History of Modern Philosophy · Chapter 38%part II. From Kant to the Present Time.% (17)
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Objective cognition is confined within the circle of our representations; all that is knowable is phenomenon. Space, time, and causality spread out like a triple veil between us and the per se of things, and prevent a vision of the true nature of the world. There is one point, however, at which we know more than mere phenomena, where of these three disturbing media only one, time-form, separates us from the thing in itself. This point is the consciousness of ourselves.
On the one hand, I appear to myself as body. My body is a temporal, spatial, material object, an object like all others, and with them subject to the laws of objectivity. But besides this objective cognition, I have, further, an immediate consciousness of myself, through which I apprehend my true being—I know myself as willing. My will is more than a mere representation, it is the original element in me, the truly real which appears to me as body. The will is related to the intellect as the primary to the secondary, as substance to accident; it is related to the body as the inner to the outer, as reality to phenomenon. The act of will is followed at once and inevitably by the movement of the body willed, nay, the two are one and the same, only given in different ways: will is the body seen from within, body the will seen from without, the will become visible, objectified. After the analogy of ourselves, again, who appear to ourselves as material objects but in truth are will, all existence is to be judged. The universe is the mac-anthropos; the knowledge of our own essence, the key to the knowledge of the essence of the world. Like our body, the whole world is the visibility of will. The human will is the highest stage in the development of the same principle which manifests its activity in the various forces of nature, and which properly takes its name from the highest species. To penetrate further into the inner nature of things than this is impossible. What that which presents itself as will and which still remains after the negation of the latter (see below) is in itself, is for us absolutely unknowable.
The world is per se will. None of the predicates are to be attributed to the primal will which we ascribe to things in consequence of our subjective forms of thought—neither determination by causes or ends, nor plurality: it stands outside the law of causality, as also outside space and time, which form the principium individuationis. The primal will is groundless, blind stress, unconscious impulse toward existence; it is one, the one and all, [Greek: en nai pan]. That which manifests itself as gravity, as magnetic force, as the impulse to growth, as the vis medicatrix naturae, is only this one world-will, whose unity (not conscious character!) shows itself in the purposiveness of its embodiments. The essence of each thing, its hidden quality, at which empirical explanation finds its limit, is its will: the essence of the stone is its will to fall; that of the lungs is the will to breathe; teeth, throat, and bowels are hunger objectified. Those qualities in which the universal will gives itself material manifestation form a series with grades of increasing perfection, a realm of unchangeable specific forms or eternal Ideas, which (with a real value difficult to determine) stand midway between the one primal will and the numberless individual beings. That the organic individual does not perfectly correspond to the ideal of its species, but only approximates this more or less closely, is grounded in the fact that the stadia in the objectification of the will, or the Ideas, contend, as it were, for matter; and whatever of force is used up in the victory of the higher Ideas over the lower is lost for the development of the examples of the former. The higher the level on which a being stands the clearer the expression of its individuality. The most general forces of nature, which constitute the raw mass, play the fundamental bass in the world-symphony, the higher stages of inorganic nature, with the vegetable and animal worlds, the harmonious middle parts, and man the guiding treble, the significant melody. With the human brain the world as idea is given at a stroke; in this organ the will has kindled a torch in order to throw light upon itself and to carry out its designs with careful deliberation; it has brought forth the intellect as its instrument, which, with the great majority of men, remains in a position of subservience to the will. Brain and thought are the same; the former is nothing other than the will to know, as the stomach is will to digest. Those only talk of an immaterial soul who import into philosophy—where such ideas do not belong—concepts taught them when they were confirmed.
Schopenhauer's philosophy is as rich in inconsistencies as his personality was self-willed and unharmonious. "He carries into his system all the contradictions and whims of his capricious nature," says Zeller. From the most radical idealism (the objective world a product of representation) he makes a sharp transition to the crassest materialism (thought a function of the brain); first matter is to be a mere idea, now thought is to be merely a material phenomenon! The third and fourth books of The World as Will and Idea, which develop the aesthetic and ethical standpoint of their author, stand in as sharp a contradiction to the first (poëtical) and the second (metaphysical) books as these to each other. While at first it was maintained that all representation is subject to the principle of sufficient reason, we are now told that, besides causal cognition, there is a higher knowledge, one which is free from the control of this principle, viz., aesthetic and philosophical intuition. If, before, it was said that the intellect is the creature and servant of the will, we now learn that in favored individuals it gains the power to throw off the yoke of slavery, and not only to raise itself to the blessedness of contemplation free from all desire, but even to enter on a victorious conflict with the tyrant, to slay the will. The source of this power—is not revealed. R. Haym (A. Schopenhauer, 1864, reprinted from the Preussische Jahrbücher) was not far wrong in characterizing Schopenhauer's philosophy as a clever novel, which entertains the reader by its rapid vicissitudes.
The contemplation which is free from causality and will is the essence of aesthetic life; the partial and total sublation, the quieting and negation of the will, that of ethical life. It is but seldom, and only in the artistic and philosophical genius, that the intellect succeeds in freeing itself from the supremacy of the will, and, laying aside the question of the why and wherefore, where and when, in sinking itself completely in the pure what of things. While with the majority of mankind, as with animals, the intellect always remains a prisoner in the service of the will to live, of self-preservation, of personal interests, in gifted men, in artists and thinkers, it strips off all that is individual, and, in disinterested vision of the Ideas, becomes pure, timeless subject, freed from the will. Art removes individuality from the subject as well as from the object; its comforting and cheering influence depends on the fact that it elevates those enjoying it to the stand-point—raised above all pain of desire—of a fixed, calm, completely objective contemplation of the unchangeable essence, of the eternal types of things. For aesthetic intuition the object is not a thing under relations of space, time, and cause, but only an expression, an exemplification, a representative of the Idea. Poetry, which presents—most perfectly in tragedy—the Idea of humanity, stands higher than the plastic arts. The highest rank, however, belongs to music, since it does not, like the other arts, represent single Ideas, but—as an unconscious metaphysic, nay, a second, ideal world above the material world—the will itself. In view of this high appreciation of their art, it is not surprising that musicians have contributed a considerable contingent to the band of Schopenhauer worshipers. A different source of attraction for the wider circle of readers was supplied by the piquant spice of pessimism.
If the purposiveness of the phenomena of nature points to the unity of the primal will, the unspeakable misery of life, which Schopenhauer sets forth with no less of eloquence, proves the blindness and irrationality of the world-ground. To live is to suffer; the world contains incomparably more pain than pleasure; it is the worst possible world. In the world of sub-animal nature aimless striving; in the animal world an insatiable impulse after enjoyment—while the will, deceiving itself with fancied happiness to come, which always remains denied it, and continually tossed to and fro between necessity and ennui, never attains complete satisfaction. The pleasure which it pursues is nothing but the removal of a dissatisfaction, and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, to be replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains. In view of the indescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not so much of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition. The old saying is true: Non-existence is better than existence. The misery, however, is the just punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itself its particular existence by an act of intelligible freedom. Redemption from the sin and misery of existence is possible only through a second act of transcendental freedom, which, since it consists in the complete transformation of our being, and since it is supernatural in its origin, the Church is right in describing as a new birth and work of grace.
Morality presupposes pessimistic insight into the badness of the world and the fruitlessness of all desire, and pantheistic discernment of the untruth of individual existence and the identity in essence of all individuals from a metaphysical standpoint. Man is able to free himself from egoistic self-affirmation only when he perceives the two truths, that all striving is vain and the longed-for pleasure unattainable, and that all individuals are at bottom one, viz. manifestations of the same primal will. This is temporarily effected in sympathy, which, as the only counterpoise to natural selfishness, is the true moral motive and the source of all love and justice. The sympathizer sees himself in others and feels their suffering as his own. The entire negation of the will, however, inspiring examples of which have been furnished by the Christian ascetics and Oriental penitents, stands higher than the vulgar virtue of sympathy with the sufferings of others. Here knowledge, turned away from the individual and vain to the whole and genuine, ceases to be a motive for the will and becomes a means of stilling it; the intellect is transformed from a motive into a quietive, and brings him who gives himself up to the All safely out from the storm of the passions into the peace of deliverance from existence. Absence of will, resignation, is holiness and blessedness in one. For him who has slain the will in himself the motley deceptive dream of phenomena has vanished, he lives in the ether of true reality, which for our knowledge is an empty nothingness ("Nirvana"), yet (as the ultimate, incomprehensible per se, which remains after the annulling of the will) only a relative nothingness—relative to the phenomenon.
Schopenhauer disposes of the sense of responsibility and the reproofs of conscience, which are inconvenient facts for his determinism, by making them both refer, not to single deeds and the empirical character, but to the indivisible act of the intelligible character. Conscience does not blame me because I have acted as I must act with my character and the motives given, but for being what in these actions I reveal myself to be. Operari sequitur esse. My action follows from my being, my being was my own free choice, and a new act of freedom is alone capable of transforming it.
If Schopenhauer is fond of referring to the agreement of his views with the oldest and most perfect religions, the idea lies in the background that religion,—which springs from the same metaphysical needs as philosophy, and, for the great multitude, who lack the leisure and the capacity for philosophical thought, takes the place of the former,—as the metaphysics of the people, clothes the same fundamental truths which the philosopher offers in conceptual form and supports by rational grounds in the garb of myth and allegory, and places them under the protection of an external authority. When this character of religion is overlooked, and that which is intended to be symbolical is taken for literal truth (it is not the supernaturalists alone who start with this unjust demand, but the rationalists also, with their minimizing interpretations), it becomes the worst enemy of true philosophy. In Christianity the doctrines of original sin and of redemption are especially congenial to our philosopher, as well as mysticism and asceticism. He declares Mohammedanism the worst religion on account of its optimism and abstract theism, and Buddhism the best, because it is idealistic, pessimistic, and—atheistic.
It was not until after the appearance of the second edition of his chief work that Schopenhauer experienced in increasing measure the satisfaction—which his impatient ambition had expected much earlier—of seeing his philosophy seriously considered. A zealous apostle arose for him in Julius Frauenstädt (died 1878; Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 1854; New Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, 1876), who, originally an Hegelian, endeavored to remove pessimism from the master's system. Like Eduard von Hartmann, who will be discussed below, Julius Bahnsen (died 1882; The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Being of the World, the Principle and Particular Verification of Real-Dialectic, 1880-81; also, interesting characterological studies) seeks to combine elements from Schopenhauer and Hegel, while K. Peters (Will-world and World-will, 1883) shows in another direction points of contact with the first named thinker. Of the younger members of the school we may name P. Deussen in Kiel (The Elements of Metaphysics, 2d ed., 1890), and Philipp Mainländer (Philosophy of Redemption, 2d ed., 1879). As we have mentioned above, Schopenhauer's doctrines have exercised an attractive force in artistic circles also. Richard Wagner (1813-83; Collected Writings, 9 vols., 1871-73, vol. x. 1883; 2d ed., 1887-88), whose earlier aesthetic writings (The Art-work of the Future, 1850; Opera and Drama, 1851) had shown the influence of Feuerbach, in his later works (Beethoven, 1870; Religion and Art, in the third volume of the Bayreuther Blätter, 1880) became an adherent of Schopenhauer, after, in the Ring of the Nibelung, he had given poetical expression to a view of the world nearly allied to Schopenhauer's, though this was previous to his acquaintance with the works of the latter.[1] One of the most thoughtful disciples of the Frankfort philosopher and the Bayreuth dramatist is Fried rich Nietzsche (born 1844). His Unseasonable Reflections, 1873-76,[2] is a summons to return from the errors of modern culture, which, corrupted by the seekers for gain, by the state, by the polite writers and savants, especially by the professors of philosophy, has made men cowardly and false instead of simple and honorable, mere self-satisfied "philistines of culture." In his writings since 1878[3] Nietzsche has exchanged the rôle of a German Rousseau for that of a follower of Voltaire, to arrive finally at the ideal of the man above men.[4]
[Footnote 1: Cf. on Wagner, Fr. v. Hausegger, Wagner und Schopenhauer, 1878. [English translation of Wagner's Prose Works by Ellis, vol. i., 1892.—TR.]]
[Footnote 2: "D. Strauss, the Confessor and the Author"; "On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life"; "Schopenhauer as an Educator"; "R. Wagner in Bayreuth."]
[Footnote 3: Human, All-too-human, new ed., 1886; The Dawn, Thoughts on Human Prejudices, 1881; The Merry Science, 1882; So spake Zarathustra, 1883-84; Beyond Good and Evil, 1886; On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887, 2d ed., 1887; The Wagner Affair, 1888, 2d ed., 1892; Götzendämmerung, or How to Philosophize with the Hammer, 1889.]
[Footnote 4: Cf. H. Kaatz, Die Weltanschauung Fr. Nietzsches, I. Kultur und Moral, 1892.]
%1. Italy.%
The Cartesian philosophy, which had been widely accepted in Italy, and had still been advocated, in the sense of Malebranche, by Sigismond Gerdil (1718-1802), was opposed as an unhistorical view of the world by Giambattista Vico,[1] the bold and profound creator of the philosophy of history (1668-1744; from 1697 professor of rhetoric in the University of Naples). Vico's leading ideas are as follows: Man makes himself the criterion of the universe, judges that which is unknown and remote by the known and present. The free will of the individual rests on the judgments, manners, and habits of the people, which have arisen without reflection from a universal human instinct. Uniform ideas among nations unacquainted with one another are motived in a common truth. History is the development of human nature; in it neither chance nor fate rules, but the legislative power of providence, in virtue of which men through their own freedom progressively realize the idea of human nature. The universal course of civilization is that culture transfers its abode from the forests and huts into villages, cities, and, finally, into academies; the nature of the nations is at first rude, then stern, gradually it becomes mild, nay, effeminate, and finally wanton; at first men feel only that which is necessary, later they regard the useful, the convenient, the agreeable and attractive, until the luxury sprung from the sense for the beautiful degenerates into a foolish misuse of things. Vico divides antiquity into three periods: the divine (theocracy), the heroic (aristocracy), and the human (democracy and monarchy). The same course of things repeats itself in the nations of later times: to the patriarchal dominion of the fanciful, myth-making Orient correspond the spiritual states of the migrations; to the old Greek aristocracy, the chivalry and robbery of the period of the Crusades; to the republicanism and the monarchy of later antiquity, the modern period, which gives even the citizens and peasants a share in the universal equality. If European culture had not been transplanted to America, the same three-act drama of human development would there be playing. Vico carries this threefold division into his consideration of manners, laws, languages, character, etc.
[Footnote 1: Vico: Principles of a New Science of the Common Nature of Nations, 1725; Works, in six volumes, edited by G. Ferrari, 1835-37, new ed.. 1853 seq. On Vico cf. K. Werner, 1877 and 1879. [Also Flint's Vico, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1884.—TR.]]
If Vico anticipates the Hegelian view of history, Antonio Genovesi (1712-69), who also taught at the University of Naples, and while the former was still living, shows himself animated by a presentiment of the Kantian criticism.[1] Appreciating Leibnitz and Locke, and appropriating the idea of the monads from the one and the unknowableness of substance from the other, he reaches the conviction—according to statements in his letters—that sense-bodies are nothing but the appearances of intelligible unities; that each being for us is an activity, whose substratum and ground remains unknown to us; that self-consciousness and the knowledge of external impressions yield phenomena alone, through the elaboration of which we produce the intellectual worlds of the sciences. For the rest, Genovesi thus advises his friends: Study the world, devote yourselves to languages and to mathematics, think more about men than about the things above us, and leave metaphysical vagaries to the monks! His countrymen honor in him the man who first included ethics and politics in philosophical instruction, and who used the Italian language both from the desk and in his writings, holding that a nation whose scientific works are not composed in its own tongue is barbarian.
[Footnote 1: In the following account we have made use of a translation of the concluding section of Francesco Florentine's Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 1879-81, which was most kindly placed at our disposal by Dr. J. Mainzer. Cf. La Filosofia Contemporanea in Italia, 1876, by the same author; further, Bonatelli, Die Philosophic in Italien seit, 1815; Zeitschrift für Philosophic und philosophische Kritik, vol. liv. 1869, p. 134 seq.; and especially, K. Werner, Die Italienische Philosophic des XIX. Jahrhunderts, 5 vols., 1884-86. [The English reader may be referred to the appendix on Italian philosophy in vol. ii. of the English translation of Ueberweg, by Vincenzo Botta; and to Barzellotti's "Philosophy in Italy," Mind, vol. in. 1878.—TR.]]
The sensationalism of Condillac, starting from Parma, gained influence over Melchiore Gioja (1767-1828; Statistical Logic, 1803; Ideology, 1822) and Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-1835; What is the Sound Mind? 1827), but not without experiencing essential modification from both. The importance of these men, moreover, lies more in the sphere of social philosophy than in the sphere of noëtics.
Of the three greatest Italian philosophers of this century, Galluppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti, the first named is more in sympathy with the Kantian position than he himself will confess. Pasquale Galluppi[1] (1770-1846; from 1831 professor at Naples) adheres to the principle of experience, but does not conceive experience as that which is sensuously given, but as the elaboration of this through the synthetic relations (rapporti) of identity and difference, which proceed from the activity of the mind. Vincenzo de Grazia (Essay on the Reality of Human Knowledge, 1839-42), who holds all relations to be objective, and Ottavio Colecchi (died 1847; Philosophical Investigations, 1843), who holds them all subjective, oppose the view of Galluppi that some are objective and others subjective. According to De Grazia judgment is observation, not connection; it finds out the relations contained in the data of sensation; it discovers, but does not produce them. Colecchi reduces the Kantian categories to two, substance and cause. Testa, Borelli (1824), and, among the younger men, Cantoni, are Kantians; Labriola is an Herbartian.
[Footnote 1: Galluppi: Philosophical Essay on the Critique of Knowledge, 1819 seq.; Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, 1832 seq.; Philosophy of the Will, 1832 seq.; On the System of Fichte, or Considerations on Transcendental Idealism and Absolute Rationalism, 1841. By the Letters on the History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant, 1827, in the later editions to Cousin, he became the founder of this discipline in his native land.]
Antonio Rosmini-Serbati[1] (born 1797 at Rovereto, died 1855 at Stresa) regards knowledge as the common product of sensibility and understanding, the former furnishing the matter, the latter the form. The form is one: the Idea of being which precedes all judgment, which does not come from myself, which is innate, and apprehensible by immediate inner perception (essere ideale, ente universale). The pure concepts (substance, cause, unity, necessity) arise when the reflecting reason analyzes this general Idea of being; the mixed Ideas (space, time, motion; body, spirit), when the understanding applies it to sensuous experience. The universal Idea of being and the particular existences are in their being identical, but in their mode of existence different. In his posthumous Theosophy, 1859 seq., Rosmini no longer makes the universal being receive its determinations from without, but produce them from its own inner nature by means of an a priori development. Vincenzo Gioberti[1] (born 1801 in Turin, died 1852 at Paris) has been compared as a patriot with Fichte, and in his cast of thought with Spinoza. In place of Rosmini's "psychologism," which was advanced by Descartes and which leads to skepticism, he seeks to substitute "ontologism," which is alone held capable of reconciling science and the Catholic religion. By immediate intuition (the content of which Gioberti comprehends in the formula "Being creates the existences") we cognize the absolute as the creative ground of two series, the series of thought and the series of reality. The endeavors of Rosmini and Gioberti to bring the reason into harmony with the faith of the Church were fiercely attacked by Giussepe Ferrari (1811-76) and Ausonio Franchi (1853), while Francesco Bonatelli (Thought and Cognition, 1864) and Terenzio Mamiani (1800-85; Confessions of a Metaphysician, 1865), follow a line of thought akin to the Platonizing views of the first named thinkers. The review Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane, called into life by Mamiani in 1870, has been continued since 1886 under the direction of L. Ferri as the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia.
[Footnote 1: Rosmini: New Essay on the Origin of Ideas, 1830 (English translation, 1883-84); Principles of Moral Science, 1831; Philosophy of Right, 1841.] [Footnote B: Gioberti: Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, 1840; Philosophical Errors of A. Rosmini, 1842; On the Beautiful, 1841; On the Good, 1842; Protology edited by Massari, 1857. On both cf. R. Seydel, Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 1859.]
The Thomistic doctrine has many adherents in Italy, among whom the Jesuit M. Liberatore (1865) may be mentioned. The Hegelian philosophy has also found favor there (especially in Naples), as well as positivism. The former is favored by Vera, Mariano, Ragnisco, and Spaventa (died 1885); the Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica, 1881 seq., founded by Morselli, supports the latter, and E. Caporali's La Nuova Scienza, 1884, moves in a similar direction. Pietro Siciliani (On the Revival of the Positive Philosophy in Italy, 1871) makes the third, the critical, period of philosophy by which scholasticism is overthrown and the reason made authoritative, commence with Vico, and bases his doctrine on Vico's formula: The conversion (transposition) of the verum and the factum, and vice versa. Subsequently he inclined to positivism, which he had previously opposed, and among the representatives of which we may mention, further, R. Ardigò of Pavia (Psychology as Positive Science, 1870; The Ethics of Positivism, 1885; Philosophical Works, 1883 seq.), and Andrea Angiulli of Naples (died 1890; Philosophy and the Schools, 1889), who explain matter and spirit as two phenomena of the same essence; further, Giuseppe Sergi, Giovanni Cesca, and the psychiatrist, C. Lombroso, the head of the positivistic school of penal law.
%2. France.%
Among the French philosophers of this century[1] none can compare in far-reaching influence, both at home and abroad, with Auguste Comte,[2] the creator of positivism (born at Montpellier in 1798, died at Paris in 1857), whose chief work, the Course of Positive Philosophy, 6 vols., appeared in 1830 42. [English version, "freely translated and condensed," by Harriet Martineau, 1853.]
[Footnote 1: Accounts of French philosophy in the nineteenth century have been given by Taine (1857, 3d ed., 1867); Janet (La Philosophie Française Contemporaine, 2d ed., 1879); A. Franck; Ferraz (3 vols., 1880-89); Felix Ravaisson (2d ed., 1884); the Swede, J. Borelius (Glances at the Present Position of Philosophy in Germany and France, German translation by Jonas, 1887); [and Ribot, Mind, vol. ii., 1877].]
[Footnote 2: On Comte cf. B. Pünjer, Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie, 1878; R. Eucken, Zur Würdigung Comtes und des Positivismus, in the Aufsätze zum Zellerjubiläum, 1887; Maxim. Brütt, Der Positivismus, Programme of the Realgymnasium des Johanneums, Hamburg, 1889; [also, besides Mill, p. 560, John Morley, Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. vi. pp. 229-238, and E. Caird, The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, 1885.—Tr.]]
The positive philosophy seeks to put an end to the hoary error that anything more is open to our knowledge than given facts—phenomena and their relations. We do not know the essence of phenomena, and just as little their first causes and ultimate ends; we know—by means of observation, experiment, and comparison—only the constant relations between phenomena, the relations of succession and of similarity among facts, the uniformities of which we call their laws. All knowledge is, therefore, relative; there is no absolute knowledge, for the inmost essence of facts, and likewise their origin, the way in which they are produced, is for us impenetrable. We know only, and this by experience, that the phenomenon A is invariably connected with the phenomenon B, that the second always follows on the first, and call the constant antecedent of a phenomenon its cause. We know such causes only as are themselves phenomena. The fact that our knowledge is limited to the succession and coexistence of phenomena is not to be lamented as a defect: the only knowledge which is attainable by us is at the same time the only useful knowledge, that which lends us practical power over phenomena. When we inquire into causes we desire to hasten or hinder the effect, or to change it as we wish, or at least to anticipate it in order to make our preparations accordingly. Such foresight and control of events can be attained only through a knowledge of their laws, their order of succession, their phenomenal causes. Savoir pour prévoir. But, although the prevision of facts is the only knowledge which we need, men have always sought after another, an "absolute" knowledge, or have even believed that they were in possession of it; the forerunners of the positive philosophy themselves, Bacon and Descartes, have been entangled in this prejudice. A long intellectual development was required to reach the truth, that our knowledge does not extend beyond the cognition of the succession and coexistence of facts; that the same procedure must be extended to abstract speculation which the common mind itself makes use of in its single actions. On the other hand, the positive philosophy, notwithstanding its rejection of metaphysics, is far from giving its sanction to empiricism. Every isolated, empirical observation is useless and uncertain; it obtains value and usefulness only when it is defined and explained by a theory, and combined with other observations into a law—this makes the difference between the observations of the scholar and the layman.