Volume 2 / Part 2 — Die Entwickelung des Causalproblems in der Philosophie seit Kant. Studien zur Orientirung über die Aufgaben der Metaphysik und Erkenntnisslehre. (Part II.) By Dr. Edmund Koenig. Leipsic: Otto Wigand.

The present work forms the conclusion of a volume published by Dr. Koenig in 1888, entitled Die Entwickelung des Causalproblems von Cartesius bis Kant. This same subject is here pursued in the history of modern philosophy since Kant.

The problem of causality, according to Dr. Koenig, has two aspects, an epistemological and a metaphysical. The pre-Kantian efforts dealt chiefly with the latter, the post-Kantian more principally with the former. The latter, the metaphysical question, is, How do things in the world of reality produce effects in one another? The former, or that which relates to the theory of knowledge, is, (1) What is the logical foundation of the idea of causality, what do we imply when we set up two objects as cause and effect, and (2) By what right and to what extent are we justified in imputing to the axiom of causality an objective validity? With respect to the latter, the epistemological, point of view, Hume and Kant believed they had established indisputably that experience as given does not furnish sufficient grounds either for the idea or the axiom of causality. On the other hand, others, like Maine de Biran, Schopenhauer, and Trendelenburg, hold, that causality is given us in experience, that we apprehend the causal relation subsisting between things, together with the things. Herbart maintains that the idea of the causal relation has been reached by the logical elaboration of experience in conformity with the general laws of logical thought. Mill and Spencer see in this idea an element that goes beyond experience, but justify it only psychologically, not logically. According to Lotze, Riehl, Wundt, v. Hartmann, Volkelt, the idea is either wholly or partly of intellectual origin. Finally, Comte and a few modern scientists look upon the idea of causality as logically valueless and scientifically superfluous.

This is, in brief, the opinions of the greatest thinkers whom Koenig treats of, respecting the logical composition of the idea of causality. But another question, that namely as to the character of the relation in which in the causal judgment the notions of the concrete causes and their effects exist, is one closely allied with this. Some hold, (Trendelenburg, Goering, Herbart, Hamilton, Spencer,) that the relation is one of identity; others that it is synthetical. This aspect is also developed in connection with the last-named thinkers.

With respect to the axiom of causality, we find diametrically opposed to each other the doctrines of empiricism and apriorism; but a number of intermediate opinions have also established themselves. Of the first, Schopenhauer, Lotze, and Volkelt are representatives, but only the theory of the first-named is developed at length. The empiricism of Mill and Goering meets with exhaustive treatment, as does the opposed view of Laas, Riehl, and Wundt and the conciliatory view of Spencer.

With respect to the metaphysical aspect of the question, above-mentioned, we find the modes of conception of phenomenalism and realism opposed. The latter only is, in the nature of its doctrine, required to explain ontologically the coming about of the causal relation in reality; the former does not recognise Being in itself, and hence there can be no causal connection of such. Schopenhauer’s attempt (the view of the forces of nature as the emanation of a Universal Will), and the splendid ontological theories of Herbart and Lotze are regarded by Dr. Koenig as being no more a solution of the problem than were the efforts of their famous predecessors Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibnitz. These dogmatic realists, as Koenig calls them, proceed from the assumption of the knowableness of the absolute; opposed to them, in this regard, are Spencer, Von Hartmann, and Volkelt, the critical realists, the first of whom gives an ontology that is a vague and metaphysical rendering of the principle of the conservation of energy, the two last of whom impute a transcendental ontological significance to the idea of causality.

The connection, Dr. Koenig concludes, is thus apparent and definite between the metaphysical and epistemological divisions of the question. The ontologist, unless he proceed dogmatically, must prove, that the notion of causality in the form in which critical analysis has established it as a valid and indispensable empirical idea, calls inevitably for the notion of an absolute reality and of a state of things in that reality corresponding to the forms of the connection given. Therefore, the logical analysis of the idea of causality is in any philosophy, pre-eminently determinative of its whole position and bearing.

On the whole, then, in the treatment of the problem forming the subject of this work, four comparatively independent views are found opposed to one another and considered in this opposition; viz., Sensualism and Intellectualism, Positivism and Rationalism, Empiricism and Apriorism, Realism and Phenomenalism. The author views the result of his researches to be, the proof of the untenability of Sensualism, Rationalism, Empiricism, and Realism, so far as this, by an historico-critical analysis, is possible.

This is but a brief sketch of the treatment pursued by the author. The author’s own view has been barely hinted at. He is a Kantian. He calls himself a “transcendental idealist.” Dr. Koenig’s developments, appreciative, acute and pointed as they are, are too detailed and exhaustive to be separately taken into discussion here; but we may illustrate his point of view by a summary of a few remarks of his on the ontological problem as solved by physics. They are as follows.

The natural modes of thought cling irresistibly to the notion of a constant substratum; this being so, how does process, how does change spring from an invariability of existence? Physical science answers, by force; which exists as a constant potentiality of the substratum, is now active, now latent. Dr. Koenig maintains that in this physical science accomplishes nothing towards the solution of the present problem; it does not by its notion of force make intelligible the acting of bodies on each other, for when it comes to define the mode of action of force it involves itself in hopeless difficulties. What is the consequence then, of this dilemma of science, where it can neither render plain the “nature” of the material substratum, nor the nature of “force,” which is, so to speak, the source of the activity of the substratum? It is either agnosticism, which places limits to our knowledge, and which Dr. Koenig rejects as unbecoming true thought, or it is that theory which regards the phenomena alone as real and views the concepts of theoretical physics as the mere shifts and helps of thought whereby we bring the phenomena into connection with one another. This latter view also Dr. Koenig cannot accept. His express contention is, that we can interpret, ontologically, the phenomena of reality by the notions of substance, force, etc.; he holds that the position of transcendental idealism is the correct theory here, the position namely that matter and force conceived as transcendent, independent entities cannot be thought away, because substantiality and causality are forms of transcendental apperception, which alone can make nature an object of cognition; matter and force must, for purposes of empiric observation, of necessity possess the same reality as phenomena themselves.

In connection with this subject Dr. Koenig contests Mach’s doctrine, that natural laws are simple economical descriptions of phenomena; he contends that “law” is the foundation of natural science, and particularly so the law of causality.

This, however, does not say much. For the formal laws in themselves are empty. The law, the axiom of causality may, a priori, be without exception; but this circumstance, the conviction we may call it, offers us no hold on nature. When we investigate nature we have to perceive definite facts; about which we formulate particular laws or statements. The law of causality, however, does not help us to discern the determinative facts or features of any phenomenon. It simply says that if we have hit upon the determinative facts and formulated a law describing them, that law holds good throughout all nature. But what is to tell us what the characteristic and determinative features of a given event are and when we have lighted on them? The law of causality? Surely not. The law of causality cannot tell us that for falling bodies v = gt, i. e. that t is decisive. It simply says that when once this fact has been discerned it holds universally good. But it would have asserted the same thing with regard to Galileo’s first (false) assumption, namely that v = Cs. If, then, the law of causality cannot tell us what those features are between which the causal connection is assumed to exist, what is to tell us? Our observation simply, which must be tested by experience. But our observation has no limits placed to it except this, that it shall select some fact that represents the phenomenon and best and most easily enables us to represent it. And there is nothing that requires that there should be only one feature or one aspect of an event by which it is representable; there may be several, as the development of science proves. Accordingly, what selection we make may depend on arbitrary and historical circumstances. And this, as we take it, is Prof. Mach’s contention. If it is true, Dr. Koenig’s criticism of Mach’s view does not hold in its whole extent.

Dr. Koenig’s treatment of the separate representative thinkers is exhaustive and in an eminent degree scientific. His work is distinguished by accuracy and pointedness of characterisation, and by special knowledge of great range. It is a valuable contribution which he has given us, to the study of the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, and he has been true to his promise, as we judge, critically to discuss and not summarily to dispose of the opinions of others.

μκρκ.

Eine neue Darstellung der Leibnizischen Monadenlehre auf Grund der Quellen. By Eduard Dillmann. Leipsic: O. R. Reisland, 1891.

The author is an admirer of Leibnitz’s monadology which he considers as “the most beautiful, most perfect fruit of philosophic thought and the most glorious system to be found in the history of philosophy.” This enthusiasm however is not shown in panegyrics but in a careful investigation of the great master’s work and we should scarcely know the attitude of the author toward the philosopher whose thoughts he discusses, if he did not give vent to his feelings in a few sentences of the concluding chapter. The rest of the book consists of purely critical and historical studies by a sober and cool-headed scholar. Leibnitz’s system as it is represented in our histories of philosophy and as it is currently conceived lacks a unitary and leading idea, so that many of its most fundamental propositions appear to be at variance. Mr. Dillmann maintains that Leibnitz’s philosophy as it really is does not lack this unity; he has made an extensive and most diligent study of Leibnitz’s works and proves with great plausibility through the assistance of many pertinent quotations the justice of his cause.

Leibnitz’s monadology is according to Dillmann essentially a conciliatory system. It attempts to reconcile the world-conceptions of his time. The mechanical explanation of nature as it was proposed in modern times and according to which all processes should be conceived as motions of bodies is harmonised with the formalistic views of classical antiquity and of the schoolmen which seeks for the causes of all phenomena in substantial forms. In aiming at such a combination, he had to show that all single phenomena of bodies and also their qualities had some ground and that the principle of the body itself consisted in a substantial form. This led him to conceive of bodies and of all things not as phenomena of an external world but as representations in the mind, and thus an entirely new standpoint was gained (p. 511). Representations are the inner states of Monads (p. 318). Monads are substances because representations are units; for representations are the many expressed in a unity (p. 319). Every monad is a concentration of the universe (p. 313). It is as if God had multiplied the universe as often as there are souls (p. 314). Every substance is a little world in itself, expressing the great world of the universe. The substance imitates in its little world what God does in the universe (p. 313).

Leibnitz’s God-idea has suffered most from a misconception of the fundamental idea of his system. Dillmann declares that the traditional view, especially Fischer’s, is in conflict with the philosopher’s own words. While Fischer says that Leibnitz’s God has created the substances and arbitrarily endowed them with their natures, Dillmann maintains on the ground of ample quotations that Leibnitz considers the forms of all possible existences as given: not even God can alter them. God however can and did compare all possible worlds, and then created that which his wisdom found to be the best world. “God,” says Leibnitz, “does not select a general Adam, but such a one,” i. e. an individual Adam, “whose perfect representation is found among all the possible beings which exist in the ideas of God. The nature of every creature is determined by eternal truths which are in the understanding of God independent of his will.” “God’s decree consists alone in the decision arrived at after having compared all possible worlds and having admitted into existence that one which is the best of all.”

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Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie in 14 Vorlesungen. By Dr. Th. Ziehen, Docent in Jena. Mit 21 Abbildungen im Text. Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1891.

The merits of these 14 lectures on physiological psychology are thoroughness, lucidity, and conciseness; the whole book is a pamphlet of 174 pp. only. The method of presentation is in all its detail work positive, stating the facts as they have been found to be by experience and as they are corroborated by experiment. Upon the whole it is a good résumé of the present state of knowledge. A translation would be very desirable and it is to be hoped that some of our psychologists will undertake the work.

The contents are briefly as follows: I. Contents and scope of psychology. II. Sensation, association, action. III. Stimulus, sensation. IV. Taste, smell, touch. V. Hearing. VI. Vision. VII. Affective aspect of sensation (pleasure and pain). VIII. Sensation, memory, concept. IX. Association of ideas. X. Judgment and syllogism. XI. Attention, voluntary thought, the ego (Ziehen says: “psychologically considered the simple ego is a theoretical fiction,” p. 139). XII. Diseased thinking, sleep, hypnosis. XIII. Action, expressive motions, language. XIV. Will, general conclusions.

Although Dr. Ziehen’s pamphlet is upon the whole an excellent treatise, we cannot agree with the author in several questions which are of great importance in their consequences.

Dr. Ziehen acknowledges that the specifically nervous processes, a sensible stimulus and a reaction, which latter is a motory effect, cannot be explained from physical laws alone (p. 4). Yet at the same time he denies that the fact that the reflexes are adapted to a purpose (Zweckmässigkeit) proves the presence of a psychical parallelism. “Pflüger,” he says, “was wrong in attributing for this reason to the spinal cord a spinal-cord-soul.” The Zweckmässigkeit of reflexes (i. e. their being adapted to a purpose) has originated not otherwise than the Zweckmässigkeit of the color of the bird’s plumage, i. e. through natural selection and inheritance. This argument might be admissible, if we had not to account for the gradual origin of consciousness also. There was a time when our personal consciousness did not exist, and there was also a time when no conscious being lived upon the earth. Unless we assume that consciousness suddenly appeared, creating out of its own subjectivity alone the objective world which appears to us as what we call matter in motion, we shall have to adopt some monistic view of the subject. To consider the psychical states as known and the objectivity of existence as utterly unknown is no monism.

Dr. Ziehen is opposed to the idea of psychical parallelism which he conceives to be dualism, but he proposes a spiritual monism in its stead, the difficulties of which he does not explain. It is to be regretted that Dr. Ziehen has not understood the main idea of the parallelism doctrine. He says in a foot-note (p. 6): “In the most extreme way, but with quite insufficient reasons Lewes has maintained the omnipresence of consciousness.” This is a misstatement of Lewes’s view, which by the bye is held by the reviewer also, although he confesses that the term parallelism is inappropriate and leads to misunderstandings. The theory of parallelism, (at least as the reviewer holds it) is not dualistic but monistic. It implies that the subjectivity and objectivity of existence are two different abstractions of one and the same reality. Its parallelism is a parallelism of these two sets of abstraction, while the reality from which they have been derived is one throughout. There exist no subjects that are not objects to other subjects, and every object admits of a subjective aspect. There is a something supposed to be present throughout nature which under certain conditions appears as consciousness. This certain something is called by Clifford elements of feeling, by Lloyd Morgan metakinesis, it has been characterised in the editorials of The Monist as the subjectivity of existence, and the presence of this something in the spinal cord was called by Pflüger Rückenmarksseele.

It appears to me that if we could explain the well adapted reaction of nervous substance without assuming a psychical element in it, we could explain the whole process of evolution and the historical development of mankind, without the assumption of consciousness. Yet it is obvious that even the explanation of the color of the bird’s plumage by the theory of natural selection and heredity presupposes the presence of psychical elements somewhere. Either the bird and his mates show a color sense, or his enemies do, whose persecution he escapes, or the animals upon whom he preys do. Man’s entire existence, physical and psychical, including his feelings of pleasure and pain, can be explained by the theory of natural selection and heredity; yet this is no proof that psychical elements do not exist in him.

It has become customary at present to define “psychical” as that only which appears in states of consciousness, and to exclude subconscious and unconscious states. Dr. Ziehen says: “Everything given in consciousness and that alone is conscious” (p. 3). Yet he introduces after all the expression “psychically latent,” “latent memory pictures,” and similar expressions. Dr. Ziehen says, “We cannot even have a conception of that which an unconscious idea can be”; yet what is a latent memory-picture but an unconscious idea?

There are two kinds of unconscious ideas: (1) Latent ideas. Every man’s brain is full of latent ideas, i. e. of memory-pictures which are at present unconscious but can become conscious at once if their activity is roused by an appropriate stimulus. (2) Ideas unrelated to the centre of consciousness. Those active ideas which, although at present in a state of activity, are unrelated to the centre of consciousness that constitutes the ego of the man, remain unconscious. Unconscious cerebration (which takes place in dreams, in diseased brains and also in certain phases of healthy brains being, as it were, a by-play of their conscious activity) need not be destitute of feeling. Any pain may be lessened when our attention is called away from it. The nervous disorder remains the same, the feeling substance of the nervous structures in which the pain was perceived also remains the same, its activity and throbbing pulsations do not cease. Yet if we succeed in separating its immediate relation to the centre of consciousness it sinks down into subconsciousness. There is no reason for assuming that the feeling, no longer perceived, is wiped out entirely.

While Dr. Ziehen’s pamphlet is a presentation of the results of positive science, we were astonished to find in the first chapter the following statement: “Later on we shall have to investigate whether there are for all psychical phenomena such material parallel processes in the central nervous system, and our answer will be decidedly in the negative.” And again we find in the schedule of psychology a distinction between (a) psychical processes not contingent upon cerebral functions (transcendental psychology), and (b) psychical processes contingent upon cerebral functions (physiological psychology). These statements are the more perplexing as the author joins the opposition made by Münsterberg against Professor Wundt’s idea of apperception, which is rejected as metaphysical, mystical, and even animistic. While we cannot in all points agree with Professor Wundt’s theory of apperception, which received a critical examination by Professor Delabarre (see The Monist II, No. 2, p. 297), we can most positively say that Dr. Ziehen in so far as he classes Wundt’s view among the dualistic theories, misunderstands Wundt’s position. Wundt’s physico-psychical parallelism cannot be identified with the metaphysical fiction of a subject, be this subject called ego or soul.⁠[66] Wundt says in a late publication of his: “Psychology of to-day, since Kant has shown the way, seeks the nature of the soul again, as did Aristotle of yore, in the facts of the spiritual life themselves and not in an unknowable ‘thing in itself’....” Deutsche Rundschau of 1891, p. 203. Wundt’s “apperception” is no metaphysical being, but simply means the focus of perception, the centre of consciousness. Wundt is certainly not infallible and we are inclined to believe that in some details he is mistaken. He is nevertheless one of the very greatest leaders among the investigators of the soul and his monism as well as his antimetaphysical tendencies cannot be doubted.

Ziehen reaches his monism by considering objective existence, as it appears to us and which we call matter, as “something utterly unknowable.” He says, “The psychical series alone is given.... Thus the psycho-physical dualism or parallelism is apparent only. Considering that the psychical series alone is given, we shall understand, that we had repeatedly to face in our investigations such factors in which the material foundations are missing. I here remind you of the projection of our sensations into space and time, for which we could not find a psycho-physical explanation.”

We hope that Dr. Ziehen will soon find occasion to explain his philosophical views. Such an explanation may throw light on his psychological theory. We do not as yet see how he can solve without inconsistency the many difficulties in which his philosophical standpoint will involve his psychology.

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Psychologie der Suggestion. By Dr. Hans Schmidkunz. Stuttgart, 1892,—pp. 425. Large 8vo.

The rapidly increasing devotion to the study of Hypnotism has yielded many valuable results, both practical and theoretical. Its application to the cure of disease—psychotherapeutics—has been most extensively introduced and bids fair to become the representative in scientific form of the germ of truth buried amongst the vast rubbish-heap of suspicious practices and pseudo-scientific “isms.” New light has been thrown on the questions of responsibility and the legal aspects of slightly abnormal states. Education and ethics, it has been more than hinted, are to find practical aids in hypnotism; while in the light of modern scientifically recognised phenomena, many of the events influential in the development of religions find a rationalistic interpretation. But the science which more than all others, the study of hypnotism is destined to enrich, is that of Experimental Psychology; and it is this phase of the subject to which Dr. Schmidkunz has devoted his volume.

The central core of the whole subject is the fact of suggestion,—a fact so comprehensive that it is almost easier to say what it is not than what it is. If we make allowance for that portion of our conduct that is based upon individual acquisitions and proceeds by logically reasoned steps, all the rest is more or less the result of suggestions, of one kind or another. To appreciate the psychology of this process it is necessary to appreciate its varieties and universality. We receive suggestions from things and deeds; the sight of food makes us hungry; the sight of our neighbor consulting his watch induces a strong desire to know what time it is. Words are powerful implements of suggestion; we accept those doctrines that we hear about us and are influenced much more frequently than we are convinced. The personal factor in suggestion is important; to some we feel attracted and accept as leaders, while others excite repulsion and antagonism. The indirectness of the process of suggestion is to be noted; in most cases we are quite unconscious of the influences exerted upon us and by which our conduct is guided, and this ignorance of the motives of our acts, Spinoza tells us, is the cause of the illusion of free will. Sympathy, imitation, the contagion of masses, the action of the mind upon the body, the formation of public sentiment,—all exemplify the process of suggestion and add their testimony to its power and domain.

We must recognise, too, that our suggestibility is a variable phenomenon; at some moments we are self-assertive and determined, at others passive and readily following another’s lead. Sometimes we take the reins in our own hands, and again allow the vehicle to find its way as it will. Every night we pass into a condition in which conscious control is abandoned and logic gives way to suggestion. A trifling illness, a dose of medicine may increase our suggestibility, and place us in a position allied to that of the hypnotic subject. All this prepares the way for recognising as the distinctive characteristic of the hypnotic condition, an exaggerated suggestibility. Not alone is there a ready yielding to every suggestion of the operator, but functions normally not under volitional control may be appealed to and utilised by the slighter and subtler processes of hypnotic suggestion. The variable threshold between the voluntary and the involuntary is shifted to a surprising extent. That complex interrelation of centres with which the sense of personality is intimately connected yields to the same influences and makes possible an experimental study of this vexed problem.

This, then, is the Psychology of Suggestion, the contribution that Hypnotism makes to Psychology. It lays stress upon the great rôle this process plays in every day mental life and thus asks us to see in hypnotism a condition closely allied to the normal, and simply illustrating in an unusually striking way, one great factor in our mental composition. It rearranges the hierarchy of mental faculties and finds a more important place for suggestion than has been before accorded to it. From a somewhat obscure and sporadic phenomenon occasionally entering into mental states, it is raised to the dignity of one of the most frequent, most important, most fertile generalisations of scientific psychology. Whether one fully agrees with this position or not, it is certainly a service to have it so comprehensively, even if at times prolixly stated, and to be assured that the study of Psychology is deriving as much benefit from the researches in hypnotism as are the more practical sciences.

J. J.

Hypnotisme, Suggestion, Psychotheropie. Études Nouvelles par le Dr. Bernheim, Professeur à la Faculté de médécine de Nancy. Paris: 1891. Octave Doin, pp. 518.

The literature of the new science of Hypnotism continues to increase with unabated pace; most of the contributions consist of studies of a few cases or a brief exposition of a single point, in most cases of points relative to the application of hypnotism to disease. The present volume, however, is of special importance not alone because of the authority that Dr. Bernheim’s name brings with it,—but because of the comprehensiveness and the skill and interest of the exposition. It is supplementary to Dr. Bernheim’s former volume, “Suggestive Psychotherapeutics,” (1886-87, English translation, 1889) and reflects the progress that has resulted from continued and systematic observation. The therapeutic interest in it naturally finds most complete representation and about half the volume is devoted to the description of cases cured or benefited by suggestive treatment. Although nervous complaints predominate in these well arranged and well described cases, yet the method is shown applicable to all the ills that flesh is heir to. While this portion of the volume will be of greatest interest to the medical world, the psychologist will find most food for reflection in the first and more theoretical half of the book. He will find there an interesting historical sketch illustrating how processes similar to those now studied as hypnotism have been in use from ancient times; how all the various healers, and the various processes and agencies used by them, involve different modes of application of the one principle of suggestion. “It is the human imagination that works miracles.”

Suggestion is defined as the act by which an idea is introduced in the brain and accepted by it, and thus many of the means by which one person influences another under every day, normal circumstances would be included in the term. Hypnotism is simply one of the most important and efficient methods of producing a state of increased suggestibility. In every day life we have abundant evidence of the tendency of ideas to be realised in actions; with every change in thought and emotion there is associated some motor expression, too subtle perhaps for analysis and description, but still present and significant. Under excitement and nervous strain these motor accompaniments of thought are increased and serve as the basis of the muscle reader’s skill. Again the possibility of disbelief and of recognising the illusory character of a sensation involve the control of higher directing powers; the accumulated experience of the past passes sentence upon the new candidate. If we imagine a condition in which this form of control is abolished, we should have a subject accepting as real almost any idea or sensation that is suggested to him, and expressing freely and unreservedly his acceptance of the same. And this it is that hypnotism does. It builds upon the natural credulity which it is the difficult task of reason to shape and control, and brings into prominence the automatic, subconscious phases of mental action. It does not endow subjects with new faculties or deprive them of their individuality, but shows in a strangely perverted perspective the various faculties and processes that go to build the endlessly complex elements of a personality. This “suggestion” view of hypnotism is the contribution of the Nancy School, and is fast becoming the recognised view of science; one will nowhere find a clearer and more convincing exposition of it than in Dr. Bernheim’s pages.

It is clearly impossible to summarise the various details that make up the body of the volume; but all the important topics are discussed and result in conclusions unusually free as well from vagueness as from narrowness. The processes inducing the state, the proportion of susceptible individuals, the various kinds and stages of hypnotism, its relation to sleep and other normal states, the rôle of memory in hypnotism, the interesting post-hypnotic, negative and retroactive hallucinations, its relation to hysteria, its possible use in crime,—these are some of the chief topics treated. The volume is a valuable contribution to the literature of the subject, reflects its most recent acquisitions, and would well merit a presentation in an English translation.

J. J.

Handbook of Psychology. In two volumes; Senses and Intellect, and, Feeling and Will. By James Mark Baldwin, M. A., Ph. D., Professor in the University of Toronto. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1891.

These are two books diligently worked out, the former of 343, the latter of 397 pp. They cover almost the entire field of psychology excluding however the treatment of such abnormal states as are Mental Pathology and Hypnotism. The author is a disciple of Dr. McCosh, and is strongly influenced by Wundt, of Leipzig, and Rabier, of Paris; yet he has developed an independent view of the nature of the soul which perhaps comes nearest to that of Prof. William James, of Harvard. The two books are actually two parts of one work, the one complementing the other. The former however is not, as the name suggests, an exposition of the nature of the senses in their relation to or as the basis of the intellect; it is an inquisition into consciousness, sensation, perception, association, imagination, rational thought, and kindred subjects. The latter, after an introduction of 50 pp., characterising the mechanism of the nervous system, treats of feeling as sensation, as pleasure and pain, as interest and belief, as emotion, and passes over to the subject of a motor consciousness, or will, ending in a chapter on volition.

Professor Baldwin states that “after we enter consciousness we find a principle of apperception to which there is no analogy in physiological integration,” adding in a foot-note: “Since the section of the ‘Unity of Composition’ theory was written, Professor James has published an acute criticism in substantial agreement with it, and the passage quoted makes reference to the sixth chapter of Professor James’s Psychology in which he rejects the so-called ‘mind-stuff,’ theory, declaring a self-compounding of mental facts to be inadmissible and proposes at last what he calls ‘soul-theory.’” Professor James in this chapter commits the mistake indicated in the editorial of the last number of The Monist (p. 248) that he considers things as things in themselves and then looks for a relation producing principle. He says:

“In the parallelogram of forces, the ‘forces’ themselves do not combine into the diagonal resultant; a body is needed on which they may impinge, to exhibit their resultant effect.”

“Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence.”

Thus Professor W. James is in need of what he calls a “medium.” He says:

“All the ‘combinations’ which we actually know are effects, wrought by the units said to be ‘combined,’ upon some entity other than themselves. Without this feature of a medium or vehicle, the notion of combination has no sense.”

We observe that feelings which originate through the impressions of the outer world upon some sentient organism, enter into relations to each other, as naturally as things are in relations, or under certain circumstances will enter more closely into relations with each other. The “soul” accordingly is postulated by Professor James as a medium to combine the effects of the manifold brain processes in order to “escape the absurdity of supposing feelings which exist separately and then ‘fuse together’ by themselves. The separateness is in the brain-world, on this theory, and the unity in the soul world, and the only trouble that remains to haunt us is the metaphysical one of understanding how one sort of world or existent thing can affect or influence another at all.” This is dualism and we suppose that Professor James is conscious of it.

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Untersuchungen zur physiologischen Morphologie der Thiere. II. Organbildung und Wachsthum. By Dr. Jacques Loeb. Mit 2 Tafeln in Lithographie und 9 Figuren im Text. Würzburg: Georg Hertz. 1892.

Dr. Jacques Loeb formerly of Zürich and lately returned from the Zoological station at Naples has been appointed Professor at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Former publications of his were reviewed in The Monist I, No. 2, p. 300. The present pamphlet is a continuance of his investigations in physiological morphology. Some of his experiments are made with Antennularia antennina (a hydroid polyp) and the author describes how without mutilation, simply by giving the creature a fixed position he succeeded in making it develop certain organs in certain places, thus proving gravitation to be an important factor in determining the growth of certain limbs. Dr. Loeb adds a few articles on the dependence of the longitudinal growth and also of the regeneration of Tubularia upon the concentration of the salt-water. His experiments with Ciona intestinalis (a solitary ascidia) prove that (1) a section in the side of the oral orifice as well as of the anus will cause the formation of ocelli on the margin of the section, (2) after an extirpation of the central nervous system the reflexes continue although with a higher threshold of the stimulus, and (3) the ciona is capable of developing the central nervous system again.

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Das Dasein als Lust, Leid, und Liebe. Die altindische Weltanschauung in neuzeitlicher Darstellung. Ein Beitrag zum Darwinismus. Mit 2 Tondrucken, 24 Zeichnungen und 10 Tabellen. By Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden. Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 1891.

The author of this book is Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, editor of The Sphinx, a monthly magazine published in Germany which professes to “lay down historically and experimentally the supersensible World-Conception upon a monistic basis.” Love of Mysticism is the main feature of The Sphinx as well as Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden’s book. The Sphinx contains reports of cases of telepathy and is quite serious in investigating the spook of a haunted house. The present book contains the author’s confession of faith. The symbols by which he depicts his world-conception reveal a cabalistic taste, and we believe that the illustrations will be rather repugnant to the man of science, as they give the impression of fantasticism. The main idea of the book is to modernise the old Hindoo view that “Kama” desire or Lust is the ground of all being, as is said in the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad (IV, 4, 5): “Man consists entirely of desire (Kama); as is his desire, so is his will (Kratu); as is his will, so is his life (Karma, i. e., activity); as is his life, so is his fate.”

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden rejects the Hindoo view of a migration of soul in so far as it suggests the idea of something personal; he prefers to speak of a transformation of soul. This, he says, has been and it may be called “metaphysical Darwinism”, and we must confess that the nucleus of the idea touches the most vital point of all the problems of life. We cannot explain ethics and the ethical instinct of man without taking into consideration that man lives and aspires for something that will outlast his individual existence. The author says: “Why do you strive for something higher, for perfection, for completion or whatever your aim may be called? Why all that, if you imagine that your individuality has only this one life upon earth and you can realise only a very small part of what you strive for? Why all your trouble, if the main thing is in vain?” We agree with the author that our moral instinct, our ideals and aspirations which are most powerful realities in life point to a life beyond the grave, they indicate that death is no finality and evolution teaches us that our souls actually continue to exist. Our souls in their individual features are parts only of the whole evolution of our race and these very individual features of our souls can be and will be preserved in the future generations.

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden’s book is characteristic of a strange tendency of our time to combine the results of modern science with the old notions of occultism. There is in it a psychological and ethical truth overgrown with a fanciful imagination.

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Max Müller and the Science of Language. A Criticism. By William Dwight Whitney, Professor in Yale University. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1892.

The Professors W. D. Whitney and F. Max Müller are not on good terms. They do not only disagree on several fundamental and many minor points, concerning the science of language, but their warfare, as is well known, is at the same time of a personal nature. The present little volume is a criticism of the new edition of Max Müller’s “Science of Language.” The great Yale philologist recognising that this work of his antagonistic Oxford colleague “is still the principal and most authoritative text-book of that study,” and noting that “its author has gained no new light from the criticisms that have been made upon his work,” feels called upon to warn the reader that “it may not be trusted where it is untrustworthy and so do harm to the science which it was intended to help.” The title of the book, according to Professor Whitney, ought to be “Facts and Fancies in Regard to Language and Other Related Subjects.”

Schleicher says: “Languages are natural organisms which, without being determinable by the will of man, grew and developed themselves in accordance with fixed laws.... Its method is on the whole and in general the same with that of the other natural sciences.” Professor Whitney censures Max Müller for calling the first part of Schleicher’s proposition “sheer mythology,” and then adopting the inference made therefrom considering the science of language as a physical science. Now it is true that the expression “organism” must not be taken literally; languages are not animals or plants, but they have some quality that is comparable to animals and plants. Their life and the development of their life is in many respects analogous to the life of organisms. Professor Whitney regards language as “a body of conventional signs for ideas” and protests against Prof. Max Müller’s usage of the word “conventional” as if it implied “a convention of people gathered to discuss and decide on the words and forms by which conceptions should be represented.” In contradistinction to Max Müller who holds that philology is a physical science, Professor Whitney regards it as an historical science. “Physical science,” says Max Müller, “deals with the works of God, historical science with the works of man.” Thus optics is a physical science, painting an historical science. Whitney declares that individuals initiate changes and the community either accepts and uses them, making them language by its use or rejects and annuls them by refusing to use them. In one word Max Müller says language is φύσει, a product of nature, and Whitney says it is θέσει, an institution of man. We believe that Professor Whitney stands almost alone in his conception of language.

Another no less important point is Professor Whitney’s objection to Prof. Max Müller’s proposition of the Identity of Language and Thought. Here Professor Whitney will find many supporters for his case; but we must add that Prof. Max Müller does not exactly mean what he says. He means by identity inseparableness. It is not so much Max Müller’s position that should be attacked as his misleading terminology. Concerning the origin of language Professor Whitney finds an instructive parallel in the beginnings of writing which were mutually intelligible signs, or in the written language of mathematics. “So we do no longer see,” he says, “the two and three strokes in our figures 2 and 3, although they are really there disguised from view.” This is a good simile, and undoubtedly cum grano salis true. But it is rather strange that Professor Whitney should find Noiré’s theory of the origin of language “utterly fantastic.”

These are fundamental differences. There are some more, less important points such as the etymology of king being the Sanskrit janaka. Max Müller proposes a very improbable reason for the change of meaning in the Lat. fagus, O. Germ. boka (beech), Greek phegos, Lat. quercus, and Germ. foraha (fir). Professor Whitney might have mentioned that a more probable reason for this change has been proposed of late by those who seek the home of the Aryans in Europe. A migrating people would naturally have called in their old home the beech, in their new the oak “a tree with edible fruit.” The same method is applicable to explain the change of meaning in forah-a-quercus which means in northern countries a fir and in Italy an oak.

Professor Whitney sums up his case as follows (p. 77): he finds “language study ... declared on transparently false grounds, to be a physical science, and language an existence which man had no part in making and changing; dialectic growth misunderstood, families of language regarded as exceptional, and a ‘Turanian’ barathrum arranged to catch all little-known varieties of speech; antecedent unity of dialect taught in one case and denied in another; a word held to be killed by the least mispronunciation; conventional explained to mean ‘voted by a convention’; thought and its expression viewed as inseparable, and even identical; the origin of language seemingly ascribed to an instinctive ding-dong of the tongue—and so on; to complete the list would be almost to give a table of principal contents of the two volumes—and a style of discussion used throughout which indicated that the author was playing with his subject rather than investigating it seriously.... The book is not science, but literature. Taken as literature, it is of high rank, as the admiration of the public sufficiently testifies; its author has a special gift for interesting statement and illustration, for lending a charm to the subjects he discusses; and he carries captive the judgments of his hearers and of many of his readers. He is a born littérateur.”

Professor Whitney concludes: “Now as heretofore, I rest my defense on not the just intent alone, but the real substantial justice of my criticisms; if they are unfounded, I deserve reprehension for making them; if they are right, then there is nothing, either in the degree of importance of the subjects to which they relate, or in the personality against whom they are directed, to call for their condemnation.”

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Seifenblasen. Moderne Märchen. By Kurd Lasswitz. Hamburg and Leipsic: Leopold Voss. 1890.

“Märchen,” in the province of science, we are inclined to believe are a prize problem for our modern poets. Who will solve it? Kurd Lasswitz has made an attempt and considering the great difficulty of the problem, we are not inclined to criticise him. The author, who has worked in scientific fields and has proved his ability as a close student, exhibits in these “soap-bubbles” a fertile imagination and poetic invention. Most of his sketches fall short of the ideal märchen of science as we conceive it, but their reading is suggestive and deserves the attention of those whose disposition favors the creation of a middle ground between science and poetry.

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FOOTNOTES:

PERIODICALS.

REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.

CONTENTS: December, 1891. No. 192

Un problème d’acoustique psychologique. By L. Dauriac.

Les origines de notre structure intellectuelle et cérébrale. II. L’évolutionnisme. By A. Fouillée.

Léonard de Vinci artiste et savant. By G. Séailles.

Sur les dessins d’enfants. By J. Passy.

Sur un cas d’inhibition psychique. By A. Binet.

CONTENTS: January, 1892. No. 193.

Le problème de la vie. By Dunan.

La maladie du pessimisme. By B. Pérez.

Philosophes espagnols de Cuba: F. Varela, J. de la Luz. By J.-M. Guardia.

Variétés: Le Problème d’Achille. By J. Mouret.

CONTENTS: February, 1892. No. 194.

Les mouvements de manège chez les insectes. By A. Binet.

Le problème de la vie (2nd article). By Dunan.

Philosophes espagnols de Cuba (concluded). J.-M. Guardia.

Revue générale: Justice et socialisme, d’après les publications récentes. By Belot.

One of the problems of the unique and great work of Carl Stumpf’s “Tonpsychologie” is the subject of L. Dauriac’s essay. The question is when several sounds enter the ear at the same time, the plurality of which is not directly known, do you have your information through an inner sense? Does every unit of the irritation correspond to a distinct unit of sensation? Is there in consciousness a simultaneousness of sensations similarly as outside of consciousness there is a simultaneousness of vibrations? M. Dauriac maintains that Stumpf’s question can be answered only on the ground of metaphysical postulates, and if preconceived solutions are to be excluded, it must be considered as insoluble.

Alfred Fouillée, in his second article on the origin of our intellectual and cerebral structure, which treats on evolutionism, comes to the conclusion that the hypothesis which in the most simple way explains the agreement of thoughts and objects is the doctrine of a radical unity generally called Monism.

J. Passy notes certain characteristic and psychologically interesting features of the drawings of children.

M. A. Binet presents two physiognomical pictures of the same face, one representing disgust or scorn, the other a good-humored and happy smile. The upper parts of both faces are exactly alike and yet the eyes of the former look disdainful while the very same eyes of the latter are full of jest and merriment. This is the fact. M. Binet psychologically interprets the fact as a phenomenon of automatic inhibition. The fact is interesting, but its interpretation seems doubtful.

Charles Dunan discusses the metaphysical aspect of the problem of life.

B. Pérez’s article is a contribution to pathological psychology with special reference to M. Magalhâes’s work on the subject. Pessimism, M. Pérez says, is a disease only if exaggerated, yet he believes that medico-psychological studies which consider the relation between the physical system and morality are very helpful even if carried too far.

M. J.-M. Guardia’s article will have a special interest for Americans. Three men arose in Spain of late, Valentin Almirall, M. L. Mallada, and J.-M. Escudor, who spoke bold and hard words of truth to their country. Cuba is the hen that lays golden eggs for Spain, but the Cubans are treated with great contempt in Spain; and yet the Spaniards are by no means their intellectual superiors, for while Spain is poor in philosophy, Cuba is the only country of Latin America where philosophy has taken root. M. Guardia sketches in the first article the history and philosophy of Don Félix Varélay y Moralès who is the harbinger of the other Spanish-Cuban philosopher, José de la Luz. The second article in the February number treats of the latter (1800-1862) whom Guardia calls the master.

George Mouret with reference to Frontera’s book on Zeno’s argument against motion makes a few remarks concerning the Eleatic sophism about Achilles and the tortoise.

An injury of a thalamus opticus produces in horses and other animals the effect of their making rotatory movements when intending to walk straight on. Forel proved that a similar effect is produced in ants by a lesion of one of their lobes. M. Binet publishes in the present essay his experiments on certain water-beetles, exhibiting diagrams of their normal and abnormal walk. (Paris: Félix Alcan.)

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ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE DER SINNESORGANE. Vols. II and III.

CONTENTS: November, 1891. No. 6.

Ueber Brückes Theorie des Körperlichen Sehens. By Dr. C. du Bois-Reymond.

Mein Schlusswort gegen Wundt. By C. Stumpf.

Erwiderung. By O. Flügel.

Litteraturbericht.

CONTENTS: December, 1891. No. 1.

Versuch, das psychophysische Gesetz auf die Farbenunterschiede trichromatischer Augen anzuwenden. By H. v. Helmholtz.

Untersuchungen über binokulares Sehen mit Anwendung des Heringschen Fallversuchs. By Dr. Richard Greeff.

Bemerkungen zu dem Aufsatze von Dr. Sommer “zur Psychologie der Sprache.” By Prof. A. Pick.

Litteraturbericht.

Dr. C. du Bois-Reymond believes that corporeal vision is either produced by one eye running in succession over several places or two eyes viewing two aspects of the object. Mach’s theory of the influence of shade upon the production of the third dimension in vision which affords quite a new and a better explanation of the phenomenon is not mentioned. Stumpf closes his controversy with Wundt with a few remarks in answer to Wundt’s reply (in Philos. Studien VII, pp. 298-327); and Flügel objects to Professor Rehmke’s proposition made in a criticism of Flügel’s book “Die Seelenfrage,” that Herbart’s psychology, being atomism, is at bottom materialism.

Dr. Richard Greeff describes Hering’s apparatus for investigating the cause of binocular vision. Wheatstone believes that the perspective of the two retina pictures produces the effect of corporeality while Brücke declares that it is mainly due to muscle-sensations. Hering sides with Wheatstone, and the experiments as described by Greeff prove that the third dimension is unfailingly perceived whenever the ocular axes diverge, while in other cases the same result is not attained.

Dr. Sommer had presented in a former article the facts of an interesting case of aphasia, (see The Monist, Vol. I, No. 4, p. 629) where the patient, his name is Voit, could remember and pronounce words only when writing them. Prof. A. Pick objects to Dr. Sommer’s regarding the case as contrary to our present experience and following two French authorities Ballet and Bernard, adduces cases of Aphasia by right-sided hemiphlegia where patients could read only when they were able to write or represent to themselves the writing motions of their hand. Thus one patient of Charcot could only read print, and not written words “because,” as he said, “it was easier for him to reproduce in his mind the written letter.” This reminds one of the case a deaf-mute who said: “I feel whenever I think of the motions of my fingers although they are perfectly at rest. I see internally an image of my moving fingers.” Professor Pick concludes that the case Voit is a good argument against Max Müller’s proposition of the identity of language and thought. Max Müller however includes in his conception of word any symbol of an idea. The finger motion of a deaf-mute is a word, and the writing motion of Voit is also a word, according to Professor Max Müller’s theory.

Prof. H. v. Helmholtz publishes the tables of his experiments in applying the psycho-physical law upon color differences of trichromatic eyes, and presents the three fundamental colors diagrammatically in an equilateral triangle in the centre of which lies white. A curve winding round this centre shows the relation of the rainbow spectrum in the system of three fundamental colors. The results do not as yet agree with the investigations of A. König and C. Diterici who make similar inquiries with bichromatic eyes. (Leipsic: O. R. Reisland.)

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VIERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTLICHE PHILOSOPHIE. Vol. XVI. No. 1.

CONTENTS:

Beiträge zur Logik. (Erster Artikel.) By A. Riehl.

Die Dimensionen der Wahrscheinlichkeit und die Evidenz der Ungewissheit. By Ad. Nitsche.

Ueber die fortschreitende Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts. II. By F. Rosenberger.

Ernst Platner’s wissenschaftliche Stellung zu Kant in Erkenntnisstheorie und Moralphilosophie. I. By B. Seligkowitz.

Ueber Sprachreflex, Nativismus und absichtliche Sprachbildung. X. By A. Marty.

Prof. A. Riehl begins in this number a series of articles on logic. The first two chapters are (1) concepts and definitions. Riehl distinguishes between a definition and a predicating sentence (Aussage), for instance, “Space has three dimensions,” is a mere definition, but “Space is the form of our intuition,” is an Aussage. (2) Conceptual sentences and judgments. The former are merely representative and cannot as the latter be said to combine or separate ideas.

Ad. Nitsche criticises Johannes v. Kries’s idea that the calculus of probabilities is admissible only if the chances are equivalent. Equivalent Chances (gleiche Spielräume), he objects, are apparently impossible, yet he admits that upon the degree of a knowledge of the conditions will depend the reliability of the probability.

The Object of B. Seligkowitz’s article is to rescue from oblivion a philosopher who especially as a critic of Kant deserves to be better known than he is, Ernst Platner (1744-1818.)

The tenth and concluding article of A. Marty on the origin of language reviews Paul Regnaud’s work Origine et philosophie du langage. (Leipsic: O. R. Reisland.)

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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY. December, 1891. Vol. IV. No. 2.

CONTENTS:

A Sketch of the History of Psychology Among the Greeks. By Charles A. Strong.

Studies from the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of the University of Wisconsin. By Prof. Joseph Jastrow, Ph. D.

The Size of Several Cranial Nerves in Man as Indicated by the Areas of Their Cross-sections. By Henry H. Donaldson, Ph. D.

Visualisation as a Chief Source of the Psychology of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. By Alexander Fraser, B. A.

Anatomical Observations on the Brain and Several Sense-Organs of the Blind Deaf-mute, Laura Dewey Bridgman. II. By Henry H. Donaldson, Ph. D.

Psychological Literature. I. Nervous System. By Prof. H. H. Donaldson.

A Laboratory Course in Physiological Psychology. II. By E. C. Sanford.

Psychiatry. Psychoses Following Acute Surgical and Mental Affections and in Multiple Neuritis. By William Noyes, M. D.

The post mortem examination of Laura Bridgman shows a brain in which the olfactory bulbs and nerves, the optic nerves, the auditory nerves, and possibly the glossopharyngeal, had all been more or less destroyed at their peripheral ends. This destruction caused a degeneration—most marked in the optic nerves—which extended towards the centres and involved them indirectly.... This case represents a maximum loss in these defective senses with a minimum amount of central disturbance, thus offering the very best sort of opportunity for education by way of the surviving senses.... Mental association was for Laura Bridgman limited to various phases of the dermal sensations and the minor and imperfect senses of taste and smell.... The motor centre there had lost some, but not all its associative connections. (Clark University, Worcester, Mass.)

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. January, 1892. Vol. II. NO. 2.

CONTENTS:

The Ethical Aspects of the Papal Encyclical. By Brother Azarias.

The Three Religions. By J. S. Mackenzie, M. A.

The Ethics of Hegel. By Rev. J. Macbride Sterrett.

A Palm of Peace from German Soil. By Fanny Hertz.

Authority in the Sphere of Conduct and Intellect. By Prof. H. Nettleship, Oxford.

Discussions and Reviews.

Brother Azarias paraphrases and praises the ethics of the Papal Encyclical. J. S. Mackenzie starts from Kant’s famous remarks that two things fill our minds with reverence, the starry, heavens above and the moral law within. The worship of these two separately and the worship of them in combination are set forth as the three great religions of the world. Fanny Hertz pleads for the abolishment of war. She quotes largely from Bertha Suttner’s novel, “Die Waffen nieder,” and from Friederich’s letters. Authority, according to Professor Nettleship, is “the power which in the sphere of conduct, in the long run determines our practice and in the sphere of intellect in the long run determines our assent.” There are roughly speaking four kinds of authority: (1) the authority of law, (2) the authority of religious bodies, (3) the authority of society or public opinion and (4) the authority of great men. Where is the seat of authority? “For each individual,” Professor Nettleship maintains, “the absolute guide can, in the long run be no other than his own conscience.” The origin of conscience and the criterion whether the voice of conscience be true or not are not explained. (Philadelphia: International Journal of Ethics, 118 S. Twelfth Street.)

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MIND. New Series. No. 1. January, 1892.

CONTENTS:

Prefatory Remarks. The Editor.

The Logical Calculus. (1) General Principles. By W. E. Johnson.

The Idea of Value. By S. Alexander.

The Changes of Method in Hegel’s Dialectic. (1) By J. Ellis McTaggart.

The Law of Psychogenesis. By Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan.

Discussions: The Feeling-Tone of Desire and Aversion. By Prof. H. Sidgwick. Sur la Distinction entre les Lois ou Axiomes et les Notions. By George Mouret.

Critical Notices.

W. E. Johnson says: “As a material machine is an instrument for economising the exertion of force, so a symbolic calculus is an instrument for economising the exertion of intelligence. And, employing the same analogy, the more perfect the calculus, the smaller would be the amount of intelligence applied as compared with the results produced.” He continues:

“But as the exertion of some force is necessary for working the machine, so the exertion of some intelligence is necessary for working the calculus.”

Here we feel inclined to stop our author. That which makes of a certain amount of metal, brass, and wood a machine, is the form in which they are composed, and this form is instrumental in using a certain amount of energy for doing a certain kind of work. Intelligence is not analogous to force but to the form of force. Not intelligence is necessary to run the instrument of intelligence, but some power, some force, some energy, and this power needed for running the instrument of intelligence, as it exists in man, is generally called will. So we are at variance with Mr. W. S. Johnson from the outset. Mr. Johnson from his standpoint considers it “important to examine the kind and degree of intelligence that are demanded in the employment of any symbolic calculus. It will appear that the logical calculus stands in a unique relation to intelligence; for it aims at exhibiting, in a non-intelligent form, those same intelligent principles that are actually required for working it.”

We abstain here from discussing the details of this highly suggestive article which contains much that is of interest to logicians. The author claims especially with regard to his interpretation of the universal and particular that his results exactly correspond with the interpretation given by Dr. Venn and Mr. Peirce, and worked out by Dr. Keynes.

The Germans distinguish between Urtheil and Beurtheilung, the first being judgment in general, the latter a judgment that declares something to possess value from the view of truth, beauty or goodness. In this sense Mr. S. Alexander deals with the idea of value. He states two main principles. (1) That value is “the efficiency of a conscious agent to promote the efficiency of society” and this, the author says, was maintained indirectly in opposition to the view that value was determined by pleasure. (2) That value is itself no something separable from other mental facts by a wide gulf, but was itself a fact of a purely natural order. “Sollen” is one kind of “Sein.”

Mr. J. Ellis McTaggart in discussing the changes of method in Hegel’s Dialectic arrives at a conclusion which according to the author must be admitted to be quite un-Hegelian. Hegel apparently regarded the procession of the categories with its advance through oppositions and reconciliations as presenting absolute truth. From this the author dissents, “for,” he says: “the true process of thought is one in which each category springs out of the one before it, and not by contradicting it, but as the expression of its deepest nature, while it, in its turn, is seen to have its deepest reality in again passing on to the one after it. There is no contradiction no opposition, and consequently no reconciliation. There is only development, the rendering explicit what was implicit, the growth of the seed to the plant. In the actual course of the dialectic this is never attained. It is an ideal which is never quite realised, and from the nature of the case never can be quite realised. In the dialectic there is always opposition, and therefore always reconciliation. We do not go straight onward, but more or less from side to side. It seems inevitable, therefore, to conclude that the dialectic does not completely and perfectly express the nature of thought.”

Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan starting from the proposition that “the business of consciousness is the control of action” shows that “we identify ourselves rather with the action of our control centres than with our lower animal instincts. Through experience we learn, and habits being formed by individual repetition become innate.” Professor Morgan reviews use-inheritance natural selection, sexual selection, the law of beauty, and conduct and verification with regard to psychogenesis. “Our nature,” he says, “is intellectual, æsthetic, moral, and sensitive”:

“The false is rejected as incongruous to our nature as intellectual; the ugly is avoided as incongruous to our nature as æsthetic; the wrong is shunned as incongruous to our nature as moral; so is the painful, so far as possible, avoided as incongruous to our nature as sensitive.... The guidance of pleasure and pain is of great importance—so great that some are found to argue that in moral matters we are influenced solely by considerations of happiness.... Only by extending the meaning of the words pleasure and pain so as to be coextensive with what I have here termed congruous and incongruous can it be said that our actions and our thoughts are determined by pleasure and pain.” (London: Williams & Norgate.)

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. Vol. I, No. 1. January, 1892.

CONTENTS of No. 1.

Prefatory Note.

The Critical Philosophy and Idealism. By Prof. John Watson.

Psychology as So-called “Natural Science.” By Prof. George T. Ladd.

On Some Psychological Aspects of the Chinese Musical System. By Benj. Ives Gilman.

Reviews of Books and Summaries of Articles.

CONTENTS of No. 2:

Psychology, Epistemology, and Metaphysics. By Prof. Andrew Seth.

A Plea for Psychology as a “Natural Science.” By Prof. William James.

On Some Psychological Aspects of the Chinese Musical System. II. By Benj. Ives Gilman.

Discussions: Dr. Münsterberg’s Theory of Mind and Body and its Consequences. By Charles A. Strong.

Reviews of Books and Summaries of Articles.

This is a new magazine which will be an additional proof that the philosophical interest in America is by no means so poor as the inhabitants of the old world generally suppose it to be. The character of the journal, it is to be expected, will be in harmony with the publications of its scholarly editor, Prof. J. G. Schurmann, whose position is clearly set forth in a little volume of his “Belief in God,” in which he conceives God in three ways (1) as the cause or ground of the world (2) as the realising purpose of the world, and (3) as the father of spirits.

Professor Watson reviews in an elaborate article Edward Caird’s work “The Critical Philosophy of Emanuel Kant.” “The philosophy of Kant,” says Watson, “was accepted at first by submissive disciples, but it had afterwards to submit to a severe process of criticism which culminated in the Absolute Idealism of Hegel. The synthesis of Kant, as based upon an untenable opposition of the phenomenal and the real, was weighed and found wanting.... We must be grateful to any one who helps us, not merely to see Kant, but to see beyond him. This is the task which Professor Caird, in his exhaustive work on the Critical Philosophy, has set himself to perform,” and adds Watson, “he has done it in a way that leaves nothing to be desired.”

Professor Ladd criticises Professor James’s Psychology as so-called natural science.

“What we wish to have in the name of cerebral psychology, is a description, in terms of a comprehensible theory of molecular physics; and, also, a statement of the formulæ which define the relations between the molecular changes and the ‘corresponding’ orders of mental phenomena. But this is precisely what Professor James avoids doing, even to the extent which so-called ‘nerve-physiology’ makes possible. And, nothing worthy of the name ‘science’ is possible for any one in this branch of cerebral psycho-physics.”

Professor James replies to the criticism in the second number of The Philosophical Review. He says:

“Psychology is to-day hardly more than what physics was before Galileo, what chemistry was before Lavoisier. It is a mass of phenomenal description, gossip, and myth, including, however, real material enough to justify one in the hope that its study may become worthy of the name of natural science at no very distant day. I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.”

Professor Ladd is a transcendentalist and Professor James has great expectations of the work inaugurated by the Society for Psychical Research.

Theoretically they stand much nearer than practically, as well indicated by Professor James’s remark:

“In Professor Ladd’s own book on ‘Physiological Psychology,’ that ‘real being, proceeding to unfold powers that are sui generis, according to laws of its own,’ for whose recognition he contends, plays no organic part in the work, and has proved a mere stumbling block to his biological reviewers.”

He adds in a foot-note:

“I mean that such a being is quite barren of particular consequences. Its character is only known by its reactions on the signals which the nervous system gives, and these must be gathered by observation after the fact. If only it were subject to successive reincarnations, as the theosophists say it is, so that we might guess what sort of a body it would unite with next, or what sort of persons it had helped to constitute previously, those would be great points gained. But even those gains are denied us; and the real being is, for practical purposes, an entire superfluity, which a practical psychology can perfectly well do without.”

Andrew Seth, the well-known coryphæus of philosophy and psychology at Edinburgh, presses the importance of distinguishing the different standpoints of psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics. Locke, Berkeley, Hume and other English as well as Continental thinkers “speak sometimes from one point of view, sometimes from the other without being aware that the two points of view are different.”

“Psychology, assuming the existence of a subject or medium of consciousness, seeks to explain, mainly by the help of association or processes practically similar, how out of the come-and-go of conscious states, there are evolved such subjective facts as perceptions, the belief in an independent real world, and the idea of the Ego or subject himself.... Metaphysics has to do with the ultimate nature of the reality which reveals itself alike in the consciousness which knows and the world which is known.... The epistemological thing-in-itself to be identified with the metaphysical essence.... The problem of knowledge and the Real, is the question which Epistemology has to face.” (Boston, New York, Chicago: Ginn & Co.)

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VOPROSUI FILOSOFII I PSICHOLOGII.⁠[67] Vol. III. No. 11. January, 1892.

CONTENTS:

Positive Philosophy and the Unity of Science. Part V. Sociology. By B. Tchitcherin.

Count Giacomo Leopardi and his Pessimism. Part IV. Continued from No. 10 of this review. (Conclusion.) By V. Stein.

An Historical Sketch of the Conceptions of Nature. (Conclusion.) By M. Menzhir.

J. V. Kiryebskii and the Origin of Muscovite Slavophilism. Public lecture delivered November 20, 1891, for the benefit of the rural districts suffering from the bad harvests. By Paul Vinogradoff.

Fouillé and the Metaphysics of the Future. Part III. General estimate of Fouillé’s views. Continued from No. 10 of this review. (Conclusion) By Aleksei Vnedenskii.

Telepathy. To be concluded in the next number. By M. Petrovo-Solovo. [This is a review of the publications of and the work done by the Society for Psychical Research in England.]

Special Part: (1) Wundt’s System of Philosophy. By K. Ventzel. (2) Hegel’s Ontology. By N. P. Hilyaroff-Platonoff. New Researches on Plato. By A. Kozloff.

Criticism and Bibliography. Review of Russian and Foreign Periodicals. Book Reviews. Bibliographical Index of recent Philosophical works. Answer to an anonymous letter received by N. Strachoff on the subject of his article: “Opinions concerning L. N. Tolstoï.” By N. Strachoff. Transactions of the Moscow Psychological Society. (Moscow, 1892.)

FOOTNOTES:

Vol. II. July, 1892. No. 4.