Harald Høffding

“ When Bradley insists on the idea of the absolute, even though there is no concept that can give it adequate expression, he appears at once as a mystic and a sceptic. The unifying bond of these two sides of his nature lies in the idea of a constant striving which is the lot of all finite beings. Our thought, says Bradley, is always striving for something which is more than thought, — our personality for something which is more than personality, — our morality for something which is more than morality! ”

“ Bruno describes the heroic man as one who is aware that the highest good can only be realized through strife and suffering, but who never despairs, because pain and danger are evils only from the viewpoint of the world of sense, not from the viewpoint of eternity (ne l’occhio del eternitade) . The possibilities of pain increase with the height of the aim. But the heroic man finds his joy in the fact that a noble fire has been kindled in his breast—even though the goal should be impossible of realization and his soul should be consumed by its profound yearning. ”

“ It is the duty of philosophy ever and anon to inspire the sense of the mysterious majesty of being when men have fallen asleep through familiarity. Even our ideas of belief are garments of Deity;—but the garment of Deity must be woven anew from time to time.
Carlyle's practical view of life reveals two distinct characteristics.—Everything great takes place quietly, in silence. Great deeds are accomplished without any express consciousness of the fact. A full and clear consciousness makes everything small and mechanical. ”

“ The aim of this work is to show that religion harmonizes with the innermost ground of our being. If this is true, it must follow that every attack and every criticism will serve only to bring out the eternal principle of religion with increasing clearness.
The civilization of the ancients over-estimated the form and culminate in the barrenness of plastic art; the civilization introduced by the renaissance over-estimated the energy and culminated in a restless striving without any absolute aim. ”

“ Herder was no less opposed to the distinction between mind and nature, God and the world, than to the sharp distinction between the individual and society, or between the conscious and the unconscious. ”

“ The more profoundly he reflected upon his ideas the clearer it became to Rousseau (as had also been the case with Shaftesbury before him) that the contradiction between nature and culture could be only a matter of degree. When he declaims against science and art, he really means only the science and art of his own age which was so utterly devoid of originality, whilst he praised the great investigators of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century. Even genius is likewise a form of spontaneous development, rather than the product of imitation or discipline. ”

“ The day of religion is past. Religion consists essentially of man's feeling of fellowship with the personal director of the course of the universe. It finds its characteristic expression in the mythological explanation of nature, in a form of worship with magic rites and in a body of dogmas which are regarded as absolute truths. Religion is in process of complete dissolution in every one of these directions. What is best in religious life will be able to survive; the impulse to transcend the bare facts of experience and to discover a higher unity will not vanish with religion. ”

“ His effort to explain the origin of the species was in complete harmony with the spirit of positivism. He referred to a fact which was actually operative in nature: namely, the necessity for every living being to possess the attributes and equipment essential to the preservation of life, or as he expressed it figuratively, the struggle for existence. If we persist in saying that the species were created, each one independently, this, in the eyes of Darwin, is but a pious way of expressing our ignorance. The struggle for existence however is not the whole cause. ”

“ But it is still only in its most primitive stages that religion pretends to furnish complete knowledge of the absolute. The higher the development of religion, the more readily it concedes the existence of an inexplicable mystery. When the evolution of religion has once been perfected religion and science will join hands in the common acknowledgment that the real nature of things is unknowable, and religion will cease to oppose the scientific explanation of phenomena.—Spencer is well aware of the fact that men are loath to surrender the well-defined intuitive ideas of the various religions. ”

“ The important thing is to surcharge the spontaneous fullness of the natural life with the independence and freedom of human life, the devotion to everchanging circumstances with the unity of personality, the matter-impulse with the form-impulse. The solution of this problem is found in play, which is the beginning and prototype of art. It is only in the free play of his energies that man acts as a totality. The æsthetic state is therefore the highest perfection of culture: it is at once the end and the means of development, which transcends all coarseness and all harmony. ”

“ The only thing which philosophy can do for us is to furnish us a criterion to serve as a guide whenever we distinguish between higher and lower degrees of reality. Religion can do no more at this point than philosophy. It too must express the highest by means of ideas which have their source in the sphere of the finite. The advantage of religion consists in the fact that it is capable of allowing the recognition of a highest reality to permeate our entire being.
Bradley has no points of contact with the special sciences, as is the case with Fechner, Lotze and Wundt. ”

“ The cause of an event may therefore exist in the event itself or in something else. That which has its cause within itself is Substance. Substance is that which exists in itself and is understood through itself, so that its concept does not presuppose any other concept. We have already observed that Spinoza’s fundamental principle is revealed in the uniformity of nature. It is therefore the fundamental presupposition of all existence and efficiency. It follows from his definition, that it exists necessarily: it contains its cause within itself, and hence nothing can prevent its existence! ”

“ With the declining influence of the speculative philosophy and the growing demand for a scientific world theory following it again making itself felt, partly in positivism, partly in materialism, partly in the new idealism, it was but natural that the problem of knowledge—as was the case in the period of Hume and Kant—should again assume a position of prominence. It raised the inevitable question of the ability of the human intellect, from its inherent nature, to construct such a world-theory, and of the limitations to which it is subject. ”

“ The affections and not merely the understanding are now to be the final arbiter, and synthesis, i. e., the conception of unity, is to be regarded as superior to analysis and specialization. The new religion is to be a worship of humanity, of which we are all members,—those now living as well as those who have died and those as yet unborn. Every thought and action is to be directed towards the development of this Grand être. The constitution of the future is to be a Sociocracy, a social community without fixed institutions. ”

“ Nature, the great Mother of us all, reveals herself in a distinctively unique manner in every individual. Every human being has his forme maistresse, his ruling passion. It is this interest that accounts for Montaigne's own personal observations as well as for his thorough study of ancient literature. His enthusiasm for nature and his insight into the multiplicity of individual peculiarities cause him to revolt against all dogmatism, both the rationalistic and the theological. ”

“ The task of Saint Simon was to prepare the way for a social reformation. But he thought that the only possibility of such a reformation involved the founding of a new world-theory which might accomplish for the present age what Christianity had done for the Middle Ages. Such a new world-theory, in the opinion of Saint Simon, must be constructed on the foundation of an encyclopedia of the positive sciences. This is all the more true, because it must now transpire that men shall make common cause in the exploitation of nature instead of the mutual exploitation of each other. ”

“ After the battle of Jena he went to Berlin, where, as professor and preacher, he labored not only on behalf of science and the church, but in the interest of public questions and the affairs of the nation. He came to the conclusion early in life that the real characteristic feature of human life, its real nature, has its seat in the affections, and that in them alone man experiences the totality of his personal self. In addition to this he acquired, both by independent reflection and by the study of the works of Kant, a clear insight into the limits of human knowledge. ”

“ This principle was at first only applied to the relation of spirit and matter: what takes place in the body furnishes God the occasion to permit a change to take place in the soul, and vice versa. It soon became evident however that, if there is an absolute substance, it is impossible for a finite being to be a cause at all. How can anything produce an effect beyond its own being in some other thing? Not only the interaction between spirit and matter but all interaction between finite beings is impossible, and divine causality alone remains possible. ”

“ As a matter of course we find a more vital relationship between unity and multiplicity in the sphere of mind than in physical nature, and psychological experience therefore constitutes our highest experience. But antitheses and disharmonies take place within the psychical processes; the soul is subject to changes as a whole; and the concept of the soul — like its correlative concept, the body — is formed only by abstraction. Psychological concepts can therefore no more express absolute reality than the concepts of natural science. ”

“ The idea of an everlasting conflict of forces would be an absurdity, and a universe wholly unconscious would represent the anomaly of a half-done performance. But nature contains a logic of its own which precludes absurdity. ”

“ Corruption begins just as soon as the aristocracy no longer believe in their right to live, to rule and to treat the great masses as their laboring cyclops. Aristocracy must show the value of life by the mere fact of their existence. It is impossible to develop the highest virtues among the great masses. ”

“ As a matter of fact this impulse is only now finding room for free development, since the rigid, dogmatic forms no longer impose obstacles. Everyone will express his sense of fellowship with existence—the ideal sociology of existence—in his own way. The disharmonies of the universe will be felt more profoundly than before, but the fundamental note will assume the character of sublimity, and the world will be one of hope and of courage for life and for death. ”

“ The problem of explaining the permanent connection of these elements, which are absolutely distinct, Hume says, is a difficulty which transcends the powers of my understanding.
Consciousness, in the third place, tends to regard its own states as external, objective phenomena. This is the reason for our regarding sensory qualities as objective attributes. And this is why we regard the mental impulse to pass from a sensation to an idea associated with it as due to an objective necessity. We are here guided by instinct, not by reason.—The foundation of science is belief, not knowledge. ”

“ Joseph de Maistre, the most important exponent of the principle of authority, assails both philosophy and natural science, the moment they presume to undertake anything beyond wholly specialized investigations. And yet he has a philosophy of his own, which is closely affiliated with that of Malebranche. Whatever is material cannot be a cause; every cause is essentially mental and the type of all causality is given in the immediate consciousness of volition. Our world theory is not to be determined by investigators and thinkers, but by the authorities instituted by God in state and church. ”

“ One and the same thing possesses a variety of attributes! And the concept of the ego, which Fichte endeavored to make the basis of the speculative philosophy, contains both contradictions: the ego develops and is nevertheless supposed to remain identical with itself, and the ego is supposed to be a unity, but it nevertheless possesses a manifold content!—The correction of contradictory experience should however adhere to experience as closely as possible; for we are obliged to maintain the principle: every phenomenon contains its proportionate implication of reality! ”

“ The whole content of experience is conceived in space and time. Hence since pure mathematics really does nothing more than develop the laws of space and time, it must be valid for every possible content of experience, every possible perception. But this demonstration likewise involves a limitation: namely, mathematics is valid only for phenomena, i. e. only for things as we conceive them, not for things-in-themselves. We have no right to make the conditions of our conception the conditions of things-in-themselves. Time and space can be conceived only from the view-point of man. ”

“ Whenever we discover disharmony between a man's conviction and the trend of his actual desires, it conflicts with the idea of inner freedom; whenever the conviction or its practical execution is too feeble, it conflicts with the idea of perfection. And the ideas of right, of equity, and of benevolence in the mutual relations of a number of men find their application analogously. We discover the practical ideas by means of an analysis of our judgments concerning human actions, in cases where the relations are clearly present, and where irrelative interests are in abeyance. ”

“ Kierkegaard renews the problem of knowledge with still greater definiteness, and declares that Hegel had not solved the Kantian problem. We can arrange our thoughts in logical order and elaborate a consistent system. It is possible to elaborate a logical system, but a finite thinker will never be able to realize a complete system of reality. We deduce the fundamental ideas from experience and experience remains forever imperfect. We understand only what has already taken place; knowledge comes after experience. We cognize towards the past—but we live towards the future. ”

“ The only explanation of the existence of a world of non-egos is that we are intended to act: activity and effort as a matter of fact presuppose opposition (resistance) and limitation. Our task consists in realizing our liberty and independence through the successive transcendence of limitations. But the ultimate presupposition forever remains that pure activity which is revealed in us under the form of an impulse to act for action’s sake. This presupposition furnishes the only possible explanation of the unqualified obligation which Kant expressed in the categorical imperative. ”

“ Hamilton regards the principle of causality as the expression of our incapacity to conceive an absolute addition of reality. On account of this incapacity we try to conceive the new (as effect) as a new form of the old (as cause) . If cause and effect should fail to fully correspond to each other, we should be compelled to assume an absolute beginning of the new. Hence, according to Hamilton (like Cusanus) , philosophy ends in a docta ignorantia. Its value consists in its constant seeking, by means of which the energies of the mind are exercised. ”