four branches, duties, property, general social life, and the State. Society rests on the two facts of the obligation to promote as much as possible the perfection of self and others, and of an express or a tacit contract which subjects the wills of some to those of others. Marriage and the parental relation are of the nature of a contract regarding the begetting, preservation, education of offspring. The only true marriage is monogamic marriage. The grounds for divorce are adultery, malicious abandonment, and the like. Slavery is permissible under certain circumstances, e. g., when the slave has deliberately chosen it. The State rests upon a contract implied in the fact that the lower organism (the family) is not equal to supplying the needs and comforts of life and defending men against injury. The State can rightfully interfere with the natural liberty of the individual only for the common good. The voice of the people is the ultimate source of authority. Passive resistance to authority is always justifiable when authority conflicts with natural right; active resistance is proper only when rights reserved by the constitution of a State are infringed. Rulers stand in a relation to subjects similar to that of parents to children. It is incumbent upon the State to care for the welfare of its subjects, even in the minutest details; it must care for all forms and means of education, schools, academies, universities, churches, theatres, books, etc.; for all charitable interests, including the provision of asylums for the poor and for orphans, the education of physicians, for all economic interests, fostering agriculture, determining relation of industries; for the general habits of eating, drinking, amusement, recreation, refreshment, etc. Atheists and deists must be expatriated and denied honorable burial. The object of punishment is correction of criminals and prevention of crime, light punishment inflicted with strictness is better than a severer one not so inflicted. Merely an extension of natural right or law is the right or law of nations. The State as a person enters into relations similar to those into which individual persons

enter. There is a necessary and natural right and a positive right among States as among those social organisms entering into the make-up of a State.

Result. The philosophy of Wolff is very largely merely a formulation and systematization of what had been taught by Leibnitz, as is sufficiently obvious. But (as Wolff himself claimed) it possesses, in relation to that of Leibnitz, a certain independence and originality, and constitutes in certain scientific regards an advance upon that. The deviations of the philosophy of Wolff from that of Leibnitz were such as to add determinateness, solidity, and comprehensiveness to philosophy, in at least a formal regard, to increase the objectivity of its results. Besides the deviations already noted, may be mentioned the conscientious application of a scientific method, the attempt to determine and deduce the categories of, at least, formal thought, the limiting of the range of miracle, the separation of morals from dogma, the broadening of the scope of philosophy so that its content became coextensive with all possible objects of knowledge, and, finally, the "teaching of philosophy to speak German." 1 Wolff, like Melanchthon, taught the "whole German world" philosophy, and has exercised a great influence in modern thinking. Among his pupils was even Kant himself. He propounded no new great principle, but he reckoned squarely with those extant, and so in a manner set philosophy on a new footing. He deserves, it would seem, somewhat more attention from students of the history of philosophy than he usually receives.

§ 77.

Wolffians and Anti-Wolffians. 2-The philosophy of Wolff, for reasons that are perhaps obvious, found numerous adherents and also met with considerable opposition. Among the followers of Wolff perhaps the most

1 Schwegler," Handbook of the History of Philosophy."

2 See Zeller, "Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie;" Noack; Erdmann.

important were Georg Bernhard Bilfinger (1693-1750), Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762), Georg Friedrich Meier (1718-1777), Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777). Of the opponents were Franz Buddeus (1667-1729), Andreas Rüdiger (1673-1731), Christian August Crusius (1712-1776), Joachim Georg Daries (1714-1792). Bilfinger, professor in Tübingen and Petersburg, follows Leibnitz in his conciliatory attitude towards theological dogma; otherwise he is a Wolffian. He distinguishes a mediate as well as an immediate representation in the monads, regards every psychological change as a passing from an idea to a resulting appetition, or vice versa, points out the necessity for a logic of the imagination (as well as of the understanding, which alone Wolff's logic was). - Baumgarten is especially noted as the author of the first modern "system" of æsthetics (a logic of the imagination which Bilfinger had desiderated). By Esthetics he understands the science of the lower, or sensible, faculties of the mind. The subject of æsthetics is, according to Baumgarten, the perfection of sensible phenomena as such, or the harmony of the manifold in phenomena. But this is the beautiful: beauty is, precisely, perfection as apprehended by the senses (for, as Leibnitz pointed out, the sensible apprehension of perfection affords pleasure). Baumgarten's "Esthetics" relates chiefly to poetry,- belongs to the class of works of which Aristotle's "Poetic" is the earliest extant representative. It is said to have been made by Kant the basis of his lectures on the subject it treats. Baumgarten expounded (with great practical success) Wolff's doctrines as a whole, out-Wolffing Wolff in the matter of logical analysis and elaborate terminology. His text-books were very popular; Kant was distinctly influenced by them. Meier was also a successful writer on æsthetics and the Wolffian philosophy. Meier emphasized "common-sense" and practicality as the primary requisites in a sound philosophy, was a Lockean in psychology, attempted a reconciliation of the imperfection of the

world and the perfection of God through a distinction between an essential and external perfection in God, the former being absolute and unchangeable. Meier's works were employed by Kant similarly as were Baumgarten's.— Lambert

a personal friend of Kant attempted the application of Wolffian doctrines and methods to Lockean psychology. In a work entitled the "New Organon," he deals with the questions whether the human understanding can attain to certain knowledge of the ultimate truth, whether it can. avoid confusing truth and error, whether speech is really a help or a hindrance to the attainment of knowledge, whether the understanding must not always be blinded by illusion or not. His most important discussions are those relating to the last of these questions. Lambert divides illusions into physical illusions (illusions of the senses), psychological illusions (illusions of consciousness, imagination, memory), moral illusions (illusions of feeling), pathological illusions (illusions due to the condition of the nerves). Lambert was highly esteemed personally and as a philosopher by Kant, and is regarded as occupying an intermediate position between Wolff and Kant. — The Anti-Wolffians objected, some more, others less, strongly to the (supposed) fatalism involved in the principle of sufficient reason, determinism, pre-established harmony, the mechanical explanation of nature, and optimism; conceived the criterion of truth to be, not the certainty of the mathematico-logical understanding, but liveliness of feeling, supernatural illumination (Buddeus), immediate thoughtnecessity (Crusius), or a high degree of probability (Rüdiger); treated reason as subordinate to revelation, and moral activity as obedience to the (revealed) will of God. Buddeus was a syncretist, including in his "system" superstitions, church-dogmas, etc. According to Rüdiger, all things, even mind and God, have a material origin, — the soul is extended, though simple. Crusius held the same view. He criticised the ontological proof of God's existence (as did after him Kant, an admirer of his), as con

founding the existence of God with the thought of that existence. His proofs of God's existence were those of "sufficient cause" (not the "fatalistic" "sufficient reason of Leibnitz and Wolff) and the "contingency of the world." The highest principle of philosophy (according to Crusius) is that of "conceivability," which is stated, That which is not conceivable is false; what cannot be conceived as false is true. The immortality of the soul is not proved from its nature as a substance, but from the fact that it (immortality) alone unites desert and happiness (compare Kant). Daries, who is less hostile towards Wolff, affirms contingency and imperfection to be consequences of freedom in God, or of a free understanding and will, as distinguished from a necessary understanding and will in God, not of the character of the finite as such. Our duties grow out of natural ends recognized as dependent on the will of God.

§ 78.

The French "Illumination." -The English philosophy of the beginning of the eighteenth century,- Deism, Lockism, the Newtonian Physics, etc., transplanted to France by Voltaire, Montesquieu, and English works that went across the Channel, found in a prevailing revolt against ecclesiastical and political tyranny a hospitable soil and bore abundantly its peculiar fruit. The new epoch produced by it in French thinking is commonly known in the history of philosophy as the "French Illumination." The names of men to be spoken of in this connection are those of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, who may be classed as Deists; Condillac and De Tracy, sensationalists; Bonnet, Robinet, and Diderot, semi-materialists; D'Holbach, Lamettrie, Helvétius, Cabanis, pure materialists. Perhaps the most important contribution to philosophy as a science made by these "philosophers" was that of the Holbachian

materialism.