THE PHILOSOPHICAL KADICALS THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS AND OTHER ESSAYS WITH CHAPTEES REPRINTED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL BY A. SETH PRINGLE-PATTISON, LL.D. FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON M C M V 1 1 TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RICHARD BURDON HALDANE A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF EARLY COLLABORATION AND CONTINUED FRIENDSHIP PREFACE. THE occasion of the four essays which form the first part of the present volume was the publication of certain notable books, such as Leslie Stephen s English Utilitarians, Herbert Spencer s Autobiography, and James Martineau s Life and Letters. But the studies they contain of important thinkers and schools are, I hope, sufficiently careful to merit reproduction in a more permanent form. Advantage has been taken of this republication to re-insert a few passages which had to yield to the exigencies of editorial space, and the argument at these points will be found more complete. The title of the volume is that of the paper which appeared first in order of time, but the choice is not merely casual. Doctrines and tendencies discussed in connection with the Philosophical Eadicals reappear in the papers which follow, and the prominence through out of the social and political aspects of philosophical theory gives a certain unity to the collection. viii PREFACE. I have added to the Essays three book -reviews, written at different times, which, from the nature of the subjects and the scope of the discussion, seemed important enough to interest philosophical students. The Eeprints which constitute the last section of the volume are from books which have been out of print nearly twenty years. In 1881, as the result of studies in Germany, I published a small volume on The De velopment from Kant to Hegel, an outline of a vast subject. Most of the ground covered in the first part of the book has been worked over afresh in other con nections since, and on certain points my views have changed. But in the second part, which traced the development of the philosophy of religion in the hands of Kant and Hegel, and was mainly expository in character, there is little, if anything, which calls for alteration. Eeligious thought has moved rapidly during the last quarter of a century, and the significance of the his torical element in Christianity for religious faith is a subject that has been widely discussed, and is under discussion still. What Kant and Hegel have to say on that question is as fresh and suggestive as ever, and a concise account of their attitude may still be found useful. I have a special interest in the republication of the " of last paper, on Philosophy as Criticism Categories," owing to the circumstances of its first appearance and the character of its early associates. It was the first paper in a volume of Essays in Philosophical Criticism PREFACE. ix published in 1883, in somewhat belated connection with the centenary of the Critique of Pure Reason. The volume was dedicated to the memory of Thomas Hill Green, who died in the previous year, and some prefatory pages by Dr Edward Caird contained a fine tribute to the spirit of Green s life and teaching. It was edited by Mr (now The Eight Honourable) E. B. Haldane and and the second on " The myself ; essay, Eelation of Philosophy to Science," was the work of the present Secretary of State for War, in collaboration with his brother, Dr J. S. Haldane. The other contributors were (to give them their later titles) Professor Bernard Bosanquet, Professor W. E. Sorley, Professor W. P. Ker, Professor Henry Jones, Dr James Bonar, Professor T. B. Kilpatrick of Knox College, Toronto, and the late Professor D. G. Eitchie of St Andrews. This, it will be admitted, was a band of which the editors had no reason to be ashamed. The ideas of the book were then comparatively un familiar, and the writing of the youthful authors was often, perhaps, unnecessarily difficult, but the critics were at least unanimous in recognising the sincerity and scientific purpose which animated the volume. My individual contribution is reprinted, apart from a few verbal emendations, in its original form. Naturally there are things which one might wish to express differently. The nature of the universal self, for example, and the difficult question of its relation to the individual selves of experience, obviously require X PREFACE. more adequate treatment. But the main argument of - the paper seems to me as sound now as it did twenty five years ago. I have to thank the editors of The Quarterly Keview, The Hibbert Journal/ The Contemporary Keview/ The Philosophical Keview, and Mind, for their kind permission to republish the various essays and reviews. My sincere thanks are also due to my friend, Mr K. P. Hardie, for the care with which he has read the proofs. UNIVERSITY OP EDINBURGH, May 1907. CONTENTS. PAGE THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS ..... 3 MR KIDD ON WESTERN CIVILISATION .... 47 MARTINEAU S PHILOSOPHY ...... 78 HERBERT SPENCER : THE MAN AND HIS WORK . 108 REVIEWS S . JONES PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE (1893) . 147 S DEWEY STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY (1904) . .178 M TAGGART S SOME DOGMAS OF RELIGION (1906) . 195 REPRINTS THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN KANT AND HEGEL (1882) INTRODUCTORY . .215 I. THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION (i) THE FOUNDATION IN ETHICS . 220 (ii) THE RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF MERE REASON ...... 232 II. CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN STANDPOINT AND TRANSITION TO HEGEL (i) THE DISTINCTION OF KANT FROM THE EN LIGHTENMENT ..... 256 (ii) CRITICISM OF KANT S POSITION . 261 III. OUTLINE OF THE HEGELIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION . 268 CONCLUDING REMARKS ..... 288 PHILOSOPHY AS CRITICISM OF CATEGORIES (1883) . 293 ESSAYS THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. reflection which will occur to most readers in tak ONEing up Mr Leslie Stephen s volumes on The English * Utilitarians/ is the rapidity with which even the most recent representatives of the school have passed into the region of history. When Mr Leslie Stephen published his History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, in 1876, John Stuart Mill was only three years dead, and the echoes had not yet died away of the famous " controversy in which he led the attack upon Intuition- as Sir ism," represented by Dean Mansel and William Hamilton. And although the direct political influence of the Philosophical Kadicals was even then a com paratively remote tradition, their social and political theories still largely moulded the views of reform and progress held by Liberal and Eadical thinkers of the day. John Stuart Mill s parliamentary experience in the previous decade was doubtless of little more than academic interest, but in the closing years of his life he was not only the most prominent English philosopher, but was reverenced as the fountainhead of economic and political wisdom by men like Henry Fawcett, Mr Courtney, and Mr Morley, with whom the future of 1 The following paper appeared in the Quarterly Review of July 1901, shortly after the publication of The English Utilitarians. 4 THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. " advanced Liberalism seemed to lie. The foremost instructor of his time in wisdom and goodness," are Mr Morley s words in the fine tribute penned immediately after Mill s death. The elevation of Mill s character, and the loftiness of his aims, are as heartily recognised now as then, but in other respects the aspect of most questions, whether philosophical, ethical, political, or social, has changed so much during the last quarter of a " " century that the equable flow of didactic wisdom in Mill s pages appeals somewhat coldly to the present generation. He must always remain one of the most interesting figures of the nineteenth century in the region of pure intellect, but the interest will be more and more that of a transition figure, in whose incon sistencies we can trace the gradual break-up of the robust and self-sufficient creed of his youth, and the sympathetic anticipation of larger truths. The history of the century is in truth the history of the emergence and rapid growth of problems with which the rigid formula? of the Philosophical Eadicals were quite in adequate to deal. Mr Stephen s volumes are in his best manner, and are a valuable contribution to the history of English thought. As he tells us in the preface, he was himself a disciple of the school during its last period. This account of the Utilitarians cannot, therefore, be con demned as written an outsider and by unsympathetic ; its clear recognition of the shortcomings of the school possesses something of the inexorable justice of history. For the rest, the subject is treated by Mr Stephen in a way which displays his qualities to the best advantage. " " of I have devoted," he says, a much greater proportion my work to biography and to considerations of political and social conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philo- THE PHILOSOPHICAL RADICALS. 5 sophy. ... I am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not with the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the court of pure reason. ... I deal not with philosophers meditating upon Being and not-Being, but with men actively engaged in framing political platforms and carry ing on popular agitations." " Many of these bygone platform framers and leaders of " revolts are obscure enough to us now, and there are quaint, even sordid, figures among them.