French Philosophers and New-England Transcendentalism

IT

I. INTRODUCTION

1. DEFINITION OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

T has been said that when an Englishman has a particular matter to investigate he ventures first to the place of his subject; makes researches and takes notes there for two years; and then, returning to England, draws up a cursory account of it all in two weeks. The Frenchman journeys to the vicinity of his subject; pursues researches there for about two weeks; and then, returning to France, spends two years in writing up a gracious essay. And the German, when he has a matter for investigation, retires forthwith into his sanctum, isolates himself there for days and days, and gradually evolves in the course of time out of his inner consciousness a prolix dissertation.

However trifling this intimation may be in view of such scientific investigations as have been carried on in England by Charles Darwin, in France by Ernest Renan regarding the Bible, and in Germany by Friedrich Wolf concerning the Homeric question, - the fact remains that Kant, the German metaphysician, has succeeded in framing one of the most abstract and at the same time most lucid and final definitions as yet made of Transcendentalism, and has framed it, too, as it were, largely out of his inner consciousness.

The acutely rational Transcendentalphilosophie of Kant deals with the sources and scope of knowledge.1 He would have us understand by transcendental knowledge, theoretical knowledge about the necessary principles of all knowledge. Our knowledge about the world of experience, he tells us in defining transcen

1 Cf. Immanuel Kant, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Frommann's Klassiker der Philosophy.

dental knowledge is necessarily founded upon a priori principles. A priori, for Kant, is knowledge in advance of all experience, that is, knowledge of the content of any of the concepts or principles of thought; and the necessary principles of attaining knowledge are themselves a priori, transcendent of experience.

Kant, the critic of pure reason, however, carefully discriminates between transcendent and Transcendental. The term transcendent applies to whatever lies beyond the realm of knowledge and experience. The extension of concepts, valid within experience, to what is beyond experience - for instance, with reference to Godis a transcendent use of concepts; this transcendent use is, according to Kant and later precise philosophers, illegitimate, and has a bad sense. The term Transcendental, on the contrary, has in the philosophy of punctilious Kant a good sense: it is explicitly applied to the a priori and necessary factors in experience, not extending beyond experience but only beyond empirically given facts of experience. The term transcendent in the bad sense — after the manner of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages - is opposed, moreover, to the modern principle of divine immanency.1 But Kant distinctly refutes this transcendent in the sense of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and would have his Transcendental principles construed in an immanent sense, that is as remaining within the limits of experience. Pantheism, which incarnates the immanency theory, is akin in certain respects to the Transcendentalism of Kant; both philosophies hold to the presence of God in the universe.

There are, to be sure, in the history of philosophy, a variety of conceptions of Transcendentalism. The definitions are not especially important, but they help us nevertheless in a way to get down to the matter at hand. Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) held for instance as Transcendental that which in the "transcendent" sense extended beyond the bounds of human experience. F. W. von Schelling (1775-1854) comprehended as Transcendental, in the modern meaning of the word, that which explains matter and all that is objective as the product of mind.2 Coleridge (17721834) tells us in his imaginative literary way that the German 1 Cf. The philosophy of Hegel.

Cf. The philosophy of Bishop Berkeley.

Mystics and Transcendentalists- particularly Behmen and Schelling - "contributed to keep alive the heart in the head; gave me an indistinct, yet stirring and working presentiment, that all the products of the mere reflective faculty partook of death, and were as the rattling twigs and sprays in winter, into which a sap was yet to be propelled, from some root to which I had not penetrated, if they were to afford my soul either food or shelter." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) states in a distinctly nineteenth century vein that "mankind have ever been divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness. Whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought is properly called at the present day Transcendental." And W. H. Channing, of our own time, writes after the manner of Emerson, "Amidst materialists, zealots, and skeptics, the Transcendentalist believed in perpetual inspiration, the miraculous power of will, and a birthright to universal good. He sought to hold communion face to face with the unnameable spirit of his spirit, and gave himself up to the embrace of nature's beautiful joy, as a babe seeks the breast of a mother."

Modern philosophers and men of letters - such as Schelling, Coleridge, and the New-England Transcendentalists — have been, it is clear, whether consciously so or not, decidedly instrumental in blurring and abolishing the acute Kantian distinction of the latter eighteenth century between "transcendent" and Transcendentalism. As a consequence, Transcendentalism - or Nativism

is at the present time widely in vogue in a loose sense as the generic term for various theories which advocate that this or that is a priori, native, inherent, constitutional; it is employed to designate the philosophy of such men of letters as Wordsworth, the philosophy of innate ideas and intuition. Empiricism, on the other hand, may be regarded at present as the generic term widely in vogue for divers theories which attribute the origin of all our knowledge to experience a posteriori; it is employed to designate the philosophy of such modern scientists as Ernst Haeckel, the philosophy of sensationalism and materialism.

To understand better the philosophy of Transcendentalism, let us examine briefly the philosophy of Empiricism — the other extreme of philosophic thought as opposed to Transcendentalism.

To the doctrine which admits of nothing as true except what is the result of experience, rejecting all a priori knowledge, the term Empiricism is applied. René Descartes (1596–1650) gives us in the following resolutions, which he drew up for himself as a kind of philosophical code, the viewpoint of the Empiricist : "Le premier de ne recevoir jamais aucune chose pour vraie que je ne la connusse évidemment être telle; c'est-à-dire d'éviter soigneusement la précipitation et la prévention, et de ne comprendre rien de plus en mes jugements que ce qui se présenterait si clairement et si distinctement à mon esprit, que je n'eusse aucune occasion de le mettre en doute. Le second, de diviser chacune des difficultés que j'examinerais en autant de parcelles qu'il se pourrait et qu'il serait requis pour les mieux résoudre. Le troisième, de conduire par ordre mes pensées en commençant par les objets les plus simples, et les plus aisés à connaître, pour monter peu à peu comme par degrés jusques à la connaissance des plus composés, et supposant même de l'ordre entre ceux qui ne se précèdent point naturellement les uns les autres. Et le dernier, de faire partout des dénombrements si entiers et des revues si générales, que je fusse assuré de ne rien omettre." 1

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the first in England to formulate the doctrine of Empiricism; he argued that knowledge is the fruit of experience; regarded himself simply as the servant and interpreter of nature; and was the creator of practical and scientific induction. But John Locke (1632-1704) is, one may say, the most flat-footed of all the exponents of Empiricism. He tells us, "All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be white paper void of all characters, without any ideas, how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety. Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience; in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself."

Failure to understand from the beginning the difference between Empiricism and Transcendentalism may breed confusion. A brief comparison of the two kinds of philosophy may then, as a final word, be illuminating.

1 Discours de la méthode, 1637. René Descartes.

Transcendentalism, at the present time, in a general sense, is the doctrine that man has a knowledge of philosophic principles by an immediate beholding without the process of reason or aid of experience. Empiricism, on the other hand, is in general the doctrine that all knowledge is derived through the senses from experiences. Empiricism tends to subordinate man to nature and experience for all his knowledge of life and eternity; Transcendentalism is disposed to subordinate nature and experience to man. Empiricism is objective; Transcendentalism is subjective. Transcendentalism depending over much upon intuition tends to become vague, visionary, fantastic; and Empiricism depending over-much upon sensation and experience tends to become materialistic, matter-of-fact, mechanical. One might say that the ambiguous and extravagant utterances of so-called clairvoyants represent absurd phases of Transcendentalism; and that the crude experiments and glittering generalities of pseudo-scientists denote absurd stages of Empiricism.

2. MISCELLANEOUS PRECURSORS

We believe to-day that all things are the result of evolution or transition; and in the light of this thought we are warranted in holding that the phenomena of New-England Transcendentalism are a result, no less than other things, of natural processes of change and development.

In taking up the subject of the precursors of New-England Transcendentalism, however, we have to do with a complicated matter. It is, in truth, almost impossible to determine definite analogies, and to point to them explicitly as the precursors or sources of the Transcendentalists in New England. Almost all the writings of all times and countries have in all probability percolated into English through translations, and have been more or less influential directly or indirectly on the writings of the NewEngland Transcendentalists.

Certain preceding writers and writings, nevertheless, must have influenced more than others the votaries of New-England idealism whom we have under consideration. The New-England Tran