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

“It is lack of attention,” he tells us further on, “that is the cause of the insensibility of hysterical patients, and it is instability of attention that is the cause of the variability of their sensory and motory disorders.” It is all due to the want of sufficient energy to bring simultaneously into a state of tension the muscular settings of all of the sensory organs. Hysterical anæsthesia according to him—and how perfectly right he is!—is nothing but a mental and psychical disease, which may be cured by suggestion; it is an organic malady, which cannot be cured without the restoration of the proper organic state.

Worthy of notice are a few pages on the existence of electrical phenomena, “which are exaggerated in certain subjects, but which appear to exist in a more feeble degree in the normal states.” The facts here involved might furnish us with a key to the phenomena of transmission, polarisation, elective sensibility, and certain actions at a distance, whose solution still presents great difficulties. Also to be noted are a number of corrections of inductions made by Darwin, whom ignorance of physiology often involved in mistakes concerning the true nature of phenomena: thus Darwin was often led to attribute an intentional character to actions which are throughout reflex.

Basing his views on the inevitable correlation of these two orders of phenomena, the physical and the psychical, M. Féré stands in a position of direct hostility to the metaphysics (of course, unconscious) of the great body of alienists. He selects the characteristic disorder of insanity, namely hallucination, and sets about to show the existence of physical phenomena concomitant with hallucination. Chapter XIII is one of the most instructive of his work and well worth thoughtful perusal. Let us add on this point that M. Féré stoutly combats the doctrine, held by Magnan in particular, that all forms of phobia, that is to say, of morbid emotive states, are the brands of degeneration. He admits, however, that a great number are connected with permanent constitutional states, congenital or acquired.

M. Féré accepts the pathological and degenerative theory of crime. But he rejects in a measure Lombroso’s thesis of the assimilation of genius to insanity. Genius and talent, he says, are by no means devoid of intellectual and emotional anomalies, but it is not true that neuropathic states are the indispensable concomitants of genius, although susceptibility to impressions is, when not developed to excess, one of the physiological conditions of genius.

With respect to the social consequences involved, I will simply quote his concise statement that “physiology is quite in accord with political economy in condemning the intemperate generosity which favors the development and multiplication of emotive personalities.” With regard, finally, to the question of responsibility, M. Féré’s position differs, so far as I can see, in no respect from my own, which I have expounded at sufficient length in a former number of The Monist, to dispense me from the necessity of reverting to it here.

Our next book is also a remarkable one—Les transformations du droit, by M. G. Tarde, a small volume of some two hundred and twelve pages. M. Tarde has again and again declared himself the avowed adversary of Spencerianism, and of evolution generally, at least in so far as the idea of evolution is indiscriminately and unreflectingly employed, as is the case, he maintains, in a great class of social questions which make up the criminal and civil law. Everywhere in these domains, despite apparent uniformity, which is the simple effect of a perspective that effaces the differences of remote times, is found diversity. The serial stages of development professedly disclosed, he rejects as absolutely incompetent in the explanation of criminal law, procedure, the status of persons and things, and obligations.

In criminal law, for example, we ordinarily regard the system of pecuniary composition as the origin of penal justice, and the idea of vengeance as necessarily antecedent to the idea of culpability. A mistake, says M. Tarde. And he offers on this subject a distinction which is quite curious. He sees the defensive reaction made against criminal acts originally splitting up into two distinct forms of quite unequal scope: the one moral, the joint product of indignation and compassion; the other vindictive, malevolent, and ruthless. The first, according to him, is exercised within the family and between members of the same social group; the second is displayed towards the foreigner and the enemy. Of these two sources of penality, the domestic moral punishment is the most important; the blow-for-blow policy, or vengeance, although more apparent, is a secondary source. I fully admit that the instinct of sympathy, the primitive condition of all social aggregation, has never been wholly absent from human relations, and it might be that the distinction perceived by M. Tarde is well founded, although the two sources appear to have become so confounded in the justice of the tribunals that it is difficult to trace them to that point. But M. Tarde seems to me to be too much disposed to flatter the portrait of the primitive man and to make as “mild as lambs” these prehistoric creatures whom we have pictured as “cruel as tigers,” and to be too much preoccupied with the ideas of penality and moral responsibility, which he thinks the new theories have compromised.

With respect to the status of persons, he denies the existence of the well-known order of development by which promiscuity, matriarchy, and patriarchy are said to succeed each other. The tribe could only have arisen, he tells us, from the federation of families, and the strong family, the one capable of development, could only have been patriarchal. It is wrong, he adds, to regard uterine filiation, that is, the custom of considering a child the son of its mother and not the son of its father, as a vestige of a pre-existent matriarchy. “In a patriarchal society, polygamy—which is the very reverse of matriarchy—ought in the very necessity of things to give predominance to the custom referred to, so that children born of the same mother could be distinguished from one another.” This, indeed, was the idea of the Greek tragedians. The maxim, which occurs so often in Euripides, that it is not good that a man should have several wives, is always disclosed as the anxiety of assuring the legitimacy of children; Æschylus charges Minerva to defend the “cause of her father”; it is one of the aspects of the reaction against the customs of Asia. The primitive family, says M. Tarde, in summing up, was quite different in its original forms; it was here monogamic, there polygamic, and in other places polyandrous, at one time exogamic and at another endogamic, and so forth. “Marriage, therefore, did not spring from a single typical form, nor does it, in its various forms, make towards such.”

His criticisms are of equal strength with regard to the status of things and the presumed priority of collective property. Contrary to the views of M. de Laveleye, he is of opinion that the community of the village could only have arisen on an enlarged model of the community of the family, “just as the vestal fire of the city could only have been lighted in imitation of the fire of the domestic hearth”: The certain effect of the first must in its origin have been to encroach upon, not to produce, the second. Excessively preoccupied in finding in the present the vestiges of a state of things that is past, the evolutionists involve themselves, regardless of consequences, in many naïve and wonderful theories, which M. Tarde, in his keen and pointed style, has not hesitated to expose. There is much point and a profusion of the granum salis in these instructive pages.

With respect to obligations, he makes a distinction, as in criminal law, between internal and external relations. Also, after having asserted with Sir Henry Sumner Maine, the non-fusion of the law of nature and the law of nations, he remarks that here also there exists two sources whose waters have not subsequently flowed together: the jus naturæ is conceived to be the generalisation of a type of relations abstracted from the internal relations of the members of the primitive social group; the jus gentium to be the outcome of relations between men that belong to different groups.

Is, then, this disordered succession of the social data mere chance? The reader will bethink himself of a number of facts which go to disprove this conclusion, and it is a difficulty moreover which M. Tarde has also felt. He replies by making a distinction of “two kinds of laws, the laws of causation and the supposed laws of evolution.” The first, which in his theory are analogous to the laws of celestial mechanics, whose formulæ remain constant no matter what the history of the solar systems distributed throughout the heavens may be, are the psychological laws; the second are merely arbitrary formulæ, which, when we come to define them accurately, do not admit of adaptation even to the majority of cases. The psychological laws of which M. Tarde here speaks are reducible to imitation⁠[82]—consequently to invention—and to logic. I certainly do not propose to question the importance of these factors. In a short tract published several years ago I pointed out myself that the influences of contact are more efficient than the influences of race or even of climate, and this implicitly involves the idea of imitation. Yet the character of the psychological factor does not, it seems to me, exclude a tendency towards a certain arrangement of the data of society, despite their possible and actual diversity. “With respect to the facts of society,” I wrote, “we point out their changes but do not succeed in disclosing the laws of their evolution; the most we have done is to note amid the totality certain features which appear to predominate.” To extricate these features is a task not unworthy of the historian. M. Tarde himself admits that results of this character have already been reached, and he especially points to “the splendid and commendable movement in advance, which though not generally noticed⁠[83] has, nevertheless, accompanied all juridical evolutions”—namely, the constant enlargement of the relations of law as the result of a growing sympathy and sociability.

To sum up, the point of view which M. Tarde has taken does not exclude a class of researches different from his. Nothing can be better than to formulate the laws of the psychological agent, and M. Tarde, original mind that he is, has done this with a superiority and penetration to which I yield my unqualified admiration. At bottom, does not the view of Auguste Comte, despite his contempt for psychology, involve the preliminary study of the biological individual and the social agent? Psychological laws and physical laws undoubtedly meet in the same group of “laws of causation”; still, it should not be forgotten that in the social order of things man is the creator of the facts and that his creations react upon him in the proportion in which they are realised. At any rate, a tangible relation exists between the creations of the agent and the variations of the results, and it is not forbidden to inquire if there does not also exist a certain order in these creations, the effect of which would be to produce a recognisable serial succession in the results, a medial line about which the events of our life oscillate. A difficult investigation—and one in which M. Tarde has shown himself to be too speedily satisfied, and in which we should strenuously guard against hasty generalisations. It is unpleasant, we admit, to turn topsy-turvy a house in which we have long lived in comfort; but our contentment returns in an increased measure when we have replaced our things in their proper places, and swept out the dusty corners.

M. M. Aguiléra has just published a work entitled, L’idée du Droit en Allemagne. His book is a history of the different schools of law which have arisen in Germany and lays especial emphasis on the fact that no nation has advanced as far as this in seeking in philosophical ideas the motives and the justification of its acts, and he sets about showing how the existence of Germany’s special conception of law may be explained. Germany, he writes in his conclusion, everywhere starts from the idea of force. Its peculiar characteristic is to bow before victorious force. And to this must be added, if we wish to comprehend its aggressive character, the sentiment of vanity, which has led it to proclaim “that incredible formula: the ideal of Germany is the ideal of humanity.”

M. George Lyon gives us a learned historical study, La philosophie de Hobbes. He points out how everything is interrelated in the work of this philosopher—his conception of the state to his theories of ethics, his ethical doctrines to his psychological theories, and the latter to general principles concerning nature, thought, and their laws. But he also presents with much force the objections to Hobbism. He condemns its final consequence, which is submission to force. He points out finally the inevitable ambiguity which permeates this system in consequence of the struggle “between individual inspiration, which is purely ontological, and the action of an intellectual environment which is eminently empirical. Hobbes was the metaphysician of empiricism as Bacon was its poet.” I dismiss for the present all discussion of these subjects; an occasion will present itself later of dealing with them.

In Les races et les langues M. André Lefèvre sums up the state of the science of language. The distinguishing characteristic of his work is the non-separation of language from the organism which has produced it, and the simultaneous presentation of languages with the ethnical groups which speak them. M. Lefèvre accepts, let us note at once, the well-known stages of the linguistic school—monosyllabism, agglutination, inflection, and analysis, which M. Tarde, if he should unexpectedly become a philologist would stigmatise as gratuitous. Of the races, of the places of origin, and of the migrations of the ancient peoples he tells a great many stories which are somewhat of the fairy-tale order, but this reservation does not affect in the least the value of his special linguistic researches.

In conclusion I shall mention Le problème de la mort, ses solutions imaginaires et la science positive, by M. L. Bourdeau, and Platon, sa philosophie, précédé d’un aperçu de sa vie et de ses écrits, by M. Ch. Bénard, a new volume in the series of historical studies by this venerable professor.⁠[84]

Lucien Arréat.

FOOTNOTES:

BOOK REVIEWS.

Einleitung in die Philosophie. By Prof. Friedrich Paulsen. Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz. 1892.

Friedrich Paulsen, professor at the University of Berlin, writes this “Introduction” not so much for connoisseurs as for students, whom it may serve as a guide. He discusses in general outlines the various fundamental problems of philosophy, at the same time indicating his own position, which, in more than one respect, is very similar to the philosophy presented in the columns of The Monist.

His own view, which, as he trusts, is the general tendency of modern philosophical thought, he calls “idealistic monism.” It is opposed, on the one hand, to supernatural dualism, and on the other hand to atomistic materialism; the former being the traditional doctrine of the schoolmen and of ecclesiasticism, separating body and soul, nature and God, etc., each into two distinct realities, which are accidentally combined, the latter being an attempt, having its beginning in the eighteenth century, to explain all natural phenomena in a purely mechanical way. Paulsen adds: “The whole history of modern philosophy can be said to be a continuous attempt to overcome this opposition.... The principle of natural science is the Natur-Gesetzmässigkeit of all events.... Modern materialism derives from this a kind of metaphysics, represents all reality as a system of blindly operating physical forces.... Philosophy undertakes to dispel the opposition of these two doctrines; its proposition is—and we may say that this is the main-spring of the entire evolution of modern philosophy—to reconcile the religious world-conception with that of natural science. There are many who regard this aspiration as a sort of squaring of the circle, and we grant that some similitude between the two may exist, for here as well as there we can attain only to approximations, here as well as there we can never solve the problem finally and forever. At any rate, we must recognise the fact that the whole philosophical thought of the last three centuries has been directed towards this goal.”

Professor Paulsen classes the various philosophies of the present time as follows: (1) The phenomenalistic-positivistic philosophy which denies any absolute cognition of reality, least of all in physics; the world of objects is a world of phenomena. (2) The idealistic monistic philosophy. To define the nature of reality as it is in itself, we must rely upon the data of our inner experience. The intellectual-historical world is to us the most comprehensible dénouement of reality—in fact, the only comprehensible one. The ultimate idea to which we are led in tracing out facts, is this: Reality, which presents itself to our senses in the objective world as a unitary system of motions, is the appearance of a spiritual all-being, which must be conceived as the evolution of some unitary idea. In this respect idealistic monism agrees upon the whole with speculative philosophy, or rather with all idealism since Plato.

The philosophy of the present time is, further on, characterised (3) as passing from intellectualism to voluntaryism; namely, it allows the will to have its legitimate influence in the construction of a world-view. It is (4) evolutionistic-theological, which latter tendency meets half way the above-mentioned idealistic monism. Both are beginning to permeate ethics, sociology, jurisprudence, and politics. The old formalistic methods are dropped and teleological considerations prevail. Purpose is recognised to rule in life. Lastly (5) the philosophy of to-day is historical. The older philosophy is mathematical-naturalistic or abstract-rationalistic. Speculative philosophy precedes the construction of an intellectual-historical world; it then attempts also to construct nature historically, at least in a logico-genetic schematism. Natural science has already pursued this course in its cosmical and biological theories of evolution. It is apparent how these tendencies follow the old tradition of harmonising the physical and the intellectual-historical worlds into one unitary conception of the whole.

The book is divided into two parts, with an introduction and conclusion. The introduction defines the relation of philosophy to mythology and to the sciences. Philosophy cannot be separated from the sciences. Says Paulsen: “Figuratively speaking, reality is a great riddle proposed to man; all the various sciences determine some parts of it, and the attempt to solve the whole, to find the key to the mysterium magnum of being, is called philosophy.”

The first book treats, in two chapters, of the problems of metaphysics, viz.: the ontological problem and the cosmo-theological problem. In the former chapter materialism, panpsychism, and the nature of the soul are discussed, while the second chapter is devoted to atomism and teleological theism, implying such subjects as the theory of evolution, causality, pantheism. The second part reviews, in the first chapter, the problems of the theory of cognition, viz.: the idealistic arguments, the realistic views, and our knowledge of the outer world. The second chapter presents an exposé of the problems regarding the origin of cognition as viewed by rationalism and empiricism, paying special attention to Kant’s formalistic realism. The conclusion is a brief treatment of some ethical problems.

It is impossible to discuss all the details of the 444 pages of Paulsen’s book, but a few specimen quotations from the chapter “Pantheism and World-soul” may be welcome to our readers. Our author asks: Considering all the tendencies of yearning and willing that appear in the innumerable forms of reality, is there a unity of inner life corresponding to the unity of the physical world in its universal interaction? The affirmation of this question constitutes the idealistic pantheism.

Idealistic pantheism is to Professor Paulsen the simplest and most obvious construction of the world possible. To other world-views, the existence of the soul is a problem; it has even been called an “absolute problem.” “I believe,” he adds, with great truth, “that there can be no stronger argument against any world-view than that it regards the existence of soul as something absolutely mysterious.” There is a power of conviction in idealistic pantheism verified by the astonishing agreement of the testimonies of many various thinkers in the Orient as well as in the Occident, in antiquity no less than in modern times. (P. 243.)

Says Professor Paulsen: “The dayfly may imagine when the sun sinks that all is at an end; light vanishes forever and the whole world is swallowed up in darkness and death. But man who sees so many suns sink and rise should have learned that in the infinite there are many possibilities which he cannot see at present [p. 241]. The conception of a world-soul, of a spiritual all-being, of a mundus intelligibilis appears to our physicists and physiologists in the same light as the conception of anthropomorphic deities—as a childish dream. They have no need of this hypothesis [pp. 243-244]. Du Bois-Reymond declares that a naturalist before admitting the assumption of a world-soul should demand, ‘that we ought to find somewhere in the world neuroglia embedded in warm arterial blood under the proper pressure and provided with appropriate sense-organs, ganglions, and fibres, corresponding to the intellectual capacities of such a soul.’ An animal,” says Paulsen, “needs as a matter of course legs to stand upon and to move with, a stomach, teeth, eyes, and a central nervous system, but the All is not in need of this; it needs no legs to stand upon and to move with, no stomach for alimentary purposes, no eyes, no ears, for there is nothing to be seen or heard outside of it, and so it can also dispense with a nervous system and a brain.”

Quoting two passages, one from Fechner, the other from Nägeli, to the effect that the system of fixed stars might be regarded as a group of molecules in an infinitely larger whole which we should have to conceive of as a unitary organism, Paulsen says: “Indeed, there is no objection to regarding a planet as a ganglion of the world-brain. Is it too large? No. Why should not the world-brain have bigger cells than an animal brain. Or is its composition inappropriate? Why? We find in it the same materials, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, phosphorus, and so forth, and also innumerable interactions similar for all we know to those that take place in a ganglion. Who knows how striking would be the resemblance of their structures, if we could but see a ganglion under a sufficiently powerful magnifying glass.”

These ideas are mere possibilities and are presented as such, but we cannot attribute to them any philosophical, scientific, or religious importance. Our idea of “a world-soul” or, better, of God, is different and we avoid purposely anything that can be constructed upon the basis of a vague hypothesis.

We ourselves reject pantheism, the view which identifies God and the All for reasons which we need not repeat here. We call our view of God entheism, and in forming our idea of God we purposely avoid such fantastical assumptions as considering the possibility of solar systems being molecules in the organism of a huge world-animal. Granted the truth of this view, the mere possibility of which we cannot deny, this extraordinary creature or world-animal would not be God, its will would not be our moral authority; it would not be the eternal, the immutable, the ground of all being, the ultimate rule of action, and the omnipotent universal law of existence: it would merely be a creature like ourselves, only immeasurably bigger, evolving like other animals and subject to the same or analogous or perhaps similar wants, disappointments, sufferings, and joys as ourselves. What a miserable God such a world-being would be; we know nothing of him and he knows nothing of us. His will and aspirations would have even less influence upon our aspirations, than, for instance, the hopes of a man upon the molecular groupings in his tissues, we being only the parasites upon the crust of an atom of his tissues. We have presented our view of the subject in Vol. III, No. 2, pp. 249-257, of The Monist, in the third part of the article “Panpsychism and Panbiotism,” with reference to a similar hypothesis incidentally touched upon as a possibility of monistic theism by Professor Romanes.

We simply state the difference between our position and that of Professor Paulsen concerning the nature of a world-soul without intending to make more of it than he does himself; for, if we are not mistaken, it is with him a mere suggestion.

We conclude our review with a passage which shows Professor Paulsen’s attitude toward Christianity, which more than anything else proves the general agreement of his work with ours. He says:

“The Christian faith is not a philosophical system, not a theological dogma and still less the residue of an old superstition, but the immediate and living certainty of the heart concerning the nature of the good and its importance in real life. This faith can be to-day the same as it was in Luther’s, or St. Augustine’s, or the apostles’ time who saw Jesus with their own eyes bodily. If Christianity, did indeed consist of a number of doctrines and opinions, it would certainly be true, as some claim, that it has been dead a long time, for doctrines and opinions are not long-lived. If Christianity really did consist of the belief in the creation of the world five thousand years ago out of nothing, the rib story of Eve, the story of Eden and the fall, etc., etc., ... then indeed it would be impossible for a thinking man of to-day to be a Christian. But all that is not the faith of Christianity, it is not the religion of Jesus. And if all the leaders of all the confessions declare that this is the Christian faith and that he who does not believe all these things can have no part in Christ, their proposition must be rejected as untrue. No one can be saved by believing these things; while the request of the church to believe in certain opinions set forth by men has expelled many an honest man.... In the life and death of Jesus I have learned to understand the meaning of life and I call God and the revelation of God that which makes my life possible and explains to me the significance of my life.... Is such a faith compatible with the above-mentioned monistic world-conception? My answer is, By all means.”

This is Professor Paulsen’s solution of the problem of a reconciliation of science and religion—and we add that it is ours too.

P. C.

First Steps in Philosophy. By William Mackintire Salter. Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Co. 1892. Price, $1.00. Pages, 155.

This little book is divided into two parts: (1) Physical, (2) Ethical. In the first, Mr. Salter discusses the conception of matter; in the second, that of duty. Mr. Salter’s philosophical position is epitomised in a sentence which he quotes from Herbert Spencer. This sentence states, that, “what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective agencies which are unknown and unknowable.” Mr. Salter’s philosophical position, accordingly, is, first, Idealism, and, second, Agnosticism.

In ethics, Mr. Salter’s view embraces Utilitarianism, or Hedonism, and Intuitionism, both of which, he says, are incomplete in themselves, and must be supplemented by other elements. Utilitarianism makes happiness the ultimate end; Intuitionism, virtue; and Mr. Salter adds, such an end must embrace the “realisation of all our capacities.” Mr. Salter’s ethical position has been before discussed in our journals.

If we study Mr. Salter’s philosophical views, we shall find that his theory is a reproduction of Berkeley’s analysis of the data of knowledge, embellished by the results of modern physiological psychology. Yet Mr. Salter’s theory, although it everywhere shows the traces of a close study of Berkeley’s views, presents the strange historical anomaly of undoing Berkeley’s work. Berkeley’s undoubted aim was to place knowledge on a basis of fact and refute, in a philosophical manner, the agnosticism, metaphysicism, and transcendentalism prevalent in his day. But Mr. Salter adds to Berkeley’s results the very things that Berkeley sought to overthrow, and thus renders the latter’s analysis (and consequently his own) in need of an equivalent analysis.

Take, for instance, the above-quoted sentence from Herbert Spencer, to which Mr. Salter assents. “Objective agencies,” “unknown and unknowable”! Is this consistent? All knowledge is a knowledge of sensations, a knowledge of and in the mind, says the idealist, and we cannot, by any process of ratiocination, arrive at things “outside” the mind. Yet he himself, it seems, arrives at a knowledge of “objective agencies” outside the mind (pp. 65, 69), and, what is more wonderful, at agencies that are “unknown” and “unknowable.” Surely, this is not abiding by an analysis of the facts of sensation (Berkeley). It is as unrational a procedure to infer metaphysical objective agencies, as it is to infer a metaphysical substratum “matter,” which last is the error of the realist.

Again, take the notion of cause. Here, also, the same unwarrantable abandonment of the facts of sensation, i. e. of all that is, is evident.

At the end of an analysis, in which he shows that “all the choir of Heaven and the furniture of the earth,” and “all which it inhabit,” retreat and vanish in mind, Mr. Salter asks: “But is there absolutely nothing real and objective left? So far as sensible phenomena are concerned, we must answer, No, absolutely nothing is left; the whole sensible (material) world is but an effect upon ourselves. But,” he adds, “it would be a hasty inference,” on these grounds, “to say that nothing whatever is left.” And when asked “what is left,” he answers, “all that causes sensation.” We can never know scientifically what these causes are, but “we have an inextinguishable faith” that they are, “there being no particular thing we are more sure of than that for every event (and every sensible phenomenon is an event, viz., in ourselves) there is some kind of explanation or cause.” To sum up: The theory of “sensible or physical idealism”⁠[85] implies a “supersensible or metaphysical realism.” In the theory of sensible idealism things only exist as sensations; “only exist, that is, save in their supersensible or transcendental causes”—which, says the author, we must always add.

What is a cause? Cause is an abstraction. An abstraction from what? from a real, physical world, or from a metaphysical, transcendental world? Plainly, from our real world, from Mr. Salter’s world of “sensible reality.” By what philosophical warrant, then, is this concept applied to a world from which it has not been derived and to which it surely cannot apply! It is wrong to speak of a cause of the All. The All has no cause, just as it has no weight.

All these difficulties arise from the notion that there are two kinds of knowledge and two kinds of existences. Idealism, to be consistent, must be absolute; Mr. Salter’s idealism is not absolute. This is exactly the criticism that the reading of his book at once forces on one. All knowledge is knowledge of sensations, i. e. of reality; things not accessible to sensation are not real, they do not exist; consequently, all entities transcendental, metaphysical, and supersensible do not exist. This is the conclusion to which any philosophy, idealism, realism, or what not must lead.

Nowadays, few people dispute the fundamental thesis of idealism (of course, expressed in different terms from those of Mr. Spencer’s sentence). In a sense, it is established. Its only drawback is, that its “establishment” accomplishes nothing. It leaves the problem of philosophy where it found it.⁠[86] Reality is still reality. The same difficulties and perplexities exist. The universe still mocks us. And foremost among the riddles that the world opposes to man, stands that eternal query: “What is mind?” Mr. Salter’s views of this question will show us what contributions his theory is likely to make to philosophy.

Mr. Salter defines mind as “that which experiences sensations and thoughts, or, more simply, that which feels and thinks.” It is not feeling, not thinking, but that which feels and thinks. It is thus an agent, a subject. It is difficult to understand how this notion of mind is come at, without self-contradiction. In their origin, all notions of mind-subjects, mind-essences, mind-agencies, and so forth, are materialistic. They must be volatilised and stripped of their substantial attributes, if they are to take a place in an idealistic philosophy, and then, as they “cannot be ranged along with the sensible phenomena of which the mind takes cognisance,” there is but one realm left to exist in, which is the transcendentalistic.

All this comes from carrying the abstraction by which “mind” is reached, to mathematically infinite limits. In this abstraction the world retreats and fades away into nothingness. And what is left? Not a single idea or fact by which we can fix our abstraction. Mind is all, and mind is nothing. It is not matter, not time, not space—not even a mathematical point, which we expect it to become in its infinitely contracting perspective. It has no attributes, no qualities; it is nothing and nowhere. This conception of mind, Mr. Salter says, is only mysterious as we make it so, by careless and inaccurate thinking. And Mr. Salter is right. It would require much careless thinking to make such a conception mysterious. A thing or notion that cannot be defined, placed, or brought into connection with any other thing or notion in the world, is not mysterious, but simply does not exist. In that respect, it is as plain as day.

The same confusion exists in the discussion which disposes of the query, “Where is mind?” The idealist, in Mr. Salter’s sense, does not admit that the mind is in, or in anywise spatially connected with, the brain. The question, where is mind? he says, has no meaning, any more than the question, what is the color of a pleasure? This is true. Mind is an abstraction. In this sense it has no spatial existence. But the phenomena from which this abstraction has produced itself, are linked with phenomena which have spatial existence, and in this sense the mental processes are not mysterious nothings and nowheres. When I lose that group of sensations called my leg, I know that, generally, I have lost the feeling of my leg. So, also, when a certain part of that group of sensations called my brain is destroyed, I know that I shall then have lost my power of memory or of speech or of motion. I may also experiment with other groups of sensations called dogs and cats, which I know have mental powers. In the light of these facts it is not correct, either in philosophy or common sense, to say that mental processes are absolutely independent of locality. I know that my thoughts are not connected with the group of sensations I call the moon, and I know they are not connected with that group of sensations that I call Mr. Smith. I am always aware of them as connected with that group of sensations which I call “myself.”

Mr. Salter, in fact, half recognises this. He says, “The mind is dependent on the body in the sense that our general power of sensation and thought is connected with those sensations we call our body.” Yet, “why this should be so is mysterious.” Indeed! One is inclined to ask Mr. Salter here, what species of explanation or knowledge he wishes of this phenomenon. Is explanation, or knowledge, something more than the recognition and seeing of a plain connection between the groups of sensations that constitute reality? In Mr. Salter’s analysis, all the facts of the world are mysterious. Why a thing is as it is and is not other than it is, is mysterious. He utterly fails to understand why the power of perceiving colors is linked with the particular group of sensations he calls his eye, and why it should not just as well be linked with some other group or no group at all.

Why do I see with my eye? Why do I not see with my hand or with the hairs of my head, or why do I not eat with my elbow, instead of my mouth? Why do not stones fall upwards? Why do not magnets point towards the East? Why do not the planets move about Jupiter or Saturn? Mr. Salter’s question makes a jumble of the whole universe.

It is not the object of science or philosophy to find out why things are not what they are, but to find out what they are. In this inquiry the why and wherefore, properly understood, will evolve themselves.

Science simply concerns itself with the connection of the groups of sensations which the idealist, and for that matter every one else, calls reality. It cannot concern itself with anything else. All other things are artificial and self-made existences. Nothing exists but reality and the connections of reality. To seek for any other connections than those that exist is absurd and futile. And to seek for any other causes or cause of relations than such as really are is also futile. Before we speak of the knowledge of a thing we must analyse and define our notion of knowledge, and before we speak of the cause of a thing we must analyse and define our notion of cause. In our view, the relation which Mr. Salter doubts, is so intimately and inextricably one, that the causal relation disappears. Neither is the cause of the other. We may, for the purposes of inquiry, start from either as our general concept, but we should never go so far as utterly to expel from reality the other. True science and philosophy are neither idealistic nor materialistic, but real. The two positions are extreme positions, and each is useful only as a safeguard against the errors of the others. Reality is reality; that is the main thing. Whether it is idealistic or materialistic is of minor consequence. Besides reality there is nothing; its negation is non-existence.

We do not wish in these criticisms to repudiate all that is in Mr. Salter’s book. A great many of its reflections are helpful and suggestive. We may refer, for example, to the passages in which the body is regarded as a gradually decreasing wall of separation between that part of reality which is known subjectively and that part which is known objectively. This is really a unitary view. We believe, however, that if Mr. Salter would carefully analyse the notions of knowledge, explanation, cause, effect, and, therefore, the notion of reality, he would not push his philosophy to the mysterious extreme at which it finally arrives, and he would absolutely reject such unscientific conceptions as supersensible realism, metaphysical realism, and supersensible or transcendental causes. These render the reading of his book as a philosophical help unsatisfactory, and leave the mind even more confused and perplexed than it was before. However, all discussions of this sort have their value, and Mr. Salter’s book possesses a virtue which few other philosophical productions can boast of: it is very short. The author’s pleasant style will also add to the pleasure of its perusal, and if read critically the book will evoke much helpful thought.

T. J. McCormack.

A Review of The Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution. By C. M. Williams. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1893.

This is a book, the perusal of which will leave the earnest student of moral science full of disappointment. Not at all that it manifests any lack of ability or information. On the contrary, it is at once clearly and entertainingly written, and at the same time packed with notes and comments that are full of interest and instruction.

The course of the book may be briefly stated. The first part, comprising nearly half of its six hundred pages, is devoted to the statement of the ethical doctrines maintained by thirteen prominent writers, whose views have been formed more or less under the influence of the theory of evolution, viz.: Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Baratt, Stephen, Carneri, Höffding, Gizycki, Alexander, and Paul Ree. The rest of the book is the review of our author. This review is conducted under the topical heads: The Concepts of Evolution; Intelligence and End; The Will; Thought, Feeling, and Will in Evolution; Egoism and Altruism in Evolution; Conscience; Moral Progress in History; The Results of Ethical Inquiry on an Evolutional Basis; and The Ideal and the Way of Its Attainment.

These are all topics of great interest and importance, and the author has brought to the consideration of them a mind fully stored and entirely competent. But we look in vain for that discourse and criticism which above all other matters relating to moral science those who are interested in human welfare crave from those who tender their reflections upon ethical topics.

The great need of moral science is the discovery and certification of its basis. It is a need that far transcends the scope of mere moral science, for upon its right determination depends the right determination of a multitude of questions that deeply involve the welfare of humanity. It is a need that is not merely crying to be supplied. It is absolutely wailing. Could it only be rightly determined, mankind would fast enough orient itself in the course of evolution and with undissipated energy work out its best possible development. But undiscovered or uncertified it balks all process, save only that mechanical, halting, stumbling process that has hitherto obtained; a process that is, as all may observe, one that has little if any inward coördination, but is full of inability and cross-purposes. Since it was the professed purpose of our author to review a number of the more prominent systems of ethics, which he esteems to be founded on the theory of evolution, his failure to notice and to comment upon so conspicuous a feature of moral science would naturally lead a reader, unversed in the works noticed, to suppose that those works had altogether slighted this topic. Such is, however, not the case. With the exception of perhaps Darwin and Wallace, all the writers reviewed by our author have given more or less attention to this matter, and they have left us in no doubt as to the positions which they severally hold. Most of them are Hedonists of one sort or another. Haeckel, Carneri, Rolph, and Alexander are, we believe, the only exceptions.

But a more serious criticism upon the work under notice is suggested by its very title. That title as much as says that the various works which are reviewed by our author are “founded” upon the theory of evolution, at least in so far as their ethical doctrines are concerned.

Now, what is the theory of evolution? What is its essential nature? Does not its very form consist in the affirmation of an eternal secular mutation, in which there is no discontinuity whatever? It says that existence in sum and in every detail is eternal and continuous process. It uncompromisingly forbids all suppositions of any absolute beginning, or of any absolute end, or of any absolutely final adjustment. Hence, no system of ethics can with truth be said to be “founded” upon the theory of evolution that ignores or forgets this essential character of it. Now, when we turn to the consideration of the various “systems” which our author supposes to be “founded” upon the theory of evolution, we find them, one and all, occupied more or less with suppositions of ends. All are forecasting some “ideal” condition, which, being attained, all chances of retrogression will be foreclosed and all possibilities of betterment will be exhausted. In other words, they suppose an attainment of death, or rather an attainment of a death-in-life more utterly horrible than any actual death can possibly be. The very first condition for an ethics that will be truly evolutional must be the fit and full recognition of a boundless horizon to evolution in morals as well as in all else. Emerson perceived the truth when he said in “The Sphynx”:

And at present, the most serious efforts to establish a truly clear-sighted ethics of evolution, with an unequivocal disavowal of any and all Hedonism, is made by the editors of The Monist. It, indeed, is the key-note of the missionary work that characterises all the publications of The Open Court Publishing Co.

Any truly evolutional ethics must show itself a doctrine that applies just as well to regress as to progress. Evolution is too often confounded with progress, but degeneration is just as truly evolutional as is the contrary movement, and, looking the facts of existence in the face, mankind has no assurance of any unchangeable course of betterment. The principles of morals are, however, not dependent upon the benign action of nature. When the earth’s stock of fuel shall become exhausted, or when the ice age returns, or when the sun grows cold, there will be no alteration thereby in the moral law. Good and evil must and will be the same under all circumstances, and no system of ethics is nor can be anything but a temporary makeshift, that does not as well fit the diastoles as it does the systoles of existence. We must look for a doctrine that shall inform the conduct of men not only for the fore part of the day, when all is jubilant and bounding and man asks only for some good task to do, but also for the evening and night, when man grows weary and craves for rest; for not only youth and maturity, but for waning strength, old age, and death; for not only the progressive era of cosmic history, but for the periods when natural conditions may disfavor mankind, when, say, man may gradually be so reduced in resources that the same will barely suffice for simple life-preservation; when under the stress of natural conditions the human intellect, in the course of generations, becomes step by step eliminated; when indeed humanity itself tends perhaps slowly, but with certainty, towards permanent extinction.

They who complacently protest that the theory of evolution leaves the domain of moral science substantially unaffected are surely in great default either in their comprehension of the nature and implications of that theory, or in their powers of circumspection, while those who suppose that moral science becomes evolutional simply because of a little application of that theory to some of the subordinate questions that are involved, show themselves in a plight as bad as the others if not worse.

Our author notices without dissent, and even with seeming concurrence, the various remarks made by many of the writers reviewed by him in discredit of teleology.

Since as we have before protested the theory of evolution forbids all suppositions of any ends that are absolutely final, it of course follows that teleology is in the strictness of its meaning inadmissible, even in ethics. But in dismissing teleology, let us not pour out the child with the bath. However it ought to be with the interpretation of the order of nature as a speculative exercise, something that is analogous to teleology is an absolute necessity if ethics is to be anything more than a curious study of human practise. The universe may manifest no purpose, design or secular tendency, but man is and can be nothing but a miserable estray on the ocean of existence unless he sails on a course, instead of merely drifting. To do this he must take something by which to steer, and any plausible stability is better than no bearings whatever. At any rate man is insuperably drawn to thus mark out his course. If the theory of evolution forbids him to suppose any ends that are absolutely final, it does not prevent him from ascertaining directions. Indeed evolution affords him data of the very first importance for that behoof. Instead of ends we have aims and if ethics is to become that counsel and guide to humanity, which we yearn for so anxiously, it must ascertain and certify that single paramount aim to which all other tendencies are naturally subsidiary. Teleology, or rather the determination of the aim of evolution, must prepare the foundation before any evolutional ethics that is worthy the name can be established.

Again our author with considerable debate notices the remarks of the writers reviewed by him on the old question of free will and necessity,—but like the positing of some end or aim to be subserved, free will is one of the presuppositions of ethics. When man begins to debate the possibility of rightly ascertaining the true end or aim for his pursuit, or when he begins to moot the question of free will, he is debating not any question of ethics proper, but only whether such a science is possible. Unless conditions and events are functions, as well of man’s personality as of his environment; unless persons count for something in the variations of the course of nature, it is altogether vain and idle to be troubled with questions of morality.

Free will and somewhat to be achieved are principles which whether well or ill founded, ethics proper must take for granted before it has or can have any raison d’être. As for free will, however the metaphysicians may have stumbled over their own feet, the common sense of mankind has never wavered. As a practical question (and ethics is pre-eminently a matter of practice) this question is not an open one.

But on the question of what is the true paramount aim for man to pursue, the decision that shall finally satisfy man is yet to be made. The best proof that no satisfactory answer has yet been made is the fact that we are still seeking an answer. As with regard to the needful prime condition for a truly evolutional ethics we found wisdom in the poetical insight, so again in this exigency we personally find the most profound ethical philosophy in that same insight.

Francis C. Russell.

Der Pessimismus im Lichte einer höheren Weltauffassung. By Dr. J. Friedländer and Dr. M. Berendt. Berlin W.: S. Gerstmann. 1893.

The authors’ aim is the refutation of pessimism and the foundation of a higher world-conception. This latter is a pantheism spiritualised by moral ideals and contrasted to Darwinism and materialism. Natural science is said to be the surrounding walls of the new view, furnishing (1) negative truths of criticism and (2) a knowledge of the positive features of nature. The negative truths are: the impossibility of the existence of a personal God, of the efficiency of prayer, of miracles, of the immortality of the soul, of the separate existence of souls without bodies. The positive results of natural science are the unity of nature, the indestructibility of nature, the harmony of the All, the indivisibility of nature, the irrefragable necessity of natural processes according to immutable laws, and the freedom or independence of nature, as having its cause in itself, uncreated and uninfluenced by any extramundane being.

Natural science alone, according to the authors, is not sufficient to constitute the new world-conception. A one-sided view of natural science together with the obsolete conceptions of theism are exactly what has brought forth the philosophical pessimism of our time. Natural science, accordingly, is not to be regarded as the sole source of truth; it is to be corrected by pantheism. The former teaches us “to regard matter and its motion, so to say, as a dead inert substance to which motion is attached; it treats matter as an immediate reality. Pantheism, however, teaches that matter is to be conceived as the interrelation of the innumerable live acts of will appearing successively in time and side by side in space,” etc. The authors point out that the necessity of law which regulates the mechanical processes of nature does not exclude freedom; for “freedom is not arbitrariness but is controlled by an immanent Gesetzmässigkeit.”

This summary is sufficient to characterise the ideas of the Drs. Friedländer and Berendt. We cannot say that they admit of no criticism, (e. g. their conception of natural science must be pronounced as too narrow if not actually erroneous, nor should the law of the survival of the fittest be interpreted in the sense that strength means brutal force,) but we can, nevertheless, express our sympathy with the aim of the authors as well as with the spirit in which they pursue it.

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Die Philosophie und die sociale Frage. By Gustav Engel. Leipsic: C. E. M. Pfeffer. 1892.

Acht Abhandlungen, Herrn Professor Dr. Karl Ludwig Michelet zum 90. Geburtstag als Festgruss dargereicht von Mitgliedern der philosophischen Gesellschaft. Leipsic: C. E. M. Pfeffer. 1892.

Wie steht es jetzt mit der Philosophie, und was haben wir von ihr zu hoffen? By Dr. Wilhelm Paszkowski. Halle a. S.: F. Beyer, 1892.

This lecture by the well-known writer on the science of statistics and its related subjects was read before the Philosophical Society of Berlin on the 31st of May, 1890. It discusses the problem of socialism, or rather the aspirations of the German social democracy from the philosophical point of view of the lecturer, which is a modernised Hegelianism. This lecture drew forth on the evening of its delivery considerable discussion, which was participated in by Herr Kahle, a socialist, and Herr Runze. The discussions of these gentlemen, together with Mr. Engel’s reply, are embodied in the pamphlet.

The second of these two pamphlets is also a publication of the Philosophical Society of Berlin. It consists of eight treatises, essays, or lectures, which were presented by the members of the society to Prof. Karl Ludwig Michelet as a festival gift on his ninetieth natal day. The authors of these eight essays are: Adolf Lasson, August Cieszkowski, Gustav Engel, Friedrich Kirchner, Wilhelm Paszkowski, Max Runze, Georg Ulrich, and F. Zelle. They deal with philosophical subjects, chiefly such as pertain to the Hegelian philosophy. Appended to the pamphlet is a bibliography of the writings of this Nestor of the Philosophical Society by F. Ascherson.

The author of the third pamphlet complains about the decay of philosophy: “Metaphysics, the inner fane in the temple of science, stands desolate,” and the last disciples of Hegel can no longer prevent the deluge which sweeps away the idealism of their grand old master.

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Der Materialismus, eine Verirrung des menschlichen Geistes, widerlegt durch eine zeitgemässe Weltanschauung. By Dr. Eugen Dreher. Berlin: S. Gerstmann. 1892.

The author of this pamphlet, at present a docent at the University of Halle, feels somewhat oppressed by the materialistic tendencies of our times. His desire is to establish in the world a province of the ideal, and this domain of idealistic aspirations and hopes, he says, must and can be based upon a scientific foundation. To reach this goal, the author propounds a philosophy which is confessedly dualistic, and which must be made a kind of religion. Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum, is to him the beginning of all philosophy. The existence of the All is devoid of sense, unless there is an ego to think it. This dualism, if made a religion, will throw light upon the problems of the labyrinth of life.

The aspirations of the author are serious and noble. We cannot, however, agree with the results of his reasonings. He does not seem to have considered Kant’s objections to the fallacy of the cogito, ergo “ego” sum. Nor is he familiar with Lichtenberg’s famous remark, that “we should say by rights ‘it thinks,’ exactly as we say ‘it rains.’” The same moral conclusions at which the author arrives may be reached, the same province for ideal aspirations in the world may be gained, the same religious comfort may be found, without any surrender of the monistic view of the world. Materialism is an error of human thought. But the error cannot be cured by dualism.

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Ueber die Grundformen der Vorstellungsverbindung. Psychologische Studie. By Max Offner. Marburg: R. Friedrich. 1892.

This little brochure is a carefully worked out study of the phenomena of association. The author’s view is summed up in the following statement: “The attempt to reduce the phenomena of association, in conformity with their real nature, to one single ultimate process cannot be regarded as successful, and we shall have to control our aspirations after a unitary conception and rest satisfied with reducing the various phenomena of association to two processes which are closely related, namely: (1) to an association of simultaneity; and (2) to an association of immediate succession.” There is much that is suggestive in the sixty-seven pages of this pamphlet.

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Finite Homogeneous Strain, Flow, and Rupture of Rocks. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. By George F. Becker. Rochester: Published by the Society. 1893.

This is a purely technical research, concerning the causes and form of the discontinuity of rock masses. The studies presented are the outgrowth of field-work in the Sierra Nevada of California. This range is so intersected by false joints, schistose and slaty cleavages, that on a scale of one mile to the inch their average separation would be for the most part microscopic. The dynamic manifestations in these regions are very systematic. Some of the strains which have produced this phenomenon have been infinitesimal, and others have been finite. Only the latter are here treated. Finite strain, the relations of stress to strain, the nature of finite shear, viscosity, flow, plasticity, ductility, and rupture, the relation of plastic solids to fluids, the spacing of fissures formed by inclined pressures, jointing, and slaty cleavage, are the chief subjects discussed. The most important result of the investigation is that jointing, schistosity, and slaty cleavage all imply relative movement and are thus as truly orogenic as falls of notable throw. “In the light of this conclusion,” says the author, “it appears that if one could reproduce the orogeny of the Sierra in a moderate interval of time on a model made to a scale of one mile to the inch, it would seem to yield to external and bodily forces much like a mass of lard of the same dimensions.”

This pamphlet is neatly got up, and reflects credit upon the author and publisher.

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