took up law, at first following Grotius and Puffendorf. He sympathized with the French in their breach with the past, and both advocated and practised strenuously the avoidance of pedantry and the use of the German tongue as a vehicle of learned communication in the universities. He acquired great popularity and influence, and though driven from his professorship at Leipsic, and forbidden to lecture or write, because of his radicalism, he received an appointment at Halle as "second," and then as "first" professor of law, and as rector of the university, in the founding of which he had been instrumental. He seems to have been a supporter and popularizer of other men's ideas rather than a profound originator, and an Illuminationist rather than a philosopher. He may be treated as, so to say, a detheologizer and naturalizer of Scholastic philosophic thought, and a forerunner of Wolff.

Works. - The principal work of Thomasius is entitled "Fundamenta Juris Naturæ et Gentium ex Sensu Communi deducta" (1705). Other works are "Institutiones Jurisprudentia" (1688), "Introductio ad Philosophiam aulicam (1688), an attack on Scholastic logic.

Philosophy. For Thomasius, philosophy is a non-technical, non-speculative, readily intelligible theory of human existence on its human side as such. He expressly and absolutely separates it as wisdom of this world from theology as "God-wisdom," and as expressly and absolutely attempts to avoid all syllogizing, all use of technical phraseology. He will avoid all prejudice and sectarianism; he will be a common-sense, eclectic philosopher. As to subject-matter and end, philosophy is to him that branch of human knowledge which teaches man how he should live happily, i. e., in inward and outward peace, in this world. Philosophy thus practically reduces itself, with Thomasius, to ethics. The Thomasian ethics has a certain basis in (Lockean) psychology. The norm of action is found in a happy commingling of certain ground-impulses in human nature, as desire of bodily enjoyment, property, indepen

dence, honor, and rule over others. Out of the relation of those to external influences spring the affects or passive conditions of the soul, of which there are the two general classes, hope and fear. Men are naturally filled with prejudice, ruled by passion, and in constant strife. A few have in themselves the true norm of action, and are capable of being teachers and rulers. By the principles of right (in the broad sense) alone are they taught to do that which will tend to freedom from prejudice, to self-dependence in theoretical matters, to inward and outward peace in practical, and so to the longest and happiest life for man. These principles are: (1) Do not to others what you would not have done to yourself; (2) Do to others what you would have done to yourself; (3) Do to yourself what you would have others do to you. The first of these is the principle of all compulsory or perfect duties, is the sum and substance of justice (justum), or right in the narrow sense, and has reference to the preservation of external peace. The second is the principle of the fitting (decorum), and has reference to attainment of external peace through benevolence. The third is the principle of morals (honestum), and relates to the attainment of inner peace. Duties growing out of the second and third principles are imperfect, because non-compulsory. Duties may be divided into duties to God, to ourselves, and to others. But since the human and the divine have nothing to do with one another, only such duties to God are subjects of philosophy as are conditional to the fulfilment of duties to ourselves and to others. The office of the State is the preservation of external peace, external right, among religious societies; otherwise the State is separate from religion. This relation of Church and State is the principle of what is termed by Thomasius his Territorial System. In religion he sympathized with the Pietists, and advocated mutual tolerance of sects.

§ 76.

Christian Wolff (1679-1754).- Christian Wolff was the son of a tanner of Breslau, who intended him for a theologian. He studied at a gymnasium in Breslau and at the University of Jena. Though distinguished at the gymnasium for attainments in theology, at the university he gave his attention rather to mathematics, physics, and philosophy, Scholastic and anti-Scholastic. At the gymnasium he read Descartes' works and Tschirnhausen's "Medicina Mentis," and when, leaving Jena (1699), he went to Leipsic to take his master's degree, he habilitated with a thesis, written in the Cartesian spirit, on "The Universal Philosophy, treated by the Mathematical Method." At Leipsic, he early prepared a dissertation on Universal Practical Philosophy, the fruit of a study of the works of Grotius and Puffendorf, to whom his practical philosophy owed much. This dissertation gained him the recognition of Leibnitz, whose views he soon adopted, and a privat-docentship in the University of Leipsic, his lectures being on the subjects of mathematics and philosophy. Through Leibnitz's influence he was, in 1707, appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of Halle; he lectured also on physics and, later, on philosophy. By the easy intelligibility and the general impressiveness of his lectures he gained great popularity as a teacher; his exposition was lucid and methodical, and he spoke in German instead of Latin, and with great fluency and naturalness of manner. But by rationalistic views in theology he excited the hostility of Pietistic colleagues, who, bringing undue influence to bear with the king against him, procured a cabinet decree depriving him of his position, banishing him from the domain on pain of death by the halter, and proscribing his works (1723). Settling at the University of Marburg, whence he had previously received a call to a professorship, he lectured there,

1 Zeller, "Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie; Erdmann, "Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie;" Noack; etc.

with even greater applause than at Halle, until 1740. In the mean time his philosophy became universally known, he was elected member of the French Academy, and won the admiration of Frederick the Great, successor to Frederick William, who had driven him from Halle, and his writings were reported upon favorably by a commission appointed to examine them; and in 1740 he was restored to his former university, and afterwards honored in various ways, dying while professor, Vice-Chancellor of the University, privy councillor, etc. He did not regain his former popularity as lecturer, in fact, lectured to empty benches; but his philosophy was at the time of his death, and had long been, the ruling philosophy in Germany.

66

Works. Wolff's earlier works are in German, his later in Latin. His most important German work is entitled, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen; auch aller Dinge überhaupt" ("Rational Conceptions on God, the World, and the Soul of Man; also All Things in General"). (The first two words of this title occur in the titles of most of Wolff's German works; they represent the spirit of this system.) Titles of some of his Latin works (which are largely restatements in more scientific form of the German works) are: "Philosophia Rationalis sive Logica" (1728), "Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia "(1729), “Cosmologia Generalis "(1731), “Psychologia Empirica" (1732), (1732), "Psychologia Rationalis" (1734), “Theologia Naturalis "(1736-1737), “Philosophia Practica Universalis " (1738-1739).

Philosophy: Stand-point and Method. - Wolff, as a true disciple of Tschirnhausen and of Thomasius, lays emphasis upon two things as prime requisites of philosophy; viz., precision and intelligibility of method, and utility of end or result. By philosophy Wolff understands the science of universal conceptions, the science which seeks to demonstrate how the possible, or universally conceivable, can be in reality. Its method is necessarily an a priori method: philosophy begins with pure conceptions, whatever their

origin, and merely draws from them that, and only that, which is contained in them. This method, like the geometrical, is not only a priori, but demonstrative and certain. Philosophy, therefore, though engaged with truth in general, is quite distinct from empirical science, which, instead of being a priori, necessary, and certain, is a posteriori, contingent, and uncertain.

The Divisions of Philosophy. — As there is in man a faculty of cognition (facultas cognoscitiva) and a faculty of appetition or volition (facultas appetitiva), philosophy is theoretical philosophy (philosophia theoretica sive metaphysica) and practical philosophy (philosophia practica). Introductory to theoretical philosophy, and to a certain extent forming a part of it, is the science of logic, having a "theoretical" part, treating (in Aristotelian manner) of the principles of formal thought; and a practical part, treating (more in the modern manner) of the grounds, limits, and forms of knowledge, and of the practical uses of logical method. The material sciences embraced under the term "theoretical philosophy" are ontology, cosmology, psychology, natural theology; under the term "practical philosophy universal practical philosophy, ethics, economics, politics.

66

Ontology. - Ontology is the theory of being in general, and its categories and kinds. This is philosophia prima. Its highest principles are those of contradiction and sufficient reason. The latter depends on the former, as is proved in the following manner : Suppose A and B to be precisely alike. If it is possible that there can be anything which has not a sufficient reason, then a change may take place in A which does not in B if B be substituted for A. But since from the very fact that A and B are precisely alike, it follows, if we assume that the principle of sufficient reason is not a valid principle, that A and B are not precisely alike, and since, on the contrary, it is impossible that a thing can both be and not be, the principle in question must be indisputably correct: everything has its sufficient