Volume 2 / Part 2 — THE MONIST. (continued 3)

Mr. Peirce attempts to explain natural laws as if they were single and concrete facts. Where we have to look for reasons he evidently employs the method of searching for causes. He treats that which in its very nature is eternal, as if it were temporal. He regards the everlasting, the imperishable, the immutable as if it had originated, as if it were transient, as if it were the product of a development.

VIII. LAWS NOT INEXPLICABLE.

But is not Mr. Peirce justified in declaring that law remains unexplained? Is law really as he says “hard, ultimate, inexplicable, immutable”? Law is to be regarded as immutable but not as ultimate or inexplicable, and thus Mr. Peirce’s denunciation of natural law is not justified. All natural laws must be conceived as forming one system ascending from the lower to the higher, from the more special to the more general. And the more comprehensive law represents in each case the reason for the less comprehensive law which is comprised in it. Thus we must finally reach the most general or all-comprehensive law, which is a description of that which is a universal quality of existence.

There is wrong notion prevalent among many thinkers that the most comprehensive description (law or reason) of a certain kind should, as in a nutshell, contain and immediately explain all that which it embraces, so that if once in its possession, we should be omniscient as to all the rest. The most universal law is looked upon as the centre of existence—das Innerste der Welt. If we could but get there, we should solve all the world-problems by mere intuition. This is the old error of the students of magic, whose hope is expressed by Faust when he says:

Comprehension is not attained simply by finding out and stating the most general feature of a certain class of facts; comprehension does not alone consist of generalisation but also of discrimination. The differences among less general laws must be recognised as results of special conditions. And any knowledge of a general law reveals nothing about the special conditions under the influence of which the same law will work differently.

It is but too often overlooked that the more general a statement is, the less it will contain, the vaguer it will appear, the emptier it must be. There is no royal road to cognition and mere generalisation is of no avail. We shall have to investigate the details of every case and view it in its relation to the general law. The general law must be viewed under those conditions which will invariably produce the same special modifications.

But do not the most general reasons remain uncomprehended? Do we not at last arrive at an ultimate law which, then, must be hard and inexplicable?

Those laws which appear in every respect to be universal are the formal laws of mathematics, arithmetic, and their kindred sciences. And all these formal sciences are not only not mystical, unintelligible, and inexplicable, but they are the most perspicuous, most reliable, and most certain knowledge we possess. All their theorems admit of the most rigid demonstration, and the last shadow of mysticism has been removed by Hermann Grassmann. Owing to his searching investigations we are no longer in need of axioms which were formerly supposed to be the indispensable basis of mathematics.

There is however a basis of formal thought left which we cannot dispense with; that is the idea of sameness, generally formulated as the law of identity. Is perhaps the law of identity by which all the regularities of nature are to be accounted for, inexplicable? Hardly! The idea of sameness has a solid basis in the facts of experience.⁠[78]

IX. CONCLUSION.

The contrast between Determinism and Indeterminism is old, yet Mr. Peirce has worked out quite a new aspect of Indeterminism and places it upon a basis that appears to be a more solid foundation than it ever before possessed. At the same time he succeeds in making some of its consequences so plausible, that in this new garb it will appeal more strongly than before to scientifically trained minds. With all deference to the logical acuteness of Mr. Peirce and with all admiration for the originality and depth of his thought, we cannot, however, accede to the new philosophy which he proposes.

Mr. Peirce’s propositions go to the core of all problems, they upset everything that has heretofore been considered as firm ground, they question the most fundamental concepts of the world-conception upon which all scientific reasoning and the methods of the positive philosophy rest. Thus they set us a-thinking and will help us to attain greater clearness on points which are to all of us of greater concern than may at first sight appear. For the fundamental problems of philosophy have a deep practical importance. Their importance is less noticeable, less obvious, but at the same time more sweeping the more fundamental they are.

Let us here in concluding this article consider only one, but the most striking one, of the consequences to which both views lead.

Indeterminism leads to a conception of God which although we may call it “mind” and place it at the beginning of the world, is pure chance or the indeterminateness of an arbitrary sporting. Determinism on the other hand leads to a recognition of God as that something in nature that is as it is, that has been and will be. Science, whose method of cognising the truth is and can only be to know in parts, attempts to describe the partial qualities of this something in natural laws.

It is of great consequence in practical life whether God is what the name Jahveh intends to convey, eternal and unalterable being, immutable sameness in the perpetual flux, irrefragable law in the changes of evolution, or whether it is the Τυχή of the pagans, i. e. indeterminable and absolute chance, unaccountable, irregular, capricious, and uncertain.

The God-idea is the basis of ethics. It matters little whether we use or avoid the name God, for the atheist has also a God-idea in his conception of that existence in which he lives and moves and has his being. This God-idea is always the ground from which we derive our rules of conduct; and whenever we change, not our terminology but our idea of God, we shall as a matter of consistency have to change our views of ethics also.

Editor.

FOOTNOTES:

LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE

I. FRANCE.

Professor Lombroso is unremitting in bringing up new facts in support of his doctrines. His Nouvelles Recherches de Psychiatrie et d’Anthropologie criminelle (New Researches in Psychiatry and Criminal Anthropology) comprise a good many, gathered from the latest works relating to criminality. In adding psychiatry to anthropology in the title to this volume, writes the learned author, “I return to my starting point and to the true source of these studies, which is only a clinical demonstration, but a more perfect one, of what is called in old psychiatry, moral insanity and masked epilepsy.” Lombroso may be reproached with a certain exaggeration, a certain haste, in his views respecting criminal man: yet can we conceive of an opinionated inquirer who would not have faith in his work, and who could resist the desire to generalise from the facts already obtained? But I have little doubt that the works of his school will end in producing a precise conception, which will force itself on the attention of legislators and jurists. I say precise, because one has a glimpse of the truth in criticising the evidence offered to us in such variety, though what one perceives sometimes vanishes.

How can we conceive of the criminal type? This is a prime question on which it is not useless to insist. Crime, as M. Tarde tells us, has become a real profession in our modern societies. Although there is some truth in it, we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the subtle form of this paradox. There is no want of delinquents carrying on a business; the army of crime recruits itself from all classes, it includes peasants and workmen, chemists and physicians, lawyers and merchants, soldiers and poets, that is to say, subjects possessing some one at least of the aptitudes which form a calling. We have here, then, on the one side, wretches destitute of all aptitude for a trade, and on the other men who do not adhere to the exercise of their profession, although capable of making use of it. The delinquent appears to us, in short, as stricken with some degree of professional incapacity, and if crime has become a profession in some sort, the criminals of every category first represent, if I may thus say, a professional or social waste. The study of the causes and the signs of this waste is just what has been undertaken.

The social causes of crime have often been put in prominence. They are numerous, and persons unacquainted with these questions are inclined to attribute the largest proportion of crimes and offences to distress and misery. But, according to the inquiries of Morrison, for example—and by the confession also of M. Troal, of whom I shall speak immediately—misery rarely produces crime, and if we examine carefully, one after the other, the social causes of crime, we shall soon be convinced that poverty, drunkenness, etc., feed criminality by producing degeneracy of the race, rather than that they directly arouse the criminal.⁠[79] We are compelled then to seek the immediate reason for a crime in the criminal himself, and to learn to distinguish the delinquent by means of the methods fixed upon by anthropologists and physicians.

At first, as we know, Lombroso recognised only one criminal type. He has since found that there are many. The distinction between the thief and the murderer is classical. Benedikt has described the born vagabond; Brouardel, the feminine type. It is always necessary in describing a type to resort to the methods of natural history, to pass in review the emotional and intellectual characters, the physiological or functional characters, the anatomical or morphological characters, and endeavor to seize certain constant correlations between the signs one has been successful in observing. The delinquent may be described as abnormal from the emotional standpoint, and as deficient or perverted from the intellectual point of view. We could then begin by describing exactly certain intellectual and emotional types, and it is no exaggeration to say that experienced magistrates in their way have done so, those even who, with M. Proal, we shall see to be the most hostile to anthropological theories. But they are reluctant to admit any relations between the moral agent and physical nature, whereas the new school, on the contrary, makes every effort to discover and determine them.

How far is it successful? That is the question.

If we take the ensemble of the emotional and intellectual characters, we shall affirm with Professor Pelman (whose opinion Mr. Christian Ufer has made known in The Monist) that the portrait of the imbecile traced by Sollier corresponds strongly to that of the born criminal of Lombroso. We shall aver also that this portrait does not answer equally well for all kinds of delinquents, and that we pass gradually from the malignant imbecile to the average or mediocre man. The same observation applies when we study the physiognomical characters of which the little book of Lombroso furnishes a great variety. We shall have evidently to consider, with respect to physiognomical characters and physical marks, a strong type (certainly inborn), a weak type, and, I would add, an acquired type.

If we take functional anomalies—those of touch, sight, etc.—we shall be struck with their number as well as with their importance, and, I may say in passing, the alienist physicians who continue to be the adversaries of Lombroso discover every day fresh examples of them, which could give to the conception of the type, the reality they still deny it to possess. The latest discovery, and certainly one of the most striking, is that which Ottolenghi has just made, in the clinic of Lombroso himself, respecting the visual field of epileptics and of the morally insane. According to the researches of Ottolenghi, the visual field will be remarkably limited, both with epileptics not in paroxysms, and with born delinquents, but more often with the latter. They present a partial hemiopia, vertical and heteronymous; the periphery of the field is sinuous and irregular. This discovery tends, then, to confirm the analogy of epilepsy with criminal tendencies; it will furnish a sign of the first order for a well marked category of delinquents.

Let us pass on to morphological characters. The abundance of evidence is truly extraordinary, and one cannot abstain from remarking, in this relation, that a certain number of the anomalies designated ought to be found, and indeed are found, in morally healthy subjects, and that therefore they do not alone suffice to furnish a ground of distinction from the medium normal type. As certain functional anomalies are not wanting either in many subjects whose morality remains perfect, it would be necessary to aim, it seems to me, at establishing an approximate quantum for the criminal type, or rather for the kinds which ought to lead, by sensible gradations, from the most pronounced type to that which is the least so. Some scattered elements of this work will be found in the book of Lombroso; the studies of Clouston on the palate (deformation of the palate existed in 19 per cent. of the general population, 61 per cent. of imbeciles, 35 per cent. of criminals, and 33 per cent. of madmen); the monographs of Ottolenghi and Roncoroni on the pathological anomalies of 100 criminals, with an indication of the number and the nature of the anomalies, etc.

In short, it cannot be questioned that the new school holds its ground well, since it circumscribes and makes more and more precise the object of its researches. In my humble opinion, it is of importance for it to get rid of hazardous or useless explanations, for it to tell us as little as possible of remote atavism—for if heredity is constant, it is not possible to trace it link by link as far as the deluge!—and finally for pure anthropologists and psychiatrists to beware of themselves drawing practical conclusions from their doctrines. The applications concern jurists, and constitute a question of another kind, into which other considerations also enter.

In the juridical domain, a French magistrate, M. Louis Proal, has just published a considerable work, Le Crime et la Peine (Crime and Punishment) which is truly the performance of an adversary, but not of such an adversary as M. Tarde. M. Proal is an irreconcilable, and all his dialectic—charged a little too much with citations of which many are useless or prove nothing—turns on the absolute affirmation of free-will. He flatters himself to have demonstrated freedom, in which he is wrong. It is a matter of faith, as criticists have very well perceived. Human science can know only determinism; it proves only what it finds.⁠[80]

M. Proal claims then to found on free-will the two principles of the moral responsibility of the delinquent, and the moral character of punishment, in opposition to the purely social point of view in which the new criminalists place themselves. The physical anomaly of the criminal seems to him a chimera, and he goes so far as to deny, or falls little short of it, the relations of frenzied impulsion with degeneracy. Willingly, perhaps, he would accept as truly mad and irresponsible only the insane, those who are shut up forever in the asylums!

Certainly, M. Proal possesses the experience of the magistrate, he has erudition and triumphs easily, in details, by the defects and deficiencies of the doctrine he combats. His objections, nevertheless, do not touch the general conception which connects crime, in a great number of cases, with the disorders of the living machine. He is not willing for the criminal to differ from the honest man otherwise than by his inclinations and will, as though will and inclinations had no dependence on the state of our organs, and as though heredity entered for nothing into the “personal factor” of character! He is not averse to saying that moral and physical decadence is always the effect of criminality, as though it was never its cause! He allows with that attenuations of moral responsibility, resulting from physiological and physical influences, as though a weakened responsibility was a true moral responsibility in the sense he understands, and as though the judge had the means of deciding at what moment morbid evolution involves irresponsibility!

These absolute principles once established, he defines an offense “the violation of a social duty,” and he grants that the judge “ought to take account of the importance of the social evil resulting from the crime.” It is sufficient for him that the intention and the responsibility is appreciated, in order to attach the penalty to morality. In default of which, writes he, there would be no more justice. It is a noble solicitude, that of wishing to justify punishment in the eyes of the guilty person himself, and to inflict it on him as an expiation of the evil he has committed. But here an error is fallen into, which is, in my opinion, to suppose that the law punishes “morally.” The law has not the power to inflict moral chastisement. It strikes the delinquent materially, in his goods, in his person; the rest depends not on the judge who applies the law, but on the judge who is in ourselves, the avenger more or less severe according to the complex incidences of education and heredity. Moral chastisement can exist only in the conscience of the delinquent, and, if this conscience is wanting, or nearly so, all the affirmations of the judge cannot cause the punishment to have the quality of moral expiation for the guilty. The criminal will submit to it through force, and the magistrate will apply it by necessity.

Such is, I think, the true situation. The new school of criminology will introduce reforms in the practice of the tribunals and in the administration of the penal laws; it will not change justice and could not compromise morality. And now pardon me for adding to these some further remarks, in connection with the books of which I have still to speak.

The interests and the passions of men, habits too long acquired to alter, can be considered as the immediate and constant motives of societies, the vis à tergo of their evolution. Political theories work on a pre-existing social matter, and more or less in the direction of the tendencies which have produced the state of things that they aspire to reform or overturn. In a general manner, they possess then neither the power necessary to create, attributed to them by utopists, nor the power to destroy, which makes them appear so formidable to conservatives. Without denying all efficiency to the intellectual ideal, it is permissible to say that its action has a bearing purely conditional, and that the revolutions of growth of social organisms never absolutely depend on the theorist who establishes its diagnosis, and endeavors to regulate its march. We behold, in a word, history making itself, rather than that we make it ourselves and according to our inclination. It is hardly possible for us to foresee the remote effects of our inventions, of our discoveries. In sociology as well as in physics, man remains the servant and the interpreter of nature.

There is in this, if I am not deceived, a reason for reassuring ourselves concerning certain alarming predictions as to the future of our civilisation. In his book La Civilisation et la Croyance (Civilisation and Belief), the second edition of which has just appeared, M. Charles Secrétan estimates that our societies will sink down, at least that they will neither return to a purified Christianity—a Christianity that has never yet been practised—nor restore the great principles of the free soul and of God. M. Secrétan is a brilliant writer and has a noble heart, and his book contains at least one truth of the first order, always good to repeat, which is that nothing durable is founded on hatred. He dare not flatter himself, however, that his warnings will be listened to, his lessons observed. Perhaps he exaggerates the real dangers which menace us, because he enlarges, unknown to himself, the rôle of philosophic doctrines, and attributes to the mind a kind of discretionary power over the sentiments and the interests of mankind.

Here we have the intellectualist mistake. It appears chiefly in the revolutionist propaganda which agitates our Europe, and of which M. J. Bourdeau makes known the ideas and the progress, in a clear and interesting manner, in his work Le Socialisme allemand et le Nihilisme russe (German Socialism and Russian Nihilism). It is a fact well worthy of remark, that the genial promoter of the theories of Fourier, St. Simon, and others—I refer to J. J. Rousseau—had had the conjecture of a social physiology: fragments of his that have been published show well that he did not regard the age of gold as one of savagery, and that he foresaw the part that human nature had to do in our calculations of government. What is found just in his writings could even well be intimately connected with this naturalist point of view. But he lived in the century par excellence of rationalism, where such ideas could be neither developed nor understood; he constructed the political world according to reasoning, and I shall not be far wrong in thinking that socialism represents in its turn, definitively, at least in its essential features, a last offshoot from this rational school which has already, a hundred years ago, made us the villainous present of Jacobinism.

Absolute communism has no chance of ever realising itself. Neither Karl Marx, nor Engels, has ventured even to indicate the possible form of the society of which they dream. The action of the socialists, in turn, could have as its result the substitution for our régime of excessive individualism and of disordered democracy, a régime of corporations and of more regular co-operation, by one of those reversions to institutions anciently delineated that history presents to us, and which respond to a sort of “law of oscillation” of social phenomena. There is no occasion, however, to give it long consideration to establish that these returns do not exclude novelty, for the apparent form of social arrangements is of less moment than the nature of the ideas and of the relations which sustain them, and here is what I would readily call a “law of progressive repetition.” As to the exact sense of the evolution which there manifests itself, the great task of disengaging it falls to the sociologists. But the school of Marx has wished to see things only from one side, and his theory, which is too simple, does not embrace the complexity of the phenomena.⁠[81]

Without any pretension to renew the face of the world and to interpret economic phenomena in favor of an arbitrary thesis, M. Ad. Costa, in his opuscule Alcoholisme ou Épargne (Alcoholism or Thrift) places before us the truly immediate question of socialism, in the presence of this “social dilemma” which reformers willingly mask in their discourses: on one side, alcoholism, life from day to day, the unreasonable and momentary illusion that one imbibes with stimulants, the wasting of daily resources, finally the pauperism which leads to social servitude; on the other side, thrift under all its forms, a provident life ordered with intelligence, abstention from dangerous stimulants, progressive comfort and increasing happiness, more and more freedom. Yes, here are the two issues between which the workers have to choose. Those who read this little book can learn there, both what milliards of salaries alcohol has devoured, and what misery both physical and moral it engenders, and the degradation that it brings to those who give themselves up to it. To many this may be only the small side of a great problem. Without thrift and the qualities which render it possible, there is neither family nor morality. How can a man pretend to possess instruments of labor when he deteriorates the chief of all, his own living machine? How can a social class have the illusion to believe that a revolution ever profits him who is neither able nor capable of preparing and conducting it?

The last work of M. E. de Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Démocratie (Democratic Government),⁠[82] published a few months before his death, treats chiefly of the organisation of public powers. This question has importance to-day, writes the learned author, only in relation to the great questions which will agitate the world of to-morrow, the social question and the religious question. Conservatives make use of government as a brake; revolutionists seek to seize hold of it as a lever. The fact is that our Europe marches towards democracy. But will democracy give us freedom? On what conditions can it form an acceptable régime and one compatible with high culture?

It is not necessary for me to explain here the reasonings and conclusions of M. de Laveleye. His book, to speak the truth, is less a book than a collection of Review articles and historical sketches. The politics of action will find in it too much theory, and philosophers will regret the absence of master-ideas. It is well to read this work for its practical advice and the rich details that it contains; we must not look there for a real historical or social conception.

The sentiment which is dominant, finally, in all the writings of which I have just spoken is inquietude, and unfortunately it is only too well justified. We see, in our Occident, alcoholism increasing with salaries, the hatred of classes with wealth, immorality with enfranchisement, public burdens with political progress, the aggregation of individuals with great industry, criminality even with education. The wealth acquired is compensated for by new evils; it seems that all our conquests have the result of putting social order in peril, and that the civilisation of which we are so proud is bound, in a short time, to become bankrupt.

We have, nevertheless, a weighty capital with which to restore ourselves, and it is only right to say that it is beginning to be applied. But we must give up some errors as to which it is good time to open one’s eyes. One of the gravest, certainly, is always to place instruction before education, and the mind before the heart. We have allowed to drop, at the same time with religion, the difficult task of forming moral habits. Let us understand in a word that, in a society, the most valuable thing is neither the steam engine, nor the bank note, but the man himself, and that in the man even it is not ability or special knowledge but character.

Lucien Arréat.

FOOTNOTES:

II. GERMANY.

In the January number of The Monist I mentioned a treatise written by G. Ludwigs, in which the novels of Wilhelm Walloth were criticised, and expressed my surprise that in the work discussed a personality unquestionably diseased was stamped as a poet of almost the first order. Much that then struck me as strange and was unclear to me, was later rendered plain and intelligible; and the explanation was not long in forthcoming.

As the newspapers shortly afterwards announced, Ludwigs was simply the pseudonym of a sixteen year old gymnasium student of Darmstadt, who had already attracted the attention of wider circles by the poems he had written. It happens at times that individualities of this description bear out in the advanced years of their life the promise of their youth. Extraordinary things were to be expected, though I cannot say hoped, of Ludwigs; but the expectation was not fulfilled. He, an instance of real decadence, yet a boy in years, voluntarily took his own life, deeply mourned by his literary associates, the “Young Germans,” in whose magazine Die Gesellschaft a brother of the deceased is now publishing biographical notes and literary remains—novels and poems—all more of a psychological than literary interest. The biographical notes plainly mark out a personality smitten with psychosis and suffering in a marked degree with hyperæsthesia, and the literary remains reflect this mental condition; light-sensations especially playing an important rôle. His nervous system was too weak to assert itself permanently against the outer world. This pressure, which objectively considered was not at all a powerful one, did not admit of the rise of a powerful sense of life; and especially oppressive to the precocious youth was the life of the school in the most varied ways, and in an unexpected moment the flame of his life went out.

As psychologists, we should find considerable interest in the study of this phenomenon of Ludwigs. We must admire his abilities and his capacity for work, which not only enabled him to perform his duties as a student of the gymnasium, but also left him time enough, in addition to his literary work, to employ himself with the psychological writings of Wundt and Münsterberg, which he desired to turn to account in the field of poetry. We must mourn too his sad fate. But we have no reason to glorify such a diseased personality, as is done on many sides in the April number of Die Gesellschaft.

But this is a peculiar characteristic of the Young-German writers and their confrères abroad, that they make the diseased take the place of the sound, and the ugly of the beautiful, and thus help greatly to undermine the health of the common mind. There are it is true a goodly number of trusting souls who believe that we may regard with security and composure, the endeavors and tendencies of the naturalistic apostles, as our taste in literature and art—a few cases excepted—can surely not be reversed into its opposite. On this point, perhaps, those who so think are not wrong. But the stage may easily be reached where literary taste no longer remains determinative, and the place of the æsthetical interest in things is taken by the scientific, before whose judgment-seat no difference of the beautiful and the hideous exists.

This view is the direct outcome of philosophical materialism. The latter doctrine may at present, it is true, be regarded in all its main points as definitively overthrown, so far as philosophy is concerned; but in the domain of belles lettres—a term not quite allowable here—the wave which it has created still sweeps mightily onward. Two new works seek to break its force, which have been published in the series Gegen den Materialismus edited by Dr. Schmidkunz (Stuttgart: Krabbe). The first treatise bears the title Materialismus und Æsthetik and has no less a person as author than Moriz Carrière; the second treats of Materialism in Literature and is the production of the northerner Ola Hansson. I am unable to say that these two treatises have especially satisfied me. Both authors look at the subject too one-sidedly from the point of view of æsthetics, and have not by far given a sufficient recognition to the psychological aspect of the subject. I recognise indeed with Carrière, in spite of all the apparent mutability of taste, a normative æsthetics; but that man bears within him an ideal of life, as the seed does the plant with its blossom and its fruit, I am unable for psychological reasons to concede. I grant that I find with Ola Hansson psychology is so far poorly represented in the naturalistic literature as the growth and evolution of character is made to appear a much too simple process; and I concede furthermore that the evolution of character in the individual case is very far removed from anything like resemblance to an example in mathematics, inasmuch as quantities may be lacking us in such a case which are absolutely necessary to be taken account of for a correct solution of the problem; but these missing quantities need not for that reason be at all matters of mystery, in their true nature wholly unknown to us.

To what limits the domain of mystery has shrunk and to how great an extent its expressions may be made intelligible and to a certain degree even may be “regulated,” provided, equipped with thorough knowledge, we courageously look the things in the face, is exemplified in a marked degree by a voluminous work of the above mentioned Dr. Schmidkunz. The so-called Suggestion passed for a long time as something wonderful and had to rest its defence in the hands of the representatives of a psycho-physical mysticism as opposed to a “surface”-psychology which in the words of Du Prels occupied itself exclusively with surface work without penetrating to the depths. Schmidkunz now points out in his Psychologie der Suggestion (Stuttgart, 1892: Ferdinand Enke) in a very comprehensive manner what others had very plainly hinted at before him, namely, that in the case of a very great number of phenomena we have, exactly viewed, to deal only with some very simple and quite explainable things which unite in the composition of what is commonly called suggestion. The contents of the work, however, are not exhausted with this; under the influence of a tremendous scope of reading, the author treats the whole domain of suggestion, and if he understood more perfectly the art of good writing, he would have earned a much greater gratitude than that which in any event is his due.

Schmidkunz touches repeatedly in his work upon a domain which still belongs to the most obscure of the history of civilisation, namely witchcraft and the trials of witches. This topic, likewise viewed from a psychological point of view, forms the subject of a special treatise by Snell, entitled Hexenprocesse und Geistesstörung (Munich, 1891: J. F. Lehmann). In this book no rôle is ascribed to suggestion, but as the title indicates the treatment centres about the question of what significance mental disorders generally may have possessed in the trials of witches. The author concedes that demented persons became the victims of the trials for witchcraft either because they had rendered themselves by their character open to the suspicion of a compact with the devil, or because they had by self-obtrusion directly drawn upon themselves this persecution, but asserts nevertheless, that the number of demented persons that fell victims to the trials for witchcraft, was comparatively very small. Mental disorder however played in so far a great rôle in the trials for witchcraft as demented persons, especially such as suffered from hysteria, became false witnesses and brought sound and healthy people into the hands of the persecuting judges.

As I am now treading the province of psychiatry, I will mention, that Wilhelm Griesinger’s celebrated work Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten has just been published in its fifth edition under the direction of Dr. Levinstein-Schlegel, the director of the Maison de Santé in Schöneberg (Berlin: August Hirschwald). I do not of course specify this work solely for the sake of the physicians who may be readers of The Monist, but am rather impelled to the act by a universal psychological consideration, for Griesinger in the first edition of the work also made a name for himself as a psychologist. It appeared originally in 1845, and possessed a compass of 396 pages; the fifth edition numbers 1100 pages and has increased considerably in size as compared with the fourth. Whether the augmentations have added anything to the value of the work is a question which must first be submitted for answer to our physicians. In psychological respects its value has in so far been very much increased as the experiential data have assumed much greater proportions: the psychological analysis however has been somewhat neglected.

Psychological analysis in fact is not the strong side of the majority of our psychiatrists. What Griesinger and still more so Spielmann sought after in this direction, has been greatly forced in the background. As a general rule our inquirers content themselves with a description of symptoms and the construction of a more than copious nomenclature, in the midst of which the connections are Very easy to be overlooked. Among the commendable exceptions is to be named in this respect the well-known Vienna professor Theodor Meynert. In addition to his extensive psychiatrical works he has also published a considerable number of lectures and discourses partly in magazines and partly in separate brochures. These discourses are now presented in collected form in a book entitled Sammlung von populärwissenschaftlichen Vorträgen über den Bau una die Leistungen des Gehirns (Vienna, 1892, Wilhelm Braumüller). The most noticeable discourses are the following: The Significance of the Brain for the World of our Ideas; The Mechanics of the Cerebral Structure; On the Feelings; On Illusion; On the Significance of the Development of the Forehead; The Mechanics of Physiognomy; Brain and Culture; The Co-operation of the Parts of the Brain; On Artificial Disturbances of the Psychic Equilibrium. No words need be wasted in the recommendation of the book of Meynert.

Chr. Ufer.

DIVERSE TOPICS.

PROFESSOR HAECKEL’S MONISM.

There are two Latin proverbs which are both good rules for controversialists who seek for the truth on different roads. The one reads: In verbis simus faciles dummodo conveniamus in re, the other reads: In verbis simus difficiles ut conveniamus in re. A difference of terms often prevents two thinkers from noticing that they actually agree. Therefore let us be lenient in terms and never lose sight of their meaning and purport. On the other hand terms are not indifferent, and the selection of terms should not be regarded as arbitrary. In order to arrive at a solid and permanent agreement, permanent because it is based upon objectively demonstrable truth, we have to be scrupulously careful with our terminology; and we must not allow the arbitrary employment of terms where they are inappropriate. An inappropriate usage of terms will lead us astray and involve us in confusion and error.

Says Professor Haeckel:

“The divergences which exhibit themselves in our respective unitary conceptions of the world are in part only apparent and in part occasioned by the divergent significances of our fundamental ideas.”

This seems to me very true and, indeed, I have very good evidence that it is true. Professor Haeckel writes in his letter to me:

“I have marked in red those passages of your kind review of my ‘Anthropogeny’ in which I agree with you and in blue those in which I differ.”

Now I find all those passages where I should have anticipated an objection on Professor Haeckel’s part marked red, while a blue mark appears where in my opinion there is only a difference of terminology. It is the following sentence on page 441:

“Psychic life is absent so far as we can see in the primordial world-substance as it appears in the form of a nebula; it is absent still in the primordial state of planets. It appears with the subjective states of awareness that rise into existence in organised life. The subjectivity of unorganised matter is, in comparison with man’s subjectivity, to be considered as a blank; i. e., if there is in it a state of awareness, which we have reasons to doubt, it is apparently without meaning; it does not symbolise external objects; it is no mind; it is, as it were, blind. Yet the aim of evolution being the development of psychical life, shows that the subjectivity of unorganised matter is spiritual in its innermost nature.”

This difference is probably a difference of terminology only, for I insist most strongly on the doctrine that all nature is alive. However, I make a difference between “life” and “soul.” Nature is alive throughout, but it is not ensouled; the action of chemical elements and of the falling stone are no psychical actions.⁠[83]

Another blue stroke appears at the following passage:

“We grant willingly that mechanical explanations will serve for all motions that take place in the world; even the motions of the brain take place in strict obedience to the laws of molar and molecular mechanics. But a mechanical explanation is not applicable to that which is not motion. If it were applicable it would not be desirable, for it would be of no avail. Mechanical explanations are to be limited to mechanical phenomena. Feeling however is not a mechanical phenomenon, and an idea, being a special and a very complex kind of a feeling, or rather and more accurately expressed, being the special meaning of a very complex feeling, is not a mechanical phenomenon either.”

The subsequent sentences are again approved by Professor Haeckel; they are marked red:

“It is true that when a feeling takes place and when an idea is thought in the brain of an organised being, that a certain nervous action takes place. The nervous action is a motion and this motion represents a definite amount of energy. There is no theoretical difficulty, although there are almost insurmountable practical difficulties, in measuring the definite amount of potential energy that is changed into kinetic energy when a man thinks. Yet the brain-motion is not the idea and by a mechanical explanation of the brain-motion we have not even touched the problem of what the nature of the idea is, why ideas originate and how they act.”

We do not understand how Professor Haeckel can object to the view that ideas and feelings are no motions. We fully grant that the nervous action that takes place when an idea is thought is a motion, and that, considered as a brain-action, it is mechanically explainable. But by feeling we understand not the brain-action but a state of awareness, and states of awareness are not objective phenomena, they are subjective phenomena; whereby we do not at all deny that there are no feelings which must not in their objective existence at the same time be supposed to be brain-motions.

Feelings are not motions but ideas are still less motions. Ideas are the meanings which certain feelings that are representative of certain sets of experiences have acquired. Is the meaning of a word a motion? Can the significance of words be mechanically explained? The meaning of ideas, the significance of words, the representativeness of feelings are phenomena which have nothing to do with motions but constitute a domain of their own.

Professor Haeckel in our opinion can mean only that there are no feelings in themselves, but all our feelings are at the same time brain-motions, and as such they are mechanical phenomena. We have to add, however, that an explanation of the mechanism of brain-action does not as yet explain the significance of mental operations.

Professor Haeckel insists so strongly upon his view of monism as being mechanicalism that this seems to mark a difference in our conceptions which might be of consequence.

I was very glad to notice the long strokes of red along the passages which contain my proposition that “the evolution of organised life is a natural process having a definite aim”; further, along the paragraphs concerning the world-order as being moral in so far as the world-order is the basis of morality, and also those which represent God as being that power of the world-order obedience to which is called morality.

Professor Haeckel’s agreement with these passages indicates that those expressions of his to which we should take exception, and which he employs again in his article of the present number, might not be regarded as divergences.

Professor Haeckel’s definition of God appears to us insufficient, and also his definition of immortality.

God is not only the sum-total of matter and force, God is also that quality of the world which the naturalist describes in natural laws. God is the life of the world, he is that feature of existence which makes mind and knowledge possible. In addition he is that which men call progress, the ideal of the future that lives in our souls and the principle of evolution in nature.

There is a deeper truth too in the doctrine of immortality. There is a conservation of matter and energy, but there is also a preservation of soul. Says Professor Haeckel, “the human soul is a very highly developed vertebral soul.” If that is so, the soul of our fossil ancestors continues to live in us. This soul has been altered, it is true, but the alterations are not so much a loss as a gain. The alterations consist in the additional growth of new powers and represent a higher development. All that which was worth preserving has been preserved.

And as it has been in the past, so we can confidently expect that it will be in the future. All that is worth preserving of our souls will be preserved in the ages to come. Our souls will live and develop to higher possibilities. They will be transmitted from generation to generation, advancing on the unlimited path of evolutionary progress.

P. C.

FOOTNOTES:

THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE.

There was during the last winter great excitement in Germany, concerning a new school-bill proposed by the chancellor Caprivi, and the late Prussian minister of cultus, Zedlitz-Trützschler. This school-bill proposed to take the direction of the public schools out of the hands of scientific men and transfer it to the clergy. The idea of the Emperor was to let the education of the young be guided in a religious spirit. He intended to wage a war against atheism.

Among the pamphlets which were written during the crisis, is especially noteworthy the monograph of the late minister of cultus, Herr von Gosler, whom we should count among the most conservative of Prussian officials. His opposition, accordingly, is the more remarkable, and his objections had much weight with the Emperor.

The Emperor has withdrawn the bill. Nevertheless, the spirit of ultra-conservatism, which shows itself in an outspoken hostility against science, still remains strong enough, and new onslaughts upon the progressive policy in school and church, may be expected in the future. The question is timely still and will remain timely until there be a common agreement concerning the principles of education, so that our school politics may no longer be decided by and subjected to partisan strife.

Attacks that are made upon the very spirit of the institution of our civilisation and the political crises following thereupon are beneficial in one respect. They make people pause; they make them reconsider the principles by which they allow their conduct to be regulated. They make men conscious of the maxims that ought to underlie their lives and which generally are accepted by the majority without much reflection. The Prussian school-bill has indeed exercised a wholesome influence, for it called attention to the importance of principles and roused the German nation from religious indifference. During the conflict many scientists and professors of universities, who as a rule interfere little with politics, have raised their voice in warning, and many valuable ideas were expressed that found a strong echo in the heart of the people.

There are two articles written by German professors which have commanded very wide attention inside and outside of Germany. The one article was written by Professor Haeckel of Jena, in the Freie Bühne, the most important passages of which appeared at the time in The Open Court, No. 243. The other article was written by Friedrich Jodl, of Prague. It appeared first in the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, and was republished in pamphlet form by Cotta, in Stuttgart. The former is an enthusiastic appeal to let science, which is the basis of our civilisation, remain the basis of our educational maxims in schools and universities. The latter discusses the philosophical principles of the conflict.

We are greatly in sympathy with the spirit in which Professor Jodl has treated his subject. Nay, more, we substantially agree with him concerning all main facts, and also concerning the sense in which our future development should be directed. Nevertheless there are points of disagreement, which we consider of sufficient importance to point out and explain.

The ultra-conservative party stands upon the platform that there can be no morality without religion, and no religion without dogmatism. For this reason dogmatism should rule supreme in the schools, and science should be subservient to religious creed. That this means curtailment of the freedom of investigation, and the suppression of the liberty of science, is understood by all the parties concerned. The liberals so apprehend it, and the ultra-conservatives do not deny it. In the face of this situation Professor Jodl proposes the question, “Is there a humanitarian morality possible?” (p. 8 of the pamphlet “Moral, Religion, und Schule.”) He says:

“A mere glance into the numerous anthologies of the moral wisdom of all times and centuries, shows that the agreement concerning moral ideas and norms is much greater, and it recedes much more into the dim past than is usually assumed. The writings of Laotse and Confutse, the popular literature of Buddhism, the fragments of old Egyptian law, the didactic poetry of Islam, contain a great wealth of moral wisdom, and treasures of the noblest ethical sentiment which the Christian Occident likes to regard as its own exclusive property. Especially the ancients, whose civilisation, in spite of much opposition, is still the basis of our civilisation, furnish us with a series of the most beautiful moral types and ideals, and there we find, beside many valuable features of Christian ethics, other no less valuable gems which we seek for in vain in the old Christian morality, and which were not recognised until Christianity came into contact with the Teutonic nations of northern Europe. Our ultra-conservatives argue that without catechisms humanity would stand helpless before the question of what is right and wrong, and what the growing generation should be taught in order to make them useful and honorable members of society.”

In opposition to these views Professor Jodl urges that

“If society of to-day can at all tolerate that such doctrines as Christian morality are taught in our schools as the foundation of practical conduct of life, this is possible only because the ethics of the old biblical Christianity has, in the course of centuries, grown to be something quite different from what it was in the beginning. The throughout communistic, labor-abhorring, world-hating, miracle-infatuated morality of original Christianity, constantly dreaming of the collapse of the world near at hand, and suited only to the demands of the paupers of the time, could only be changed and adapted to the conditions of later periods of radically different conditions, with great difficulty. The Catholic church has done much to accomplish this purpose, and in a still higher degree Protestantism has made many concessions to humanitarian ethics and practical reason. These concessions, however, must appear from the historical standpoint, as adulterations of the Christian ideas. Exactly in the degree that Christian morality in modern times has remained a living power, it has ceased to remain Christian in the historical sense.... The tendency of the whole development of the modern world is to conceive the moral norms as natural conditions of human society, and to understand them in their connection of the individual with the whole. This thought and sentiment must become in the child a living power, and morality cannot expect in this respect help from religion. Religion knows only the relation of the individual to God, as it is expressed in the mystical ideas of sin and mercy. Religion knows no duties and goals for humanity, but only for the egotistic desire of salvation for the individual. Religion knows no progress, no evolution, but only eternal life or eternal damnation. The civilised nations of Europe had to go through with many hard struggles in order to arrive at the idea that there is a humanitarian, and a natural, morality, in comparison with which all religious dogmatism must be considered as indifferent additions. Only on the basis of this conviction is it possible that there exist to-day so many religious confessions of faith, and among them also those who are religious without having any special confession. Here lies the great duty of our time for enlightened legislation, for our schools, to take care that the universal Christian be developed from the narrow dogmatism, and, further, the universal human ideal, from the universal Christian. To expect this of the clergy of the different religious societies, would be a mistake.... The theological spirit and the principle of free investigation, are irreconcilable adversaries. Every religion, of whatever denomination it may be, is stable in its very nature. It pretends to be eternal truth, and whenever it compromises with the idea of progress, it does so reluctantly, and in the form of concessions.”

We agree with Professor Jodl in his opinion that our present dogmatic religions are entirely unfit to understand the demands of the present. And it is true that the humanitarian ideas of morality have been slowly developed from the crude and immature notions of the apostolic times. The aim of our moral development must be humanitarian ethics. But we disagree with professor Jodl that we cannot expect a further evolution of our moral ideas from the clergy.

It seems to me that here lies the important difference between the old and the new world. Conditions favor religious progress in America, while the conditions in Europe cut off all hope and produce an ominous stagnancy.

The clergy of the old world, in Germany as well as in England, and in all Catholic countries, are appointed only on the condition of being ultra-conservative in religious matters, as well as otherwise. No young man whose enthusiasm would carry him so far as to suggest reforms on broader humanitarian principles, would be admitted in the church as ministers. And if he had been admitted by mistake, he would meet with a fate similar to that of the Abbé Lamennais, whose experiences are admirably described by George Julian Harney, in No. 213 of The Open Court.

The situation is greatly different in America. Our clergymen, our congregations, our churches, are perhaps more orthodox in many respects, and especially in their belief, than those of Europe. Nevertheless, they are more liberal in principles, and they are less obstinate concerning dogma. Most of our churches here do not even possess dogmatic creeds, or confessions of faith. The clergy of the Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Unitarians, are not bound by oath before taking orders; to believe in sundry articles and to preach certain doctrines which are supposed to be absolute truth. The Baptists, it is true, are as a rule very orthodox and very dogmatic, but they are liberal in spite of it, open to conviction, and not averse to going onward with the times. This attitude of the American clergy must appear inconsistent to Europeans who can, in ecclesiastical affairs, only judge from their own experiences. And it may be that their position is as much inconsistent as was for instance that of Newton, who considered the trash he wrote on some theological questions concerning the apocalypse as infinitely superior to his mathematical and astronomical works and did not see that the recognition of the law of gravitation would go far toward freeing humanity from many of those nonsensical ideas which he cherished so highly.

In former times I was inclined to blame the clergy for the lack of progressiveness in the churches, but I have come to the conclusion that not the clergy are to be blamed for retarding the broadening of the religious spirit, but the lay-members of the churches. I am personally acquainted with several clergymen of different denominations, Christian as well as Jewish, who conceive it their duty to point out the way of progress and to further the spirit of a scientific world-conception in religious matters. They advance exactly as quickly and exactly as far as they can in working out of the narrow dogmatism of the religious views of their flock the ideas of a broad humanitarianism.

It has often happened that clergymen, encouraged by their congregations, have grown too broad in the opinion of their narrower brethren, and it was customary, in former years, to cast them out according to the old fashion of dealing with heretics, which is still customary in European churches. The churches have become more careful here, for, whenever such a case happened, these liberal clergymen were, as a rule, not deserted by their congregations. Thus every act of removing a clergyman usually led to a schism, and it seems that, at least to some extent, the churches have of late given up their policy of removing heretics within their ranks.

This much is certain, that many among the American clergy are ready to progress with the times, and to accept the truth wherever they find it. In Europe religion is dictated to the people from above by government and church authority. The clergymen are servants of these authorities. Their consciences are not bound, as they ought to be, to teach the truth and nothing but the truth, but to teach the doctrines which their employers bid them teach. And this policy is still considered right and natural, even among liberal minded people.

In America the clergy are exponents of the views of their congregations. In Europe the congregations are separated from their pastors by a deep gap: there is no gap between the congregation and the clergy in America. Both are in the closest contact. Our congregations are more orthodox than European congregations; therefore our clergy is more sincerely orthodox, and more honestly narrow, than the European clergy. The European clergy are more scholarly, yet at the same time there may be more hypocrites among them in Europe who know better than they preach. But there is no doubt that with a further development of intellectuality and scientific insight, our congregations will become broader and more liberal and more humanitarian, and, with the congregations, our clergy are bound to develop in the same lines.

European theology is much superior to American theology in scholarly critique, in historical investigation, and in philosophical depth. Nevertheless, we must not hope from European theologians that they will undertake the great work of reform that is so much needed in our churches, which is nothing less than to reconcile religion with science; to let religion develop into a religion of science, preaching boldly and unreservedly those humanitarian ethics which stand upon the principles of truth; that is, of scientifically proved truth, which finds the sanction of the moral “ought” in the facts of experience.

Professor Jodl says:

“The main objection of the supporters of dogmatism in school politics is this: They propose it is not so much religion that is needed in education; not the contents of ecclesiastical doctrines, but to give to morality a foundation; to give it what science calls the sanction of ethical rules.... From this standpoint, every attempt that is liable to weaken the ethics of religious sanction must appear equivalent to the attempt of abolishing criminal law and penal institutes, and to deliver the peaceful citizens into the hands of murderers and robbers.”

Professor Jodl continues:

“The nature of religious sanction consists in this: that the moral rules are conceived as the behests of an all-powerful, omniscient being, that promises to immortal man for their fulfilment, eternal rewards, and for their non-fulfilment eternal punishment in the life beyond.”

In opposition to this view Professor Jodl maintains that

“Man’s morality, on the one hand, has never been preserved from error by an outlook into the beyond of heaven and hell, and, on the other hand, there have never been missing those impulses that originate in the depths of human nature working in the line of moral ideas.”

These impulses are, according to Professor Jodl, the purely moral sanction of conscience. And conscience is represented as, and in another place called, “the natural sanction of morality.”

This view of regarding conscience as the natural sanction of morality does not appear to us as a happy expression, and it seems to us that Professor Jodl did not intend it as it might be understood. For Professor Jodl speaks in another passage of “the natural impulses of morality as having their sanction in experience.”

If that be so, conscience would not be the ultimate authority, but conscience would have to be regulated and corrected by a rationalised experience.

If “the natural impulses of morality have their sanction in experience,” the ultimate authority would be the facts represented in experience; and the facts of experience, in their totality, are nothing more or less than the whole universe with its natural laws and conceived in its cosmical order. The universe, the All, nature, or whatever you call it, is indeed an omnipotent reality which man cannot resist, and in which he can live only by adapting himself to its laws. If this ultimate authority of the natural laws be called by the religious term “God,” we shall see at once that the old dogmatic religions express a very deep truth in mythological language. The ultimate sanction of morality is not our conscience, but that omnipotent power which resides in the objective world of realities, in the cosmical order of the universe.

We might as well say that everybody shall regard his watch as the ultimate standard of time as to make his conscience the criterion of morality. May everybody use his watch wisely and regulate it well. And so may everybody revise his conscience and investigate diligently whether it agrees with the laws of that all-power of which we are a small part and through which alone we exist.

Professor Jodl praises very highly the French institution of a so-called purely moral instruction in the public schools. Father H. Gruber, however, points out some serious shortcomings in this system of moral education, resulting from a lack of principle. (See Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, Freiburg i. B., 1892, No. 4.)

It is apparent that moral commands cannot be based upon purely subjective notions or ideals, they must be based upon some objective authority which is a power that enforces obedience. Such a power exists. It is the world in which we live. It is that All-being of which we are a part. And that feature of nature which enforces that conduct which we call moral is named God in the terminology of religious language.

A consideration like this points out the way to a reconciliation between science and religion. There is a truth in the old religions, and this truth need only be purified from the errors that cluster about it, hiding its grandeur, beauty, and importance. Let the church and its authorities recognise science and the principle of free investigation; let them be ready to accept the scientific methods of research; let them be willing to accept truth as it can be proved by arguments and verified by experience as well as by experiments; and we need no longer worry about dogmatism and the narrowness of their sectarian doctrines. All these accidental features of religion will, then, pass away, and we shall have a religion which the scientist and the philosopher can embrace.

This is what we call the Religion of Science; and the Religion of Science is bound to be the religion of the future. The Religion of Science will not abolish the religions of the past, but it will develop them, broaden them, perfect them, into the cosmical religion of humanitarianism.

To teach an ethics that either has no sanction, or whose sanction is built upon the diverging opinions of individuals, will not do. Ethics must be based upon the sanction of some objective authority, and the recognition of an objective authority, of a power which enforces a certain kind of conduct, being religion, we say that no ethics can be without a religious basis.

The problem at present is not how to teach irreligious ethics—all such attempts are failures at the start; but to change the mythology of the old religions into a clear, scientific conception of the natural conditions which demand of man that he should observe those rules which we are wont to call moral.

P. C.

THE FUTURE POSITION OF LOGICAL THEORY.

In last October’s number of The Monist, Professor John Dewey gives a sketch of what in his view is “the present position of logical theory.” According to this the basis of the position seems to be that “the only possible thought is the reflection of the significance of fact,” and that therefore logic, which is the science of the laws of thought, rests in reality on an objective basis. He supports Hegel in denying “the existence of any faculty of thought which is other than the expression of fact itself.” Now it is doubtless the case that this is the position at present taken up by a large number of logicians, but as this position seems to me to be fundamentally erroneous I should like to put before your readers what I hope will be “the future position of logical theory.” I have elsewhere worked out in some detail a theory of reasoning which differs from that commonly accepted chiefly in this, that it recognises not two, but three kinds of reasoning, which I call Objective, Subjective, and Symbolic. Reasoning is commonly divided into two branches, denoted by various pairs of terms, such as Objective and Subjective, Inductive and Deductive, Empirical and Formal. The lines of division indicated by these various pairs of terms are not quite identical; but they none of them indicate what seems to me the most important distinction of all, namely that between real, and symbolic argument. There does exist (I will not say a “faculty of thought,” but) a method of argument which “is other than the expression of fact itself,” whether of objective or of subjective fact. The term “formal reasoning” is indeed often used to denote this kind of argument, but this is a bad name to give it, since it seems to imply, and frequently is held to imply, that it deals with the forms of objective or subjective facts, whereas in reality it deals only with symbols, which are arbitrarily defined, and which do not necessarily correspond to any things whatever, whether objective or subjective. That this kind of argument not only exists, but flourishes is evident as soon as it is grasped that pure mathematics is nothing but a branch of symbolic logic. It may be that there exists somewhere a fact of which any conceivable mathematical formula might be regarded as the reflexion, but it must surely be evident that it was not to the reflexion of such facts that mathematical formulæ in general owe their existence or validity. It may perhaps be true “that fact, reality is significant,” and even that thoughts are themselves such significant realities, but it is the thoughts that are given to us first, or rather sensations which are the elements of thoughts, and we can only infer the realities from them, and not vice versa.

The essence of my theory of logic may be briefly stated thus. The meaning of a logical term contains two parts, its denotation and its connotation. Either of these parts may be laid down arbitrarily as its definition, leaving the other part which I call its import to be found out by experience. To understand both parts of the meaning of any term is therefore to possess real knowledge. Pure symbolic reasoning deals only with the definitions of terms, and is not therefore founded on real knowledge, nor can it alone ever lead to real knowledge. Thus if in any proposition the definitions of the terms are deducible from one another, the proposition may be proved symbolically and is what I call a truism: it gives no real information. But if the definitions of the terms are independent of each other, and yet not inconsistent, the proposition can only be intended to assert the identity of the imports of the terms; it therefore ascribes import to the terms and gives real information, whether true or false. If any terms in a symbolic argument are however known to have real import, it may be ascribed to them in real propositions, and any conclusions of the argument which contain only such terms will ipso facto be made to yield real information, which may be new in the sense that it was not before recognised, though it was of course implied in the real assertion or assertions which ascribed import to the terms of the symbolic argument.

It is in this way possible to separate any science into two branches, one of which consists purely of symbolic argument founded on definitions alone, while the other may be expressed in a series of propositions, the definitions of whose terms are independent of each other, and which ascribe real import (whether objective or subjective) to the terms of the symbolic science, or some of them.

This is as far as pure logic can go. The question how the truth of any real propositions comes to be known is not, in my opinion, any part of logical theory, but belongs to metaphysics. However that is no reason for not discussing it here, especially as it is the chief question discussed in Professor Dewey’s paper.

“Truth” means some sort of consistency in a proposition. We may compare a symbolic argument to a game with counters, the rules of which are laid down arbitrarily, and to say that a given conclusion of such an argument is true only means that the game has been “played fair.” But the truth of a real proposition does not depend on any arbitrary rules. It expresses a consistency between two real facts, either that two named groups of things possess certain common attributes, or that certain of the things possessing named groups of attributes are identical. The essential element of all real knowledge is then a connecting link between a thing and an attribute, such as is afforded by a well-understood word.

Now the only “things” which we can apprehend directly are our subjective sensations and conceptions. We can compare two or more sensations or conceptions, and recognise in them common attributes. Thus I can say of my own knowledge that the sensations I denote by “the taste of sugar” and “the taste of lead acetate” have a common attribute, which I call “sweetness.” This is a real assertion, for its truth is not deducible from the definitions of its terms, and yet I know, by direct apprehension, that it is true. But it is only a subjective truth. The corresponding objective assertion would be sugar and acetate of lead both produce, when tasted, the sensation of sweetness. And I have no direct apprehension of this fact. That the tastes referred to in the former proposition were produced by objective things denoted by the terms sugar and acetate of lead, can only be inferred by the process called induction, which can never lead to a positive or necessary truth.

Thus we may from a pure symbolic science proceed one step further, to a subjective science, by the aid of direct apprehension, and the results of such a subjective science may in certain cases attain the position of absolute, or necessary truths. But on the other hand, all objective sciences must rest on induction. Now the true nature of induction is, I am persuaded, commonly misapprehended, because it is not realised sufficiently clearly that the prime data of induction are not themselves objective, but subjective facts. An “objective fact” is really only an hypothesis, postulated to account for certain of our subjective sensations. The only justification for making such an hypothesis is that it actually does explain certain sensations, and the measure of its probability (for we can never assert it as a necessary certainty) is the number and complexity of the sensations which it accounts for. The first of all such objective hypotheses is that we have an objective environment to whose action our sensations, or some of them, are due. This suggests at once a more general hypothesis, commonly known as the law of causation, namely that the conditions obtaining in the objective universe at any one moment are the effective causes of those obtaining at the next, and so at any subsequent moment. These two hypotheses, together with certain subsidiary ones, do suffice to account for an enormous number, if not all, of our sensations, and so we are justified in entertaining them. But to leave out the notion of effective causation, and to substitute a mere rule of sequence, is to remove the only justification we have for assuming the hypothesis of causation at all. It is perhaps conceivable that the hypothesis may be false, that our sensations are not “caused by” an objective environment but if so what reason remains for believing in that environment at all? I can never know anything whatever about an objective universe, unless some of my sensations about which alone I know anything directly, are caused by that universe. It is perhaps thinkable that there should be an objective universe in which events occur which in no sense cause my subjective sensations, but to which those sensations nevertheless happen to correspond; but if this is so the sensations afford me no ground whatever for believing in the occurrence of the events, or the objectivity of the universe.

Well then, the essence of induction is the assumption of an hypothesis to account for observed facts—first of all of directly observed sensations, and then of facts assumed to be objective in virtue of the primary hypothesis. That this account of induction is the true one is I think particularly enforced by the consideration of those cases to which at first sight it does not seem to apply. A common example of induction is afforded by our belief that the sun will rise to-morrow. That it has risen every morning for the last four thousand years or more is no reason whatever for believing that it will rise to-morrow, unless it is held to point to some explanatory hypothesis. Such an hypothesis has actually been framed by astronomers, and no one would now pretend to found his belief in the sun’s rising to-morrow on the mere fact that it has often risen before, but would go on to explain that it must rise unless the earth were to stop revolving, etc. If at Monte Carlo the red turned up ten times running, would that be any reason for expecting it to turn up again, the eleventh time? No, it would not unless the succession of reds seemed to point to some explanatory hypothesis, such as a defect in the roulette. Again, the fact that in the last fifty years the death rate in London has been about twenty-eight per thousand would be no reason for believing that it will be about that figure this year except on the assumption that the constancy of the death rate indicated certain constant causes, which we have no reason to believe have been altered this year.

Having once assumed that our environment is objective, and as a corollary the hypothesis of causation, the whole of physical science follows, step by step. Subsidiary hypotheses are introduced at each stage and justified by the way they account for observed results. To show how a single hypothesis is capable of explaining a large number of observed results, the full meaning of the hypothesis is elucidated by symbolic reasoning. By such reasoning it is for example shown that the same hypothesis, of universal gravitation, is capable of accounting, not only for the movements of the stars, but for the tides, the flow of rivers, the falling of unsupported bodies, the rising of balloons, the movements of the balance in Cavendish’s experiment, and so on. That such wide extensions of an hypothesis are possible tends greatly to confirm, not only the hypothesis itself, but the fundamental hypotheses of objectivity and causation also. But it does not prove either the one or the others. We cannot know anything about the objective universe with absolute certainty, but we may reasonably believe a certain hypothesis about it with any degree of conviction we think suitable; that is we may (and of course we actually do) act on all occasions as if we knew absolutely that they were true.

We may then believe, and I for one do believe, not only in the objectivity of the universe, but that even my own subjective sensations are mere bye-products of that universe. I believe that objective facts are, if I may so express it, more real than subjective sensations; that in fact the objective universe might have existed, and might exist again without any subjective element in it anywhere. But I cannot know this, it is with me a matter of faith. Thus I cannot agree with Hegel, that “all possible thought is the reflexion of the significance of fact” (except perhaps in the sense that thought is the reflexion of the significance of certain changes in the grey matter of the brain) for this would seem to imply that stupid or contradictory thoughts reflected stupid or contradictory significance in certain facts. But I believe that men of science are gradually evolving a system of thought which will more and more faithfully reflect the significance of fact, and that thus science is actually building up truth. But all science must begin with, and be founded upon, subjective knowledge, and therefore any theory of positivism contradicts itself for it must be founded on faith. Science is thus founded on faith, faith in things not directly apprehended, just as truly as religion is. It is only because we unconsciously acquire this faith in our infancy, and that it is in most cases amply justified by subsequent experience, that we do not even recognise the fact that it is faith, in exactly the same sense that belief in God is. But just as men have sometimes lost their faith in God, so it may happen to a man to loose his faith in reality, and logic is quite as incapable of shaking a man out of the one position as out of the other.

This I take it is the key to the agnosticism of such men of science as Mr. Huxley. I do not for a moment suppose that Mr. Huxley believes less than most men; he probably has good grounds for believing a great deal more. Only he rightly refuses to say that he knows facts of which he can have had no direct apprehension and which he can only infer more or less probably, to be true. Hypotheses which as we push our investigations are shown to be capable of explaining more and more facts, that is, ultimately, more and more sensations, will in the end come to be believed in without doubt or hesitation. If a man says he knows the law of gravitation to be true, he commits a logical blunder; but there is nothing to prevent a scientific man from believing in any miracle or prodigy, so long as the account he gives of it does not contradict itself. Not only may two equally reasonable men form very different estimates of the probability of the same event, even with the same evidence before them, but one man may put his faith to a proposition with admittedly much lower degree of probability than would be required to convince another. Only, a scientific man will always distinguish between what he knows and what he believes, and will admit that though he has made up his mind to act as if he knew to be true the propositions he only believes to be so, yet another man may reasonably take a different view of any one of them.

Edward T. Dixon.

Trin. Coll., Cambridge, Jan. 8, 1892.

COMTE AND TURGOT.

On page 410 of the last number of The Monist, it was stated that the doctrine of the three stages of knowledge was not properly a Comtean idea but belonged to Turgot. The following letter from Professor Schaarschmidt of Bonn informs us of the passages in Turgot where the statement of the doctrine is found:

To the Editor of The Monist:

To your note of inquiry of the 22d of last month I have the honor to reply, that the Comtean theory of the trois états may be traced back to utterances of Turgot made by him in his Second discours sur les progrès successifs de l’esprit humain prononcé le 2me décembre 1750—namely in the Sorbonne. You will find the discourse referred to in the edition of the works of Turgot which I now have before me, namely that of Guillaumin, Paris, 1844, in Vol. II, at pages 597 et seqq. The passage in question is found at p. 600-601. However, it is highly probable that the so-called loi des trois états was directly transmitted to Comte by St. Simon, who reproduced the idea of Turgot in his Introduction aux travaux scientifiques du XIXme Siècle, at pages 62-63. For Comte was dependent in many respects on St. Simon, while it is probable that he had never studied Turgot. To St. Simon, in fact, is due the expression “philosophie positive,” as well as the germ-notion of the division of the Sciences, which Comte further elaborated.

Schaarschmidt.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Darwin and after Darwin. I. The Darwinian Theory. By George John Romanes, M. A., LL. D., F. R. S. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co. 1892.

In the present work by Professor Romanes, who may be regarded as the special exponent of Darwin’s theory of organic evolution, we have a complete and systematic presentation of “Darwinism according to Darwin.” It is the outcome of a course of lectures delivered by the author in 1889 before the Royal Institution, London, and forms only part of a much more extensive treatise on the Darwinian theory, embracing the early history of biology, and a discussion of the further developments of the theory subsequent to the death of the great naturalist who gave it birth. The present part is limited to what is distinctly Darwinian, dealing with it and with the main objections raised against the general theory of organic evolution it enforces.

The subject naturally divides into two parts, and Professor Romanes accordingly deals with it in two sections, in the first of which he considers organic evolution as a fact, stating the main evidences in support of the doctrine, while in the second section he furnishes “the evidences which thus far have been brought to light touching the causes of organic evolution considered as a process.” The author points out in his introductory remarks, that in order to establish a theory of a continuous transmutation of species, which is what is meant by organic evolution, it is not necessary to furnish proof of all the natural causes which have been at work. The issue is between the theory of a supernatural cause, as operating immediately in numberless acts of special creation, and the theory of “natural causes as a whole whether these happen, or do not happen, to have been hitherto discovered.” Moreover, the discussion is concerned only with the origin of species, and not with that of life, as to which the author says with truth, “although in the opinion of most biologists it is a question which we may well hope will some day fall within the range of science to answer, at present, it must be confessed, science is not in a position to furnish so much as any suggestion upon the subject; and therefore our wisdom as men of science is frankly to acknowledge that such is the case.”

The idea of evolution implies continuity, and the author refers to the fact that the uniformity of nature’s method in the production of phenomena to which continuity is due, recognised in other fields of science, strongly recommended the theory of organic evolution for acceptance on merely antecedent grounds. There is another important fact, from the antecedent point of view, to which Professor Romanes draws attention. He states it in the words of Mr. Wallace, who lays down as a general law that “every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing and closely allied species.” This is a necessary consequence of natural evolution, but no reason can be assigned for it on the theory of special creation, and the existence of such a correlation may be regarded as a test-question between the two theories.

The direct evidence in favor of organic evolution brought together in the first section of the present work is considered under the several heads of classification, Morphology, Embryology, Palæontology, and Geographical Distribution. As to the first of these subjects, the object of classification has been the arranging of organisms in accordance with their natural affinities. Organisms have been compared for the purpose of ascertaining which of the constituent organs are of the most invariable occurrence, and therefore of the most typical significance, and the author shows that “all the general principles and particular facts appertaining to the natural classification of plants and animals, are precisely what they ought to be according to the theory of genetic descent; while no one of them is such as might be—and indeed, used, to be—expected upon the theory of special creation.” In connection with the important subject of Morphology, the author, after showing that the theory of descent with continued adaptive modification fully explains all the known cases of divergence from the typical structure which an organism presents, devotes himself especially to the argument from rudimentary structures. These are of such general occurrence that they are found in every species, and such obsolescent or vestigial structures, as the author terms them, are of great value as evidence for the theory of evolution, particularly those found in adult man. To human vestigial structures the author pays particular attention, his observations being accompanied by excellent illustrations from nature. It is noteworthy that he abandons the flattening of the tibia in man, and the disposition of valves in human veins, as arguments in support of man’s natural origin, which is abundantly supported, however, by reference to other rudimentary organs.

The science of Embryology is of special importance, on account of the history it affords of the process of evolution, and thus supplying evidence of the fact, although the author remarks, “the foreshortening of developmental history which takes place in the individual lifetime may be expected often to take place, not only in the way of condensation, but also in the way of excision.” To understand the argument from embryology it is necessary to trace the first beginning of individual life in the ovum, and for this purpose to consider the phenomena of reproduction in their most simple form. In connection with this subject, Professor Romanes, after examining the features in which the cell-division of protozoa differs from that of metazoa, and after considering the grounds on which it may be concluded that there is a physiological continuity between growth and sexual reproduction, points out that the constructive argument in favor of evolution derived from embryology commences with the fertilisation of the metazoal ovum. As this first stage has not been adequately treated by any other writer, the author deals with it at considerable length. The later stages of individual development, including that of the vertebrata, on the lines of Haeckel’s ideal primitive vertebrate, are more concisely treated. The science of embryology, covers the whole field of animal life, and it is not surprising therefore that it is considered by the author and other evolutionists as furnishing the strongest support to the theory of evolution.

As to the palæontological evidence, Professor Romanes does not ascribe to it the paramount importance which it has in popular judgment. Nevertheless he asserts that, not only is no positive proof against the theory of descent to be drawn from a study of palæontology, but it proves two very important general facts in favor of it. These are that from the earliest to the latest times there has been a constant and progressive increase in the diversity of types both of animals and plants, and that “through all these branching lines of ever-multiplying types, from the first appearance of each of them to their latest known conditions, there is overwhelming evidence of one great law of organic nature—the law of gradual advance from the general to the special, from the low to the high, from the simple to the complex.” These general facts are supported by detailed consideration of fossil horns, bones, teeth and shells, which supply four special lines of evidence. The evolution of mammalian limbs with particular reference to the hoofed animals is treated with a fulness its importance requires.

As the geological argument is concerned with the distribution of species in time, so that based on the present geographical distribution of animal and plant species is concerned with their distribution in space. This, although not regarded by the author as a crucial test between the rival theories of creation and evolution, is declared to be one of the strongest lines of evidence in favor of the latter. The general facts relied on are, the discontinuity of distribution of certain species, the absence of any constant correlation between habitats and animals or plants suited to live upon them, and the presence in every biological region of species related to other species in genera, and usually also genera related to other genera in families; this correlation between a geographically restricted habitat and the affinities of its fauna and flora being repeated over and over again throughout the earth’s surface. But further, the correlation between habitats and their animals and plants is not limited to the now existing species, that is, the dead and living species are allied, showing that the latter are modified descendants of the former. Moreover, where the areas of distribution are not restricted, through species wandering away from their native homes, the course of their wanderings is marked by the origination en route of new species. Another important consideration is that a double correlation exists in the geographical distribution of organic types. That between the geographical restriction and natural affinity among inhabitants of the same areas has already been mentioned. The second is the correlation between degrees of geographical restriction and degrees of natural affinity. This is consonant with the theory of descent with modification, as “the more distant the affinity, and therefore, ex hypothesi, the larger and the older the original group of organisms, the greater must be the chance of dispersal.” These general considerations are supported by detailed illustrations drawn from the distribution of aquatic and terrestrial organisms. The author shows that an examination of the faunas and floras of oceanic islands establishes the general law “that wherever there is evidence of land-areas having been for a long time separated from other land-areas, there we meet with a more or less extraordinary profusion of unique species, often running up into unique genera.” There is, moreover, a constant correlation between the degree of this peculiarity, and the time during which the fauna and flora have been isolated. The author concludes this part of his argument by the forcible observation that “if the doctrine of special creation is taken to be true, then it must be further taken that the one and only principle which has been consistently followed in the geographical disposition of species, is that of so depositing them as to make it everywhere appear that they were not thus deposited at all, but came into existence where they now occur by way of genetic descent with perpetual migration and correlative modification.”

The second part of this work, that which treats of selection, under the two heads of Natural Selection and Sexual Selection, although in some respects the most important, does not need to be noticed so fully as that which deals with the facts of natural evolution. After stating the theory of natural selection, the author notices various fallacies connected with it which are largely prevalent among the adherents of Darwinianism, although nowhere fallen into by Darwin himself, and the still greater fallacies found in the writings of his opponents. In the two following chapters Professor Romanes, after stating the main arguments in favor of the theory of natural selection, reviews the main objections which have been urged against it. The first argument is that, as a matter of observation, “the struggle for existence in nature does lead to the extermination of forms less fitted for the struggle, and thus makes room for forms more fitted.” The second argument, which the author considers of overwhelming significance, is that there is not a single instance, in either the vegetable or the animal kingdom, of a structure or an instinct which is developed for the exclusive benefit of another species. Its importance may be judged by the fact that Darwin considered that a single instance to the contrary would invalidate the whole theory of natural selection. The third argument is based on the facts connected with the variation of animals and plants under domestication. Ocular evidence of the value of this argument is furnished by a series of drawings prepared for the present work representing varieties of pigeons, and of eight other animals. As special illustrations of natural selection the author considers the subjects of protective colouring, warning colours, and mimicry. In referring to his treatment of the criticisms of the natural selection theory, in the course of which he deals with the main objections, we cannot do more than mention that based on the possession by the skate of an electric organ, which, owing to the weakness of its discharges, cannot apparently be of any use to the animal. This difficulty seems to be unexplainable according to the principles of natural selection, and Professor Romanes, in admitting the fact, remarks that it is of a magnitude and importance “altogether unequalled by that of any other single case—or any series of cases—which has hitherto been encountered by the theory.”

The last chapter of the work is devoted to the consideration of the theory of Sexual Selection, which was suggested by Mr. Darwin to furnish a scientific explanation of the wide generality of beauty in organic structures. It is an observed fact that sexual selection does take place among the higher animals, and it is inferred that, the selection has reference to an æsthetic taste on the part of the animals themselves; and that this cause is adequate to explain the phenomena of beauty presented by such animals. After stating the evidence in favor of these conclusions, the author considers at length Mr. Wallace’s views on the subject. These constitute the objections urged against the theory of sexual selection, of the truth of which, however, Darwin shortly before his death expressed himself as remaining firmly convinced.

Professor Romanes concludes his present volume with a few general remarks on the philosophical relations of Darwinism to the facts of adaptation on the one hand and to those of beauty on the other. In none of these, says the author, do we meet with any independent evidence of supernatural design, although there is abundant evidence throughout organic nature of natural causation. And yet natural causation furnishes no disproof of the existence of a Supreme Being. The whole of organic and inorganic nature is made subject to one rule of government, but “the ulterior and ultimate question touching the nature of this government as mental or non-mental, personal or impersonal, remains exactly where it was.” Moreover, if there be an intelligent First Cause, of whose Will all secondary causes are the expression, their operation must be uniform, so far as the Will is consistent, and therefore it must appear as what we call mechanical. Thus according to the pure logic of the matter, “the proof of organic evolution amounts to nothing more than the proof of a natural process.”