Volume 1 — LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.

I.

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

You have requested me to write you for your new quarterly magazine a review of the philosophy of contemporary Germany as manifested in its most important tendencies and endeavors. In setting out to comply with your wish, I feel that this is no simple task. With mere titles of books neither you nor your public will be satisfied. The readers of The Monist will demand a deeper insight into the workshops of German philosophy; they will want to know if the old mother soil of speculative thought has retained its pristine fertility. Fertile it has remained. But in quite another sense from formerly. In a few years a century will have elapsed since Schelling published in the Philosophische Journal of Niethammer and Fichte, his "General Survey of Modern Philosophical Literature," and it is well to recall to mind that treatise and that period in attempting to characterise the present state of philosophy in Germany; contrasts, we all know, are quite as important for the acquisition of knowledge as resemblances. One central problem stood at that time predominantly in the foreground; the problem, namely, of the unification of knowledge. Neither the idea nor the tendency it involves, is unknown to the philosophy of to-day, but its meaning has become a different one. At that epoch it was sought to solve the problem from within, to solve it from the centre; it was sought to find a supreme species of knowledge possessing a certainty founded unconditionally in itself, and to expand this dialectically into a system of ideas.

I do not need to set forth here the great and peculiar acquisitions that this method has won for us, nor to point out what wealth of noble power was dissipated by it in the treatment of impossible problems. These things belong to history. The speculative period of German philosophy is dead. Ludwig Feuerbach in the middle of this century sung its funeral dirge. But it took some time before people accustomed themselves to regard it as really dead,—a time in which countless attempts were made to resuscitate it; it took some time before philosophers began generally to bestow upon the corpse the kicks of abuse that Schopenhauer in its own lifetime administered to it, and for which he was rebuked by a universal silence of indignation.

Earlier history, still under the influence of the speculative masters, had characterised the progress of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel as the necessary and logical evolution of the idea of philosophy in its highest sense. But the present prevailing method of presentation is accustomed to draw a sharp, deep line at the termination of Kant's activity, and to regard the entire subsequent speculative development of the Kantian philosophy as a fallacious digression and an abandonment of the fundamental critical idea. "Back to Kant" is the watchword that has resounded since the beginning of the sixties, at first in solitary utterances, and then with greater, ever-increasing emphasis—the incipient condemnation of a period in which German philosophy had celebrated its grandest and most brilliant triumphs, and at a time when German speculative thought had just begun to grow better known and more influential abroad.

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Back to Kant. Yes. But to which Kant? To the Kant of the first or the second edition of the Critique of the Pure Reason? To the Critique of the Pure or the Critique of the Practical Reason? Very perplexing questions these. The philosophy of Kant is not so easily reducible to a simple and comprehensive formula. It is a veritable Proteus, that changes at will form and appearance. Every one interprets it, in the end, as he wishes Kant should have thought. The cry "Back to Kant" has become in the ranks of German philosophers a veritable apple of discord. An enormous Kantian literature has sprung up; critical, exegetical, constructive. No one can dispute its acumen, learning, erudition, and profundity. But the traits of Alexandrianism unmistakably cling to it. A more pernicious waste of intellectual power, perhaps, than that of the much deplored speculative period. One has the feeling often as if one would like to cast into the tumultuous, struggling crowd of combatants a different battle cry—"Back to Nature! Back to to the examination of the true contents of things!"

I shall select on this occasion from the superabundant store of Kantian literature the works of two writers only to whom the characterisation just advanced does not apply, and to whom independent and fundamental importance belongs. They are, first, ERNST LAAS,[58] professor at the University of Strassburg, who died in 1885, and second, ALOIS RIEHL,[59] formerly of Gratz, now of Freiburg. Both began with Kantian research. Neither remained identified with it. Both sought to supply a new foundation for that branch of philosophy that deals with the theory of cognition; both brought to the service of their task, in addition to eminent critical and analytical acumen, comprehensive historical knowledge. Widely different in method, both pursued the same end—the eradication of that transcendent bias which had so pernicious an influence with Kant himself and his immediate followers, and the replacing of all dualistic opposition of a higher and a lower, or a real and a phantom world, by a philosophy of reality based upon the rigid analysis of pure experience. Both, therefore, are, in this sense, indispensable preconditions of every monistic philosophy that is not founded on immediate intellectual perception, or mere postulates, but aims at a critical foundation.

[58] Laas, Idealismus und Positivismus, 3 Vols. 1876-87.

[59] Riehl, Der philosophische Kriticismus und seine Bedeutung für die positive Wissenschaft, 3 Vols. 1876-87.

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Simultaneously with this battle for the "real" Kant and the measure of that in his philosophy which could be utilised as the groundwork of a new structure conforming to the conditions of the times, German philosophy in the second half of this century waged another war. No fratricidal struggle this, no mere scholastic feud, but a battle for existence with a foreign foe—the physical sciences. After the speculative philosophy had retired from the throne that it had so long occupied, and the vacancy seemed yet unfilled, the attempt was made to place in the unoccupied seat another intellectual power whose credit and authority with the contemporary world had begun to keep pace with the success that attended its endeavors. We shall designate these attempts briefly as "materialism," and understand by the term any and every endeavor that aims at constructing a conception of the world with the means and methods of the mathematical and mechanical sciences alone. That which was here sought after was the exact opposite of the state of things that obtained in the speculative period; and the treatment that the speculative philosophy had to submit to at the hands of many of the spokesmen of the new movement was not entirely undeserved. The battle that German philosophy here had to fight was no easy one. Its foe occupied every position of vantage. The real or apparent exactness of its principles, the detailed character of the structure of the world that it bade fair to offer were a power. What we want is facts, not ideas; intelligibility, not profundity—these were the demands with which philosophy was confronted. It was impossible to outflank, in this direction, the representatives of a scientific discipline that admitted of skilful popularisation. There was nothing similar to oppose to it. Philosophers were accordingly compelled to confine themselves to criticism, to show forth the unmistakable defectiveness of the pure-mechanical philosophy, the weaknesses and flaws in its demonstrations and the arbitrary character of its construction; and to point out by a display of much acute reasoning what fifty years before was self-evident, that mind and mental life are not merely an accidental phase of things, not a product incidentally resulting, but an indestructible feature of the inward nature of the world itself.

Much of this extensive antimaterialistic literature, in which may also be included by far the greater part of anti-Darwinian literature, can put forth no claim to lasting worth, and is to-day wholly antiquated. For the simple reason that people no longer understand, or at least will soon no longer be able to understand, the circumstances and conditions out of which this polemical activity sprung: namely the transcendent metaphysical philosophy; mistaken idealism which imagined that existence and reality had to be transfigured in and by cognition instead of through will and action; the secret fear of an endangerment or indeed of a dislodgment of the religio-theological world-conception, the supernatural God-idea, the pure spiritual and immortal soul, the freedom of the will, and other phantoms whatsoever the designations they may bear.

But this warfare against materialism, which was waged by minds of widely varying rank and power, resulted at least in the substantial advantage of having brought the hostile parties closer together, of having forced them to the reciprocal study of their respective means of investigation, and of having put an end to the complete estrangement that formerly existed between them. Not only did it enrich philosophy, but it also led physical science to a correction of many of its conceptions and to a re-examination of its methodological hypotheses.

This is best to be studied, perhaps, by taking to hand the writings of a man who may be characterised pre-eminently as a spokesman of the materialistic movement in Germany,—I mean JAKOB MOLESCHOTT. His well known work Der Kreislauf des Lebens has become in its last, the eighth edition, something quite different from what it was in its first; and the rich collection of his lesser writings (Kleinere Schriften, 2 Vols., 1879-87) also offers the philosopher, especially from a methodological point of view, much that is worthy of especial attention. Moreover, this reciprocal influence of mind upon mind is manifested in the case of many of the most distinguished investigators of the last thirty years, in the most remarkable and gratifying manner. It is impossible to study the discourses and treatises of physiologists like DU BOIS-REYMOND and WILHELM PREYER, of physicists like HELMHOLTZ and ERNST MACH, and the discussions occasioned by their works, without being surprised at the extent to which the points of view of psychology and of the theory of cognition have penetrated into the problems and inquiries of the physical sciences. And vice versa philosophical works, like FR. A. LANGE'S History of Materialism (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart), UEBERWEG'S Collected Essays (Gesammelte Abhandlungen, just recently edited in a commendable manner by Moritz Brasch), the numerous works of LUDWIG NOIRÉ, and, last but not least, the entire scientific activity of WILHELM WUNDT,—all show an intimate familiarity with the methods of the physical sciences and an assimilation of materials from these branches of knowledge such as the speculative period can furnish no example of.

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Nevertheless, this intellectual revolution, far-reaching as it was, has led neither to solid systematic construction nor even to the successful development of positive methods of thought. Since the decline of speculative philosophy,—in which in this connection the Herbartian may also be included,—two systems only have dominantly influenced the German mind: the system of ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER and that of HERMANN LOTZE. In both a resonance still lingers of the older time. In Schopenhauer we detect the spirit of Schelling's nature- and art-philosophy; in Lotze, traces of the finely studied subtlety of Herbartian metaphysics. But though both are indebted for a portion of their real intrinsic worth to this organic though involuntary connection with a great epoch, their influence upon the present time rests upon very different grounds; and primarily upon the symmetrical, finished, and compact totality of their intellectual creations. They arose at a time in which philosophers had begun to lay aside the older systems as useless, and in which that multitudinous dismemberment of knowledge already began to make itself felt which to-day seems to be still growing greater. Although it may be difficult in many phases of the development of science to satisfy the impulse latent in us to unify knowledge, and although this endeavor is characterised ever anew by the representatives of special research as a delusion, nay as a ruinous delusion,—yet this impulse is not to be eradicated from the human mind and in some way or other it will ever procure itself recognition. Works like Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (World as Will and Idea), or Der Mikrokosmus (Microcosm) embrace in fact the entire sphere of knowledge, not in an extensive, but in an intensive sense: they furnish a definite view of the complete inter-relation and meaning of life.

It will perhaps appear strange to the reader that works are here mentioned in the same breath and their effects upon the present time discussed, which are separated in origin from each other by a space of about forty years. Yet this very anomaly is characteristic of the development of the German mind. When Schopenhauer published, in 1819, his principal work, the time for it had not yet come. The philosophy of Hegel, a rationalistic panlogism, was then in the very midst of its career of triumph. The irrationalistic and pessimistic elements of Schopenhauerian thought were repulsive. We now know that the two first editions of the Welt als Wille und Vorstellung mouldered in the shops of the booksellers. Not until shortly before Schopenhauer's death in 1860 did the literary public and the scholastic circles of Germany begin to occupy themselves more seriously with this philosopher. Not until then did he really enter as an active factor into our intellectual life.

This influence, in the case both of Schopenhauer and Lotze, rests, aside from the fact of the universal character of their thought-creations, already referred to, pre-eminently in the circumstance that both made thoroughly their own the scientific theory of things and recognised that conception as one whose justification was contained in itself, and which, regarded from the standpoint of its own hypotheses, was irrefutable, though they were nevertheless far removed from perceiving in it the final and irreversible verdict of human knowledge. In this endeavor to fix the limits of scientific cognition Schopenhauer and Lotze form important pillars of the antimaterialistic movement in Germany, and are just in this respect also intimately related with the task of the modern Critical Philosophy or Neo-Kantianism. But while the latter movements came to a stop with predominantly negative or preparatory criticism, Schopenhauer and Lotze owe a great portion of their wide-spread influence on German culture to the circumstance that they undertook, from the point of view of the critical theory of knowledge already acquired, to sketch the plans of structures of the world which would furnish a general background and scheme of synthetic connection for the collective special results of the physical and mental sciences. That these sketches of world-construction have an individual coloring can only lessen their value in the eyes of those who believe they are privileged to apply to such a synthetic, constructive formulation of the highest ideas of all existence and thought, the standard of the exact determination of a single law. And so I shall only hastily point to the fact, that the contrariety and oppositeness that permeates the world and all our thought about the world also comes sharply to light in the case of these two philosophers, not to their mutual destruction, but to the heightenment of the effect by the contrast.

The fortunes of the two systems, which began about the same time to acquire influence, were dissimilar. The pessimistic element alone evinced itself fruitful, in the sense that it came immediately into contact with general culture through manifold forms of presentation and extensive discussion. The royal structure of the Schopenhauerian philosophy has given a host of dispensing draymen for thirty years an abundance to do. The leader of this army, EDUARD VON HARTMANN, has long since taken a place by the side of the sage of Frankfort, as independent master-builder, and presented a system planned and executed with the most diffuse architectural details. The nuclear idea of the Philosophy of the Unconscious (Die Philosophie des Unbewussten) has been amplified by the author himself in every direction, extended, exhibited in its historical relationships, and applied to the special departments of philosophical science. The theory of cognition, ethics, æsthetics, the philosophy of religion have all been treated of by Hartmann in the last two decades in voluminous works, and often repeatedly elaborated. In addition thereto, come several volumes of essays in which the philosopher has had something to say upon every conceivable topic, political, literary, æsthetical, pedagogical, and politico-economical. Hartmann's fecundity is only surpassed by his volubility. In him appears anew that union of philosophy and journalism that had remained disunited since the close of the period of illumination. The utility, nay the necessity, of this combination, with which, unfortunately, the academical philosophy of the passing century would have naught to do, Hartmann knew the value of, and skilfully exhibited his appreciation; though one often wishes that its popular character had, in places, been made to do service in behalf of different ideas.

The writings of no other philosopher have obtained so wide a circulation as those of Hartmann. His chief work, "The Philosophy of the Unconscious," first published in 1870, has long since been put in stereotype form, and from time to time passes through repeated new editions. Also his numerous other writings have for the greater part been repeatedly republished. We possess a collection entitled "Select Works," and have just received a "Popular Edition." And it is moreover generally known that it has only been since the appearance of the Philosophy of the Unconscious, that the sale of the writings of Schopenhauer has assumed great proportions. Through the mediation of Hartmann Schopenhauer's fundamental ideas first reached the general public.

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The philosophy of Lotze lacked an interpreter of like versatility and fecundity, although it had need of such a one in a much higher degree. Both thinkers were masters of the philosophical style. But Lotze's symmetrically rounded and intricate periods, with their inexhaustible influx of incident relations, makes very different demands upon the patient resignation of the reader than the lightly moving, epigrammatically pointed style of Schopenhauer. Lotze for this reason never really became popular. His influence has remained rather a scholastic and academic one. It has been fruitful in high degree in its effect on the special departments of philosophical science, particularly on psychology, whose present representatives in Germany almost without exception received from him incitation and a solid scientific view-point. Not unimportant, too, is his influence upon academic instruction in philosophy, through the "Dictations" to his lectures, published after his death, which are in every student's hands and serve in many ways as a substitute for the study of his principal work. Lotze's authority, finally, stands like a rock with all whose great concern it is to find ways of reconciling the claims of theology and of religious belief with the present state of science.

And their number is by no means inconsiderable. Official Germany has become pious, or, at least, would like to appear so; and although this is not to be understood exactly in the sense of especial dogmatic zeal, yet people adhere nevertheless with a certain tenacity to the religious background of the prevailing world-conception. Abroad it is the custom to regard the Germans upon the whole as a nation of atheists, because they have produced several curious fellows like Strauss and Feuerbach, enjoy having a good time on Sunday, and drink plentifully. Nothing can be more erroneous than this opinion. The average German has long since learned to place implicit confidence in the declaration of his teachers, that the great critical liberal movement of the later Hegelian school is not to be seriously taken but to be looked upon merely as the outcome of a "pathologically over-excited" epoch. Nowhere in the great civilised countries has freethought practically found so little footing; nowhere is its dependence upon the central powers of government greater; nowhere is it more impossible to wrest even a tittle from the authority of the old system of education with its foundation laid in the theological world-theory.

This condition of things, the obstinacy, the timidity with which state and public opinion hold fast to religion,—and now in times of imminent social danger more so than ever,—must be borne in mind if we wish to understand the comparatively great success that the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Hartmann has had in Germany. In the support of these two systems the philosophical opposition of freethought has simply found expression—the opposition that has arisen against the official philosophy, of which it cannot exactly be said that it theologises, but which carefully avoids coming into conflict with theology, and does not, in its aristocratic academic exclusion, endeavor to influence more extended circles. The factor that made this philosophy of opposition accord with the spirit of the times—its proximity, namely, to the scientific world-theory—has already been emphasised; and the fact that its pessimistic coloring has not been changed by its connection therewith will be found intelligible when we consider the turn that pessimism took in the hands of Hartmann. Only the quietistic Buddhism that Schopenhauer taught, could, in an age of the highest expansion and display of power both at home and abroad, appear as an incomprehensible riddle of the national mind. The evolutionistic pessimism of Hartmann, however, which demands of the individual complete and resigned submission to the struggle for existence, although it is able to offer him in the remotest background of time no better outlook than the ultimate annihilation of existence itself—is in its immediate practical commands too closely akin to an optimistic conception not to satisfy fully the needs of life, and is again too analogous to certain cosmological prophecies of natural science not to pass as the metaphysical expression of a truth otherwise accredited.

As opposed to this state of things Neo-Kantianism or the Critical Philosophy in its various forms has taken no firm position; no more than its master Kant himself did. To a great extent it makes use of the limitations of knowledge that have been critically determined, in order to leave open behind the same a realm of transcendent possibilities in which religion may lead a passably secured existence. Behind the greatest critical acumen theological prejudice is only too often concealed.

Few only of the intellectually eminent representatives of this movement like Alois Riehl and Ernst Laas exhibit in this respect perfect determination and the consciousness that the consequences of modern science unavoidably demand the laying aside of current religious conceptions and the substitution for them of more correct ones. Laas especially, in many passages of his principal work (Idealism and Positivism), as also in his readable little treatise Kant's Stellung im Conflicte zwischen Glauben und Wissen,[60] has emphasised strongly the view that there can be ideals only for the man who acts, and that so-called ideals where mingled with the function of pure cognition only falsify reality and lead to irresolvable conflicts. And Laas likewise belongs to the few who have laid prominent stress upon the educational task of modern philosophy as a substitute for systems of religious ideas.

[60] Kant's Position in the Struggle between Faith and Knowledge.

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From the point of view of different systematic hypotheses, but substantially with exactly the same tendencies, analogous ideas find representation in EUGEN DÜHRING, who in versatility of talent and literary activity is perhaps to be placed directly by the side of Lotze and Hartmann, though the favor in which his works stand and the circulation they have obtained fall far below the position of the latter. He presents a different form of positivistic philosophy in Germany, a philosophy not preponderantly critical but constructive, and begins with what Ludwig Feuerbach about the middle of this century in his Principles of a Philosophy of the Future (Grundsätze einer Philosophie der Zukunft) once propounded as programme. His chief work, Cursus der Philosophie als strengwissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung (Course of Philosophy as Exact-Scientific World-Conception and Conduct of Life), and the treatise against pessimism entitled Der Werth des Lebens (The Value of Life) sketch a world-picture that is intended theoretically to be but the simple conceptual interpretation of the present contents of experience, and therefore rejects the metaphysical constructions of Lotze, as well as the new conceptual mythology of Hartmann, and criticistic doubts concerning the objective reality of the world given in consciousness. In the practical direction, as an offset to the world-throe of humanity, the gladdening power of a life and action based on universal sympathy is emphasised. Dühring is a unique, but isolated phenomenon; standing, like Schopenhauer once did, in sullen antagonism towards the official academic philosophy, and totally ignored by it; unable by virtue of the conditions already delineated to influence wider circles, which the unanimated rigidity of his manner of presentation does not contribute to make easy. Eminent mental endowment and extensive knowledge are perhaps displayed in a higher degree in his historical works (Kritische Geschichte der Allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik[61]; Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie[62]; Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Socialismus[63]) than in his systematic treatises.

[61] Critical History of the General Principles of Mechanics.

[62] Critical History of Philosophy.

[63] Critical History of Political Economy and Socialism.

Nevertheless, Dühring can at the farthest be regarded only as one of the forerunners of that Messiah that is destined for German philosophy and German intellectual culture perhaps in the coming century; of that man who shall be able to cast up the accounts of the work of the present period, with its infinite analyses, its historical comparative character, and its pyramidal yield of material, and to condense that which now everywhere surges about us like a spiritual ether, but nowhere palpable or tangible, into the unity of a system that shall point out the paths to be followed and shall dominate all minds.

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There are many,—and among them eminent investigators and estimable scholars,—who smile at this prophecy as an Utopian dream; nay, almost stand in dread of such hopes, as perilous to science. The day of systems, say they, is past. Philosophy, too,—perhaps it were more proper to say "mental science,"—is breaking up into a number of special sciences, over which it is sought to place a general science of knowledge or theory of science, as the last representative of that which was once called philosophy and was recognised as the queen of the sciences.

As intimated, I do not know whether the impulse toward unity that inheres in the human mind is to be so easily driven from the field; whether we shall be satisfied in the long run to behold that light that irradiates the universe, broken a hundred-fold by the prisms of the single sciences. But one thing is certain. The more irresolute they are in whom the science of the future places its confidence, the more actively will they press forward who hold that the precious treasure of truth has long since been granted unto man, and who would fain forge with this heritage of the past the fetters of the future. After the Catholic church under Pius IX. had hurled in the face of modern culture and science its frantic Anathema sit, it began under his successor a much quieter, yet far more determined warfare. Like one of the famed lianas of the primeval tropical forests, it entwines the giant Science, to sap his best powers and slowly but surely to stifle his life. Whatever the modern mind with the help of freedom won by bitter struggles has gained in the knowledge of nature and of history, is twisted and turned, falsified and misinterpreted by hundreds and hundreds of busy hands until it has been fashioned to fit that ready-made scheme of things composed on the one hand of Catholic dogmatical teachings, and on the other of the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. As many representatives as secular freethought can show, there will be found beside them to-day an ecclesiastical advocatus diaboli who will neither rest nor cease until of the hero has been made a wretch and mangy heresiarch.

Under protection of the principle of free inquiry, and with all the helps of science, a warfare of extermination is here carried on against all freedom of mind and all science, which is the more dangerous in proportion as the opponent loves to decorate himself with the borrowed plumes of science, and as he is able skilfully to mask his real designs. Catholicism is striving with untiring efforts to gain by the help of this reformed and modernised scholasticism, the mastery of the schools, of education, of the universities, and of the entire activity of science. And compared with the position of the representatives of modern thought it has decidedly the advantage. Not only is it in the possession of a unitary world-theory, but it defends that theory with most determined vigor and heedlessness against all differing views. The representatives of modern science, on the contrary, are not so fortunate as to possess inherited truth and infallible authority, and they not only have to contend with the formidable internal difficulties that stand in the way of a unitary formulation of their conception of the world, but frequently even avoid entering on this task with determination in order to make less prominent the contrast with the religio-theological system to which every exact scientific conception of the world must of necessity lead.

Against these aggressive endeavors of the theological mind, neither lofty indifference, nor calm historical contemplation, nor mere literary warring will avail. The power of freethought must be displayed, and the positive work that it can do must be shown. Otherwise the time may come when the fame of rigid scientific thought and successful research in special fields will not exonerate German philosophy from the reproach of having left the nation in the lurch at a period of momentous spiritual crisis. To make useful the rich acquisitions of these labors toward the construction of a general theory of the world, remains, therefore, the serious task of the German philosophy of the future.

I shall be permitted, perhaps, in a future article to present an account of the literature of these special departments.

FRIEDRICH JODL.

II.

RECENT FRENCH PUBLICATIONS.

The works that have appeared during the last three months belong to authors of different nationalities—Italian, Roumanian, Belgian, and I ought to add Russian; but I shall not speak on this occasion of the important work of Sergneyeff, Physiologie de la Veille et du Sommeil.

It is, as you see, a gathering of good company, on French soil.[64]

[64] All these works are published by Alcan.

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The only French work to be mentioned is that of M. CH. ADAM, Philosophie de François Bacon, a memoir presented in the prize competition of which M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire was the reporter and preferred by the Academy of Moral and Political sciences.

M. Ch. Adam is already known by several works relating to the history of philosophy. The study which he now gives to the public is conscientious; we must commend his erudition and the moderation he has displayed both in his praise and in his criticism. I am not sure, however, if he is right in asserting that the fame of Bacon will increase and diminish alternately, according to whether patient analyses or daring hypotheses find the more favor in the scientific world. I have known many a savant, profoundly metaphysical and imaginative, who, in admiring Bacon, delusively believed himself in the possession of a solid safeguard against metaphysics. There is more chance, to my mind, of finding the admirers of the Chancellor among pure philosophers than among men of science. This is why I subscribe completely to the judgment of M. Ch. Adam, when he subordinates Bacon to Descartes and to Galileo. Especially should he be put below Galileo, who was the great initiator of modern science, at least the first to add a link to the chain of human science then being forged; one, I might say, who by his solid contributions really founded physical science, as chemistry was founded by Lavoisier and his contemporaries a century and a half later.

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The Roumanian writer is M. BASILE CONTA, whose unfinished work, Les Fondements de la Métaphysique, has been translated by M. Tescanu. M. Conta died in the heyday of his powers. Born in 1845, he was successively, from 1875 to 1881, professor of jurisprudence at the University of Jassy, deputy, and minister of public instruction. The author and his works have, therefore, serious claims to our attention. Nevertheless, I can hardly believe that M. Conta always kept in the path in which he started, for if he had, it would have led him to considerable results.

M. Conta held that every combination of ideas, that is to say every ultimate generalisation, is essentially mobile, alterable in character, and that there will never be any final, definitive philosophical system. Subject to the benefit of this wise reserve, he undertook, nevertheless, to frame a "materialist" metaphysic, founded like the positive sciences on induction, and he attempted to rise to a general system, from which it appeared to him that the ancient notions of the soul, of freedom, and of God could not be legitimately excluded.

According to my mind, the defect of his method was the allowing too much to reasoning, the too great desire to create reality by simple logic. Unfortunately, the intellectual necessity that he proclaimed, of reducing all to unity, does not carry with it the means of properly making this reduction by a subtle operation of the mind. In order to advance towards his end, M. Conta found himself led to formulate a compendious sketch of a theory of cognition, a psychology, and a logic, at the risk of sinking at times in the quicksands of a treacherous discussion. As a matter of fact, metaphysics, spiritualism, and materialism, are conceptions of great vagueness, and the problem to reconcile them by any fashion of union, is rather like inquiring how many ways there are of placing three persons at table, or even a greater number.

This is not said by way of disputing the merits of a writer whose loss is justly regretted, or to discourage the reading of a book in which many will find much to accept.

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The Belgian author is M. ALBERT BONJEAN, a barrister of Verviers. His book, L' Hypnotisme, ses Rapports avec le Droit et la Therapeutique, la Suggestion Mentale, affects too much the style of an address before a court in which the orator wishes to exhibit wit and acumen. Nevertheless, it is written with clearness, is agreeable to read, and the verbal nicety sought does not impair its good sense.

M. Bonjean has developed the three following theses: First, that the action of magnetism is not explained by the hypothesis of a fluid, that we cannot speak with M. Ochorowicz, of "a certain tonic vibratory movement which propagates itself outward from the periphery of the body," but that it is explainable by simple suggestion; second, that the power of suggestion is almost unlimited; and third, that though verbal suggestion is incontestable, mental suggestion remains doubtful until proof to the contrary.

M. Bonjean thus sides with MM. Ochorowicz and Delbœuf, and the whole school of Nancy, against that of the Salpêtrière. He endeavors especially to show the serious consequences, in criminal and civil affairs, of immoral suggestions, the dangers of which he reproaches M. Gilles de la Tourette with having concealed far too much. His personal conviction does not rest itself solely on the expositions of others, but on experiments which seem to have been conducted with prudence.

Extraordinary as this almost passive obedience of a subject to the suggestion of an act which is repugnant to his moral tendencies appears, we come in a position, it seems to me, to comprehend it by the observation of the degenerate patients of our asylums in their various manias. The dipsomaniac resists with all his power the impulse to drink, and the kleptomaniac the impulse to steal; they fight against it even to agony, but they end always by yielding to it. "It was stronger than I"; such is the formula that we have noted most often in the answers of these unfortunates. And remark, that the dipsomaniac does not drink for pleasure, but by compulsion, be the beverage what it may, water, urine, or petroleum; just as the kleptomaniac does not steal with a view to enjoying the product of his theft, which he ordinarily abandons or restores, but steals to deliver himself from agonising torture. In this manner also the onomatomaniac acts, who is seeking a word, and who rises at night to consult the dictionary, etc. The hypnotised subject is in the same predicament, whatever pathological difference there may be between the two; his personality has momentarily sunk in hypnosis, as does that of an insane person during the attack of insanity; his moral resistance must finally yield, and it is not at all remarkable that it does.

The volume of M. Bonjean ends with an interesting discussion of the celebrated case of Lully. The deceit that gave rise to belief in suggestion without words or gestures appears to be established; the subject reads from the lips of his magnetiser.

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Let us turn to the fine work of M. R. GAROFALO, La Criminologie, Etude sur la Nature du Crime et la Théorie de la Pénalité. M. Garofalo has himself translated his work from the Italian; this second edition is entirely recast.

The Italians have always had a taste for juridical studies. Their school of criminologists has placed itself at the head of the movement which ought to result in the reform of all criminal codes. Two principal tendencies are predominant in the works of this school: the physicians and anthropologists, for example M. Lombroso, have conformably to their mental tendencies, particularly studied the criminal, of whom they have endeavored to fix the type; the jurists, like M. Garofalo, vice-president of the civil tribunal of Naples, consider by preference the crime, which they determine by reference to our social organisation. M. Garofalo shows himself at once an innovator, in that he endeavors to give a positive definition of crime, to take the place of the vague and incomplete definition which was accepted by the old jurists, and conforming to which anthropologists have thought themselves able to mark the characteristics of the criminal man. That definition has relation to the average morality of the societies of to-day; crime or criminal offence is to be sought, according to him, only in the violation of altruistic sentiments acquired and consolidated in the average social individual—compassion and probity. New categories ought then to be established; that of "revolutionists," for example, with whom the offence does not proclaim moral monstrosity.

The violation of altruistic sentiments certainly reveals in the offender a grave anomaly; it marks him as not adapted to the conditions of society, and even incapable of adapting himself to them, in consequence of psychical and physiological irregularities. The principle, then, is correct, although M. Garofalo has based it on an analysis of sentiments which appears to me insufficient. The sympathetic emotions which compassion embraces, are not the only source of our moral activity; probity arises in part from intelligence, and the logical sense intervenes to give the form of justice or injustice to an act of passion. Now, feebleness of judgment becomes, incidentally, an important element of the diagnosis of the criminal. Let us agree, nevertheless, that the absence of compassion and of probity upon the whole makes up the "natural crime." This suffices surely in practice.

On the other hand, it is not convenient, and it is unquestionably not indispensable, to make a difference between an anomaly "in relation to a superior civilised type," and an anomaly "in relation to the human type itself." Here is the criterion that M. Garofalo—prepossessed as he is to take away from born criminals the benefit, too easily obtained, of disease—proposes to us, in order to distinguish from the anomaly truly morbid, an anomaly not pathological, but which depends in some way on the cerebral organisation. Subtle is this distinction which he opposes to the opinion of French alienists, according to whom the immoral are always more or less physically degenerated. I will confine myself to recalling on this point a remark of Dr. Magnan. Very often, said this eminent clinician one day to me, a father of poor moral stability but otherwise healthy of body, has a son well balanced in his moral and intellectual tendencies but already on the way to degeneracy. The anatomical anomaly invoked by M. Garofalo would be then not far from the physiological anomaly; functional disturbance of the higher faculties is not alone concerned. Fundamentally, this is of little moment to the practical conclusions of his system, which we must rapidly indicate. With regard to the repression of crime, and as to a large category of criminals, the social point of view necessarily dominates the medical point of view.

M. Garofalo inquires what the power of education and of the increase of well-being is in diminishing crime. He has found them extremely weak. Severity of repression alone appears of some efficacy; indulgence augments crime. For the sake of social selection, the criminal ought to be eliminated, by capital punishment, perpetual banishment, etc., according as the case demands. Temporary imprisonment has no place in this system. Finally, the only criterion of penality is lack of adaptability to social life; this criterion will replace the false principles of "moral responsibility" and "proportionment of the punishment to the crime." It is too apparent that the prevailing penal theory and the jurisprudence in agreement with it, seem to tend to protect the criminal against society, rather than society against the criminal. And what absurdities besides! The attempt is less severely treated than the consummated offence; preparatory acts are never punished, the attempt at a crime is always punished.

The criterion of penality once accepted, it is necessary to find the indices of this lack of fitness, of the impossibility of adaptation to social life, which justifies repression. M. Garofalo seeks them no longer in "premeditation," but he finds them in the motive of the crime and in the way in which it has been prepared or perpetrated. We cannot follow him into the details of this discussion, which presents the highest interest. Our exceptions would turn on the interpretation of certain features; they do not bear on the general principles of this great and solid work.

LUCIEN ARRÉAT.