American Philosophical Society

“ The Society includes among its members advocates of widely differing systems, all, however, working in the spirit of the Preamble to the Constitution, which says: “The object of this Society is to encourage the study and development of Speculative Philosophy; to foster an application of its results to Art, Science, and Religion; and to establish a philosophical basis for the professions of Law, Medicine, Divinity, Politics, Education, Art, and Literature.” ”

“ The theological and metaphysical philosophies having failed, what remains? Nothing remains but the positive philosophy, which is the only agent able to reorganise society. The positive philosophy will regard social phenomena as it regards other phenomena, and will apply to the renovation of society the same scientific spirit found effective in other departments of human knowledge. It will bring to politics the conception of natural laws, and deal with delicate social questions on impartial scientific principles. ”

“ The universal recognition of this distinction, revealed in every man's consciousness, involved in the organic relations of society, testified to everywhere in the pages of history, embodied essentially in the religious nature and sentiments of mankind, woven into general literature, found to-day unmistakably in the thinking, laws and customs of all races and tribes, and acknowledged in the philosophical view of humanity wherever man is studied, irreducible as a fact by any account of its genesis or explanation of its significance, presents the occasion and primary materials of ethical science. ”

“ As the main object we should have in view is the improvement of American thought concerning moral and social truths, it might seem that the work of which I am speaking should mainly be a work of moral philosophy, comprising the treatment of all natural rights and natural duties whether of individuals or of societies, and leaving dialectics and metaphysics mostly in the background as idle speculations, or at least as teaching nothing that is essential to the happiness and prosperity of private and public life. ”

“ From the necessities of society, then, arose in the seventeenth century a scientific system which furnished universally valid principles for the guidance of life and the conduct of society. This system of natural religion and of natural law transformed the ideas of Europe; morality and art were influenced by its standpoint. According to this system, there lie in the nature of man conceptions, uniform relations, which have always as result the same fundamental ideas of social life, order, moral laws, rules of beauty, belief in and reverence for the Deity. ”

“ On the other hand, the Rules clearly indicate that the Society is at full liberty to investigate any philosophical system, ancient or modern, with a view to ascertain the broad fundamental principles which form the basis of every school of religious philosophy, properly so called, and thereby "promote the principle of a Universal Brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race or creed." ”

“ The earlier conceptions of Universalism, emphasizing the good as something binding irrespective of the inclinations of the individual, issue in particular formulæ of virtue; later conceptions recognize the differences of individual cases while still insisting on the universal or authoritative character of morality. The problem receives its definite shape when the explanation of authority is sought, not in some categorical imperative, but in the very nature of society [Pg 229] itself, which, if a whole, is yet a whole made up of individuals. ”

“ They incessantly boasted of the greatness of General Influence of the Philosophers. philosophy, and the obsolete character of Christianity. They believed that successive developments of human nature, without the aid of influences foreign to itself, would gradually raise society to a state of perfection. ”

“ This remarkable man, whose system of thought will long remain one of the landmarks in the history of philosophical speculation, does, in the treatise in question, lay down an universal first principle as the origin and ground of moral obligation ”

“ But the heart of American philosophy is not there: it is in pragmatism, in instrumentalism, in whatever other theory clearly establishes the purely functional character of truth, the mechanical aspect of intellect. Having put the criterion of truth outside the intellect, and considered intellect as the mere mechanism of belief, these doctrines try to re-establish the dignity of intellect by making of it a machine for the reproduction of morally or socially useful beliefs. ”

“ Special emphasis was given to the fact that, even apart from the precepts of revelation, man is bound to rectitude by an imperative within him, which is not of his choice, but claims the right to dominate his choices. And since the seventeenth century the ethical constitution of humanity, together with the nature and grounds of right, has been made, apart from theology, the distinct and separate theme of scientific and philosophical investigation and discussion. ”

“ The other class had not, even by the end of the second half of the century, as yet agreed upon any one scheme for harmonizing the various theories of knowledge, of reality, and of the ground of morality and religion. There appeared, however,—especially during the last two decades of the century,—certain signs of convergence upon positions, to occupy which is favorable for agreement upon such a scheme, and which now promise a new constructive era for philosophy. The terminus of the destructive movement has been reached in our present-day positivism and philosophical skepticism. ”

“ They arise from phenomena of history and life, and form, in their essential statements, a body of scientific and philosophical knowledge of equal certainty and authority with the most assured results of other branches of rational investigation. Ethics, therefore, finds its fundamental truths in the natural constitution of the world, and is able to build these truths into a science possessed of all the rights and force of systematized and established knowledge. ”

“ It may be worth suggesting here that while some of the thinkers of America, like many of the same classes in England, are mourning over the low state of the Philosophy of Mind in their country, society is neglecting a most important means of obtaining the knowledge requisite for the acquisition of such philosophy. ”

“ The ethical principle broadens out, thus, from the single moment of the individual life until it embraces the whole of mankind; but there are many points in the course of the development at which we can make a stand, and there may, therefore, be as many philosophical systems as there are larger or smaller totalities. The position of the man who holds fast consistently to a principle that determines the criterion by the family, the caste, the nation, a sect, as highest totality, is as unassailable as we have seen that of the individualist to be. ”

“ Psychology and sociology, those half-literary, half-scientific disciplines, gave as a basis to philosophy not the individual effort to understand and to think, but the positive observation of the more or less involuntary processes of thought in the multitude. Intellect was sacrificed to a democratic idea of the equality of minds: how could the philosopher presume to think, I do not say better or more efficiently than, but differently from the multitude? ”

“ Philosophers, in philanthropic dreams, built up ideal structures in which mankind was to dwell, and nothing could exceed the irresistible pathos with which human rights were asserted, and the subtle nicety with which they were defined. ”

“ An ideal implies no contrast of observer and observed: conduct is something mental: the ideal is a reality of mind, existing in the minds of those who act upon it. The social ideal has thus a concrete existence in the collective action of good men."
In this manner, the supposed independence of the tendencies towards Individualism and Universalism disappears, the harmony of the individual and his harmony with society being identical—a true independence being equivalent to true coöperation.
Morality implying adjustment to the ideal order, a realization of the bearings of our acts is important. ”

“ It was shallow philosophy that most powerfully aided the spread of rationalism and infidelity in France, Germany, and other European nations. America needs no such thing.
[pg 244] We need thorough and comprehensive philosophical teaching in accordance with the tradition of the schools which have been formed and directed by the highest ecclesiastical authority, and which shall be conducted by men thoroughly competent for the task. The only fruit our youth can gather from any other system will be noxious in its effects both on their minds and their morals. ”

“ We have stated these fundamental principles already at the beginning of our book, we have also set forth how greatly liberal freedom of thought is lacking the first presumption of any proper science, namely, the clear perception that there is an objective truth in philosophical-religious questions, to which we must submit, there, in fact, most of all. ”

“ To European philosophy the reproach has been made again and again, and with some justice, of imposing laws upon reality which are only the laws of individual philosophic thought; and yet what else does the scientist ultimately do? But both scientist and philosopher find their justification in their faith in the validity of their instruments: in a spirit of devotion and humility, not in a gratuitous presumption. The typical American philosopher has sold his birthright, not for a pottage of lentils, but for mere love. ”

“ But I will consider these as three separate branches and assign to each one three subdivisions. Natural philosophy consists of theology, mathematics, and thirdly the study of this world of generation and decay and things that though imperishable are nevertheless matter, and deals with their essential nature and their substance in each case. Practical philosophy again consists of ethics in so far as it deals with the individual man, economics when it deals with the household as a unit, politics when it deals with the state. ”

“ Complete philosophy must rest on a theory at once statical and dynamical. A full science of Ethic cannot be constituted by tabulating in a series the changes recorded in moral sentiment, whilst wholly ignoring the permanent instincts of the human heart, the qualities of the human will, the powers of the human intelligence, and the personal, domestic, tribal, and national institutions which cling round man under all conditions of development. ”

“ Now if these philosophers had known human nature under any other type than that of their own age, and of the particular classes of society among whom they lived, it would have occurred to them, that wherever this habitual submission to law and government has been firmly and durably established, and yet the vigor and manliness of character which resisted its establishment have been in any degree preserved, certain requisites have existed, certain conditions have been fulfilled, of which the following may be regarded as the principal. ”

“ Nor is it unphilosophical to suppose the difference in human sentiment, and the variety of opinions among mankind, may conduce to this end. They may be permitted, in order to improve the faculty of thinking, to draw out the powers of the mind, to exercise the principles of candor, and learn us to wait, in a becoming manner, the full disclosure of the system of divine government. Thus probably, the variety in the formation of the human soul may appear to be such, as to have rendered it impossible for mankind to think exactly in the same channel. ”

“ Those current abstractions, which make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have been brought under suspicion. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice—all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which is discredited, but just that homely and popular wisdom by which common life is guided. ”

“ What, in short, are the laws or principles governing the moral world, and how do these principles find expression in the life of man? Closely related to psychology and ethics, and furnishing them with a large body of facts, are the social sciences, which consider the thoughts, feelings and volitions of social organisms, or man in society; the ends which such organisms serve, and the means with which such ends are reached. Society, unconsciously or consciously, aims to realize certain ends. ”

“ The last two chapters of "The Data of Ethics" deal with Ethics as the law of the ideal man in an ideal society, and treat of the attainment of general principles in this science as in other sciences by the neglect of conflicting factors, and the recognition of fundamental factors, in the gradually accumulated knowledge of society. On account of the diversity of men and societies, a code of perfect personal conduct can never be made definite; only certain general conditions of perfection can be pointed out. As life is now carried on, the conflict of claims is continual ”

“ And when we speak thus we do not refer to any action of the idea otherwise than in the consciousness of men. It may be legitimate, as we have seen, to consider ideas as existing and acting otherwise, and perhaps, on thinking the matter out, we should find ourselves compelled to regard the idea of social good as a communication to the human consciousness, a consciousness developing itself in time, from an eternally complete consciousness. ”