History of Materialism (Volume 1); History of Materialism Until Kant. and Criticism of Its Present Importance, .

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1877. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... sity to lead to noble and elevated forms of life, and to a love of those forms which rise far above the commonplace demand for happiness; just as, on the other hand, an idealistic ethical system in its full development cannot help being anxious for the happiness of individuals and the harmony of their impulses. But we are concerned, in the historical development of nations, not with a purely ideal ethic, but with thoroughly fixed traditional forms of morality, the stability of which is disturbed and shaken by any new principle, because they do not rest upon the abstract reflection of the man himself, but on a taught and inherited product of the collective life of many generations. And thus our experience hitherto seems to teach us that all Materialistic morality, pure as it may otherwise be, operates especially in periods of transformation and transition, as a powerful solvent, while all great and decisive revolutions and reforms first break out in the shape of new ethical ideas. Such new ideas were introduced in antiquity by Plato and Aristotle, but they could neither penetrate to the masses, nor gain over to their objects the old forms of the national religion. All the deeper on this account was the influence of these products of Hellenic philosophy upon the later development of mediaeval Christianity. When Protagoras was driven from Athens for having begun his book on the gods with the words, As to the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, it was already too late for the salvation of the conservatism for which Aristophanes vainly set to work all the forces of the stage, and even the sacrifice of Sokrates could no longer stay the progress of the Spirit of the Times. As early as the Peloponnesian war, soon after the death of Perikles, the gr...