Volume 3 / Part 4 — THE MONIST. (continued 4)

“Stated in this crude way, the hypothesis is pretty sure to meet with immediate disbelief. And yet neither many nor far-fetched considerations are required to mitigate its paradoxical character, and possibly to produce conviction of its truth.

“To begin with, no reader of the last two chapters will be inclined to doubt the fact that objects do excite bodily changes by a preorganised mechanism, or the farther fact that the changes are so indefinitely numerous and subtle that the entire organism may be called a sounding-board which every change of consciousness, however slight, may make reverberate....

“The next thing to be noticed is this, that every one of the bodily changes, whatsoever it be, is felt, acutely or obscurely, the moment it occurs....

“I now proceed to urge the vital point of my whole theory, which is this: If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no ‘mind-stuff’ out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. It is true that, although most people when asked say that their introspection verifies this statement, some persist in saying that it does not. Many cannot be made to understand the question. When you beg them to imagine away every feeling of laughter and of tendency to laugh from their consciousness of the ludicrousness of an object, and then to tell you what the feeling of its ludicrousness would be like, whether it be anything more than the perception that the object belongs to the class ‘funny,’ they persist in replying that the thing proposed is a physical impossibility and that they always must laugh if they see a funny object. Of course the task proposed is not the practical one of seeing a ludicrous object and annihilating one’s tendency to laugh. It is the purely speculative one of subtracting certain elements of feeling from an emotional state supposed to exist in all its fulness, and saying what the residual elements are. I cannot help thinking that all who rightly apprehend this problem will agree with the proposition above laid down. What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lip nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the only thing that can be supposed to take its place is some cold-blooded and dispassionate sentence, confined entirely to the judicial realm, to the effect that a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their sins. In like manner of grief: what would it be without its tears, its sobs, its suffocation of the heart, its pang in the breast-bone? A feelingless recognition that certain circumstances are deplorable, and nothing more. Every passion in turn tells the same story. A purely disembodied human emotion is a non-entity.” (P. 449 seq.)

It is, of course, impossible for me to give all the arguments by which Professor James attempts to establish his position; the above quotations will make it clear what it is—namely, that all our “feelings” are sensations.

Before proceeding to consider some of the objections to this view of the matter, it may be well to notice briefly what seems to be a gap in the author’s treatment of it. In adult human beings, very few, comparatively, of what are ordinarily recognised as emotions follow directly upon the perception of their objects, in the ordinary sense of the word. His theory might perhaps suffice, without further explanation for such cases as the “spitting” of blind kittens at the smell of a dog, or the rage of a bull at the sight of a red cloth, or the startled feeling that we experience at a loud and unexpected sound, if the latter should be called an emotion. But in the immense majority of instances the emotions of which he treats arise in a very different way.

Some of his own illustrations will serve as well as any to show this. For instance, neither running nor any other of the symptoms of fear which he enumerates is the necessary result of seeing a bear. A chained or caged bear may excite only feelings of curiosity, and a well armed hunter might experience only pleasurable feelings at meeting one loose in the woods. It is not, then, the perception of the bear that excites the movements of fear. We do not run from the bear unless we suppose him capable of doing us bodily injury. Why should the expectation of being eaten, for instance, set the muscles of our legs in motion? “Common sense” would be likely to say it was because we object to being eaten, but according to Professor James, the reason we dislike to be eaten is because we run away. So, again, striking is not a reflex act, following on the hearing of an insult as sneezing does on taking snuff. Whether the muscular movements or the emotions are the primary thing, what both shall be depends on many things besides the words that are spoken. To be accused of drunkenness or unchastity, for instance, would dispose some persons to violence, but others might feel only the stirrings of pride at what they would consider a tribute to their manhood. In those who considered such a charge opprobrious, it might excite feelings of amusement, contempt, pity, or grief towards the one making it, according to the estimation in which he was held. To say that if it makes us strike we shall be angry, if it makes us laugh we shall be amused, if it makes us weep we shall be grieved, does not go to the bottom of the matter. According to the theory, the thought of the estimation in which we are held by others is, in itself, entirely indifferent to us, and only affects our feelings through the muscular movements it excites.

In view of the variety of these movements in response to the same physical stimulus in a case like this, the statement that objects excite bodily changes by a preorganised mechanism explains nothing. We want to know why in one case a given perception excites one set of movements, and in another an entirely different set. Without attempting to decide whether or not a satisfactory explanation can be given on Professor James’s hypothesis, I will only say, that, so far as I can see, he nowhere attempts it. In his section on “The Genesis of the Various Emotions,” (pp. 477 seq.), he only discusses the question how the various feelings come to be associated with their respective movements. How the movements come to be associated with the perceptions, he does not discuss at all.

Turning now to the considerations which Professor James urges in support of his theory, quoted above, the first two—that objects excite bodily changes and that these changes are more or less distinctly felt—may pass unchallenged. I am disposed to go as far with him as to admit that these feelings, in the cases which he describes, may properly be considered components of the emotional state. But when he affirms that there is nothing else—that if we subtract our consciousness of peripheral sensations there would be no emotion left—it seems to me that he is going very much too far. I should have no hesitation in saying that such a statement of the case is contradicted by my consciousness, but as that would be merely setting up my consciousness against his, without the possibility of an umpire, I will call attention to some other considerations which seem to me to render it improbable.

In the first place, it is to be noticed that the cases he instances in illustration of his position are all of violent emotions. Admitting that we cannot have these emotions, in such degree, without movements such as he describes, nor even imagine how they would feel if such a thing were possible, it does not follow because they cannot be separated that they are identical. We do not reason in this way in regard to those feelings which are not commonly called emotions. I can no more imagine myself in intense bodily pain without a tendency to groan and writhe than deeply grieved without a tendency to weep, and yet no one, probably, would say that the pain consisted solely in my consciousness of the groaning and writhing. If grief is a kind of pain, it is to be expected that, in a high degree, it will produce bodily movements more or less similar to those excited by other sorts of pain. All these emotions, however, are capable of infinite gradations in intensity. The fear of losing one’s pocket handkerchief is an emotion of the same kind as the fear of losing one’s fortune. In Professor James’s description of fear, it is evident that he has abject terror in mind; I hardly think it probable that he has any such sensations, when he fears, for instance, that he will be late to dinner, and yet he must be differently constituted from many of his fellow-men if his state of mind in such a case is merely a cold, intellectual cognition of the fact that such a state of affairs would be undesirable.

The same is true of the other emotions he mentions. The feeling of the ludicrous is, perhaps, the strongest case he cites, but in my own case slight degrees of amusement do not excite laughter, or even any conscious disposition to laugh. There is, at the most, in such cases, a tendency to smile, which may be overpowered by some other emotion, without in the least impairing my feeling of amusement. It seems to me certain that slight degrees of all the emotions mentioned may be unaccompanied by any distinct consciousness of reflex movements. In such cases it is only by a pretty strong effort of attention that we are able, if at all, to determine what the bodily changes are, although we are distinctly aware of the emotion.

Again, it is to be noticed that many actions, similar in character to those we have been considering, are not associated with what are commonly called emotions. Laughing and sobbing, for instance, are spasmodic movements of the muscles of respiration, not strikingly different from hiccuping, and there seems no good reason why the consciousness of the former two should usually be felt as strong emotional excitement, while the latter is not. In some cases, movements identical with those accompanying particular emotions may occur entirely independently of them. Shivering from cold, for instance, is the same sort of a movement as may occur in violent fright, but it does not make us feel frightened. The laughter excited in children and sensitive persons by tickling of the skin is not necessarily accompanied by any mirthful feelings. The act of vomiting may be the accompaniment of the most extreme disgust, or it may occur without a trace of such emotion. Professor James himself gives an instance of this sort that can hardly be bettered:

“The writer well remembers his astonishment, when a boy of seven or eight, at fainting when he saw a horse bled. The blood was in a bucket, with a stick in it, and if memory does not deceive him, he stirred it round and saw it drip from the stick with no feeling save that of childish curiosity. Suddenly the world grew black before his eyes, his ears began to buzz, and he knew no more. He had never heard of the sight of blood producing faintness or sickness, and he had little repugnance to it, and so little apprehension of any other sort of danger from it, that even at that tender age, as he well remembers, he could not help wondering how the mere physical presence of a pailful of crimson fluid could occasion in him such formidable bodily effects” (p. 457).

Here we have a condition such as is sometimes experienced in connection with the most extreme degree of fear or grief unaccompanied by any emotion except astonishment at its occurrence. I presume that if a person should faint on hearing bad news, Professor James would consider that one of the causes of his intense emotion. Why did it have no such effect in this case?

Assuming that the emotions are the effects and not the causes of what are usually reckoned as their “expression,” it seems evident that a given movement or set of movements must uniformly, at least in the same subject, give rise to the same feeling, and that in the case of opposite emotions such as joy and grief, hope and fear, the more intense the emotion, the more unlike must be the actions from which it arises. Neither of these is the case. On the contrary, it would seem to be the fact that the actions accompanying emotion tend to become more alike in proportion to its intensity. It is not at all uncommon for people to weep from excess of joy as well as of grief. Pallor and trembling are frequent accompaniments of the extremes of hope as well as fear. The naturalist Wallace gives an account of his feelings on capturing a rare and beautiful butterfly, which is worth quoting in this connection:

“The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out of the net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to my head, and I felt more like fainting than I have done when in prospect of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day, so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very inadequate cause” (“Malay Archipelago,” p. 342).

Here it is evident that a feeling of intense exultation gave rise to sensations very similar, to say the least, to those of extreme fear.

One other argument brought forward by the author deserves special notice in this connection:

“The best proof that the immediate cause of emotion is a physical effect on the nerves is furnished by those pathological states in which the emotion is objectless. One of the chief merits, in fact, of the view which I propose, seems to be that we can so easily formulate by its means pathological cases and normal cases under a common scheme. In every asylum we find examples of absolutely unmotived fear, anger, melancholy, or conceit, and others of an equally unmotived apathy, which persists in spite of the best of outward reasons why it should give way. In the former cases we must suppose the nervous machinery to be so ‘labile’ in some one emotional direction that almost every stimulus (however inappropriate) causes it to upset in that way, and to engender the particular complex of feelings of which the psychic body of that emotion consists. Thus, to take one special instance, if inability to draw deep breath, fluttering of the heart, and that peculiar epigastric change felt as ‘precordial anxiety,’ with an irresistible tendency to take a somewhat crouching attitude and to sit still, and with perhaps other visceral processes not now known, all spontaneously occur together in a certain person; his feeling of their combination is the emotion of dread, and he is the victim of what is known as morbid fear” (p. 458).

Now, it is evident, of course, in such a case as this, that such a combination of feelings as is here described is not a fortuitous coincidence of so many independent sensations. They must have a common starting-point, which cannot well be elsewhere than in the brain. But if this is the case, it seems to me to be begging the question to assume that the sensations and not the emotion are the primary thing. On the assumption that fear, in the normal condition, is the cause of the disturbances of respiration, circulation, and the like, which accompany it, it is as easy to formulate normal and pathological cases under a common scheme, by supposing it to be the cause of the like disturbances in cases of morbid fear, as on the theory of Professor James.

It seems to me, then, that the theory does not satisfactorily account for the facts, so far as the involuntary, reflex accompaniments of motion are concerned.

The difficulty is greatly increased when we consider the relations of emotion to voluntary action. We have seen that reflex acts, similar to, or identical with those in which Professor James believes emotion to consist, may occur independently of emotion, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, at least. Strictly voluntary acts, on the contrary, are always the concomitants of emotion of some sort. In the great majority of the ordinary actions of life, they are the only motor phenomena of which we are aware in this connection. Our whole daily conduct, in our business and pleasure, our incomings and our outgoings, our downsittings and uprisings, is inseparably associated with our likings and dislikings, our hopes and fears. What is the nature of this association?

Under the theory we are considering, two relations of voluntary acts to emotion are possible. They may, like the involuntary reactions, constitute the emotion, or unlike them, result from it. Professor James does not express himself on the general question, but some of his illustrations seem to favor the former view. If the man who meets a bear is frightened because he runs, or the one who is insulted, angry because he strikes, the voluntary acts of running and striking must, in part, at least, constitute the emotions of fear and anger in these cases. Let us, then, consider this case first.

If I see a shower coming up, and run for a shelter, the emotion is evidently of the same kind, though perhaps less in degree, as in the case of the man who runs from the bear. According to Professor James, I am afraid of getting wet because I run. But supposing that, instead of running, I step into a shop and buy an umbrella. The emotion is still the same. I am afraid of getting wet. Consequently, so far as I can see, the fear, in this case, consists in buying the umbrella. Fear of hunger, in like manner, might consist in laying in a store of provisions; fear of poverty, in shoveling dirt at a dollar a day, and so on indefinitely. Anger, again, may be associated with many other actions than striking. Shylock’s anger at Antonio’s insults induced him to lend him money. Did the anger, or revengefulness, or whatever we may call the passion, consist in the act of lending the money? I hardly think it necessary to multiply instances in illustration of the fact that the same act is often associated with the most contradictory emotions, and acts which are ordinarily indifferent with the most intense feeling; that, in fact, there is no such uniformity in the associations of emotion with voluntary conduct as the hypothesis would seem to require. I incline to think that most people will believe, in the cases cited by Professor James, that the running and the striking are the results, not the causes of the fear and anger.

If we assume such to be the case, we are no better off under the hypothesis we are considering. Excluding voluntary movements, there is nothing left of the emotion, according to Professor James, but the consciousness of involuntary, reflex acts resulting from perception. The voluntary acts must, then, be directly caused by these. Now, in the first place, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to tell what these actions are. What are the involuntary muscular contractions that impel a day-laborer to go to the place of his work, and keep his voluntary muscular system in strenuous activity all day, enduring fatigue and all the discomforts of the summer’s heat or winter’s cold? It would probably puzzle him very much to tell, although he has a very clear idea of why he does it. I doubt if, on his own hypothesis, Professor James himself would find it easy to explain the constituents of the emotions which impel him to go to the class-room at the appointed hour and conduct a recitation. But even in cases in which we are distinctly conscious of involuntary action, there seems to be no connection between it and the voluntary acts accompanying the emotion. In the case of the man running from the bear, for instance, trembling lips, weakened limbs, goose-flesh and visceral stirrings have nothing to do with running, but, on the contrary, would rather tend to prevent it. In fact, it may be said, in general, that the two classes of emotional activities are mutually antagonistic. The more involuntary the action, the less efficient the voluntary activity is apt to be, as any one knows who has had an attack of the “buck ague.” We should have, therefore, diminution of the effect with increase of the cause.

It seems, then, on the hypothesis, impracticable to account for the association of voluntary action with emotion either on the supposition that the former is the cause or the result of the latter. A third alternative—that there is no relation of cause and effect in the case, and that the phenomena of emotion and action, although constantly associated, are really independent, I will not discuss, as it does not commend itself to my mind, and Professor James, elsewhere, expressly repudiates it. It seems to me that the only reasonable conclusion is that emotion is something different from either involuntary or voluntary muscular activity, and which may be the cause of either or both.

Professor James, after admitting that the view of the subject which he advocates is only a hypothesis, and that much is lacking to its definitive proof, goes on to say:

“The only way coercively to disprove it, however, would be to take some emotion and then exhibit qualities of feeling in it which should be demonstrably additional to all those which could possibly be derived from the organs affected at the time. But to detect with certainty such purely spiritual qualities of feeling would obviously be a task beyond human power....

“A positive proof of the theory would, on the other hand, be given, if we could find a subject absolutely anæsthetic inside and out, but not paralytic, so that emotion-inspiring objects might evoke the usual bodily expressions from him, but who, on being consulted, should say that no subjective emotional affection was felt. Such a man would be like one who, because he eats, appears to bystanders to be hungry, but who afterwards confesses that he had no appetite at all.” (P. 455.)

Whether the truth of the first of the above paragraphs is to be conceded or not, depends, I suppose, on the strength of proof necessary for coercion. The only way, for instance, coercively to disprove the once prevalent theory that “lunacy” is due to the influence of the moon would be to abolish the moon. Most intelligent people, however, at the present day, accept the fact that there seems to be no coincidence between the moon’s phases and the phenomena of insanity as sufficient proof for practical purposes of the incorrectness of that theory. It seems to me that the facts to which I have called attention show a somewhat similar lack of correspondence in the case we have been considering. I am, however, unable to see why a case of complete anæsthesia, such as is supposed in the second paragraph, would not answer nearly as well for one side of the question as the other, according to the presence or absence of emotion. To suppose that cutaneous and visceral sensations are preserved unimpaired for purposes of emotion, while absolutely abolished for all other purposes, would be putting a pretty severe strain on the faculty of belief.

Such cases, as Professor James says, are hard to find. He refers to one, reported by Strümpell, in which a boy, anæsthetic within and without, with the exception of one eye and one ear, was stated to have manifested shame, grief, surprise, fear, and anger. He goes on, however, to say: “In observing him, however, no such theory as the present one seems to have been thought of; and it always remains possible that, just as he satisfied his natural appetites and necessities in cold blood, with no inward feeling, so his emotional expressions may have been accompanied by a quite cold heart.”

Since Professor James’s work was published, two cases have been reported by Berkley,⁠[57] which, although not, perhaps, conclusive, are of interest in this connection. In the first, the patient, a woman of English birth, age not stated, had complete loss of sense of pain, heat and cold, pressure and equilibrium, of smell, taste, and sight. The sense of touch, although not completely abolished, was very greatly impaired. She recognised a hat, for instance, only after feeling of it for a long time and then seemed doubtful about it. Her sense of the position of the extremities was also very imperfect, although not entirely abolished; and there was some deafness, although not enough to render her incapable of conversation. With regard to her mental state, Dr. Berkley says:

“The psychical condition has undergone but slight change, she is possibly a little apathetic, with some slight tendency towards a melancholic tone, but when aroused and induced to converse for some time, this in great measure passes away. The memory is quite good.”

Dr. Berkley was kind enough to give me the following additional information about this patient, who, at the time of writing, was still under observation:

“Since the coming on of the dullness in hearing there has been a considerable degree of apathy manifest. She is no longer conscious of the smaller noises that occur around her, but is very readily aroused by the voice, and then takes a lively interest in what is said to her: for instance a few days ago the resident physician remarked to her that he was going to obtain a pair of crutches for her use; she laughed heartily at the idea, and said she would fall and break her leg at the first step.”

In response to further inquiries, he writes as follows:

“1) Visceral sensations. The clearest evidence of visceral sensation I have noted in my article,” [warning of the necessity of evacuating the bowels and bladder by a pricking pain in the lower part of the abdomen,] “no others were sufficiently definite to be described. For two years there has been no feeling of hunger or thirst, and as the diet has only been a few mouthfuls of milk at a time for nearly that period, there has been no feeling of repletion.

“2) When the patient laughs at a joke, there is a slight flushing of the face, besides the ordinary contraction of the facial muscles; she is aware that she is laughing, but besides acknowledging that she perceives no difference between the act now, and some years ago, she is unable to describe the sensation further.

“3) Anger. As I think I mentioned in my last letter, the patient has been a person of unusually equal temper; an outbreak of real passion has never been observed with her. When annoyed or teased by some of the other women, there is a distinct corrugation of the forehead, accompanied by an exceedingly slight general movement as if of aversion, no words, movement of the chest, clenching of the hands, etc. She describes the sensation as one of repulsion.

“Like Strümpell’s case she shows definitely shame, grief, surprise, fear, and substituting for anger, repulsion.

“My own impression derived from observation of the patient is, that all mental emotional sensibilities are present and only a little less vivid than in the unanæsthetic state; and that emotions are approximately natural, and not at all coldly dispassionate.”

In the second case, that of a Russian woman, aged thirty-five, there was complete loss of cutaneous sensibility in all its qualities: the sense of position (“muscular sense”) was almost completely abolished; the sense of taste was absent in the anterior two-thirds of the tongue. Smell, sight, and hearing were preserved. She had left the hospital before the article was written. In regard to her case, Dr. Berkley writes:

“While in the most absolute state of anæsthesia (auditory and visual excepted) there was no departure from a normal psyche; the woman would sometimes be angered when she did not understand a question, at others would smile or shake her head, and would frequently laugh and talk with another Russian woman in the same ward. There was never the slightest apathy manifest after the first few days of febrile movement.”

I give these cases for what they are worth. In the first, it is evidently impossible to entirely exclude the presence of sensations caused by the reflex acts, and the second, not having, apparently, been examined with special reference to the subjective side of her emotional manifestations, may be open to the same objection which Professor James makes against Strümpell’s case. To me it seems extremely unlikely that, if the theory under discussion is correct, such an amount of anæsthesia as existed in these cases would have produced no obvious effect on the emotions. The fact that voluntary acts were performed by both these patients as well as by Strümpell’s case, seems to me conclusive as to the existence of emotions of some sort in all of them.

It seems clear to me, from the foregoing considerations, that there are serious difficulties in the way of accepting Professor James’s theory as an adequate explanation of all the phenomena of emotion. On the other hand, I think it contains an important truth, and that, by calling attention to it, he has rendered a real service to psychology. In order to make it clear how far I agree with him, it will be necessary to consider just what feelings are to be classed together under the head of emotion.

If we touch our fingers to a live coal, we are conscious of a sensation of heat, and also of pain. If we take quinine into our mouths, it tastes bitter, and also disagreeable. So in regard to a very large proportion of our sensations, we recognise two elements—one which has to do with the qualities of the object, and, another consisting of the pleasurable or painful way in which those qualities affect us. The former may be called the objective element in sensation. We think of the heat as residing in the coal, whether we are touching it or not, but it never occurs to us to think of the coal as in pain. The pain is in us—an entirely subjective feeling. Doubtless there is no more reason to think of heat, as it is appreciated by our senses, as a property of the coal, than pain, but that is the way in which we naturally think of it. That these two elements are really distinct is evident from the fact that the different senses furnish them in different proportions. Comparatively few sights, for instance, give any such sensuous pain to the eye as the sensation produced by getting a grain of sand under the lid, which gives us very little information in regard to the qualities of the offending substance. In fact, it is generally true that intensity of pleasurable or painful sensation is a hindrance to exact knowledge of its object. It is further evident from the fact that, in disease, one form of sensibility may be abolished while the other is retained. A person may be able to feel the slightest touch, and to recognise perfectly the size, shape, and texture of the objects he handles, and yet feel no pain when cut, struck, nor burned, or he may have even heightened sensibility to painful impressions with loss of the power to recognise the sensible qualities of objects.

Now, although we are accustomed to distinguish between emotions and purely sensuous pleasures and pains, there are some points, at least, at which it is not easy to draw the line. My pleasure in the anticipation of a good dinner is undoubtedly an emotion. Is not my pleasure in eating it entitled to the same name, and does not the latter consist in the reality of the sensations which in the former case were enjoyed in imagination? Is not the enjoyment we feel in the smell of mignonette, the tone of a sweet voice, the color and form of the rainbow, emotion? Yet it consists largely, if not entirely, in the agreeableness of the sensations. Most people would probably think it strange to hear hunger and thirst spoken of as emotions but would readily agree that desire of food or drink is as much an emotion as any other desire. Is the desire in this case anything more than the hunger or thirst?

I am inclined to think that it is proper to call such pleasures and pains as I have instanced above emotions, and if so, I see no reason for denying the name to any sensuous pleasures and pains. If Professor James’s view is that all feeling is sensation, I should say that all feeling is emotion. Whether this view is correct or not, I do not see how Professor James can consistently refuse to accept it. On his theory, the emotions which he discusses must owe their pleasurable or painful quality to the pleasurable or painful nature of the sensations in which they consist. I can see no valid ground for saying that some such feelings are emotions and others are not. But the essence of emotion is pleasure or pain. Abstracting these qualities, it would be an indifferent emotion, which, I think all would agree, is a contradiction in terms. Possibly he might wish to limit the use of the term to those pleasurable and painful feelings, which arise not directly, but in a reflex way. He might say, for instance, that the disagreeableness to the ear of the creaking of an ungreased axle is not, but the shudder which it gives a sensitive person is, emotion. In that case, it must be admitted that a sneeze is emotion. His contention is that we have no other pleasures or pains than those of sensation. If this be true, a setting off of some sensations as emotions is, if not an arbitrary, a comparatively useless procedure.

My own view, then, is that the elements of sensation which I have spoken of as objective and subjective might, with equal propriety, be characterised respectively as intellectual and emotional, and that in this direction the theory under discussion, although true as far as it goes, does not go far enough.

However this may be, the admission or denial that these feelings are emotions does not necessarily affect the question whether or not this is the only origin, of pleasure and pain. As has already been said, those feelings to which no one will deny the name of emotions are not usually, in adult human beings, at least, direct reactions on sensation. If it be true that the start we give at the unexpected slamming of a door is a sort of fright, it is a very rudimentary sort compared with that which one feels when the cry of fire is raised in a crowded theatre. “A burnt child dreads the fire.” It is not the sight of the fire, but the thought of the burning, that arouses the emotion. When a man reads in the newspaper of the death of a friend, or a rise in the value of property in which he is interested, it is not the sight of the black marks on the white paper, but the beliefs which, through a long and intricate series of associations they call up, which move his feelings. If he could not read, he would see the same announcement without any emotion. The usual origin of the emotions par excellence is by way of association.

Suppose that I have taken a nauseous dose, and made a wry face over it. No one, I presume, would question that the disagreeableness lay in the unpleasant taste, and not in the distortion of the countenance. Now, suppose I have to repeat the dose, and my face takes on a similar expression at the anticipation to that which it wore when I took it originally. How does this come about? If I can trust my own consciousness, it is because the vivid reproduction, in memory, of the unpleasant taste is itself unpleasant. I do not see how it can well be otherwise. Professor James says (p. 649) that “the first element of memory is the revival in the mind of an image or copy of the original event.” How can I have a copy in my mind of a pain if it is not painful? Take away the painfulness of it and there would be nothing left. I might remember the circumstances under which it occurred, and judge from them that I must have suffered pain, but I could not, it seems to me, remember the pain itself. Whether that is possible or not, I feel sure that the fact, in my own case, is, that my memory of a pain resembles it in the same way that my memory of the circumstances in which it occurred resembles them. If this be the fact, what can be more natural than that it should excite the same sort of associated movements that were excited by the original sensation? I cannot make it seem any more credible, to return to the example mentioned above, that my repugnance to a repetition of the dose is due to my involuntary movements than that my discomfort in taking it originally was due to the similar movements that occurred then.

Suppose that a child who has eaten and enjoyed an orange is offered another. The sight of it calls up the recollection of the agreeable taste, and the expectation of a repetition of the pleasant experience excites expressions of pleasure. If the fruit is snatched away, the disappointment at the loss of the expected pleasure is distressing, and very probably may result in his weeping. I hardly think that any one who will consult his own consciousness will say that the reason he likes the taste of an orange is that it makes him laugh or smile to get it. He likes it because it tastes good, and is sorry to lose it for the same reason. The laughing or weeping is, I think, unquestionably the result of the pleasure or grief, not of the mere perception of an object in itself indifferent.

It is true that emotions of this sort do not always arise by way of personal association. Young children are apt to be afraid of strangers, of large animals, and of loud noises. I can remember being frightened at my first sight of a locomotive. Here we come upon the questions of inherited experience and natural selection, which can hardly be discussed in an article like this. The objects of which young children are instinctively afraid, as a rule, are either dangerous themselves, or more or less similar to dangerous objects. I see no more difficulty in supposing that mental pleasure and pain, on the sight of special objects, may be a matter of organisation than in the case of the analogous physical sensations.

My view of the matter, then, is that emotion in the sense in which the word is commonly used bears the same relation to perceptions or beliefs that feelings of physical pleasure or pain do to the objective or intellectual quality of sensations. I am inclined to think it proper to class all pleasurable and painful feelings together as emotions. If this view is correct, it would, of course, include those feelings to which Professor James would confine the term. I should not at all hesitate to admit that the emotional state of a person who trembles and turns pale with fear is different from that of one who preserves his self-possession in the presence of a danger that he realises and dreads. I think it is true that the voluntary actions prompted by an emotion have some tendency to intensify it. But, so far as I can analyse my own feelings, the pleasures and pains of memory and imagination seem to me just as real as those of sensation, and not at all to be confounded with them. When I try to subtract all motor reactions and resulting sensations from the feeling of fear, for instance, there remains not merely the intellectual perception that the event dreaded is not desirable, but the perfectly distinct emotional consciousness that I do not desire it.

This view seems to be favored by the analogy between the relations of sensation to reflex movement on the one hand, and of perception to voluntary movement on the other, which will, I think, be found to be very complete. We have reflex acts which are useful, such as breathing, the beating of the heart, swallowing and coughing; and others, like groaning, weeping, and trembling, which seem to be useless. In like manner, emotions of hope or fear may give rise to voluntary acts calculated to enable the subject of the emotion to secure or avoid its object. If I burn my fingers, my hand is involuntarily snatched away. Such would not be the case if the burn caused no pain. If I see that the house is on fire, I try to escape, either by extinguishing the fire or by getting out of the house. It seems to me evident that I should not do so if the thought of being burned were not painful. Such emotions may also occasion useless acts, more or less similar to those mentioned above. A person who saw no way of escape from a burning house might tremble, weep, or groan from fear.

On the evolutionary hypothesis, it seems easy to understand how the reproduction, by memory or imagination, of certain feelings might bring about movements like those excited by the original feelings. Professor James would have us believe that this reproduction is always, in itself, indifferent, that is, merely intellectual; but that it is, nevertheless, capable of setting up the movements which, in the case of peripheral stimuli, are the results of pleasure and pain, and that the consciousness of these movements is, in such cases, the sole cause of the emotional condition. Such a reversal of relations seems to me highly improbable. Each one must decide for himself which view is more in accordance with the facts of his own consciousness.

W. L. Worcester.

FOOTNOTES:

PROFESSOR ERNST MACH’S TERM SENSATION. SUPPLEMENTARY TO HIS CONTROVERSY WITH THE EDITOR.

The Monist, Vol. I, No. 3, contains a controversy between Prof. Ernst Mach and myself on some questions of psycho-physics in which Professor Mach, having reference to an editorial article on “Feeling and Motion,” regards sensations as the “elements of reality,” “while motion,” he says, “is a mere mental auxiliary, an artificial expedient.” “Physicists,” we are told, “have accustomed us to regard the motions of atoms as more real than the green of trees. In the latter I see a (sensory) fact, in the former a Gedankending, a thing of thought.”

In contradistinction to Professor Mach I maintained that our scientific terms, although abstract concepts and things of thought, or noumena, are after all descriptive of actual facts; they are symbols representing features of reality. Motions, i. e., that which is meant by the term motion, is a reality, and what the chemist calls atoms is a definite quality of certain facts of experience. Atoms are not things in themselves, as the name seems to suggest, but rather proportional relations conveniently so expressed as if they were ultimate units or concrete little bodies of a definite mass or weight. What atoms are, aside from representing the proportions in which elements combine, we do not know. We may define “atom” as the minimal weight in which an element enters into chemical combinations, but such atoms have never been an object of observation. For aught we know, they may as little be discrete bodies as a curve consists of discrete straight lines, which, as such, would be unobservable only because infinitesimally small. The infinitely small straight line into which a curve is analysed by mathematicians is a fiction, wisely devised for calculating the path of the curve. This fiction is as Professor Mach says, an artifice only, not a reality, or as I say, an allegoric expression to characterise not whole concrete realities, but certain features of reality in their abstractness.

Scientific terms are comparable to myths that contain deep religious truths. The fiction of the myth is only the vehicle of its meaning. The naked meaning in its abstract purity may be difficult to grasp. Thus our imagination steps in and completes the picture so as to render it concrete and easily thinkable.

Now, when several months ago I met Professor Mach at Prague, our conversation naturally touched upon the problems which had formed the subject of our discussion. Professor Mach assented to my speaking of scientific terms as abstracts. That, accordingly, must be considered as the point of agreement. But when I proposed that the term sensation also was according to my terminology an abstract term representing one feature of reality only and excluding other features, Professor Mach took exception to it, saying that he understands by sensation reality itself. Very well then, this is the difference; and this difference is after all a difference of terms only. I understand by sensation the psychical feature of the data of experience only, to the exclusion of what may be called its physical aspect. Sensation accordingly, as I use the term, is not the whole of the given reality but only one of its qualities. If, as Professor Mach uses the term, sensation is another name for reality, the main difference between our views appears to be removed.

P. Carus.

BOOK REVIEWS.

Vorlesungen über die Menschen- und Thierseele. By Wilhelm Wundt. Zweite umgearbeitete Auflage. Hamburg and Leipsic: Leopold Voss. 1892.

The new edition of Wundt’s Menschen- und Thierseele is one of the best existing general introductions to psychology. It preserves nearly the just mean between the purely introspective and abstract treatment and the substitution of physiology for psychology with which recent treatises have familiarised us. The author has completely rewritten the edition of 1863, which he regards as a youthful indiscretion (Jugendsünde)—retaining only such chapters as could be brought into harmony with his maturer views and with the developed science of psycho-physics that has taken the place of the Zukunftsprogramm of thirty years ago. He has wisely omitted all the superficial and diffuse chapters on comparative psychology and ethnology which cumbered the original work; has silently ignored the fantastic speculations as to the identity of electricity and nerve-force (one of the worst of the aforesaid youthful sins); and practically abandoned (perhaps as too esoteric for popular exposition) the elaborate reduction of sensations and perceptions to unconscious judgments and inferences.

The first thirteen or fourteen chapters offer a very clear and interesting résumé of the chief doctrines of the Physiologische Psychologie in regard to sensations generally, their measurements and qualities, Weber’s and Fechner’s laws, the special sensations of color, hearing, and the muscular sense, and the problem of space perception. Following the plan of the original work in these chapters, the author aims less at completeness of statement than to present clearly the distinctive doctrines of modern psychology. In the treatment of certain themes, e. g. Fechner’s law, and the perception of space, he neglects, for the sake of clearness, qualifications of detail which the special student must look for in the larger work. The last sixteen chapters deal with the feelings, the will, consciousness, attention, association and apperception, conception, abnormal and animal psychology and instinct, concluding with two notable lectures on the “Freedom of the Will” and the “Immortality of the Soul.” It is to these chapters that we must look for Wundt’s general psychological and philosophical system. Profiting by recent criticisms he has here set forth his characteristic doctrines in so clear and definite a final statement that further misconception of them is hardly permissible. The remainder of this notice will be devoted to what is perhaps the most interesting question thus suggested: Wundt’s relation to the associationist psychology of Spencer on the one side, and to the younger German school of experimental psychologists on the other. Wundt ignores the Spencerian form of the associationist psychology, and the young psychologists do injustice to Wundt, neither side apparently condescending to read with attention the writings of the other. The debate, so far as it is not merely verbal, springs from two real differences of method: (1) Wundt in his psychological analysis habitually takes account of the problems of the theory of knowledge (Erkenntnisstheorie), or ultimate metaphysics, which the young psychologists endeavor (not always with success) systematically to exclude. (2) Wundt, gifted with superior powers of introspection, is more aware than the young psychologists of the infinite complexity and subtlety of mental states. He prefers, therefore, to a schematic simplification of the phenomena a terminology and descriptive analysis that reflect in some measure their manifold diversity. And thus while Wundt finds the pure associationist psychology barren and tautologous, the young psychologists see in Wundt’s complicated terminology only a shamefaced reversion to the discarded psychology of a substantial soul endowed with autonomous “faculties.” But the analysis of our mental states which Wundt gives by means of this terminology is really only a subtler restatement of the analysis of Mill, Spencer, and Taine, to which the new psychology has not been able to add anything of moment. It is true that he proclaims the inadequacy of association, even when translated into the diagrams of a hypothetical cerebral anatomy, to “explain” fully our conscious active mental life. But in this he is at one with Spencer (ultimate scientific ideas), J. S. Mill (Examination of Hamilton), and Schopenhauer (Epiphilosophie). It is gross injustice to stigmatise as an abandonment of the scientific attitude of mind this occasional passing recognition of the seeming ultimate inexplicability of things. In no single concrete instance can it be shown that Wundt now sacrifices the recognised methods and postulates of modern scientific investigation to the psychological hypostisations which his opponents detect in his terminology.

In confirmation of these statements I will give a brief summary of Wundt’s doctrine of association and apperception with an occasional indication of its relation to the psychology of Spencer. Wundt distinguishes the totality of mental states which are perceived from the presentation at the focus of consciousness which is apperceived. In this way (substituting everywhere dunkel bewusst for unbewusst) he avoids the metaphysics of the unconscious, while getting the benefit of the entire analysis of its advocates. I do not think the ultimate difficulty can be evaded in this way, but will not stop to argue the point. A further advantage of this distinction is that it makes possible a dynamic treatment of mental states as “events” in place of the crude psychology that deals with the conditions of any mental state as so many ready-made parts externally dovetailed into the completed product. The active side of consciousness is taken into account from the outset. The mental state at any moment is described by indicating the presentation which is then at the focus of consciousness (apperceived) and the accompanying faintly conscious presentations that qualify its tone and total effect. The given mental state is “explained” by tracing out the dynamic readjustments that brought this particular presentation to the focus, and grouped the faintly conscious presentations about it. Now the bringing of a presentation to the focus of conscious attention is the primitive psychical activity, the elementary act of will,⁠[58] and since Wundt places this at the beginning he rejects all evolution of will or instinct from reflex action, and thus, it will be said, here at least puts himself in distinct opposition to advanced scientific thought. Let us distinguish. So far as we are dealing with the developed minds we know, Wundt’s distinction is merely the expression of an observed psychological fact. External volition does go back to internal voluntary attention and this to a focussing of consciousness for which apperception is as good a term as another. Such focussing of the attention is for us now the primary reaction of the “self” on its received impressions. Out of a given group of presentations I apperceive by preference one and you another, because at the time my “self,” my mind, differs from yours. This self may be only a convenient shorthand expression for a passive product of external forces. The feeling of the reaction of the self may be an illusion, and its activity may be merely the mechanical action of a relatively coherent group of presentations when a new presentation is introduced among them, and the whole process may be explicable in terms of associations. But the feeling exists, and Wundt has described and analysed it better than any of his critics.

On the other hand, if the question is of the hypothetical origin of mind, we are at once brought face to face with an ultimate metaphysical problem which the new psychology impatiently ignores, which Spencer grudgingly acknowledges, but which Wundt and Kantians like Riehl find confronting them at every stage of their analysis. Conscious mind cannot conceive of its own origin, and therefore all psychological theories of development must postulate in some form the elements of consciousness and will. Nothing that I could add to the dialectics of this question would influence those who feel no difficulty here. They require a long course of Kantian criticism or its equivalent. At any rate it is not fair polemic to class a thinker as unscientific merely because he recognises this difficulty and gives it expression in his psychology, instead of contemptuously relegating it to metaphysics.

After thus laying the foundations in the doctrine of apperception for the psychology both of cognition and of the will, Wundt proceeds to restate the associationist analysis of Mill and Spencer in a more elaborate terminology but in substantial agreement with Spencer till he reaches the “concept,” when the introduction of apperception gives rise to a seeming difference. Spencer distinguishes simultaneous from successive association as carefully as Wundt. What Wundt, after Herbart calls “complications,” namely the joint reference to one object of a number of disparate presentations of sense, is clearly described by Spencer (“Principles of Psychology,” §§ 315-355); and Wundt’s “assimilations” do not differ appreciably from Spencer’s “still less conscious” processes of “organic classification” (“Principles of Psychology,” § 320). Into the metaphysics of the ultimate relations of contiguity and similarity as laws of association I cannot enter here. Similarity will always be recognised as ultimate by those who, like Spencer, approach the problem first from the psychical side, while a purely materialistic treatment in terms of nervous currents, such as we find in James, will endeavor to do away altogether with similarity, which simply cannot be expressed in terms of nerve-structure without reasoning in a circle. Wundt retains similarity but endeavors to coördinate it with contiguity. The problem is really identical with the final question of the relations of “mind” and “body,” and cannot be profitably discussed apart from that question.

Coming now to the concept and the judgment, we find Wundt affirming that the different forms of simultaneous and successive association (as he has defined them) are not an exhaustive classification of mental processes—that they do not include the concept. Well, he is at liberty to define his own terms, and before we accuse him of hypostasising a new faculty to account for the concept, let us scrutinise his meaning. We shall find that he merely repeats, in a subtler terminology of his own, the analysis of Berkeley, Mill, Taine, Spencer, and Romanes. These writers treat the concept as a complicated associational group held together by the word. Now Wundt, while conceding the theoretic admissibility of this form of statement, holds that such groups present so many distinct characteristics that all delicacy of psychological discrimination is sacrificed by confounding them under one denomination with other associational complexes. He does not, like Professor James, bid introspective psychology “throw up the sponge” here, but wishes to carry his analysis into recesses which the instruments of the associationists are too clumsy to explore. In the interests of this analysis he limits the term association to combinations mediated by a limited number of elements. The (apperceived) concept, on the other hand, is the product of the reaction of the total mind. This distinction (whatever we may think of its absolute validity) expresses a finely observed psychological truth. The distinctive quality of a concept consists, Wundt says, “in dem begleitenden Bewusstsein, dass die einzelne Vorstellung einen bloss stellvertretenden Werth besitze.” This feeling he calls the Begriffsgefühl, meaning thereby exactly what Professor James means when he says that “the thoughts by which we know that we mean the same thing are apt to be very different indeed from each other,” and that “a polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of ‘Hollo! thingumbob again!’ ever flitted through its mind.” Only, instead of “throwing up the sponge,” Wundt goes on to give a very interesting account of this feeling in its various degrees of clearness between the conceptual polyp and the conceiving man. Apperception is invoked only to name and emphasise the feeling of activity of the self that enters into the Begriffsgefühl, distinguishing it as a reaction of the total consciousness from the relatively passive associations of what Romanes would call “recepts.” Psychologists, however, will continue their fruitless debates on questions of terminology and will still imagine that Wundt is a belated reactionist.

Paul Shorey.

Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie. By Hugo Münsterberg. Heft 4. Freiburg i. B. 1892.

Münsterberg’s fourth Heft begins with studies in association. If a and b have been independently associated with m, can a call up b without the appearance in consciousness of m? The affirmative answer of common experience was confirmed by Scripture’s experiments. Associating five Japanese symbols with two series of five German words, he found that a word of one series tended (without conscious recollection of the Japanese symbol) to revive the particular word in the other series that had been associated with the same symbol. Münsterberg, after repeating and varying the experiment in a number of fields, denies that any such relation can be observed. He may very well be right on the question of facts. It is a priori improbable that a transitory and arbitrary association of a meaningless symbol could modify appreciably the independent and accidental associative attractions of familiar words and presentations. The philosophic interpretation is another question. For our real knowledge it is a matter of indifference whether we fill out “missing links” with “dunkel bewusst,” “unbewusst,” or “cerebral processes that have no psychical correlates.” And yet how much of contemporary psychologising is a logomachy raging around just this question.

Münsterberg’s second series of experiments show clearly the part played by such missing links in perception. A word is called out just before a complicated picture is exhibited to the subject. He will usually perceive first in the picture some object naturally associated with the word, even though the word has aroused no conscious associations.

Similarly (III) a hastily seen misprinted word will be interpreted variously according to the associations of another word called out to the subject in advance.

Another series of experiments has for result that even the most commonly associated word-couples, as table and chair, have no fixed, unconditional associative attraction for each other in the same or in different minds, but that the unit of attraction is the “associative constellation.” This is only common sense, and artificial experiments will never reveal anything in this field that we cannot learn quite as well in the class room. “Table” will suggest “logarithm” if the boy is fresh from the class in trigonometry.

“The difference between men is in their principle of association” said Emerson long ago. Münsterberg, who has in his archives records of fifty thousand experiments in verbal associations, presents a table of the comparative frequency with which substantives are associated with superior (more general) or inferior class names, with adjectives or with verbs to which they stand in the relation of subject or of object. His chief result is that minds which associate a noun with its higher class name (Ueberordner) think of it as the subject of a verb and do not associate it with an adjective. The Unterordner thinks of the noun as object of a verb and associates it with an adjective. The adjective, then, is not the higher class to which the substantive belongs, but a limitation of the substantive. The French, if they please, may use this conclusion to refute Spencer’s contention that “white horse” is a more natural order than cheval blanc.

The first topic in “memory studies” is the persistence in the psycho-physical mechanism of the disposition to an acquired automatic movement, even after the memory of the nerve has been seemingly displaced by the habit of its contrary. The experiments were trivial, such as shifting the position of an inkstand from right to left in alternate months, or wearing a watch alternately in the right or left fob. The result, a progressive diminution of the mistakes made after every change, may plausibly be explained by the stimulated attention and consequent care of the experimenter. The second topic treats of the effect of a time interval on the exactness of our memory of sensations of movement in eyes and limbs. The section on “chain reactions” is a methodological study of the various applications of this experimental method. “The influence of nervous stimulants on psychic activities” is rather interesting reading, but yields no important results. Alcohol depresses, tea and coffee heighten the powers of memory and perception for an hour or two after absorption. But the harmful effect of the alcohol sometimes passes away after the first hour. Grössenschätzung is a study of our estimates of distances on a surface, made by passing the hand over it at arm’s length, at half arm’s length, etc. From experiments as to the estimate of absolute tone-distances (as distinguished from musical intervals) Münsterberg concludes that pure measurements are not possible with three tones only. Experiments with four tones do not, he says, confirm the law that distances corresponding to equal differences of vibration are felt as equal.

Physiologists have assumed that the symmetrical movement of the limbs as in swimming or rowing is the natural one; and the alternating or independent movements, as in walking or writing, are an acquisition involving inhibitions of the natural innervations. “Even in adult life,” says Professor James, “there is an instinctive tendency to revert to the bilateral movements of childhood.” Professor Münsterberg was led to doubt this view by observing the unsymmetrical motions of a baby in a warm bath, and experiment has confirmed his scepticism. Complicated joint motions of both hands (tracing circles or other geometrical figures on a surface) do not exhibit any tendency, when the attention is distracted, to assume the symmetrical form. They rather tend to compensate each other in such a way as to preserve equilibrium with the minimum strain on the other muscles of the body, and this law leads as often to alternating as to symmetrical movements of the arms or legs. The case is different of course with the muscles of the trunk, and may be different in birds, as it would in us if we spent our lives in swimming or rowing.

A new method of attacking the problem of localisation is to observe the effect of altering the circulation in different parts of the brain. Tentative experiments on one subject seem to show that verbal associations are readiest when the victim lies on his left side, which is a happy coincidence with the localisation of the speech centres in the left frontal convolutions. If these statistics can be trusted, it is inadvisable to undertake hard mental labor with the head hanging back over the edge of a chair!

In the last chapter, certain simple experiments in our estimates of voluntary movements in varying conditions of mind and body are made the basis of a far-reaching theory of pleasure, pain, and judgment, the elements of which can be found in Aristotle, Herbert Spencer, and James. Münsterberg found by repeated experiments that the accuracy of attempted reproduction of a fixed and familiar amount of centripetal or centrifugal movement of finger and thumb along a rod perpendicular to his waistcoat varied with his condition of fatigue, pleasure, or pain. In a pleasurable state of consciousness the centrifugal movement was exaggerated while the centripetal fell short. In pain the reverse relation obtained. Hence he infers a connection between pain and muscular flexion and pleasure and muscular extension, or rather, he distinguishes the mere sensation of pain (Schmerz) and pleasure (Lust) which may depend on integrations and disintegrations in the nerve-tissue, from the accompanying feelings of agreeableness (Wollust) or disagreeableness (Unlust) which are due to sensations aroused at the centres by movements of flexion and extension throughout the body. He thus attaches his special theory of pleasure and pain to Lange’s and James’s theory of the identity of the emotions with their bodily concomitants—though he protests against the metaphysical implications of the doctrine. The origin of the existing coördination of muscular flexions and extensions with pleasure and pain, he explains teleologically on the principles of the Spencerian psychology of evolution. He then proceeds, after Sigwart and Brentano, to revive the old idea of Aristotle (whom he does not mention) that the judgment (affirmative or negative) is rather the assumption of an attitude toward a presentation (Stellungsnehmende Akte) than a mere conjunction of presentations. The affirmative judgment is a faint incipient represented movement of the self towards a suggested conjunction of presentations. The negative judgment is a similar movement in the opposite direction. Ontogenetically these inchoate movements are later than the movements of acceptance or rejection called forth by a painful or pleasurable stimulus, and must therefore be treated as derivative phenomena. But the Kantians may derive some comfort from Münsterberg’s final assurance that he too believes that “Erkenntnisstheoretisch das Urtheil primär ist.”

Paul Shorey.

The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. By Josiah Royce, Ph. D. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

We are told by Professor Royce in the preface to this book, that we are indebted for it to the lady friend to whom it is gracefully dedicated, who asked him “for some account of the more significant spiritual possessions of a few prominent modern thinkers,” to be related “in comparatively brief and untechnical fashion.” The larger portion of the work is taken up with that subject, exhibiting the general growth of modern philosophical thought beginning with Spinozism, and terminating with Monism as the outcome of the doctrine of Evolution. The author’s purpose is constructive, however, as well as expository. He has his own philosophical creed, suggested by what he knows of the progress and outcome of modern thought, and the second portion of the work is the expression of his thoughts on the world-conception which he regards as embodying the true spirit of modern philosophy. Professor Royce justly lays stress on the fact that the theory of evolution is the product of a genuine and continuous growth. He dwells particularly, moreover, on the distinction between the epistemological sense of idealism, which “involves a theory of the nature of our human knowledge,” and its metaphysical sense, in which it is “a theory as to the nature of the real world, however we may come to know that nature.” It is in accord with the latter sense that Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their allies, as believing matter to be an expression of the world-spirit, are referred to as the idealistic school; and it is in the metaphysical and not the epistemological sense that the term idealism has been used since Hegel. The opposite of a metaphysical idealist is “one who maintains the ultimate existence of wholly unspiritual realities at the basis of experience and as the genuine truth of the world—such unspiritual realities for instance as an absolute ‘Unknowable,’ or, again, as what Hobbes meant by ‘Body.’” This is not, however, the view of the author, who thinks that the metaphysical idealist alone is in possession of a successful solution for the epistemological problem.

Professor Royce divides modern philosophy into three great periods, of which the first was one of pure and simple naturalism. The supernatural had then only a secondary interest, and thought was governed by three ideas—“that nature is a mechanism, that human reason is competent to grasp the truth of nature, and that, since nature’s truth is essentially mathematical, geometry is the model science, whose precision and necessity philosophy, too, must imitate.” During the second period of modern philosophy there was a gradual change of thought objectivity. Reason was still the instrument, but it was employed on the mind itself. It came to be recognised that if man is part of nature’s mechanism, he is a knowing mechanism. The age was, however, more than one of self-analysis. Rousseau introduced a sentimental tendency from which came “a revival of passion, of poetry, and of enthusiasm, whose influence we shall never outgrow.” To it is traceable the French Revolution which overthrew all the mechanical restraints of civilisation, and “demonstrated afresh to the world’s outer sense the central importance of passion in the whole life of humanity.”

The period of modern philosophy, which still continues, began with the publication of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” the essential doctrine of which is that man’s nature is the real creator of man’s world, that visible nature is the expression of the human spirit, the inner structure of which is therefore the deepest truth for us. This idea is “as old as deeper spiritual faith itself,” and yet it is the very soul of all our modern life because it is “the essentially humane view of reality.” For fifty years Kant’s ideas ruled philosophic thought, and then, through the progress of science, the doctrine of evolution received formulation, and confirmation and “external nature has once more gained for us an imposing authority which makes us in many ways sympathise afresh with the pure naturalism of the seventeenth century.” We are compelled to omit any account of the author’s study of the philosophies of Spinoza, Locke, and Berkeley, or the philosophic systems of Kant and his successors of the German School of Idealists. Nor can we say anything as to the doctrine of Evolution, which Professor Royce rightly regards as having had its rise long before Darwin or Herbert Spencer. Before proceeding to state his own views, the author takes a cursory glance at modern empirical monism which he affirms to be rather a suggestion than a philosophy. It is not surprising, therefore, that he is not content with it although he makes use of its ideas.

Let us now see what are the “Suggestions” which Professor Royce offers as his contribution towards the formation of a world-conception. These occupy the last four chapters of the work, which are supplemented by a general summary in the appendix, to the book. For the sake of conciseness we will make use of this summary, according to which there are two phases of idealistic doctrine, the Analytic Idealism of Berkeley and the Synthetic Idealism of Kant and his successors. The former shows that if the world is to be knowable at all, it must be, in its deepest nature, a world of ideas, that is, it exists “only in so far as beings with minds actually know it to be.” The objection that nobody can know any reality beyond his own self, is met by the synthetic phase of idealism which shows us that “there is but one self in the world, the logos or world-mind. The finite self knows truth beyond its own limitations, just because it is an organic part of the complete Self.” What are the demands of idealism as thus stated? They have relation, first, to the interpretation of the facts of experience, which must be in terms of the doctrine of the world-mind, and, secondly, to experience itself, on which we depend “for the revelation of that truth which, for us finite beings, must remain a fast ‘outer’ truth, just because it is the content of other mind than our own bits of selfhood, and is universally true for all intelligences.” The philosophy of experience having to do with facts and with the interpretation of facts, it is necessary to distinguish between what is really “outer” and what is “inner” about our finite experience. The former embraces the world of facts, and a fact is something which must be describable in some sort of universal terms. The principle of ordinary realism, “that you must not be sentimental or otherwise emotional in your account of the truth of things, but rather exact in your descriptions of what things are,” has a thoroughly idealistic justification. Not appreciation, but description gives us outer truth, and this is the characteristic presupposition of all natural science, which is concerned with the universal aspects of things, as opposed to momentary and transient aspects. That presupposition involves the assumption that the world is essentially describable. But as only the well-knit, the orderly, that which conforms to law, can be described science assumes the universality and rigidity of the laws of nature. It assumes further, since the most exact descriptions are possible only in the case of processes in Space and Time, of a mechanical type, that everything including man himself, is a part of nature’s mechanism. A closer analysis, however, shows that, as one can only describe what has been first appreciated, there must be universal types of appreciation, and therefore, that “Ideals must be deeper than Mechanism, so that, in order to be relatively describable, nature must embody purposes, and so be possessed of worth.” The author’s conclusion is that the natural order is also a moral order, and that therefore “the world of absolute self must appear to us as having two aspects, one a temporal, the other an eternal aspect, one of law and one of worth. Man then turns out to be at once a part of nature’s mechanism, and a part of the moral order; at once temporally determined and morally free.”

The final lecture presents the author’s views as to the solution of the problem of evil. Professor Royce believes that all evil is part of a good order, and hence he agrees with Hegel, who declared that life, however good, will always be restless, longing, suffering, and who gloried in the paradox as the very essence of spirituality; rather than with Schopenhauer, whose recognition, in another light, of the universality of the same truth led him to abandon all hope in life. The justification of the existence of an evil impulse comes just at the instant when it is hated and condemned. Thus “condemning and conquering the evil will, makes it part of a good will”; as pain and suffering have their compensation in their chastening effect on the spirit. But to the enlightened soul it is not so much the painfulness as “the blind irrationality of fortune that seems to drive God out of our thoughts when we look at our world.” It is the capriciousness of life, arising from human stupidity, that really makes it seem like an evil dream. What is the explanation of this caprice given by the author? It is to be found in the creed of his idealism, “This world is the world of the Logos.” It is “the suffering God, who is just our own true self, who actually and in our flesh bears the sins of the world, and whose natural body is pierced by the capricious wounds that hateful fools inflict upon him.” And as our defeats are his, so his triumph and his eternal peace are ours also.

Prof. Royce in making “only one more effort to define a ‘double-aspect’ theory of the relations of the physical and the moral and æsthetic worlds,” affirms that our philosophic insight teaches us that the world of matter in motion is simply an external aspect of the appreciable world, that is, of the world of the Logos. Of this, it is such an aspect “as can be expressed by finite consciousness in terms of the space and time forms, and of the categories of empirical science.... Consequently all its laws, all its necessity, its causation, its uniformity, belong, not to its inner nature as such, but to the external show of this nature.” That which actually appears to us is matter in motion, which furnishes the fact of the double aspect, the inner intelligibility of which fact is problematical to us, but not so for the Logos, who is our true Self, and who “completes the insight that for us is so fragmentary.” This true Self, the Logos, is the only Self, and with it the deeper self of man is identical. That this deeper self is “the self that knows in unity all truth,” is declared to be no hypothesis, and therefore the existence of the Infinite Self is perfectly sure. This Self “infinitely and reflectively transcends our consciousness, and therefore, since it includes us, it is at the very least a person, and more definitely conscious than we are; for what it possesses is self-reflecting knowledge.” Finally, the true world, that is the world of appreciation, is the system of the thoughts of the Logos, whose unity we know, just so far as we ourselves consciously and rationally enter into it and form part of it. Therefore “in so far as we have inner unity of thinking, in so far as we commune with our fellows, and in so far as we rightly see significance in the outer universe, we are in and of the world of appreciation that embodies the thought of the Logos.”

Ingenious as this theory is, and notwithstanding the elements of truth it possesses, we cannot accept it as conclusive. Its weakness is revealed in the last line of the paragraph just quoted. If only the world of appreciation embodies the thought of the Logos, what becomes of the world of fact? The latter is said to be the outer aspect of the former, a notion which is apparently derived from the association with man of body and mind. But the existence of mind, which we must understand by the term Logos, in nature, although declared by Professor Royce to be the only thing certain, is a mere inference, and even if the analogy of the human organism justifies such an inference; it would require that if priority has to be given to mind or matter in the universe it must be allowed to the latter. At birth a human being has no mind, properly so-called, since it is the result of the activity after birth of the organism, through the agency of the brain. It is true that the human body possesses from the first the elements of the mind, or rather of the feeling which thus exhibits itself; or, better still, the organic structure of which feeling is the general function. The utmost that can be properly asserted of the universe, therefore, is that it possesses a certain organic arrangement of its parts, and therewith such a condition of feeling, or, what in this relation would be a better term, sensitiveness, as is required by its organic character. In relation to such a state of things the terms thought, consciousness, reflection, have no meaning so far as we can judge. That organic aspect of the universe, moreover, leaves no room for duality. Just as the human organism constitutes a perfect unity, although it is made up of various organs and exhibits the properties attributed to both mind and matter, so must the universe be such a perfect unity whatever its nature and attributes. The human organism may, however, be strictly described as matter under organic conditions, a description which is equally applicable to the universe, without determining what those conditions are. Professor Royce objects to the Unknowable of Herbert Spencer, but there is very little practical difference between it and his own true Self, which, as the Absolute, is unknowable, although he is known in the inner self of man, as Spencer’s Unknowable is known in the human consciousness. Both Absolute and Unknowable are, however, merely names for Organic Nature, which is seen in all things visible and is known by all her operations. These are governed by the laws of her very existence, and it is the uniformity of which those laws are the expression which constitutes the moral law of the universe, the breach of whose eternal order, whether this is established in the world of matter or in the human mind, must be attended with consequences that are designated by man as evil. We find only a world of description, which is nevertheless one of moral order.

Widely as we disagree on the grounds stated with the conclusions of Professor Royce’s work, it is undoubtedly a valuable contribution to the discussion of the world-problem. Its description of the characteristics of the philosophy of Kant and of the German idealists is clear, though not intended to do more than exhibit the spirit of their teaching, and it is written in a style which renders it easy reading. It is a pity, therefore, that it is disfigured with such colloquialisms as you’ll, isn’t, can’t, don’t, words which neither sound well, nor look well in print.

Ω.

Die Aristotelische Auffassung vom Verhältnisse Gottes zur Welt und zum Menschen. By Dr. Eugen Rolfes. Berlin: Mayer & Müller. 1892.

This book is a scholastic “survival.” The author believes that Zeller’s interpretation of Aristotle is wrong, and in five formal theses he endeavors to prove secundum artem that the philosopher was a theist who taught the creation of the world from nothing, and the immortality of the soul. In the defence of his theses he manifests some ingenuity and industry, but no criticism. The work has no scientific significance.

P. S.

Max Stirner und Friedrich Nietzsche. Erscheinungen des modernen Geistes und das Wesen des Menschen. By Robert Schellwien. Leipsic: C. E. M. Pfeffer, 1892. Price 2 m 60 pf.

Individualism is the spirit of the age, and among all the champions of individualism the most original, the most consistent, the boldest, are perhaps Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche. Robert Schellwien, in sketching their views in great outlines, partly admires these courageous thinkers who dare to draw the consequences of their principles to the very last even though they will appear absurd to the world, partly censures the rashness with which they arrive at, and the superciliousness with which they sometimes state, their opinions. Upon the whole the author succeeds in impressing the reader that there is in these two peculiar geniuses a gigantic strength, and that their views of truth, morality, and justice deserve a greater attention than they have received. The reviewer is no admirer of either Stirner or Nietzsche; he believes nevertheless that a careful analysis of their erratic minds and lives will be very instructive. It will be first of pathological and then even of more than pathological interest. The actual objective value of the ideals truth, morality, and justice, will be best illustrated by showing all the consequences of a consistent individualism. We hope that this pamphlet will grow into a more comprehensive work; and in that case we should advise the author to add short biographies of his heroes.

κρς.

The Sources and Development of Kant’s Teleology. By James Hayden Tufts. Chicago: University Press. 1892.

This little tract is an inaugural dissertation presented by Mr. Tufts to the University of Freiburg for the attainment of the doctorate of philosophy. It is written in English. Mr. Tuft’s dissertation is wholly historical. He simply seeks to expound Kant’s true views. In this respect the work bears the marks of much research and of a thorough exploitation of Kant’s works. Mr. Tuft’s concluding words are that “with every new discovery of science, every advance in the ideals of art and of the conduct of life, every development in religious faiths, comes anew the task for philosophy to criticise, and through criticism to make a fresh attempt to interpret from the unity of reason the manifold of life.”

μκρκ.

Distinction and the Criticism of Beliefs. By Alfred Sidgwick. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1892.

This work might be described as an inquiry into the conflict between philosophy and common sense, and its central idea as the continuity of nature. What bearing this idea has on the inquiry is shown by the statement, that the distinction between philosophy and common sense is only one of degree. And yet, regarded as methods, or attempts to follow ideals, they may be sharply contrasted. This implies the existence of distinctions, and hence arises the question how far distinction is consistent with continuity in nature. The recognition of such a continuity requires the admission of the unreality of distinctness, but this fact is not inconsistent with the use of rough distinctions, which give rise to what the author terms effective ambiguity. Here we have the field of the operation of common sense, which exhibits itself as tact in the use of rough distinctions, while, on the other hand, philosophy may be said to be concerned with the continuity which, from a superficial glance, might be supposed to stand in opposition to distinction.

The ultimate result which Mr. Sidgwick has in view is the reconciliation of philosophy and common sense, although it is incidental to his main purpose, which is the discussion of the best way of dealing with ambiguity, that is, of using rough distinctions. The improvement suggested is the substitution of “reasoned discrimination” for “haphazard tact,” and it is based on the doctrine that “the validity of all distinctions is relative to the purpose for which they are used at the time.” This cannot mean that distinction is merely relative, as it is said that there is no distinction which is quite safe against being broken down. The implication is that a safe distinction is possible, although difficult to find, and consistently with that view, the doctrine has the double aim of repressing excessive belief in distinctions which are, at least for the moment, invalid, and, on the other hand, of “enabling us to justify for a passing purpose, distinctions which are faulty on the whole.” The justification here arises from the use, and not from the distinctions themselves, although it is evident there must be some basis for them, or they would be invalid. The element of truth is derived from the continuity of nature, with which philosophy is concerned, and hence the improvement in the method of common sense is to be effected through its regulation by the method of philosophy.

The justice of this view may be tested by its consequences, which are stated by the author in reviewing the chief incidental aims of his book, as being those which have to do with controversy, the faults of language, and the conflict between the rival ideals, faith and doubt. “Philosophy,” we are told, “is doubt, just as science is knowledge,” (a description which like many other things in this book we cannot endorse,) and the true centre of philosophical interest in regard to rival ideals is “to harmonise the dispute by seeking how to limit each ideal by its opposite.” This is the aim of all real philosophy, which recognises that every ideal has an element of truth. Philosophy is thus explanation, and Mr. Sidgwick avers one of the great dividing forces in philosophy has always been “the rivalry between two opposite methods of general explanation—that which explains small things by great ones, the part by the whole, the many by the one (e. g. all earthly facts as related to their one cause and substance); and that which explains great things by small ones, the whole by its parts, the one by the many (e. g. the system of nature as a ‘concourse of atoms’).” Thus regarded, the distinction between philosophy and common sense is simply one of method; and it may be said to consist in the use by the former of rational doubt based on scientific knowledge, as distinguished from the belief founded on popular wisdom which distinguishes the latter. Both alike, however, are the fruit of observation, pushed further, nevertheless, in the one case than in the other, which is practically the view expressed by the author.

In considering the nature of philosophy, we have given the gist of Mr. Sidgwick’s reflections on controversy, which is treated as the opposition of ideals. This conflict is kept alive chiefly by doubt as to how abstract notions should be applied in concrete cases, and largely owing to “the absence of that kind of sharp distinction which is applicable, not only to the notions themselves, but to the actual facts to which they pretend to refer.” This view is ably enforced, as well as the necessity of applying to the conflict between ideals the rule laid down as to the purposive validity of distinctions. The operation of this rule would be attended with concession instead of assumption, there being, however, the admission, which is equivalent to an assumption, that neither side of any ideal dispute is devoid of some truth as well as some error. This is really required, if not by the continuity of nature, yet by continuity in our interpretation of nature. This is continuity in thought, and hence arises the difficulties connected with language which it is one of the author’s incidental aims to point out. He supposes that language acts as a drag on the progress of knowledge, owing to the clumsiness of words arising from the fact that “things spoken of are always more full of change and movement than the words we can use in speaking of them.”

Mr. Sidgwick insists upon continuity, yet change itself may be evidence of at least partial discontinuity. Our author remarks, in an appendix note on the continuity of nature, that every change, as such, is a saltus, however small it may be, and that the same is true of any gap between the two extremes of nature and the intermediate region. That such an intermediate region exists, is required by the continuity of nature, which again is evidence of change, on the principle that every chain is made up of a series of links. But as in the chain there is no real gap between the links, so there is no actual discontinuity consequent on change in nature. The two extremes may be regarded as prolongations of the intermediate region, and the changes to which such prolongation is due may so occur that there may be discontinuity between certain parts, as between the fibres of which a hempen rope is made, and yet there be a perfectly continuous whole. We have an example of such a discontinuous continuum in a beam of ordinary light, which presents not the slightest gap, and which yet is made up of numberless undulations in different ratios representing the six spectrum colors, each of which is, moreover, spread throughout the whole of the beam. Here we see that continuity is quite consistent with distinction. The latter may be regarded as discrimination of the various phases of the former, and the distinction remains valid or otherwise according to the accuracy of the discrimination or not. But constant change of distinction is required by progress in knowledge which may be regarded as a thought representation, by discontinuous steps, of the continuity of nature.

As to the conflict between faith and doubt, the author considers the function of scepticism as the search for grounds of belief, and thus doubt is said to be “rather a friend than an enemy to those who remember that there is still some truth, on any subject, for fallible men to learn,” as well as to those who are more interested in the discovery of truth than in supporting their own beliefs.

Ω.

Vorlesungen über Geometrie, unter besonderer Benutzung der Vorträge von Alfred Clebsch. By Dr. Ferdinand Lindemann. Leipsic: B. G. Teubner. 1891.

This first part of the second volume of Alfred Clebsch’s Lectures has been arranged and treated by Professor Lindemann in the same way as the first, except perhaps that the editor has extended his independent investigations rather further than before, owing mainly to the fact that he had in addition to his own notes when attending Professor Clebsch’s lectures in 1871-1872, only five folio pages of the late master’s manuscript at his disposal. The present volume is divided into three parts. I. The Point, Plane, and Straight Line. II. Surfaces of the Second Order and of the Second Class. III. Fundamental Conceptions of Projective and Metrical Geometry. Historical notices and references are added in foot-notes. Considering the prominence of the editor as a mathematician, it would be a presumption on our part to praise his work.

κρς.

An Introduction to General Logic. By E. E. Constance Jones. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 1892.

This work is another witness of the great interest now being taken in all that pertains to the methods of knowledge.

Miss Jones, the author, is lecturer on logic at Girton College, Cambridge. During an experience of several years in teaching, certain difficulties have very forcibly pressed themselves upon her attention. She hopes by her book to aid in removing these difficulties.

It is certainly a good augury for women when their intellectual representatives begin to show the disposition to turn towards the “dry light.” Logic and mathematics are “dry” to be sure; that is, they are very apt to be found dry, very dry, by beginners, and always by those who lack that real intellectual robustness which is alone fit to meddle with fundamental problems. Hence these sober and severe disciplines find little favor among those who seek merely for “showy” attainments, those to whom whatever is “uninteresting” is intolerable, and those who regard obscurity as inseparable from profundity. When then we find scholarly women manifesting a real relish for this “dry light,” it gives promise of a coming day when the intellectual appetite will rise above the level of mere entertainment, the level of the playhouse and the circus, and take kindly, and perhaps zealously, to real edification.

Miss Jones makes but very modest claims on behalf of her treatise. She has not undertaken to innovate to any great extent upon the regular scheme. If in her changes there is that which might especially provoke criticism, it is perhaps in the nomenclature which she adopts. The traditional logic forms a system which has its own proper merits and defects. It is of great historical interest, and its regular terminology is almost indispensable for the proper illustration of its doctrines.