Volume 2 — THE MONIST. (continued 4)

The embarrassments that involve the foundations of elementary geometry are mainly, if not wholly, those which involve the general problems of definition. Now a definition is the certification of the purport of a name by means of a statement or a conspiracy of statements necessary and sufficient to that end. But names are constituents absolutely necessary for the formation of any statement, so that the above definition of a definition may be restated thus: A definition is the certification of the purport of one name by means of other names, necessary and sufficient to certify the purport of the one defined. Evidently then, definition can only lead us from name to name in unending process, or to some undefinable name, or to some name that we choose to leave undefined; and the question arises, on what sort of names shall we take our stand as ultimate grounds?

Our author answers this question as follows: “The propounder of a scientific theory is not of course expected to teach his readers to speak, it is only necessary for him to define the terms peculiar to his science, or those to which he wishes to attach peculiar meanings. He may therefore assume that the meanings of all other words are known to his readers.”

He then propounds that “all that is logically required for a definition is one or more assertions with regard to the word to be defined or, its attributes,” provided “they are not demonstrably incompatible with each other.”

Although our author conceives that logical competence requires no more than this for a good definition, he yet goes on to remark, that “if the definition is to form the basis of a deductive science it is further advisable that the assertions should be independent,” and that “where it is required to define a term whose denotation is already known, it is further necessary not only that the assertions should be commonly accepted as true with respect to it, but that they should restrict the meaning of the term exactly to its accepted denotation, neither more nor less, and should do so in the simplest manner that can be devised.”

It is upon this theory of definition that our author requests of his critics a “categorical” answer to his first question, “Do you accept the requirements I have laid down for a logical definition? (If not please state which of them you object to, why you object to it, and what you would propose to substitute for it.)”

Since it is a “categorical” answer that is requested and since also it is the matter of definition that is put in issue, we wish that our author had been more definite and had made his propositions better issuable, for we must protest that we regard ourselves obliged to answer to what we can best conceive to be the author’s true meanings rather than to what he has explicitly said.

We do not conceive that he regards it as necessary to a definition that the defining assertions should be expressed “in the simplest manner that can be devised.” We have also to take his use of the word “restrict” as importing completion as well as limitation, and his use of the word “requirements” as intending conditions that together are sufficient as well as necessary.

If we are right in our understanding of the meanings of our author he contemplates four cases, first, the definition of a name that has no denotation already known and that is not to form the basis of a deductive science, second, the definition of a name that has no denotation already known but which is to form the basis of a deductive science, third, the definition of a name that has a denotation already known but which is not to form the basis of a deductive science, and fourth the definition of a name that has a denotation already known and is to form the basis of a deductive science.

In this fourth case our author deems it requisite for a logical definition that there shall be made one or more assertions about the subject of definition that are not demonstrably incompatible with one another, that are independent of one another, that are commonly accepted as true in respect to the subject defined and that “restrict” the meaning of the name under definition exactly to its accepted denotation.

It seems to us that this last requirement dispenses with the necessity of all the rest. If we have provided an assertion or a set of assertions that do in fact complete and limit the meaning of the subject of definition exactly to its proper denotation that is a definition in full. It implies that the defining assertions are all consistent with one another, and in case any assertion is dependent upon one or more of the rest that is a circumstance wholly immaterial. Utile per inutile non nocetur.

Again, what is it to be commonly accepted as true? Does logical competence depend on the altering states of our knowledge or on the fluctuations of opinion? Was a whale logically defined as a fish before we learned that it was a mammal?

The third case allows of the application of the same comment as that made upon the fourth. But in the first and second cases the doctrines of the author as well as his suppositions are very notable. He supposes the anomaly of names without any known denotation, by which he may mean those which have no application whatever. In respect to such he propounds that they may be given a logical definition by making one or various consistent assertions as applicable to them or to their attributes.

“The proof of the pudding will be found in the eating,” as our author says. So let us say that a troft may be perceived whenever our attention is excited, and that trofts are of multitudinous variety. Do these assertions constitute a logical definition? It is a prime requisite for a definition that the defining assertion or assertions shall have a meaning, which is the same as to say that names must be employed that are already significant. These significant names must be so used that the intellectual sensibility shall be excited to perceive in a determinate way that which is intended to be defined. In other words, sense and not nonsense must be produced in the mind that considers the definition. Perhaps, however, our author intends such words as electricity, or spirit, or energy.

Because of the considerations above indicated and others we cannot accept the author’s requirements for a logical definition as a whole. Some of them are in some of his cases unnecessary, while taken together they supply no new means whereby to solve the several problems of definition.

The author’s subjective theory of geometry is plainly the outgrowth of his confidence in the solvent power of the concept of direction as a prime datum of geometry.

Everything of consequence in his essay depends upon the worth of this concept as a geometrical foundation. Considering the disparagement that has been visited upon that concept by numerous writers of good geometrical rank we naturally look for considerations tending to remove the discredit that has befallen that notion. Instead however of this we find the most palpable set of circular definitions. Direction is defined by direction in the most distracting way, thus:

“(a) A direction may be conceived to be indicated by naming two points as the direction from one to the other.”

The inaptitude of the term direction for use in geometry is rooted in its ambiguous purport. As commonly used it means at least three distinct but closely associated notions which become confused in thought and expression unless the most solicitous care is taken to distinguish them. When we speak of the direction of one point from another or of the direction from one point to another we mean the straight off-ness or from-ness or to-ness which one bears to the other; in other words a relation of separation and straight mediation. When again we speak of the direction of a motion we intend the indefinite straight sense of its procession, which is not a relation but an attribute of the motion. When still again we speak of the direction of a line we mean its straight lay as compared or as comparable with other actual or possible correlates which is again a relation but not necessarily the same relation as that that obtains between two points.

In all these meanings the notion of straightness is involved, and could we say in lieu of straightness first directness and then direction and holding fast in thought this sense of the word, make a noun of it, so that a direction would intend the same as a straightness and no more, it might obtain a useful geometric term and notion.

To define it we might first define a line thus: A line is a space boundary that is indefinitely long but not otherwise of any extent. Then, a direction is a line such that between the points that bound any assigned parcel of it no copy of said parcel is possible.

But direction purports to our author the second of the meanings above set forth, namely, the indefinite straight sense of the procession of a motion. Definite parcels of a direction thus understood are identical with vectors.

Now the notion of straightness is after the notions of point and line the most fundamental one of geometry and the one which is altogether the most prominent and useful. It is the necessary means for any definition of a vector or of the notion which our author deems so important. As straightness is attributable only to lines and long things which a line may represent it makes no difference whether we define straightness or a straight line, but a masterful performance of this definition is absolutely necessary before the foundations of geometry can be abidingly certified.

Our author defines a straight line thus: “A straight line is a continuous series of points extending from each of them in the same two directions.” What kind of a thing a continuous series of points may be we are not told but as a point is defined to be “a portion of matter so small that for the purpose in hand variations of positions within it may be neglected” we take it that a straight line is a continuous series of particles of matter. The “purpose in hand” in this case must of course be the purpose of geometry.

In defining an angle our author first lays down that “The difference between two directions is called their inclination to one another” and then “The measure of an inclination is called an angle.”

Considering that it is the doctrine of the author that every straight line has two contrary directions the measure of whose inclination is an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees, we imagine a northeast southwest line cutting an east west line and wonder if the right hand upper angle is really two angles according to whether or not the directions both pass to the left or both pass to the right or pass one to the left and the other to the right.

Were this an ordinary work we might regard it as due to the author to notice the many excellencies which characterise it, in spite of the defects which we notice. But as our author evidently realises, the eminent dignity of the topic challenges and its singular importance demands unsparing criticism. He who offers to instruct the world on the foundations of geometry draws his sword and throws away the scabbard, and like a doughty champion he will scorn to accept any favor, prizing only such success as he shall take at the point of an efficacy of treatment that conquers all competent and candid criticism.

Stringent as are such terms of contest an author who is a worthy competitor in the field of geometric research can be well content with them in the perception that the very same conditions apply in full force to the comments of his critics.

The author is undoubtedly an able man and a close thinker. He has concentrated his mind upon a work that is worth the energy of a lifetime. But we must confess our judgment to be that in spite of his capacity and evident devotion he has come short of the high result to which he has aspired.

ρσλ.

Les Fêtes de Montpellier. Promenade a travers les Choses, les Hommes et les Idees. By J. Delbœuf. Paris: Félix Alcan.

We have here a charming narrative by the well-known Professor at the University of Liège of his visit to the fêtes of Montpellier, undertaken in great measure to make the personal acquaintance of M. Dauriac, the critic in the Revue Philosophique of the author’s work “La matière brute et la matière vivante.” The description given of the fêtes, which marked the sixth centenary of the University of Montpellier, is very entertaining, as is the account of the journey through the South of France; but as M. Delbœuf says that he was more curious to become acquainted with men than with places, what he tells us about the former will be the more interesting.

The author, with the companions of his tour, could not pass Nancy without stopping to see “the masters in the science of hypnotism” there. An account of what he saw and heard gives the author the opportunity of repeating “That he does not regard forgetfulness on awaking as characteristic of profound hypnosis, and that experience is against the efficacity of criminal suggestion unless the subject is criminally inclined.” The fêtes at Montpellier commenced with a religious service in the Cathedral, during which the Bishop, M. de Cabrières, preached a sermon so liberal in tone, that M. Delbœuf thinks the time is arriving when the church will demonstrate that Moses was the precursor of Darwin. At the University reception which followed, M. Delbœuf sought out among the professors for his friend M. Dauriac, whom he had figured when first he heard from him as small, thin and dark, but now found, in accordance with the usual rule in such cases, that he was tall, robust and fair. In the course of their subsequent conversations the two Professors made mutual confidences, M. Dauriac confessing that his true vocation was music, and that he was preparing a work on the psychology of the musician; while M. Delbœuf informed his friend that he was about to reply to his criticism of “La matière brute et la matière vivante,” and that he would throw the greatest light on the origin, which was still obscure, of life and death. If the genial Liège Professor can do this, he may be the first to reap the benefit referred to in his own words: “The discovery of the cause of death could not fail to assure the immortality of its author and its inspirer, and sooner or later that of humanity at large.” For, according to a medical adage, if the cause of a disease is known it is already conquered.

Montpellier was honored during the fêtes with the presence of Helmholtz, to whom but for national jealousy would have been confided the part of speaking in the name of the foreign universities. Nevertheless he was the true hero of the occasion, and when at the official reception, on the President of the Republic shaking his hand and saying a few gracious words someone feebly hissed, Helmholtz received in response a perfect ovation of applause. M. Delbœuf met with a congenial spirit in the Professor of Zoology, M. Sabatier, who has a laboratory at Cette. Their views on free-will were in sympathy. They agreed in allowing freedom not only to the superior animals, and to inferior animals and plants, but even to so called inorganic matter. M. Sabatier is a Christian and at the same time a convinced transformist; having arrived at his views from religious considerations. He cited M. Dauriac as saying, “The reign of determinism is not in the objective world; its empire extends itself over nature only after having been exercised over thought. There is no other necessity than that of logic or mathematics.” M. Delbœuf is evidently an “indeterminist” by nature. He heartily sympathised with the students in all their demonstrations of freedom, although one of them assumed a somewhat serious character. Dining in the open air with M. Milhaud the author of an article in the Revue Philosophique on non-Euclidian geometry, he was prepared to talk mathematics. The surroundings were too much for him, however, and in recalling the scene he cries, “To the devil with philosophy and mathematics! I cannot recall what we said; in my remembrances, I see only blooming faces, I hear only the indistinct bursts of gaity.” M. Delbœuf’s sympathetic nature is shown in the fact, which he records, that wild animals in confinement soon become familiar with him.

One of the principal objects of the author’s journey was to see M. Gabriel Tarde, “one of the most prolific and original publicists in France, if not in Europe,” who resides at Sarlat. After quoting passages from an article of M. Tarde on Social Darwinism, which appeared in the Revue Philosophique, M. Delbœuf remarks that nothing is more attractive and at the same time more fatiguing than the reading of his works. M. Tarde is “the locomotive that carries you to the end of your journey across countries by turns wild, agricultural, industrial, picturesque; but without giving you time to regard and admire.” Referring to M. Tarde’s acute criticisms of Lombroso and his theories, the author says, “It is not that he strikes the pseudo-thinker with formidable blows, but he makes him drop gently to the ground.” The French publicist sees in imitation the source of social life, and he has been long engaged in developing the idea, to the great importance of which M. Delbœuf bears witness; although he objects to the use which M. Tarde makes of terms taken from mathematics, physics, and biology, to express his sociological views. On the question of free-will there was no agreement. Although the latter is a determinist, he believes in penal responsibility, on the ground of personal identity; the diseased person or the madman is no longer himself, in which they differ from the criminal.

We can say nothing of M. Delbœuf’s visit to the canons of the Tarn. Here was captured a lizard which displayed, when compared with a Spanish lizard in captivity with it, as much difference in character as could be found between two men chosen at hazard. The author concludes an amusing description of the habits of the two captives by recommending their history to the politicians and the historians of France and Spain, as likely to throw light on that of the peoples themselves. We leave M. Delbœuf, whose book of seventy-five pages may be said to be as full of interesting matter as an egg is of meat, with quoting his postscript: “On the day that these lines appear (March 1891) the Spanish lizard has finally cast off his savage character and follows in the footsteps of the French. Effect of imitation.”

Ω.

Der Positivismus vom Tode August Comte’s bis auf unsere Tage (1857-1891). By Hermann Gruber, S. J. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder’sche Verlagshandlung. 1891.

This pamphlet of 194 pages is the continuation of another pamphlet on August Comte, the founder of Positivism, which was reviewed in The Open Court, No. 134. The author is a Jesuit and it is a matter of course that all the facts he relates, all the doctrines he explains are represented from the standpoint of Roman Catholicism. The booklet is of great importance in so far as we learn through it what an erudite Catholic mind thinks of that recent movement of philosophy which has been called by the collective name Positivism. The method pursued by Hermann Gruber is most recommendable. He states facts and quotes abundantly so as to let the various philosophers speak for themselves. He is economical with the salt of his own opinion, yet he uses it with such a discretion that Roman Catholics can become thoroughly acquainted with infidel views without suffering in their faith.

The book consists of two parts: (I) The Positivism of the schools in connection with Comte and of the Positivistic movement outside of these schools. The first part begins with a discussion of Littré. Littré, “the voice, the spirit and the soul of Positivism,” as Bourdon calls him, is characterised as a philological genius. Although he had chosen the medical profession, which however he abandoned early, and although he regarded the propaganda of the positive philosophy as his life-work, all his talents lay in the direction of special investigation in the literary, historical, and linguistic fields, and the editing of the French dictionary remains his main achievement.

Comte had not nominated a successor who should in his place be the Directeur du positivisme. Littré had forfeited this honor on account of his quarrels with Comte in which he strongly sided with Madame Comte against her husband. After Comte’s death P. Lafitte was elected as a temporary director and he has kept this office ever since, which he conducts with remarkable devotion and unselfishness. Although without property himself he proposed not to use the positivistic funds until he had shown himself through his work worthy of using them. He ekes out a scanty living for himself by giving lessons in mathematics, and devotes all the rest of his time to the management of and the propaganda for the Positive Church. His co-workers are Audiffrent, Antoine, Robinet, and others—all of them as the reviewer thinks strange people, visionary enthusiasts, and, to use an expressive Americanism, regular cranks. Lack of space prevents us from recapitulating their ceremonies, their sacraments, festivals, pilgrimages, memorials, and other forms of service. Their whole behavior proves that they are and will remain infidel Roman Catholics and it would have been wiser if they had not left the church at all. The positivistic orthodoxy culminates in the positivistic mystery of Comte’s idea of a “Virgin-Mother” (Vierge-Mère) which according to Lafitte is destined to elevate the intercourse between the sexes, while Audiffrent, Lagarrigue, and the Brasilian Lemos stick closely to Comte’s view “to represent positivism as directly conceived under the Utopia of a virgin-mother.”⁠[22] General Lemos goes so far as to say “We prefer to be looked upon with St. Paul for the sake of our faithfulness toward Comte as fools than to be praised by the contemporary frivolity as sages.” And Audiffrent defends against Lafitte the diplomatic action of Comte’s with the General of the Jesuits concerning an alliance between Positivism and Catholicism. Positivism, he says, invites all who have ceased to believe in God to become positivists, but it induces all those who still believe in God to turn Catholics, thus making an alliance possible of the disciplined against the non-disciplined.

If the Jesuit General ever has seriously considered the offer, he would perhaps have accepted it, for there is no doubt that he would have made the better bargain as all the discipline we should say is on his side.

The English group of Comtean Positivists consists mainly of Fr. Harrison, Richard Congreve, George Eliot and James Cotter Morison. The second part of the book which treats of the positivistic movement outside of the positivistic schools in England, France, Germany and other countries will be less interesting to English and American readers partly because the subject is better known to them partly because our author is apparently more familiar with his French than with his English sources. The second part begins with John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. It mentions Bain, Lewes, Clifford, Maudsley, Darwin, Sully, Romanes, Huxley, Tyndall. Clifford’s view is sketched in sixteen lines but in such a way that it appears grotesque. As French positivists outside the schools are mentioned Taine, Ribot, Fouillée, Guyau, Charles Richet, J. Luys, Cl. Bernard, and Roberty. It is correctly said of Ribot that his doctrine of personality is most characteristic of his views. The unity of a personality in the ego does not grow from above downwards but from below upwards, but Gruber is mistaken in saying of Charles Richet, the editor of the Revue Scientifique, that he represents about the same views as Th. Ribot. Richet’s publication on telepathic experiments in which he confidently believes, would never be countenanced by Ribot.

As the first German positivist is mentioned Eugen Dühring. Riehl, Laas, Lange, Vaihinger and Avenarius are disposed of together in the next following chapter. Several pages are devoted to Wundt.

The little chapter headed Nord-America (p. 171) consisting of two and a half pages begins with the words: “According to the testimony of G. Stanley Hall philosophy in the new world is in its swaddling-clothes still (in den Kinderschuhen). Philosophers over there are as rare as snakes in Ireland (Schlangen in Norwegen).⁠[23] For scientific instruction in the United States are used as guiding stars Spencer, Lewes, Darwin, Huxley, and Haeckel.” As a representative Atheist is named Ludeking, a man unknown to fame, while Colonel Ingersoll is not mentioned at all. It is maintained that J. D. Bell, a professor in New York had proclaimed the same confession of faith as Comte in The Modern Thinker—a journal which we have never seen nor ever heard of. The societies for ethical culture are characterised as avowing “a purely natural religion” while in fact natural religion, the religion of science and philosophy, as a basis of ethics is as rigorously rejected by Professor Adler as any dogmatic religion, and more than half of the two and a half pages is filled with a masonic proclamation of the Sovereign Grand Commander, Albert Pike, of Washington, which preaches the belief in an unknowable God and denounces Atheism.

The booklet closes with the following sentences: “The full and true positivism is embodied in the Catholic Church. The divine revelation which she represents is that which is truly real ... truly sure ... truly precise ... truly organic ... truly useful. The deepest root, however, and the most essential nature of all true positivism (this is vouched for by reason as well as by revelation) is not the relative but the absolute.”

Here we conclude our review of the book. We have however to add a few words which concern The Monist as well as all the publications of The Open Court Publishing Co. Hermann Gruber mentions in his book The Open Court and its editor together with the societies for ethical culture. We have, ourselves, characterised our views as positivism and as monism, but we stated at the same time that our positivism had nothing to do with Comte or with any one of Comte’s disciples.⁠[24] They have (with the sole exception of Ribot and I should hesitate to call him a Comtean) contributed little if anything to the formation of our views. The name Positivism is a good and expressive word and we have adopted it because taken in its proper meaning it represents the true principle of modern philosophy. However we cannot agree with any of the fundamental tenets either of Comte or of his most positivistic and most scientific disciple Littré.⁠[25] Comte as well as Littré are radical agnostics they repeat again and again that “We can know nothing about first and final causes. Positive philosophy denies nothing and maintains nothing.” According to our view of the subject this attitude is rather negativism than positivism. But it is not even negativism; it is worse, it is mere scepticism leading to indifferentism. It sounds very philosophical to speak of the inscrutability of first and final causes but the very terms “first causes” and “final causes” are most nonsensical and self-contradictory concepts. (See “Fundamental Problems,” pp. 88-90, and 101.) Comte and Littré imagine to have conquered metaphysics, but in fact they are the worst kind of metaphysicians. They believe in the ghosts of metaphysics as strongly as some mediæval minds believe in devils but are afraid to wrestle with them, because, as they maintain these metaphysical ghosts cannot be conquered.

Comtean Positivism, especially as it is represented by Littré, consists mainly if not exclusively of the doctrine to “let metaphysics alone” (which latter includes the object of religious worship) and limits science to positive issues. Thus the oneness of the sciences, a unitary world-conception is lost, for the hierarchy of the sciences which are to serve as a substitute for philosophy is rather a summing up of the stock of knowledge than a system of the sciences exhibiting their organic growth. It is an inventory rather than a plan to guide science in its further evolution. It is an anatomy rather than a physiology, for the very life and spirit of the sciences is missing. And outside the pale of the hierarchy of the sciences there is looming around an awful something quite different in its nature, like an infinite ocean surrounding a forlorn island, the unknowable first and final causes! That which is called by former philosophers “metaphysics,” which is at the same time the essence of religion, is by no means either unknowable or indifferent. It is not something beyond, something extramundane, it is the very life of the world and our religious and philosophical opinions are not only of a theoretical interest. They are the main factors of our lives which in the long run will determine the direction of our development. That this is so, has not been sufficiently recognised, and we would suggest in this connection that a history of the United States should be written to point out that the political liberty of the country and its republicanism are nothing but the application of its religious principles and of the Puritan conviction of religious independence. The historic growth of the colonies remained faithful to this maxim. The religion of a man and of a nation is the most important thing. In the same way the structure of a seed predetermines the whole plant, and the angle of crystallisation together with the shape of the crystal-nucleus from which the process of crystallisation starts, will determine the formation of the whole crystal.

His sceptical attitude led Littré to what he and his friends call “tolerance.” Littré’s wife was a devout Catholic and his daughter was educated in her mother’s faith. He had intended to explain to her his views of the subject when she had reached maturity, and leave the choice to her. But when the moment came, he declared that “the experiment was not worth the tears which it would cause.” Our view of “tolerance” is radically different. Whatever the truth may be it should be struggled for, cost it ever so many tears or pains.

We cannot sympathise with Littré’s method of constructing ethics upon the nutritive and sexual instincts, the former producing egotism, the latter altruism. Emotions are, says Littré, as much as ideas, the result of brain-processes in consequence of external impressions and “the struggle between both kinds of emotion make up the moral life.” Littré rejects the evolution theory and its attempts to explain ethics. (See Gruber’s book p. 20.) Having explained our views of ethics on other occasions, it is sufficient here to state that we consider Littré’s attempt as a failure. We cannot even adopt the so-called “positive method,” of which Littré says: “Whoever adopts this method is a positivist and whether he acknowledges the fact or not, also a disciple of Comte. Whoever employs another method is a metaphysician. It is the surest mark by which a careful mind will discriminate what belongs to the positive philosophy and what is foreign to it.” What is this method? Says Littré: “It is an acknowledged principle of positive science that nothing real can be stated through reasoning (raisonnement). The world cannot be guessed.” Littré is opposed to so-called a priori arguments. Hermann Gruber says in the preface: “This positive method is embraced by all the representatives of the lines of thought here discussed. All of them intend to build up their systems with the exclusion of scholastic, respectively of Kantian, Hegelian, or any a priori speculations after purely ‘scientific’ methods upon the foundation of the facts of experience.” We certainly intend to build our world conception “upon the facts of experience” but the most important facts among them are their formal relations and these formal relations when represented in thought are exactly that element which Kant called a priori. The sense-element affords us the building stones, but the a priori element represents the mortar without which we could not build. So much do we oppose this one-sided philosophy which takes its stand upon what is wrongly called the purely scientific method, that our views have been called the Philosophy of Form, and justly, for Form is that feature of the world which makes of it a cosmos and formal thought is the organ of our comprehension.

κρς.

Ueber den associativen Verlauf der Vorstellungen. Inaugural-Dissertation. By E. W. Scripture, M. A., Fellow of Clark University. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. 1891.

This essay of 102 pages characterises most excellently some of the proceedings and methods of Professor Wundt’s psychological laboratory. The author, a disciple of Wundt, is a native American who studied in Berlin, Zürich, and Leipzig, and took his degree of Doctor on the ground of this dissertation. The object of the treatise is not so much to solve as to formulate the problem of the associative course of concepts, and the author hopes that in a future treatise he will be able to propound his theory based upon the facts here related.

The experiments were made with the assistance of seven friends, among them German students, a doctor of philosophy, a doctor of medicine, and a teacher. They were of different nationality, three Germans, one Belgian, one Japanese, one Englishman from the Cape, and two Americans, the author included. The apparatus used was so arranged that the person operated upon sat in the dark, before him was a plate of ground glass intercepting from a camera an image which was exposed for four seconds. Pictures of all kinds, colors, and plainly printed words were used. For other sense-impressions the observer was also seated in the dark. Several instruments for producing sounds were ready on a table. Tastes were effected by liquids which the person operated upon had to drink, and the sense of touch was investigated through handing him cards to which some small objects had been attached. The author was partly operator, partly observer, i. e. the person operated upon. The ideas evoked through the sense-impressions produced in this way, are enumerated in tabular form in the order in which they arose.

Among the experiments made in this way we find one kind which is of special interest. Sir William Hamilton made the remark in his Lectures on Metaphysics that unconscious ideas may serve as connecting links between two ideas otherwise unassociated. He represented his view in the following way: Let A, B, C, be three ideas, A does not suggest C, but both are associated with B. It happens that A is directly followed by C in consciousness. In such a case A may recall B and B may recall C, but B being a minimum visibile or minimum audibile does not enter consciousness. Thus the idea of the mount Ben Lomond called into Hamilton’s mind the system of Prussian education. Subsequent reflection taught him that he had met on Ben Lomond a German. The recollection of the place was associated with the ideas—a German, Germany, Prussia. These ideas were too weak to enter consciousness yet they reawakened another idea which did enter consciousness, the system of Prussian education.

This is a mere suggestion of Hamilton’s but Dr. Scripture proved its truth by actual experiment. He took cards containing some simple words, such as Mensch, Gehen, Kommen, Blume, etc., and also Japanese words in Roman characters Hana, Hito, Iuku, Kuru. To every word was attached another Japanese word in Japanese characters so that the same character appeared on Hana and Blume; Hito and Mensch; Juku and Gehen; Kuru and Kommen. The words were shown twice so as to give a stronger impression. The Japanese gentleman was excluded from these experiments, and indeed, the unknown Japanese characters which were only dimly or not at all remembered, evoked the corresponding words: Hito—Mensch; Kuru—Kommen; Blume—Hana, etc. Dr. Scripture adds: “These associations were involuntary, the observer imagined them to be wrong, and could find no reason for the involuntary appearance of the words. He had not thought at all of the connecting links.”

It appears that the links in a chain of concepts need not be all conscious and the result of his experiments in this line is formulated by Dr. Scripture as follows: A concept apperceived can bring another concept into the focus of consciousness although it was never associated with it, if there are other psychic elements of lower degrees or even outside of consciousness which are connected with both—provided that there are no other elements stronger than these. The effect of the unconscious link however is much weaker than that which was conscious.

Pages 71-101 are devoted to the investigations of the after-effect of concepts. The phenomena of ideation being extremely complex, we cannot assume that the process of a so-called reproduced concept is analogous to the original idea. A sensation changes during its presence with reference to the degree of consciousness of its parts and even the concepts as a whole may be altered. The process is different according to circumstances. The renewed concepts differ from their originals, (1) in the degree of the consciousness of the whole idea, (2) in the degree of the consciousness of its parts among themselves, (3) in form, color, relations, etc., (4) in duration. In order to avoid the metaphysical influence of hypothetical theories we ought to avoid all kinds of terms suggestive of a theory and stick closely to a simple description of facts. Therefore Dr. Scripture proposes to discard such words as “retention, reproduction, revival,” etc., and suggests the term “after-effect.” Yet he adds, quoting from Wundt, “these after-effects themselves are as little ideas as the effects produced upon nerves and muscles by exercise can be called actions of will.”

Dr. Scripture avoids explaining what he conceives these after-effects to be. We see no reason for disagreement and should say that the result of the after-effects is what generally goes by the name of “disposition.” And a certain disposition is produced according to the law of the conservation of form in living structures. (See “The Soul of Man,” pp. 418-424.)

Dr. Scripture is led by a consideration of his observations to the following statement: “Each concept is conditioned through the effects of the elements of the present state of consciousness and the after-effects of many (if not of all) previous elements of consciousness.”

This result is not compatible with the theory of reproduction now almost universally accepted by the association-psychology. Wundt says: “If only certain single concepts were renewed, we might perhaps explain why in the memory-picture certain elements of a former reproduction are missing: but we could not explain why the elements of a concept change so often qualitatively as is indeed the case. This, it appears, is possible only because a memory-picture and others of a kindred nature affect each other mutually.”

This will find explanation in the following experiment. The observer sees a dog, and thinks of a circus, which he saw a year ago. There is no direct association between the picture of the dog and the special reminiscence of that circus visited a year ago. The association was formed at the moment. Former sensations of dogs had their after-effects and this special reminiscence was localised.

Dr. Scripture maintains that Höffding’s association theory contains too many hypothetical elements; it presupposes faculties of the soul to join like with like and to combine simultaneous or consecutive events.

κρς.

FOOTNOTES:

PERIODICALS.

MIND. July, 1891. No. LXIII.

CONTENTS:

The Problem of Psychology. By E. W. Scripture.

The Physical Basis of Pleasure and Pain. I. By H. R. Marshall.

Schopenhauer’s Criticism of Kant. By W. Caldwell.

Discussion: On the Origin of Music. (1) By R. Wallaschek; (2) By Prof. J. McK. Cattell; The Coefficient of External Reality. By Prof. J. Mark Baldwin.

Critical Notices: James’s “The Principles of Psychology”; Pfleiderer’s “Development of Theology in Germany”; Keynes’s “Scope and Method of Political Economy”; Lehmann’s “Die Hypnose und die damit verwandten normalen Zustände.”

As all sciences treat, to a great extent, of the same objects, they can be separated only according to how they treat things. On this principle, Mr. Scripture divides sciences into Special Sciences, General or Philosophical Sciences, and Didactic Sciences. The Special sciences are, I, the Mathematical Sciences, treating the forms of all experience; II, the Phenomenal Sciences, treating of the contents of all experience; the second class is divided into the Physical Sciences, which treat experience from its objective side, and Mental Sciences, which treat experience from its subjective side. The group of Mental Sciences is best divided, according to Wundt’s scheme, into the sciences of mental processes, Psychological Sciences; the sciences of mental products, Philological Sciences; and the Sciences of mental development, Historical Sciences. Psychology as a science of mental phenomena has a two-fold relation to the physical sciences: it is complementary to them, a necessary auxiliary; they are complementary to it, accessories in psychological investigation. States of mind always remain states of mind; they cannot be resolved into motions of particles of matter, and it is a fundamental axiom that mental phenomena cannot influence or be influenced by material phenomena. But we are justified in talking about a nervous stimulation becoming a percept, a muscular contraction following an act of will, as long as we remember that these are only substitutes for unknown quantities. Physiology investigates nervous changes; Psychology, mental changes; Physiological Psychology, the relations between the two. Mental phenomena are of two kinds, mental processes and mental products. Psychology is the science of mental processes; it seeks the exact description and explanation of the operations of our inner experience. The relation of Psychology to Philosophy is a burning question. Metaphysics, or Philosophy in the narrower sense, seeks from the agreement of the results of all other sciences to establish a system of the principles that underlie all existence, i. e. a theory of the universe, material and mental. After the general principles have been determined by metaphysics, philosophy has the duty of correcting the special sciences when they set up one-sided hypotheses, and of helping where they are unable to proceed alone. Psychology is considered a part of philosophy, but as a special science, treating mental processes from its own standpoint, it is distinct from psychology as a general science treating mind, relations of mind and matter, etc., from the standpoint of philosophy. The latter should be termed Philosophical Psychology. The relation of Psychology to Logic depends on what the latter is. Logic is a science of thought, but thought is also a subject of psychology. Psychology treats thoughts as we think them; Logic, as we ought to think them. Each of the sciences, Epistemology, the doctrine of knowledge, and Methodology, the doctrine of methods, treats of thought for its own distinct purpose. The former determines what the truth is; the latter determines how we ought to think. The didactic sciences are of two kinds: the sciences of the general principles or ends to be obtained, and the sciences of the means to attain these ends. Among the former is General Pedagogy, which determines the ends to be sought for in education. Psychology furnishes the foundation of fact; the science of general pedagogy judges which of these facts are desirable, in much the same way as epistemology judges which are true.

In a former article (Mind No. 56) Mr. Marshall showed that Pleasure and Pain are primitive qualities which, under proper conditions, may appear with any psychosis, whatever be its content. He now finds that all the most notable pleasure-pain theories may in the first instance be placed in four groups, determined by the emphasis of certain kinds of pleasure or pain. An examination of pleasure-pain theories shows, first that there is a general agreement, with but few dissenting voices, that all pleasure is at bottom the same thing, and that all pain in its essence is a single psychological phenomenon, and further that pleasures and pains are unifiable; second, that there are certain facts so marked in experience as to have become the basis of the majority of pleasure-pain theories. Mr. Marshall proceeds to consider the theory that “the activity of the organ of any content if efficient is pleasurable, if inefficient is painful.” He concludes that pleasures and pains are involved with the nutritive conditions of the active organ, and lays down the principle that “all pleasure-pain phenomena are determined by the action in the organs concomitant of the conscious state, as related to the nutritive conditions of the organs at the time of the action.” The difference between the hypernormality of pain and of pleasure, turns upon the fact that pleasure is obtained where the organ has been rested. Rest in an organ which is sometimes active means storage of energy derived from blood supply; and action after rest means the use of stored energy. But as action of an organ after rest gives a psychic content which is pleasurable, we have the working hypothesis: “Pleasure is experienced wherever the physical action which determines the content involves the use of stored force—the resolution of potential into actual energy; or, in other words, whenever the energy involved in the reaction to a stimulus is greater in amount than the energy of the stimulus.” By a similar process of reasoning we obtain the hypothesis: “Pain is experienced whenever the physical action which determines the content is so related to the supply of nutriment that the energy involved in the reaction to the stimulus is less in amount than the energy of the stimulus.” We may also say in general, “Pleasure and pain are primitive qualities of psychic states which are determined by the relation between activity and capacity in the organs, the activities of which are concomitants of the psychosis.” Mr. Marshall then supplies the psychological interpretation of the physiological phenomena attendant on the pleasures of Rest and of Relief, and of the pain of Obstruction or hindered activity. He concludes the present article with the statement that the physical concomitants of pleasure-pain phenomena are to be found in general qualities common to all processes which are at the basis of our conscious life; and that this is corroborated by introspective analysis of pleasures and pains. Mr. Marshall’s idea does not appear to us as a happy solution of the problem.

The object of Mr. Caldwell’s paper is to explain Kantism through Schopenhauer, who claimed to be Kant’s only true successor in philosophy. Schopenhauer came to the conclusion that Kant’s only real discovery, given in the “Æsthetic,” was that Space and Time were known by us a priori. The principle of Causality is the only element of value he finds in the “Analytic,” and a much simpler account could have been given of it. The “Dialectic” represents the Negative side of the Critical Philosophy, which although conclusive, might have been stated more simply. In Ethics Kant rendered the immortal service of showing, by his attribution of a noumenal freedom to man, compensating for his phenomenal necessary determination, “that the kingdom of virtue is not of this world”; although the K. d. prakt. V. is only an application to ethics of the principles already reached in the sphere of the Pure Reason. Schopenhauer finds the K. d. Urtheilskraft to contain the characteristic defect of Kant’s whole Philosophy—the starting from indirect instead of direct knowledge. Lastly, the criticism of the Teleological Judgment only shows what the K. d. r. V. already showed, the subjectivity of what we may call the ontological categories. According to Schopenhauer, the chief tendency of the Kantian philosophy is to establish “the total diversity of the real and the ideal.” The Ideal he explains as “the visible, spatial appearance with the qualities that are perceived on it,” and the Real as the “thing-in-and-for-itself,” which is the reality underlying and determining the world of experience, and, as such, a real and not a hypothetical entity. Schopenhauer never speaks of it in the plural, as Kant does, and so keeps consistently to a monistic point of view. He says, “The way in which Kant introduced such a thing-in-itself and sought to reconcile it with his philosophy was faulty.” This concerns Kant’s method, against which Schopenhauer directs the full force of his criticism. The fundamental principle of Kant’s method Schopenhauer takes to be the starting from indirect reflective knowledge: Philosophy is for Kant a science of conceptions, while for himself it is a science in conceptions; philosophy being a conceptualised or generalised statement of our knowledge. Schopenhauer sees all Kant’s errors contained in the following sentence from the K. d. r. V.: “If I take away all thought” (through the categories), “from empirical knowledge, there remains absolutely no knowledge of an object, for through mere perceptions nothing at all is thought.” In endeavoring to construct a philosophy out of pure conceptions Kant failed to solve the problem, in having the thing-in-itself left on his hands. This proved to Schopenhauer that the path of abstract reflection was closed as the path of philosophy. Mr. Caldwell demurs to Schopenhauer’s statement that the “Æsthetic” is Kant’s only discovery, yet as the “Æsthetic” shows the tendency to conceptual abstraction, his view of Space and Time is of extreme importance. It is of the “Logic” of the K. d. r. V. that Schopenhauer’s criticism is materially and formally most radical. He gives a different account of the functions of the Soul, rejecting altogether the faculty-distinctions of Kant: he associates Kant’s faculty of Understanding more with Sense and the category of Cause with the spatio-temporal or perceptual construction of the world, and holds the other eleven categories to be mere blind windows put into a scheme through Kant’s love of symmetry; and, secondly, he holds Kant’s account of Reason to be utterly false, and substitutes his own doctrine of the thing-in-itself for Kant’s three Ideas of Reason. By Reason Schopenhauer means the power the mind has of forming general conceptions and of knowing by way of conception or idea, the matter for conceptions and ideas being of course derived from Perception. Reasoned knowledge is an abstraction from perceived knowledge, and all knowledge, as Schopenhauer says, is originally and in itself perceptive. The confusion in Kant’s account of the elements entering into knowledge, is Schopenhauer’s reason for holding that Kant can only have had the fundamental principle of his method imperfectly present to his mind. His whole difficulty in relating the elements of knowledge to each other arose from the fact that he in his thought likened the categories to conceptions through want of an explicit and persistent recognition of the nature of conception. Schopenhauer himself classifies the categories according to the planes or stages of experience they characterise: the perceptual, the mathematical, the logical, and the ethical in order. The categories are all abstractions, but not conceptions or notions. Conceptions are a particular kind of abstractions, and so are categories: to conceptions material entities correspond, but to categories only relations or forms. Knowledge consists in the detection of relations existing between the different planes or sections of the perceptual continuum, the difference in perceived things being that some are immediately and others only mediately perceived. The true reason of Schopenhauer’s revolt from the method of conceptions is to be found in the difficulties in which he felt himself involved by the theory of Subjective Idealism. Philosophy, he says, is a search for the Thing-in-itself, but he tells Kant that from the idea nothing but the idea follows, and that the path of Reflexion or Knowledge is closed as the path of philosophy. Had Schopenhauer kept more true to his ruling that knowledge is originally and in itself perception, he would not have maintained that the world is my idea. The Thing-in-itself is the shadow cast by the Reflective or Abstracting Understanding. With both Kant and Schopenhauer it is primarily invented to get rid of the difficulty bred of a belief in an abstraction or unreality, and as it is a pure mental fiction, we may safely deny that there is any such thing in reality.

Mr. Wallaschek finds the origin of music in a rhythmical impulse in man. The sense of rhythm arises from the general appetite for exercise, which recurs in rhythmical form owing to sociological as well as psychological conditions. On the one hand, there is the social character of primitive music, compelling a number of performers to act in concert. On the other hand, our perception of time-relations involves a process of intellection, by means of which the mind is able to comprehend them as a whole. Since music is produced not merely as an auditory impression and expression, but also in order to evoke reflexion, it must contain the qualities of time-order and rhythm. Mr. Herbert Spencer’s theory of the origin of the general appetite for exercise is said to afford the most valid explanation. It is the surplus vigor in more highly evolved organisms, exceeding what is required for immediate needs, in which play of all kinds takes its rise. We owe our musical faculty to the time-sense rather than to our sense of hearing. The perception of particular tones and tunes plays a very low part, if any, in primitive music. In almost all the examples furnished by ethnology, we see that music is the expression of emotion, which is also one of the sources of human language. Mr. Spencer is said to be wrong, however, in thinking that musical modulation originates in the modulations of speech Music and speech have a reciprocal influence, and primitive human utterance, using sound-metaphors and onomatopœia, may resemble primitive musical tones. Nevertheless, an early separation of distinct tones and indistinct sounds seems to have taken place, not as a transition from the one as prior to the other as succeeding, but as a divergence from a primitive state which is, strictly speaking, neither of the two.

Professor Cattell objects that the theories of Darwin and Spencer on the origin of music, describe what probably took place, rather than explain why it was necessary that it should have taken place. As to Spencer’s explanation of harmony, he affirms that it amounts to saying that harmony gives pleasure because it is pleasant. After referring to the connection of harmony with the existence of overtones, Prof. Cattell states that music is not, as commonly supposed, a creation of the imagination, freer than the other arts from a physical basis, but is rather a discovery and a development. All the combinations of music are latent in the sounds Of nature, and the history of music bears witness to the gradual adoption of such as are more remote. The difference in voices rests on the overtones present, and the immense emotional effects of music are due to the fact that music expresses the emotion of the human voice, using and developing those combinations of tones which the voice uses when moved by sorrow and joy, despair and exultation.

By the Coefficient of External Reality, Professor Baldwin means the something which attaches to some presentations in virtue of which we attribute reality to them; while others, not having the coefficient, are discredited. Diametrically opposed solutions of this question are held. To one class of writers, the coefficient of the reality of an image is its independence of the will; to another class, the coefficient is subjection to the will. If we make a distinction between a memory-coefficient of reality—that is, the something about a memory which leads us to believe it represents a real experience—and a sensational coefficient, that is, the criterion of present sensational reality, we see that those two kinds of reality differ in their relation to the will. A present sensible reality is not under the control of any will, but a memory coefficient is subjected to will, in the sense that we are able to get the image again as a sensation by repeating the series of voluntary muscular sensations which were associated with it in its first experience. This memory-coefficient of external reality must be distinguished from the coefficient of memory itself; the latter being the feeling that an image has been in consciousness before, i. e. recognition, or sense of familiarity. A true memory is an image which I can get at will by a train of memory-associates, and which, when got, is further subject to my will. (London: Williams & Norgate.)

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. July, 1891. Vol. I. NO. 4.

CONTENTS:

The Modern Conception of the Science of Religion. By Prof. Edward Caird.

The Functions of Ethical Theory. By Prof. James H. Hyslop.

The Morality of Nations. By Prof. W. R. Sorley.

J. S. Mill’s Science of Ethology. By James Ward.

Vice and Immorality. By R. W. Black.

The Progress of Political Economy since Adam Smith. By Francis W. Newman.

Programme of School of Applied Ethics.

Discussions: The Moral Aspect of “Tips” and “Gratuities.” By Christine Ladd Franklin.

Ideas and facts, says Professor Caird, are continually being woven together as warp and woof, into the web of man’s intellectual life. The idea of the unity of mankind has within the last century become an almost instinctive presupposition of all civilised men. It has special application to the history of religion. In a man’s religion we have expressed his ultimate attitude to the universe. Even atheism or agnosticism involves a definite attitude towards the ultimate problem of human life. The modern ideas of the organic unity and the organic evolution of man inevitably compel us to seek for the one principle of life which is striving towards the full realisation of itself.

Professor Hyslop remarks, that two questions may be asked: (1) Why is it that any disturbance in ethical speculation at once brings men up in arms about the consequences? (2) Why is there such a tendency even in speculative ethics to bring its theories into harmony and sympathy with “practical” problems? The preliminary answer is the distinction between science and art. The aim of science is to find causes; the aim of art to produce ends by means of these causes. But art may be divided into productive and practical art. Every consideration of the scope and aim of ethics shows it to be both a science and an art. As a science it endeavors to explain something; as an art, to realise something. Its complications are thus two-fold. Ethics may be a science in two distinct relations. First, it aims to show the general conception which will reduce the various motives actually governing human conduct to unity. Secondly, it aims to show the end that ought ideally to govern conduct, and this is the supreme object of ethics as a science.

In relation to the Morality of Nations, Professor Sorley says that the relations of the state, diplomatic or military, with other states may be compared with the relations of one individual to another, but the two sets of relations are not the same. A crime is an act punishable by law, and it is absurd therefore to speak as if the state, acting legally, could commit a crime. But if theft ceased to be a crime it would be as much an offense against morality as before. Taxation to which the taxed have not consented and unfair taxation cannot be regarded as theft, as some suppose. Individual morality becomes mixed with national morality when those through whom the state acts act for themselves and for their own interests, instead of for the common good. Within a nation the state is above all individuals, but there is no corresponding superior power over nations. What remains is a general obligation upon states to observe justice in their dealings with one another. National morality differs from individual morality in that a nation’s first duty may be said to be to itself. There is no selfishness, there is only patriotism, in its recognising the fact and acting upon it. The intercourse of nations can only reach a full measure of development under a common moral law, which recognises the rights of one nation as of equal value with the rights of any other.

Mr. Ward points out, that Mill, in his exposition of what he called Ethology, or the Exact Science of Human Nature, repeated in all the issues of his “Logic,” remarks that Ethology must first proceed deductively. The laws of the formation of character “are derivative laws, resulting from the general laws of mind, and are to be obtained by deducing them from those general laws.” There was a want of clearness in Mill’s conception of an individual. The notion of a Self proved, on his own admission, “the real stumbling block” to his psychological theory. In discussing the influence of remarkable men, Mill allows that “whatever depends on the peculiarities of individuals, combined with the accidents of the positions they hold, is necessarily incapable of being foreseen.” When we attempt to estimate the influence of circumstances on individuals, we must often know how the circumstances appear to them,—this personal equation so to say is frequently incalculable.

In the main, says Mr. Black, sin exists intimately in, or as an inseparable affection or potentiality of, the person as a whole, and to discourage it is to discourage the person, and tantamount, therefore, to discouraging his goodness as well. At this point the division of sin into vice and immorality becomes essential to a rational solution. Immorality is crime against living moral agents. Vice may be defined as the spending of the forces of one’s own life to the detriment of its moral capabilities.

Mr. Francis W. Newman, who began the study of Political Economy seventy years ago, when he was sixteen, gives in this article his views on the evils of land tenure in England.

Mrs. Franklin thinks “the subjective feeling of worth and dignity” which distinguishes the people of this country will be injured by “giving fees to our inferiors when they perform some service for which they are (or ought to be) otherwise well paid.” That the matter is not “absolute ethics” is apparent from the fact that in Japan a totally different sentiment prevails. The editor, Prof. Josiah Royce (under the signature of J. R.) in commenting on Mrs. Franklin’s communication after referring to the evils of the German custom of Trinkgeld as detailed by v. Ihering, says that if it harms the manhood of our writers to “tip” them the mischief should be met by organised devices such as v. Ihering proposes, and not by individual action. (Philadelphia: International Journal of Ethics, 1602 Chestnut Street.)

Ω.

REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.

CONTENTS: June, 1891. No. 186.

Les Resultats des Theories Contemporaines sur l’Association des Idees. By B. Bourdon.

Comment la Sensation devient Idee. By J. Payot.

Notes et Discussions. Qu’est-ce que la Physiologie Generale? By Durand (de Gros).

CONTENTS: July, 1891. No. 187.

La Notion de Limite en Mathematiques. By G. Milhaud.

Coup d’oeil sur l’Histoire de la Philosophie en Russie (I). By F. Lannes.

Les Sources de la Philosophie de l’Inde. By P. Regnaud.

M. Bourdon reviews the modes of association proposed by various psychologists, and the factors which intervene to give force to associations. Wundt alone; among psychologists has the great merit of not placing ideas and sensations in actual opposition. The laws of ideology are almost the same as those of physics; and the law of association ought to be true not only for ideas, but for sensations and for objects. M. Bourdon’s conclusion is that the theory of the association of ideas has hitherto been treated from a too subjective and idealistic point of view. He would substitute for the theory of association of idea a theory of a society of phenomena, which conception he thinks better explains the process.

In a preceding contribution to the Revue Philosophique (May, 1890) M. Payot showed that sensation is the translation into terms of consciousness of that which, considered from the objective point of view, is a reaction of the organism, as a whole, to an external impression. Sensations are the irreducible element of the psychic life. They contribute the materials which the mind modifies, combines, and classes according to their relations, variable or invariable. This is chronologically posterior to sensation, which has an affective origin. The reactions corresponding to the most frequent sensations become more and more rapid until consciousness, “which translates only physiological states of a sufficient duration,” has not time to appear. Here we have a reflex-act. In an intermediate zone where reactions take a time sufficient for them to be conscious, the intellectual states, to which the abstract name of the intellectual faculty has been given, have birth. Differentiation operates between sensible and intellectual facts, until they seem to belong to two irreducible faculties; but the intellectual states are grafted on the sensible states, and although the graft develops so greatly that the sensibility appears like a parasite, the latter is the primitive trunk and through it the graft exists by a kind of continued creation. Sensations are convenient abstractions but nothing more. A sensation never presents itself in the adult consciousness without a crowd of instantaneously evoked relations. There is never absolute exclusion between perception and sensation: these are two states which dissolve into each other, which have no difference in nature, and which are separable only in gross. Properly speaking there are no sensations, only perceptions more or less complex. In sensation the state of mind is considered in itself without reference to its relations; in perception attention is paid chiefly to the relations. But sensation exists only for consciousness, as it can never enter directly into intellectual constructions, but only through the state of remembrance. Every sensation so far as we are sensible of it is purely felt, and we effectuate our mental constructions not with sensations, but with our remembrances of sensations. But the rôle of sensation is still more restricted. However rapid its flight across consciousness it instantaneously provokes the remembrance of numerous sensations of differences and resemblances with anterior sensations. It is an occasion for this, and nothing more. To be perceived, a sensation must be followed by sensations different from itself. The mind seizes relations of resemblance between sensations and resemblances between relations: it classes them, the chaos unravels and organises itself. The organisation has been progressive, but at all stages the procedure is alike; it consists in disengaging remembrances more or less masked by dissimilarities: this is the universal procedure of the mind and the condition sine qua non of thought.

In his article on General Physiology, M. Durand (de Gros) in criticism of M. Ch. Richet’s article on this subject which appeared in the April number of the Revue Philosophique, points out that Richet in applying the term “general anatomy” to the anatomy of the tissues, and “special anatomy” to the anatomy of the organs, overlooked the fact that generality and speciality when used to express the two opposite sides of a science express relations of abstract, nominal extension and not real extension. Thus, by general chemistry is intended the consideration of the higher laws governing the molecular actions of bodies, the one on the other, whatever that may be, and the modes of composition which result therefrom for each of them. General physiology should be, therefore, the philosophy of the science of the functions of life, that is to say, the higher laws embracing all these various particular functions; special physiology having for its object these particular functions in what is proper to each of them and distinguishes it from the others. Physiology has reference, however, to the other animals as well as man, and also to plants, and hence the term general physiology has been applied to the physiology common to all living beings, and special physiology to that which concerns the various animal and vegetal species taken separately. But this is in reality comparative physiology, and thus positive physiologists have made a false use of the term general physiology, and have left the true general physiology unrecognised and unnamed. In conclusion, M. Durand presents his conception of “organology.”

In the form of a dialogue M. Milhaud meets the objections made to the notion of limit in Mathematics. The question whether to have a limit, for anything variable, is not synonymous with attaining a limit, is considered in connection with Zeno’s problem of Achilles and the tortoise, the strict solution of which is, not that Achilles will never overtake the tortoise, but that he will not overtake it on this side of a spot situated at a distance of 10/9 of a metre from the starting-point, within a period equal to 10/9 of a second commencing at the instant of starting. To the objection that by its very nature the limit cannot be attained, as where the limit and the variable element which indefinitely approaches it are essentially different, it is replied that when a variable element has a limit, this element is a quantity and the limit is a quantity of the same kind, quality being neglected. In the proposition: the length of the circumference is the limit of the perimeters of the inscribed polygons, the limit is a quantity of the same kind, that of length. It is not necessary to know whether the definition accords with reality. M. Milhaud then shows by reference to the properties of an unlimited series of inscribed polygons and the corresponding circumscribed polygons, that two such series of geometrical lengths satisfying the required conditions can always be considered as defining a new length, superior to all the first and inferior to all the others. As to its existence, it can be said only that a length exists only as determined, as limited; and a state of length, or a particular length has a right to exist, provided that the properties of quantity which condition it are not contradictory. The essence of mathematical space, breadth, length is only the content of their definitions. Mathematics owes its existence to the condition of creating for itself a world of fictions. There is a divergence of opinion as to whether incommensurables should be represented by lengths or by numerical symbols, but the divergence is a last echo of the endless discussions which the notions of infinity and continuity have raised among mathematicians.

Philosophic thought, says M. Lannes, presents, in Russia, in its past history, a very poor condition. Philosophy does not exist, unless that name be given to such moral precepts, or domestic recommendations as we find in “the instruction” of a Vladimir Monomaque or in the “Domostroï.” The Russian mind was easily guarded against the liberties of thought, regarding science and philosophy with contempt and holy dread. There, as during the Middle Ages in the rest of Europe, the end to attain, to which all others were subordinated, was the safety of the soul. It was only with Peter the Great that thought took a freer flight, notwithstanding the restrictions that it had still to support. The Little Russians were the first to turn towards western instruction. In order to meet the Jesuits, who appeared in Russia about the middle of the 16th century, with the arms they used, scholastic philosophy was introduced into the college of Pierre Mohila, at Kief. Aristotle was taken as guide and the teaching was in Latin. Under Alexis Mikhaïlovitch, rational, natural, and moral philosophy began to be taught in a formal manner at the Academy of Moscow. Peter the Great ordered an important place to be given to rhetoric and dialectics, and the mention of logic, psychology, and metaphysics in the programme of the Academy. In 1755 logic, metaphysics, and morality entered into the teaching of philosophy at the University. In the 18th century two currents of ideas manifested themselves, of which some are connected with mysticism, others with the influence of French philosophy. The former became associated, through Novikof and Schwartz, with free-masonry, which was regarded as a means of acquiring a knowledge of God, of nature, and of man, of becoming a better Christian, a better citizen, and a better family head. Novikof and Schwartz founded the “Society of the Friends of Instruction,” and through their zeal a mass of moral and religious books were published for distribution in places of instruction. The influence of the French “philosophers” of the 18th century was preponderant in Russia in the second half of the 18th century. Voltaire enjoyed the greatest favor, and his renown was universal. Freethought penetrated the middle classes, and even conservative and religious men denied miracles in the course of history, considered religion as a political instrument, and attacked the ignorance and cupidity of the clergy. On the happening of the French revolution Catherine was frightened and took rigorous measures against those who wished to use freedom of thought.

Questions of pedagogy held a great place in the thoughts of Catherine. She confided the care of pedagogic reforms to Betski, who showed that true education is that which unites the development of the body, of the mind, and of the heart; but the moral element ought to have the first place. Alexander I. re-established philosophic liberalism and sought to excite interest in social, economic, and political questions. The university of Moscow was reorganised, and one of the faculties included dogmatic and moral theology, theoretical and practical philosophy, natural, political and popular rights. Philosophy also established itself in the new universities of Kharkof, Kazan, and Petersburg. But minds were possessed with more living ideas and various tendencies, political, moral, religious, sceptical, led to the establishment of numerous secret societies whose starting point was the masonic alliance. About 1816, Schröder had introduced into the foreign lodges a spirit of cosmopolitan humanity. Fessler saw in the lodges a means of moral education, the basis of civic education. In order to be received as a mason, it was necessary to pass through certain “consecrations,” to obtain certain “degrees of knowledge.” Among those “consecrated” by Fessler was Spéranski who, notwithstanding his mysticism, was imbued with the principles of the Revolution. On the reaction under Prince Galitzyn, the minister of public instruction, science was given a mystical end, and religion was declared to be the supreme science. The sciences which could do injury to religion, as geology, were either discarded, or directed to be taught according to the spirit of Holy Scripture. As to philosophy, the teaching of moral philosophy, which does not separate morality from the faith, was alone allowed. The treatises of the Kantian Jacob were forbidden, as containing scandalous theories. In general, in the universities, during the first year of the nineteenth century the objects of philosophic study were somewhat vague. The utility of the sciences, of education, of the individual characters of peoples, enthusiastic discourses on free will, on the rights of reason, on the spirit and forces of nature. Fessler and Vellanski introduced the German philosophy and principally that of Schelling, which became in some sort the lever which put in movement ideas on the independence and the nationality of civilisation. The most ardent champion of Schelling’s doctrine was Odoievski, whose external personality marks curiously the idea entertained of philosophy and philosophers between 1820 and 1845. A philosopher was represented as a sort of romantic Faust, leading a kind of life different from common mortals. If he occupied himself with physical sciences, the philosopher was regarded as the equal of a sorcerer with terrible powers. M. Lannes concludes his present article with a sketch of the life and philosophy of Galitch, who on his return to St. Petersburg from a three years tour through Europe wrote a dissertation on philosophy, in which he explained the development of beings by the double action of activity and passivity, the one being cause, the other product. In 1819 Galitch taught in the University logic, psychology, and metaphysics, and later he received authority to teach the history of philosophy, to which he gave an eclectic character, in accordance with the instructions of his hierarchical superiors. In his esoteric teaching he initiated his friends into the philosophy of Schelling. In that year he published a “History of Philosophic Systems,” the appearance of which was a rare novelty in the Russian Scientific World. He subsequently published several other works, but the manuscript of one on the “Philosophy of the History of Humanity,” which cost him much labor was destroyed by fire. The merit of Galitch is to have wished to establish in Russia philosophy as science. He assigned to the study of philosophy the whole encyclopedia of the sciences, but true philosophic knowledge is the knowledge of the unity from which external phenomena flow. M. Lannes gives an analysis of Galitch’s “Picture of Man,” where, before M. Renouvier, he says of freedom, “it can itself begin an entire series of phenomena, which are then linked together in the relations of dependence, that is to say are the necessary acts of a voluntary principle.” Galitch deserves to occupy a small place in the general history of the philosophy of humanity. If there existed before him a science of the relations of the soul and the body, he was at least one of the first to elaborate a programme of what is called to-day comparative psychology.

M. Regnaud finds the sources of the philosophy of India in India itself, as they appear in all their simplicity and primitive character in the Rig-Veda, the very ancient collection of liturgical hymns of the Brahmans. The whole doctrine implied by both the Vedic cult and the text of the hymns is resumed in a verse of the Rig Veda. “Each day the same liquid rises and descends; the rains vivify the earth, the fires of the sacrifice vivify the sky.” The libations destined to feed the fire of sacrifice and which consisted of inflammable liquids, such as the ghrita or clarified butter, were poured out each time that the sacrifice was celebrated into the atmosphere (or the sky) whose life they maintained, in like manner as liquid and solid foods sustain the life of man. The whole religious conception of the Vedic epoch consists then in the idea of an endless circulus, of a perpetual exchange of the elements of life, in an immense body which is the universe, whose arterial centre is the sacrifice, and the fire the motor, the distributer, and so to say the brain. (Paris: Félix Alcan.)

Ω.

REVUE DE L’HYPNOTISME. April, 1891. No. 10. 5th YEAR.

CONTENTS:

(1) Accouchement dans l’hypnotisme. By Dr. Fraipont and M. J. Delbœuf. (2) Accouchement pendant le sommeil hypnotique. By Dr. M. G. Kingsbury. (3) Memoire relatif a certaines radiations perques par lessensitifs. By Baron de Reichembach. (4) Discussions et Polemique: La Nutrition dans l’hypnotisme. By Gilles de la Tourette and H. Cathelineau. (5) Recueil de Faits: Contribution à l’application de la thérapeutique suggestive. By Dr. P. Van Velsen. Huit observations d’accouchement sans douleur sous l’influence de l’hypnotisme. By Dr. Marie Dobrovosky. Revue Bibliographique.

Dr. Fraipont terminates his interesting memoir with the remark that save under very exceptional circumstances, as when the subject is very sensitive or has before suffered a sort of trance, hypnotism can scarcely have any practical importance in accouchment. M. Delbœuf refers in a postscript to the case of a patient described in his writings by the initial J..., and states that her accouchment confirms him in his view of the rôle of the brain, which he regards as a moderating and inhibiting organ, and consequently in the opinion expressed by him in the Revue Philosophique as to the essence of freedom, which he regards as having an arresting and not an inciting effect.

MM. de la Fourette and Cathelineau confirm the conclusion drawn from researches made by them for Professor Charcot, that nutrition is affected during the hypnotic sleep, and therefore that hypnotism is a pathological condition. (Paris: 170 Rue Saint-Antoine.)

PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Vol. XXVII. Nos. 9 and 10.

CONTENTS:

Goethes Verhaeltniss zu Spinoza und seine Philosophische Weltanschauung. By G. Schneege. I.

Wilhelm Wundt’s “System der Philosophie.” By Johannes Volkelt. I.

Recensionen: (1) A. Fouillée, L’Avenir de la métaphysique fondée sur l’expérience. By C. Schaarschmidt. (2) Th. von Varnbüler, Widerlegung der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. By E. König. (3) Bericht über neuere Erscheinungen aus dem Gebiete der Geschichte der Æsthetik. By E. Kühnemann. (4) C. Baeumker, Das Problem der Materie in der griechischen Philosophie. By P. Natorp.

Litteraturbericht.

Johannes Volkelt continues his review of Wilhelm Wundt’s “System of Philosophy.” Prof. C. Schaarschmidt criticises Fouillée’s view of a future metaphysics as based upon experience, from the Kantian standpoint. Dr. E. König explains with sufficient strength the futility of Varnbüler in his bold attempt of refuting Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” and Dr. Paul Natorp, the editor, devotes an article to Prof. Clemens Baeumker’s book “Das Problem der Materie in der Griechischen Philosophie,” in which the author sets forth that the problem of matter is not a limited problem, but the sum total of all those questions which have reference to the existence of some cause of sensory phenomena which in its nature is different from consciousness. The problems of psycho-physics and of the theory of cognition are modern and were unknown to the ancients. Their standpoint remained throughout that of realism. A résumé of the views of Greek philosophers from Thales down to the New Platonists follows.

The leading article is devoted to Goethe’s relation to Spinoza and his philosophical world-conception.

Goethe’s philosophical and religious opinions are naturally of the greatest interest, because Goethe, the child of nature in the highest sense of the word, represents a genius not such as our great contemporary Cesare Lombroso conceives him to be, i. e. a species of the abnormal man and a kind of insane person, but such as genius is conceived by the layman, i. e. an abnormally normal man, a man whose excellencies lie in a rare harmony of highly developed perfections—not in eccentricities. Goethe’s eccentricities were not worse or more extended than those of average people, but he had more sense, more humor, more depth, and more spirit. Well, Goethe as a son of man and as a type of an unusually perfect man was a poet, a philosopher, a scientist, an historian, an artist, a man of the world, and a man of practical life, all in one, and the opinions of this man in the religio-philosophical field show at least that they accord with man as a child of nature.

Goethe’s philosophical views were strongly influenced by Spinoza yet not so as if Spinoza had impressed his view upon Goethe. Goethe happened to read Spinoza’s “Ethics” while still immature in mind and felt himself powerfully attracted by the spirit of the book. “What I may have read out of or into that work,” he writes, “I could give no account. Yet I found a pacification of my passions. A great and free vista upon the sensual and moral world seemed to open before my eyes. That strange sentence ‘He who loves God must not demand of God to love him in return,’ with all its premises and conclusions filled all my thoughts. To be unselfish in everything and most so in love and friendship was my highest delight, my maxim, my practice, so that the bold expression of later years ‘If I love thee, it is none of thy business’ came right from my heart. In addition to this, it must be recognised that the most intimate combinations result from contraries. The all-pervading calmness of Spinoza contrasted with my excited aspirations, his mathematical method was a counterpart of my poetical thoughts and habits.” In Spinoza’s doctrine of necessity Goethe found comfort concerning man’s dependence upon the outer world which caused him so much pain. It is probable that the famous sentence of the liberation from passions through a clear comprehension of them was very sympathetic to Goethe, for it is a characteristic feature of his poetry that they were confessions as well as liberations of all that moved and disturbed him. As soon as Goethe was able to give to himself a clear account concerning that which had affected his soul and as soon as he could give a poetical form to it so that it became something independent and outside of him, he gained, in the sense of Spinoza’s doctrine of liberation from passions, the peace and liberty of his soul. Yet Spinoza’s doctrine of necessity was a metaphysical conception. Goethe transferred it into the domains of practical ethics, thus giving rise to his idea of resignation. Goethe writes in the beginning of the sixteenth book of “Wahrheit und Dichtung”: “Our physical as well as our social life, customs, habits, worldly wisdom, philosophy, religion, even many incidental events, everything demands of us that we should resign ourselves. So many things which most intrinsically belong to us we are not allowed to develop. That of the outer world which we want as a complement of our nature is taken away and many things which are foreign to us and disagreeable are thrown upon us. We are deprived of everything that we have with difficulty acquired, of everything that is friendly and before we fully comprehend it we find ourselves obliged to surrender our very personality, first piecemeal and finally in its entirety.” Professor Schneege says that Goethe’s practice of resignation gave him solace when he felt low-spirited concerning the limits of human willing and wishing and hoping, and his resignation was as a matter of principle a total resignation. A partial resignation leads to the pessimistic outcry “All is vanity,” yet the total resignation affords an inner peace and produces that “air of peace,” die Friedensluft as Goethe calls it, which surrounds us when reading Spinoza.

One of Goethe’s maxims is quite Spinozistic. Goethe says (Max. und Refl. Abth. v.): “He who declares himself to be free will feel himself at once dependent but he who dares to declare himself dependent, feels himself free.”

Goethe rejected the idea of a personal and transcendent Deity which was urged so strongly upon him by Lavater. Rejecting Lavater’s view, he says (Wahrh. und Dicht. xiv.): “I assured him in accord with my Realism which is inborn as well as acquired that since it had pleased God and Nature to make me as I am, I must remain so.” The expression “God and Nature” savors strongly of Spinoza’s “Deus sive natura.”

According to Eckermann (Gesp. m. G. ii, p. 169) Holbach’s Systéme de la nature had also made a strong impression upon Goethe. Nevertheless he was dissatisfied with the spirit of French materialism. He says: “How empty and hollow is this sad atheistic twilight, in which the earth with all its forms and the heaven with all its stars disappear. Matter only is said to exist, being in motion from eternity to eternity, thus producing to the right and to the left without further ado all the innumerable phenomena of being.” Goethe’s view of “God and nature,” did not deny the Deity as such, but identified both in the sense of Spinoza. In this sense Goethe interpreted the sentence: Qui deum amat conari not potest, ut Deus ipsum contra amet—si homo id conaretur, cuperet ergo ut Deus quem amat, non esset Deus. The latter idea, “if a man wished that God should love him in return, he would wish that God be not God” is a corollary only to the impersonal conception of Spinoza’s non-anthropomorphised Deity. We cannot and we must not think of God as a human being who like a monarch makes favorites of those who are faithful not so much to the divine laws of ethics but to God personally.

Goethe agreed in his views of Spinoza with Herder, who in a letter to Jacobi writes: “The πρὼτον ψεῦδος, my dear Jacobi, in all anti-spinozistic systems is that God is supposed to be the great ens entium, the cause of all phenomena, a cypher, an abstract idea which we have formulated. However, that is not so according to Spinoza; God is to him the most real and active unity which says to itself ‘I am that I am, and shall be in all the changes of my phenomena that which I shall be.’ What you mean, my dear fellows, by an existence outside of the world, I do not understand. If God does not exist in the world, and indeed, everywhere unlimited in his totality and entirety, he does not exist at all. The limitation of personality does not belong to the infinite being, since a person originates with us by limitation as a kind of modus or as an aggregate of beings whose activity is endowed with the illusion of unity.” A modification of Spinoza’s view consists in the recognition of the creative activity which Herder attributes to God. In another letter to Jacobi, Herder writes: “You wish God in the shape of man like a friend who thinks of you. Consider that in that case he must think humanly of you. If he is partial to you he will be partial against others. Explain to me why you need him to be human. He speaks to you, he affects you through all noble men who are his organs and most so through his organ of organs, the core of his spiritual creation, his only begotten. I must confess that this philosophy makes me exceedingly happy. Goethe has read Spinoza since your departure and it is a test case to me that he has conceived him exactly as I do.”

Herder was a clergyman and he held the highest position of his church, being Superintendent General. Would the protestant state churches of to-day either in England or in Germany have room for a man like Herder?

Goethe concurred with Herder, that the idea of an extramundane Deity has no sense, an outside God is powerless and an immanent God alone is a reality. He puts in the mouth of Faust the following lines:

Spinoza makes a difference between natura naturans and natura naturata. A similar contrast is made by Goethe in the following lines which are found among the Zahme Xenien, Part vii.

According to Schneege, Goethe was an agnostic. Faust says:

This quotation however expresses Faust’s despair and not Goethe’s philosophical view. It is true that Goethe has made a few utterances which savor of agnosticism, but most of them are expressive of the idea that we can never be through with our wisdom; every new solution proposes new problems.

How little Goethe was in accord with the view of modern agnosticism or phenomenalism, that we know the outside of nature only and not her inside, can be learned from his opposition to Haller’s famous lines:

In answer to the agnostic sentiment of the famous naturalist, Goethe answered with the following verses (quoted in the translation given in “Fundamental Problems,” p. 142):

We ought to bear in mind that Goethe was no philosopher in the strict sense of the word and did not attempt to have a system that should be free from contradictions. So we read in one place: “Man is not born to solve the problem of the world, but to seek for the limit of the incomprehensible and then to remain within the limits of the comprehensible,” and in another place “Man must hold fast to the belief that what seems incomprehensible is comprehensible, for otherwise he would cease to investigate.”

The idea of evolution was the basis of Goethe’s idea of immortality. Here also he remains in accord with Herder who had proposed in his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind” his views of the development of beings by degrees. Goethe wrote from Rome (See “Herder’s Nachlass,” ed. Düntzer, Frankfort, 1756, i, p. 17.): “How much I enjoy Herder’s ‘Ideas,’ I can scarcely express. Since I expect no Messiah, this [viz. the prospect of further evolution] is to me the dearest Gospel.”

Goethe’s idea of the soul is not clearly worked out in its philosophical aspect. He speaks of souls as of monads and believes in a migration of the soul. “I am sure,” Goethe said to Falk, “I have been here some thousand times and expect to come again some thousand times.”

Goethe was very decided in practical and ethical respects. Goethe deviated from Spinoza by introducing a strong trait of individualism into Spinoza’s cosmism.

And man is the last product of constantly higher evolving Nature—das letzte Product der sich immer steigernden Natur. Nature’s intention according to Goethe’s view is to produce constantly more perfect creatures. He says: “Imagine Nature standing as a gamester before the roulette table constantly shouting au double. With all she has won through all the phases of her activity she continues to play on into infinity. Stone, plant, animal, everything is risked in such hazarding ventures again and again, and who can tell whether man himself is not but a venture for a higher aim.” Death was to Goethe no destruction but a dissolution. A destruction or annihilation appeared as an impossibility to him. And his idea of immortality was not one of existence after death but of a continued activity. In the year 1825 Goethe declared to Chancellor von Müller (“Gespräche m.d. Kanzler von Müller,” p. 99), that he should not know what to do with an immortality in which he would not find new tasks to do and new difficulties to conquer. (Heidelberg: Georg Weiss.)