LANGE'S "HISTORY OF MATERIALISM "* Fr is now more than

time to notice the third and concluding volume of Mr. Thomas's able translation of the late Professor Lange's History of Materialism, to the first and second volume of which we called the attention of our readers on separate occasions, as they appeared in an English shape. This great work, perhaps the most important contribution to philosophical literature that has appeared for a long time, is, as we formerly remarked, professedly historical rather than speculative; but in

• History of Materialism. By Professor Lange. Translated by E. C. Thomas. Vol. IIL London : Trilbner and Co.

this volume, and in the concluding chapters of the second volume, to which it is necessary briefly to recur, Lange's own opinions are shown more distinctly than in the earlier portions of the book, and though they appear in a somewhat disjointed form, and are sometimes difficult to separate from statements purely historical, it is very important, in the present conflict of diametri- cally opposite schools, to disentangle from their surroundings the views of one who has exercised so great an influence on the minds of the leaders of so-called scientific thought of the day.

The second section of Lange's second book deals with the relation of materialism to the exact sciences, force and matter, modern cosmogony, Darwinism and teleology. Considerable space is occupied by a discussion of the legitimacy of what Lange calls philosophy, as distinguished from purely observa- tional scientific research. From the general tenor of his thoughts, we are almost compelled to conclude that in " philosophy " we are not, in his sense of the word, to include anything more than what may be called an enlarged view of the results of science, regulated and kept in check by a due estimate of the "limits of natural knowledge." By "natural knowledge" he means all knowledge attainable by the legitimate use of our faculties on the data of observations on the objective world, whether the non- ego of so-called matter, or the non-ego of mind under the light derived from our internal psychology (taking psychology merely as one of the sciences of observation) ; little more, indeed, than that which defines these limits of natural knowledge on the one hand, and, on the other, takes a large and catholic view of the bearings of any particular sphere of positive science, as distinguished from the more exclusive aspect which it presents to the mind of a specialist.

Such, at first sight, would seem to have been Lange's idea of legitimate philosophy, and yet interspersed throughout the whole work are passages indicating a wider view, and a recog- nition of a region of thought outside of and above the region not merely of the grosser materialism, but of that larger materialism with the history of which he professes to deal :—

" From the first, to my understanding, to construct a philosophical theory of things exclusively on the physical sciences must in these days be described as a philosophical one-sidedness of the worst kind."

Again :— "The relation of Philosophy to Materialism at length attains the utmost clearness in Kant That Kant dealt with all the objects of natural science in a scientific way, there is no doubt; for the metaphysical principles of natural science' contain only an attempt to discover the axiomatic foundations a priori, and do not fall, therefore, within the sphere of empirical inquiry, which every- where rests on experience, and regards the axioms as given. Thus Kant leaves the whole compass of scientific thought in its place and in its dignity, as the great and only means of extending our experience of the world given to us through our senses, of systematising it, and thus making the world intelligible to us in the causal connection of all phenomena. Were it well done, then, if such a man at the same time did not rest in the scientific and mechanical theory of the world, if he asserted that this is not the end of everything, that we have reason to take the world of our ideas into account, and that neither the phenomenal world nor the ideal world can be regarded as the absolute nature of things,—were it well done to pass unsuspectingly by or to ignore the whole assertion, just because we do not feel the need for wider and deeper examination ?"

Speaking of certain questions to which philosophy inevitably gives rise, he says :—

"To come to a thorough explanation with these is the only way in which the Materialist can claim a prominent place in the history of Philosophy. Without this effort of the mind, Materialism—which indeed otherwise can only clothe old ideas in new material—remains, for the most part, nothing but a battering-ram directed against the crudest conception of religious tradition, and a significant symptom of a profound intellectual ferment."

Passages such as these, which might be multiplied to any extent, indicate the attitude of Lange's mind towards what he would term idealism. It is a phase of thought now extremely com- mon, though seldom expressed in language so clear and with so

candid a spirit as we here find it. A limitation of certainty of knowledge to the results of the empirical sciences, with a rever- ential and yet sometimes contemptuous contemplation of those beliefs and speculations outside of that sphere which, however various in detail, are fundamentally the same, or are obvious developments from each other, throughout the whole human family, and are intimately connected with what even the

grosser materialism admits to be our highest and noblest aspira- tions; an absolute denial of Free Will—holding it to be an absolute delusion, in so far as it claims to be an objective reality (though admittedly a form of subjective consciousness) ; a denial of all a priori validity to the moral ideas, a negation of teleology (in its ordinary sense of purpose), and, as a necessary result, complete agnosticism in the matter of Deity, these posi- tions do not form a hopeful substratum for a philosophy of a very elevated or elevating type. But the constant under-current of respectful sentiment towards much that lies beyond the domain of what he calls certainty testifies, in spite of these negations, to the largeness and catholicity of Lange's nature, and to his power of shaking off the bonds of the narrower and more crude materialistic spirit. There is a constant recurrence of expres- sions not merely of respect for the higher philosophy and theology, but of a hazy recognition of at least probable truth lying behind that region :—

4' In the relations of Science we have fragments of truth which are continually multiplying, but continually remain fragments ; in the ideas of Philosophy and Religion we have a figure of the truth which presents itself to us as a whole, but still always remains a figure, varying in its form with the stand-point of our apprehension."

To Christianity itself (at least when divested of the ecclesiastical and dogmatic shell from which, Lange says, it must ultimately

break loose, so as to develop its full activity) he attributes a conservative power which, he says, may probably ward off such dissolution of society as some now fear from the unequal distri- bution of wealth, the communistic ideas which thus arise, and the general analogy of our condition to that of the ancient world prior to its fall. Beneficial as he thinks the influence of Christianity to have been, he holds that "the wrong side" of that influence is to be sought for first in those very doctrines and institutions through which it acquired its dominion over men's minds and hearts. The ethical characteristics of a religion consist not so much in its moral doctrines, as in the form in which, it seeks to establish them. The ethics of materialism remain indifferent to such forms. "The oft-attempted deduc- tion of all the virtues from self-love remains, therefore, not merely sophistical, but cold and tedious. But the morality also,

which results from the principles of natural altruism, not only harmonises very well with physical materialism," but even bears itself a materialistic character, so long as it misses its ideal, and merely insists that we should yield to a feeling of sympathy for our fellow-men, however much it may counsel self-sacrifice instead of enjoyment. The principle of ethics is not a priori as a ready-made, developed conscience, but a generalisation a pos- teriori. This often leads us astray, and it may be asked, is it not better to resign oneself to the ennobling influence of natural sympathy, "than to listen to prophet-voices which have but too

often led to the mosthideous fanaticism?" Religion in times which connected together culture and piety has always been inseparable from art, while it is a sign of decline when its doctrines are con- founded with sober knowledge. In art and religion the true value of the ideas lies in the form or style, and the impression of these on the soul, while in knowledge all ideas should be materially cor- rect. All this, as Lange thought, is even now dimly suspected by the most decided believers, who may be in a state of mind approaching to that of children listening to fairy-tales, who only half believe, while they enjoy what gives a concrete form to their dreams of something great and good, the full masculine sense for reality and verification not being developed.

Our limits do not permit our illustrating further the relations of that phase of materialism which, according to Lange, includes all real knowledge, to ethics and religion. But we think that we have said enough to point out at least, however imperfectly, the direction of the stream of thought which is now setting in so strongly, in so far as it is due to his guidance. Innumerable writers of the day display materialistic speculation in infinite variety, but it is well to study it in the form which it took in the mind of its historian, who is also, beyond all doubt, its most profound as well as its most candid exponent. It is a phase of doctrine perplexing enough to us to find it laid down, on the one hand, that the human ideas of right and wrong, of beauty and ugliness (for a3sthetics, in Lange's mind, share the same fate as ethics) are so purely subjective—accidents, indeed, of our brain organisation and of the developing effect of our sur- roundings, that they fail to represent anything whatever in the essential constitution of things, and that the ascription of these distinctions to an infinite formative intelligence is a delusion, about to perish gradually, when its usefulness and necessity as a support shall have ceased—that all that region of human nature which has given rise to martyrdoms innumerable, to crusades,

and which, in its less reasonable aberrations, led, to use Lange's own words, Mormons to flee amidst battle and privation to the Salt Lake, and Mahommedanism to remould nations and agitate whole continents with the swiftness of a blazing fire,

—which, in its highest forms,.every day produces the most love- able and noblest human characters, and above all, alone de- velopes the quality to which we so emphatically apply the term

holiness,—is to be treated as "poesy," having no foundation for its ideas and impulses in objective fact, and is yet, on the otht r hand, to be contemplated with the respectful admiration, and even awe, which these volumes repeatedly express. To us, a more gross materialism, if less elevating, would seem more reasonable.

It would have been interesting to analyse the very subtle

statements of Lange on atomism and on "matter and force," which show bow a certain monism, rather thar materialism in its more ordinary sense, ruled the mind of de author. This, however, is impossible in our space, and we conclude by a very

characteristic quotation, in which he denounces teleology, or, rather, what he would term " the teleology which resembles human purposefulness." There is, he says, room for a true teleology which is not only compatible with Darwinism, but is almost identical with it. The mechanism (meaning the vast provision, for example, of germs, in order to secure a limited result) by which nature attains its ends, is really through its

U72 iversality, as high as human purposefulness is through that

which he calls its rank :—

" If a man, in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions ; if in order to get into a locked-up room he were to buy ten thousand keys, and to try them all ; if in order to have a house he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather ; assuredly no one would call such a proceeding purposeful, and still less would any one conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence."

We suspect that in admitting what he calls a true teleology, Lange has really undermined his own reasoning, and has ad- mitted a purposefulness in Nature only intelligible through Theism, the expression of which may be approximately reached by describing it as the will to produce the most marvellously varied results by the fewest and simplest rules of action, i.e., laws or forces, if the terms are preferred. Beyond this hint, however obscure it may seem, we cannot prolong the discussion.

Apart from those parts of the work which bear more directly on the higher philosophy, its possibility, and its nature, the man of science will find innumerable passages which he will do well to lay to heart in the prosecution of his specialty, whether in the region of physics or biology ; while those whose chief interest is historical will find a mine of wealth in the masterly analysis of the successive phases of human thought. We would specially draw attention to the able disquisition on the mental growth of two very different men—tiberweg and Strauss—in the penultimate chapter. The translation is good, but sometimes, we venture to think, not quite so lucid as that of the two preceding volumes.