190 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



over the purely animal attributes of human nature. As 

 the highest among the former he counts benevolence, the 

 habit of living for others : his moral ideal consists thus 

 in complete self-devotion in which all personal or selfish 

 considerations disappear. In addition to this Comte 

 aims at a definite Order of society, based upon a philo- 

 sophical creed and manifested in a hierarchy not unlike 

 that which prevailed in the middle ages during the un- 

 disputed sway of the Eoman Catholic Church. But the 

 power which builds up and pervades this new Order is 

 not the faith of the old religion, but the scientific spirit, 

 the supreme control of the intellect which is to gain the 

 same undisputed sway in the social as it has gained in 

 the natural and especially the mathematical sciences 

 and their applications.^ 



^ Referring again to wliat was 

 stated {supra, p. 186, note), the sim- 

 ilarity or parallelism between an 

 idealistic and a positivist attitude 

 towards the ethical problem is 

 strikingly brought out by Professor 

 Jodl in treating of a tliinker who 

 may be looked upon as an extreme 

 representative of the former school. 

 This was Karl Chr. Fr. Krause 

 (1781 - 1832) the propounder of a 

 system termed Panentheism, the 

 attempt to combine the pantheistic 

 and theistic conceptions of the 

 nature of the Absolute. His vol- 

 uminous writings, of which only a 

 few were published during liis life- 

 time, had only a small influence on 

 European thought, notable only in 

 the philosophy of law through one 

 of his disciples, H. Ahrens (1808- 

 1874, Professor at Brussels and 

 Leipzig). The passage is striking and 

 instructive and worth quoting : "In- 

 voluntarilj' these views of Krause 

 suggest a comparison with Auguste 

 Comte. The ethics of both tend 



towards the proclamation of a re- 

 ligion of humanity which appears 

 here in a metaphysical, there in a 

 positivist clothing ; confining itself 

 there to the given world and the 

 knowable connection of things, but 

 extending here in bold flight the 

 thoughts and deeds of man beyond 

 the limits of the universe. The 

 contrast of aspects which is here 

 evident is in its innermost essence 

 insoluble, as both sides are equally 

 given in experience. . . . Human 

 consciousness is not self - creative, 

 it rests on a foundation which 

 it has not made itself and which 

 we may witli equal justice call un- 

 conscious or supercouscious. The 

 positivist need not further con- 

 sider it, it being for him a given 

 fact, but he cannot wish to deny 

 it ; but this feeling of dependence 

 upon vast mysterious powers . . . 

 marks exactly that point of empiri- 

 cal certitude from wliich the specu- 

 lative and religious aspect did, and 

 will always, start. Disregarding 



