HERBART, Johann Friedrich, German philosopher: b. Oldenburg, 4 May 1776; d. Got tingen, 11 Aug. 1841. His career is evidence of the fact that at least some men may live peaceful lives in stormy times. A student at Jena under Fichte, a tutor in Switzerland, a docent at Gottingen in the theory of education, and after that a professor to the end at Gottin gen, at Konigsberg, and finally at Gottingen again— that is the story of his life. But if he took no part in the revolutionary tumults that afflicted his country, he at least became a leader in her intellectual contests. His meta physics stands at the opposite pole from that of Hegel. His psychology laid the foundations for modern psychophysics and experimental psychology, while his pedagogics is still the source of much of our best educational theory and practice.
The turning point between Herbart and Hegel lies in the use to be made of the prin ciple of contradiction. Herbart took the ortho dox stand that what contradicts itself cannot be truly real or actual, whereas Hegel boldly incorporated the principle of contradiction as a stage in what might be called his dialectic of evolution, which follows the formula; thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The antithesis is the con tradiction of the thesis, but only that the two may come together again in a higher synthesis. A familiar illustration is the relation of (1) being, (2) non-being and (3) becoming, in which the second is thought as the contradic tion of the first, while the third is conceived as a higher synthesis of the first two, since be coming has elements both of being and of non being. Herbart, however, rejects such reason ing as insufficient, and demands that philosophy shall accept the validity of the principle of contradiction, and honestly endeavor to remove the contradictions inherent in our everyday thought of the world. Such contradictions are encountered when we consider a thing and its attributes or the ego, which is both subject and object or when we trace experience back to matter, in which the notions discrete and con tinuous are seen to be at variance. The effort to remove the contradictions leads Herbart back to a pre-Kantian method of speculation, for he holds himself ready to accept any sort of a presupposition, rational, or irrational, which promises to resolve the difficulty, even though the principle of explanation should forever resist demonstration as to its reality. In other words, we may assume anything to be true which clears up our thinking. But this is the method of Leibnitz, of Spinoza, and of many others antecedent to the time of Kant (q.v.). The fundamental form in which contradiction appears is that the simple is conceived as mani fold. For example, the thing we call water is at the same time thought of as heavy, fluid, colorless, having the quality of quenching both fire and thirst, and as being capable of trans formation from a liquid to a solid or to a vapor. The way to overcome this contradiction is to assume a plurality of simple beings, and to explain the manifold as appearance arising from their relations. These simple beings that
underlie the phenomenal world are atoms, or monads, or as Herbart prefers to call them, Reals. They are conceived to be in mechanical interaction, and to give rise to the manifold we have in experience. Like the atoms of Democritus they are simple and alike in quality, but unlike the monads of Leibnitz they are not points of self-active force, containing an inherent principle of development. Why and how the Reals act and interact Herbart does not explain, not even how they get and exercise their one function of Self-preser vation. The inability to explain these things which we most want to know is the penalty at tached to this type of metaphysics. Yet it would be unfair to assume that no good re sults can come from even such pre-suppositions. The Reals are not spatial in the ordinary mean ing of that term, for space and time as we know them are themselves phenomenal products, but they may be conceived to be in what Herbart calls intelligible space, in which the, Reals ex ist in a state of partial or total interpenetration. Here they reciprocally "disturbp one another, a resulting, which is a ustatep of the Real. When the Real which is (dis turbed)) happens to be a soul, the disturbance, or the state of self-preservation, becomes an idea, which is the primary form of mental life. Psychology is, therefore, the science of these self-preservations of the soul-monad, which is like all Reals unknowable, but as Herbart thinks a necessary presupposition of our experience. Psychical life is the reciprocal tension of ideas. Consciousness depends upon the degree of this tension. The lowest degree of strength which an idea can have and still be actual marks the threshold of consciousness. If reduced below this degree it remains as and may rise again when freed from ((arrest? The soul monad has its seat in the brain and is in in timate interaction with a multitude of other Reals. Outwardly originating stimuli are con veyed to the brain by the nerves and reach the soul through the medium of the other Reals present. Since the idea is the primary form of mental life, feeling and volition must be ex plained through an examination of the inhibi tory relations of the ideas. Pleasure arises when there is a furthering of mental movement, and pain when there is an arrest. Volition arises from desire, a state of feeling, which has a natural impulse to find satisfaction through action. Since mechanical action and reaction of the Reals is the source of ideas, it seems a natural conclusion that there may be a statics and mechanics of mental states. This led to Herhart's attempt to work out the calculus of ideas, thus opening the road for the modern quantitative study of mental phenomena, as seen in psychophysics and experimental psychology. Herbart claims to have founded psychology anew upon metaphysics, mathematics, and ex perience. The third of these bases is treated under the term apperception, which has import ant results for education.