Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/459

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PHILOSOPHY 445 identity. Combined with these views is Ma- miani's elaborate scheme of cosmology. To the ontological school also belongs Gioberti (1801-'52). He dissented radically from Eos- mini, to whom he bears somewhat of the rela- tion of Plato to Aristotle. He commends the sobriety of English and Scotch philosophy, but recognizes no true modern philosophers after Malebranche and Leibnitz. While the starting point of Kosmini's speculations is psychologi- cal, that of Gioberti is ontological. He begins with the idea, asserting that we see directly and immediately the ideal being, which can be no modification or subjective form of the human spirit ; and this ideal being we regard as identical with absolute being. Only as this is made objectively real can we fully conquer sensism, nominalism, and skepticism. Plato's ideas are but abstractions unless they be con- crete in the idea of the being. Kevelation alone can assist us to decipher the grand enig- mas of man and the universe, and avoid the extremes of pantheism or dualism. The phi- losophy of Scripture is founded upon a single axiom, expressible in one word, creation : " the Being creates existences." This, properly con- ceived, fully resolves the question of the origin of ideas. Insisting upon the intimate union of philosophy and religion, Gioberti exclaims : "I establish philosophy upon a formula as ancient as the creation." Augusta Vera (born about 1817) is the recognized head of the He- gelian school in Italy, to the exposition of the views of which he has devoted his pen. Ventura (1792-1861) was the representative of scholasticism, placing the authority of the church above reason and all else, and holding that philosophy culminated in Aquinas. Posi- tivism, implying the negation of all metaphys- ical science, is represented by G. Ferrari, who makes experience the only foundation of true knowledge, and asserts that Hegel only pro- duced a philosophy of contradictions, and that his failure shows the futility of all metaphysi- cal speculation. Sympathizing with him are Franchi (whose real name is Francesco Bona- vino) and others, who, asserting the relativity of knowledge, pronounce all questions as to the absolute and infinite insoluble, and limit phi- losophy to natural science. In Belgium, Hol- land, Switzerland, the Scandinavian and Slavic countries, and Hungary, the various schools of German philosophy have exerted successively a not inconsiderable influence. At Ghent a modernized Cartesianism has been defended by Huet, a pupil at Paris of Dumoulin. In Lou- vain, Ubaghs, as a disciple of Bonald, taught a doctrine of supernatural ontologism, which was opposed by the Jesuits. In Holland the recent names most significant in the history of philoso- phy are Hemsterhuis, Wyttenbach, Van Heusde, and Opzoomer. In Norway, Hegelianism is rep- resented by Monrad, and in Sweden the Kant- ian philosophy by Boethius, and that of Fichte and Schelling by Hoijer, while Bostrom follows Leibnitz, and Borelius, Hegel. In England, the history of philosophy in the 18th century, after Berkeley, is illustrated by the speculations of Hume, already referred to ; Andrew Baxter, who wrote in defence of the immateriality of the soul, asserting against Berkeley the reality of the external world, and also that it is neither eternal nor uncreated ; David Hartley, who by his doctrine of vibrations prepared the way for the materialism of Priestley, and by his theory of association for the speculations of Adam Smith; Joseph Priestley, who main- tained the doctrines of the materialism of the soul and philosophical necessity, in which he was sustained by Thomas Belsham, and op- posed by Kichard Price; Erasmus Darwin, who, holding the dualism of matter and spirit, derived ideas from physical impressions on the fibres which constitute the immediate organs of sense; and Abraham Tucker, who in the broad range of his speculations aimed to har- monize extreme views, and to be himself con- servative, while sometimes giving a free scope to philosophical fancy, and discussing a great variety of topics theological and philosophical, including the relations of the spirit to matter, liberty, and necessity. In Scotland, Oswald, Beattie, and Campbell united with Keid in op- posing and refuting the skeptical philosophy of Hume. At the commencement of the pres- ent century, Dugald Stewart modified Beid's technology, conceding more than he did to the laws of association, while approaching nearly to Hume's position in his estimate of the no- tion of causality. He was succeeded by Thomas Brown, who, following Reid and Stewart in the doctrine of original intuitions taking the place of unproved first principles in a system of knowledge, rejected their doctrine of con- sciousness, and, though agreeing with Hume in resolving cause into invariable antecedence and consequence, differed with him in ascribing our notion of it, not to mere custom, but to irresistible intuitive belief. In closer sympa- thy with Stewart was Sir James Mackintosh. More eminent than any of these was the late Sir William Hamilton, the annotator of Reid, whom he follows in asserting that conscious- ness makes us immediately cognizant of the non-Ego, at the same time maintaining the rel- ativity of all knowledge, that the infinite and absolute are simply inconceivable, and that an uncaused and self-existent being can be only the object of faith. While a disciple of Hamil- ton, Mansel differed from him, as from Kant, on certain points of immediate knowledge, while he pushed Hamilton's principles beyond the point at which Hamilton had left them, con- tending that thought and knowledge are lim- ited to conditioned and finite objects ; that the unconditioned can be only negatively known ; that while the " limits of religious thought " may be fixed, the sphere of- faith transcends reason, and suffices to resolve difficulties which reason cannot overcome. From both Hamil- ton and Mansel Henry Calderwood dissents with respect to their theory of the knowledge