Volume 2 — THE MONIST. (continued 4)

While Mark still preserves the development of Jesus’s messianic consciousness, Luke as well as Matthew have entirely obliterated it. According to Mark, Jesus proclaims the kingdom; Matthew and Luke make him preach his person. They make Jesus proclaim himself as the Messiah from the very beginning and his command not to speak it out openly given to those whom he healed and also to his disciples has no sense here. Matthew has a liking for cabalistic numbers, there are three times seven generations the names of which are not without doing violence to historical facts adjusted to the pattern, there are three temptations, seven parables, etc. Throughout we notice reflection, purposive selection of the material, and artificial adjustment to a plan. The book has a tendency to show that Jesus was the King of Israel predicted by the prophets and in the psalms. Luke on the other hand has also a dogmatic programme. It is the gospel of gentile Christianity as founded by Paul.

The critical school finds adversaries among theologians as well as unchristian thinkers, both of whom are apt to speak of fraud when religious books are written with certain dogmatic tendencies. Professor Holtzmann objects to such a view of the development of Christianity. He says that a religion which did not rouse sufficient enthusiasm to develop a religious poetry would be very poor and lifeless. Even the apocrypha of the New Testament are evidence of the vigor of the new religion, although we must be aware of the fact that the Church showed good judgment when adopting its canon to accept those which were full of moral meaning and to reject those which were mere myth without any deeper significance.

We have given this abstract of one part of Holtzmann’s work with the omission of all the learned by-work for those not familiar with theological investigation. Similar results are obtained by an inquiry into the origin of the Acts. The apostles were the first and living representatives of the Christ. Out of the interest in the apostles’ words grew an interest in their actions and lives, and there are a great many writings of this subject preserved. One only has been received into the canon.

It is impossible to follow Professor Holtzmann into the details of his work, but we can warmly recommend it as the best compendium existing, not only for the student of theology but for everybody who is interested in the results of the scientific criticism of the synoptic gospels and the Acts.⁠[51]

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Schriften der Gesellschaft fuer Psychologische Forschung. Heft 2. Ueber Aufgaben und Methoden der Psychologie. By Hugo Münsterberg. Leipsic: Ambr. Abel. 1891.

In this monograph Professor Münsterberg prepares the way for greater and more important work. His aim is to define the province of psychology and to investigate the methods which have to be employed. Psychology is not philosophy; accordingly the consideration whether there is a reality of an outside world does not belong here. The psychologist is not bound to wait till this and other metaphysical questions are decided with certainty; the reality of the outside world has simply to be assumed together with its cognisability.

What means ‘to explain’? “To explain means simply to render clear that which is not clear or to reduce the unknown to the known, the complex to the simple (p. 104).... It is an indispensable presupposition of any natural science to consider nature as being capable of explanation (erklärbar), and this presupposition means that natural processes can be perfectly separated into most simple mechanical processes. This presumption can be realised to-day only on the basis of the atom-conception. It is accordingly not an experience, but a postulate of natural science to derive the whole material world-process from the mechanism of atoms. A description becomes an explanation in the measure in which it approaches this aim” (p. 105). The question is, whether in psychology, description can be supplanted by explanation, whether laws can be stated instead of mere rules.

Professor Münsterberg takes that ground in psychology which as it appears to us is the only tenable ground, viz. that feelings are not motions and cannot be explained as converted physical processes. Professor Münsterberg says: “A sensation, a feeling, a will can never fill even the very smallest space. What is extended in space can never itself be a state of consciousness. To the psychologist this distinction is now a matter of course, so much so that it is difficult to call to one’s mind how much trouble it cost to acquire this insight. The object of psychology accordingly can never be an object in space, it can never be a process of motion, accordingly, even brain-irritation can under no circumstances ever become the object of psychology” (p. 97). Psychology has to investigate the psychical phenomena of the individual consciousness (p. 102), it has to separate it into its elements, i. e. those ingredients which are no longer divisible; which being done, psychology searches for the rules for the combinations of these psychical elements and shows us the different complex contents which are formed in this way by the elements up to that totality of single combinations which is given us as the contents of our spiritual personality (p. 103).

“The question is, (1) Are there psychological processes in us, the development of which presents itself with immediate certainty as necessary, and (2) can we reduce all the individual and with them all the spiritual phenomena to such spiritual processes recognised as necessary? The first question can be affirmed, although only in a limited sense, and the second question must be unequivocally denied, thus making an immediate explanation of psychical phenomena impossible” (p. 107). The first question is to be affirmed in a limited sense, because “if certain premises are thought, the conclusion, it appears to us as a necessity, can be thought thus and not otherwise” (p. 108). But this is “a logical and not a psychological necessity.” To actually think the conclusion depends upon the will to think it. The will actually existing, the logical necessity becomes a psychological, for “the connection between the willing and the willed (zwischen Willen und Gewolltem) always appears to us as necessary.... Where there is inner will there is an inner necessity.” Now, in order to make explanations in the physical world, we supplement that which has been actually observed with not-observed connections. But we cannot, according to Münsterberg, in an analogous way supplement in the world of psychical phenomena the conscious states with any other kind of states which are not conscious, thus referring our spiritual life and acts of will to unconscious processes, for “the very nature of psychical states is consciousness, i. e. a state of being conscious. Ihr Sein ist das bewusst-sein.... A state of consciousness, says Münsterberg, which is not conscious, is comparable not to a body which is not perceived, but to one which does not exist. Accordingly unconscious psychical phenomena do not exist. All psychical phenomena are directly given and the reduction of their combinations in a certain way through hypothetical psychological supplements is once for all excluded” (p. 110).

We agree in all the main positions with Professor Münsterberg, but in the last mentioned point we disagree. Professor Münsterberg limits psychical states or feelings to states of consciousness without considering that there are subconscious and even unconscious feelings. By consciousness we understand those feelings alone which are concentrated so as to be connected with the ego, i. e. the present centre of consciousness. We assume that even the spinal ganglions of the brainless frog are feeling if the skin is irritated, but this feeling can never become conscious, it can no more be telegraphed to the central station so as to become co-ordinated with other feelings which are registered in the brain. The objection may be raised, We do not know whether the ganglion is feeling; and I should answer, I call feeling anything that is of the same nature as the elements of which consciousness consists, and we have all reasons to assume that there is such an elementary psychical accompaniment of the ganglionic irritations, and that consciousness rises from many such elements through their co-ordinate combination in the brain. Isolated feelings are never conscious, and consciousness is a co-operative system of feeling. This distinction between consciousness and feeling is a mere matter of terminology. If we find another terminology more practical we are willing to surrender ours. Yet such a distinction between consciousness and feeling seems to be necessary for a proper description of the psychical facts. The assumption of subconscious states and even of unconscious feelings is a great help in explaining the phenomena of consciousness. But unless we are grossly mistaken, our disagreement is merely apparent, for Professor Münsterberg, rejecting the idea of a psychological explanation, believes in the parallelism of psychical and physical phenomena. “The physical acts” (he says on p. 125) “reducible to mechanical axioms can be explained through causation, the psychical acts follow one another without inner necessity. If we connect both, we are enabled to transfer the necessity-connection of the physical upon the psychical and offer thus an explanation where otherwise description only was possible.” But in doing this, have we not supplemented those psychical elements which appear as conscious states by other psychical elements which have not entered into that combination which makes them actually conscious? It is an hypothetical addition for the sake of explanation, a Hilfsconstruction just as much as the supposition of the existence of atoms or electric currents or other physical phenomena which are not directly observed, but indirectly in their effects only.

Supplements are necessary for explanation wherever the immediate facts do not contain all the elements of a certain process. If an observable phenomenon has not its conditions in observable facts we hypothetically assume unobservable facts as its causes. But we may incidentally remark that description and explanation are not different in kind, but in degree. Explanation is an exhaustive description set forth in its greatest possible simplicity. An exhaustive description enumerates all the determinative factors of a process and it drops everything that is of no account, so that information is imparted with the greatest economy as well as completeness. An exhaustive description is a reliable guide to preascertain the outcome of a process, and reveals in this way the identity in the change, the continuity of the process and the conservation of matter and energy in their transformations, or, in other words, it reveals the necessity of the result. There is perhaps no natural science in which the processes can be exhaustively described without hypothetical supplements and so the science of psychology forms no exception to the general rule.

The aim of psychology in its wider sense will be “to separate all the contents of consciousness into their elements, to state their laws of combination, and to seek in an empirical way for the diverse elementary psychical contents, their correspondent physiological irritations, in order to explain in this way mediately from the coexistence and succession of physiological irritations the purely psychological laws of combinations which as such are unexplainable” (p. 127).

Our objection to this view resembles much some of the objections which Professor Münsterberg himself makes when speaking of the availability of the mathematical method so-called. He says: “Measuring and counting of psychological phenomena have been made repeatedly, directly as well as indirectly, and it has been proved that mathematics can be applied to psychology.... Nevertheless it would be a misuse of the word if we named these numerical descriptions an ‘application of the mathematical method.’ If an historian of literature counts the poems and dramas of authors, if he also calculates how long it took them to write their literary products, who would call his work a mathematical history of literature? Even astronomy would be no mathematical science if we counted only the stars in the sky.” If the aim of psychological explanation were as Professor Münsterberg here asserts to be reached through the explanation of physiological states only, we should say, that the physiological method were alone admissible in psychology, a principle to which our author rightly objects. Psychical states sometimes demand a physiological explanation, and we cannot understand psychology without having a certain amount of physiological knowledge. Nevertheless, the explanation of psychical states and the necessity of certain connections must be understood mainly from the psychical elements themselves. Psychical elements, i. e. feelings, as has been explained on other occasions, have acquired and constantly do acquire meaning. This meaning which appears in sensation-symbols and thought-symbols and which is different in the different forms of feeling (correspondent to different forms of nervous action), creates a new domain,—the domain of spirit,—and thus psychical states are changed into spiritual facts. Suppose for instance that a merchant receives his mail; he opens a letter containing some important news which sets at once all his nerves into irritation, makes him neglectful of all other things in order to attend with great haste to one special affair. How can we explain this instance, or any other spiritual act through a consideration of physiological conditions. Is it not the meaning alone which special sense-impressions convey that produces the extraordinary effects? The physiologist would as little be able to detect this meaning through an analysis of the sense-impressions, as an electrician would be to understand the import of a telegram when measuring the strength of the electric current in the telegraph wires. The combinations of the purely psychical states may after all not be quite unexplainable, while their physiological concomitants are in many cases insufficient to account for spiritual interconnections.

In discussing the methods of psychology Professor Münsterberg rejects the speculative and the mathematical methods; he claims a great importance (and we agree with him) for self-observation. But self-observation is no easy task; it requires a high degree of training. “He who does not understand botany cannot make observations of plant-life. The same things which call into play certain associations in the botanist are also seen by the layman, but they remain unobserved. Self-observation is in a similar way ... not without its presuppositions; it is dependent upon a rich store of ready associations” (p. 164).

Psychological investigations under natural conditions are classified by Münsterberg according to their objects, as those of the normal man, the child, the savage, the insane, the animal, etc. In experimental psychology, psychopetal, psychofugal, and psychocentral processes are distinguished. For psycho-physiological investigations we have besides, (1) the immediate experiment in the laboratory, (2) the method of anatomy, (3) of comparative anatomy, (4) and of physiology. Professor Münsterberg concludes with an appeal to institute special professorships of psychology, which is at present a mere branch of philosophy. It takes all the energy of one man to keep abreast with the progress of psychological investigation. “No medical man, no lawyer, no theologian, or educator should enter into practical life without having passed an examination in psychology ... the growing generation of children, the sick, the criminal, and the comfort-seeking souls of mankind have to suffer if teachers, physicians, judges, and preachers are ignoramuses in the matter of human soul-life.... But here also the gods have placed sweat before virtue.”

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La Philosophie du Siècle. By E. de Roberty. Paris: Félix Alcan.

The author of the present work, which forms a volume of the Library of Contemporary Philosophy, is one of those disciples of the founder of French positivism who, while following in his footsteps to a certain point, do not hesitate to diverge from the beaten track when they think their leader has gone astray in his philosophic quest. M. de Roberty speaks of Comte with reverence as his first guide and his best master, and he finds in the very contradictions of the Master the germ of his own conception of the general trend of philosophic development.

The fundamental thesis of the present work is that the three contemporaneous philosophic systems, those of Criticism, Positivism, and Evolutionism, are merely varieties of a single species, as strictly parallel manifestations of a common stock of beliefs and general hypotheses. The basic identity of the thought of this century is shown by the ever increasing convergence of the great leading ideas, as exhibited in the prevailing theories of knowledge, by the preponderance of relativism, and of agnosticism. It reveals itself, especially in the similar conceptions formed by the most varied systems, not only of the essential characters of philosophy, its method, and the ends it ought to pursue, but also of the scientific laws which govern its evolution. We cannot follow the author through his discussion of all these points and we must therefore restrict ourselves to the most salient features of his argument.

Modern philosophy is represented by three principal schools: Criticism which originated with Kant, Positivism founded by Comte, and Evolutionism introduced by Spencer. These three systems had a common ancestry, that of sensualism. The critical philosophy is the legitimate heir of sensuous idealism, and the positive philosophy the immediate descendant of sensuous materialism. The evolution philosophy is itself rooted in sensualism, but it is really a conciliator of the two great philosophies which preceded it, Criticism and Positivism. This conclusion, which appears to us just, is supported by various considerations to which reference here is not necessary. M. de Roberty bears testimony to the influence of the philosophy of Kant over the development of the evolutionist conception, which could be applied to society only by giving an apparent universality to the mechanical hypothesis. This was accomplished by Spencer, as it had been done to some extent by Comte. The popularity of the evolution philosophy is explained by the author as due to its admixture of agnosticism with a monism which captivates the masses “by the audacious assertion that it has raised all veils and resolved all enigmas.” Kant, Comte, and Spencer have equally seized this characteristic trait of the genius of our century. They each treat, says M. de Roberty, of the most transcendent problems of metaphysics, and place them carefully under the cover of the experimental method. Let us add that they are each different expressions of that genius, which marks the progress of the mental evolution of mankind.

The second part of M. de Roberty’s work deals in the first place with the conceptions of philosophy, its nature and its end, framed by the three great modern systems. The confusion generally made between philosophy and science is first pointed out, the evil of which arises from the fact that allowance is not made for the progress of scientific knowledge. The author is strongly inclined to favor the idea of the general equivalence of science and philosophy, in the sense that every effect is identified with its cause. But as the effect is always modified with its cause, neither the content not the general conception of philosophy can remain unchangeable. Philosophy becomes thus the co-ordination of the sciences in view of their general and abstract finality—by which is meant simply the last term of an evolution—a conception of the world.

In what do the conceptions of philosophy held by the criticist, the positivist, and the evolutionist, differ from that formulated by M. de Roberty? He affirms that they all entertain certain errors of method derived chiefly from ancient metaphysics. The prototype is found in Kant, who says that philosophy is a system of universal acquirements formed of abstract notions, and that it has for its aim the passage of our understanding from sensible to suprasensible knowledge. The latter is the a priori, the permanent and verifiable hypothesis, for each of them. It is the transcendental element which all modern philosophy has derived from the past, and which forms the bond of alliance between faith and knowledge. Of the three postulates of Spencer, the universal hypothesis is in the first, an Unknowable Force. The other two belong to psychology, proving that the English evolutionist, like Comte, confounds science with philosophy, which to him, as to his predecessors, is a simple theory of knowledge.

Philosophy is a method which conducts to a conception of the world. But, says M. de Roberty, modern philosophies fail in that they deal with hypotheses. Now, although hypothesis is the soul of the special sciences, for philosophy it must always be a purely mental recreation. To render valid the universal hypothesis constructed by philosophers, it would be necessary that the sum of the final truths of science should include the sum of the phenomena which constitute nature.

We cannot follow the author through his ingenious criticisms of Spencer’s great synthetic formula, to which he devotes the twelfth chapter of the present work, and which he characterises as the perfect type of the universal unverifiable hypothesis. Nor can we do more than give a passing glance at his views of the psychology of the three modern systems of philosophy. He affirms that the metaphysical transformation by criticism of psychology into philosophy left hardly anything to the special science. To positivism is due the conception of psychology as forming an integral part of biology, which has led to the important psycho-physical experiments of the present day. But the biological analysis of the individual should be followed by social analysis, the study of mental manifestations in society, in connection with which should be created a special concrete science to embrace the higher psychology, as pointed out by the author in his work “La Sociologie.” Science, art, and industry are a projection into the external world of the thinking, feeling, acting subject, and psychology ought also to be thus projected by fusion with biology, or with biology and sociology, which it is necessary to study if we would discover psychic laws.

In the chapter on the Supremacy of Science, the author affirms that the philosophy which will result from the progress of psychology and sociology will present a striking contrast with all known metaphysical forms, but it will always remain a world-conception, and it will have to submit to the law of correlation which explains the character and destinies of its predecessor. Agnosticism, which invites men to bend before the Deus ignotus of all religions, marks the fatal termination of ancient anthropomorphism, influenced by a progressive knowledge, and thus appears as the final integration of all theology. It also represents, however, the condition of incognisance to which the opposite state will succeed when the cycle of abstract sciences is completed and a really scientific psychology formed. Then hypotheses as to universal causes will receive their psychological solution, and it will remain for philosophy only to confront and co-ordinate them with the general results of other sciences. Having arrived at this point M. de Roberty formulates the conclusion that Philosophy and Science are terms which connote two principle species in the vast genus designated by the single term knowledge. The most marked trait of future philosophy will be the distinction of these two species, as their confusion was the most general character of the philosophy of the past. Philosophy and science will then be perfectly identified, but the identity will be general and not specific. Thus philosophy will not be positive in the sense of Comte, it will never completely identify itself with science.

In his last chapter, entitled “The Intellectual Series,” M. de Roberty continues his criticism of the views of Comte as to the law of the evolution of philosophy. He shows that, so far from this being the most general law of intellectual evolution, and therefore the supreme law of all social phenomena, philosophy is only one of three intermediate terms, the others being art and industry, by the aid of which the evolution of scientific ideas acts on the ensemble of the social evolution. The intellectual evolution is the direct consequence of the social fact, but the social evolution is subject to the laws of intellectual evolution, which embrace four great classes of conceptions, answering to the four well recognised groups of facts known as science, philosophy, art, and industry. We have here the same series of special evolutions as those supposed by Comte, with the important change, however, marked by the inversion of the first two members of the series. In this relation, the author affirms that Comte’s law of the three states is false so far as concerns the evolution of the sciences, and is of very secondary importance as regards the evolution of philosophy and the two succeeding evolutions.

The author concludes his work with a criticism intended to show that the principal defects of Comte’s system arise from the confusion previously insisted on in relation to the first terms of the intellectual series, science and philosophy. That confusion is exhibited in the statement that among the ancients philosophy was developed before science and art. M. de Roberty, moreover, declares Comte’s theory that the industrial development is the point of departure of modern civilisation, leads to a complete subversion of the logical and historical. Instead of the useful or the proper being, as that theory would require, the foundation of the good and this, in its turn, the germ of the true, the true is the foundation of the beautiful, and of the good and the useful. But the true is more complex than supposed by Comte. It possesses at least two aspects, science and philosophy, which may be really distinguished, although the line which separates them is yet undetermined.

We have given a summary of M. de Roberty’s general argument, instead of referring to particular propositions which may be open to criticism, because his work appears to us a very valuable contribution towards the elucidation of the important question as to the position of philosophy in relation to science. We shall look with much interest for the appearance of the author’s two further works which he announces as supplementary to the present one. That on Agnosticism is already in the press. The subject of the other work is Monism, which M. de Roberty characterises as “the chimerical pursuit which has essayed, through the ages, to fix the so-called unity of things, the extra or supralogical identity of phenomena.” This hypothetical monism of philosophy is dealt with incidentally in the present work. The “supralogical identity of phenomena” is a different kind of monism from that of The Monist.

Ω.

Ueber Bewegungsempfindungen. Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doctorwürde vorgelegt der hohen philosophischen Facultät der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg i. B. By Edmund Burke Delabarre of Massachusetts. Freiburg in Baden: Hch. Epstein, 1891.

Dr. Edmund Burke Delabarre introduces himself to the world of science with an excellent monograph on motion-sensations, based upon careful observations which were made in Professor Münsterberg’s psychological laboratory at Freiburg i. B. The subject of the dissertation is of great importance and there is much confusion prevalent at present even among the most prominent authorities. It appears to us that Dr. Delabarre has adopted the right view and he certainly defends it with great ability. Professor Wundt rejects in his Physiological Psychology all the theory of the so-called “muscle-sense” and admits that there is some truth in the three explanations devised as an explanation of our consciousness of performed motions, which thus would be a complex of (1) pressure-sensations, (2) specific muscle-sensations, and (3) innervation-sensations. This third kind of sensations is of a very hypothetical nature. The term signifies that, when muscles are innervated we are supposed to have a direct sensation of the innervation in the central nerve-organs; and this view is objected to by Münsterberg, who says that “a brain irritation which is not accompanied with centripetal effects or central after-effects of former muscular activity has its physiological consequences but excites no conscious states.” Thus, according to Dr. Delabarre, without the motion of the sense-organs, i. e. muscular activity, there is no consciousness; all consciousness derives its data from the periphery. Dr. Delabarre goes over the whole field of the literature of the subject and weighs all pros and cons. He finds that all cases are intelligible without the supposition of central innervation-sensations. He admits that the term muscle-sense is vague, but he believes that the term having been generally introduced may be retained. He defines it as that complex of sensations which results from muscular activity.

The second part of the dissertation contains the reports of the experiments, describing the instruments used and the methods employed.

We are informed that Dr. Delabarre has been appointed to the chair of psychology in Brown University.

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Le Nihilisme Scientifique. I. Dialogue entre le Doctor Oudèn et L’Etudiant Ti son Neveu. Rapporté par P. Van Bemmelen. Leide: E. J. Brill, 1891.

Dr. Oudèn’s nephew thus summarises the scientific, or rather “philosophic” views of his uncle: “There is no God, but there is the world. In this world there are neither souls, nor mind, nor life; there is only matter and its elementary forces. Nevertheless these forces do not exist; there is only movement, the sole function of matter, which is inert. In its turn, matter has no reality; it is composed of geometrical points which are susceptible of movement. But as there is neither time nor space, there is no movement.” Nothingness is thus reached, but beyond is illusion, the maja of the Hindoos, which explains all our conceptions of nature including that of our own being. This scientific maja is not the semblance of a real world, but that of a world which does not exist, so that illusion and nothingness are the same thing. From which it follows that there is no illusion and no mind to be deceived! Mr. Van Bemmelen’s opuscule is an ingenious jeu d’esprit, evidently intended to exhibit a certain phase of speculation as a reductio ad absurdum.

Ω.

Diritto Sociale Tentativo in Bozza. Dell’Avv. Pietro Pellegrini. Borga a Mozzano. 1891.

There is no denying the activity of the statesmen and scholars of modern Italy in the cause of radical, social reconstruction and, as remarked by a recent traveller in Italy, in the “building up again a Commonwealth, founded on high principles of right and equality.” “Diritto Sociale,” in Italian jurisprudence, of course, relates to municipal and positive law, in its social-economical and social-political aspects. But, in a country with the municipal and political traditions of Italy, this “Diritto Sociale,” even in modern times, exhibits a tendency to crystallise into a kind of concrete, social religion. The Avvocato Signor Pietro Pellegrini, the learned author of this book, appears to feel deeply concerning the present condition of this branch of jurisprudence in Italy.

In his preface the author says, that during the present century legal science has not made any very substantial progress; that the revolution of the last century, while asserting the famous rights of man, forgot the rights of juridic persons, of corporations, and law became an individualista—or, individualiser. On the strength of his juridic personality man thereupon engaged in a struggle for his rights on the vast social field, but he found himself alone—an individual and nothing more. As such, he could not form a juridic, social organism, but he merely sought to adapt himself to an actual, external juridic organisation, differing but slightly from old-time despotism. On this basis the State still continues to create municipal and positive laws, more or less adapts them to the facts of reality, arbitrarily creating juridic persons and administrative bodies, such as the mandamenti, circondarii, provincie of the modern Italian kingdom—all of which are only hybrid administrative entia, that do not in the least satisfy a number of local public needs; and therefore, there is no harmony between individual men and the juridic persons, between the public administrative entia and the State, and there is bloody war among the States themselves.

The ultimate cause of all this conflict is to be ascribed to the individualism of the law, in not recognising organic, juridic relations; and this, moreover, necessarily called forth the reaction of an exaggerated socialism.... Person has a much wider significance than individual; person cannot be isolated, individual, because, juridically, person implies an exchange of relations with others; hence, juridic persons ought to enjoy a greater legal authority than they actually enjoy in our modern jurisprudence. The plasma sociale, or the original social mould, is developed by degrees into a vital, practically real, organism, endowed with a physical body, that needs the material means of nutrition, in order to live, to preserve, and develop itself. These, however, do not exist; because nature furnishes only sufficient means to preserve man in a purely savage, animal condition. But, at least, there exist the sources, or fountain-heads, from which it is possible to derive the desired nutritive materials; on condition of molding or transforming those fountain-heads, and of assuming their efficacious, practical direction. In the individualised or individual system there takes place a struggle among the individuals for the possession of that nourishment, in which case, however, the sources themselves are appropriated rather than the nutritive materials they contain. Such is the exclusive nature of the social means of nutrition, present and future, through which a large number of individuals will be at the mercy of a few, while the notorious “rights of man,” remain powerless....

The rights emanating from the organic concept of personality, together with the physico-economical laws of the fountain-heads of social nourishment, spontaneously furnish the equitable distribution of the nutritive materials to each organic member, so that there is no monopolising of those natural fountain-heads, but a normal nutrition of all the organs, according to their needs, and their actual capacity as juridically displayed....

Those fountain-heads, besides being limited, are scattered through space, because it is impossible to unite or concentrate them on any particular point of the globe. Hence this plasma sociale or social mold is distributed through space according to imperative laws, that result from the combined capacities of the respective juridic, that is, social persons, with the capacities of the respective sources of social nourishment—of different municipal organisations, of cities, townships, and villages. All these are pre-eminently juridic and social persons, each one possessing its peculiar functions, that cannot be exercised by other persons. The present work contains a lengthy but valuable introduction in four chapters, discussing the general concept of law; and thereupon the book is divided into three parts, in which are explained the principles and development of positive law in its respectively civil-social, social-economical, and social-political aspects. This work, throughout, presents a number of equally important and novel points of view, through which the author’s concept of an organic municipal and social law everywhere becomes the surest means of creating unity and harmony, not only within the general department of law, but also within the sphere of practical legislation.

γνλν.

An Outline of Locke’s Ethical Philosophy. By Mattoon Monroe Curtis, M. A. Leipsic: Gustav Fock, 1890.

This excellent study was presented to the University of Leipsic as the Inaugural Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and it is well deserving of publication, if for no other reason than the need of such a work. There appears to have been hitherto no complete account of Locke’s System of Ethics, which does not even find a place in Mackintosh’s “Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy.” The author has not been able to discover any trace of the treatise on Ethics which Locke proposed to write, but his published works “abound in ethical observation and severally took their rise from ethical considerations,” so that there is no deficiency of materials from which to ascertain his ideas on that subject.

Mr. Curtis very justly remarks that it is important to ascertain an author’s views before criticising them, a truism which is not always acted on, as indeed was the case with Locke’s own critics. He does not, however, profess to criticise but, as the title of his work shows, to give an outline of Locke’s Ethical Philosophy. In his Preface he states that his author adopted the Stoic division of Philosophy into Physics, Ethics, and Logic. The object of Ethics, is described by Locke, in his noted “Essay,” as the seeking out of those rules and measures of human actions, which lead to happiness, and the means to practice them. The end of this, is not bare speculation, and the knowledge of truth; but right, and a conduct suitable to it. In the application of its principles Locke may be said to have gone further than any of his predecessors and of most of his successors. As pointed out by Mr. Curtis, he maintains that the institutions of government, religion, and education are, in essence, ethical and that all are parts of a system which must be based upon, and be in harmony with, the fundamental physiological and psychological principles of human nature. This follows from Locke’s principle that the Individual, and not the Family, is the real social unit. Man is a rational, social, religious, and political being, and, therefore, “in the individual is contained, potentially, all institutionalism.”

It must be noticed, however, that to Locke the moral dynamic in human society is the concept of God. He regards this idea “as a natural, formal, necessary and transcendental principle at the root of human nature and institutions, and consistently declares that the denial of it dissolves all,” as it alone gives a sufficient explanation and sanction to the principles of morality. This brings us to the very foundation of ethics. All depends, however, on our conception of God. Locke maintained that duty “cannot be understood without a law, nor a law be known or supposed without a law giver, or without reward or punishment.” His conception of God, therefore, was that of a law-giver, and he believed that the existence of God could be demonstrated not only by teleological argument, but also by psychological proof drawn from the being and nature of man. Locke was so thoroughly convinced of the dependence of morality on the existence of God, that, notwithstanding his general liberality of thought, he excluded atheists from toleration. He writes: “Promises and Covenants, and Oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an Atheist.”

It would be a mistake to suppose that, because Locke believed morality to be founded in our conception of God, he considered the moral law referable simply to the divine will, and therefore to be arbitrary and changeable. So far from this, he regarded the moral law as eternal and immutable, and affirmed that its cardinal principles could be discovered and laid hold of by the light of nature. As says Pfleiderer, when speaking of Locke and Wolff, “Locke also considers a supernatural revelation to be possible, and to have actually taken place in Christianity, but he insists as strongly as Wolff does, and even more logically, that this revelation must not in any way contradict the natural revelation given us by God in our reason.” Locke expressly declares, that the reason is natural revelation, while revelation is natural reason enlarged. The latter he regarded as necessary because, although reason is sufficient for the virtuous, penalties must be relied upon for influencing the multitude; and in revelation the doctrine of immortality with future rewards and punishments is made known. Whether this revelation is true or false, the fear of future punishment has undoubtedly had a restraining influence over the vicious. But reason would not be sufficient for the virtuous without an inclination natural or acquired, to virtue. It is a question of disposition, and this will be virtuous or vicious, according to the conditions under which the individual has come into being and been “educated,” in the fullest sense of this term. Reason forms part of these conditions which, so far as they are not purely objective, are dependent on or referable to human nature; as, indeed, must be the supposed revelation of enlarged natural reason.

In relation to the ethical life, Locke declares that happiness is the only idea which reason takes up out of the sphere of pleasure and pain, and yet that if we aim directly at happiness, we shall miss it. What then has to be done is to seek out “the rules and measures of human actions which lead to happiness.” This is the office of ethics, the end of which is virtue, and thus happiness and virtue are one. With Locke moral actions are only those that depend “upon the choice of an understanding and free agent.” The agent here intended is, as pointed out by Mr. Curtis, the man, and not the will. Locke says that the proper question in connection with freedom, is not “whether the will be free, but whether the man be free.” The will is determined by the mind, and liberty is “a power to act, or not to act, according as the mind directs.” In his “Thoughts concerning Education” Locke affirms that “the result of our judgment, upon examination, is what ultimately determines the man, who could not be free, if his will were determined by anything but his own desire, guided by his own judgment.” The position of Locke is, says the author, that of Plato and Kant: Reason is given as the governor of the will, by its sway to constitute it good. Thence we may rightly conclude, that those who are not governed by reason have not true freedom.

We have not space to consider the views entertained by Locke on Institutional Ethics, beyond referring to his doctrine that property rights are given only by labor, and not by occupation, and that labor is the source of all values. The latter doctrine cannot now be accepted as sound, whatever may be said as to the former, but Locke deservedly holds a high place as a political economist. He seems indeed to have been a kind of universal genius. Mr. Curtis refers to the remark made of him “that no philosopher since Aristotle has made and recorded so many valuable observations, or given so great a stimulus to human thought.” Any fresh light that can be thrown on the opinions entertained by so profound a thinker, especially on the important question of ethics, is of value and hence we welcome the present work as an acceptable addition to philosophic literature.

Ω.

N. B.—Owing to lack of space, reviews of a number of new works have been crowded out of the present number of The Monist; among which the following will appear in No. 3: Die Entwickelung des Causalproblems in der Philosophie seit Kant, by Dr. Edmund Koenig; Spinoza’s Erkenntnisslehre in ihrer Beziehung sur modernen Naturwissenschaft und Philosophie, by Dr. Martin Berendt and Dr. Julius Friedländer; Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie, by Dr. Th. Ziehen; Handbook of Psychology, by J. M. Baldwin; An Essay on Reasoning, by Edward T. Dixon; Das Dasein als Lust, Leid und Liebe, by Hübbe-Schleiden; Die Bedeutung der theologischen Vorstellungen für die Ethik, by Wilhelm Paszkowski; and Einleitung in das Alte Testament, by Prof. C. H. Cornill.

FOOTNOTES:

PERIODICALS.

VOPROSUI FILOSOFII I PSICHOLOGII.⁠[52] Vol. II. No. 6. September, 1891.

CONTENTS:

Positive Philosophy and the Unity of Science. By B. Tchitcherin.

Philosophy of the Christian Theocracy in the Fifth Century. The Cosmic Views of St. Augustine in his Genesis. By Prince E. Trubetzkoi.

Ethics of Life and of the Free Ideal (conclusion). By K. N. Ventzel.

Opinions Concerning L. N. Tolstoï. By N. Strachoff.

From the Philosophy of History. By Vladimir Solovieff.

Special Part: (1) Fundamental Moments in the Evolution of the New Philosophy. Metaphysical Philosophy: Descartes and Occasionalists. By N. Grote. (2) Measurableness of the Simplest Mental Acts. By E. Tchelpanoff.

Criticism and Bibliography. Review of Philosophical Periodicals. Book Reviews.

Appendix: 1) Recent Publications. 2) Transactions of the Moscow Psychological Society.

Positive Philosophy and the Unity of Science. This article is made up of extracts from a lengthy competitory dissertation presented by the author to the Moscow Psychological Society. The writer points out the fallacy of the “fundamental law” of the Comtist philosophy—the supposed gradual evolution of human thought through three successive phases,—the theological, metaphysical, and positive stage of development. The writer contends, that the so-called “positive stage,” as conceived by Comte, is really neither positive, nor even scientific, if we examine its main foundations. As all the world knows, Comte was not satisfied with the results of the particular sciences, but wished to effect their comprehensive unity. The writer lays stress on the fact that Comte failed to perceive the inward contradiction of his whole system. His followers, in order to overcome this difficulty, were compelled to advance still another step. Despite the teaching of Comte, they recognised in mathematics the whole of a science that derived its principles from experience. This is shown by Littré in his criticism of the system of Comte (Aug. Comte et la Philosophie positive, page 567), where Littré refers himself to the analysis of Stuart Mill in his Logic. The author, in order to reach a definite and satisfactory solution of this important problem, in his next, concluding article, will investigate the nature and alleged solidity of the mathematical principle.

The Philosophy of the Christian Clergy in the Fifth Century. In analysing the whole literary activity of St. Augustine, we observe, in the evolution of his doctrine, three stages, that closely correspond to his own personal struggle against the three heresies of his time—Manicheism, Donatism, and Pelagianism. Yet all of these three stages are characterised by one and the same principle—the ideal unity of the Christian churches. This ideal aspiration reveals itself as a kind of constructive principle of the universe; as the supreme principle of a social organisation of humanity, as the substance and contents of subjective, human freedom. The Bishop of Hippona,—after thus having developed the several aspects of his doctrine against the heresies,—sums up, and concentrates his teaching, in its widest bearings, against the heathen. Here this Christian ideal attains its fullest and final expression, and is formulated as a Civitas Dei, as the unity of a universal, divine Sovereignty.

Ethics of Life and of the Free Ideal. In concluding his exhaustive reflections on the subject of Guyau’s system of ethics, in which the writer frequently has occasion to cite the critical parallel views of A. Fouillé and of other English and Russian philosophers, Mr. Ventzel remarks, that his aim has been, not only to introduce M. Guyau’s system of ethics to his Russian readers, but also and mainly to show the relations of this system of ethics to moral obligation. The writer wishes to say in conclusion a few words about Guyau’s relation to ethical sanction. Guyau rejected any moral sanction, in the strict sense of the word, that was distinguished or detached from social sanctions, as such. In this sense he conceives moral sanction and moral obligation in his Ethics of Life, in his Equisse d’une Morale. If life, of itself, creates an obligation to work, simply, on the strength of our capacity to work, in such case life also will create its own ethical sanction. Even when generously giving itself away, life will without fail, again and again, find itself. No matter how it be cut short, life will preserve a vivid consciousness of its fulness and significance and will reappear in some other place and under other conditions; for, truly, nothing in this world lives and works in vain.

Opinions Concerning Leon N. Tolstoï. Mr. Strachoff’s psychological study would doubtless possess an additional interest to western readers if the writer had really given an exclusively Russian estimate of Tolstoï’s character and intellectual activity. In this respect, however, we must not expect to find any very marked deviation from the well-known current views of the reading public of other nations. “The main cause,” Mr. Strachoff observes, “why people are incensed against Tolstoï, is to be found in the fact, that, of all men, Tolstoï has most widely deviated from universally received ethical notions, and that he antagonises his century, even in certain delicate problems, that will always be the dearest to mankind. You cannot help feeling this, when you listen to the clamour, reproach, and vituperation, that have been raised against him throughout the civilised world. For the rest, it seems rather odd, that, at the close of the nineteenth century, there should have risen such a number of deadly foes against an inoffensive writer and thinker like Tolstoï; and yet, long ago, we had been accustomed to the intemperate utterances of a host of enraged freethinkers, whom we have endured with patience and meekness. Why, accordingly, have we all of a sudden lost our patient tolerance, and why are we almost ready to start a systematic persecution against the thoughts and words of a book like the Vasnaya Polyana (Clear Field)?... It must be admitted, that there is a certain originality in his writings. Every line possesses a freshness and novelty that are entirely his own; and yet his language is tame, and the subjects even more common than in other writers. He frequently describes the birth and death of very plain people. He tells us how these same people amuse themselves, eat, drink, and dance on feast-days, cut the hay, go to church, to confession, and so forth. Occasionally he tells how a jealous husband kills his wife,—a fact, that has been told in so many other literatures. But in anything he relates, he has the art of throwing a strong, clear light upon his subject, so that it seems to us, as if those time-worn scenes were seen and heard for the first time. In this consists the real originality of Tolstoï’s art. And he is the same in his ethical teachings. They strike us by their directness, vigor, sincerity; and for this very reason they powerfully arouse our love and our yearning for those deep, spiritual cravings that invite man to lead a higher life—“to live a god-like life.” Here also, at times, it appears to us, that we hear about those lofty aspirations for the first time; but when you pay close attention, you will find that his doctrine is really based on the ethics of the past, and you meet with traits of that self-same Christian doctrine with which you have been familiar from early childhood.”

From the Philosophy of History. Mr. Solovieff, this time also, has chosen a title that scarcely conveys a definite idea of the aim and contents of his article, which describes the specific relations of the Christian idea to the historical evolution and political ideal of the nations of antiquity. (Moscow, 1891)

γνλν.

MIND. October, 1891. No. LXIV.

CONTENTS:

Belief. By G. F. Stout.

The Physical Basis of Pleasure and Pain. (II.) By H. R. Marshall.

The Festal Origin of Human Speech. By J. Donovan.

Induction and Deduction. By L. T. Hobhouse.

Discussion: (1) Dr. Münsterberg and Experimental Psychology. By E. B. Titchener. (2) On the Origin of Music. By H. Spencer.

Valedictory.

Under “Belief” Mr. Stout includes every mode and degree of assent or dissent. To disbelieve a proposition is to believe its contradictory. Doubt is belief in a disjunctive judgment. In a former article he dealt with the “Genesis of the Cognition of Physical Reality.” He now treats of the various kinds of real existence; as follows. The Real in Sensation. The real as immediately apprehended in sensation must not be confounded with the percipient mind. Sensation as such is real in so far as it limits and controls the movement of attention, by restricting the range of subjective selection. The Real in Judgments of Comparison. In and through the peculiar movement of attention in endeavoring to keep it fixed on A in the very act of fixing it on B, the points of agreement and difference between A and B gradually emerge into clear consciousness. Objective Attributes of Presentation. Dr. Pikler’s theory of the psychology of Objective Existence fails to distinguish between the phenomena which are merely observed by voluntary attention and those which are actually produced by it. The act of introspection modifies more or less the mental processes which it examines. Their pre-existing strength and mode of operation can be ascertained only by elimination of the peculiar reinforcement or enfeeblement which they acquire by emergence into distinct consciousness. The Objectivity of Space and Spatial Relations. Although we can produce change of place by moving our bodies, according to our will, this freedom of selective selection has rigid limits imposed on it by the very nature of space. This control imposed on our freedom by the nature of the object constitutes its objectivity. The constant possibility of transition from one position to another is apprehended as inherent in the very nature of space independently of our will. Whenever I distinctly attend to the nature of a spatial limit, I must of necessity admit that space is boundless. What has been said about the objectivity of space in general applies mutatis mutandis to the objectivity of space-relations as treated by the geometrician. The psychological conditions of my subjective certitude lie ultimately in the impassable barriers, arising from the very nature of space, which confine the freedom of my constructive movement. Reality in the Association of Ideas. Association is a cause of belief. If certain contents of consciousness have once been copresented in a certain relation to each other, the reproduction of the one tends to bring about the reproduction of the other in the same relation in which they were originally copresented. A comparatively feeble association may command belief merely from the absence of counter-associations. This is the basis of Bain’s doctrine of primitive credulity. Subconscious Conditions of Belief. The presentations which successively emerge into the forms of consciousness are only fragmentary portions of the total mental system. Many, if not most, of our beliefs depend on the operation of subconscious elements which, in massive combination, co-operate to support a certain connection of ideas which appears in consciousness as an object of attention. But such massive support may arise from the connexion of the belief with practical interests or æsthetic enjoyments, or with some powerful organic sensation. Apperception and Belief. Ideal combinations may be separable or inseparable according as this or that apperceptive system happens to be predominant. This is best seen in its pathological exaggeration in the case of suggestible patients. Under normal conditions the necessary alternation of different apperceptive masses produces a corresponding variation in the conditions of belief. The Real in the Products of Constructive Imagination. The work of imagination either imposes an illusion on the mind, or it does not. In both cases there is a certain reference to reality. Illusion is a temporary and often more or less imperfect belief in the product of constructive imagination; a belief which can be indirectly produced or dissipated at will. The Real as Physical Resistance. In the experience of the irregular interruption of otherwise continuous series of muscular sensation, which, apart from this restriction, are producible at will, we apprehend real existence. The reality, however together with that of sensation as such, being communicated to the interpretations which we are constrained to put both upon sensations and their order, gives rise by a very complex process to the presentation of a physical world. Conclusion. The law of conflict is the psychological counterpart of the logical law of contradiction.

In the present paper Mr. Marshall examines in detail his thesis that Pleasure and Pain are determined by the relations between the amount of activity in, and the nutritive conditions of the organ which determines the conscious content (Mind No. 63). He states the psychological conditions for Pleasure to be: “A content which appears normally at regular intervals will tend to be indifferent. If it appear with hypernormal intensity or frequency suddenly in the course of the normal regularity, it will for a relatively short time appear as pleasurable, but this pleasurableness will soon fall away into indifference.” The psychological condition of Pain is said to be: “If a content which has already often appeared in consciousness appear with unusual frequency or exceptional intensity, it will ordinarily be accompanied at first by pleasure, which usually will wane until the content appears indifferent. If the hypernormal stimulus continue (except as after described) the content will become painful, and this pain will increase in amount, and having reached a maximum will decrease gradually until it disappears, but in general with it will also gradually disappear the content itself, not to reappear in consciousness for a considerable time, if ever. In some cases, however, if the content be not over intense, we may look for a gradual decrease of the pain felt at the beginning until a condition of indifference is reached.” Time is an essential factor in the process of organic repair. For each organ there will be a certain time after action has ceased at which recurrent activity will be most effective. Here we have the physical basis of the gratifications obtained through rhythms. There is also a relation of rhythm to pain. The throbbing of acute pain, so far as it is not directly traceable to pressures of blood-supply, is probably indirectly traceable to the rhythm of blood-supply. Turning to Psychology proper, the laws of Pleasure-Pain may be stated in terms of Attention. Pleasure, as involving the use of stored force, implies a continuance of activity in the organ of pleasurable content, and therefore a tendency to continuance of Attention upon that content. Pain, on the other hand, implies a tendency to cessation of activity in the organ of the painful content, and therefore the disappearance of the content. The notion that pleasure is mere absence of pain is denied by this theory, which accounts for the connexion, in a broad way, between Pleasure and Pain and activities respectively advantageous and disadvantageous. In relation to Ethics this theory teaches that the act of will, per se, is pleasurable as the outcome of the conditions of opposition which are anterior to the will-act. Further, action in the direction of the greatest desire is the most pleasant action. But this does not show that the effect of habit may not be such as to lead to action against the strongest desire and away from the greatest pleasure. Further, the object of desire, whilst it may be, is not necessarily the attainment of pleasure.

A scrutiny of the psychological aspect of musical pleasure, says Mr. Donovan, will lead to the conviction that its origin required simpler psychological machinery than the origin of speech, which was possible only through the aid of that machinery. The ear is superior to the eye in respect of their relative contributions toward making up our mental life and activity. The superiority of the ear rests on its functional passivity. This allowed auditory impressions to force themselves into consciousness in season and out of season. The facts of history and ethnology which may be given a new aspect when regarded in the light of the analysis of music cover a very wide field, beginning with the first and rudest vestiges of communal sympathy and tribal glorification, and extending up to the national song or epic. It is peculiar to man to give expression to communal interest in a way which has nothing to do with life-caring instincts. That interest finds its first and rudest expression in bodily play-excitement: (1) bodily play-movements in imitation of actions, (2) rhythmic beating, (3) some approach to song, and (4) some degree of communal interest, display themselves as the most constant elements of all festal celebrations. If we start from the generally-accepted explanations of play-movements in animals, and grasp the ultimate reason why play-excitement became infused with the communal spirit, there will be no difficulty in tracing evidence of this spirit even where they are most hidden by accompanying habits. Success in a common enterprise tends to preserve it. The natural modes of expression of the communal elation follow, i. e. the bodily play-movements in imitation of the successful actions and the rhythmic beating. These movements give to consciousness preservative elements of sensation. Every step of tonal development was made in order to prove the effectiveness of the elements of sensation which could preserve the content of consciousness springing out of play-excitement and communal elation. The attention-drawing power a musical tone possessed was enhanced by the conditions of its production which ensured repetition in a persistent temporal succession. Animals’ excited cries were both before and after the stimulating rhythmic beating—produced tones. The same excitement which impelled to these cries also impelled to rhythmic beating, and thus produced a persistent auditory model for the cries. The philologist says that roots are elements of words which analysis can reduce no further. The psychologist can trace them back to the musical tones which became reproductive agents of the vague presentative elements of actions as they had been repeatedly held together in consciousness by the psychological machinery of nascent musical pleasure.

In a previous article (Mind, No. 62) Mr. Hobhouse aimed at proving that all reasoning involved generalisation from observed facts, and that all such generalisation could be shown to proceed on a definite principle. There are two main ways in which Induction and Deduction may be distinguished. First we may distinguish the assertion of a universal from its application. The application of a universal to a particular case is represented by the syllogism in which the major is a general judgment and the minor a particular judgment of perception. When two judgments are compared they are found to be (1) Tautologous—the same assertion of the same fact. (2) Different statements of the same fact. (3) Assertions of different facts. A judgment expresses a relation between two terms, and hence two judgments may be said to assert the same fact when they assert the same relation between the same terms. But if either of the terms or the relation differs, then they assert different facts. Generalisation involves a universal principle connecting different facts. Syllogism does not. Syllogism appears as simply the opposite side of generalisation. In the latter we assert a universal for the first time, in the former we apply a universal already asserted. But in both we are dealing with the same relation of universal and particular. Whether we assert or apply our universal, the same ultimate logical fact, expressed in the axiom of Induction, is at the bottom of the process. But a different distinction may be drawn between Induction and Deduction. The whole process of bringing particular facts under universals by observation of similar particulars may be called Induction, while the combination of several universals in a chain of reasoning is called Deduction. In the first, Generalisation, we assert a universal on the ground of a particular, or a particular on the ground of a similar particular. In the second, Construction, we assert a relation between two universals on the ground of the relation of each to one or more intermediate relations. Construction involves generalisation at every step, and is a true reasoning process. The nature of the generalisation may be shown by the typical Deductive axiom. If, where two terms are in any way related to a third, a relation between the two is observed, then when any other two terms are similarly related to any third, the relation between these two will be similar to that observed between the first two. The simplest construction on which others rest is that of two relations to the same type, and this axiom applies to relations so understood. The axioms postulated by Reasoning lay down the conditions under which facts not presented may be known to exist, and they are thus distinguished from those principles called the “Laws of Thought.”

Mr. Titchener severely criticises Dr. Münsterberg’s experimental psychology, pointing out various errors, and concludes that “whether the theories of the Beiträge stand or fall, their experimental foundation has very little positive worth.”

In reply to the criticisms in Mind, No. 63, Mr. H. Spencer points out that Dr. Wallaschek has overlooked a passage in which the former recognises rhythm as an essential component of music. He does not coincide with Dr. Wallaschek’s view, however, since it regards music as acquiring its essential character by a trait which it has in common with other things, instead of by a trait which it has apart from other thing. It is from the emotional element of speech that music is evolved—not from its intellectual element.

After referring to the fact that harmony, as ordinarily understood and as spoken of by him, is concerned with the fundamental tones and ignores the overtones, Mr. Spencer states that he cannot accept Prof. Cattell’s view that harmony has been developed from melody. To establish the evolution of the one from the other, there must be found some identifiable transitions between the combinations of tones constituting timbre, which do not constitute harmony to our perception, and those combinations of tones which do constitute harmony to our perception.

In his Valedictory on retiring from the Editorship of Mind, Professor Robertson refers to the establishment of the Review in 1876, on the initiative of Professor Bain, by whom it has since been sustained, and he mentions that most of the experimental research has been contributed by the American hands “that have been or are now organising psychological laboratories over all the breadth of their own land.” (London: Williams and Norgate.)

Ω.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. October, 1891. Vol. II. No. I.

CONTENTS:

The Unity of the Ethics of Ancient Greece. By Prof. Leopold Schmidt.

The Problem of Unsectarian Moral Instruction. By Felix Adler, Ph. D.

The Theory of Punishment. By Rev. Hastings Rashdall.

An Interpretation of the Social Movements of our Time. By Prof. Henry C. Adams.

The Prevention of Crime. By Dr. Ferdinand Tönnies.

The Ethical Teaching of Sophokles. By Prof. Arthur Fairbanks.

The Right of Private Property in Land. By Prof. J. Platter.

Discussions.

Prof. Schmidt’s article is a reply to a criticism of his work on the ethics of the ancient Greeks which had appeared in the International Journal of Ethics.

Dr. Adler’s article is the introductory lecture of his course on Moral Instruction before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth. He refers first to the difficulty in the way of combining moral and religious instruction in the public schools arising from the difference in religious belief of the tax payers, and to the devices suggested to circumvent the difficulty. The first of these devices is that Catholics, Dissenters, and Jews, shall formulate a common platform of belief. There are two obvious objections to this proposal. It would leave out of account the party of the agnostics and be a gross injustice to them, and it would never content the really religious minds of any denomination. It would be acceptable only to the comparatively small class of so-called rationalists or theists pure and simple, and they have no right under the specious plea of reconciling the various creeds, in effect, to force their own creed upon the rest of the community. The second device is that religious and moral instruction combined shall be given in the public schools by persons of the several denominations. The high authority of Germany is invoked in favor of that system but Dr. Adler states that the example of Germany cannot be quoted as a precedent owing to the relation between the state and the schools in that country. The system, moreover is not a happy one as, agreeably to Professor Smith’s propositions that scientific instruction must be unsectarian and religious instruction must be sectarian, the latter ought to have no place in state schools, at least in a country where the separation of church and state is complete. To the third arrangement proposed, that each sect should build its own schools, and draw upon the fund supplied by taxation according to the number of children which it educates, there are two objections. Owing to the power of sects and their influence, direct and indirect, the rules and regulations prescribed by the state for the schools to conform to would not be enforced. And secondly, the purpose for which the public school exists would be defeated, as the sectarian schools tend to prevent the growth of that national unit which it is the very business of the public school to create and foster. The correct answer to the question as to the way in which to impart moral instruction so as to satisfy all parties will be the solution of the problem of unsectarian moral education. The answer is: It is the business of the moral instructor in the school to deliver to his pupil the subject matter of morality, but not to deal with the sanctions of it; to give his pupils a clear understanding of what is right and what is wrong, but not to enter into the question why the right should be done and the wrong avoided. The conscience can be enlightened, strengthened, and always without once raising the question why. Professor Adler, it appears to us, overlooks the intimate connection between the two questions of what is wrong, and why is it wrong. With the “why,” which is the moral sanction so-called, he excludes the criterion of right and wrong and confines himself to conventional morality. Professor Adler proposes, that the material for the moral lessons should be “the stock of moral truths accepted by all good men.” This would be a very simple solution of the ethical problem. Mankind need no longer remain in doubt as to what good and bad is. We have only to accept the propositions of “all good men.” But where is the judge that shall decide who are to be considered as good men? Either Professor Adler considers his own views of moral goodness as authoritative and ultimate or his reasoning moves in a vicious circle.

Professor Tönnies and the Rev. Hastings Rashdall discuss punishment as a preventive of crime. Professor Adams finds that the genius of invention established the factory system replacing the old domestic system of industry. The change of a society based upon tools into a society based upon machinery means that the worker has lost control over the conditions of labor which he now tries to regain. Arthur Fairbanks says that according to the ethics of Sophokles, conscience was sense of conformity to an æsthetic ideal. J. Platter of Zürich rejects Henry George’s theory as “nonsense.” (Philadelphia: International Journal of Ethics, 1602 Chestnut Street.)

ωκ.

RIVISTA ITALIANA DI FILOSOFIA. September and October, 1891.

CONTENTS:

L’immaginazione nelle sue relazioni normali e morbose colla sensibilita. By L. Ambrosi.

L’origine indiana del pitagorismo secondo L. von Schröder. By P. D’Ercole.

Luigi Vives, pedagogista del rinascimento. By A. Piazzi.

La filosofia di Empedocle. By S. Ferrari.

Imagination in its normal and diseased relations to sensibility. The writer calls our attention to the endless variety of different and apparently contradictory things that are usually attributed to the faculty of imagination. To some this faculty of the human mind is the main cause of human errors, and with Montaigne they call it “la folle du logis”; but to others, imagination plays a rather important part in the discovery of great scientific theories. All unanimously admit, that imagination lends fuel to the flames of all kinds of evil passions; but on the other hand it cannot be denied, that imagination sustains the will in every work of great stress, or great sacrifice, by the vivid representation of an expected final success. All human votaries and possessors of this fleeting, inconstant mental faculty are by turns “happy, unhappy, sane, sick, wealthy or poor; it makes us believe, doubt, or deny reason; it makes fools and sages.” (Pascal, Pensées, Art. 3, § 3). Yet how can the psychologist reconcile all this; how can he find the different circumstances, through which one and the same cause produces such an endless variety and discrepancy of facts? Several psychologists, who have tried to follow the flights of imagination throughout all its different manifestations by the sole aid of style and language, have been poets rather than true philosophers. Such was Delille in his poem l’Imagination; and such was even Professor Mantegazza himself, in that chapter of his Physiology of Pleasure, which he has dedicated to the “Gioie della fantasia,” where he describes this faculty with far more enthusiasm than scientific precision. Bonstetten, in his Recherches sur la nature et lois de l’imagination, Genève, 1807, is supposed to have been the first to give a minute and exclusively psychological analysis of imagination; but his investigations seem to prove, that a delicate subject of this kind, like certain volatile essences, evaporates at the moment we wish to analyse it, and cannot be defined by any strict scientific formulas and classifications. And yet, if we really wish to study the psychology of imagination, we must not be frightened by these difficulties, or regard them as insurmountable. We may not be able to reduce all these varied phenomena to very definite and limited categories, but it does not follow from this, that we have only to make a simple, empirical registration of these phenomena. As Michaut observes (L’Imagination, Introduction): “Wherever we find a general element, there also we shall find room for science.” Despite the inconstancy of the phenomena, it remains true, that also in the facts of imagination there is something constant and regular; that they are subject to laws, which might be probably severed from the phenomena, and be reduced to a certain unity and uniformity, without forgetting, at the same time, that this fleeting and delicate subject is not always reducible to absolutely strict classification.

How are we, accordingly, to obtain that harmony and unity of view, that will unite and group all those diversified manifestations? Mind cannot be conceived as a collection of different states, but we have to assume, that within the Psyche there is something substantial; there is unity, constancy in its energy; and that this side of its being is also the principle of its transitory actions. We recognise therefore the existence of two distinct sources of spiritual energy, that will better make us understand the diversity of its products: on the one side, the soul itself, with the formal laws of its simple being, and, on the other side, the power or force of its sensible representations,—of its reactions. This distinction, applied to the present problem, will on the one hand cause us to consider images as the products of an activity of an inferior order, called psyche soul, but we shall behold on the other, that same soul, when it has freed itself from the tyranny of the senses, itself becoming properly what is called mind, its emancipation rising to the higher function of arranging and organising the images produced by the aid of the senses. Hence follows, that the relations of either conflict or harmony which these products of the soul have among each other, and to mind proper, will serve as a criterion of a classification, in which we have to take note: (1) of the reciprocal action between sensations and images; (2) of that between images and images; (in both of which instances the power of the products possesses an advantage over the power of mind;) and (3) of the action of mind upon images. By this road it will be possible to follow all the phases of the evolution of mind from the moment when overcome by obstinate images it is reduced to a life of disorder, incoherency, or, as it were, to death of mind, until the moment when in its own turn mind takes hold of the numerous images by which it is besieged, and by subjecting them to its own laws—to laws of unity and harmony—it creates out of that disorderly chaos of images the wonderful synthesis of science and works of art. From that instant we behold mind rise through a series of intermediate stages, from abject servitude to the loftiest heights of freedom, from a state of humiliating impotency to an unhampered display of its true, inward activity,—from folly to genius. In other words, it is chiefly this psychic activity, in all its different stages of development and power, that must be our guiding criterion in the study of the phases and phenomena of imagination.

The writer, thereupon, seeks to explain the nature of this psychic activity in its application to images. He briefly investigates the origin of images, their immediate derivation from the sensations, and their intimate reciprocal connection, by virtue of which the one cannot be produced without the other; and whence there arise many different relations, that not only explain, but even enable us to classify a large number of facts relating to this mental faculty. The writer concludes with some general remarks on the diseases of imagination.

The Hindu Origin of Pythagorism according to L. von Schroeder. This article was suggested by Dr. L. v. Schroeder’s monograph: Pythagoras und die Inder. Eine Untersuchung über die Herkunft und Abstammung der Pythagorischen Lehren. The discussion about the local origin of Pythagorism began with the ancients themselves, is being continued in our own time, and, from the nature of the subject itself, bids fair to be protracted for an indefinite period still. In recent times this arduous problem has invaded the domain of comparative ethnology, comparative religion, philology, in brief, of all the historical sciences, receiving, doubtless, striking and copious illustrations from all these, yet at the risk of almost losing sight of itself. In Pythagorism, as in certain other products of the human mind, it is difficult to discriminate with absolute historical certainty between “mine” and “thine.” The real solution of the problem may perhaps be found in the original unity of the evolution of the Indo-European mind. The writer, however, views the problem simply as one of comparative religion and the history of philosophy. The ancients advocated the Italic, or Tyrrhenian origin of the Pythagorean system, and among modern Italians, Vico and Gioberti have done the same. The Chinese origin was defended by Gladisch. The third, the Egyptian origin, also dates from antiquity, and in modern times has been ardently defended by Roth. The fourth, the supposed Hellenic origin, has had the greatest number of followers, and has been ably championed by Dr. Edw. Zeller in his work, Die Philosophie der Griechen. As regards the last, the alleged Hindu origin, this was suggested of course by the numerous striking analogies found between Hindu and Pythagorean doctrine. Still, all that has been said on the subject by Schroeder, Max Müller, Weber, and others, has failed to thoroughly convince the writer. In his next article he promises to show, that everything has induced him to believe that the Hindus themselves rather borrowed their doctrine of transmigration from the philosophical system of Pythagoras.

Luigi Vives. A Pedagogist of the Renaissance. The interesting subject of this article is probably to this day but little understood or appreciated by the pedagogists of northern Europe. To this day, many among them seem ignorant of the fact, or, perhaps, are unwilling to frankly admit, that along with the Catholic revival, and the intellectual renaissance of the Latin nations, there was initiated the tradition of really humane pedagogics, founded on the nature of man, and, in its aim and workings, vastly superior to the educational systems of the nations beyond the Alps. It was an earnest, liberal, refining educational system, that professed an affectionate regard for youth. It banished corporal punishment, and addressed itself directly to the heart and the intelligence. The Jesuit maxim: “debetur pueris maxima reverentia,” still recalls the original spirit of this humane system of education. It is perhaps not an exaggeration to maintain, that, in the spirit of the time, it also aimed at the beautiful in education. It was a declared enemy to any thought, speech or action in bad form. To the subject of this article, the Spanish bishop of Valencia, Louis Vives, is due the honor of having been one of the most ardent and successful promoters of this new educational system, and to have been the Jean Jacques Rousseau of his time. Vives was born in the year 1492, and died in the year 1540. He had studied at the University of Paris, and was an intimate friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam. He is moreover the author of a number of valuable educational works. Bishop Vives, however, must also be regarded as a clergyman, who in his practical career would at times find it difficult to reconcile his broad-minded scholastic ideals with the duties of his calling, and with the exaggerated ascetical tendencies by which he was surrounded. As a matter of fact, in a short time the church is seen practically to override all this liberal educational movement of the renaissance. Within the college- and convent-walls, in the Latin countries, the humane paternal pedagogics of the renaissance soon and easily degenerated into oppressive, injurious, personal surveillance, and an odious theocratic tyranny. With all our sincere admiration for the work initiated by men like Louis Vives, we must nevertheless maintain, that all, or nearly all, the ecclesiastic educational systems of the Latin countries during the following centuries, can scarcely lay valid claims to a place within the pale of true pedagogical science.

The Philosophy of Empedocles. In this concluding article the writer exhaustively discusses the religious tenets and ethical precepts of Empedocles, as both appear in the Proëmium, in the third book on Physics, and in the poem of the “καθαρμοί”—or expiatory atonements.

Bibliography. In this department we notice a lengthy review of Prof. E. Dal Pozzo di Mombello’s Lectures on Monism, delivered at the University of Perugia. In this number are also contained the Bollettino Pedagogico Filosofico, Critical Notices, and Recent Publications. (Rome. Tipografia delle Terme Diocleziane. 1891.)

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REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. November, 1891. No. II.

CONTENTS:

Les origines de notre structure intellectuelle et cérébrale. I. Le Kantisme. By A. Fouillée.

Du rôle de la volonté dans la croyance. By J. J. Gourd.

In discussing the part of the will played in belief, M. J. J. Gourd considers our belief in an ultra-phenomenal reality which he calls “metaphysical belief.” “All thought,” he says, “involves a relation, viz. a relation between subject and object. Every relation presupposes a comparison of its terms and this comparison is not established if the subject and object belong to different worlds. The subject is undoubtedly found in consciousness, the object must be there also. All the ingenious arguments to escape this conclusion are vain. Accordingly, one may well believe in the truth of the metaphysical belief, but this belief is not true.”

M. G. Tarde, the great criminologist and an opponent of Professor Lombroso’s school reviews the penological and criminological literature of recent times in France, Italy, and Belgium.

Alfred Fouillée revises in the article on “the origin of our intellectual and cerebral structure” several solutions of the problem of the nature of thought-forms, especially Kant’s view of the a priori. Strongly influenced by Schopenhauer, he makes of the great pessimist’s will-theory quite an original and peculiar application and finds that the question of “idées-forces” is also at the bottom of the question of the origin of ideas. In comparing the origin of ideas to the origin of solar systems, he says: “Ideas are the condensation of that which exists everywhere in a nebulous state into luminous centres and conscious focuses. Sensation is desire.” And he sums up his view in the sentence: “Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu et voluntate.” (Paris: Félix Alcan.)

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ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE DER SINNESORGANE. Vol. II. No. 5.

CONTENTS:

Die Sinne der Verbrecher. By C. Lombroso and S. Ottolenghi. (Mit 4 Figuren.)

Ueber Vergleichungen von Tondistanzen. By Gustav Engel.

Litteraturbericht.

Cesare Lombroso and his assistant S. Ottolenghi communicate the results of their investigations of the senses of born criminals in a similar way as the former of the two had done in his “Studies in Criminal Anthropology,” The Monist, Vol. i, No. 2, p. 177 et sqq. Our authors say: “Since the days of the famous Greek sage who said that nothing came into the intellect save through the gateway of the senses, it could be foreseen that a study of the senses would become the gateway to ethics.” And, it is a fact recognised for some time but not as yet proved by exact methods that a lack of moral sense is often accompanied with an obtusity of the sense-organs. Dr. Azam’s famous Felida showed an entire absence of the moral sense when she was in a state of analgesia; Romanes has pointed out that the sensitiveness to pain is greater in tame animals than in wild beasts, this is especially noticeable in the dog. It is noteworthy also that savage peoples are almost insensible to pain while civilisation often increases sensibility till it becomes hyperæsthesia.

Obtusity of the sense-organs in criminals should not be confounded however with the anæsthesia of criminals, because the rarity of laterality, the absence of isolated insensible places, the lack of motory anomalies, etc., exclude the supposition of hysteria.

Our authors found among 15 criminal boys between 10 and 14 years no less than ten cases of absolute analgesia, which proves that this symptom cannot be the effect of alcoholism, syphilis, marasmus, or overwork of a special trade.

Several anecdotes are told about the insensibility to pain. An old thief had his leg amputated with the greatest apathy: the operation done, he took the limb into his hand and joked about it. An inveterate murderer, his penal servitude being ended, was dismissed out of the bagnio of the island S. He asked the warden to be retained, because he did not know how to get food and shelter. His demand being refused, he opened his bowels with the handle of a spoon, went to bed as usual, and died without even a sigh. Mandrin, a criminal, shortly before his execution allowed himself to be cut in eight places without giving a sign of pain; criminal R. flayed the skin of his face with a piece of glass. In the penitentiary at Chatham during the years 1871 and 1872, 841 voluntary wounds and injuries were made. Among them 27 convicts had mutilated some limb, and in 17 cases the limb had to be amputated.

This obtusity of the sensory organs in criminals is supposed to be of a cortical origin and being similar to the phenomena of savage life is interpreted as atavism. Criminals show deficiencies in the senses of touch, smell, taste, and hearing, but not of sight. And this is analogous to the savage in whom the sense of sight is naturally very strong, and no criminal could execute numerous thefts or escape the arm of justice without a high development of the sense of sight.

In the second article on comparisons of tone-distances Gustav Engel, Professor at the Royal High-school of Music in Berlin, takes occasion to explain his views of the subject with reference to the severe criticism of C. Stumpf on Carl Lorenz’s theory. Wilhelm Wundt had taken part in the discussion in favor of Lorenz. The subject of the article lies in the border-land between the physiology of hearing and music; and Professor Engel comes to the conclusion that affinity of tones, i. e. the interval-sense in a melodious succession does not lead to the same accuracy and reliability of hearing as their concord. He objects to the idea of an arithmetical difference as proposed by Lorenz and Wundt, and proves it through the fact that the Pythagorean tierce in the unaccompanied scale makes a less noticeable disturbance than in a concord, while the approximately pure tierce (which is too low only by a small fracture of a comma) is excellent in the concord while it causes a slight disturbance in the melody. Musical intervals are not identical with the geometrical intervals, yet they are based upon them as a selection made among innumerable possibilities for certain purposes. Their acceptance is established only in harmonic music, but this fact too adds some difficulties to the investigations made in this field, for if two tones sound together, we can no longer distinguish them separately, as would be required for the investigation; and if we let the one succeed the other their geometrical relation is no longer discerned with the same precision. (Hamburg and Leipsic: Leopold Voss.)

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VIERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTLICHE PHILOSOPHIE. Vol. XV. Nos. 3 and 4.

CONTENTS of No. 3:

Psychische und physische Activität. By H. Höffding.

Ueber Sprachreflex, Nativismus und absichtliche Sprachbildung. (Achter Artikel.) By A. Marty.

Zur Philosophie der Mathematik. By Chr. v. Ehrenfels.

Der Folgerungscalcul und die Inhaltslogik. By E. G. Husserl.

CONTENTS of No. 4:

Die Gesetzmässigkeit der physischen Activität. By H. Höffding.

Ethnologie und Æsthetik. By E. Grosse.

Ueber die fortschreitende Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. (Erster Artikel.) By F. Rosenberger.

Ueber Sprachreflex, Nativismus und absichtliche Sprachbildung. (Neunter Artikel). By A. Marty.

Ueber Fernwirkung und anormale. Wahrnehmungsfäkhigkeit. Methodologische Randglossen. By M. Offner.

Prof. H. Höffding’s article on psychical and physical activity is an answer to a criticism by Professor Kroman. Professor Höffding had proposed, concerning the relation of the psychical to the physical, a theory which he called the “identity hypothesis,” according to which the physical and psychical activities are not different in their nature but only in their phenomenal appearance. K. Kroman, a countryman and colleague of H. Höffding—both are professors at the University of Copenhagen—rejected in his recent work “Logic and Psychology” the identity hypothesis and characterised it as “Duplicism,” a name against which Höffding protests. Kroman’s objections are as follows: a) Natural science knows of no reason to conceive of the relation of the psychical to the material in the way expressed by the identity-hypothesis. b) On the basis of the identity-hypothesis it remains unexplained how we can know anything about the external world. c) It is inexplicable how an identity can obtain of two so different things as are the bodily multiplicity and the psychical unity. Professor Höffding investigates these three objections separately and comes to the conclusion that his identity-hypothesis shows the relation between the psychical and material nature in a clear and simple light. It excludes on the one hand materialism and on the other hand spiritualism. The question whether either phenomenon, spirit or matter, represents the absolute nature of existence, cannot, according to Höffding, be answered. It appears to us that Professor Höffding’s position is sound in all main points and may be considered as that view which is most prevalent among modern psychologists. However, concerning the question whether spirit or matter represents the absolute nature of existence, we refer the reader to the editorial article “Are there Things in Themselves?” section XII, “The Oneness of Subjectivity and Objectivity.” In our opinion the question itself is illegitimate. Neither the subjectivity of spirit, nor the objectivity of matter represents the absolute nature of existence; both together form the nature of existence; and we omit here the word “absolute” purposely. The question as to which abstract, matter or spirit, represents the absolute nature of existence seems to us similar to the question which of the two terms A and B represents in the relation A:B the absolute nature of the relation. The obvious answer is neither.

The eighth article of A. Marty of Prague on Language-reflex is mainly of a controversial nature directed against L. Tobler’s article on the origin of language in the Zeitschrift für Völker-Psychologie. By Nativism, Marty understands the theory that certain involuntary articulate sounds are associated with certain ideas, while the so-called empirical theory attempts to explain the origin of the first words without such innate mechanical relations between sounds and concepts. Marty represents the empirical solution of the problem and objects to the extreme nativism, but he grants that Tobler’s modified nativism approaches very much to his own position.

The longest article of the present number (63 pp.) is an essay full of valuable hints by Chr. v. Ehrenfels on the Philosophy of Mathematics. The epistemological basis of mathematics demands a psychological investigation of its contents. Accordingly the author proposes to present a psychological characterisation of the number-conceptions, from which he derives some conclusions concerning the theory of cognition. He investigates the origin of the unity conception which is generally defined as “positing a unit” or as “conceiving as a unit.” We usually believe that we abstract numbers directly from the objects, when we look for instance at one house with two doors and five windows. But this process of abstraction is not quite so direct as it seems. The number-conception is not taken from external observation, but carried into the same; yet this is done involuntarily and inadvertently so that it appears as if they were eo ipso contained in it.

What is the origin of the concepts “unity” and “multiplicity”? Two methods present themselves: 1) The concentration of attention and (2) the act of bringing into relation. The former produces a unity and, when successively directed to several objects, a series of units. The latter appears to be required by the consideration that the conception of a number is conditioned by acts of distinguishing. The number “two” requires two acts of distinguishing, “three” requires three, “four” requires six and the number n requires n/2(n-1) acts of distinguishing. This explains why we can have clear and direct conceptions only of very low figures. The idea that a combination of both methods will explain the facts is by no means excluded. But there is a third source which may be used to explain the unity conception, viz. inner experience. “The unity of consciousness,” Ehrenfels says, “has been misused in philosophy to demonstrate the substantiality, simplicity, and indestructibility of the soul.” Nevertheless there is some truth in the unity idea, for the present psychical phenomena present themselves in a peculiar amalgamation, which admits of a comparison between two elements while it erects a barrier between the ego and the tu. Our psychical contents will always appear to us as a unit; and on this basis we might declare that the unity conception is derived from this source. [Here Ehrenfels does not see that the concentration of attention is practically the same as the unity of consciousness, for attention means consciousness, and concentration produces unity.]

Number-conceptions originate by counting. We disjoin things; for instance, we throw a number of apples into a basket, or we let the finger slide over the division lines of a measuring stick naming each unit while proceeding in the act. From such processes the function of counting can be abstracted while the details are neglected as unimportant. Most of the higher numbers are never directly but only indirectly realised. So for instance twenty is to many that number which will be reached by counting up to twenty, yet the single units of the number are lost sight of entirely. Such number-conceptions belong to the class of “indirect concepts” which represent objects not through marks belonging to the object itself, but originating through its relation to other objects. The basis of such indirect concepts had been called by Ehrenfels Gestaltsqualitäten, i. e. figure qualities, and by Meinong fundierte Inhalte or founded contents. Thus indirect conceptions are parts contingent upon some such basis.

Number-conceptions are not always clearly thought out and there are some helps to represent higher or more complex numbers. Thus we can think of ten as represented by the outside and inside corners of a pentagram, twelve as the edges of a cube, etc., and common among all nations is the usage of the fingers to represent numbers up to ten. Such helps are quite different from indirect number-conceptions and may be called figurative number-conceptions.

That there are mathematical conceptions of magnitudes which have no objective analogon is quite natural, for there is even in an indirect conception no warrant for its objective reality; and we ought to consider how many word- and idea-combinations are possible without their possessing some analogous reality. Yet the so-called irrational cannot properly be called a number, it is the demand of a number which in fractions can sufficiently for certain purposes but never fully be realised.