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historical course of the revolutionary philosophy if we merely attach deistical consequences to Protestant principles. Our attention must henceforth be concentrated on the spiritual disorganization, till we have to notice the great final explosion of the temporal power in connection with the reorganization which will be the closing topic of this Work.

Protestantism opposed to

progress.

We give too much credit to human intelligence if we suppose that it could have dispensed with this final elaboration of the critical doctrine, on the ground that its great principles having been furnished by Protestantism, the consequences of those principles might be left to develop themselves without assistance from any systematic formation of negative doctrine. In the first place, human emancipation must thus have been seriously retarded, as we shall admit if we consider how resigned the majority of men are to a state of logical inconsistency like that sanctioned by Protestantism, and especially when the understanding is still subject to the theological system. In countries where the philosophical movement has not fully penetrated the national mind, as England and the United States, we see the Socinians and other sects, which have rejected almost all the essential dogmas of Christianity, persisting in their original restriction of free inquiry within the purely biblical circle, and fostering a thoroughly theological hatred towards all who have pursued their spiritual liberty beyond that boundary. Moreover, it is evident that the expansion of the revolutionary doctrine would have been wholly repressed without the deistical movement which characterized the last century; for Protestantism, after having introduced critical principles, always abandoned them when they could be dispensed with, using its triumph to organize a retrograde system of resistance. It was thus with Lutheranism, which was as hostile to mental liberty as Catholicism; and thus it was with every form of Christianity, according to its power, till the triumph of the Anglican church and the expulsion of the Calvinists from France gave a systematic character to Protestant discouragement of progress. Protestantism having thus seceded from the progressive movement, which it had hitherto represented, it became necessary that new and more consistent leaders should assume the conduct of the march; and we find in this case the usual correspondence between great social exigencies and their natural means of satisfaction. The Protestant period had brought the ancient social system to such a state of decay that it could not guide, but only impede the formation of modern society, so that a universal and decisive revolution was seen to be impending, by such thinkers for instance as Leibnitz. On the other hand, the system would have lasted for an indefinite time, in its state of decay, and without fulfilling its professions, in virtue of its mere inertia, if the revolutionary ferment, which we shall see more of presently, had not

THE NEGATIVE PHILOSOPHY.

289 entered in to direct the movement of decomposition towards that regeneration which is its necessary issue. The heretical movement which I before noticed aided the systematic formation of the negative philosophy. We have seen how ancient was the tendency to entire emancipation from theology, as when, in the decline of polytheism, there were Greek schools which speculatively transcended the limits of simple monotheism. At that time, when the very conception of a true natural philosophy did not exist, such an effort could issue in nothing but a kind of metaphysical pantheism, in which nature was abstractly deified; but there was little difference in fact between such a doctrine and that which has since been improperly called atheism; and it resembled it particularly in its radical opposition to all religious beliefs susceptible of real organization, which is the point that concerns us here, where our business is with negative ideas. This anti-theological disposition was overborne during the long continuance of Catholicism; but it never disappeared entirely, and we see its traces in the whole course of the persecution of the philosophy of Aristotle, in consequence of its sanction of the tendency. We trace it again in the predilection for the freest thinkers of Greece, who indirectly influenced many speculative men, and chiefly among the high Italian clergy, who were then the most thinking portion of mankind. Without actively interfering in the destruction of the Catholic system, the anti-theological spirit was stimulated and expanded by it: and in the sixteenth century, while leaving Protestantism to its work, it profited by the half-freedom afforded by philosophical discussion to develop its own intellectual influence, as we see by the illustrious examples of Erasmus, Cardan, Ramus, Montaigne, and others, confirmed by the artless complaints of true Protestants of the spread of an anti-theological spirit, which threatened the success of their nascent reform by showing forth the decrepitude of the system to which it related. Religious dissent was naturally favourable to the tendency, The negative which ceased to become a source of mere personal philosophy. satisfaction to leading minds, and extended to the multitude, to whom it served as the only refuge from the fury and extravagance of the various theological systems, which had now degenerated into mere principles of oppression or disturbance. The negative philosophy was, in fact, systematized about the middle of the seventeenth century, and not in the subsequent century, which was occupied by its universal propagation. Its advent was powerfully aided by an intellectual movement, which is perpetually confounded with it, but which is far nobler in nature and destination. The positive spirit. had hitherto been concentrated upon obscure scientific researches ; but, from the sixteenth century onwards, and especially during the first half of the seventeenth, it began to disclose its philosophical character, no less hostile to metaphysics than to theology, but

VOL. II.

T

obliged to ally itself with the one to exclude the other. Its influence arose from its favouring the invasion of faith by reason, by rejecting, provisionally at least, all articles of belief that were not demonstrated. Bacon and Descartes could hardly have entertained any anti-religious design, scarcely reconcilable with the object of their active solicitude; but it is unquestionable that the preparatory state of full intellectual enfranchisement which they prescribed to human reason must henceforth lead the best minds to entire theological emancipation at a time when the mental awakening had been otherwise in this respect sufficiently stimulated. The result was the more certain from its being unsuspected, for it was the consequence of a simple logical preparation, the abstract necessity of which could not be denied by any sensible man. Such is, in fact, the irresistible spiritual ascendency of revolutions which relate purely to method, the dangers of which cannot commonly be perceived till it is too late to restrain them. While the best minds were thus inevitably influenced, the multitude were troubled, at the moment of shaken conviction, by the rising and growing conflict between scientific discovery and theological views. The memorable persecution of Galileo for his demonstration of the earth's motion must have made more unbelievers than all Jesuit intrigues and preachings could retrieve or save, to say nothing of the exhibition that Catholicism made of itself as hostile to the purest and noblest aspirations of the human mind. Many other cases, less conspicuous but perfectly analogous, brought out this antagonism more and more towards the end of the seventeenth century. In both its aspects this influence, acting on all orders of minds, wrought against the beliefs which contended for the moral government of mankind, and therefore in favour of a final emancipation of human reason from all theology whatever, the incompatibility of theology with the spread of genuine knowledge being thereby directly revealed.

The ascendency of the negative philosophy was assisted by the good and the bad passions of men, as elicited by the circumstances of the time. The spirit of religious emancipation is closely connected with that of free individual activity; and there can be no doubt that the struggle against the retrograde dictatorship of the seventeenth century roused all the generous passions in favour of the critical doctrine, which, in its systematized condition, was the only universal organ of social progress. On the other hand, negative doctrine, speculative and social, is congenial with the worst parts of human nature. Vanity is pampered by the sovereignty given to every man by the right of private judgment. The term freethinker has been sufficiently abused by theological hatred; but, necessary as the title was to express resistance to intellectual bondage, it indicates also that no equivalent is provided for the ancient guidance. Ambition accepts with eagerness the principle of the

ITS THREE PERIODS.

291

sovereignty of the people, which opens a political career to all who can achieve it. Pride and envy are gratified by the proclamation of equality, which may be either a generous sentiment of universal fraternity or a hatred of superiority, according to the natures that entertain it. In short, the mental influences which conduced to the formation of the negative philosophy were strengthened by powerful moral influences, tending in their combination to insurrectionary crises, in which there is usually a welcome ready for those who fret under the habitual restraint of social laws.

Three periods.

In surveying the history of the critical philosophy, we must carefully separate the spiritual from the temporal case. The latter was indispensable to the political action of the revolutionary doctrine; but it could not take form till the spiritual function was accomplished. The philosophical emancipation was the most important, because it brought the political after it; and the political could not have occurred without the philosophical. The survey is, in fact, naturally divided into three portions: the first comprehending the systematic formation of the critical doctrine; the second, the universal propagation of the movement of mental emancipation; and the third, the political emancipation, which is the complement of the spiritual.

Systematized.

Hobbes.

The first operation, though commonly referred to the eighteenth century, certainly belongs to the seventeenth. Arising out of the most advanced Protestantism, it grew in silence in countries which, like England and Holland, had been chief seats of Protestant change. Its organs, like those of Protestantism, must be derived from the metaphysical school, which had risen to power in the chief universities; but they were genuine philosophers, seriously at work, in their own way, on the whole range of human speculation, and not at all like the mere men of letters of a succeeding age. Three great men led the philosophical revolution, men mutually unlike and unequal, but concurring in the result;-Hobbes first, then Spinoza, and finally Bayle, who, a Frenchman by birth, was obliged to go to Holland to work freely. Spinoza, under the special influence of the Cartesian principle, no doubt aided the emancipation of many systematic minds, of which indeed we have proof in the multitude of refutations aroused by his audacious metaphysics; but he cannot be called the founder of the negative philosophy, both because he followed Hobbes, and because the highly abstract nature of his obscure dogmatic exposition admits of no sufficiently marked social use. Bayle's labours had this last quality; but the disconnected character of his partial attacks, even more than chronological considerations, marks him out as a leader of the propagation of the doctrine rather than as one of its framers; though he had undoubtedly a share in its formation. We are thus obliged to regard Hobbes as the father of the revolutionary philosophy. We shall hereafter find

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it is easy to see that a doctrine which restricted its action to the spiritual order of ideas must have been in a favourable position, from the security which was felt by rulers as long as their temporal power was undisturbed. In regard to Hobbes, it seems to me remarkable that, notwithstanding his national predilection for aristocracy rather than royalty, he should have chosen monarchical power for the single centre of his political scheme; and this view of his has furnished to the retrograde school, which is more powerful in England than anywhere else at present, a specious pretext for avenging the peers and clergy on the progressive spirit, by representing it as an abettor of despotism, so as to impair by a welcome calumny its European reputation. My impression is that, in the first place, Hobbes was aware that the monarchical dictatorship was better adapted than the aristocratic to facilitate the necessary decay of the old system, and the development of new social elements: and that, in the second place, he was instinctively aware that his doctrine, far from being specially English, must meet with its completest reception and development among nations in which royalty was the form of political concentration: instances of insight and foresight to which I believe the sagacity of the illustrious philosopher to be fully adequate.

So much for the formation of the negative doctrine. We must now proceed to observe its propagation. Hitherto, it Its propagation. had been restricted to a few select minds; but its final destination depended above everything on its becoming sufficiently popularized. The first observation we have to make on this new revolutionary phase relates to the change in the centre of movement, and in its permanent organs.

The work of destroying the old theological and military system had first been carried on, as we have seen, in Germany, Holland, and England. In those countries the political triumph of Protestantism had neutralized its tendency to philosophical emancipation by connecting with the conservative system the kind of organization that Protestantism would admit of. Thenceforth, all emancipation of the human mind became more repugnant to official Protestantism than to the most degenerate Catholicism itself, because it evidenced the radical insufficiency of the spiritual reformation which had cost so much. The repugnance extends beyond official Protestantism, to the least orthodox dissenting sects, which, proud of their comparative freedom, cling the more earnestly to the doctrines they have retained, and which therefore hold in especial horror such an irresistible concurrence of philosophical opinions as dispenses at once with all this laborious Protestant transition. In Catholic countries, on the other hand, where the people had any intellectual liberty left at all, the only refuge from complete mental despotism was in the negative philosophy, systematically extended. The centre of the intellectual and social

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