,which history unfolds before our view there lies the ^er|Jjddenhidden world of desires and motives, of passions andenergies, which produced or accompanied them ; behindthe busy scenes of Life lie the inner regions of Thought.Only when facts and events cease to be unconnected,when they appear to us linked together according tosome design and purpose, leading us back to someoriginating cause or forward to some denned end, canwe speak of History in the sense which the word hasacquired in modern language ; and similarly do thehidden motives, desires, and energies which underlie oraccompany the external events require to be somehowconnected, to present themselves in some order and con-tinuity, before we are able to grasp and record them.

VOL. I. A


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INTRODUCTION.

2.Thought,the onlymovingprinciple.

3.History ofNature, howto be under-stood.

4.Not intelli-gible with-out intel-lect.

That which has made facts and events capable of beingchronicled and reviewed, that which underlies and con-nects them, that which must be reproduced by the his-torian who unfolds them to us, is the hidden element ofThought. Thought, and thought alone, be it as a principleof action or as the medium of after-contemplation, iscapable of arranging and connecting, of combining whatis isolated, of moving that which is stagnant, of propel-ling that which is stationary. Take away thought, andmonotony becomes the order.

This assertion may seem bold to many, who would lookrather to the grand phenomena of Nature than to thenarrow limits of man's activity. A few remarks will,however, suffice to show that my proposition is notopposed to the view which they take. It may beurged that, independent of human life altogether, theearth has a history, the planetary system has a develop-ment, and that, according to modern theories, evolutionis the principle which governs inanimate as well as ani-mated nature; that rest and sameness are nowhere tobe found, everywhere change and unrest. But changeand unrest do not necessarily constitute history. Motionand change would be as monotonous as absolute rest,were they merely to repeat themselves endlessly, did thewhole movement not produce something more, and werethis something more not greater or better than thebeginning. But greater and better are terms which implycomparison by a thinking beholder, who attaches to onething a greater value than to another, judging by certainideal standards, which are not in the objects or process ofnature themselves, but are contained only in his own think-


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INTRODUCTION. 3

ing mind. It may be that a mechanical and mindless seriesof changes can produce numbers without end, or forms ofcountless variety: but this process would deserve the nameof history only if either the transition from unity to mul-tiplicity, or the production of formal variety, were capableof being understood by a thinking mind, if the resultof the process were a matter of some concern, if aninterest were attached to it, if a gain or loss could berecorded. The pendulum which swings backwards andforwards in endless monotony, the planet which movesround the sun in unceasing repetition, the atom of matterwhich vibrates in the same path, have for us no interestbeyond the mathematical formulae which govern theirmotions, and which permit us mentally to reproduce, i.e.,to think them. A combination of an infinite number ofthese elementary movements would have as little interest,were it not that out of such a combination there resultedsomething novel and unforeseen : something that wasbeautiful to behold or useful to possess, something thatwas valuable to a thinking mind in a higher or lowermeaning of the word.

But if, even in inanimate nature, the processes of change.acquire an interest, possess a history, only if referred toa, thinking inind which can record, understand, and appre-ciate them, how much more is this the case when we dealwith human affairs, where man is not only the thinkingbeholder but the principal agent ? Here the historicinterest would cease, were the succeeding years and agesto produce no valuable change, were the rule of existenceand the order of life to repeat themselves in unceasingmonotony. The savage tribes of Africa have a history: but hit?' y


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INTRODUCTION.

Two waysin whichThought

this history is all known when the order of the day, theyear, at most of a generation, is known. Even the highlycomplicated but stagnant life of China would have a shorthistorical record many thousands of years taking up nomore space than as many days of modern European history :

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.Thus it is that Thought becomes in two ways a subject

of great interest and importance to the historian. Offfistory

nto every change in nature or human life we can ask : Whathas been its result in the world of thought ? Whatgain or loss, what progress, has it worked in the mindsof men, of us the beholders ? Has it increased ourknowledge, enriched our stock of ideas, deepened ourinsight, broadened our views and sympathies in oneword, has it added to our interests ? has it made largerand fuller our inner life ?And of every change in human affairs we can ask this

further question : What part has thought, the inner life,played in this change ? These two questions mark thetask of the historian of Thought.

I do not think it necessary or practicable at this stageto explain minutely the terms with which we have sofar been dealing. Many a one might be tempted to askfor a definition of Thought, or for a preciser statement ofthe actual relation between Nature, Life, and Thought.1

Definitionof Thoughtimpossible.

1 In refusing to define what Imean by Thought, I take up theopposite position to that occupiedby Prof. Max Miiller in his latestwork, 'The Science of Thought,'London, 1887, p. 1, where he says : I mean by Thought the act ofthinking, and by thinking I mean

no more than combining. I donot pretend that others have notthe right of using Thought in anysense which they prefer, providedonly that they will clearly defineit. So far as definition is at all apart of the work of the historian.I maintain that it is the jreaulb and


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INTRODUCTION.Such definitions must be left to the reader himself, ifin course of the perusal of these volumes he finds itnecessary to form abstract theories on these points.Any definition given now would inevitably involve us incontroversies, which would be embarrassing and con-fusing. I rely upon the general and undefined sense ofthe word Thought, assuming that every one will connectsome intelligible meaning with it, some meaning whichwill enable him to understand the very general pro-position with which we started, the existence of an s.inner or hidden world behind the world of external outer andinner worldevents and facts, the continually changing nature of undefined.this inner world, and the connection and reaction be-tween the two worlds. Whether in time and in im-portance the outer or the inner world is the first,whether within the latter equal value attaches to theclearer province of Eeason, i.e., defined Thought, to theobscurer regions of Feeling and Imagination, and to theunconscious world of Impulse, these are questions whichit is not necessary to answer at present. As it wasenough to point to the existence of the two worlds ofLife and Thought, so it will be enough to notice thatthought does not mean merely defined, clear, methodical 9.Many mean-thought, but likewise the great region of desire, impulse, 1feeling, and imagination, all of which play, we mustadmit, a great part in the inner life of the soul as wellas in that of the outer world.

Thought.

outcome of his narrative, the im-pression which he leaves on themind of the reader when he hasperused the work. History is notmainly a science which proceedsby analysis ; it is the attempt to

collect and arrange in a living pic-ture an enormous mass of detail.Too rigid definitions, like lineswhich are too hard and marked,spoil the total effect.


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6 INTRODUCTION.In this sense of the word we have in the following

treatise to deal with the History of Thought : not, how-ever, with the history of thought in general, but with

10. that of a denned period, with that of the present ageThought ofthe present and the age immediately preceding it, the age, in fact,*oto which the writer and his readers belong, of whichthey have a personal knowledge and recollection more orless wide and intimate. It is the latter circumstancewhich has made me select this special portion of thehistory of thought; for it is that portion of which, itseems to me, I and my contemporaries should if we goabout it in the right way know most. As every personis his own best biographer, so it seems to me every ageis, in a certain sense, its own best historian.

11. We know that this has been frequently denied so farContempor-ary history, as external events (that which many persons call historyto what ex-

par excellence) are concerned. Contemporary writers do*ble* not, it is stated, get beyond mere records of events,

records at once one-sided, incomplete, and confusing. Itis indeed necessary to have the records in great numberand variety : because the true and real record can onlybe given by him who combines all these many recordsinto one, who avoids the errors arising from specialpoints of view, from narrowness of outlook, from indi-vidual ignorance, blindness, or prejudice. Still, in spiteof such defects, the contemporary records will alwaysremain the most valuable sources for the future historianwho may succeed in sifting their various testimonies,combining and utilising them to produce a fuller andmore consistent picture of the bygone age. But whilehis work may be only temporarily valuable, theirs is


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INTRODUCTION.

lasting. It is hardly doubtful that, after hundreds orthousands of years have passed, the simple, detailed, andperhaps contradictory, narratives of contemporary wit-nesses will outlive those more elaborate and artisticefforts of the historian which are so largely inspired andcoloured by the convictions of another viz., his ownage. For as Goethe has remarked : History must fromtime to time be rewritten, not because many new factshave been discovered, but because new aspects come intoview, because the participant in the progress of an ageis led to standpoints from which the past can be re-garded and judged in a novel manner. 1

Most of the great historians whom our age has pro-duced will, centuries hence, probably be more interestingas exhibiting special methods of research, special viewson political, social, and literary progress, than as faith-ful and reliable chroniclers of events ; and the objectivity 12.on which some of them pride themselves will be looked objectivityofhistor-upon not as freedom from but as unconsciousness on their lans-part of the preconceived notions which have governedthem. But where the facts recorded and the mind whichrecords them both belong to the same age, we have adouble testimony regarding that age. The events, andthe contemplating mind, supplement each other to forma more complete picture, inasmuch as the matter and themedium through which it is viewed belong to the sametime. And so it comes to pass that historians likeThucydides, Tacitus, and Machiavelli are looked upon as

1 ' Materialien zur Oeschichte derFarbenlehre,' Werke, 2te Abtheil-ung, Band 3, p. 239. I quote from

the new edition, brought out bythe German Ooethe Society.


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8 INTRODUCTION.

13.Value ofcontempor-ary records,both ofFacts andThought

14.Mystery ofthe Life ofThought.

15.LatentThoughtthe materialfor genius.

perfect models in the art of writing history, and thememoirs of many modern statesmen are more lastinglyvaluable than the more elaborate and connected narra-tives of remote and secluded scholars.

But if the contemporary record of facts will .alwayshave a peculiar value, however incomplete it may be,still more must this be the case with the contemporaryrecord of thought ; especially if thought means the wholeof the inner life of an age, not merely that portion whichin the form of defined thought has been incorporated inthe written literature of the age. For a large portion ofthis hidden life is known only to those who have takenpart in it. The vague yearnings of thousands who neversucceed either in satisfying or expressing them, the hun-dreds of failures which never become known, the number-less desires which live only in the hearts of men or arepainted only in their living features, the uncountedstrivings after solutions of practical problems dictatedby ambition or by want, the many hours spent bylabourers of science in unsuccessful attempts to solvethe riddles of nature, all these hidden and forgottenefforts form indeed the bulk of a nation's thought, ofwhich only a small fraction comes to the surface, or showsitself in the literature, science, poetry, art, and prac-tical achievements of the age. Equally important, thoughnot equally prominent, this large body of forgottenthought has nevertheless been that which made themeasure full, which -heaped the fuel ready for thematch to kindle ; it constitutes the great propelling forcewhich, stored up, awaits the time and aid of individualtalent or genius to set it free. Philosophers tell us of


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INTRODUCTION.the wastefulness of organic life, of the thousands of germswhich perish, of the huge volume of seed scattered use-lessly. A similar fate seems to fall on the larger portionof intellectual and moral effort ; but here a deeper con-viction tells us that it is not the sacrifice but the co-operation of the many which makes the few succeed,that excellence is the prize of united effort, that manymust run so that one may reach a higher goal. Whatother feeling could console those legions of honest workerswho spend their lives in trying to deal with the seem-ingly unconquerable host of social evils, the apparentlygrowing vice and misery of large towns, who raise acry for oppressed nationalities, or preach against thecurses of war and militarism ? Or what higher and un-selfish satisfaction could an author derive from spendinghalf a lifetime in producing a work which in the endmay fall dead-born from the press, if it were not theconviction that in the cause in which he has failedanother after him may succeed, and that his failuremay be a portion of the silent and hidden efforts thatco-operate towards a useful end ? l But who in after-ages can write the history of this forgotten and hiddenwork of a nation ? Whose historical sense is delicateenough to feel where the pressure was greatest and theeffort longest ere the new life appeared, whose eye pene-trating and discerning enough to follow up the dim streaks

1 Sehen wir nun wiihrend un-seres Lebensganges dasjenige vonauderen gelestet, wozu wir selbstfriiher einen Beruf fiihlteu, ihn aber,mil manchem andern, aufgebenmussten, dann tritt das schemeGefiihl ein, dass die Menschheit zu-

sammen erst der wahre Mensch i.-t,und dasa der Einzelne nur frohund gliicklich sein kann, wenn erden Muth hat, sich im Ganzen zufiihlen. Goethe, 'Wahrheit undDichtung,' 9th Book; Werke, 27,277.


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10 INTRODUCTION.of twilight, dazzled as he must be by the blaze of the

16. risen sun ? We who live in the expectation of the lightContempor-ary record which is to come, surrounded by the shadows, difficulties,of Thought 'more faith- an(j obstacles ; we who belong to the army, and are notleaders, who live in, not after, the fight, we claim to bebetter able to tell the tale of endless hopes and endeav-ours, of efforts common to many, of the hidden intellec-tual and moral work of our age.

1

How far back we who have lived during the secondhalf of the present century may extend the period ofwhich we claim to have a personal knowledge, is a pointof further interest. Certain it is that in our parents andimmediate forefathers we have known the representativesof a generation which witnessed and laboured in the in-terests of the great Anti-Slavery, the Eeform, and the Anti-Corn-Law movements, who experienced the revolutionsworked by the introduction of steam-power and gas, whotook part in the great work of national and popular edu-cation abroad and in the reform of school-life in England.They themselves went through the enthusiasm of theanti-Napoleonic Eevolution in Germany, came under theinfluence of Goethe's mature manhood, were fascinated bythe stories from the pen of the Wizard of the North, par-

17.Events ofthe imme-diate past.

1 Compare what A. de Tocquevillesays, ' CEuv. com p.,' vol. viii. p. 170 : Nous sommes encore trop pres desdvenements pour en connaitre lesdetails. Cela parait singulier, maisest vrai. Les details ne s'appren-nent que par les re ve lations post-humes, contenues dans les Me-moires, et sont souvent ignores descontemporains. Ce qu'ils saventmieux que la posterite, c'est le

mouvement des esprits, les pas-sions ge nerales du temps, dont ilssentent encore les derniers fre'mis-sements dans leur esprit ou dansleur cocur ; c'est le rapport vrai desprincipaux personnages et des prin-cipaux faits entre eux. Voilh ceque les voisins des temps racoute saper9oivent mieux que ne fait laposterite .


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INTRODUCTION. 1 1took of the spirit of the Eomantic School, felt the electricaltouch of Lord Byron's verse, listened to the great oratorsof the third French Eevolution, and could tell us of thenow forgotten spell which Napoleon I. exercised overmillions of reluctant admirers. Most of these fascinationsand interests live only in the narratives of contemporariesand surviving witnesses, few of whom have succeeded inperpetuating them with pen or brush, making them intel-ligible to a future age ; most of them die with the genera-tion itself. Not only have we listened to their words andseen in their features the traces of the anxieties they livedthrough, in their eyes the reflected enthusiasms and as-pirations, in their glances and in the trembling of theirvoices the last quiverings of bygone passion and joy, wehave received from them a still more eloquent testimonial,a more living inheritance. But this we cannot handdown to our children in the form in which it was givento us : it has not passed through our hands unaltered.This inheritance is the language which our parents havetaught us. Unknowingly they have themselves altered is.the tongue, the words and sentences, which they received, which Lan-guage under-depositing in these altered words and modes of speech thespirit, the ideas, the thought of their lifetime. These pwords and modes of speech they handed to us in our me of18infancy, as the mould wherein to shape our minds, as theshell wherein to envelop our slowly growing thoughts, asthe instrument with which to convey our ideas. In theirlanguage, in the phrases and catchwords peculiar to them,we learnt to distinguish what was important and interest-ing from what was trivial or indifferent, the subjects which


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1 2 INTRODUCTION.should occupy our thoughts, the aims we should follow,the principles and methods which we should make use of.The bulk and substance of this they indeed inherited them-selves ; but the finer distinctions of their reasoning, thedelicate shading of their feelings and aspirations, theyadded and modified for themselves, modelling for their ownspecial use the pliable and elastic medium of the mothertongue. With this finer moulding we have inherited thespirit of the former generation : predisposing us to certainphases of thought and placing in our path a difficulty inacquiring otherwise than by gradual and almost imper-ceptible degrees the faculty of assimilating new and un-expected opinions, tastes, and feelings. Many of us adhereto the special character and phase of thought acquiredin our youth. Some by learning foreign languages, andliving in other countries, gain a facility for understandingquite different phases of thought: very few among us

19. develop so much original thought that they burst theofconven- shell of conventional speech, coining new words and ex-tionalspeech for pressions for themselves, embodying in them the fleetingcdnmg'of ideas of their time, the indefinable spirit of their age.new words. Qnce expressed, these new terms are rapidly circulated,

and if we look back on the period of a generation, wenote easily the progress and development of opinion andtastes in the altered terms and style of our language.

Thus it is that the writer, and those of his readerswhose memory carries them back to the middle of thecentury, and whose schooling and education embodied theideas of a generation before that time, can claim to havesome personal knowledge of the greater portion of thenineteenth century, of the interests which it created and


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INTRODUCTION. 13the thoughts which stirred it.1 It is the object of these 20.

Object ofvolumes to fix, if possible, this possession ; to rescue fromoblivion that which appears to me to be our secret prop-erty ; in the last and dying hour of a remarkable age tothrow the light upon the fading outlines of its mentallife ; to try to trace them, and with the aid of all possibleinformation,* gained from the written testimonies or therecords of others, to work them into a coherent picture,which may give those who follow some idea of thepeculiar manner in which our age looked upon the worldand life, how it intellectualised and spiritualised them.This attempt is therefore not a history of outward politi-cal changes or of industrial achievements : the former willprobably be better known to our children than they have 21.Not a politi-been to us ; the latter will soon be forgotten as such, or cai history,nora historyincorporated in the still greater results of the future, for ^n^ture'which they will be the preparation. Nor is it a history and Artof Knowledge and Science, of Literature and Art, whichI purpose to write ; though as these are the outcome ofthe inner life, and contain it, so to say, in a crystallisedform, they will always have to be appealed to for thepurpose of verifying the conclusions which we may arrive

^ On the division of History intocenturies see what Du Bois-Rey-mond says (' Reden,' Leipzig, 1886,vol. i. p. 519), and the fuller dis-cussion of the subject by Prof. O.Lorenz, ' Die Geschichts - wissen-Bchaft' (Berlin, 1886, p. 279 sqq.)The latter refers to what the firsthistorian says (Herodotus, ii. 142 :KOI'TOI rpirtKOfftat ftfv avSpwv ytvtalSvffarat fivpta trfa ytvfal yap rpelsavtipuv tKcnbv tr*d fffn). A per-son born in 1840 can claim to havea personal knowledge of the last

half, and through his parents andteachers a knowledge of the firsthalf, of the century. In this wayit may be said that his personaldirect or indirect knowledge ex-tends over nearly a century. Lor-enz says correctly : Fur jedeneinzelnen bildet der Vater und derSohn eine greifbare Kette vonLebensereignissen und Erfahrun-gen. And that this applies evenmore to ideas and opinions, toThought, than to events and facts,is evident.


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14 INTRODUCTION.22. at. What will interest us most will be the consciousWhere the

interest of ajms an(j en(Js if such existed, of any political or socialthe book *taaiuhe movement, and, where they did not exist, at least thewMchhave results to our inner life which have necessarily followed,our inne?

n the methods by which knowledge was extended or sciencelife.applied, the principles which underlay literary compositionand criticism, and the hidden spiritual treasure whichpoetry, art, and religious movements aimed at revealingor communicating ; in fact the question : What part hasthe inner world of Thought played in the history of ourcentury, what development, what progress, what gainhas been the result of the external events and changes ?

23. But if personal knowledge and experience are as itThepersonalknowledge seems to me or the greatest importance in an attemptand experi-enceneces- iike this i if, without having lived the inner life, a recordsary for atrayaTforms ^ ^ would be either a mere string of names or a criticismo/the^x-011 of opinions, not a living picture, so it is also the factorground to be which necessarily limits the extent of the ground whichtraversed. I propose to traverse. Thus I feel obliged in the first

place to limit myself to European Thought. Such a limi-tation would hardly have been called for a century ago,because it would have been a matter of course : but thesteady growth and peculiar civilisation of a new and

24. vigorous people on the other side of the Atlantic forceinfluence from me the twofold confession, that there is a largeonlytouched world of growing importance of which I have no personal

knowledge, and to estimate which I therefore feel un-qualified and unprepared ; and further, that I am equallyunable to picture to myself the aspect which the whole ofour European culture in its present state may assume toan outside and far-removed observer who is placed in the


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INTRODUCTION. 15New World. As this New World grows not only innumbers and national wealth, but also in mental depth,as it becomes more and more intellectualised andspiritualised, so it will no doubt experience the desire ofrecording its own inner life and culture, emphasising thepeculiarities which distinguish it as a whole from ourcivilisation. But the tendencies of this new culture areto me vague and enigmatical, and I frankly admit thatI am unable to say anything definite on this subject. Con-vinced as I am that in human affairs all outer life is thevessel which contains an inner substance, the shell whichenvelops a growing kernel, I am, nevertheless, unable inthis case to penetrate to either, and must therefore contentmyself with taking notice of this vast new element ofnineteenth-century culture only where it comes intoimmediate contact with European thought, which hasindeed been powerfully influenced by it. And of Euro- 25.pean thought itself I am forced to select likewise only German,J and Englishthe central portion, the thought embodied in French, ^German, and English Literature. I have to admit thatItalian, Scandinavian, and Russian influences are allaround this centre, sometimes penetrating far into it ;but here again languages unknown and interests foreignto me have made it impossible to identify myself ever sosuperficially with the new life that is contained in them.I must therefore here also confine myself to very im-perfect and casual notices, which make no attempt todo justice to the subject.

The subject before us, then, is European Thought i.e.,the thought of France, Germany, and England during thegreater part of the nineteenth century. Circumscribed as

the presentwork.


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16 INTRODUCTION.

26.Unity ofThought aproductof thiscentury.

27.Voltaire.

28.AdamSmith.

this subject is by the limits of time and space which Ihave mentioned, it is, nevertheless, still vast, intricate, andbewildering. And yet it is my intention, throughout theinquiries which I have to institute and in the various out-lines and sketches which I have to draw, never to losesight of the unity of the whole. This unity, I maintain,the progress of our age has more and more forced uponus. It is itself a result of the work of the century. Ahundred years even fifty years ago, it would have beenimpossible to speak of European Thought in the mannerin which I do now. For the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies mark the period in which, owing to the use ofthe several vernacular languages of Europe in the placeof the mediaeval Latin, thought^became nationalised, inwhich there grew up first the separate literature and thenthe separate thought of the different civilised countries ofWestern Europe. Thus it was that in the last century,and at the beginning of this, people could make journeysof exploration in the region of thought from one countryto another, bringing home with them new and fresh ideas.Such journeys of discovery, followed by importation of newideas, were those of Voltaire 1 to England in 1726, wherehe found the philosophy of Newton and Locke, at thattime not known and therefore not popularly appreciatedin France; the journey of Adam Smith in 1765 to France,where he became acquainted with the economic system ofQuesnay and the opinions of the so-called physiocrats,which formed the starting-point of his own great work,

1 For a most complete collectionof data referring to this subjectsee Du Bois-Reymond's address in

the Berlin Academy, 30th January1868, reprinted in the collection ofhis ' Reden,' Leipzig, 1886, vol. i.


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INTRODUCTION. 1 7' The Wealth of Nations.' During the last quarter of theeighteenth century A. G. Werner raised the MiningAcademy at Freiberg, which had been founded in 1766,from a mere provincial institution to be one of the greatcentres of scientific light in Europe, to which studentsfrom all parts of the world flocked to listen to his eloquentteaching. Towards the end of the century Wordsworthand Coleridge went on a trip to Germany, whence the 29.latter brought to England the new philosophy of Kant thoughtand Schelling. Madame de Stael, in an age when tidingsof a new literary life in Germany had reached French tnorti[ords Society through some of the emigrants of the Revolution,set herself reluctantly to learn German,1 convinced that a so.new phase of thought had appeared there ; and then with thoughtimportedBenjamin Constant visited the country itself at the end ^^Smeof 1803, and again in 1807. The result of these journeys de sta61 'of exploration was her work ' De L'Allemagne.' WhilstColeridge and Madame de Stael drew inspiration fromthe new life which centred in the Weimar of Goethe andSchiller, the scientific students of the whole Continentdirected their gaze to Paris, where alone for many de-cades the modern methods could be learnt, where thenew scientific ideas were, so to speak, collected in a focus. siParis theFor more than half a century Paris remained the centre focus fscientificof scientific thought,2 and even English philosophers, who idea8-

1 See Lady Blennerhasset's in- j dern scheint, jetzt bei Deutschlandteresting work on Madame de Stael, angelangt ist. German ed., vol. ii. p. 461 gqq. ; -See Bruhns, 'Life of A. v. Hum-especially the remarkable passage boldt,' translated by Lassell, vol. i.quoted there, p. 465, in her letterto the Baron de Gerando, October1802: Ich glaube wie Sie, dassder menachliche Geist, der zu wan-

p. 232 : Notwithstanding thesardonic expression of the franticjudge, 'Nous n'avons pas besoin desavans,' Paris was yet at the close

VOL. I. B


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18 INTRODUCTION.

32.Continentalmathemati-cal methodsintroducedinto Eng-land byBabbage,Herschel,and Pea-cock.

33.Liebig'sLaboratory.

34.Comte'sphilosophyshown to hisown countryby an Eng-lishman.

since Bacon and Newton had followed their own inde-pendent line of research, had to discover in the seconddecade of the century that Newton's great name was nota guarantee for the efficiency of his methods, which hadbeen greatly developed and improved in the hands ofContinental mathematicians. These improved methodswere imported into England by three Cambridge grad-uates, Herschel, Babbage, and Peacock, who translatedLacroix's Treatise, and by doing so gave a great impetusto mathematical research in this country. Fifteen yearslater, students from all parts of the world flocked to thesmall University town of Giessen in Germany, thence totake home with them a knowledge of the new science andmethods of Chemistry, taught in the laboratory of Liebigmethods previously used only in the private and inacces-sible laboratories of learned investigators. 1 It will be inthe memory of many how the philosophy of AugusteComte, published between the years 1830 and 1840,remained without much influence in his own country,whereas, mainly through the writings of J. S. Mill andof the eighteenth century themetropolis of the exact sciences.Lalande, in writing to von Zach onJanuary 26, 1798, remarks : ' Thelove of mathematics is daily onthe increase, not only with us butin the army. The result of thiswas unmistakably apparent in ourlast campaigns. Bonaparte himselfhas a mathematical head,andthoughall who study this science may notbecome geometricians like Laplaceand Lagrange, or heroes like Bona-parte, there is yet left an influenceupon the mind which enables themto accomplish more than they couldpossibly have achieved without thistraining. Our mathematical schools

are good, and successfully accom-plish their main object in thediffusion of mathematical know-ledge.' Compare also vol. i. p.342, referring to 1804. Also vol. ii.p. 92, referring to the period 1820to 1830. Humboldt continuedto regard Paris as the true metro-polis of Science

(p. 70), and manyother passages. See also Steffens, Was ich erlebte, vol. x. p. 233,and what Goethe said to Eckermann

on the contrast of Germany andParis in the year 1827.1 See A. W. Hoffmann, 'The

Life - Work of Liebig,' FaradayLecture for 1875, p. 8.


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INTRODUCTION. 19his school, it became, as it were, a centre of thought, anembodiment of a circle of modern ideas in this country,whence it was reimported into France nearly a generationafter its first appearance. Something similar happenedto a once neglected but now renowned English landscape-painter, Constable, whose pictures when exhibited in 35.-n n ^ -i -> 111 Constable'strance m 1824 created a profound sensation, and had influence in.France.such an influence on the artists of that country that theyare said to mark an era in landscape-painting there.1

Such journeys of discovery in the realm of thought andideas have now become almost impossible. In the courseof our century Science at least has become international : 36.Science be-isolated and secluded centres of thought have become come inter-national.more and more rare. Intercourse, periodicals, and learnedsocieties with their meetings and reports, proclaim to thewhole world the minutest discoveries and the most recentdevelopments. National peculiarities still exist, but aremainly to be sought in those remoter and more hiddenrecesses of thought, where the finer shades, the untrans-latable idioms, of language suggest, rather than clearlyexpress, a struggling but undefined idea. Thought has itsdawn and twilight, its chiaroscuro as well as its open day ;but the daylight has grown wider and clearer and more dif-

1 See Walter Armstrong in the' Nineteenth Century ' for April1887; Julius Meyer, 'Geschichteder modernen franzosischen Mal-erei,' Leipzig, 1867, Book 7, chap.2 ; A. Rosenberg, ' Geschichte dermodernen Kunst,' vol. i. p. 63.Rosenberg thinks the influence ofConstable on French Art is exagger-ated, and mentions Paul Huet,whose early pictures date from1822. But an Englishman, Bon-ington, who, however, is claimed as

of the French School, was evenbefore Huet and Constable. Seealso what Delacroix wrote to Th.Sylvestre in 1858 : Constable estune des gloires anglaises. C'est unveritable re formateur, sorti de 1'or-niere des paysagistes anciens. Notreocole a grandement profile de sesexamples et GeYicault dtait revenutout etourdi de 1'un des grands pay-sages qu'il nous avait envoye's (quoted by Emile Michel in ' GrandeEncyclopedic,' art. Constable ).


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20 INTRODUCTION.

37.The lightwhich Ety-mologythrows onhistory ofThought,

38.and on themigrationof ideas.

fused in the course of our century, and so far as the greatervolume of ideas is concerned, we can speak now of Euro-pean thought, when at one time we should have had todistinguish between French, German, and English thought.Reserving, therefore, in the meantime the task of investi-gating what still, within the bounds of this larger inter-national life, remains peculiar to the thought of eachnation, it is the great body of common European thoughtwith which I propose at first to deal. How has it grownto be what it is now, what special contributions have theseveral nations made to the general stock, what is atpresent our inventory of it, how has it been changed incourse of the century ? But how, it may be asked, are weto take stock ? how is this inventory to be drawn up ?There is indeed one very obvious method which presentsitself, though it is not the one which I propose to useexclusively, or even largely. And yet it seems to mewell worthy of special attention.

Already I have remarked how the changes of thoughtare deposited in the altered language and style of theage. A closer study of the changes which, in the course ofthis century, have taken place in the vocabularies as wellas in the styles of the three principal European languageswould no doubt reveal to a great extent when and hownew ideas have presented themselves, how they havebecome fixed and defined in special words or terms. Itwould allow us to trace to a very large extent not onlythe growth of the general stock of European thought, butalso the migration of single ideas from one nation toanother. And, lastly, it would exhibit to a great extentin what peculiar phrases, in what secluded corners, the


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INTRODUCTION. 21individual thought of each of the three nations has foundrefuge. 1 Any one who has attempted to translate fromone of these languages into another, be it prose or beit lyrical, philosophical, or descriptive poetry, will haveexperienced the necessity of studying minutely themeaning or hidden thought which a word or a phrasemay signify : he will have been led to notice what iscommon and what is peculiar to different languages,

1 The only books which treatof words in the sense mentionedabove, and which have come undermy notice, are Home Tooke's ' Di-versions of Purley ' and ArchbishopTrench's little volumes on ' TheStudy of Words ' and ' EnglishPast and Present.' So far as theuse of

merely philosophical termsis concerned, I may refer to R.Eucken, 'Geschichte der philoso-phischen Terminologie, Leipzig,1879. A great deal of materialfor a research of this kind maybe found in the large Dictionariesof Grimm, Littre, and Murray,though I do not feel sure that thegreat change which has come overlanguage, through the expansion,deepening, and differentiation ofideas and of thought in our age,has been specially taken note of.The plan of Grimm's Dictionary,which aims at embracing the Ger-man language in its developmentduring three centuries, beginningwith Luther and ending withGoethe (see Wilh. Grimm's ' KleinereSchriften,' vol. i. p. 508), almostexcludes the period which I amreviewing.

It is interesting to rememberthat Diderot, the first writer whoattempted to collect the great bodyof modern Thought and Learninginto an encyclopaedic whole, re-ferred to Language very much inthe same manner as we do now,* hundred aud fifty yearn later.

See the article Encyclopedic,where Diderot says that a Dic-tionary is only an exact collectionof titles, to be filled in by the Ency-clopaedia ; and further on, p. 639 :Si 1'on compte les hommes dege nie, et qu'on les re pande surtoute la duree des siecles e coule s,il est Evident qu'ils seront en petitnombre dans chaque nation et pourchaque siecle, et qu'on n'en trouverapresqu'aucun qui n'ait perfectionnela langue. Les hommes createursportent ce caractere particulier.Comme ce n'est pas seulement enfeuilletant les productions de leurcontemporains qu'ils rencoutrentles ide es qu'ils ont a employer dansleurs ecrits, mais que c'est tantot endescendant profonde ment en eux-memes, tantot en s'elancant audehors, et portantdes regards plusattentifs et plus pene'trans sur lesnatures qu'ils environnent, ils sontobliges, surtout a 1'origine deslangues, d'inventer des signes pourrendre avec exactitude et avec forcece qu'ils y decouvrent les premiers.C'est la chaleur de 1'imagination etla meditation profonde qui enrichis-sent une langue d'expressions nou-velles : c'est la justesse de 1'espritet la srvi'ntr de la dialectique quien perfectionnent la syntaxe ; c'estla commodit^ des organes de laparole qui 1'adoucit; c'est la sen-sibilite' de 1'oreille qui la rend har-monieuse.


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INTRODUCTION.39. and the thought which they express. Of Goethe itGoethe. Jmay be said that he created to a large extent the

language and style of that which is best in the modernliterature of his country. No such supreme influencebelonging to a single individual can probably be foundin any other German, French, or English writer in ourcentury, for reasons which are obvious : but the greatFrench novelists, the German metaphysicians, and theoriginal poetical minds of modern England have en-larged and enriched the vocabulary of their respec-tive languages, and have added a number of usefuland novel modes of expression (tournures, Wendungen).Carlyle's influence has been great in introducing novelepithets, borrowed or imported frequently from theGerman. Matthew Arnold has laboured in a similardirection, his models being, besides Goethe and Heine,mostly French authors, such as Sainte-Beuve and the

40. introspective school. Germany has been less fortunatePeculiarity


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24 INTRODUCTION.of Max Miiller, who would absorb philosophy in thescience of Language l in the same way as Astronomy hasto many become merely une question d'analyse. In acertain sense we can agree with both of these thinkers.Without discussing the vexed question of the origin ofLanguage and Thought, to us as individuals, born in acivilised and intellectual age, words certainly came earlierthan clear and conscious thought. The easy manner also inwhich, through the use of our parents' tongue, we becameintroduced into a complex and bewildering labyrinth ofhighly abstract reasoning is little short of a miraculousrevelation. But, as I mentioned above, it is not myintention to study the development of European thoughtduring this century by means of a close analysis of thechanges and growth of the three principal languages.Such an enterprise would demand an amount of lexico-graphical knowledge possessed only by the authors ofdictionaries like those of Grimm, Littre, and Murray.But though I am not qualified for such a task, there is onespecial point on which I cannot avoid being drawn intoa grammatical discussion. It refers to the word Thought

44. itself. How is the meaning which I and my readers con-Thought,how ex- nect with this word to be expressed in French and Ger-pressed inGemCMand man ^ How are we to translate the word ? The subject we

deal with does not belong to England alone, but as muchto France and to Germany : it must thus have a name ineach of their languages. Now I believe that the wordpensde expresses in French very nearly the same thingwhich we mean in English by thought. It is some-

1 See his ' Science of Thought, ' London, 1 887, especially pp. 292 and550.


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INTRODUCTION. 25what more difficult to find a corresponding word in Ger-man. I have for some time hesitated whether to use theword Geist or Weltanschauung, two terms frequently usedto express the aggregate of the inner life of an age : buthave finally resolved to use the word Denken, as this wordlends itself to the same contrasts of Life and Action(Leben und Handelri), denoting the inner world, whereasthe opposite of Geist is Stoff (matter), and Weltanschauung,though an expressive and untranslatable word, denotesrather the outcome, the result, of thought than thoughtitself. Passing from the word to the subject itself, I findthat the greater definiteness of the term in the Englishlanguage is accompanied also by a more abundant litera-ture of the subject. The larger idea of a Philosophy of 45.History is indeed due mainly to Continental thinkers, of Historydue to con-especially to Herder, Hegel, Comte, and Guizot, and *^^Voltaire's ' Siecle de Louis XIV.' will always be themodel of the historical picture of a period. Still it isin my opinion mainly the writings of Carlyle, Buckle,Draper, Lecky, Leslie Stephen, and, considering its size,perhaps more than all, Mark Pattison's 'Essay,' 1 whichhave fixed in our minds the meaning of the wordThought as the most suitable and comprehensive termto denote the whole of the inner or hidden Life andActivity of a period or a nation. I therefore put in aclaim to start with the use of the English word, assufficiently familiar to most of my readers, and requestthose who may object to the vagueness of the French

1 See ' Essays and Reviews,' remarks on it in the Preface to' Tendencies of Religious Thought j his ' History of English Thoughtin England, 1688-1750,' by Mark in the Eighteenth Century.'Pattison ; also Leslie Stephen's


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26 INTRODUCTION.and German equivalents to look for a definition of myintention in the English word Thought. I am notaware that French literature possesses any histoire dela pense'e, either of a longer or shorter period ; I knowof innumerable works in German which cover a similarfield, but they have mostly used the word Weltanschauung,or expanded the meaning of Thought into the wider senseof a history of Civilisation (Kulturgeschichte) or narrowedit to that of Literature, proving as it seems to me

46. the real want of a concise term such as the EnglishWant ofFnOeran^n 1 language now supplies. And yet, I think I am rightand French. jn saving that the conception of Thought, in the sense

in which I am using it, is truly an outcome of interna-47. tional, not of specifically English progress, and belongs

neJerthf-ht mainty t the period of which I am treating, a periodspe characterised, as I have already remarked, by the great

interchange of ideas, by the breaking down of intellectualbarriers, between the principal European nationalities.

48. It was above all in the mind of Thomas Carlyle, who firstCarlyle thea?* dafve amono Englishmen made a profound study of the intel-thfworei*

10 lectual agencies which brought about the great change inmoc|ern Europe, that the conception formed itself of anintellectual and spiritual organism, underlying and movingexternal events. He first gave the peculiar sense to theword Thought, in which we here employ it, and made itan object of special study for those who came after him ;an object, indeed, definable in various ways and to be con-templated from differing points of view, but yet a some-thing, a power recognised by every one, and for which nobetter word could be invented. No other language has aword so comprehensive, denoting at once the process and


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INTRODUCTION. 27the result, the parts and the ideal whole, of what is feltand meant : it commits us to no preconceived theory,can be used equally by thinkers of the most oppositeviews, and lends itself to any specialisation which maybecome necessary.

II.

Two processes have helped to determine the intel- i.The twolectual progress of mankind. These two processes haveoften been apparently opposed to each other in theiroperations ; but in reality neither of them can proceedvery far without calling the other into existence. Theyare the extension and the condensation of knowledge.Curiosity, the demands of practical life, the experiencesof every day, all tend to an enlargement, to an accumula-tion of knowledge. Such growing knowledge is, however,of little avail if it be not readily grasped : the commandof knowledge is as important as its accumulation. Themore extensive the country which we wish to explore, themore we look out for elevated and commanding pointsof view, which permit us at a glance to overlook a widelandscape measuring the distance behind or the prospectbefore us. But, however enticing, these elevated viewsare frequently seductive and misleading. They permit usnot only to look backward on the land which we haveexplored, giving us a clearer picture of its many features,of its winding paths, of the position of its separate objects

these elevated views present to us likewise the regionswhich we have not yet explored, and suggest the attemptto supersede the laborious process of further exploration


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28 INTRODUCTION.

2.Object ofthe book.

Menmnift.tion ofknowledge,

by the more delightful venture of filling up the dim out-lines which we see before us, with analogies of past ex-perience or creations of our imagination. And even ifwe do descend into the plains and continue the minuterand more laborious search, we cannot rid ourselves of cer-tain preconceived but frequently misleading ideas whichthe superficial glance has impressed on our minds.

The condensation may become an idealisation of know-ledge. History affords numerous examples of these dif-ferent stages of progress ; centuries of dull accumulation,of unmethodical and ill-arranged learning, have been fol-lowed by short periods of enlightenment, by the trium-phant shout of sudden discovery or the confident hope ofinvention. Patient work and real progress have for a longtime been repressed by the allurements of seductive phan-toms, which have had to be abandoned after an immensewaste of labour. New prospects have suddenly openedthe view into vast unexplored regions, heights have beengained from which the whole of human knowledge ap-peared for the moment condensed into a single truth oridealised into a vision, and again these delightful achieve-ments have for a time appeared lost in an all-pervadingdiscouragement and dismay.

Whether our century has been characterised by anyone or by a succession of several of these varying moods,is a question which I hope to answer in the sequel. Forthe present it is sufficient to note that in both directionsin that of accumulating and in that of condensing andidealising knowledge the efforts of the nineteenth cen-tury have been many and conspicuous. In the former itis altogether unparalleled, whereas in the latter it has


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INTRODUCTION. 29

probably not equalled the ideal greatness of Greece inthe Periclean age, the brilliancy of the Kenaissance inItaly, or the great discoveries of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries in France and England. But what ourcentury has done is this : it has worked out and deposited 4.Nineteenthin special terms of language a clearer view of the correctmethods for extending knowledge, and a peculiar concep- ^Methodtion of its possible unity. At one time and that not edgeT un-, ity of know-Very long ago the word truth seemed to indicate to the ledge.seeker not only the right method and road for attainingknowledge, but also the end, the crown of knowledge. Truth, and nothing but truth, seems still to the popularmind the right maxim for seeking knowledge the wholetruth stands before it as the unity of all knowledge, wereit found. I think it is now sufficiently clear to the scien- 5 .tific inquirer, as well as to the philosopher, that love of truth notthe end oftruth, while it does indeed denote the moral attitude of the oniTtheTt-inquiring mind, is insufficient to define either the path or th fnqufir.the end of knowledge. What is truth ? is still the un- 1Dsolved question. The criteria of truth are still unsettled.It would, indeed, be a sorrowful experience, a calamity ofunparalleled magnitude, if ever the moral ideas of truthand faith should disappear out of the soul of either theactive worker or the inquiring thinker; but it is withthese as with other treasures of our moral nature, such asgoodness and holiness, beauty and poetry our knowledgeof them does not begin, nor does it increase, by definition ;and though in the unthinking years of our childhood weacquire and appropriate these moral possessions throughthe words of our mother-tongue, they rarely gain in depthor meaning by logical distinctions which we may learn,


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30 INTRODUCTION,

Method of

first byed

Bacon,Mm, &c.

parent.

or to which we have to submit, in later life. These donot touch the essence, though very frequently they maysucceed in destroying the depth, of our convictions.

In the place, then, of the high-sounding but indefinablesearch after truth, modern science has put an elaboratemethod of inquiry: this method has to be learnt by patientpractice, and not by listening to a description of it. It islaid down in the works of those modern heroes of science,

., from Galileo and Newton onward, who have practised itsuccessfully, and from whose writings philosophers fromBacon to Comte and Mill have not without misunder-standing and error tried to extract the rationale. Thesemethods will take up a large portion of our attention.For the moment it is important to note that the result oraim of scientific inquiry does not dictate the methods, thepurely scientific inquirer does not know where the pathwill lead him : it is sufficient that it be clearly marked.Modern science defines the method, not the aim, of itswork. It is based upon numbering and calculating inshort, upon mathematical processes ; and the progress ofscience depends as much upon introducing mathematicalnotions into subjects which are apparently not mathe-matical, as upon the extension of mathematical methodsand conceptions themselves. The terms exact and posi-tive are current in the Continental and English languagesto denote these methods and their application. Now toany one who does not stand in the midst of the scientificwork of the age, it might appear as if by merely followinga defined method which is capable of numerous modifica-tions, by treading a clear path which in its course leadsus to endless equally defined ramifications, the scientific


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INTRODUCTION. 3 1

inquirer is losing daily more and more those elevatedviews, those points of condensation, those unifying andidealising aspects on which, as it seems to us, the com-mand and grasp of knowledge depends. This is indeedalmost inevitable so far as the older ideas are con-cerned. Unity of knowledge, order and harmony, evencompleteness and symmetry, truth and beauty, are indeedno longer of direct use as canons for the scientific inquirer,any more than the mysteries once supposed to be inherentin certain numbers. Though we still live under thecharm of such entities, however much we may try to get ridof them, it must nevertheless be admitted that the poetical,philosophical, and religious aspects of things seem to recede s.into an increasing distance from the scientific ; they do not distancebetweenguide scientific search ; it does not receive from them much ^j^ andsupport. Have both sides been losers by this change ?So far as science is concerned, it can claim to have attainedby it not only a greater formal completeness and certaintyof progress, but also another very important advantagewhich was unknown to ancient and mediaeval research.This advantage consists in the closer connection be- 9.tween science and practical life. The same mathematical nec'tion nbetweenspirit which governs scientific methods rules also in trade, ^ence andcommerce, and industry, and is gradually penetrating intothe professions, such as medicine, law, and administration.For all these pursuits have either directly to do withnumbers, measures, and weights, with distances of spaceand time, or they have found it necessary to introduce,an elaborate system of statistics and averages throughwhich the irregularity and captiousness of subjectiveand individual influences are practically eliminated. The


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32 INTRODUCTION.

problems of scientific research have thus enormously in-creased ; each advance in science increases our commandof certain measurable phenomena in practical life ; eachnew development in the latter prepares a new field forscientific inquiry. The contact between science and lifehas become more intimate in the course of our century.This to a great extent has counterbalanced the tendencyof modern scientific method, which, operating alone, wouldhave led to endless specialisation ; for it is the peculiarity

10. of all practical problems that they cannot be isolated inSolidarity ofaii practical the same way as scientific experiments that they, in fact,problems. force upon us the necessity of looking at a large number

of surrounding and extraneous circumstances, at the total-ity of life and its interests.

1

If our century can claim to have firmly establishedexact or positive methods in science and life, and to havefurthered in this way the interests of both, the questionremains, Has nothing been done to uphold those older,1.Whathas the

nineteenth those time-hallowed ideals of truth, beauty, and wisdomcenturydone forthe ideals

harmonising principles of science and life ?whichto former ages seemed to denote the unifying andWhat has

become of philosophy, art, and religion, which were onceintrusted with the special care of those ideals, chargedwith preventing the falling asunder of the many branchesof knowledge and practice, and expected to save us froma loss of the belief in the integrity, interdependence, andco-operation of all human interests ?

1 Science deals with things in theabstract, in their isolation, in vacuo.Practical life deals with the samethings in their position in the realworld, surrounded by other things.

In this distinction lies the value ofLotze's definition of the reality ofa thing as a standing in relation,viz., to other things, to all things.See ' Microcosmus, ' book ix.


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INTRODUCTION. 33Unless I believed that our age was elaborating a deeper 12.Deeper con-and more significant conception of this unity or all human ception ofthe unity

interests, of the inner mental life of man and mankind, f^^tTI do not think I should have deemed it worth while towrite the following volumes : for it is really their mainend and principal object to trace the co-operation of manyagencies in the higher work of our century ; the growingconviction that all mental efforts combine together toproduce and uphold the ideal possessions of our race ; thatit is not in one special direction nor under one specificterm that this treasure can be cultivated, but thatindividuals and peoples in their combined internationallife exhibit and perpetuate it.A number of words have during this century been in- is.Differenttroduced by various systems of philosophy to denote this terms f?r* r expressing

unity of the inner life of mankind : Hegel's Geist, Comte's this unity>Humanity, Lotze's Microcosm, Spencer's Social Organism,all refer to special sides and aspects of the same subject.And it is interesting to note how the great schools ofIdealism in Germany, of Positivism in France, of Evolu-tion physical and mental in England, and in spite oftheir apparently disintegrating tendencies how the socialchanges of the Eevolution and the specialisations of sciencehave all combined to emphasise this unity of human lifeand interests. To show this in detail is the object I havein view. So far we have not committed ourselves to anyof the many existing theories : the word Thought seems to M.

, . . , . Definition ofme to be capable of the widest application, and to denote Thought.in the most catholic spirit whatever of truth and valuemay be contained in the combined aim and endeavour of

VOL. i. c


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34 INTRODUCTION.all these modern aspirations. A history of this thoughtwill be a definition of Thought itself.Much has been done in the course of this century toprepare for an undertaking such as the one before me. Itwill be well to review shortly this special side of modernliterature. We have indeed passed out of what may be

is. called the age of encyclopaedic treatment of learning the1750 to 1850.The age of hundred years from the middle of the last to the middle*

^ ^ne present century.1 The plan of such an arrangementencyclopee-

nmg' of knowledge belongs to an earlier period, the period im-mediately succeeding the birth of modern science. LordBacon was the father of it, but neither he nor the mostencyclopaedic intellect of modern times, Leibniz, did muchto realise the idea, and it was reserved for the genius andthe labours of Diderot and d'Alembert 2 in France, in the

1 Encyclopaedia nomen hodiefrequentius auditur quara alias.Gessner in Gottinger Lections-Kata-log for 1756.2 Diderot's Prospectus to the' Encyclopedic ' appeared 1750 ; thefirst volume appeared 1751 with thecelebrated Discours preliminaire of d'Alembert and a reprint of the Prospectus. The complete titlewas ' Encyclopedic ou dictionnaireraisonne des sciences, des arts etmetiers, par une soci^te de gens delettres, mis en ordre et publie' parDiderot et d'Alembert.' The prin-ciples which guided the editors,and the object of the work, are ex-plained, with repeated references toLord Bacon, in this introduction,as well as in the article Encyclo-pedic, in the fifth volume (1755),which was written by Diderot, andoccupied 28 pages. See also Did-erot's 'Penates sur 1'interpretationde la Nature,' published anony-mously in 1754.

Copious details about the history,the reception, and the influence ofthe ' Encyclopedic ' are to be foundin the correspondence and memoirsof Grimm, d'Alembert, and Vol-taire, Madame d'Epinay, the AbbeMorellet, and many others. Theyare combined into a concise narra-tive, giving all the important facts,in Rosenkranz's ' Leben und WerkeDiderots,' 2 vols., Leipzig, 1866,and in John Morley's ' Diderot.'It is interesting to note how theidea of the unifying and life-givinginfluence of thought was as familiarto Diderot as it is to us : Si Tonbannit 1'homme ou 1'etre pensantet contemplateur de dessus la sur-face de la terre ; ce spectacle pathe-tique et sublime de la nature ii'estplus qu'une scene triste et muette.L'univers se tait ; le silence et lanuit s'en em parent. Tout se changeen une vaste solitude, ou les pheno-ruenes inobserve's se passent d'unemanicre obscure et sourde. . . .


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INTRODUCTION. 35middle of the eighteenth century, to carry out the plan,foreshadowed in the ' Novum Organum,' of collecting allknowledge, which had been accumulated ever since sciencehad been liberated from the fetters of theology, into onecomprehensive whole. It must, however, be admittedthat whilst the practical end of these laborious under-takings, the diffusion of knowledge, has certainly been ie.Unity ofgreatly furthered, the original idea, that the sum of knowledgegraduallyhuman knowledge is an organic whole, has in the exe- | Sens(gc1t ?fcution been by degrees entirely lost sight of. The unity ^1of thought and knowledge was indeed referred to inDiderot's Prospectus and d'Alembert's Discours pre -liminaire, and in the introduction to Ersch and Gruber'sgreat Encyclopsedia, 1 as also in Coleridge's celebrated essayVoila ce qui nous a de'termine' achercher dans les facuity'sprincipalesde 1'homme la division ge'ne'rale alaquelle nous avons subordonnenotre travail. Article Encyclo-pe die,' p. 641.

1 Ersch und Gruber's 'AllgemeineEncyclopedic der Wissenschaftenund Kiinste,' Leipzig, 1818 to 1875,unfinished, 151 vols. It was foundedby Professor Johann Samuel Ersch,librarian at Halle in 1813, assistedby Hufeland, Gruber, Meier, andBrockhaus, and contained contri-butions by the most learned andeminent Germans of the century.It is interesting to compare theplan and principles which guidedthe editors, as expounded in the in-troductions to the first and secondvolumes, with the correspondingdissertations prefixed to the ' Ency-clope'die ' in France and the ' Ency-clopaedia Metropolitana' in England.The unity aimed at by Bacon waseither purely formal, securing onlyuniformity and completeness oftreatment, or it was that of prac-

tical usefulness the philosophy offruit and progress. The plan adopt-ed by Diderot and d'Alembert couldhardly attain anything more thanthis. Coleridge, nursed in Germanphilosophy, and deeply impressedwith the fact that there is a higherview than that of Lord Bacon, andthat such is to be found rather inwriters like Plato and Shakespeare,uses the word method in a muchwider sense. He was deeply affect-ed by the spirit of the idealisticphilosophy, which was foreign toBacon and unduly despised by him.In the idealistic systems of theContinent, beginning with Kant,the opinion was current that themethods and treatment of sciencealone were insufficient to close thecircle of knowledge. The trulyencyclopaedic view was only possiblein a scientific investigation speci-ally carried on for that purpose,and this was considered to be oneof the main objects of philosophy.Thus Kant in many passages of hisworks, notably vol. ii. pp. 377, 378,


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36 INTRODUCTION.on the science of method prefixed to the ' EncyclopaediaMetropolitana ' ; but the result has shown, what was notevident to Lord Bacon, that neither a systematic divisionof learning according to some logical principle, nor the his-torical identity of the beginnings of all branches of know-ledge, can in the end preserve the real unity and integrityof thought. The work of the advancement of learning,if it be once handed over to different sciences and in-trusted to separate labourers, does not proceed in a cyclewhich runs back into itself, but rather in the rings of anever-increasing spiral, receding more and more from thecommon origin. Such is the impression we get if wecontemplate the unfinished l rows of Ersch and Gruber's613 ; vol. iii. pp. 188, 212 ; vol. v.p. 312 (Rosenkranz's edition), especi-ally the two following : Philos-ophy is the only science which canprocure for us inner satisfaction,for she closes the scientific cycle,and through her only do the scien-ces receive order and connection.And : Mere ' iroXviffropia ' is acyclopeau learning which wants oneeye the eye of Philosophy anda cyclops among mathematicians,historians, naturalists, philologists,and linguists, is a scholar who isgreat in all these lines, but havingthese considers all philosophy assuperfluous. Still, with KantPhilosophy is not an instrumentfor the extension, but merely astudy of the limits of knowledge ;she does not discover truth,but only prevents error. Thismodest definition was given up inthe systems of Fichte, Schelling,and Hegel, who maintained that acertain kind of and this the highestknowledge could be attained by

starting from one highest principledeductively : the all - embracing,encyclopaedic character of philoso-

phical, speculative knowledge wasincreasingly emphasised, and thisnot only in special lectures on thesubject, as in Fichte's lectures onThe Nature of the Scholar, inSchelling's on The Method ofAcademic Study, in Hegel's 'Ency-clopaedia of Philosophy,' but alsoin the regeneration and reform ofmany older and in the foundationof new universities and academiesthroughout Germany. The great' Encyclopaedia ' of Ersch and Gruberwas planned in a similar spirit, asthe reform of university teachingand of academic learning. Thisreform has been of the greatest im-portance to the German nation andto the interests of science andknowledge. The Encyclopaedia, onthe other hand, has remainedincomplete, a huge but abortiveattempt to combine not only theprinciples of kn

merz - history european thought in 19thc. 1

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