408 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



J. M. Guyau. 



are the two main difficulties with which any system of 

 naturalism has to deal, and it is significant and in- 

 teresting to note that the most comprehensive attempt 

 in recent times to deal with these difficulties, from a 

 purely anthropological point of view, is to be found in 

 French literature, and especially in the remarkable writ- 

 ings of Jean Marie Guyau. 



We have already, in the two foregoing chapters, dealt 

 with the positive side of Guyau's teaching, with his 

 philosophy of the Beautiful and his Ethics; and we 

 shall have to revert to it when in the following chapter 

 we deal with the problem of Society. At present it is 

 rather the negative side which I desire to dwell on. 

 With him the spiritual view of things and of life does 

 not coincide with traditional religion and morality, the 

 main positions of which he rejects. He teaches a 

 peculiar kind of Irreligion and Immoralism, or rather 

 he desires to rise beyond the conventional standards of 

 morality and the traditional dogmas of religion. He 

 has thus, in a remarkable study by M. Alfred Fouillee, 

 been correctly and significantly compared with Nietzsche 

 in Germany. 1 Now the two main positions in the 



1 'Nietzsche et L'Immoralisme,' 

 by Alfred Fouillee (2nd ed., 1902). 

 From the Introduction to this work 

 we learn that Nietzsche was well 

 acquainted with Guyau's principal 

 works, his own copies of which are 

 covered with marginal notes of ap- 

 proval and criticism, but that 

 neither Guyau nor Fouille"e himself 

 knew Nietzsche personally, though 

 they lived for some time at the 

 same places on the Riviera. M. 

 Fouillee expresses his comparative 

 estimate of the two thinkers, whose 



names have been brought together 

 in several critical notices by French 

 and German writers, as follows : 

 " Les ceuvres de Guyau et de 

 Nietzsche ont ainsi eveille" de 

 toutes parts des echos plus ou 

 moins discordants. Quant a nous, 

 il nous semble que 1'individualisme 

 de Nietzsche a besoin d'etre corrige 

 par le point de vue social de Guyau. 

 Aussi avons-nous cru necessaire, 

 tout en insistant sur Nietzsche, de 

 le comparer a son devancier francais. 

 Les theories du penseur allemand 



