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[Illustration: GIORDANO BRUNO.

From the Statue in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome.]

HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

by

A. W. BENN,

Author of "The History of English Rationalism in the
Nineteenth Century," Etc.


[Illustration: GIORDANO BRUNO.

From the Statue in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome.]







[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]

London:
Watts & Co.,
17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.
1912

Printed by Watts and Co.,
Johnson's Court, Fleet Street,
London, E.C.




CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I.                                  PAGE
  THE PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE                  1

  CHAPTER II.
  THE METAPHYSICIANS                            31

  CHAPTER III.
  THE THEORISTS OF KNOWLEDGE                    65

  CHAPTER IV.
  THE GERMAN IDEALISTS                         101

  CHAPTER V.
  THE HUMANISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY      124

  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                 149

  INDEX                                        153

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  GIORDANO BRUNO      _Frontispiece_

                         PAGE
  FRANCIS BACON           13

  RENE DESCARTES          34

  BENEDICTUS SPINOZA      47

  DAVID HUME              78

  IMMANUEL KANT           86

  G. W. F. HEGEL         111

  ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER    117

  AUGUSTE COMTE          128

  HERBERT SPENCER        138




{1}

CHAPTER I.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE

For a thousand years after the schools of Athens were closed by Justinian
philosophy made no real advance; no essentially new ideas about the
constitution of nature, the workings of mind, or the ends of life were put
forward. It would be false to say that during this period no progress was
made. The civilisation of the Roman Empire was extended far beyond its
ancient frontiers; and, although much ground was lost in Asia and Africa,
more than the equivalent was gained in Northern Europe. Within Europe also
the gradual abolition of slavery and the increasing dignity of peaceful
labour gave a wider diffusion to culture, combined with a larger sense of
human fellowship than any but the best minds of Greece and Rome had felt.
Whether the status of women was really raised may be doubted; but the ideas
and sentiments of women began to exercise an influence on social
intercourse unknown before. And the arts of war and peace were in some ways
almost revolutionised.

This remarkable phenomenon of movement in everything except ideas has been
explained by the influence of Christianity, or rather of Catholicism. There
is truth in the contention, but it is not the whole truth. The Church
entered into a heritage that she did not create; she defined and
accentuated tendencies that {2} long before her advent had secretly been at
work. In the West that diffusion of civilisation which is her historic
boast had been begun and carried far by the Rome whence her very name is
taken. In the East the title of orthodox by which the Greek Church is
distinguished betrays the presence of that Greek thought which moulded her
dogmas into logical shape. What is more, the very idea of right belief as a
vital and saving thing came to Christianity from Platonism, accompanied by
the persuasion that wrong belief was immoral and its promulgation a crime
to be visited by the penalty of death.

Ecclesiastical intolerance has been made responsible for the speculative
stagnation of the Middle Ages, and it has been explained as an effect of
the belief in the future punishment of heresy by eternal torments. But in
truth the persecuting spirit was responsible for the dogma, not the dogma
for persecution. And we must look for the underlying cause of the whole
evil in the premature union of metaphysics with religion and morality first
effected by Plato, or rather by the genius of Athens working through Plato.
Indeed