highest principle. In this attitude Henry of Ghent, especially, came forward in opposition to Thomism. He formulated sharply the standpoint of inner experience and gave it decisive value, particu-/ larly in the investigation of the states of feeling. Just in this point, in the empirical apprehension of the life of feeling, the theory of which became thus emancipated at the same time from that of the will and that of the intellect, he met support in Roger Bacon, who, with clear insight and without the admixture of metaphysical points of view, distinctly apprehended the difference in principle between outer and inner experience. Thus the remarkable result ensued, that purely theoretical science developed in opposition to intellectualistic Thomism, and in connection with the Augustinian doctrine of the self-certainty of personality. This self-knowledge was regarded as the most certain fact of "real science," even as it appeared among the nominalistic Mystics such as Pierre d'Ailly. Hence "real science" in the departing Middle Ages allied itself rather to active human life than to Nature; and the beginnings of a "secular" science of the inter-relations of human society are found not only in the theories of Occam and Marsilius of Padua (cf. p. 328), not only in the rise of a richer, more living, and more "inward" writing of history, but also in an empirical consideration of the social relations, in which a Nicolas d'Oresme,' who died 1382, broke the path. 6. The divided frame of mind in which the departing Middle Ages found itself, between the original presuppositions of its thought and these beginnings of a new, experientially vigorous. research, finds nowhere a more lively expression than in the philosophy of Nicolaus Cusanus, which is capable of so many interpretations. Seized in every fibre of his being by the fresh impulse of the time, he nevertheless could not give up the purpose of arranging his new thoughts in the system of the old conception of the world. This attempt acquires a heightened interest from the conceptions which furnished the forms in which he undertook to arrange his thoughts. The leading motive is to show that the individual, even in his metaphysical separateness, is identical with the most universal, the divine essence. To this end Nicolaus employs for the first time, in a thoroughly systematic way, the related conceptions of the infinite and the finite. All antiquity had held the perfect to be that which is limited within itself and had regarded only indefinite possibility as infinite. In the Alexandrian philosophy, 1 Cf. concerning him W. Roscher, Zeitschr. f. Staatswissenschaft, 1863, 305 ff. A v on the contrary, the highest being was stripped of all finite attributes. In Plotinus the "One" as the all-forming power is provided with an unlimited intensity of Being on account of the infinity of matter in which it discloses itself; and also in Christian thought the power, as well as the will and the knowledge of God, had been thought more and more as boundless. Here the main additional motive was, that the will even in the individual is felt as a restless, never quiet striving, and that this infinity of inner experience was exalted to a metaphysical principle. But Nicolaus was the first to give the method of negative theology its positive expression by treating infinity as the essential characteristic of God in antithesis to the world. The identity of God with the world, required as well by the mystical view of the world as by the naturalistic, received, therefore, the formulation that in God the same absolute Being is contained infinitely, which in the world presents itself in finite forms. In this was given the farther antithesis of unity and plurality. The infinite is the living and eternal unity of that which in the finite appears as extended plurality. But this plurality-and Cusanus lays special weight on this point-is also that of opposites. What in the finite world appears divided into different elements, and only by this means possible as one thing by the side of another in space, must become adjusted and harmonised in the infinitude of the divine nature. God is the unity of all opposites, the coincidentia oppositorum. He is, therefore, the absolute reality in which all possibilities are eo ipso realised (possest, can-is), while each of the many finite entities is in itself only possible, and is real or actual only through him. 2 Among the oppositions which are united in God, those between him and the world, — that is, those of the infinite and the finite, and of unity and plurality, - appear as the most important. In consequence of this union the infinite is at the same time finite; in each of his manifestations in phenomena the unitary deus implicitus is at the same time the deus explicitus poured forth into plurality (cf. p. 290). God is the greatest (maximum) and at the same time also 1 Nicolaus also designates his own doctrine, in contrast with opposing systems, as a coincidentia oppositorum, since it aims to do justice to all motives of earlier philosophy. Cf. the passages in Falckenberg, op. cit., pp. 60 ff. 2 Thomas expressed the same thought as follows: God is the only necessary being, i.e. that which exists by virtue of its own nature (a thought which is to be regarded as an embodiment of Anselm's ontological argument, cf; § 23, 2), while in the case of all creatures, essence (or quidditas - whatness) is really separate from existence in such a way that the former is in itself merely possible and that the latter is added to it as realisation. The relation of this doctrine to the fundamental Aristotelian conceptions, actus and potentia, is obvious. the smallest (minimum). But, on the other hand, in consequence of this union it follows also that this smallest and finite is in its own manner participant in the infinite, and presents within itself, as does the whole, a harmonious unity of the many. Accordingly, the universe is also infinite, not indeed in the same sense in which God is infinite, but in its own way; that is, it is unlimited in space and time (interminatum, or privitively infinite). But a certain infinity belongs likewise to each individual thing, in the sense that in the characteristics of its essence it carries within itself also the characteristics of all other individuals. All is in all: omnia ubique. In this way every individual contains within itself the universe, though in a limited form peculiar to this individual alone and differing from all others. In omnibus partibus relucet totum. Every individual thing is, if rightly and fully known, a mirror of the universe, a thought which had already been expressed incidentally by the Arabian philosopher Alkendi. Naturally this is particularly true in the case of man, and in his conception of man as a microcosm Nicolaus attaches himself ingeniously to the terministic doctrine. The particular manner in which other things are contained in man is characterised by the ideas which form in him signs for the outer world. Man mirrors the universe by his "conjectures," by the mode of mental representation peculiar to him (cf. above, p. 343). Thus the finite also is given with and in the infinite, the individual with and in the universal. At the same time the infinite is necessary in itself; the finite, however (following Duns Scotus), is absolutely contingent, i.e. mere fact. There is no proportion between the infinite and the finite; even the endless series of the finite remains incommensurable with the truly infinite. The derivation of the world from God is incomprehensible, and from the knowledge of the finite no path leads to the infinite. That which is real as an individual is empirically known, its relations and the oppositions prevailing in it are apprehended and distinguished by the understanding, but the perception or intuition of the infinite. unity, which, exalted above all these opposites, includes them all within itself, is possible only by stripping off all such finite knowledge, by the mystical exaltation of the docta ignorantia. Thus the elements which Cusanus desired to unite fall apart again, even in the very process of union. The attempt to complete the mediæval philosophy and make it perfect on all sides leads to its inner disintegration. L PART IV. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RENAISSANCE. J. E. Erdmann, Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Darstellung der Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. 3 pts., in 6 vols. Riga and Leips. 1834-53. H. Ulrici, Geschichte und Kritik der Principien der neueren Philosophie. 2 vols. Leips. 1845. Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. 4th ed. Heidelb. 1897 ff. [Eng. tr. of Vol. I., Descartes and His School, by J. P. Gordy, N.Y. 1877.] Ed. Zeller, Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibniz. 2d ed., Berlin, 1875. W. Windelband, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. 2 vols. Leips. 2d ed. 1899. R. Falckenberg, Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Leips. 1886. [Eng. tr. by A. C. Armstrong, N.Y. 1893.] J. Schaller, Geschichte der Naturphilosophie seit Bacon. 2 vols. Leips. 1841-44. J. Baumann, Die Lehren von Raum, Zeit und Mathematik in der neueren Philosophie. 2 vols. Berlin, 1868 f. F. Vorländer, Geschichte der philosophischen Moral-, Rechts-, und Staatslehre der Engländer und Franzosen. Marburg, 1855. F. Jodl, Geschichte der Ethik in der neueren Philosophie. 2 vols. Stuttgart, 1882-89. B. Pünjer, Geschichte der christlichen Religionsphilosophie seit der Reformation. 2 vols. Braunschweig, 1880-83. [Eng. tr. of Vol. I., History of the Christian Philosophy of Religion from the Reformation to Kant, by W. Hastie, Edin. and N. Y. 1887.] [B. F. Burt, History of Modern Philosophy. 2 vols. Chicago, 1892.] THE antitheses which make their appearance in mediæval philosophy at the time of its close have a more general significance; they show in theoretical form the self-conscious strengthening of secular civilisation by the side of that of the Church. The undercurrent, which for a thousand years had accompanied the religious main movement of the intellectual life among the Western peoples, swelling here and there to a stronger potency, now actually forced its way to the surface, and in the centuries of transition its slowly wrested victory makes the essential characteristic for the beginning of modern times. Thus gradually developing and constantly progressing, modern science freed itself from mediæval views, and the intricate process in which it came into being went hand in hand with the multifold activity with which modern life in its entirety began. For modern life begins everywhere with the vigorous development of details; the tense (lapidare) unity into which medieval life was concentrated, breaks asunder in the progress of time, and primitive vigour bursts the band of common tradition with which history had encircled the mind of the nations. Thus the new epoch announces itself by the awakening of national life; the time of the worldempire is past in the intellectual realm also, and the wealth and variety of decentralisation takes the place of the unitary concentration in which the Middle Ages had worked. Rome and Paris cease to be the controlling centres of Western civilisation, Latin ceases to be the sole language of the educated world. In the religious domain this process showed itself first in the fact that Rome lost its sole mastery over the Church life of Christianity. Wittenberg, Geneva, London, and other cities became new centres of religion. The inwardness of faith, which in Mysticism had already risen in revolt against the secularisation of the life of the Church, rose to victorious deliverance, to degenerate again at once into the organisation which was indispensable for it in the outer world. But the process of splitting into various sects, which set in in connection with this external organisation, wakened all the depths of religious feeling, and stirred for the following centuries the passion and fanaticism of confessional oppositions. Just by this means, however, the dominance at the summit of scientific life of a complete and definitive religious belief was broken. What had been begun in the age of the Crusades by the contact of religions. was now completed by the controversy between Christian creeds. It is not a matter of accident that the number of centres of scientific life in addition to Paris was also growing rapidly. While Oxford had already won an importance of its own as a seat of the Franciscan opposition, now we find first Vienna, Heidelberg, Prague, then the numerous academies of Italy, and finally the wealth of new universities of Protestant Germany, developing their independent vital forces. But at the same time, by the invention of the art of printing, literary life gained such an extension and such a widely ramifying movement that, following its inner impulse, it was able to free itself. from its rigid connection with the schools, strip off the fetters of learned tradition, and expand unconstrained in the forms shaped out for it by individual personalities. So philosophy in the Renaissance loses its corporate character, and becomes in its best achievements the free deed of individuals; it |