GIFFORD LECTURE THE SEVENTH.

Sophists-Aufklärung-Disbelief, Simon of Tournay, Amalrich of Bena, David of Dinant-Italian philosophers, Geneva Socinians, Bacon, Hobbes, the Deists, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza-Hume, Gibbon-Germany, Reimarus, etc. - Klopstock, Lavater-Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Jacobi-Goethe, Schiller, Jean PaulCarlyle-France-Kant and his successors-Necessary end of such movements-Cosmological argument-Locke, Clarke, Leibnitz-Aristotle-Dependency - Potentiality and actuality beginning-Aristotle and design-Mr. Darwin's mistake-Empedocles and the survival of the fittest.

A

ONE can hardly leave Plato without saying a word about the Sophists: it is his handling of some of the most conspicuous Sophists, indeed, that constitutes the special charm of several of his very best dialogues. Amongst the individual Sophists, there are, of course, many characteristic differences; still, when looked at from a certain historical distance, they, so to speak, appear to run into each other, as though but units in a single movement. One general spirit we assume to unite them all, one common atmosphere to breathe around them. In brief, they all step forward as the apostles of the new; and this distinction they all arrogate in one and the same way, by pointing the finger at the old. Suppose the old to be a clothed figure, then one Sophist has the credit of stripping off its gown, another its tunic, a third its braccae, and so on. So it is that the whole movement is shut up in a single word now-a-days, the word Aujklärung. In the Greek Sophists we have before us the Greek Aufklärung. Aufklärung is Klärung Auf, a clearing up. It means that, as it were, day had dawned, that light had come, that people at last had got their eyes opened to the absurdity of the lies they had hitherto believed in. It was as though they had suddenly turned round upon themselves, and found, strangely, all at once, everything in the clearness of a new revelation. They were all wrong, it seemed: they had been dreadfully stupid. Hitherto they had lived only, and never thought; but now they both saw and thought. This was not true, and that was not true. There was absurdity there, and there was absurdity here. And it was only they were right-only they, the Sophists themselves. They saw how it was with all things, and they could speak of all things. They saw just so well, indeed, and had so much power in the seeing, that, on the whole, they could speak of all things pretty well as they pleased. That is very briefly, but not unjustly, to name the Sophists as we see them in Plato. If we but take up into our minds the general characteristics of this movement, then, the movement on the part of these Sophists -if we but take it up into our minds and name it Aufklärung, we shall have some idea of what an Aufklärung means. It was not the Sophists, however, that suggested the word. This, the suggestion, was due, not to an ancient, but to a modern movement a movement that was, on the whole, more peculiarly French, but still a movement in which England, Germany, Holland, and all the other nations of Europe more or less participated. It was preceded here, in Europe, I mean, by a want. This want was the product of suffering, on the one hand, and of the ordinary human curiosity, or the desire of gain, on the other. Political tyranny and religious corruption had become, on the part of the arbitrators, whether of the State or the Church we may not too incorrectly say, universal. Men grew scandalized, indignant; yearned for delivery from the wrong; and

SPINOZA'S TRACTATUS THEOLOGICO-POLITICUS.

117

revolted against both both Church and State. Meantime, too, discoveries in the pursuit of curiosity or gain had been going on. There were discoveries by sea, and there were inventions in the arts. America was discovered, and gunpowder-gunpowder and printing were invented. Greek fugitives had fled into Italy; Protestantism arose. There was but one general result; there was but one desire awakened - the desire to know.

And it was the desire to know, conjoined with the political and ecclesiastical wrong, that gave rise to the modern Aufklärung. What concerns religion is, undoubtedly, the most notable phase of the Aufklärung, but it is not the only one. The Aufklärung was a movement of the whole of humanity, and extended into humanity's veriest roots, political, social, educational, and all other. So far as books are concerned, perhaps it is the religious element that shows most. There are not wanting many heretical opinions during the whole history of the Church, some of which were as extreme in their quality as even those of a Hume, or a Voltaire himself. As early as about 1200, there was Simon of Tournay, with his book, de Tribus Impostoribus, and, somewhat later, the followers of Amalrich of Bena, and David of Dinant. Considerably later than these still there were the Italian Philosophers of the Transition Period, and the Socinians of Geneva, who, with their questions, harrowed the very soul of Calvin. Bacon, Hobbes, and the English Deists may or may not be reckoned to the movement of the Aufklärung; in strict accuracy, perhaps, they were better named its forerunners; among whom even John Locke is sometimes included, and, if John Locke, then surely also René Descartes. For myself it always appears to me that the Tractatus Theologico - Politicus of Spinoza, published perhaps about 1660, may be very fairly accounted

the beginning itself of the Aufklärung. That work is very much the quarry from which Voltaire drew-very much a source of direction and supply also to the Critics of Germany. In Great Britain we may instance as undoubted members of the Aufklärung such men as David Hume and Edward Gibbon, but only at the head of a cryptic mass. In Germany the movement, as in writers like Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Baumgarten, Semler, Reimarus, and even scores of others, was much milder than elsewhere, if also considerably thinner. In Germany, too, there was speedily a reaction against it, as exemplified in the pious spirit which reigns in the works of its Klopstocks and Lavaters. But what writers put an end to the movement, if not generally, at least in their own country, were Lessing, Herder, Hamann, and Jacobi-four men distinguished (of course, variously among themselves) almost by an inspiration, we may say, not less religious than it was philosophical, and not less philosophical than it was religious. There is not one of the four but excellently exemplifies this. Lessing is not an enormous genius-he knows himself that he is not a poet, but only a critic. For all that, however, to get the German spirit that is peculiar even yet, he is, perhaps, just the very best German writer whom it is possible to choose. As the truth for him was ever the middle between two extremes, so he himself stands there a figure in the middle for ever. Clearness, fairness, equity constitute his quality. Living in the time of the Aufklärung, he, too, would have Aufklärung; but the Aufklärung he would have should not be for his eyes only, he would have it for his soul as well. It was his heart that would have light-feeling-not mere perception. He was not a man that trusted, like so many other literary men of the day, to himself and his own inspiration. He was a thoroughly educated man, trained

LESSING-JEAN PAUL.

119

in mathematics as well as in philology; and he had read deeply. Even of archaeology, even of Church history, he surprises by his knowledge. Christianity is to him, for all his enlightenment, the religion of our maturer humanity; and he vindicates for reason and by reason, the very strictest dogmas of the Creed. To him the unity of God and the immortality of the soul are truths demonstrable. Yet he prefers the religion of the heart to the religion of the head. He defends the tradition of the Church; and yet he opposes the Christian of feeling to the dogmatist of belief, even as he opposes the spirit to the letter. He clings to the rule of faith-the regula fidei; but he would as little sacrifice reason to faith, as he would sacrifice faith to reason. Still his place in theology is only, as he says, that of him who sweeps the dust from the steps of the temple; and his religion proper is rightly to be named, perhaps, only the religion of humanity.

This that I have said of Lessing will dispense me from any similar details as regards the other three. Hamann, with whom I have no great sympathy, is a very peculiar personality, and has left behind him certain pithily farfetched and peculiar sayings quite currently quoted, while both Herder and Jacobi are eminently noble men, as well as great writers. The specialty that I would attribute to all four of them is, that they correct and complete the Aufklärung by placing side by side with the half on which alone it will look, the failing half on which it has turned its back, and have, in this way, done good work towards the reconstitution and re-establishment of the central catholic and essential truth. Nor has it proved otherwise with German literature in general, and its coryphei in particular. The example of Lessing and the others has proved determinative also for such men as Neither on their

Goethe, and Schiller, and Jean Paul.