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A QUARTERLY REVIEW
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MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
EDITED BY
GEORGE GROOM ROBERTSON,
PROFESSOR IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
VOL VL-i88i.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ;
AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1881.
\1
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VI,
AETICLES.
PAGE
ALLEN, G. Sight and Smell in Vertebrates .... 453
BENN, A. W. Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge . 231
DAVIDSON, W. L. The Logic of Dictionary-defining . . 212
EARLE, J. The History of the Word < Mind ' ... 301
GURNET, E. Monism . 153
KEARY, C. F. The Homeric Words for < Soul ' . . .471
HODGSON, S. H. M. Kenouvier's Philosophy Logic . . 31
-Psychology . 173
MONTGOMERY, E. The Substantiality of Life . . . 321
PDNNETT, J. T. Efficiency as a Proximate End in Morals . 350
READ, C. G. H. Lewes's Posthumous Volumes . . . 483
EOYCE, J. " Mind-Stuff" and Eeality 365
SETH, A. Hegel : An Exposition and Criticism . . . 513
SPENCER, H. Eeplies to Criticisms on The Data of Ethics . 82
SULLY, J. Illusions of Introspection ..... 1
George Eliot's Art 378
THOMPSON, D. G. The Summum Bonum . . . . 62
VENN, J. Our Control of Space and Time . . . . 18
WHITTAKER, T. " Mind-Stuff " from the Historical Point of
View . 498
NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
BAIN, A. Mr. Spencer's Psychological " Congruities " . 266, 394
BALFOUR, A. J. Prof. Watson on Transcendentalism . . ' 260
BENECKE, E. C. On Definitions 530
BURNS-GIBSON, J. "A New Departure in Metaphysics" . 542
CHAMPNEYS, F. H. Notes on an Infant . . . .104
DAVIDSON, W. L. Definition of Consciousness . . . 406
Sensation . . . .551
FRANKLAND, F. W. The Doctrine of Mind-Stuff . . . 116
VI
Contents.
HALL, G. S. Kecent Eesearches on Hypnotism .
HODGSON, S. H. Free- Will : a Eejoinder to Dr. Ward .
JAMES, W. Sense of Dizziness in Deaf-Mutes
MACGREGOR, D. Eeflex Effects of Extempore Speaking
SULLY, J. On the Definition of Instinctive Action
CRITICAL NOTICES.
ADAMSON, R.-
-W. S. Jevons, Studies in Deductive Logic
J. Watson, Kant and his English Critics
ALLEN, G. L. Geiger, Contributions to the History of the De-
velopment of the Human Race (trans.) . . 278
BURNS-GIBSON, J. J. Sully, Illusions 413
J. Davies, Hindu Philosophy. The San-
khya Karilta of Iswara Krishna . . 587
COLLIER, J. A. Fouille'e, La Science sociale contemporaine . 137
COUPLAND, W. C. W. Graham, The Creed of Science, Reli-
gious, Moral and Social . . . 563
EDITOR. H. C. Bastian, The Brain as an Organ of Mind . 120
A. C. Eraser, Berkeley 421
JEVONS, W. S. E. Y. Edgeworth, Mathematical Psychics . 581
LAND, J. P. N. F. Pollock, Spinoza : His Life and Philosophy 131
LEVIN, T. W. G. L. Turner, Wish and Will ... 424
MONRO, C. J. J. Venn, Symbolic Logic . . . . 574
POLLOCK, F. B. Perez, L Education des le Berceau . . 281
F. Schultze, Die Sprache des Kindes . . 436
SETH, A. E. Zeller, A History of Greek Philosophy from the
Earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, I. (trans.) 286
R. Adamson, Fichte, . . . . . .583
STEWART, J. A. F. H. Peters, The Nicomachean Ethics of
Aristotle (trans.) . . . . .433
SULLY, J. G. Pfisterer, Pddagogische Psychologie . . . 142
E. Gurney, The Power of Sound . . .270
E. v. Hartmann, Zur Geschichte und Begrundung
des Pessimismus . . . , . .285
T. Ribot, Les Maladies de la Memoire . . 590
VENN, J. H. Scheffler, Die Theorie der Erkenntniss oder die
Logischen Gesetze . . . . . .592
Contents. vii
NEW BOOKS.
PAGE
Bahnsen, J.-^-Der Widcrspruch im Wissen u. Wesen der Welt, I. 151
Beard, G. M. American Nervousness .....
Bergmann, J. Sein und Erkennen . . . . .298
Bertrand, A. IS Apperception du Corps Immain fyc. . . 444
Bleuler, E., Lehmann, K. Zwangsmdssige Liclitempfindungen fyc. 297
Bower, G. S. Hartley and James Mill . . . .440
Buchner, L. Mind in Animals (trans.) . . . . 292
Butler, S. Unconscious Memory . . . . . .146
Byk, S. A. RechtspJiilosophie 601
Capes, W. W. Stoicism . 145
Collins, W. L. Butler 291
Colsenety'E.LaVieinconscientedel'Esprit . . .149
Cossa, L. Guide to the Study of Political Economy (trans.) . 148
Danover. De VEsprit Moderns fyc. ..... 444
Davies, J. Hindu Philosophy, fyc. ..... 442
Duncan, W. S. Conscious Matter $c 293
Edgeworth, F. Y. Mathematical Psychics .... 293
Erdmann, B. Nachtrage zu Kant's K.d.r. V. . . . 600
Evellin, F. Infini et Quantite . . . . . .295
Farrer, J. A. Adam Smith 289
Feuerbach, L. The Essence of Christianity (trans.) . . 596
Fitzgerald, P. F. Philosophy of Self-Consciousness fyc. . . 602
Fowler, T. Locke 288
Bacon 440
Fraser, A. C. Berkeley 291
Frb'bel, K. F. Future Science of Existence or Ontology . 443
Frohschammer, J. Die Principien der Arist. Philosophic $c.. 601
Geiger, L. Hist, of the Development of the Human Race (trans. ) 148
Gener, P. La Mort et le DiaUe 294
Graham, W. The Creed of Science $c. .... 442
Gurney, E. The Power of Sound 145
Guyau, M. Vers d'un Philosophe 445
Hall, G. S. Aspects of German Culture .... 444
Harper, T. The Metaphysics of the School, II. . .441
Hartmann, E. v. Zur Gesch. u. Beyriindung des Pessimismus 150
Hay em, A. L'fitre Social 444
Hegel, G. W. .The Philosophy of Art (trans.) ... 149
Vlll
Contents.
Heman, C. F. Die Ersclieinung der Dinge in der Wahrnehmung
Holmes-Forbes, A. W. TJw Science of Beauty
Jacoby, P. fitudes sur la Selection, fyc. .
Kaines, J. Seven Lectures on the Doctrine of Positivism
Kedney, J. S. The Beautiful and the Sublime
Koeber, R. Schopenhauer's Erlosungslehre . . . .
Lange, F. A. History of Materialism fyc. (trans.) .
Le Conte, J. Sight
Leigh, A. The Story of Philosophy . . . . .
Locke, J. Conduct of the Understanding (Ed. Fowler) .
Loomans, C. De la Connaissance de Soi-meme
Lotze, H. Logik (2nd Ed.) ......
Mahaffy, J. P. Descartes .......
Mayor, J. B., Ancient Philosophy from Tholes to Cicero .
Monk, "W. H. S. Sir William Hamilton ....
Panizza, M. La Fisiologia del Sistema Nervoso $c. (2nd Ed.)
Perez, B. L' Education des le Berceau .....
Eibot, T. Les Maladies de la Memoire ....
Rumelin, G. Reden u. Aufsdtze ......
Scheffler, H. Die Naturgesetze $c., Ill
Schmidt, E. v. Die Philosophic der Mythologie undMaxMiiller
Schneidewin, M. Lichtstrahlen aus E. v. Hartmanris Werken
Siebeck, H. Geschichte der Psychologic, I., 1
Sigwart, C. Kleine Schriften ......
Sully, J. Illusions ........
Turner, G. ~L.Wish and Will
Tylor, E. B. Anthropology .......
Vaihinger, H. Commentar zu Kant's K.d.r. V.
Venn, J. Symbolic Logic .....
Vernial, P. Origine de VHomme fyc, .
Wallace, W. Epicureanism ....
Watson, J. Kant and his English Critics
Weir, A. The Critical Philosophy of Kant
Weisenberg, W. Theismus und Pantheismus
Wundt, W. Grundziige der physiol. Psychologic (2nd Ed.)
Materialism Ancient and Modern .
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NO. 21. LJ anuar y> l88r -
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
I. ILLUSIONS OF INTBOSPECTION.
THE term Illusion is in science generally confined to errors of
sense-perception. On the other hand in popular discourse it is
extended to a number of other errors. Thus we speak of an
illusion of memory, of an illusory idea respecting one's own
character, and so on. If we try to discover what these errors
have in common we appear to find that they are all semblances
of immediate knowledge, by which I mean any variety of cogni-
tion which is not consciously based on some other cognition and
which appears self-evident. The term illusion is thus opposed
to fallacy which simulates the form of a conscious process of
inference. Although psychology undoubtedly tends to assimilate
all intellectual processes and to identify immediate and mediate
knowledge, or, to use Lewes's expression, the logic of feeling and
the logic of signs, as forms of one process, there appear to be
certain advantages in marking off for separate treatment those
errors which simulate the form of irresistible intuitions not
obtained by any possibly precarious operation of reasoning. If
for no other reason, these popularly recognised illusions may
afford a specially valuable subject of investigation as presenting
the forces which underlie all error in their highest intensity,
in other words as constituting prerogative instances of these
forces.
If we adopt the above definition of Illusion, we may roughly
2 Illusions of Introspection.
mark off four possible varieties, namely, illusions (1) of (external)
perception, (2) of introspection or internal perception, (3) of
memory, and (4) of belief, the latter covering those erroneous
1 self-evident ' cognitions which are not included under any of
the other heads and which resolve themselves into anticipations,
definite or indefinite, and wider errors respecting the world, self,
or human nature in general.
Each of these varieties can, I conceive, be dealt with most
effectively by taking the first class, that is to say, the well-recog-
nised class of sense-illusions as our type. An illusion of sense
may be defined as a misinterpretation of a sense-impression
resulting in a percept which is afterwards found not to corres-
pond to the object actually present to sense. By interpretation
must here be meant not only the taking up of the sense-impres-
sion into a percept by a synthesis of presentative and representa-
tive elements, but also the definition of the sense-impression itself
so far as this depends on processes of discrimination, comparison
and classification.
Illusions of sense or perception fall into two roughly distin-
guishable classes, Passive or a posteriori illusions, and Active or
a priori illusions. The former owe their force to something in
the sense-impression of the moment, to a powerful suggestion of
a mental image by this, in relation to which the mind is com-
paratively passive. The latter owe their cogency rather to some
pre-existing activity of the mind, to some preconception or form
of expectation, which in relation to this resulting percept may, to
adopt the useful expression of Dr. J. Hughlings Jackson, be
called a process of pre-perception. As an illustration of each
class I may take the alleged experiences of ghost-seers. A
man may imagine that he sees a ghost either because he happens
in the dark to see an object which accidentally bears a curious
resemblance to an apparition as usually described, or because he
is in a room which he knows bears the reputation of being
haunted, and where consequently his imagination is busy shaping
the representation of the object. In most illusions of perception
both the elements of suggestion and preconception cooperate.
Yet we may have a pure illusion of suggestion, and in a centrally
originating hallucination we have clearly a pure illusion of pre-
conception. 1
Let us now pass to our special subject Illusions of Intro-
spection. By Introspection I mean here the mind's immediate
reflective cognition of its own states as such. In one sense, of
course, everything we know is a mental state, actual or imagined.
Thus a sense-impression is known exactly as any other feeling
1 1 have worked out a scheme of Sense-illusion in an article headed
" illusions of Perception " in the New Quarterly Magazine of April last.
Illusions of Introspection. 3
of the mind, as a mental modification. Yet we do not speak of
introspectively recognising a sensation. Our sense-impressions
are marked off from all other feelings by having an objective
aspect, so that in attending to one of them our minds pass away
from themselves in what Professor Bain calls the attitude of
objective regard. Introspection is confined to feelings which
want this objective aspect, and includes sensation only so far as
it is viewed apart from external objects on its subjective side,
as a feeling of the mind, a process which is next to impossible
where the sensation has little emotional colour, as an ordinary
sensation of sight or of articulate sound.
This being so, an illusion of introspection will in the main be
sufficiently distinguished from one of perception. Even a hal-
lucination of sense, whether setting out from a subjective sensa-
tion or not, always contains the semblance of such a sensation,
and so would not be correctly classed with errors of introspection.
One or two doubtful cases intermediate between the two groups
will be touched on presently.
Just as illusions of introspection must be marked off from
those of perception, so must they be distinguished from those of
memory. It may be contended with some show of reason that,
strictly speaking, all introspection is retrospection, since even in
attending to a persistent feeling the mind is reflectively repre-
senting to itself the immediately preceding momentary experience
of that feeling. In other words, to have a feeling and to know
that we have it are not precisely the same mental conditions,
the second being the immediate consequence of the first and
constituting a more fully developed intellectual state. Yet sup-
posing this view to be correct it does not hinder a broad
distinction between acts of introspection and acts of memory.
Introspection must be regarded as confined to immediately ante-
cedent mental states with reference to which no error of memory
can be supposed to arise. It would follow that illusions connect-
ed with the consciousness of personal identity would fall rather
under the class of mnemonic than that of introspective error.
Once more, an illusion of introspection must be distin-
guished from one of belief. An error of the latter sort may have
its origin in one of the former : thus a man's illusory opinion of
himself may involve errors of introspection. By the latter as
distinguished from the former I propose to mean only such
errors as are connected with single acts of introspection. In
relation to these such an illusion of belief would be viewed as a
compound.
Finally, it is to be observed that our definition of an illusion
of introspection serves to mark it off from a fallacy of introspec-
tion by the absence of anything like a conscious process
4 Illusions of Introspection.
inference. Thus if we suppose the derivation by Descartes
of the fact of the existence of God from his possession of the
idea to be erroneous, such a consciously performed act of reason-
ing would constitute a fallacy rather than an illusion of
introspection.
Thus far we have been concerned with settling the definition
or determining the notion of an illusion of introspection: we
have not yet inquired whether there answer to this ideal
scheme any actual contents. We have now to pass to this ques-
tion, namely, whether in observing and interpreting other mental
feelings besides sense-impressions and their counterfeits, sub-
jective sensations, anything analogous to sense-illusion ever
happens.
If we define an illusion of perception as an erroneous projec-
tion of subjective ideas into the region of immediately present
objective existence, we shall at once see that the idea of such an
illusion may be extended to misinterpretations of the immediate
subjective accompaniments of sense-impressions. Such illusions
would form a connecting link between those of perception
properly so-called, and illusions of introspection in a stricter
sense supposing such to exist.
As our first example of such an error we may take the wrong
attribution of beauty to external objects. I do not here raise
the question whether there is any external quality independent
of our minds answering to our sentiment of the beautiful, or
whether in every case our projection of this sentiment into the
region of objective existence is illusory : this is a philosophical
rather than a psychological question. I may assume here that
there are certain aspects of external things, certain relations of
form, colour, together with certain associations, which are com-
monly recognised as the causes of the feeling of beauty, and
popularly recognised as the embodiments of the quality. Accord-
ing to this view, illusion arises whenever an individual errone-
ously passes from a present feeling to the external object and
calls this beautiful, thereby regarding it as a cause of a common
aesthetic pleasure.
Now this error is very common. Our aesthetic impressions
though agreeing up to a certain point do not agree throughout.
Permanent differences of natural sensibility, of experience and
of association make one thing highly interesting to one man
while it is wholly uninteresting to another; and temporary
fluctuations of mental conditions will make a thing seem beau-
o
tiful to the same man at one time and not at another. Yet the
deeply-rooted habit of taking an individual feeling as the repre-
sentation of a common feeling, a habit which, as I have elsewhere
observed, is no doubt connected with the strongest social instincts
Illusions of Introspection. 5
of our nature, leads us invariably to give objective validity to
our private and personal aesthetic preferences.
It is to be remarked that these errors roughly fall into the
two classes of passive and active illusions. That is to say, the
wrong ascription of a common aesthetic value to an object may
arise either through a peculiar effect of the sense-impression or
through the cooperation of an antecedent subjective disposition.
The former class would be illustrated by the common attribution
of objective beauty to things which delight us mainly through
special individual suggestions, as when for example a man pre-
dicates a special beauty of his home scenery, or a mother of her
favourite boy. Illustrations of the active variety would be found
in those judgments which depend on a pre-existing condition of
mind. Our enjoyment of nature or art is conditioned in part by
our temporary mood or mental tone. There are moments of excep-
tional emotional exhilaration when even a commonplace landscape
will excite an appreciable thrill of admiration ; and in such a
case we irresistibly tend to assign a corresponding degree of
objective value to the scene. The error exactly corresponds to
those illusions of sense which arise from overlooking the rela-
tivity of our sensations to the organic conditions of the moment.
It may be said to be an illusion due to a temporary hyperaesthesis
of the emotional organs.
What applies to the sense of beauty will, it is clear, apply to
all other feelings excited by external objects. Nor is the error
confined to those cases in which the object is fitted to touch a
number of minds, such as the awful, the grotesque, the hideous
and so on, but sometimes arises even in the instance of a dis-
tinctly personal feeling. Thus the fond rhother instinctively
attributes the many feelings of pleasure excited in her mind by
the sight of her child in the form of certain lovable qualities to
their exciting cause. In the very act of loving it she regards it
as objectively lovable.
The other group of illusions standing between those of per-
ception proper and those of introspection are errors connected
with reading the external manifestations of the feelings of others,
and generally with the interpretation of signs so far as it is
immediate and not the result of a process of conscious reasoning.
To interpret the look or word of another is clearly a mental
process very analogous to sense-perception. There is first of all
a recognised sense-impression : and secondly the interpretation
of this impression by help of a representative image ; and both
processes appear to be equally immediate or 'intuitive'. On
the other hand there is a well-marked difference: for while
perception proper is an imaginative reconstruction of external
experiences, such as muscular and tactual feelings, interpretation
6
Illusions of Introspection,
of signs properly so called takes place by a representation of
subjective feelings. And further, and this is the chief point,
in the latter case there is a distinct recognition of the fact that
the feelings so represented are not our own, but belong to ano-
ther consciousness. 1
The errors incident to this process of immediate intuition of
others' feelings or thoughts are familiar enough. Here again we
may conveniently distinguish between a passive and an active
form of the illusion. A passive illusion arises whenever through
the force of an inseparable association a given external mark
calls up a wrong interpretative image. In the reading of emo-
tional expression the signal instance of this error is histrionic
illusion. The assumption of the characteristic bodily attitude,
gesture and tone of a passion, as anger, by a first-rate actor is
powerfully delusive, since the fact is, according to the best autho-
rities, that the actor cannot venture to give himself up to the
particular emotion which he simulates. Another example of this
illusion is not uncommon in everyday life. A man has some
peculiarity of features, such as unusually elevated eye-brows, or
a drawn corner of the mouth which irresistibly calls up some par-
ticular shade of feeling. Even when we grow accustomed to the
peculiarity, such is the force of the impulse to project the sug-
gested feeling that we continually tend to lapse into the silly error.
A similar error often happens with respect to the interpreta-
tion of language when this is used in an unfamiliar way. The
often ludicrous oddity of a foreign language to one who visits
the country in which it is spoken consists in the calling up of
wrong meanings, namely such as have become associated with
similar sounds in one's own language. The Englishman who
visits Germany cannot for a long time hear a lady use the
expression ' Mem Mann ' without a half-belief that the person
is specially dwelling on the fact of her husband's masculinity,
and the function of support and protection attributed to the sex.
The more active errors connected with a wrong reading of
feelings into other minds would furnish us with material for a
long chapter. I can only just touch on one or two striking
examples. It is a subject of common remark that a highly
sympathetic nature, eager for the response of another mind, is
predisposed to ascribe to those whom it meets utterly wrong
sentiments. The extreme case of this error is of course that of
1 We seem to want some scientific term to express this act of interpreting
the mental states of others. The word 'read' is not precise enough. It
is sometimes said that this interpretation is compounded of perception
proper and introspection : but this does not seem to me to be an adequate
account of the process. However this is, the reader will see my reasons for
dealing with it before introspection proper.
Illusions of Introspection, 7
the deluded lover who gazing into the eyes of a quite common-
place mistress ' intuites ' by a fine spiritual sense a perfect
reflection of his favourite aspirations and aims.
Again, the interpretation of nature by the anthropomorphic
and the poetic fancy is clearly an example of an illusory pro-
jection of individual feeling. Sometimes this is due to some
very remarkable degree of resemblance between the object and
the human form : but in most cases the force of the illusion is
due to a strong emotional predisposition in the spectator's mind.
The lonely communer with nature, though he has turned his
back on human sympathisers, tends to spread his deepest feel-
ings over his inanimate surroundings. His longing, his sadness,
his momentary delights seem to flash back upon him from the
face of nature as from a mirror. And it is this strong emotional
craving for sympathy which so often underlies those quaint
poetic transformations of natural objects into living forms on
which I had occasion to dwell when speaking of illusions of
sense.
Finally it may be noted that this erroneous reading of indi-
vidual feelings into other minds is exemplified in a good deal of
current criticism of art. Thus a reader who feels in a particular
way when reading a poem instinctively tends to project the
feeling into the work and to regard it as the direct outcome of
the author's mind. He recognises it, he will tell you, by an
' intuitive faculty '. Unfortunately it not unfrequently happens
that two natures are affected differently by one and the same
poem, just because they come to the reading of it with very
different emotional predispositions and anticipations ; and then
there is the obvious difficulty of ascribing incompatible feelings
to one and the same mind. A student of the ' higher criticism,'
as it is called, may amuse himself by discovering instances of
such contradictory emotional intuitions. And the same thing
shows itself in the current modes of talking about music. It is
a commonplace that the same music is felt very differently by
different persons according to their emotional susceptibilities and
dispositions. Starting from this well-ascertained fact, Mr. Gurney
has recently argued with considerable ingenuity that much of
the common reading of certain sentiments into musical composi-
tion as though they were in the composer's mind and consciously
expressed themselves in his musical utterances is altogether
illusory. 1
In all these cases the illusion will of course have more of the
active character if in addition to the pre-existing force of per-
manent habits of feeling there is some temporary concrete
1 The Power of Sound, pp. 345 ff.
8 Illusions of Introspection.
emotional impulse at work. Thus a man will more readily find
sadness in a piece of music if lie goes to listen to it in a sad
mood.
Precisely the same thing shows itself in the more intellectual
kind of interpretation, that of words. Our misapprehensions of
others' thoughts are due in part to our permanent intellectual
habits, in part to our temporary intellectual condition. To give
an illustration of this last, the Section "On Language" in the fifth
volume of Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind begins thus : " The
great Lagrange," &c. Having the image of ' language ' in my
mind I read again and again " The great Language," puzzling
over the sense, before I recognised my error.
It follows from what has just been said that when an external
impression is one which suggests the existence of a particular
feeling in another mind, and this is instantly recognised as a
cause of some different feeling in our mind, the tendency to give
objective reality to this cause will be exceptionally powerful,
being compounded of the two forces just considered. And
accordingly it is in this class of feelings, as gratitude, anger,
contempt, &c., that we find some of the most coercive forms of
illusion. The action of another that seems to be an intentional
injury will often produce for a moment the faint illusion that
we have been wronged even when evidence has completely
satisfied our judgment that no injury was intended. The con-
trasting illusion is illustrated in those cases in which vain people
tend to take as compliments words and actions which the
slightest cool inspection would show to be quite innocent of any
such intention. It is obvious that temperament and pre-existing
habits of feeling, together with temporary conditions of mind,
will greatly determine the character and force of these illusions
in different cases.
It may be added that the powerful tendency of the anthropo-
morphic fancy to vivify and personify nature, which as we have
seen rests mainly on the second of the two impulses just con-
sidered, is aided by the first as well. It is a familiar fact that
when a man accidentally hits his foot against a stone or other
obstacle he feels for the moment an irresistible impulse to be
angry with the innocent offender, that is to say to vaguely repre-
sent the object as intending to injure him. And in quite a
similar way our calmer emotions tend to construct causes for
themselves in the shape of vaguely represented emotional dis-
positions and intentions in nature towards ourselves. Thus the
deep pleasure which a beautiful natural scene imparts easily
passes into the form of a sentiment of gratitude towards some
friendly spirit of Nature.
But the reader may think that all this time we have been
Illusions of Introspection. 9
dwelling on the confines of illusions of perception and have not
touched as yet any errors of introspection properly so called.
Allowing the force of this remark I will now pass to our proper
inquiry, namely, whether there are any errors connected with
the interpretation of subjective states of mind which do not
arise as concomitants of the direct effects of external agencies,
but appear as isolated subjective phenomena.
Now a mere glance at our everyday modes of describing
internal states proper will show that there is something like a
slight constant error in the ordinary process of introspection.
Abstract reflection on subjective feelings is an art learned with
considerable difficulty, and presupposes a fairly high degree of
intellectual culture. Where this is wanting there is a manifest
disposition to translate internal feelings into terms of external .
impressions. Not that the process approaches to one of halluci-
nation ; but only that the internal feelings are intuited as having
a cause or origin analogous to that of sense-impressions. Thus
to the uncultivated mind a sudden thought seems like an
announcement from without. The superstitious man talks
of being led by some good or evil spirit when new ideas arise in
his mind or new resolutions shape themselves. To the simple
intelligence of the boor every thought presents itself as an ana-
logue of an audible voice, and he commonly describes his rough
musings as saying this and that to himself. And this mode of
viewing the matter is reflected even in the language of cultivated
persons. Thus we say ' The idea struck me,' or ' was borne in on
me/ ' I was prompted to do so and so/ and so on, and in this
manner tend to assimilate internal to external mental phe-
nomena.
Much the same thing shows itself in our customary modes of
describing our internal feelings of pleasure and pain. When a
man in a state of mental depression speaks of having ' a load '
on his mind it is evident that he is interpreting a mental by
help of an analogy with a bodily feeling. Similarly when we
talk of the mind being torn by doubt or worn by anxiety. It
would seem as though we instinctively translated mental plea-
sures and pains into the language of bodily sensations.
The explanation of this deeply rooted tendency to a slightly
illusory view of our mental states is, I think, an easy one. For
one thing it follows from the relation of the mental image to
the sense-impression that we should tend to assimilate the
former to the latter as to its nature and origin. This would
account for the common habit of regarding thoughts, which
are of course accompanied by representatives of their verbal
symbols, as internal voices, a habit which is probably especially
characteristic of the child and the uncivilised man, as it is also
characteristic of the insane.
10
Illusions of Introspection.
Another reason, however, must be sought for the habit of
assimilating internal feelings to external sensations. If lan-
guage has been evolved as an incident of social life, at once its
effect and its cause, it would seem to follow that it must have first
shaped itself to the needs of expressing those common objective
experiences which we receive by way of our senses. Our
habitual modes of thought, limited as- they are by language,
retain traces of this origin. We cannot conceive any mental
process except by some vague analogy to a physical process.
In other words, we can even now only think with perfect
clearness when we are concerned with some object of common
cognition. Thus the sphere of external sensation and of physical
agencies furnishes us with the one norm or standard, and we
instinctively view subjective mental states as analogues of these. 1
Still it may be said that these slight nascent errors are hardly
worth naming, and the question would still appear to recur
whether there are other fully developed errors deserving to
rank along with illusions of sense.
An examination of these last shows that in many cases the
error involves not only a misinterpretation of a present impres-
sion but .a misapprehension of the impression itself. Thus
some of the illusions known as colour-contrast, the illusion of
the stereoscope, and so on, may be said to rest on an inability
to distinctly attend to and recognise the elements of sense-
impression actually present. Now to this variety of sense-
illusion there corresponds a number of errors of introspection.
In point of fact, an illusion of introspection proper may in
general be defined as a misapprehension of the contents of
consciousness.
At first sight no doubt it looks as if the knowledge of a
present feeling is absolutely certain. Yet a little consideration
of the errors to which we are liable in detecting the quality of
a present sense-impression may prepare us to find that the
mind's internal eye is sometimes deceived. Introspection, so
as we confine our attention to
long
a single well-defined and
1 The reader will remark that tliis habit of giving an external material
origin to subjective states is in a sense complementary to that instinctive
tendency to attribute life and consciousness to inanimate objects of which
I have already spoken. In an essay on " Poetic Imagination and Primitive
Conception," published in the Cornhill Magazine^ I have tried to show that
both impulses have their explanation in the fact that our first knowledge
was naturally of human beings (ourselves and others) with their two-
Bided nature bodily and mental, and that we make this our type or norm
in regarding all forms of existence, material and mental alike. It would
seem to follow from this that the representation of any mental state must
at least be accompanied by a vague representation of one material object,
namely our bodily organism, as a support for the, particular feeling.
Illusions of Introspection. 1 1
fairly intense feeling which can be supposed to remain constant
for a short duration, is of course above suspicion. If I am
suffering from intense mental depression a mere glance inwards
will suffice to guarantee the existence of the feeling ; and no
stronger certainty is attainable than that thus reached. Yet
the problem of introspective cognition is rarely as simple as
this. Let us compare the process of self-observation with that
of external perception.
First of all, it is noteworthy that a state of consciousness at any
one moment is an exceedingly complex thing. It is made up of
a mass of feelings and active impulses which often combine and
blend in a most inextricable way. External sensations come in
groups, too, but as a rule they do not fuse in apparently simple
wholes as our internal feelings often do. The very possibility
of perception depends on a clear discrimination of sense-ele-
ments, for example, the several sensations of colour obtained by
the stimulation of different parts of the retina. 1 But no such
clearly defined mosaic of feelings presents itself in the internal
region : one element overlaps and partly loses itself in another,
and subjective analysis is often an exceedingly difficult matter.
Our consciousness is thus a closely woven texture in which the
eye fails to trace the several threads or strands. Moreover
there is the fact that many of these ingredients are exceedingly
shadowy, belonging to that obscure region of subconsciousness
which it is so hard to penetrate with the light of discriminative
attention. This remark applies with particular force to that
mass of organic feelings which constitutes what is known as
ccemesthesis or vital sense.
While, to speak figuratively, the minute anatomy of con-
sciousness is thus difficult with respect to longitudinal sections
of the mental column, it is no less difficult with respect to
transverse sections. Under ordinary circumstances external
impressions persist so that they can be transfixed by a deliberate
act of attention, and objects rarely flit over the external scene
so rapidly as to allow us no time for a careful recognition of the
impression. Not so in the case of the internal region of mind.
The composite states of consciousness just described never
remain perfectly uniform for the shortest conceivable duration.
They change continually, just as the contents of the kaleido-
scope vary with every shake of the instrument. Thus one
shade of feeling runs into another in such a way that it is often
impossible to detect its exact quality ; and even when the
character of the feeling does not change, its intensity is under-
going alterations so that an accurate observation of its quantity
1 I need hardly observe that physiology shows that there is no separa-
tion of different elementary colour-sensations which are locally identical.
12
Illusions of Introspection.
is impracticable. Also, in this unstable shifting internal scene
features may appear for a duration too short to allow of close
recognition. In this way it happens that we cannot sharply
divide the feeling of the moment from its antecedents and its
consequents.
The full import of these considerations can only be seen when
we reflect on what is involved in a process of recognition, ex-
ternal and internal alike. It clearly involves first of all an act
of attention, and this requires time, since it takes place by
means of a process of focussing or adaptation, discriminative or
selective. But again, this process of adaptation involves the
bringing of the particular feeling under the proper representa-
tion ; for even an internal feeling is intellectually cognised by
means of a fusion of the representation of a feeling with the feeling
itself. Now it is to be remembered that, when in the attitude
of attending and framing the necessary representation, we neces-
sarily pass out of this particular state of feeling which we were
in before the process of recognition began. In other words, as
observers of what is going on within us, we cannot be in the
same mental condition as when not observing ; there is a slight
modification of the contents of consciousness whenever there is
the direction of a deliberate attention to these contents. From
all of which follows that it must be very easy to overlook,
confuse and transform, both as to quality and as to quantit
the actual ingredients of our mental condition.
Hence there spring a number of small errors of introspection
which, to distinguish them from others to be spoken of presently,
may be called passive. These would include all errors in de-
tecting what is in consciousness due to the intricacies of the
phenomena, and not aided by any strong bias. For example,
a mental state may fail to disclose its component parts to intro-
spective attention. In the chemistry of mind results are often
so blended as to become no longer distinguishable. Thus a
motive may enter into our action which is so entangled with
other feelings as to escape attention. The fainter the feeling
the greater the difficulty of detaching it and inspecting it in
isolation. Again, an error of introspection may have its ground
in the fugitive character of a feeling. If, for example, a man is
asked whether a rapid action was a voluntary one, he may easily
in retrospection imagine that it was not so, when as a matter
of fact the action was preceded by a momentary volition. Such
transitory feelings which cannot at the moment be seized by an
act of attention are pretty certain to disappear at once, leaving
not even a temporary trace in consciousness.
It is to be observed that this confusing of elements of con-
sciousness involves a species of error closely analogous to an
Illusions of Introspection. 13
illusion of perception which depends on a misinterpretation of a
sense-impression. This is illustrated in the case in which a
feeling or emotion is confounded with some inference based on
it. In the more vulgar form of this error, there is an ' intui-
tion ' of something supposed to be immediately given in the
feeling itself. For instance, a man whose mind is thrilled by
the pulsation of a new joy exclaims * This is the happiest
moment of my life/ and this assurance seems to be contained
in the very intensity of the feeling itself. Of course cool
reflection will tell him that what he affirms is merely a belief
the accuracy of which presupposes processes of recollection and
judgment, but to the man's mind at the moment the supremacy
of this particular joy is immediately intuited. And so with the
assurance that the present feeling, for example of love, is
undying, that it is equal to the most severe trials, and so on.
A man is said to feel at the moment that it is so, though as
the facts believed have reference to absent circumstances and
events it is plain that the knowledge is by no means intuitive.
In this way our emotions in the moments of their greatest
intensity carry away our intellects with them, and throw into
confusion the region of truth and certainty and of pure imagina-
tion, and even the narrow domain of the present and the vast
domain of the past and future. At such moments differences of
present and future may be said to disappear and the energy of
the emotion to constitute an immediate assurance of its exist-
ence absolutely. 1
We will now pass to the consideration of other illusions of
introspection more analogous to the active illusions of perception.
In an examination of these we find that a pure representation
may under certain circumstances simulate the appearance of a
presentation, that a mental image may approximate to a sense-
impression. In the case of the internal feelings this liability
shows itself in a still more striking form. The higher feelings
or emotions are distinguished from the simple sense-feelings in
being largely representative. Thus a feeling of contentment at
any moment, though no doubt conditioned by the bodily state
and the character of the organic-sensations or ccenaesthesis,
commonly depends for the most part on intellectual representa-
tions of external circumstances or relations, and may be called
an ideal foretaste of actual satisfactions, such as the pleasures of
success, of companionship, and so on. This being so, it is easy
for imagination to call up a semblance of these higher feelings.
Since they depend largely on representation, a mere act of
1 It is evident that when the mind wrongly passes from a present feeling
to something remote in. time, the error approaches to the class of illusions
of belief.
14
Illusions of Introspection.
feeling
imagine
representation may suffice to excite a degree of this
hardly distinguishable from the actual one. Thus to
myself as contented is really to see myself at the moment as
actually contented. We should expect from all this that in the
act of introspection the mind is apt, within certain limits, to
find what it is prepared to find. And since there is in these
acts often a distinct wish to find some particular feeling, we can
see how easy it must be for a man through bias and a wrong
focussing of his attention to deceive himself up to a certain
point with respect to the actual contents of his mind.
Let us look at one of these active illusions. It would at first
sight seem to be a perfectly simple thing to determine at any
given moment whether we are enjoying ourselves, whether our
emotional condition rises above the pleasure-threshold or point
of indifference and takes on a positive hue of the agreeable or
pleasurable. Yet there is good reason for supposing that people
not unfrequently deceive themselves on this matter. It is
perhaps hardly an exaggeration to say that most of us are
capable of imagining that we are having enjoyment when we
conform to the temporary fashion of social amusement. It has
been cynically observed that people go into society less in
order to be happy than to seem so, and one may add that in
this semblance of enjoyment they may, provided they are not
biases, deceive themselves as well as others. The expectation of
enjoyment, the knowledge that the occasion is intended to bring
about this result, the recognition of the external signs of enjoy-
ment in others, all this may serve to blind a man in the earlier
stages of social amusement to his actual mental condition.
If we look closely into this variety of illusion, we shall see
that it is very similar in its structure and origin to that kind of
erroneous perception which arises from inattention to the actual
impression of the moment under the influence of a strong
expectation of something different. The representation of our-
selves as entertained dislodges from our internal field of vision
our actual condition, relegating this to the region of obscure
consciousness. The essence of self-deception may be said to be
the holding of a representation in the upper region of clear
consciousness so as to cover from view something below it.
Could we for a moment get rid of this representation and look
at the real feelings of the time, we should become aware of our
error; and it is possible that the process of becoming blase
involves a waking up to a good deal of illusion of the kind.
Just as we can thus deceive ourselves within certain limits
as to our emotional condition so we can mistake the real nature
of our intellectual condition. Thus when an idea is particularly
grateful to our minds we may easily imagine that we believe it
Illusions of Introspection. 15
when in point of fact all the time there is a subconscious
process of criticism going on, which if we attended to it for a
moment would amount to a distinct act of disbelief. The
rationale of flattery, which is not ineffective even with really in-
tellectual men, seems to be that it disposes the flattered person
to indulge the pleasant half-illusion that the words are true,
even when careful reflection must show that they are an ex-
aggeration. That is to say, the flatterer's assertion calls up a
vivid representation which for the moment simulates the form
of a belief.
It is plain that the external conditions of life impose on the
individual certain habits of feeling which often conflict with his
personal propensities. As a member of society he has a power-
ful motive to attribute certain feelings to himself, and this
motive acts as a bias in disturbing his vision of what is actually
in his mind. While this holds good of lighter matters as that
of enjoyment just referred to, it applies still more to graver
matters. Thus, for example, a man may easily deceive himself
that he feels a proper sentiment of indignation against a perpe-
trator of some mean or cruel act, when as a matter of fact his
feeling is much more the personal one of compassion for the
previously-liked offender. In this way we impose on ourselves,
disguising our real sentiments by a thin veil of make-believe.
The great region of this kind of illusion is that of the moral
and religious life. With respect to our real motives, our domi-
nant aspirations, and our highest emotional experiences, we are
liable to deceive ourselves. The moralist and the theologian
have clearly recognised the possibilities of self-deception in
matters of feeling and impulse. To them it is no mystery that
the human heart should mistake the fictitious for the real, the
momentary and evanescent for the abiding. And they have
recognised, too, the double source of these errors, in the powerful
disposition to exaggerate a present feeling on the one hand, and
on the other hand to take a mere wish to feel in a particular
way for the actual possession of the feeling. Men of deep reli-
gious natures and given to introspection and self-scrutiny have
again and again confessed to their weakness in separating the
wheat of sincere impulse from the tares of spurious sentiment.
And the morbid melancholy to which this habit of self -anatomy
\vhen indulged in to excess often leads sufficiently illustrates
the uncertainties which characterise the process of moral self-
anatomy.
The opinion of theologians respecting the nature of moral
introspection presents a singular contrast to that entertained
by some philosophers as to the nature of self -consciousness.
It is supposed by many of these that in interrogating their
16
Illusions of Introspection.
internal consciousness they are lifted above all risk of error.
The 'deliverance of consciousness' is to them something bearing
the seal of a supreme authority and must not be called
in question. And so they make an appeal to individual con-
sciousness a final resort in all matters of philosophical dispute.
Now on the face of it, it does not seem probable that this
operation should have an immunity from all liability to error.
For the matters respecting which we are directed to introspect
ourselves are the most subtle and complex things of our intel-
lectual and emotional life. And some of these philosophers even
go so far as to affirm that the plain man is quite equal to the
niceties of this process.
It has been brought as a charge against some of these same
philosophers that they have based certain of their doctrines on
errors of introspection. This charge must of course be received
with some sort of suspicion here, since it has been brought for-
ward by avowed disciples of another philosophic school. Never-
theless as there is from our present disinterested and purely
scientific point of view a presumption that philosophers like
other men are fallible, and since it is certain that philosophical
introspection does not materially differ from other kinds, it seems
permissible just to glance at some of these alleged illusions in
relation to other and more vulgar forms.
These so-called philosophical illusions will be found like the
vulgar ones just spoken of to illustrate the distinction drawn
between Passive and Active illusions. That is to say, the alleged
misreading of individual consciousness would result now from a
confusion of distinct elements, including wrong suggestion, now
from a powerful predisposition to read something into the
phenomena.
A kind of illusion in which the passive element seems most
conspicuous would be the error into which the interrogator of
individual consciousness is said to fall respecting simple unana-
lysable states of mind. On the face of it, it is not likely that a
mere inward glance at the tangle of conscious states should
suffice to determine what is such a perfectly simple mental
phenomenon. A study of the limits of discrimination with
respect to simultaneous sensations would lead us to expect that
the feelings and ideas which enter consciousness together must
tend to blend inseparably in apparently simple states. Accord-
ingly, when a writer declares that an act of introspection
demonstrates the simple unanalysable character of such a
feeling as the sentiment of beauty or that of moral approval,
the opponent of this view clearly has some show of argument
for saying that this simplicity may be altogether illusory.
Similarly when it is said that the idea of space contains no
Illusions of Introspection. 17
representations of muscular sensation, the statement may
clearly arise from an "inability to analyse the idea. 1
In most cases of these alleged philosophical errors, however,
the active and passive factors seem to combine. There are cer-
tain intricacies in the mental phenomenon itself favouring the
chances of error, and there are independent predispositions
leading the mind to look at the phenomenon in a wrong way.
This seems to apply to the famous declaration of a certain school
of thinkers that by an act of introspection we can intuite the
fact of liberty, that is to say, a power of spontaneous determina-
tion of action superior to and regulative of the influence of
motives. It may be plausibly contended that this idea arises
partly from a mixing up of facts of present consciousness with
inferences from them, and partly from a natural predisposition
of the mind to invest itself with this supreme power of absolute
origination. 2
In a similar way it might be contended that other famous
philosophic dicta are founded on a process of erroneous introspec-
tion of subjective mental states. In some cases indeed it seems
a plausible explanation to regard these illusions as mere survivals
in attenuated shadowy form of grosser popular illusions. But
space forbids my entering on these, which, moreover, hardly fall
perhaps under our definition of an illusion of introspection.
In drawing up this rough sketch of the Illusions of Introspec-
tion I have had no practical object in view. I have tried to look
at the facts as they are apart from any conclusions to be drawn
from them. The question how far the liability to error in any
region of inquiry vitiates the whole process is a difficult one ;
and the question whether the illusions to which we are subject
in introspection materially affect the value of the introspective
method in psychology, as many affirm, is too subtle a one to be
treated now. It must suffice to say that I do not think it does
any more than the risk of sense-illusion can be said materially
to affect the value of external observation. The obvious differ-
ence is that in the latter we are face to face with a common
object of inspection, whereas in introspection we are attending
to what is individual and private. For this reason individual
1 1 find that after practice I recognise this ingredient much better than
I did at first. And this exactly answers to Helmholtz's contention that
elementary sensations as partial tones can be detected after practice. Such
separate recognition involves correct representation. On the other hand it
must be allowed that the intuitionist may say that the empiricist is here
reading something into the idea which does not belong to it.
2 1 may as well be frank and say that I myself, assuming free-will to be
an illusion, have tried to trace the various threads of influence which have
contributed to its remarkable vitalitv. See Sensation and Intuition, Chapter
v. 5 on " The Genesis of the Free-Will Doctrine ".
2
18 Our Control of Space and Time.
errors are much less easily rectified in the latter region than in
the former. This is the characteristic difficulty of the introspec-
tion method. Yet even our subjective experiences are found
within certain limits to agree one with another, and in the mul-
titude of observers there is an approach to objective certainty.
And though it cannot be said that introspection has yet become
a very perfect scientific instrument, it is to be remembered that
it is a comparatively new acquirement of the race, which may
be expected to gain in precision as evolution advances.
JAMES SULLY.
II._OUB CONTROL OF SPACE AND TIME.
PHILOSOPHEES have, as a rule, been so much occupied with
inquiring into the origin and necessity of our notions of space
and time, that they have generally passed over the somewhat
humbler task of inquiring what are the nature and limits of
our actual control over each of these entities. And yet it may
be argued that hardly any inquiry can be of more importance
from a speculative point of view ; at any rate for the logician,
whatever it may be for the metaphysician. For is not almost
all the knowledge we possess a result of inference ? and is not
the result of inference generally reducible to, or at least expres-
sible as, some real or imaginary change in our place or time ?
The wonderful complexity and ingenuity of the processes to
which we have to resort, in order to attain to the aim as just
indicated, tend very much in the case of most persons to
obscure the real simplicity of that aim from view. But let us
take a very simple example. There is a tree at the bottom of
my garden, and I want to know how far off it is, and to what
species it belongs. I can settle the former question roughly, in
a few seconds, by pacing the distance, or with tolerably com-
plete accuracy, in a few minutes, by the help of a measuring
rod or line. The latter question is settled with equal ease, sup-
posing of course that I have the requisite prior experience and
knowledge to draw upon, by just going up to the tree and
looking at its flower and leaves.
If however the tree happens to be on the other side of a river
which I cannot cross, then I have to resort to calculation or
inference for the purpose. Of course it would be much simpler
and more satisfactory to go and look at the tree still, if I could
only do so. But failing in this I have to set about ' inferring '.
To decide the distance I appeal to some sort of trigonometrical
Our Control of Space and Time. 19
considerations ; and to decide the species I gather up what help
I can from the hints furnished by the size and shape of the
tree, the time of coming into leaf, the colour of the flowers ; or
perhaps, if I am lucky, a bit of leaf or blossom may be blown
within reach of me. But so great is our triumph, and so com-
plete sometimes our success in finding elaborate substitutes for
a simple walk or change of place, that we are very apt to over-
look how almost ridiculously simple the end we aim at would
often be, if only our faculties of locomotion were less restricted
than they unfortunately are at present. There are myriads of
facts about which if any doubt is felt it is dispelled at once by
some one just going to look at the things ; there are myriads of
other facts, in all essential points often just as simple, which
because unfortunately we cannot 'go and look at them,' task
the highest powers of thought of our greatest philosophers, and
the most exquisite skill of our instrument makers. If we waut
to know how hot it is at the Antipodes we go there ourselves,
or send some one else there, with a thermometer. But if we
want to know how hot it is half way there, viz., at the centre of
the Earth, or indeed whether it be very hot at all there, we are
led into the most intricate questions of physics and mathe-
matics, through which at present we can find no certain way.
Similar considerations apply also to the case of time, and, if
possible, even more strongly ; for here, for one reason or another,
we .seem to be more prominently occupied with the mere des-
cription of events (which is equivalent to their direct observation)
and less on the whole with their analysis and generalisation.
Very many of the facts which the ordinary historian toilsomely
works out by elaborate comparison of records, and inference in
filling up the gaps which they leave between them, are such as
he could settle almost at once and completely to his satisfaction,
if only he could just step back into the time in question. It
may be replied that though he cannot go to the events the
events can come to him, through the testimony of witnesses and
other records. It is clear however that this one-sided process is
a very poor substitute. The witness is not of our own selection :
perhaps he does not know what are the important points which
he ought to observe ; and, one may almost say, he knows that
he cannot be cross-examined, and is therefore subject to hardly
any check. A few hours spent in personal observation upon
the spot by a critical historian himself, would sometimes be
worth a whole volume compiled by contemporary witnesses.
This must especially be the case where we are concerned with
general dispositions and tendencies rather than specific facts.
People have disputed, and will continue to dispute, for instance,
whether and to what extent our age is more moral than former
20
Our Control of Space and Time.
ages. What a light we should gain upon this point if only some
London police magistrate, some doctor in general practice, or
some shrewd man about town, could go, with proper introduc-
tions, into some other century, and live for a few months on
easy terms with its inhabitants !
But many of the past facts which we want to decide can rest
upon no personal testimony. We cannot appeal to the witness,
because he was never there. And yet the facts themselves may
be of just the same kind as those e very-day phenomena in the
decision and estimate of which any ordinary person is nearly as
good a judge as any other. Such inquiries as whether the
earth was once fluid, whether the glacial period prevailed more
than once, and how far southwards it extended, are not in
themselves more difficult of decision than to decide whether the
lava from some volcano is fluid, or whether there are two
winters annually in the Arctic regions. So far as any difficul-
ties in the phenomena themselves are concerned, apart from our
means of getting to know them where we are now, these ' ques-
tions could be settled at once by any witness as good as an
ordinary skipper, without the least hesitation or doubt. He
would merely have to tell us what he had seen and feltj and the
matter would be set at rest at once.
The foregoing considerations are obvious enough when pointed
out; and they would probably be perfectly familiar to every
one, were it not that, as already remarked, the excessive ingenuity
and complication of the various substitutes which have been
discovered for the unattainable visit of observation tend to con-
ceal from view the extreme simplicity of that end in itself. In
saying this it is not intended to imply that the processes of
inference at all resemble observation. On the contrary many
of them are of a highly abstract and generalised kind, and they
are mostly carried on more or less symbolically. But they
ground or result in an imaginary observation. This is also the
form which their concrete applications take, and we may fairly
say that we have not attained a proper grasp of them until we
can mentally reproduce them in this way. We must be able to
individualise or picture the results to ourselves before we can be
said properly to know them, and to do this is clearly to take an
imaginary observation of them.
We may see then already how important would be a com-
plete control over space and time, as for want of a better
i'orm of expression we have ventured to call it, for all purposes
which concern our inferences. Any such control, if really
complete, would tell at once by superseding all need for observa-
tion ; for why carry on in our study a painfully elaborate and
circuitous process when the direct process for which it was
Our Control of Space and Time. 21
meant to be a substitute was itself within our power? And
indirectly it also tells in the same way by both strengthening
and simplifying the processes of reasoning. The wider the basis
of observation from which we start the better grounded, as a
rule, are our conclusions, and the shorter the processes of getting
at them. Every bit of extra power therefore that we could gain
over these two all-pervading conditions of things would diminish
the sphere and lighten the work of inference. Before looking
closer at the details, let us just ask in a word or two. what it is
that we wish for ; in other words, what are the requirements
for that power of observation which if complete would render
all inference superfluous, and which in proportion as it approxi-
mates towards completeness so powerfully aids our inferenn
These requirements seem reducible to the two following regard
being had to the nature of our faculties and the general condi-
tions under which we have to employ them : power to move
about as freely as we may wish in space or time, and power to
enlarge space and time to any extent we may need. The sense
in which this latter requirement has to be understood will be
more fully discussed in the sequel.
Let us begin with the former, viz., our power of locomotion
(the reader will observe that we are obliged to use, in many
cases, space-words for time-ideas, and vice versa, from inadequacy
in ordinary terminology). What our powers are in this respect
as regards space, every one knows. Within very small limits
we can move ourselves, or the objects with which we are con-
cerned, up and down and about, in three dimensions, as we please.
Within wider limits, viz., that of the surface of the globe, we
are restricted to two dimensions. Beyond that again we are
hampered still further by being confined to one dimension only,
our motion along that even being quite beyond our own control.
This of course refers to the motion of the earth round the sun,
or any further motion that our system may have through space.
Even this however, as an aid to knowledge, counts for some-
thing, so that we should not receive it without gratitude ; for
some of our knowledge of the shape and magnitude of the
visible heavens depends more or less upon this power of linear
movement.
But though every one knows the nature and limit of our
powers in this respect, it is only those who have given some
attention to psychology who can at all realise their import-
ance in the processes of gaming knowledge, or the extent
therefore to which our powers of inference are crippled by thcii-
very partial and one-sided development. Let us then take an
example and look at it a little more in detail ; and instead !'
beginning with some broad and concrete circumstance or aggiv-
22
hir Control of Bpace and Time.
gate of circumstances, it will be better to commence with a
minute one. I am inspecting some small object, say a penknife
of unfamiliar construction, and I want clearly to understand its
mechanism, size and shape. How is it that I am able to do this
so completely and accurately ? Mainly on this ground, that I
am able to turn it about at will so as to present any face towai ds
me, and to put it at any required distance far or near. With
this, however, must be combined an important consequence of
this power of adjustment, viz., the power of looking at the same
point of the object again and again as often as we please. This
consideration is a very important one. My actual range of
observation, as every one knows, is at any one moment extremely
minute, almost indefinitely so, the merest point only being pre-
sented to the eye. But by running the eye repeatedly over the
main outlines, by frequent recurrence to points already once
looked at so as to bring them into connexion with the remain-
ing points, we succeed in building the various parts up into one
connected whole. We then consider that we have understood
or taken the whole object in. To attain to this end it clearly
does not much matter whether the power of local movement is
on our side or that of the object, whether we turn about it or
make it turn all sides to us. Motion being merely relative,
either of these amounts to that control of space of which we are
talking ; and it is generally more convenient, when we can do
so, to move the object rather than to move ourselves, for much
the same reasons as make the turner prefer that the object
should rotate under his tool rather than he be at the trouble of
moving his tool round the object. But without this power of
freely moving the thing relatively to ourselves or ourselves
relatively to the thing, we should have extremely slight oppor-
tunities of getting familiar with the mutual arrangement of the
various parts of any object small or great.
Now this state of powerlessness represents almost exactly our
relation to events in respect of time. We are bound, as we all
know, to go steadily forwards : we have no power to stand still,
go sideways or backwards. It is easy to perceive how serious a
hindrance is thus caused in our investigations. Suppose we are
examining some small time-event. If it present itself in the
form of some process which is entirely within human control we
may probably be able to stop it altogether at some arbitrary
point, or to invert its order of occurrence. This comes to very
much the same thing as being able to turn the pen-knife over
in our hands in point of fact we are making use of our superior
powers of space-locomotion and are substituting movement here
for movement in time. The comparison therefore is not quite a
parallel one ; for it is not really the same event which we thus
Our Control of Space and Time. 23
turn about temporarily, but only an exactly similar one. It is
as if we had no power to move our knife, but by looking about
the room could observe any quantity of other knives differently
disposed close by, but all exactly similar in their construction.
We should thus contrive to supplement our impressions gained
from one of them by those gained from the others. When how-
ever the operation under observation is a natural one, and there-
fore outside of our direct control, we are in general quite powerless
to do anything of this kind. It is a very difficult thing to find
what would popularly be called the ' same event ' twice over
that is, two distinct events alike in all essential respects, but
differing from one another by being each of them in exactly the
desired stage of development. Different stages of development
can often be secured readily enough, but they labour under the
essential defect of discontinuity : that is, we cannot secure any
desired exact intermediate stage at will : to say nothing of the
obvious difficulty of securing that they shall really be alike in
all other essential particulars. Suppose, for instance, we are
examining the process of germination of a seed. We may find
it the best plan to grow a great many of them, and then select
some of them for examination, thus securing that there shall be
some of them in almost all the successive stages of development.
But this seems to fall just as far short of what we really want
as would an offer to look at a variety of knives, very much like
one another, lying in various directions about the room, but
without permission to stir from our position or touch any one of
them, fall short of the advantage of handling any one of them
at leisure, and turning it about into any desired position. What
a gain, for instance, it would be to any student, say of embryo-
logy, if he could put his object under a microscope and then
shift it a few minutes or hours forwards or backwards in time
according to his choice ! Forwards of course he can go, or rather
must go, as things are now, provided the processes in question
are not brought to a stand-still by means of the observation
itself. But apart from the tedious uniformity of the pace with
which that progress may now be carried on, there is the fatal
defect that we cannot pause at the critical stages, and recall and
re-observe them at our leisure. What we want is the power to
stop still and to go backwards whenever we please. Compare
the position of a man who has got an intricate argument in
writing before him, with that of one who can merely listen to it
as it is repeated to him in order, and we shall realise the differ-
ence between what our powers of observation now are and what
they might have been had these things been other than they are.
What we want in fact is a microscope with a double set of
stage-screws : one set to move the stage about as is now done,
24
Our Control of Space and Time.
in respect of space, and the other set to move it about in a
similar way in respect of time. A very small range of such
movement would answer our purpose. Many an intricate ques-
tion which has puzzled physiologists and others for years, might
then probably be cleared up in a few minutes ; for no one needs
to have it pointed out to him how much easier it is to keep the
same object continuously in view under a slow movement of any
kind, than it is to detect and recognise it, or rather something
else very much like it, amidst a crowd of varying circumstances
which only permit an occasional glimpse.
Physical speculators have not unfrequently indulged in fanci-
ful modes of attaining the equivalent of such a power as that
just indicated. Since light travels with finite velocity, we are
at liberty to conceive an object moving so fast as to outstrip it.
Suppose a human eye receding from our system into space with
a velocity greater than that of light, and occasionally pausing
for a moment so as to permit the rays from the objects which it
was leaving behind to overtake it and record their impression.
We should then invert, so far as that eye was concerned., the
relative course of events, and this would be, so far as all visual
considerations applied, precisely that regression into past time
which is desired. Doubtless the object in question would thus
become diminished in size, and perhaps dimmed in brightness,
at a most prodigious rate. But in spite of this it might still be
possible thus to make out certain features such as the change of
colour in some of the fixed stars, or the relative change of place
in some of those which were double. Sound waves of course
travel with far less rapidity ; and accordingly similar considera-
tions, though leading here also to very wild fancies, do not yield
quite so wild fancies as those involved when we try to meddle
with light. Projectiles from some of our great guns actually do
outstrip the sound of their discharge. If therefore one of these
were gifted with an ear and the requisite consciousness, the first
thing which it might hear that in any way concerned itself,
when it had come to rest and recovered itself, might be the
noise of its flight through the air, followed by the sound of its
own discharge, and finally by the word of command to dis-
charge it.
But power to move about as we please in space or time is
clearly only one of our requirements. Suppose we have suc-
ceeded in placing ourselves right opposite to the thing, or
contemporaneous with the event, it may still be too small, or
too brief, or possibly too large or too slow for our purposes.
Observation is conditioned by the nature and limits of our
faculties, and it is no good being in close proximity to a thing
if our faculties are unable to take it in. One great difficulty
Our Control of Space and Time. 25
consists, it need not be said, in the fact of the phenomena need-
ing magnification ; in their being, that is, too small for observa-
tion. Abstractedly considered, therefore, the alternative before
us, as regards this desideratum, is either to make the thing
itself really or apparently larger, or to make ourselves smaller.
It would often be highly convenient to us if we could succeed
in the latter object (for what opportunities of observation, con-
cealed from us, the minuter insects must enjoy ; and how much
they could tell us about the constitution of various bodies
cell-structure and so forth if only we could strike out some
means of communication with them!). Failing this, however,
we have to resort to the former plan, viz., that of making the
thing bigger. But here popular language, and not improbably
popular thought also, is somewhat confused. We do not actually
magnify objects ; that is, enlarge their real dimensions in space.
At least we do not do this intentionally and for purposes of
observation ; for the change thus producible, though real as far
as it goes, is far too slight to be of any practical service. Heat
an object, and of course it grows larger ; and its various charac-
teristics are, to that extent, more easily decipherable. But
whatever may be the importance of taking into account such
considerations as these when we have to deal with large iron
constructions, such as railway bridges, &c., no one would think
of appealing to them to furnish any practical aid in our pro-
cesses of observation. What therefore we have to do instead is
to enlarge the effect which the object produces upon us ; that is,
to enlarge what we may call the image which it produces upon
our organs of sensation.
When we thus shift the proposed alteration of size from the
object itself to the effect produced by it upon our various senses,
we have at first sight an apparent promise of riches which is by
110 means fulfilled in practice. For we possess a variety of
senses, and it might be suggested that we should take each of
these in turn and magnify the impression which we obtain of an
object by means of it. But any such hope is soon seen to be
illusory. To begin with, only two of our senses give us much
service in the way of estimating space-relations viz., sight and
touch ; the other senses being of very little use in this respect.
And moreover, as it unfortunately happens, one of these, viz.,
touch, has proved itself quite incapable of any such refining
process as we have just now in view. Hence it comes to pass
that our sole reliance in this respect has to be based upon the
sense of sight. 1
1 It need hardly be said that we are here speaking solely of direct appeals
to sensible testimony. Of the many indirect methods which are available,
26 Our Control of Space and Time.
What we can do in this way as regards space has been ren-
dered familiar to almost every one, for nobody with any rudiment
of cultivation can have failed to often handle a telescope or
microscope. Accordingly we need devote but very few words of
explanation here, and they will only be expended in order to
draw attention to, and render more simple, the less familiar
parallel application to time. Now if any one were asked, taking
the current signification of the word ' magnify,' whether we can
do the same here for time that we can for space, what would he
probably reply, as soon as he had realised the nature of the
question proposed to him ? Most likely he would give a decided
negative ; and, if asked his reasons for saying so, the instance of
the microscope would very probably furnish the most appropriate
example in illustration. Every one who has ever had to look at
living things through a microscope will be aware how much
their apparent motion is affected thereby. He will be familiar
with the curious rapidity with which the smaller organisms,
animal or occasionally vegetable, shoot across the field of view.
They move apparently with extreme velocity, so that we have
sometimes to deaden them, or at least to do something to hinder
the vivacity of their movements, if we want to secure a suffi-
ciently steady look at them. This apparent velocity may of
course be explained by saying that we have magnified the inter-
val of space through which they move, but have not altered the
corresponding intervals of time. Hence of course the velocity
which depends upon the ratio of one of these elements to the
other, has been made apparently much greater than it really is.
Such an answer is abundantly sufficient for all practical pur-
poses, but as we happen just now to be almost wholly in the
regions of speculation rather than in those of practice, it will be
necessary to look a little more closely into the matter. We
must ask again then, what exactly do we do when we magnify
an object ? As every one who has any acquaintance with optics
is aware, all that can be secured by any combination of lenses,
whether they take the form of telescope, microscope, or opera-
glass, is an enlargement of the area on the retina which is
occupied by any minute part of the object presented to us. So
far as we are concerned this comes to just the same thing as if
the object itself were actually enlarged ; it being of course
insisted on that every element of the object shall be similarly
treated, so as to prevent any kind of distortion.
This, it will be observed, concerns only the sense of sight. As
already remarked, the sense of touch cannot be aided by any
such as resort to more refined measurements, employment of electricity
substitution of time for space in measurement and vice versd, and so forth,
we here take no note.
Our Control of Space and Time. 27
corresponding process of assistance. This is greatly to be
regretted, for the gain to our knowledge would be enormous
were any resource of the sort available. For instance I look at
a pebble and at the same time I handle it. The two senses
co-operate here, the sight and the touch ; the latter being in
many respects the most powerful and trustworthy of the two.
Either by itself would be fallacious and easily misled, but taken
together, so as mutually to aid and correct one another, they
concur in making up our information about the object. But
suppose it were some microscopic object, say a diatom instead of
a pebble, which was under our observation. What an immense
gain it would be if I could handle this also on a larger scale,
with the same success as I can look at it on a larger scale !
Questions which have often puzzled observers, for instance,
whether certain marks upon their surface are ridges or not,
would then be instantly set at rest. The case however seems
hopeless, even to the imagination, which is saying a good deal
for the deficiency arises out of that which constitutes the main
excellency of the sense in question. The difference consists of
course in this, that we see by means of a medium, and it is this
medium of which the microscope is able to make use for its
purpose. But in touching the object we come into direct contact
with it (all metaphysics apart), and there is therefore no avail-
able means by which the subjective effect can be made more
delicate in the way desired.
Now let us turn to time, and see what there is here, corres-
ponding to the same state of things. To begin with, can we
actually magnify a thing or rather an event as it would be
more appropriately called that is, can we make it take a longer
time in happening ? Of course we can, and to a very much
greater extent than was possible in the corresponding case of
space. We must of course remember that what was demanded
in the former case was not merely enlargement in general, but
uniformly proportional enlargement throughout. So what we
want here is uniform diminution throughout in the speed with
which the process is performed : otherwise we should be hin-
dered by what may be termed time-distortion or warping. A
moment's reflection will remind us how very frequently we can
secure this end, at any rate to some extent. When we are
dealing with time it is events or processes, rather than things,
with which we are concerned, and many of these may consist of
our own performances. Most processes over which we have any
sort of control can be gone through more or less slowly, and
some of them can be performed just as slowly as we please.
And, what is very important, we can make sure that the second
performance is so exactly the repetition of the former, except in
28
Our Control of Space and Time.
the point of speed, that we can really speak of it as being in
popular language the ' same ' event over again. These remarks
apply especially to the cases in which mere motion is under
consideration ; as if, for instance, we wished to observe the exact
path traced out by a point on a swiftly moving wheel, or the
mutual relation of the different portions of some complicated
machine. But when we come to considerations of force and
have to reckon with mass and gravity, even in the simplest
kinds of action, we lose much of this control. If projectiles
could be made to move as slowly as we please, men would not
have remained so long in doubt as to the nature of the path
traced out by them ; nor would artillerists even now be uncer-
tain as to the direction of the axis of an elongated shot during
the course of its flight. If a horse could be trotted or galloped
as slowly as we please we should instantly be able to settle the
vexed question as to how many legs he has upon the ground at
one and the same instant. But, after all such exceptions, this
particular power over time is greater than that over space.
When it is merely a question of making a thing take place more
slowly we can often succeed in doing so to any extent we please,
without the slightest fear of producing distortion.
But, notwithstanding this, when all is done that can be done,
there still remains a very large field of events quite beyond our
own control, and in which the rate of change is so great, or the
time occupied so short, that our powers of observation are alto-
gether baffled. In these cases therefore we sadly need some
instrument, corresponding to a microscope, which shall be con-
trived so as to diminish the rate at which the successive brief
and rapid changes in the stages of an event reach our organs of
sense. Transferring the language appropriate to one order of
considerations into the domain of the other, we may say that
the power of magnifying a few thousand diameters in time would
often be of enormous service to us. It would make the greatest
possible difference to us in the ease and accuracy of many of our
observations and consequent inferences about very brief or very
rapidly changing events.
Can we then succeed in attaining any such power of magnify-
ing ? Before attempting to answer this question we must first
see which of our various senses are most in employment in esti-
mating time-successions, so that we may know which they are
that need such assistance. In the case of space we saw that of
the two senses principally concerned in yielding information one
only had shown itself amenable to this magnifying process,
namely the sense of sight. In the case of time the senses upon
which we have most occasion to rely are, it seems, those of sight
and sound ; for touch and the muscular sense do not play any
Our Control of Space and Time. 29
important part here, at any rate not in the simple examples now
before us. Let us begin then with the former of these, and
trace out in an example the nature of the analogy before us.
Take for comparison some very minute object, say a pollen
grain, and some very brief event, say a flash of lightning. What
we do with the former is of course to enlarge the angular ma"-
O O O
nitude which it subtends upon the retina, so that the eye may
be able to distinguish the space attributes of its various parts.
In simple words we make the object ' look bigger '. What
therefore we want to do with the latter is to enlarge the time
intervals occupied by the successive portions of the event as
they reach the eye. In equally simple words with those above,
though, owing to the unfamiliarity of the conception, they do
not happen to be words in common use in this exact significa-
tion, we want to make the event ' look slower '.
The former of these objects is happily secured by the inven-
tion of a system of transparent lenses which spread out the rays
of light in space. Can no sort of glasses be contrived which
shall spread them, out in time, if one may use such a phrase ?
Unfortunately not, so far as we know ; though there is nothing
which need deter the scientific imagination from trying to con-
ceive the existence of such a contrivance. It really does not
seem as if we had to do more than postulate the existence, in an
extremely high degree, of qualities undoubtedly possessed in an
extremely low degree by various substances at present. It is a
well-known fact that light travels less rapidly through dense
glass than through that which is rarer. Take then a sheet of
glass of which the density increases uniformly from one end
towards the other, and look at the flash as it passes across the
pane. Let the increase of density at one end over that at the
other be only sufficiently great, the transparency being retained
unaltered, and the desired effect will be secured at once ; for the
whole duration of the flash, and that of each portion of its
career, would be proportionately lengthened out. If we could
effect in this way a second of delay in the passage of the rays
through the thickness of one end of our sheet of glass, over that
occupied in their passage through that at the other end, and if
the whole duration of the flash was the 10,00()th of a second, we
should have secured a magnifying power of about 10,000 dia-
meters, so to say. If the momentary event was comparatively
stationary in space, like the flash of a gun, say, instead of light-
ning, then we should have to move our glass before it, instead of
leaving it to move before the glass. The introduction of such a
delay as might thus be conceivably brought about would be
enough to enable us to ascertain tolerably plainly the shape of
the spark or flash throughout its career. As we are not describ-
30
Our Control of Space, and Time.
ing such an instrument but merely suggesting that it is not
inconceivable, we have no need to suggest also any remedies for
various obvious difficulties. All that we need say is that,
always granted the first step, they possibly might not prove
proportionately more intractable than the difficulties of aberra-
tion and spherical distortion which at first seemed absolutely
insurmountable difficulties in telescopes and microscopes.
To ' magnify ' for the ear we should need a slightly different
contrivance (we are still discussing of course the prolongation of
the sound, not its intensification in the way of loudness). It
may possibly be suggested that magnification of the kind in
question is already sometimes secured for us by nature ; for is
not a thunder-clap really a momentary crash which has been
lengthened out into a continuous roar before it reaches our ears
at a distance, owing to the multitudinous reflection from many
clouds ? A little consideration will show however that the
analogy here is not a valid one. The thunder-clap is not really
changed into a single prolonged one. What takes place is rather
this : it is changed into a great number of equal ones rapidly
succeeding and indeed overlapping one another. It is as if
instead of using a lense in order to get one enlarged image we
employed a sort of multiplying mirror which produced a great
number of closely adjacent and slightly superimposed images.
This of course would give a larger resulting image, but it would
be merely a blurred one and not at all the enlarged and clearly
defined one which we wanted. A real magnifier would have to
produce a single aural image of which the component parts
shall merely be enlarged, and proportionately enlarged, but none
of them repeated more than once. How should we set about the
construction of such an apparatus ? Construct, as before, a
diaphragm which at one end shall be (acoustically in this case)
less transparent than it is towards the other end. We should
then need some kind of tube, itself impervious to sound, and
the diaphragm would have to be moved rapidly across the end
of the tube which was towards the noise in question, whilst the
ear was applied to the other end. Each successive minute
interval of duration of the sound would then be equally retarded,
or ' magnified/ and might thus become perceptible and distin-
guishable by the ear. The tone of course of the noise woiild be
altered, but for this allowance would have to be made after due
calculation. 1
1 The importance of such an end, unattainable as it may be, is aptly
illustrated by the phonograph. That instrument, as is well known, will
imitate and reproduce sounds, say those of the human voice. Inasmuch as
it does so by the turning of a handle we can of course turn that handle as
slowly as we please, and thereby obtain a control of the speed of utterance
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 31
The above remarks belong mostly to the region of dreamland,
but they none the less concern a subject which all who have
occasion to speculate on the nature of Observation and Inference
ought to be familiar with. Even in the most mechanical em-
ployments, and under the strictest confinement to practical aims,
a man will never truly understand how his machine is working
within its ordinary range and conditions, unless he also knows
what it would do under conditions which he will almost certainly
never see realised. Even then our knowledge can never be
sound and accurate about what does happen under present con-
ditions unless we make it embrace also a good deal about what
merely might happen under conditions which do not exist.
When therefore we are professedly dealing with speculation
rather than with practice, the necessity of thus freely extending
our limits of thought and hypothesis becomes quite imperative.
Our observation and inference are carried on under certain con-
ditions of space and time. Some of these conditions seem
absolutely inseparable from the very nature of our faculties, and
I will therefore leave to the metaphysician the discussion of
what would come to pass were these tampered with. But there
are others amongst these conditions (referred to here, for want of
better terms, as 'our control of space and time') some of
which are within our power to some small extent to modify and
amend. With the nature and consequence of these the logician
is bound to render himself familiar, both as they are now and as
they may be in the future ; but he will never succeed in doing
this unless he is also familiar with them far beyond this point,
viz., as they are conceivable to the imagination but will in all
likelihood never be realised at all in practice.
J. VENN.
III. M. RENOUVIEB'S PHILOSOPHY. LOGIC.
I.
PHENOMENISM in some shape or other bids fair to be the
philosophy of the future. Kant's Critical Philosophy impressed,
as is well known, its direction on succeeding thought, and in
fact has dominated its development down to the present day.
Of the two strains which contended for the mastery in Kant, the
of the machine which inveterate association forbids in the case of our own
vocal organs. This, of course, is a perfectly distinct process from that
conceived and discussed above. It corresponds (in the case of space) to the.
physical enlargement of a body already alluded to, as distinguished from
its being what we call magnified.
32
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
critical seems to have preserved the greatest vigour, the other or
absolutist strain having worked itself out in both its branches.
The absolute thought theory, though still sitting in isolated
grandeur on sundry professorial chairs, shows no sign of re-
covering its ancient supremacy; and the absolute will theory,
though popular perhaps in the land of its nativity, has aban-
doned the proper objects of philosophy, the facts of conscious
perception and action, to become a philosophy of unconscious-
ness and the means of attaining it.
It was not till the second half of the present century that M.
Eenouvier, in his Essais de Critique Generate, did for the critical
strain in. Kant what the German ontologists had done for the
absolutist strain, that is to say, produced a complete system of
philosophy on its principles, a system based at once on the
disproof of noumenal entities, of which substance and substan-
tial cause are the chief, and on the reflective analysis of the
phenomena of consciousness as such. M. Eenouvier has been
the first to produce a complete system of philosophical pheno-
menism, based on the critical principles of Kant ; and it is with
his name that the phenomenism of the future will be justly
associated. 1 Nevertheless a prior name ought not to be omitted
when we speak of a critical philosophy, the name of a younger
contemporary of Kant himself, that of Salomon Maimon. He
too was phenomenist and criticist, but he did not live to bring
his philosophical system to completion. M. Eenouvier's ori-
ginality, too, is in every way beyond question. He can in no
sense be called the successor of Maimon. Their ways diverge
widely, though it is from a point within phenomenism. Both
go together up to the point of complete correlation between
consciousness and its objects, which is the note of phenomenism ;
but when they come to the analysis of phenomena within
consciousness, then immediately their differences begin, differ-
ences which are of a fundamental kind. They diverge as early
and they diverge as widely as, in the opposite school of abso-
lutism, Hegel's theory of absolute thought diverges from Scho-
penhauer's of absolute will. Equally irreconcilable, however,
they probably are not ; though time alone can show. For their
differences lie in the analysis of phenomena which are open to
the observation of all, and confessedly to be examined in their
1 Had I been acquainted with M. Renouvier's works when I published
the Philosophy of Reflection (as I must now confess with shame I was not),
I should not have laid claim, in the unqualified way I did, to have been
the first to dispense, in a system of philosophy, with the notion of substance
(Vol. II., p. 189), though basing that claim on my views with regard to
time and space. It is equally dispensed with in M. Renouvier's system,
though i'ts place is not supplied in the same way ; and this retractation,
unimportant as it may be, is therefore liis due.
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 33
character of phenomena, and with the aids derived from physio-
logical psychology. The common acceptance of phenomenist
principles is a deeper bond of union than any divergence on
points of analysis within phenomena, however fundamental, can
disturb. There are facts to appeal to, and what is more, an
admitted method of interrogating them. Absolutism, on the
other hand, supplies no bond of union at all ; it is a name and
nothing more. Each absolute system excludes every other
absolutely and from the first.
The importance of this fact can hardly be overrated. Pheno-
menists can hail one another as allies, as co-operators in a
common work, notwithstanding the widest divergences of opinion
and method within that work. All such divergences, and the
discussion to which they give rise, are but the necessary means
of reaching a common truth, which when reached is welcome to
all, being of the kind which all are alike seeking. In this
respect the phenomenist philosophy is the parallel of science,
where all truths are welcome, by whomsoever they are won, and
whatsoever prior hypothesis they favour or disprove.
A cordial and friendly welcome, then, and at the same time
an attentive examination, should be the reception given by
phenomenists in this country to the works of the veteran philo-
sopher who has been the first to propound a system of philoso-
phical phenomenism, and who by loftiness of aim and dignity of
thought, combined with acuteness and learning, has the most
powerfully contributed to command its success.
II.
M. Renouvier's system is contained, up to the present time,
in four works, to which he gives the title of Essais de Critique
Generate, the several names of which sufficiently indicate their
subject and scope. The first is the Traite de Logique Generale
et de Logique Formelle, published in 1854; the second the Traite
de Psychologie Rationnelle, published in 1859 ; both which ap-
peared again in revised and enlarged editions, each work being
in 3 vols. 12mo, in 1875, to which editions the references in the
present article are made. The third is Les Principes de la
Nature, 8vo, 1864. The fourth is the Introduction d la Philo-
sophic Analytique de I'Histoire, of which the first volume, the
only one hitherto published, appeared, 8vo, in 1864. The ten
years, therefore, from 1854 to 1864, saw the foundation of M.
Renouvier's whole system.
But these works have since been followed up by others of no
less, indeed in one case as I venture to think, of even greater
importance and value, barring always the transcending value of
3
34
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
establishing phenomenism at all. I allude to the next work
which M. Renouvier published, his Science de la Morale, 2 vols.,
8vo, in 1869. Next to this came his Uchronie, in 1876, the
scope of which will be sufficiently set forth, for the present, by
its alternative title " An historical and apocryphal sketch of the
development of European Civilisation, not as it ioas, but as it
might have been". Besides which, he is continually contributing
articles on philosophical, social and political questions, to the
Journal of which he is chief editor, La Critique Philosophique.
Such is the general map of the Eenouvier territory. Before
proceeding to explore it, I will venture the remark that, in my
opinion, the crowning peak of the whole land, the glorious
sunlit summit to which its roads have led him, and from which
we obtain no uncertain glimpses of the promised future of
humanity, is the Science de la Morale. That work gives promise
of a better future for mankind, not only because it contains the
analysis and establishment of the principles which ought to
guide human effort, but also because it exhibits them in a form
in which they may be pressed on the attention of practical
statesmen. As I propose to examine only those two of M.
Ren ouvier' s works which are the foundation of the rest, I con-
fine myself to hailing his Science de la Morale as deserving, not
merely comparatively with other books, but also in a more
absolute and positive sense, the distinctive title (a title devised
by Coleridge) of The Statesman's Manual.
But it is time to begin with the system itself. It is contained
in the four Essays mentioned above, and the Science de la Morale
is its corollary (barring one important derogation to be men-
tioned in its place). The two first Essays, the Logique and the
Psychologic contain the establishment of the principles, which
the third, the Nature, applies to the world of physics and bio-
logy, and the fourth, the Philosophic de I'Histoire, to the early
periods of human society. The two first Essays are therefore
theoretically the basis of the whole, and, as we shall see, the
Logique is the basis of the Psychologic. These two contain an
I -analysis of consciousness from two different points of view ; the
1 Logiq_ue regarding its phenomena as a. subject-matter to be des-
cribed and its relations determined, the Psychologic regarding
i the same phenomena as functions or modes of activity of
^ consciousness, as in a given individual, the main classes of
which are given in the first instance by the main divisions of
the Logique. Thus both essays go over the same ground, testing
and controlling each other ; the mental furniture which the
Logique analyses as the content, and the Psychologic as the
functions, of the mind, being also the obverse aspect, the subjec-
tive aspect as it is commonly called, of the objective universe of
M. Renouvier s Philosophy. Logic. 35
existence ; though it must be noted that M. Renouvier gives to
the terms objective and subjective significations just the reverse of
the usual ones. But this is a question of nomenclature which
need not now be discussed.
We may pass lightly over the first two Parts of the Loc/ique.
They are devoted principally to the establishment of Pheno-
menism, the exclusion of the Absolute and of noumenal entities,
in short, of what M. Eenouvier well calls " fetishism in philo-
sophy ". The first Part is entitled " Of Representation in
general". The most general term, which includes all other
phenomena of consciousness within it, is according to M.
Renouvier representation. Each representation has a double
aspect, on one side it is a phenombne representatif, on the other a
phenomena represent^ or, in less technical language, a perception
and a thing perceived ; a distinction, it must be observed, which
is a very different thing from that between a state of conscious-
ness and a state of nerve on which it depends.
Farther, just as the noumenal substrates, or things-in-them-
selves as they are called, are excluded from philosophy, so also
the Ego, the Moi, or Self, is excluded as a datum from the
representations considered merely as such in this first Part. It
will come in, when we come to the analysis of representation in
the third Part. Representations alone and in general, not any
one or more particular representations, are in this first Part
shown to be the proper and total object of the whole inquiry.
And every representation must be taken as involving no more
than its own elements, the elements composing it as a repre-
sentation.
The question of method comes next. The great principle by
which the nonentity of noumenal substrata is proved, when the
case is one where actual phenomena are treated as if they were
such substrata, is what M. Renouvier calls the "principle of \
number," or " principle of the finite ". Actual representations, '
he says, treated as things-in-themselves, must either form a
whole or not form a whole. If they do not form a whole, they
are things which we cannot consider, under the simple relation >
of existence, conjointly with other things which exist. But this
is incompatible with representing them at all. Therefore they
must form a whole. And, if they form a whole, then, witli any
given whole, a number is always given. Everything that can
enter into representation at all, even to be discussed, must form .
a whole with other things in representation. This, if I rightly
apprehend the argument (Vol. I., p. 46), is what is intended by
the " principle of number". It seems to require some further
support than can be obtained from the consideration of repre-
sentation in general. The notion of a wlwle must have its
36
M. Itenouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
foundation, and consequently the principle of number its proof,
in the analysis of representation, which is for the present
deferred. For my part, at* least, I should hesitate to admit,
without further proof, what this argument seems to require, that
to represent a thing conjointly with others is the same thing as
representing them all together as a whole. The term whole is
ambiguous.
This principle M. Eenouvier then applies (I. pp. 50, ff.) first
to the representations of space, time, matter, and motion ; and
shows that to take them as things-in-themselves is to take them
in a way which contravenes the principle of number, is to take
them as realised infinites, either of extension or division, and
vice versa. Taking the parts of space, of time, of matter, and of
motion, as things-in-themselves involves taking them as realised
infinites, either in extension ad extra or in division ad intra, and
that is contradictory to the principle of number. The parts of
space, time, matter, motion, if taken as infinite, form a number
which is not a number ; and to imagine that such things exist is
to imagine an object to exist which contradicts the laws of
representation, that is, to imagine a thing-in-itself. A discussion
of Zeno's paradoxes is appended. Other groups of phenomena
are then taken, ending with the largest of all, the Sum of
Things, and proof is given that, existence involving relation, a
thing imagined to exist out of relation, or in other words in
itself, is a nonentity.
It will not, I hope, too much interrupt the current of narra-
tion to remark, that the proof last mentioned seems to stand on
very different ground from that on which the preceding identi-
fication of a thing-in-itself with an infinite is based. It is a
perfectly general consideration that existence involves relation ;
but that a thing-in-itself is the same as an infinite thing
requires a special analysis of the meaning of infinite. And
even if an infinite thing were shown by analysis to be a con-
tradiction, still it is not every self-contradictory fiction that is a
thing-in-itself, which is a fiction of a particular kind. This last
remark applies to M. Eenouvier's conception of things-in-them-
selves generally. He seems to understand the term in an ex-
tended and not in the strict sense which Kant gave it, in the
section of the Kritik d. r. V. on the ground of distinction
between phenomena and noumena. (See I. 43 and 91-92.)
The second Part is devoted to an " Elementary Eeview of
Phenomena ". It is really a sequel to the first Part, containing
more introductory matter, explanatory of the Phenomenist
position. Various terms are defined and explained; Reality,
which it is shown cannot be opposed to Phenomenon ; Truth ;
Principle of Relativity; Law of Phenomena; Objective and
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 37
Subjective Order; Subject and Attribute; Function, a term
which is employed in a sense derived from the signification it
bears in mathematic, and means, in such phrases as physiolo-
gical, intellectual, functions, functions of sensation, memory,
and so on, a " regular determination of certain phenomena con-
sequent on the determination of certain other phenomena,
conformably to a law which is proper to each order and known
by experience". Space and time are said to be "general func-
tions of all phenomena so far as subject to the laws of quantity".
Consciousness may be called "a function of functions of objective
phenomena," objective meaning, in M. Benouvier's sense, as repre-
sentations ; and nature " a function of functions of phenomena ".
The term etre calls for a special definition. Noumenal
substance being banished, what do we mean by I'etre ? What is
a Being ? It is clear that a being, an existent, implies relation
and law. And the word is applied properly to all phenomena,
to relations as well as to the terms connected by them, to the
law as well as to the subject of it. There seems to be a certain
double sense in the word, an absolute and a relative sense ; " in
fact, the absolute is in some sort given in the phenomenon,
namely, so far as it is simply there, present, or posited ; but, so
soon as posited, the phenomenon appears in a relation which
may well be not this or that, but is necessarily some relation or
other. Thus the phenomenon is, and the absolute disappears; or
the absolute is and remains, and the phenomenon is no more,
and there is nothing ". . . . " The proposition the existent is,
which does not go beyond its own subject, empty as a judg-
ment, is equivalent to the exclamation : dtre ! representation !
phenomene ! It expresses the great mystery which no represen-
tation has ever penetrated or ever will penetrate; but would
this mystery if the existent were not a determinate existent,
if relations were not present itself at all ? " (I. 140.) Some
remarks on existents belonging to the material, vital, and repre-
sentative or conscious orders, followed by a brief section on
science and the sciences, complete the second Part. So much
will perhaps suffice to convey an outline of M. Renouvier's
position as a Pheiiomenist, or in other words, with regard to the
general question of the nature of existence.
The third Part, which contains the "Analysis of Fundamental
Laws," is naturally that to which the greatest interest attaches,
at least for phenomenists, inasmuch as this analysis it is which
ascertains the distinctive character of the phenomenism ex-
pounded in the two foregoing Parts. All representations (we
have seen) are in relation to others, order is traceable in all from
the very first ; they come to consciousness in relation with eacli
other, and thereby also in relation to consciousness as a whole,
38
M. Benouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
and to its centre the conscious person. What are the chief or
ruling relations to which they are subject ? That is the great
question.
These relations M. Renouvier finds to be certain Categories to
the number of eight, or nine if we count relation itself, each
consisting of three members, a thesis, an antithesis, and a
synthesis ; and these Categories, involved in the representations
representatives, rule our thoughts, so that we find them again in
the world of existences, the representations representees, as the
laws of that world. The following is the table of them :
CATEGORIES.
RELATION.
Nombre
Position
Succession
Qualite
Devenir
Causalit^
Finalit^
Personnalittf
THESE.
DISTINCTION.
Unite
Point (limite}
Instant (limite)
Difference
Eapport
Acte
Etat
Soi
ANTITHESE.
IDENTIFICATION.
Pluralite
Espace (intervalle)
Temps (intervalle}
Genre
Non-rapport
Puissance
Tendance
Non-soi
SYNTHESE.
DETEKMINATION.
Totalite
l^tendue
Duree
Espece
Changement
Force
Passion
Conscience
This conception of the Categories differs from Kant's in not
requiring any noumenal agent, of whose transcendental actions
the categories may be conceived as expressions ; for they exist
in right of experience, as members of the analysis of actual
phenomena. And it differs from Hegel's conception of the laws
of thought, inasmuch as the categories are not produced out of
each other by a process of negativity, nor any one of them out
of nothing by the same process. Time and Space too, it will be
observed, which are Kant's forms of perception or intuition as
opposed to thought, are here made moments of the two cate-
gories, position and succession. The effect of this is, first, to
obliterate the distinction between perception and thought, at \
least as a cardinal distinction of the analysis, by sinking them \
in one single class of phenomena, representation; and secondly,
to subordinate the forms of perception to those of thought (and /
not vice versa), by making the forms of that single class of \
phenomena, in which the distinction is obliterated, the ultimate
laws of consciousness, in which the forms of perception as such
are comparatively insignificant moments. The results of this
will appear as we proceed.
The Categories of representation being established, the re-
mainder of the Logique consists in their development and
application. From the first or general category, that of Eelation
itself, with its three moments, springs the distinction between
M. Benouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 39
' analytical and synthetical judgments, and the fundamental law
i of identity or of contradiction, together with that of "excluded
middle," here called (< principe de V alternative^ which are shown
to be one in principle, and to be what M. Renouvier well calls
loi regulatricc des relations const antes.
The next three categories, Number, Position and Succession,
are then exhibited as the source and basis of mathematic in both
its branches, calculation and geometry. The discussion of posi-
tion and succession contains a proof of the irreducible or ultimate
[ character of extension and duration as features of representation, -^t,
Extension and duration are not deducible one from the other, tuftt
\ nor either of them from anything else but from the category of
i which each is a moment. An excursus on the notion of exten-
sion, appended to the chapter on position, and another on the
notion of time, appended to that on succession, contain much
sound and vigorous criticism on the English Association theorists.
The doctrine next propounded is one to which M. Renouvier
attaches great weight, and to which he frequently recurs, the
non-existence of infinity in matters pertaining to quantity. "I V
had no right," he says "to make a category of the infinite
applied to quantity, because I demonstrate that this term
cannot be used without contradiction, so far as it is taken for a
law of representations that are actual. While, so far as it is
taken for a law of representations that are possible, the infinite
is nothing else than the indefinite, and the difference between ^
these two words is great. The indefinite belongs to the -same
category as potency (puissance) or possibility." (I. 366.) I
shall return to this point before the end of the paper; at present
I go on with the Logique. My mathematical knowledge un-
fortunately does not enable me to do justice to the mathematical
disquisitions which are a capital feature of the work, with two
of which, on the theory of negative values, and the theory of -
the indefinite and of limits, the first volume closes.
The second volume opens with the foundation of the theory
of Formal Logic on the category of Quality, with its three
moments of genus, difference, and species. Logical classification
accordingly comes from the application of these three moments
to the content or matter to be classified, phenomena standing in
qualitative relations to each other by virtue of attributes which
are predicable of them. The predicable qualities of phenomena
add a concrete determination to them, over and above that
determination which they get from simply belonging to the first
or general category of Relation.
" The category of quality answers the question what (quel), declares that
one thing is such and such other thing. There enters then into every repre-
sentation of quality an element of distinction and an element of identihca-
40
M. Renoumers Philosophy. Logic.
tion. But this latter law, which is that of relation in general, receives a
wholly new character and development, foreign to the preceding cate-
gories, inasmuch as the quality, or thing declared of another thing, is a
genus; the object qualified a difference, and their synthesis, marked by the
copula, a species." (IT. p. 2.)
By calling the object qualified a difference is meant, that,
in the rose is red for instance, red being the genus, the remaining
qualities of the rose, other than redness, are its difference from
other cases of redness. The law or category of quality, then,
presupposes that we see differences and resemblances in the
content or matter of representation, and that these are the basis
of their classification under the three moments of the category.
On this basis a complete and in many respects new theory of
formal logic is developed, interspersed as before by several
vigorous criticisms of various English writers, among others of
Dugald Stewart, Sir W. Hamilton, Whewell, and De Morgan.
The next Category, that of Devenir Becoming as opposed to
Being, the German Werden, brings unrTEoThe atmosphere of
concrete phenomena in their concrete shape. The preceding
categories have to do with those laws of phenomena which are
constant, as compared to their content; this one has for its
object the concrete content itself. It is a synthesis of sameness
with difference, of being with not-being; that is to say, it is
Change. And this notion of change is then applied to the fore-
going categories.
Going on to the law of this concrete change brings us to the
next Category, that of causality. It differs from devenir in the
^^^**^* ***T^^^^
introduction of a new notion, that of force.
" Every representation of change is accompanied by a representation of
force. From this new point of view, potency in its character of the inter-
val of two joined acts which determine it " [act, potency, and force, are the
three moments of the category] " gives us power> if the second act is not
yet posited, and gives us doing or production, if it is posited. These are
two aspects of the notion of force. Under the first aspect, the force is only
virtual, and the potency is as yet distinct from the act ; under the other,
the synthesis is complete, and it is force properly so called which then
appears, having an equal share both of the act and of the potency, which are
transformed by bein ,' taken up into a third conception. In fact, whether
we posit the act pure without potency, or the potency pure without act, we
neither obtain change at all (devenir), nor do we obtain doing at all (le
faire), and for the same reason. Things are then represented either as
actual or as possible, but not as produced. Act and potency, viewed in
complete abstraction, are mutually exclusive ; force, foreign to each of them
separately, is the result of their synthesis. Force is the act of a potency."
(II. 278-9.)
Such is in outline M. Kenouvier's account of the notion of
forcje and causality in general; there is a special category of
consciousness to explain it. But this is" not all. There is also
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 41
another special source from which our knowledge of force is
derived, a particular case of force, which serves us afterwards as
a type for imagining other cases of causality. This is voluntary
or intentional action ; a fact of consciousness, of personality ;
"the^oiily case in which phenomena are known to us beforehand
(d'avance) as connected by a force". (II. 286-7.) M. Kenou-
vier's meaning seems to be, that the category is of general
applicability, but that one class of cases only, that of voluntary
action, gives us the exemplification of this category ; though
other cases are brought under it afterwards by being compared
to that original one.
There follows under this category a treatment of the funda-
mental principles of dynamics, and also of the logical modal
propositions and syllogisms, of the possible, and the probable,
ending with a thorough-going discussion of the theory of proba-
bilities.
In the next Category, that of Finalite or Final Cause, the
subjective character is still more strongly marked. We have
seen that human acts afforded one case of causality and force ;
here it is found that all final-causation is conscious. For to
constitute this, there must be "default, want, need," terms which
are applicable only in the case of beings who propose ends to
themselves. (II. 459.) We find ourselves accordingly in the
subjective domain of the passions, using this term in a large
sense. The analogy between this category and the preceding
one is very close. Still there is a difference which is extremely
important.
" Tendency (la tendance) is an interval between two states (e'tats), just
as potency between two acts. But a potency includes a number, and often
an indefinite number, of possibles ; it comprehends contraries at the least,
contraries which, whether through ignorance or otherwise, are imagined in
the unknown future as connected with a determinate past. But a tendency
has one direction only, simple and unique. In both cases there occurs a
synthesis of an interval with its two limits ; we have seen that two definite
acts, limiting a potency, constitute a force ; similarly, two definite states,
limiting a tendency, form a synthesis which we will designate by the name
passion." (II. 459-60.)
In this way we are brought to the last of the Categories, that
of Personality, the fullest and most particular of all, as Relation,
the first category, was the most general and abstract. It is
supposed in all the rest, inasmuch as for analysis an analyst, for
science a savant is required ; and all the forms of knowledge are
moulded on the laws of the person, who alone has the represen-
tations.
" Like all the categories, personality is determined by the synthesis of a
limit and interval to correspond. The limit is the self, a sphere and a
42
M, Uenouvier 's Philosophy. Logic.
series of phenomena posited as being, as act, as state, in the same way as
the common thesis of the categories of becoming, causality, and finality, is
posited. The interval, abstraction being made of all limitation by the self,
is the not-self, the indeterminate, indefinite, complexus of all other or
exterior phenomena, but phenomena connected, under all the categories,
with those of self, in regard to which they are determined. The synthesis
of self and not-self is consciousness, the person." (II. 484-5.)
The way is thus prepared for the subject of the next Essay,
the Psychologic,, which treats of the various functions of con-
sciousness, and (as already remarked) reproduces the categories
in an active shape or as functions. Consciousness is not itself
relation but a relating, " relation referente " ; and so also, under
the next four categories, it is a numeration, an imagination, a
memory, a judgment, all which compose the general function of
intelligence or understanding, and (supposing the category of
becoming to be involved, as it inevitably is) of thought. As
subject to becoming, too, consciousness is also will and passion,
which are the active states of causality and final-causation.
The three main divisions of psychology are thus given, under-
standing (including sensibility), will, and passion. Still in some
sort even here we are yet in the kingdom of forms ; the cate-
gories are forms, the " skeleton of representations," and so also
are the functions. We suppose the matter in and upon which
these forms of both kinds are displayed. This matter, consist-
ing of phenomena which do not give but range themselves
under the categories, and which the categories do not give but
arrange this matter so arranged is experience ; and inasmuch as
consciousness with its forms is the arranger, experience is a
name also for consciousness. (II. 488.)
But we have not yet arrived at the end of the Logique.
There are certain conclusions to be drawn from the analysis,
certain results relating to our conceptions of the frame of things,
which the Logique by itself is sufficient to warrant. Indeed it
is here, in the fourth and concluding Part of the work, which
deals with the Limits of Knowledge, that the immediate interest
of the whole is found. What are these conclusions ? The form
which the last Part takes is that of discussing the possibility of
an universal and scientific synthesis comprehending the pheno-
mena of the universe at large. " Can science solve the general
questions which are posed when she applies the categories to
experience, or in other words to the World ? Is an unique and
total synthesis of phenomena possible ? " (III. 7, 8.)
The answer, as we shall see, comes briefly to this. No such
synthesis is possible for scientific knowledge ; but there is
possible existence beyond that knowledge, which escapes the
reach of synthesis, and is the legitimate object of beliefs. There
is a region which belief may people with probable phenomenal
M. JRenouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 43
existences, enveloping a region which can conceivably (though
not so at present) be entirely reduced to the synthesis of know-
ledge. Now there are two ways in which this conception of a
region of the world of existence, beyond the reach of scientific
synthesis, may be imagined. Either that region is imagined as
infinite, and then the world as a whole is imagined as infinite
also ; or it is imagined as finite, and then we imagine a finite
synthesis of knowledge, surrounded by an unknown region
indefinite to us, and the whole lying within a finite universe.
Which of these two ways is adopted by M. Eenouvier ?
The way in which he approaches the subject is the following.
There is, he says, a discrepancy in our conceptions of the world
as a Total, according as we approach it directly by the categories,
or from the suggestions" of our actual experience. When we
take the latter course, and endeavour to follow up experience as
far as it will carry us, we find in every direction, a Beyond ;
phenomena seem to lead us to an infinite under all the cate-
gories ; we seem to have a limited experience of an unlimited
world. On the other hand, when we apply the categories
directly to phenomena, the world is conceived in all directions
as a finite whole, with nothing beyond it either in space, time,
or anything else. Is the world, then, finite, or is it infinite ?
This is a real antinomy, which must be solved, if knowledge is
to be a reality, by showing that one branch is true, the other
false, and why.
M. Eenouvier's solution is, that the result of following experi-
ence, the infinity of the world, is attained by means of a gene-
ralisation or induction which may be illegitimate ; while the
result of applying the categories directly, the finiteness of the
world, not only results from a necessity of thought, but is not
contradictory, either in itself, or to the inductions of experience
so far as they legitimately go. The infinity of the world is
contradictory to its finiteness, but its finiteness is not contra-
dictory to the indefinite limits of experience, which is all that
experience can legitimately assert. " The theatre of experience
is the content of the world, and the world exceeds it." (III. 21.)
"In one word, experience does not prove that nothing is possible
beyond experience, or limiting the sphere of possible experience.
On the contrary, the conception of the Whole perishes, and
phenomena drift without anchorage, if the infinite, the true
name of which is contradiction, obtains a footing in scientific
knowledge." (III. 22.)
The antinomy is thus shown to be real, and at the same time
receives a solution in the sense of finiteness. An excursus is
devoted to applying the same principles to Kant's Antinomies,
with the result (1) of rejecting Kant's solution, founded on his
44
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
thing -in-itself doctrine, that the dispute is a dispute about
nothing at all, and (2) of upholding the Theses in all four cases
M. Renouvier thus conceives the world or sum of things as a
finite whole, with no time before it or after it, no space outside
it ; but as containing within itself an unknown region beyond
the reach of scientific knowledge, a region which we know to
exist, and to exist in relation to the known region, the cate-
gories of representation being applicable alike to both. Experi-
ence is satisfied by having a beyond assured to it ; and the
categories are satisfied by that beyond being conceived as finite.
This beyond is the region of possibles and of belief, of reality but)
not of knowledge, except so far as this, that we know it is
subject to the categories.
There is, then, beyond the synthesis of experience, an indefi-
nite and comparatively unknown region, which is marked out
by the categories, the laws of all representation. This region as
a whole is determined by the categories, that is, not by extrinsic
but by intrinsic conditions. And no synthesis of experience of
the world as a whole is possible, because experience implies
relation of one fact or phenomena with others beyond it,
whereas the world has nothing either beyond it or beside it.
(III. 10.) But since we have a general knowledge of the world
as a whole, having the categories which determine it, the
question occurs whether we have not also, in the categories,
data for deducing the phenomena within our experience, and
so in a general way arriving at a scientific synthesis of the
phenomena of the world, including the unknown region ; a
synthesis which would be a deductive and scientific synthesis of
general laws, though one with great lacunae, and not to be
called a synthesis of experience. " In order for such a science
truly accessible to exist, we should necessarily have to conceive
the unique and total synthesis as attained and possessed, at
least in hope, so that analysis should find its mission in deve-
loping by deduction from this function of all relations" [viz.,
the idea of the world as an anticipation of the synthesis] " a
result adequate to its content" [viz., the world itself]. (III. 22.)
It remains, then, to show that we have not, in the idea of the
world given by the categories, such an anticipation of synthesis
or " function of all relations " as would furnish data for the
required deduction ; that is, that we have not, even in hope, the
unique and total synthesis in question. And this M. Eenouvier
proceeds to do, by taking the categories in detail, and comparing
them with the results obtained or obtainable by following up
the line of experience.
In the three categories of number, position, and succession,
the world as a whole is subject to the categories, that is to say,
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 45
it 'consists of a finite number of phenomena, a finite extent in
space, and a finite duration in time. But then we do not know
what these finites are ; they are known to us only as indefinites.
On the other hand, the question, Why this number, this extent,
this duration, and not others, is a question we have no right to
ask. Divisibility in phenomena is also shown similarly to be
finite and not in infinitum; the problem of several similar
worlds is discussed ; the vacuum is maintained in opposition to
the plenum. In this part of the work, again, powerful criticisms
are interposed on Hamilton, Mill, Mr. Spencer, and M. Vacherot.
(III. pp. 35 to 114)
When we come to the category of quality, the result is
somewhat different. The world clearly falls under the cate-
gories of number, position, and succession, that is, it is a finite
number, extent, and duration, of phenomena. But it does not
fall in the same sense under the category of quality. It is not
a species at all. We must indeed say that it is a genus with
regard to its internal species, or that it is a species of species, all
differences included ; but this is not to determine the world as a
species ; it is merely to define it in the technical terms of the
category. Its determination analytically or a posteriori is im-
possible, because here we are debarred from using the moment
of difference, all differences being already included in the Whole.
It is therefore no datum for a synthesis. Again, to determine
the world as consisting ultimately of one or of several species
would be to refer it to so many substances out of which, or
causes by means of which, it has become what we see it. We
should in this way pass out of the category of genus and species.
(III. 116.) An excursus is devoted, to the subject of transfor-
mations of force, and a chapter is given (after examining the
next category, that of becoming) to show that the evolution
theory cannot carry its subsumption of species under the head
of development to the point of abolishing species altogether,
without at the same time abolishing all knowledge whatever.
In other words, the category of quality, with its moments of
genus, difference, and species, is a necessity of thought. At the
same time it gives us no hint what, or how many, are the
separate existences with which the world begins.
The case with the category of Becoming is the same as with
those of number, position, and succession. The general conclu-
sion applicable to all alike, as well as to that of quality, is, that
representation by the categories is the rule of experience, and
consequently extends by anticipation to the totality of its
phenomena. But the extreme limit, which we are thus com-
pelled to posit, is not a thing which can itself be limited. It
cannot therefore be defined; and is no datum for the total
46
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
synthesis. In other words, the categories are the alpha and
omega of knowledge and of existence ; they present us with a
finite world, the limits of which are fixed, but cannot without
contradiction be defined, by representation. (III. 152.)
The three last categories hang closely together; questions
raised under the first are referred to the second, and thence to
the third, for an answer, and only under the third is a perfect
synthesis shown to be impossible. To begin with the first of
the three. The notion of an uncaused cause or causes is forced
upon us by the category of number applied to that of becoming;
we are compelled to assume one or more causal phenomena, or
rather forces (since potency and act are never isolated, but
always combined into force as already shown). These are
posited as existing without antecedents, and as the conditions
of existence of subsequent given relations. (III. 181, 187.)
Nor is this spontaneous existence to be confined to the
beginning of the world. "We are ignorant," says M. Eenou-
vier, calmly, and without betraying any sense of the insecurity
which such a fact would introduce into all sequences, " whether
phenomena entirely new and independent (without any bond
with those which now are or have been), can or can not super-
vene". (III. 181.) In discussing the question whether there
is a law of universal pre-determination of phenomena, or
whether there is a real contingency in nature (which great
question is passed on to the succeeding categories), M. Eenou-
vier says, that, if all or any future events are in fact uncertain,
ambiguous, unforeseeable by any consciousness whatever, then
the determination of one possible event, to the exclusion of
others, is a title of real individuality for the forces by which
the determination is effected ; they are free forces, and to the
extent to which they determine possibles are veritable first
forces. (III. 194). Reserving however for the moment this
question, he concludes, after an elaborate discussion (III. 191-
192), that the probabilities are in favour of more first causes
than one, but in interdependence on each other. Clearly, how-
ever, no complete synthesis of the world is hereby placed
within our reach.
The category of final cause leads us to attempt the synthesis
of the world by positing an ultimate final cause or causes of all
phenomena, which would be a closing limit, as a first cause is a
commencing limit, of phenomena as a whole. The necessity,
however, of an ultimate end, in time, of phenomena is not so
certainly established as that of a first beginning is ; for it is not,
like that, established directly by the principle of contradiction.
The events to which it relates are ex hypothesi future ; and the
contradiction which lies in an actually realised infinity is there-
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 47
fore avoided by the notion of an endless succession into the
future. But it is none the less incomprehensible on that
account. (III. 198, 199.) We are therefore led to assume the
more comprehensible view of a final limit to the world in time.
(Ib. 198-201.)
Here we are again brought to the question of indeterminism
or real contingency. Seeing that the first cause must be re-
garded, when we bring in the notion of passion, that is, of
conscious desire, as existing in virtue of an end, the question
arises, whether the whole order of events originated by the first
cause, in view of the ultimate end, is predetermined by its
cause and its end together ; or may the end be missed ? How
is the cause determined by the end, and are the ends one or
several, acting together or acting apart ? (Ib. 201-204) It is
clear that we can get no total synthesis from this category, but
must have recourse to that of Consciousness.
But even under the category of consciousness, our hopes, if
we ever had any, are doomed to disappointment. M. Eenou-
vier shows by a series of subtil reasonings, which cannot be
condensed or summarised without grievous loss of their weight
and vigour, and which take us deep into the questions which
cluster round the conceptions of cause, creation, causa sui et
mundi, fate and free-will, foreknowledge absolute, and others of
similar profundity, that neither the hypothesis of one, nor that
of several, conscious beings can enable us to attain the desired
synthesis of the world of phenomena. He himself prefers the
hypothesis of several, for " we cannot hold our footing in that
of unity, and so soon as we succeed in rendering it intelligible,
we find that we have passed over into the other hypothesis ".
Though we must admit that a synthesis exists, it is a synthesis
inaccessible to us. Still M. Eenouvier goes so far as to say that
" Leaving in its inaccessible obscurity the question of pure origins, we
affirm that the first datum for science is a plurality of consciousnesses; and
this might, in strictness, pass for a solution of the problem which philo-
sophy pursues. We reject the pretensions of metaphysic. We affirm a
first commencement of all things ; but then that is to posit a limit, not to
open the field to absolute knowledge. We declare for the impossibility of
conceiving, either in their unity or in their plurality, the primitive terms
which are imposed by logic on the development of the facts of existence.
It is thus and in this sense only, that the law of the multiplicity of con-
sciousnesses can offer itself as a solution a solution which has nothing in
common with that universal synthesis, the conditions of which we set out to
seek." (III. 241.)
The whole chapter concludes thus :
" We come to this as our definitive conclusion : The total synthesis of
phenomena, so far as it is a first datum, is withdrawn from knowledge and
from science. It existed nevertheless, it existed determinately under all
48
M. Renouvier 1 s Philosophy. Logic.
the relations, in its own nature, conformably to the category of number,
without which neither speculation nor thought is possible.
" The actual synthesis, which embraces past phenomena in its sphere, is
determined for the same reason ; it is a datum, but it is not a datum for
science, nor can it be so. It admits of a plurality of consciousnesses, and
that is all we know of it.
" The synthesis bearing on the future could only be a datum so far as
phenomena, of whatever kind, should be in strict dependence on antece-
dent phenomena, which is their pre -determination. But we know not
whether the world is subject to such a law, and if it is not, we must then
say that the total synthesis, in respect to the future, is, and has been at
every epoch, an idea without foundation for every possible consciousness."
(Ib. p. 245.)
Courage, reader ! There remain but two and twenty
pages duodecimo to compass, and those few pages contain the
harvest of all that has gone before, and will give us a "broad
outlook over the whole field of philosophy and its divisions, as
conceived by our author. M. Renouvier has fully attained his
purpose in the whole preceding discussion on a total scientific
synthesis, though I am painfully aware of the inadequacy of my
brief rendering to represent its power and completeness. But
why is M. Renouvier anxious to show that no scientific synthesis
is possible ? It is to break with absolutism in philosophy once
and for ever ; to show how and why it is that he has no part
nor lot with a priori constructions of the universe, overriding
experiment and induction, whether of an idealistic or material-
istic type ; in short, to prove himself a genuine phenomenist.
The need for this, I will add, was the greater because he adopts
the theory of categories, or laws of thought as opposed to per-
ception, which had already led, in Germany, to an idealistic
absolutism. That, I take it, is the main purpose of the long
disproof of a total scientific synthesis.
But this being done, there remain the questions relating to
the indefinite unknown region beyond experience, but within
the categories. These questions have now to be treated. We
do not get rid of this region of the world, or of the questions
relating to it, by showing that the scientific synthesis of the
world as a whole is impossible. Indeed these questions are
the specially philosophical ones in a phenomenist system. The
purpose of philosophy, says M. Renouvier, has always been
defined, by its necessary practice, as an inquiry concerning
God, man, liberty, immortality, and the first laws of the several
sciences, all questions which hang closely together, and which,
even if no science of them were possible, would still offer a field
to criticism, in order to prove that it was not. For this reason
he has excluded the word philosophy from the title of these
Essays.
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 49
The sciences differ from philosophy (still it is M. Eenouvier
who speaks) in that each of them places its own principle OP
first law beyond the field of its own researches ; whereas
philosophy has principles, and its own among the rest, as its
proper object of research. There is thus a circle in philosophy,
seeing that it must employ the very principles which it seeks to
establish in the act of establishing them. It replaces the vague
and confused syntheses, which serve as its data, by definite
syntheses which are its results. If it can, so to speak, make
both ends meet, by showing that its definite results are the
harmony of its vague data, then it is entitled to postulate the
assent of mankind.
Uncertainty to some extent there must always be in human
speculation, but both its kind and its degree are to be determined
severally for different problems, and in the first place by the
division of knowledge to which they belong. The limits of
knowledge as a whole are disclosed by finding its general laws,
which has been done in the present Essay ; and this branch of
knowledge, a work of criticism, now takes the place of the old
and untenable universal science which used to be called philo-
sophy. Under this come the several special sciences, some
logical, some of observation or experiment ; but all limited by
the data which are proper to each, on the one hand, and by the
verifiability of their inductions on the other. Criticism again
will have its place in the interval between their results and the
extreme limits of existence defined by the categories. (III.
246-250.)
Such are the negative results of our analysis ; results which
are by no means negative in their consequences. The old
schools and the old theories vanish spiritualism, materialism,
pantheism, the idols of the infinite, of substance, of substantial
causes. " Mind (esprit) and matter are but names applied to a
classification of phenomena in the rough (grossiere). The de-
termination of facts of every order, and of their laws, replaces
the search for entities. Existents (etres) are laws." (III. 251.)
Things-in-themselves, too, are no more. On the other hand, " it
is no longer allowable to affirm deliberately that the individual
has no durable existence ; that personality is a transient illusion,
not a constant law ; that man is swallowed up in nature, and
humanity with him ; or that this present and perishable
humanity is the culminating product of the world's develop-
ment." (Ib.)
Thus we find that, according to M. Eenouvier's theory the
immortality of living beings is no longer an impossibility, though,
or rather because, it is no longer made to depend on the notions
of soul or of substance. The unknown region of thought beyond
4
50 M. Eenouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
the actual synthesis of science guarantees at least its possibility.
We can now, too, see the true and the false senses in which the
term Atheism has been and still is so often applied. God, as
conceived under the terms of an antiquated theology, can no
longer be the object of our belief. That shell of the divinity is
broken. But the same unknown region of thought, which is the
field of legitimate beliefs, recognised as such by science, and
which makes a future life possible to thought, is also the ground
on which we can securely seek the divine author, or authors, of
the world as known to us. "
In brief, " an order of possibles, objects of the belief which reason
authorises, remains secure, and exists beyond the laws which reason imposes
or science determines. We now know what criticism forbids, what pre-
tensions it ruins, what hopes it permits. We have next to ask, whether
criticism has not a part to play on the stage thus reserved for speculation ;
whether, in the intermediate region between the special sciences and the
analysis of first principles, there is not a place for a General Science in a
new and legitimate form." (III. 258.)
This last question introduces M. Eenouvier's special doctrine
concerning the articulation, if I may use the word, of philosophy.
A new career js to be opened for a general science, without en-
croaching on the special sciences, and in dependence on the
abstract science of the Logique. Where and how will this new
territory be carved out ? We have seen that there is an un-
known domain of thought beyond the reach of science ; we have
now to remark that there is a certain set of problems, belonging
to phenomena on this side science, which no special science as
yet undertakes to treat. These problems are all of a practical
character, and relate to matters which, though not lying wholly
in an unknown domain, are yet equally matters of probability
and of belief rather than of demonstration. We may consider
them as marking out a domain in the phenomena of actual life.
Join the two domains, and we have the field of M. Eenouvier's
new general science ; lying, as it were, astride of the barrier
between science and belief. The problems which he speaks of
are these, and they are italicised in his pages :
" What are we to think of the proximate origin and proximate destiny
of the special phenomena manifested in a consciousness 1 " [Immortality].
" More generally, can we admit a certain order of the world as referred to
consciousness 1 " [Moral government of the world]. " Is it allowable to
suppose a human individual destiny, a law of development of personality,
and under \vhat conditions 1 " [Nature of the future state]. " Up to what
point are the principles of ethic and of the foundation of States involved in
the solution of these questions 1 " [Dependence of moral and political
practice on the unknown domain]. (III. 260.)
The foregoing amounts to nothing short of sketching out a
schenxe, and that on a philosophical basis, in which the questions
M. Jtenouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 51
that concern man individually and socially are to be treated in
connexion with the invisible world, instead of being left, as they
now are, to be fought for by theologians on the one hand and
those who deny, or at least abstract from, the existence of the
invisible. In this consists its immense practical importance.
We have here a philosophy which has special practical results.
Two things are gained by this distribution: (1) morals, including
social and political practice, are brought under the sanctions of
the invisible world ; and (2) we judge the nature and character
of the invisible world chiefly by our own moral nature, and no
longer solely by our intellectual faculties and acquirements.
At the same time it must be admitted, I think, that philosophy
is brought into possible collision with special science in one part
of the field, on which it would not be in collision with it if a
stricter limitation of the province of philosophy were adopted.
I mean the domains, not of morals, for they are clearly a de~
pendency of the analysis of consciousness, but those of physical
science on the one side and of the philosophy of history, includ-
ing the origins of civilisation, on the other ; in short, the two
fields covered by M. Benouvier's third and fourth Essays. On
his view of the new general science he is bound to have theories
in these domains, and thus comes into collision with other
theories, for instance, with Mr. Spencer's Evolution theory ;
which on a stricter view of what pertains to philosophy would
be avoided, philosophy being then conceived as indifferent to
questions of history, whether physical or human.
Turning to this new general science, the question is, what are
the first steps towards taking possession of the new domain.
The first necessity, says M. Eenouvier, is to study consciousness
in action, " man as a function of the categories," man no longer
as a content of thought and feeling, but as thinking, feeling,
acting ; the microcosm not the macrocosm ; in short to enter o'n
a Psychology which shall be the complement of the Lor/iqUe.
We shall then have before us, as our object of research, an
individual human consciousness, but one taken as a represen-
tative of all ; and this, the first step we take, is the step from
the general science of the Logique, the method of which is
demonstrative and analytic, to the most general branch of the
new science, which must proceed by the method of hypothesis
and induction. The generalisation of the phenomena of the
inquirer's individual consciousness is in fact the first step into
the domain of beliefs and probabilities.
And here it must be noted that, if the Logique had succeeded
in establishing what it is the tendency of philosophy to aim at,
a complete total synthesis, no need and at the same time no
room would have existed for such a science of probabilities as
52
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
we now must descend upon. Every result that followed would
then have followed as a deduction from that synthesis. There
would have been an absolute system of philosophy embracing
and determining the phenomena of all the special sciences. This
pretension being abandoned, the only course open is a scientific
but not absolute psychology ; and the first question to occur in
that psychology will relate to the nature and conditions of
certitude.
But it will also be remembered that one problem remains over
from the Logique, which has been passed on from category to cate-
gory, and has never met with a solution, the problem of deter-
minism : Is there real contingency in the world, or is everything
that occurs or will occur governed inevitably and universally by
antecedent laws, without the possibility of modification ? The
question of certitude depends on this problem, says M. Eenouvier,
more than is generally imagined ; and a new light will be thrown
upon both questions by the new psychology, the Critique de
I'Homme. In fact we shall find, that the two main problems
treated in the Psychologie Rationnelle are those of Liberty and
Certitude ; " for the question is " (and these are the concluding
words of the Logique) "to know how a man can attain and
ascertain truth independently and beyond the limits of his own
actual and individual consciousness."
III.
Such are the outlines of a philosophy, or rather of the basal
work of a philosophy containing an outline of the rest, which
will, if I mistake not, and so far as it founds a system of
Phenomenism, impose its law and its direction on the next epoch
of philosophic thought. I say only so far as it founds a system
of phenomenism, for the work which we have just gone through
falls into two very distinct portions, the phenomenism of the
first two Parts having no necessary connexion with the analysis
of the phenomena of consciousness by Categories, which occupies
the third Part, and is applied to the interpretation of phenomena
generally in the fourth. The phenomenism may stand, and the
analysis fall.
The analysis seems to me open to serious objections, objections
which looked at solely from an analyst's point of view appear
enormous, fatal to the system, but which yet, from a practical
point of view, sink into utter insignificance. I mean that they are
insignificant when we consider how independent of that analysis
phenomenism really is ; how independent of it also that doctrine
of phenomenism is which maintains the existence of an Invisible
World in relation with our own ; and, moreover, when we take
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 53
into account the possibility of replacing it by one more searching,
not only without weakening but with positive addition of
strength to the general phenomenist theory. The question of
analysis by categories is a question within phenomenism, and
may be answered in different ways without destroying the union
of phenomenists in developing that general theory.
From this point of view I will venture with diffidence to state
my objections to that analysis, not purposing to examine it at
length, still less pretending to refute it. I wish rather to call
attention to this great work of M. Kenouvier's, to claim for it due
recognition and careful examination by others, being convinced
that in this way alone the interests of truth can be served.
Besides it is necessary for phenomenism that its analytical
portion should be placed on a perfectly secure footing, beyond
the reach of scepticism and of atomism. For by phenomenism
I mean, of course, philosophical phenomenism, not that rope of
sand, that psychology in masquerade, and negation of philo-
sophy, which regards consciousness as consisting of isolated
atoms of thought, Humian impressions and ideas, bound to-
gether by the Laws of Association. If this is phenomenism, it
is certainly not philosophy ; and even phenomenism it appears
to be only because it makes no use of the notions of nounienal
substance and efficiency, not because it disproves their existence.
What then are the objections ? In the first place, what M.
Eenouvier calls an analysis into categories is not analysis, but
an arrangement of the facts under heads which are, it is true,
well known notions in actual use, but none of which are
ultimate elements of thought. It is an arrangement of a double
kind, first of phenomena under the nine categories, secondly of
three mutually relative conceptions under each category ; and
this certainly simplifies the phenomena by classifying them in
an easy and convenient order. But the categories themselves
are as much in need of analysis, as the phenomena are when
not so arranged. There is not one of the categories, or of the
conceptions composing it, which is not resolvable into simpler
elements ; these elements being some mode or other of feeling
or sensibility, some duration of time, and, in the case of feelings
of sight, touch, and sense of resistance (whether separately : or
combined), some extension in space, together with that particu-
lar feeling, or sense, of effort in attention, which is the mark oi
what we call volition. The formal elements in the categories,
abstracting from their content of feeling other than the feeling
of effort -and it is as purely formal that M. Eenouvier regards
them, calling them for instance the "skeleton of representa-
tions" are thus reduced to three kinds, that of space,. that of
time, that of volition. And of these the modes of time and the
54
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
modes of space are formal elements in states of consciousness
before volition modifies them; are elements of perceptions,
before these perceptions are modified by volition into thoughts.
If this conception could be carried out, we should have a
real and, so far as it went, explanatory analysis of conscious-
ness ; real, because into constituent parts more elementary than
the things analysed, and explanatory because an approach to
determining the primary springs of consciousness, at the point
where it issues from its conditions of existence, the properties
and powers of nerve-substance, before its development into
distinct functions and faculties. But no such approach is made
by M. Eenouvier's analysis.
Take for instance the category of Causality, which is the
name for the three conceptions, act, potency, force, taken
together. This is an arrangement, not an analysis into elements
more elementary than the thing analysed. To begin with the
included conceptions. Force is not analysed by saying that it
consists of the combined notions of act and potency, for these
require the notion of force for their own intelligibility ; each of
them includes force, just as much as force includes them ; act
also is a relative term to potency, and each must be understood
pari passu with the other. But this is not an analysis of the
relation between them ; it is a mere statement of it. So neither
is the relation between the three terms an analysis of causality,
but a statement of the relation to be analysed. Putting for-
ward such statements as an analysis of phenomena amounts to
admitting that the relations entitled categories cannot be
analysed ; whereby they come back again into objective nature
as entities, just as much as if they were called by that name.
Unfortunately M. Eenouvier makes no distinction between
perception and thought. He calls both, taken together, by the
common name of representation. And the consequence is, that
he does not distinguish the two kinds of formal elements in
thoughts, but only inquires what are the ultimate modes which are
assumed by combinations of the three kinds; a category being the
combination of some formal element or elements of perception
with attention, which is the formal element turning perceptions
into thoughts. The categories are thus not an analysis of con-
sciousness in its formal element, but a classification of the
combinations of the formal elements in thought, which are in
actual use in reasoning. They have consequently no title to be
the foundation or criterion of truth in philosophy or criticism.
Consequently, too, they are no sufficient reply to the Associa-
tionists. That theory cannot be answered by pointing to the
inseparability of relatives in thought, but only to that of the
ultimate elements in pre-volitional representation. For it would
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 55
still be open to them to urge, that the law of inseparable asso-
ciation had been employed in producing the apparent insepara-
bility of relatives in thought, namely, by supposing them to
have been originally isolated in perception; whereas they are
precluded from this, if it can be shown that the smallest and
simplest perceptions, at the moment they cross the " threshold " of
consciousness, are states of consciousness containing distinguish-
able but inseparable elements, some of which (the formal) are
carried on into the adjacent perceptions, so as to bind them all
into a single chain from the very first. The Association theory
requires the assumption, that perceptions are originally isolated;
then and then only is there room for the theory. This assump-
tion it is which a philosophical phenomenism is challenged to
overthrow.
M. Eenouvier seems to have a remarkably firm grip of the
truth of phenomenism, but, were it not so, his theory of the
categories as an ultimate analysis of consciousness would
seriously endanger it. It is in fact the very route out of
Kantianism followed first by Fichte and then by Hegel. I do
not mean that they framed a theory of Categories, but that they
adopted the form of thought instead of the form of perception as
their guiding principle. This is common to them with M. Kenou-
vier. In speaking of Being, too, he sometimes speaks Kant's and
Fichte's language. " Etre c'est poser," he says at one place (III.
200) ; and in the Psyclwlogie we find him showing that being is
affirmation, which is thoroughly Fichtean. Taken in a full
unlimited sense, uncorrected by the co-existing fact that we
cannot posit or affirm, nor yet abstain from positing or affirming,
at our pleasure, such phrases as these are sheer idealistic abso-
lutism. It is true that to the perception of existence there goes
attention ; but that is far from being the whole of the percep-
tion. And in fact we abstract from this attention when, after
it, we assert that the perceived thing exists. It is what we
cannot Jielp seeing, touching, hearing, and so on, that we say
exists. Our affirming it does not make it. Existence is a per-
ception. The affirmation of an existence which is not forced on
the perception is a belief.
There is another doctrine also of prime importance which
M. Renouvier shares with the post-Kantian absolutists, one
which strikes still harder at the root of phenomenism than
the analysis already criticised, and is a consequence of it.
He holds that self-consciousness is a necessary element or
condition of sensibility ; which is a consequence of the category
of personality. It comes out first clearly in the Psyclwlogie
(Vol. I. p. 6), where he says, speaking of this category, " with-
out personal representation, no sensible representation would
56
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic.
subsist". Were it not for his combining, somewhat incon-
gruously as it seems to me, a system of thorough-going pheno-
menism with this absolutist analysis, he would occupy much
the same position as Terrier of St. Andrews, whose Institutes of
Metaphysic, published in 1854, the same year as M. Eenouvier's
Logique, gives a complete correlation of objective and subjective
aspects, but includes the same absolutist notion, namely, of self-
consciousness being a condition of consciousness and not vice
versa. Terrier never worked out his Institutes into a complete
system, so that we cannot tell what the effect of this notion
would have been in his case; M. Eenouvier has managed to
frame a phenomenistic system in spite of it. Still it seems to
me, that the stability of the system is seriously endangered
thereby. And after all the chief point is, not so much to have
a phenomenistic system, as to have a logical and impregnable
one.
Changes like those suggested in ultimate analysis, especially
if our views on Being and Self-consciousness altered conjointly,
would involve further changes of great importance for a pheno-
menist system. In the first place, what shall we think of Infi-
nity ? And here I am in part replying to a criticism which M.
Eenouvier did me the honour to make in La Critique Philoso-
phigue for Nov. 30, 1876. M. Eenouvier seems to have no
other notion of the infinite than as a realised infinite, which he
rightly says is a contradiction. But there is something between
this and the indefinite, the validity of which notion he asserts.
He seems to think that we can affirm nothing to exist which
we cannot in thought see all round, as it were, or which is not
conceived as a whole. Consequently his indefinites all lie
within the universe conceived as a vast but finite whole. The
reason of this is, that his categories are forms of thought, not
perception, and all thought is limitation.
But if we take the forms of perception, time and spatial
extension, as our ultimates, then we shall find that infinity is
involved in all perception. Every perceived thing, which is a
portion of time or of space, has time or space beyond it. The
perception that this happens always, wherever you have a per-
ception, this is the infinity of time and space; it does riot
involve a process, or going on to see whether, or where, you
will be brought to a stop ; it is not, as M. Eenouvier says, a
result of an induction which may turn out invalid ; but it is the
perception that time and space have and can have no final
boundary, that is, one without time or space beyond it. This is
a perception which, so far from involving, entirely excludes the
thought of a realised infinite. Yet it is not an indefinite. That
is the product of the process in infinitum; you go on without
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 57
knowing whether or when you will come to an end ; and this is
only possible in concrete cases, not with time and space in
abstracto. Yet time and space are not thus treated as things-
in- themselves ; they are merely treated as forms of perception,
instead of forms of thought. The term indefinite may be
denned as that which has no known end ; the term infinite as
that which has no possible end. Just as the finite is that which
has and must have an end ; the definite that which has a
known end.
Applying this to the Invisible World, those who take my
view of ultimate analysis would adopt the first of the two ways,
mentioned above, of imagining the unknown region beyond the
synthesis of science, that of imagining it infinite ad extra, and
not in M. Eenouvier's way of conceiving it as vast but finite.
This, however, gives rise to no practical difference, since we
cannot practically treat the imagined infinite but by employing
thought upon it, that is, conceiving limits ever farther and
farther off, thus turning it into an indefinite. The ideal exis-
tences, which we imagine as belonging to it, must be made
indefinites by the mere circumstance that we try to conceive
them; of which effort to conceive, the imagination of the
infinite is a condition.
But M. Eenouvier's finite world, that world which we may
picture as a vast but closed and hollow sphere, the surface of
which is defined by the categories, threatens to be too small for
him at one point. It bulges at the Possibles. If he holds, as
we know from the Psychologie he does hold, the doctrine of a
real indeterininism as the basis of a real liberty of will, then the
closed circuit of the categories bursts at that point. Real con-
tingency is the aTreipov, has no bounds, and cannot be imagined
to exist in a finite world. Indefiniteness, which is merely the
absence of known bounds, is no satisfaction to the claims of real
indetermination. Beyond that indetermination which depends
upon our ignorance, there is, it is held, a real limit ; and yet in
the world, so limited, there is real indetermination. How can
this be made to harmonise ?
Not that the imagination of an infinite world shows real
indetermination to be true. Far from it. It gives scope for it
only, if it should be held true on other grounds ; whereas a
finite world gives no scope for it at all. llie infinite gives scope
also for an infinite determination ; but it does not decide between
the two. It sets indeterminism free, and the gift of infinity is
not to be despised.
The analysis of ultimates proposed above, in lieu of the
categories, will also be found to have a direct bearing on the
questions of certitude and liberty which are treated more fully
58
M. Renoumer's Philosophy. Logic.
in the Psychologic. Indeed there is no part of philosophy where
important differences do not result, according as we adopt the
one or the other view of ultimate analysis. It is not here the
place to enter on these questions. One word, however, on
another point connected with the unknown region, before
bringing this paper to a close, I mean M. Kenouvier's rehabilita-
tion of polytheism.
It is in the unknown or intermediate region of thought,
limited ad extra by the categories, and lying between that
external limit and the still more limited interior sphere of
scientific synthesis, that the great problems of philosophy are
met with, which, according to M. Eenouvier, are Kant's well
known three Liberty, Immortality, and God. Eegarding the
third, the question is One or several ? And here we see at
once that the hypothesis of several harmonises perfectly with
that of several causes of the world, and that several causes are
more favourable than one alone to our hopes of completing the
scientific synthesis of known phenomena. The vast variety of
phenomena and their laws would sooner reach their explanation,
if they really reached it by arriving at several causes, than if
these had again to be referred to a single cause.
But this consideration is, of course, a mere preliminary. The
phenomena of the unknown region are to be judged, not so much
by logical needs and intellectual processes, as by the moral
nature of man. Final causes, desires, purposes, volitions, which
are all phenomena of personal consciousness and subject to the
moral law, are the considerations of decisive importance in framing
our conceptions of the unknown region, and not scientific con-
ceptions of causality alone. The category of causality is in-
cluded under and dominated by those of finality and personality ;
and these are the categories which give its final complexion to
the unknown, as indeed they do also mediately to the known
region.
M. Eenouvier insists very strongly and very rightly, in my
opinion, on the necessity of employing the moral or practical,
not only the speculative, reason in ascertaining the nature of the
Divinity. In the Psychologic, where all these questions are
treated at length, he represents God as the God of the moral
reason, and rejects every attempt to ascertain his nature by
identifying him witlAhe " law of laws or the aggregate of laws
which compose the universe ". Such a method could lead
only to a " certain totality of unknowable functions," a conception
belonging either to a materialistic or a pantheistic or a scholastic
atheism. But " to attach oneself, by belief, to the existence of
an order of Benevolence (Bonti) which saves the person and
M. Renouvier'8 Philosophy. Logic. 59
assures the victory of the Just, this is to affirm God, without
knowing anything else about him." (Psych. III. 191-193.)
Such being what I must consider the just and profound views
of M. Eenouvier on the nature of the Divine, and of our means
of ascertaining it, what are the considerations which lead him
to give the preference to a conception of it as composed of a
number of Gods ? Again I must have recourse to the Psycho-
logic, where all the questions of this series are expressly treated,
the foundation only being laid in the Logique. I bring forward
the question here, because it can only be handled properly in
connexion with the Infinite ; but in M. Eenouvier's treatment
it is closely connected with the two others of the same series,
liberty and immortality ; and his doctrine on these two enters
largely as a determinative into that of polytheism.
His train of thought is this. God, we know, is a limited
Being ; for, in the first place, he must be construed to thought
under the categories ; secondly, his power and his knowledge are
both limited by human freedom of thought and action. (Psych.
III. 251, 252.) This is one set of considerations. But, in the
next place, this relative independence of other persons, in regard
to God, involves of itself their probable immortality. God " will
dispose of the causes and ends of our world so far as the liberty
and individuality of persons, who are not he, and the general
laws which he represents as enveloping his own existence, allow
it ". (Ib.J These other persons, in short, treat the Divinity as
Hamlet treats the Ghost :
" And for my soul, what can it clo to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself ? "
Now, not to mention the probability of other celestial persons
in the unknown region, " our speculations in moral belief, by
leading us to the thesis of the immortality of persons, have
beforehand and necessarily opened to us the way to polytheism,
by means of apotheoses. The progress of life and virtue peoples
the universe with divine persons, and we shall be faithful to an
ancient and spontaneous religious sentiment if we call those
among them Gods, whose nature we think we can honour and
whose works we can bless." (Ib. 254.) Besides which, a
hierarchy of Gods is in greater accordance with republican,
monotheism with monarchical, sympathies ; though this is not
put forth as a reason for belief, but only as a recommendation of
it, if it should be accepted on other grounds. (Ib. 259 ff.)
These views are farther confirmed, when we come to examine
them in the light of history critically treated, as may be seen by
turning to the Fourth Essay, pp. 761 to 768. At the same time
it is only fair to say, that M. Kenouvier must not be regarded as
00 M, Renouvier 's Philosophy. Logic.
doing more than saying what can be said for polytheism, and
that he expressly guards himself against being supposed to be
making a personal confession of faith (Psych. III. 268). Still
it is clear that his sympathies lie in that direction. As far as
sympathy goes, I think, we shall find the determining circum-
stance to be this, do we lay most stress on the belief in
God, or on the belief in Immortality ? " Immortality," says M.
Renouvier," is the grand moral faith of this doctrine," namely,
of polytheism. (Ib. 262.) There is the real watershed between
Monotheism and Polytheism, when both are taken alike as
consequences of the moral law. But sympathy alone need not,
as most certainly it ought not, be made the criterion of ques-
tions like these.
Let us go back to the intellectual root of the whole question.
M. Renouvier requires to have the Divinity construed to the
logical intellect before he will consent to believe in it. His
intellectual conception and his moral affirmation must strictly
coincide. God must be thought under the categories. The
categories, as the be all and end all of consciousness, are at the
root of the polytheistic conception. For, since they compel us,
in any case, to conceive the Divinity as finite, the hypothesis of
several finite Divinities, like that of several finite causes, satisfies
the imagination at less cost of thought than the hypothesis of
one only.
The very same requirement of having the Divinity construed
to the logical intellect, before consenting to believe in it, is the
ground of the Scholastic unifying conception of God ; only that
here infinity is thought to be embraced, a realised infinity, which,
as M. Renouvier says, is a contradiction.
One side denies the infinite, the other defines it. But the
infinite can neither be denied nor defined. It is a fact which
must nevertheless be reckoned with. It disposes of theorists, not
they of it. The infinite, I have already tried to show, is a fact
of perception, and not a fact of thought. It can only be partially
conceived, by entering on aprocessus in infinitum, and conceiving
one ideal beyond another in succession, the last of which still
has infinity, undefined, beyond it, of which it falls infinitely
short. There is an indefinite approximation to the infinite, and
each stage of this approximation, in matters of religious belief,
is an intellectual conception taking in so much and no more of
the Infinite Being.
Now what I say is this, that the moral affirmation of the
existence of the Divinity attaches to the Infinite, the intellectual
conception to the Ideals carved out of it successively in the
indefinite approximation. The highest ideal conception which
we can form is thus an imperfect image of the infinite, the nature
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Logic. 61
of which we can know in no other way than by successive more
and more perfect ideals, or partial conceptions of it. The
existence of the infinite is a fact shown by analysis ; no belief
in the strict sense is possible of this, but only knowledge ; but
the moral affirmation, that the infinite, in matter of religion, is
represented (though imperfectly) by, and exists including, our
highest ideal conception, this is an act of religious belief, an act
of faith. It affirms the existence of something not only not
forced upon it, but of something which, (not being like the
infinite alone an abstract element, but a concrete object), yet
cannot be logically conceived as or for itself, but only in its
representative approximation.
I accept as fully and as frankly as M. Eenouvier the necessary
anthropomorphism of all religion. " All theism, in the eyes of
a man of sincerity, is entirely anthropomorphic." (Phil, de I' Hist.,
p. 767.) But I hold that the only possible escape from the
narrowness of anthropomorphism, from the false sense of
Trdvrwv /jLerpov avOpwiros to the true one, lies in the fact, which
analysis reveals, that the infinite both exists and escapes logical
definition. This fact it is which keeps the universe from being
dwarfed to the measure of human powers, as the categories dwarf
it when they are taken as the measure of existence.
But does this alone prove either monotheism or polytheism
to be true ? Certainly not. But it leaves the field open for
monotheism, which the narrower conception of a world limited
by the categories would close. It leaves scope for the moral
motives, which tend to unification, to operate. And this being
so, then, to my mind, one consideration is of decisive weight.
It is this. If the Divinity is to be conceived, as M. Eenouvier
contends in a passage already quoted, as the God of the moral
and practical reason, that is, as the God of all men's consciences ;
and if the conscience of men is formed everywhere on the same
model, namely, on the ideal of Justice fulfilled by Benevolence,
which is also M. Renouvier's doctrine; it follows that every one,
so far as he approximates to his own ideal, approximates to the
ideal of all. The ideal is the same, though approached by divers
paths, and in different degrees. That which we represent to
ourselves as the union of justice and benevolence, the infinite
object of that approximative ideal, that and that only is the
adequate object of religion.
SHADWORTH H. HODGSON.
IV. THE SUMMUM BONUM.
IN connexion with the subject of ends and dispositions
toward ends, discussions as to the greatest or highest good
have almost always arisen from the very dawn of philosophis-
ing. Much fruitless speculation has taken place in the course
of these discussions, proceeding from the fact that thinkers
have approached the topic imbued with scholastic or a priori
notions, which have prevented them from dealing with it in a
scientific spirit and by a scientific method ; but, notwithstand-
ing this barrenness of results of a considerable portion of the
inquiries as to the Summum Bonum, no less important con-
sequences naturally flow from them than the fixing of the
ethical standard, and the determination of what ought to be
the chief ends of human endeavour.
The Eoman orator, man of letters, and philosopher, to whom
the world is indebted for the treatise De Finibus, has pre-
sented in that essay the true philosophy of this subject in
setting forth the doctrines of Epicurus, the greatest ethical
teacher of the Greeks ; and as remarkably has he exhibited
the arguments which from the beginning to the present have
been urged against that philosophy, arguments whose in-
sufficiency, as they were stated then and as they are stated now, is
no less conspicuous than the assurance with which they are
brought forward and reiterated by their advocates as conclusive
and irrefragable from their side of the question. Both in the
days of Cicero and in modern times, thinkers have misunderstood
the Epicurean philosophy, not seeing the strong physiological
principles upon which it rests, and have misrepresented it
through an obstinate perversion of its meaning and tendencies.
The way in which they have misunderstood and perverted it
receives nowhere any better illustration than in the treatise I
have mentioned. They seem never to have been able to com-
prehend that pleasure is not confined to things sensual, but
belongs as well to the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual ;
nor that when men affect to despise and avoid pleasure, it is
only a greater pleasure that they are seeking. " The wise man
holds to this principle of choice in these matters, that he rejects
some pleasures so as by the rejection to obtain others which
are greater, and encounters some pains so as by that means to
escape others which are more formidable." l
1 De Finibus , I. 10. " Itaque earum rerum hie tenetur a sapiente
delectus* lit aut rejiciendis vomptatifcus majores alias consequatur aut
perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.
The Summum Bonum. 63
The only way in which any satisfactory determination can be
reached as to what is the Summum Bonum, is by a reference
to the ultimate experiences of the human mind. And looking
in that direction for a solution of the problem, it seems to be
necessary first to know what a Bonum, or good t^ing ja, in order
to learn what are its superlatives. An appeal to such an arbiter
as the one selected reveals two kinds of experiences which are
the earliest, the most marked, and the most unanalysable of any
which occur in the sentient life of the individual. The one
kind of experience is that which we desire to perpetuate and
repeat ; the other that which we desire to annihilate, prevent,
and avoid. One we draw toward ; the other we flee from. We
call the one experience pleasurable ; the other we term painful.
A good thing is a thing which gives us a pleasing or pleasurable
experience ; a thing the opposite of good is what gives us
correspondingly a painful experience. On the side of volition,
whatever is desired, so far forth as the individual desires it, is
-to him & good thing; whatever is avoided, so far forth as the
'individual repels it, is to that individual a bad thing.
If now the will inclines toward those things which are pleasur-
able and away from those things which are painful, and if both the
pleasurable and the painful do as a fact come into everybody's
experience, then the maximum of the pleasurable, and the
minimum of the painful are the chief objects of desire. This
contemplates a maximum of pleasure for a given period over
and above what pain is inevitable and cannot be avoided. But
such a maximum or excess is no other thing than what we
mean by the term happiness, and the period considered is the
human lifetime, or an extension of it. A Bonum is something
pleasurable ; the Summum Bonum is the greatest amount of the
pleasurable attainable during the existence of the sentient
being.
This view of what constitutes the Summum Bonum follows
naturally and, as it would seem, necessarily from a philosophy
which takes its stand upon experience as its foundation, and
appeals solely to experience as the arbiter to determine the
validity of its principles. Having accepted the dictum that the
facts of experience are at once the data and the criteria of
philosophy, and believing that science is only principia
generaliora, and philosophy nothing more than generalissimo-,
the conclusion is inevitable that a pleasurable experience, pre-
sentative or representative, is the object of volition, and that
the greatest amount of pleasure or happiness is the Summum
Bonum. In the light of such a philosophy no argument is
needed to substantiate this truth. All the lines of association
support it, and the rnind yields assent to it as soon as stated,
64
The Summum .Bonum.
not because it is a self-evident a priori idea proved independ-
ently of experience, but because a universal agreement of all
experience proves and establishes it. It matters little what
name is applied to characterise the highest good. Behind
the name lies the experience, and that which is desired on the
one side is generalised and set over against that which is
avoided. The greatest excess of experiences gratifying desire
over experiences baffling it is the Summum Bonum to be gained,
by whatever name you choose to mark the same. The word
happiness best expresses that excess, and is properly chosen for
the purpose. " Therefore," say the Epicureans, " this notion is
implanted in our minds naturally and instinctively, as it were ;
so that we feel the one is to be sought for and the other to be
avoided." l
It is impossible to answer fully the question, What is the
Summum Bonum ? without a reference to psychology, as has
been before remarked. The problem must inevitably be worked
out through an examination of the human mind, for the
existence of a chief good concerns primarily and vitally human
action. The good is a good with respect to my pursuit. What I
apprehend to be the highest end of endeavour is my Summum
Bonum. So that, since action follows volition and intelligence
directs and guides volition, the laws of will and the laws of
intellect, if any such laws there be, ought to and must indicate
what are the objects of volition and with it the ends of action.
Those laws show a pleasant thing to be an object of desire ;
a painful thing an object of aversion. By generalisations from
these observed facts, it appears readily and plainly enough, in
the widest reach of the mind, that the greatest quantity of
pleasurable experience is the superlative good. Now in answer
to such reasoning it has been claimed, on the one hand, that
such a generalisation does not include all there is in the idea of
the Summum Bonum, but is defective, though the method is a
proper one ; on the other hand, some are ready to object that
the rinding and determination of the Summum Bonum is not
possible by such a process and is not a matter of generalisation
at all.
Both of these parties find the highest ethical good in some-
thing which they conceive to be over and above happiness,
which they variously style worthiness, blessedness, virtue, &c.
To confound these with happiness, they say, is to ignore im-
portant and fundamental differences. Virtue may subsist not
only without happiness but in opposition to happiness ; a man
1 De Finibus I. 9. " Itaque aiunt hanc quasi naturalem atque insitam
in animis nostris inesse notionem, ut alterum ease appetendura, alterum
aspernandum sentiamus."
The Summum Bonum. 65
may consciously be worthy to be happy and yet not happy at
all, though preferring worthiness to happiness, though choosing
virtue above all things.
As to the first of these assumed chief excellences the question
at once arises, Worthiness of what ? " Worthiness of spiritual
approbation," we are then told. Enough for the man, " that
he is in the sight of his own spirit and of all spirits, worthy of
all spiritual approbation." The very phraseology here used
shows that this claimed supreme good is dependent upon some
other good more ultimate. Would those who urge this standard
deny that the spiritual approbation is a more excellent thing
than the worthiness of it ? And then too does it not appear
that to be worthy of such an approbation is one of the best
means of getting it ? So it would seem as if the approbation
itself is the higher good and that worthiness is advanced as a
sort of consolatory substitute, since such approbation is not
always gained when deserved. Moreover, this worthiness in
the sight of one's own spirit can be nothing other than the
spiritual approbation of one's own spirit ; and this would seem
to include in reality all that is meant by this mooted chief end.
To have one's own spiritual approbation means, if it means
anything, a consciousness that the person is worthy of the
approbation of other spirits. If, therefore, we substitute for
" worthiness of spiritual approbation " consciousness of spiritual
excellency, we shall have all that is embraced in the former.
But consciousness of one's own merit or excellency of any kind,
as also one's own approbation and the approbation of others,
are all alike elements and constituents of happiness ; they are
not the whole of happiness or the only happiness, but constitute
a variety of happiness.
Dr. Mark Hopkins, of Williams College in Massachusetts,
observes a propos of this alleged Summum Bonum :
" What is that in which a man's worthiness of spiritual approbation
consists '] It is in his choice of an ultimate end. The character is
according to that. Does then the highest good of man consist in his
choosing as an ultimate end his own choice of an ultimate end ? This
cannot be, and yet it would seem to follow from the definition
How then can that be the highest good of man, which, if he really had it,
he would think of only as the man who has healthy lungs thinks of his
breathing. No doubt worthiness is conditional, and in a moral being
necessarily so for blessedness. But the word, though it may be used
absolutely, naturally carries. with it an indication of something beyond
itself. A worthiness of what ? Of approbation ? And why not of the
blessedness there is in and through that worthiness and approbation ? "
Lectures on Moral Science, pp. 57-58.
Now as to Dr. Hopkins's blessedness as a Summum Bonum, it
is quite significant to remark that on turning to Webster's
5
66
The Summum Bonum.
Dictionary of the Unglish Language the very first definition
given of the term is happiness and the second is felicity. After
this general explanation follow two specific kinds of happiness,
namely heavenly joys and the favour of God, while the synonyms
of the word are happiness, beatitude, bliss, joy. In this case the
lexicographer may be relied upon. I am wholly unable to see
how any ingenuity can possibly make out blessedness to be any-
thing other than a kind of happiness. If I am right, then
although blessedness be, if you please, a principal end of volition
and a good, yet, since it must be subsumed under a more general
good, this latter is the Summum Bonum.
In reality both these two designations of the chief good
which we have just been considering belong to the same general
class as is indicated by those who urge the claims of virtue to
the position of Summum Bonum. Mr. Sidgwick defines virtue
to be " a disposition to do or habit of doing such voluntary
actions as are deserving of praise or approbation ". Worthiness
of approbation would thus seem to be its characteristic. In its
ultimate analysis virtue reduces itself down to good character
with its associations of good reputation. But a good character
and a good reputation are themselves pleasures to their
possessor ; and if these constitute the Summum Bonum then the
latter is still a pleasure and we are inevitably and unavoidably
brought back to happiness. Turn which way we will, we can-
not escape from the conclusion that good is pleasure as contra-
distinguished from pain and that the chief good is the chief
pleasure or the maximum of happiness.
If it be conceded that maximum happiness is the Summum
Bonum, some question would still remain as to whether it is
rnaximum happiness of the individual or of others. There does
not seem to be any way of avoiding the conclusion that the
ultimate appeal must be to the individual consciousness for a
judgment of what is good according as it is good for that
individual. My own feelings are the motives of my actions
and volitions. There must be a pleasurable feeling to me, in
order that I may pursue any course or plan of action. The
thought of it must yield satisfaction to me and not to any one
else merely. If I make my belly my god or if I seek sincerely
the welfare of rny neighbour, in either case there must be some
stimulus of pleasure to me in the course adopted. If now
pleasurable sensation were the only end to be sought, this would
yield us an unmitigated egoism as a principle of action. But
an economy of pleasure is requisite, else pain comes all the more
overwhelmingly ; and it is not the pleasure of the moment
irrespective of consequences that experience teaches us to pur-
sue, but the greater joy derived from a wise economy of
The Summum Bonum. 67
pleasures in a word the maximum excess of pleasure over pain,
or happiness. And through the social condition and the social
necessities of mankind it occurs that I do not obtain happiness
except through the happiness of others about me ; and,
generally speaking, it comes to be observable that the greater
the number of other people around me who are happy, the
greater and more secure is my own happiness. Thus as man-
kind come into closer relations and more frequent and easy
communication with each other the truth which before seemed
limited in its application to the family, the neighbourhood, the
party, the state, or the nation, now is seen to have an extension
which includes the whole human race. Thus, as constituting a
part of each individual's happiness, the happiness of others
becomes a Bonum, but does not alter the fact that, in the ulti-
mate analysis, the Summum Bonum to each individual is his
own greatest happiness. In speaking of the chief good, there-
fore, it is well to discriminate between the chief good of the
individual and of the nation or race ; the former is the maximum
of happiness for that individual ; the latter is the maximum of
happiness for the greatest number. Since ethics concerns the
relations of man to man and implies a social organism, the last-
named is the Summum Bonum of that science.
The question is sometimes asked why we concern ourselves
with the welfare of others at all, especially of others quite
remote from us. 1 conceive that there is no answer to be given
to such a query more than to state the fact of the social interde-
pendence of men and the further fact that this interdependence is
becoming more and more close and necessary. There is no
more reason to be given for it than that life exists or that the
solar system stands. Its existence is on precisely a par with
those other scientific truths. If then we are asked why we
should educate men to find their happiness in the joy of others,
to find a pleasure in self-denial and self-sacrifice which over-
masters great pain, to esteem it a blessing to die for their
country and while they live to live not for their present selves
but for the benefit of succeeding generations, we can only
justify ourselves by replying that such an education tends to
promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number and that
it is necessary to the happiness of each one of us that the
general happiness be preserved and increased. Thus much for
the educators, and it ought to be held a sufficient justification.
For the person acting under such an education, it can only be
said that to him his maximum of happiness lies in his self-
sacrifice. Any inquiry into the final cause of such a disposition
or of the general growth and progress of altruism in the human
68
TJie Summum Bonum.
race must be as irrelevant and fruitless as an inquiry into the
final cause of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies.
The interest we take in future ages and future generations is
in the same category, though at first sight it might seem to be
more inexplicable. What has posterity done for us ? was the
argument of Sir Boyle Eoche. Posterity does nothing for us,
but it does a great deal for and most intimately concerns our
children and our children's children ; and the happiness of our
children is directly related to our own ; and even if an in-
dividual has no children and does not expect to have, his labour
for the posterity of some one else brings him the approbation
and favour of his associates. But even if it does not bring such
a reward, it is likely to do so at some future time, and the hope
of enduring fame is one of the chief elements in the present
happiness of many people.
All we can do is to watch the development of natural
tendencies and see whither they point. That they are so and
the manner in which they came to be so are within our ken.
Why they are so and what their ultimate results will be we
cannot tell. " Therefore, he affirms," says Cicero of Torquatus,
n that there is no need of argument or of discussion as to why
pleasure is to be sought for or pain to be avoided. This he
thinks a matter of sense, just as much as that fire is hot, snow
white, honey sweet ; none of which propositions require to be
confirmed by laboriously sought reasons; but that it is suffi-
cient merely to state them." x
Enough has been said to show, I trust, that the maximum
happiness includes all that there is in the idea of a Summum
Bonum, when we essay to find the latter by observation and
generalisation. There is no more far-reaching, no wider
generalisation to be made ; this embraces all that can possibly
enter into the notion of a chief good. To those, however, who
claim that observation and generalisation have nothing to do
with the determination of a Summum Bonum, such a result
will not be conclusive. Such thinkers can only be met in the
field of psychology and general philosophy. If experience is
not the sole teacher, if knowledge is not the outcome of
experience, and if science is something more or other than
generalisations from experience, then these people may be right ;
but if the contrary is the truth, with that truth our thesis
stands established and cannot bs weakened or broken down.
Such a comprehensive inquiry as the solution of these problems
1 De Finibus, Bk. I. g. " Itaque negat opus esse ratione, neque dis-
putatione quam ob rem voluptas expetenda, fugiendus dolor sit. Sentiri
hoc putat, ut calere ignem, nivem esse albam, dulce mel ; quorum niliil
aportere exquisitis rationibus confirmari ; tantum satis esse admonere."
The Summum Bonum. 69
would require belongs to a treatise and not to an essay. It
cannot even be outlined here. We assumed our position on
this point at the outset of the discussion. But it may be useful
in this connexion to indicate with a little more particularity
some of the causes which have led men astray in studying this
fundamental question of ethics.
The main difficulty seems to have been that singular obtuse-
ness (before noted) to the fact that pleasure does not mean
sensual enjoyment, carrying with it the idea of excess and riot.
Epicurus both by his life and teaching sought to disabuse men
of these false ideas, but they would not be disabused. The
entire second book of the De Finibus, which is occupied with a
refutation of the Epicurean doctrines, refutes what Epicurus
never asserted nor claimed. It proceeds on the supposition
that Epicurus meant by pleasure pleasures of sensation and of
the body ; and that too although the first book of the same
treatise expressly shows that under the term pleasure Epicurus
included enjoyments of the mind as well as of the body and
laid greater stress upon the former. Because Epicurus said that
there are no enjoyments which are not derived from sensation,
the assumed opponent insists that he ignored, denied, and
despised everything but presentative sensational pleasures, and
actually holds up the words of Epicurus upon his death-bed as
proof of the inconsistency of his character with his general
doctrine those words wherein the philosopher says that he is
passing a happy day, though suffering pains so intense that
nothing can be added to make them greater having " to
balance this a joy in my mind which I derive from the recol-
lection of my philosophical principles and discoveries". To the
arguments of Torquatus that Epicurus meant by pleasure
something other than sensual delight, Cicero only reiterates that
all the world knows what pleasure is and that if Epicurus gives
any different meaning to the term, either Epicurus or the rest of
the world is in error ; and then sagely proceeds to argue as if
Epicurus had yielded his own idea of pleasure to the popular
notion and adopted the latter into his philosophy to support
which theory there is not the smallest evidence nor for it the
slightest warrant of any kind. But having made this assump-
tion, the Stoics could easily enough declaim about the greater
excellence of honour and virtue, of the superiority of friendship,
modesty, temperance, over pleasure ; of the greater excellence
of the lives of Eegulus, Virginius, Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades,
Themistocles, or Epaminondas over that of the man of Lari-
uvium, Lucius Thorius Balbus ; but they seemed to be utterly
oblivious to the fact that to Epicurus honour and virtue, friend-
ship, modesty and temperance, courage and patriotic self-denial,
70
The Summum Bonum.
though to him only greater pleasures, were nevertheless entitled
to all the praise the Stoics claimed. Their denunciations and
reasonings were destitute of force and application. And to
crown all this amazing perversity, Cicero sums up the argument
against Epicurus by a reference to the fact that " the whole
sum of philosophy is directed to ensure living happily " the
very ground principle of Epicureanism and then rebukes the
Epicureans for placing happiness in pleasure, and endeavours to
show that devotion to pleasure cannot bring, ensure or per-
petuate happiness !
But though the persistence of this singular and inexcusable
heresy even to the present day, spite of all the discussions that
have marked and new lights that have illumined the centuries
since Cicero wrote, is a matter for wonder, it is not inexplicable.
The psychological facts of representation have never until
recently been at all clearly understood. It has not been evident
or at least not been well formulated that our so-called ideal life is
a representation of our sensational. It has not been appreciated
that since cognition, feeling, and volition are all but different sides
of the same experience, our emotional enjoyments are only repre-
sentations of our sensational pleasures. Therefore it has seemed
to many that our ideal joys were something different in kind
from our sensations, and while the term pleasure had a relevancy
to the sensational enjoyments, the thinking mind, having failed
to grasp the true relations of ideas to sensations, could not
associate the joy of the higher faculties with animal pleasure,
and was unwilling to mark the two by the same designation.
Instead of an identification they made an opposition which was
part and parcel of an opposition running through their whole
philosophy between the sensational and the ideal, the experi-
ential and the intuitional. They ought to have made an
opposition between one pleasure or set of pleasures and another;
instead of this they wrongly opposed all pleasure to something
they insisted was different from pleasure, and which they called
joy, blessedness, complacency or virtuous bliss.
This assumption of a difference in kind between pleasure and
blessedness (if you please I use only one of the designations)
has followed the course of the assumed difference in kind be-
tween intuitional and experiential knowledge. And as intui-
tional cognition has been esteemed higher and better, so a joy in
things connected with intuition has been regarded as higher,
and any kinship with the pleasures of the animal life has
been strenuously denied. The intuitional philosophy has on
the whole (and especially so far as its applications to ethics are
concerned) derived a support from religious dogmatism, because
it has been conceived to be an ally of dogmatic creeds. The
The Summum Bonum. 71
church having expressed in those creeds the most enormous
assumptions of fact as divine revelations and having denied the
right to test their claims by the ordinary gauges of human
experience, welcomed a philosophy which would throw discredit
upon the methods of experience, and which set up sources of
knowledge as above and independent of experience. If the
argument from design was not conclusive, a philosophy which
gave a faculty of seeing the existence of God by the mind's eye,
without proof and without need of proof, was a great gain. And
since question and doubt and proof had a disintegrating effect
upon religious institutions which rested upon the truth of dog-
mas handed down from generation to generation, and which
were alleged to have been received from the vicegerents of
Jehovah, a philosophy which seemed to discourage religious
scepticism and to show the untrustworthiness of the logical,
powers of the human mind and the results of their exercise was
too precious a possession, to be lightly relinquished. I am not
insensible to the fact that at some times the experiential philo-
sophy has been the bulwark of religion and the intuitional the
breeder of infidelity, but such has not been the general course ;
and the tenacity with which men have clung to church institu-
tions and special formulas of belief furnishes, through the
associations to which I have adverted, some explanation of the
readiness with which they have lent their ears to anything to
the damage of the Epicurean doctrines and the resoluteness with
which they have closed them to any explanations or elucidations
\vhieh tended to make it seem more creditable.
Among the religious and theological obstacles which have
been in the way of a true appreciation of the greatest happiness
philosophy, there appears quite prominently the free-will
doctrine. The prevalence of this wide-spread error was owing
to its close connexion with theological postulates respecting
responsibility for sin, and was able to maintain its hold so long
as psychological knowledge remained imperfect. But so soon as
a close study of the facts of mental action and growth showed
the dependence of volition upon motives, which motives were
found wholly within the domain of the feelings, and that the
will followed the direction of the strongest motives, people were
better able and more ready to see that the free-will principle
involved an actual absurdity no less an absurdity than the
denial of the law of universal causation.
Another very potent reason for the distrust with which
Epicureanism has been regarded lies in what is called our con-
sciousness that we perform many actions without thinking of
our happiness at all or even moved by other and opposed con-
siderations ; that we follow after many things for what they are
72
TJie Summum Bonum.
in themselves and not for the pleasure or happiness they will
bring. This difficulty, like the preceding ones, has sprung from
an imperfect psychology. It was inevitable in a state of
ignorance as to the laws of mental operations ; but when we
have gained a knowledge of those laws it vanishes without
leaving a wrack behind. We have only to learn the laws of
association, verifiable from the general experience of mankind,
to see precisely how that consciousness comes to exist. Associa-
tions of contiguous and similar experiences by repetition grow
more and more inseparable until they are so connected that the
links by which they were originally joined drop out, and one of
the associated ideas recalls the other invariably and immediately.
A habit of doing things in a particular manner or of doing
particular things when once established, causes us to perform
the actions without any thought of their purpose, although the
habit itself grew out of some ascertained or expected utility.
The action becomes automatic and in itself pleasurable.
Having done the act many times, it is habitual, and we love to
do it for its own sake. But it is not my purpose now to do more
than refer to the psychological facts a knowledge of which
removes the difficulty I have just spoken of, without attempting
a full exposition of them or a demonstration of the validity of
the conclusions drawn from them. It is true that we take
pleasure in actions or things for their own sake without con-
sciously having any other end in view ; but still it is pleasure
that is taken ; and that pleasure comes by repeated action from
presentative pleasures as opposed to pains, and its growth in
representativeness is distinctly traceable to utilities either in
the happiness of the individual or of others. It only remains
to be said that the influence of inherited mental constitutions
supplies all that is needed to account for thoughts and chains
of thought, feelings, and actions, which the individual's own
associations do not seem to be able to explain. The facts of
heredity furnish the concluding and consummating links in the
chain of demonstration which substantiates the truth of the
experience-philosophy.
Let it further be noticed that the cry has been raised against
the maximum-happiness-principle that it excludes all dis-
interested action and is wholly inconsistent with it. And here
also a more thorough and correct psychological analysis reveals
the baselessness of the objection. From the primary pleasures
of society and sexuality forming appetites as basic and original
as the appetite for air, drink or food, spring the desires for
the amicable presence of other human beings which for their
satisfaction demand the happiness of those others as a con-
stituent of one's own happiness. If therefore the appetite of
TJie tSummum Bonum. 73
sexuality is not fully gratified without the pleasure of both
parties, and the appetite for the society of others requires for its
satisfaction that those others shall be happy in your presence
(else they will flee from it and society cease to be), and if by
the force of habitual action extending through the life of
the individual and making an inseparableness of association
and reaching back in the line of its inheritance through count-
less generations, acquiring new strength and power with each
repetition if there comes a spontaneousness of disinterested
action and a joy in its exercise for itself which does not seek
for satisfaction beyond ; then the existence of altruistic acts
and ends is fully accounted for and seen to be a part of the
greatest-happiness-philosophy and included within and under
its principles. It makes me happy to have others happy ; to
forget myself is a part of my pleasure and upon that altruistic
pleasure of the Ego depends not only the happiness but the
existence of the whole human race. Therefore, so far are the
maximum-happiness-laws from excluding altruism, that the
latter forms one of the most important elements of the greatest
happiness both of the individual and the race, and is certainly
recognised by those laws as indispensable to such happiness.
Valuable as have been Mr. Henry Sidgwick's contributions
to ethics, it seems to me that, in his exposition of its methods,
he has failed to make a sufficiently profound analysis of the
psychological phenomena of feeling and volition, and thus to
comprehend the full force of the philosophy of hedonism and
especially what he terms Egoistic Hedonism. In discussing
pleasure and desire (Methods of Ethics, Bk. I. c. 4) Mr. Sidg-
wick appears to misapprehend the meaning of the truth
enunciated by J. S. Mill, that ' desiring a thing and finding it
pleasant are in the strictness of language two modes of naming
the same psychological fact '. He goes on to say : " Now if
by ' pleasant ' we mean that which influences choice, exercises
a certain attractive force on the will, it is not a psychological
truth but a tautological assertion 'to say that we desire what is
pleasant. But if we take ' pleasure ' to mean ' agreeable sensa-
tion/ it then becomes a really debatable question whether our
active impulses are always consciously directed towards the
attainment of agreeable (or the avoidance of disagreeable)
sensations as their end." And the latter is what the author in
question understands Mill to mean. With all due respect to
Mr. Sidgwick, I am compelled to believe that Mill meant the
former; but whether he did or not, the former statement seems
to me to express essentially the truth of the matter ; and the
fact that it is tautological does not militate against its truth or
its importance. We have before us a certain mental plie-
The Summum Bonum.
at on one side it is feeling,
feeling influences or
on the other it is
moves the volition : the
nomenon ; looked
volition. The
volition is moved by the feeling. Now if we are asked to
describe the feeling, beyond stating that it is feeling, and
its quantity perhaps, we can only characterise it in terms of
volition ; it is an agreeable feeling we say, that is (we explain),
it is a feeling which attracts volition or desire. Reciprocally,
we must describe a volitional state in terms of feeling ; we
desire a thing, that is, we are moved toward an agreeable feeling.
Of course desire and pleasure are not the same thing, for to
make up desire there is an element of pain needed. We do
not desire what we have ; it is the absence of something repre-
sented as pleasure which creates the desire. But given an
experience not present, to say that it is pleasant means precisely
the same thing as to say that it is desired. It would not be
correct to say that a thing which is pleasurable is desirable,
unless we make a qualification ; for the term desirable carries
with it an implication more extensive than the other word ;
meaning oftentimes desirable on the whole as compared with
other objects of desire what ought to be, not what is, desired.
Whatever is pleasurable is an object of desire would more
nearly express the truth.
Perhaps the whole subject can be made more plain by
analysis of the ideas marked by the name pleasure, a word with
which Mr Sidgwick seems also to have difficulty. It cannot
properly be said that pleasure means agreeaUe sensation, nor is
that a fair statement of the best hedonistic views. Pleasure
is an abstract, whose concrete concept is agreeaUe experience,
not sensation. Now an agreeable experience includes not
merely sensation but all feeling, emotion as well as sensation ;
it includes not only the presentative but the representative in
all its varieties of integration and complexity. This change
from Mr Sidgwick's explanation will be found to make quite a
difference with the philosophy of the subject. It should be said,
however, that elsewhere in his discussions of egoism Mr. Sidg-
wick defines pleasure as " feeling that is preferable or desirable"
a definition to which little exception can be taken, but
which is much more comprehensive than the one previously
given.
And now bearing in mind that pleasure is itself but an
abstract, which is derived from and for its meaning carries
the mind back to the concrete, it should be evident that this
name and the notion marked by it arise from the intellectual
operations of reflection, which take place for intellectual pur-
poses rather than volitional. For the sake of classification,
comparison, condensation and unification of knowledge, this
The Summum Bonum. 75
abstract notion is formed ; but the volitional activities do not
keep pace with the intellectual ; the former rather aim at real
concrete things as objects of desire. The mind does not desire
pleasures as such, but rather things which are pleasurable.
But in another sense volition is inseparably connected with
cognition ; feeling, volition, and cognition are three different
sides of one experience. We mark, identify, and gauge our
feelings arid volitions by means of our cognitions. In
experiencing a pleasure, the pleasure is ascertained and made
definite by the cognition. What then do we cognise ? We
cognise primarily things that are outside of ourselves ; and as
we represent the experience, we represent the objects of cogni-
tion in the position of prominence they originally occupied.
So that what we desire is things definitely cognised ; and
those things are in the first place objects outside of ourselves.
And since we do not desire everything that conies into
experience but avoid some things, the motive to desire or
avoidance is the pleasurable or painful feeling connected with
the experience. Those things which have pleasure connected
with them in our experience we seek. The object of desire is a
cognition ; the end of desire is a pleasurable feeling. In other
words, the object of action is intellectual, the end or final
motive is feeling. The child desires its mother's breast ; the
breast is the object of desire, the feeling of hunger is a motive
and the represented satisfaction of assuaged hunger is the final
motive or end. That which is desired is objective, else it would
not be desired at all ; the satisfaction of the desire is subjective.
It is a law of our nature that action is directed from the centre
outward ; and volition flows toward a cognised object ; but this
flow is hastened or checked by subjective pleasure or pain.
Moreover since the objects of action are primarily and at all
times in large part non-ego, external things form a large part
of the objects of desire, volition, and action. And when action
or volition is directed toward subjective things it is necessary
to objectify them. They become in the mind's contemplation
objects external to the subjective mind. As such they are
objects of desire as well as of other operations of volition.
Thus when I eat an apple there is a subjective pleasurable
feeling. The experience altogether is the apple, the action of
the eating and the feelings accompanying. When I recall the
experience I think of the apple and the actions I performed in
eating it ; and as I mentally reproduce them, the accompanying
pleasurable feeling is reproduced also in some degree and stimu-
lates me to again realise what I have represented. I then say,
I desire an apple. But it is possible for me to form an idea or
cognition of this pleasurable feeling and abstract it from the
76
The Summum Bonum.
cognition of the apple, or to direct the attention toward that
cognition chiefly instead of toward the apple and the actions of
eating. Should I do this the experience is not reproduced as it
occurred, but a modification is made ;" feeling does not start in
and begin to fill quite the same channels as before. We have
in such a case not the pleasure of eating the apple represented,
but the pleasure accompanying a new intellectual object, which
is at best only a part of the original object ; we have the plea-
sure which attends the cognition of the pleasure of eating the
apple a dilution of the original pleasure. If we were to make
this cognition of the pleasure of eating the apple the object of
desire, we should have a vastly weaker pleasure than if we
made the apple as represented the object of desire. Practically,
therefore, we desire and seek non-ego objects for the most part
rather than subjective experiences objectified, though pleasurable
feeling is still the motive of the desire.
The result of this line of thought is to substantiate Mr.
Sidgwick's expressed views that men do not always consciously
seek pleasure or the production of agreeable sensations within
themselves, but that there is " everywhere in consciousness
extra-regarding impulse directed toward something which is not
pleasure ". Indeed we may even go farther, in maintaining
that men scarcely can be said to seek pleasure at all. But it
also appears there was not in the author's mind clearly the true
meaning of the somewhat loose expression that we always
desire or seek for pleasure. And while it is patent that we
desire objects external which are not pleasures, it is by no
means shown that we desire any objects which are not in some
degree pleasurable. On the contrary it is made more evident
that pleasurable feelings are the motives and ends of actions,
although not the direct objects of volitions. Cognitions do not
move the will : to do that is the province of feeling ; and plea-
surable feelings draw action and volition towards those objects
which produce them while painful feelings similarly repress and
repel. So that the Epicurean philosophy is not disturbed by
the considerations Mr. Sidgwick adduces upon this point. It is
after all only the old misapprehension of the Stoics repeated,
and comes as did theirs from an imperfect psychological
analysis.
It remains for us now to note some of the relations of the
Summum Bonum to ends and dispositions. As a matter of fact
we may say in general terms that the majority of men do seek
their own happiness as their supreme good ; and yet this state-
ment needs to be explained or it will confuse. This is our
generalisation of what men do. They do not themselves seek
happiness directly and distinctly ; they seek more specific and
The Summum Bonum. 7T
particular things which are hedonistic or synedonistic. In other
words they do not make happiness an end, so much as the doing
or requiring certain things which have a eudaemonistic tendency.
We see, therefore, that the Summum Bonum cannot be said to
be generally the supreme end of a person's volitions : it may
not even be a superior end, nor even an end at all. The desires
may not be once directed to it ; it may not consciously be in
the thought ; that it should be there requires no inconsiderable
amount of education and involves much reflection and general-
isation. It is the more special ends that engross the attention of
mankind, though they are all related to and may be connected
with the Summum Bonum. The latter is the highest generalisa-
tion of what may become ends ; practically what are ends are
more specific. The Summum Bonum ascertained furnishes us a
gauge by which to estimate the value of these specific ends and
to determine whether dispositions toward them should be
encouraged or discouraged.
When we come to consider whether the Summum Bonum
should be inculcated as a principal or supreme end, there are at
least two important things to be noted. The first is the diffi-
culty in practically having any end which can be said to be
supremely self-sufficient and engrossing ; the second is what has
been aptly called the Fundamental Paradox of Hedonism. As
to the first, the remarks just made in the last paragraph are
pertinent. Men as a rule are occupied very much more with
the particular than with the general. Though they generalise
and form general rules and purposes, and maintain general ends,
they are being constantly diverted from these to particular ends,
becoming controlled by the latter. Though these particular
ends be intermediate to some more general and superior ends,
they are more frequently and more continuously in the mind
than are others and come to be, therefore, in themselves suffi-
cient ends and no longer intermediate. It requires a vast
amount of enthusiasm for ideals to enable a person to sustain
as a superior end a very general notion with its accompanying
feelings. Much more is this the case with a supreme end.
Wealth is often said to be a man's supreme end all-absorbing
and all-engrossing ; but it is the pursuit rather than the
possession which engrosses his attention, and it is the acquisi-
tion of this and that particular thing, as a house, a mine, a
manufacturing establishment, or a railroad, which he desires
prominently. He has the ideal of wealth in his mind but it is
not that which inspires him so much as the nearer and more
intermediate ends. This is abundantly proved by the fact
that self-sufficient ends are all the time passing into the class
of intermediate. Nevertheless it is practicable for a person to
78
The Summum Bonum.
dwell upon a very general notion and create from that a higher
end which shapes his efforts ; and while he employs means to
that end, these intermediate ends do not cause him to lose sight
of the higher end, but are kept in perfect subordination to it.
But I question very much if many men have ever had any one
definite end which for a very considerable portion of life could
be considered as a one supreme end before all others engrossing
and absorbing their attention and desire, unless it be the
acquisition of some particular, special pleasure, like the gaining
of a crown or office, or the quest of something lost or the
fruition of some scheme of business or adventure. When we
look at a man's life after it is concluded and see how by a pro-
gress from one point to another he arrives at a remarkable
eminence, we are apt rashly to conclude that to attain what he
at last reached was the supreme controlling end of his life,
whereas it is more frequently the case that his ends varied from
time to time and were developed as circumstances arose which
made the attainment of a given end seem practicable. It is not
to be supposed that Whitington, when at the sound of Bowbells
he had his boyish dream of becoming Lord Mayor of London,
afterward held in his mind the attainment of that position as a
supreme end or even cherished it as an engrossing end, until as
he rose step by step that eminence at length appeared to him as
within his grasp. Indeed it is the general experience that men of
power and ambition who entertain in early years hopes of great
place, as manhood comes and they are thrown out into active
life and realise its competitions, give up their fond dreams, and
form their ends according to their circumstances, modifying
them as those circumstances alter, amplifying them or raising
them as opportunities enlarge.
If, however, it is possible to form principal ends which will
control action, and to make one end more engrossing than
another, it is important to know what ends ought to be made of
the greater consequence and whether any one end should be
held as worthy to be supreme. And if to the individual the
Summum Bonum is his highest happiness and to the race it is
the maximum happiness of the greatest number, it would seem
as if these should be the supreme ends. But it is evident that,
whatever is accepted as the chief good, anything which tends to
secure it should be appropriated, and anything tending in an
opposite direction should be avoided. If now it should appear
that to gain happiness for one's self, egoistic happiness must
not be held up as an end of effort, and if to so advance it is the
surest way to defeat the object of acquiring it, then, doubtless,
this Summum Bonum should not be made a principal much less
the supreme end of the individual's action. This supposition is
Tlu Summum Bonum. 79
in strict accordance with fact, and this constitutes the Funda-
mental Paradox of Hedonism. And yet it is not so paradoxical
as it would seem to be at first sight. For the social constitution
and condition of mankind not only make it possible but render
it inevitable that men shall find their own happiness in the
happiness of others about them. The continuance of the race
cannot be secured unless human beings associate together ; and
they will not associate together unless they find pleasure in
each other's society ; but they do associate and they do
naturally delight in gregariousness to a greater or less degree.
Therefore, one of the means of securing egoistic happiness is
altruism. Holding up to one's self egoistic happiness as a
principal end concentrates the attention upon self, and reduces
the flow of benefits which comes from disinterestedness or rather
from interest in the welfare of others, thus cutting off the
supply coming from one great source of happiness. If such an
end is kept before the mind as an ideal, the dispositions of the
will are drawn towards it, intermediate ends range themselves
under it, and the special objects of desire relate directly to
self and selfish enjoyment. The virtues tend to disappear and
the vices to increase. Charity faileth, and coldness, malevolence
and cruelty take its place. Eeacting upon the individual, this
ensures towards him a like treatment to that which he visits upon
others. The predatory impulses are revived and society tends
to fall asunder, to the detriment of each one. But by altruistic
dispositions and conduct the prosperity and happiness of each
individual is increased and made more secure through the
prosperous and happy condition of all. Thus, proceeding from
the fact of the existence in man naturally of the primary
original pleasure of society, creating an appetite for the presence
and companionship of his fellows as necessary and as irresisti^e
as the appetite for food or sleep, it appears that to cherish as a
supreme end toward which the dispositions are consciously
directed that ideal which, when realised, is the individual's
Summum Bonum is to prevent such a realisation and defeat
its own object. From the same fact it does not equally follow
that to seek as an end the highest happiness of the greatest
number or the chief good of the race is always the surest way
to secure the individual's chief good. It does appear, however,
that to hold up as a principal end the happiness of some others is
a most certain means to the individual of attaining his
Summum Bonum. How wide the circle of altruistic regards
should be for the individual's happiness must be determined
by circumstances. But maintaining as a principal end the
highest happiness of the greatest number may throw an indi-
vidual out of the pale of the sympathies of his immediate
80
The Summum Bonum.
neighbours and may bring upon him obloquy, persecution, and
perhaps death, whereas a subserviency to the demands of his
fellows near by may bring to him honour and prosperity,
although the wants of his constituency are directly opposed to
the maximum felicity of the maximum number. If, however,
by inheritance or education we have so strong an altruistic
constitution as to cherish the highest altruistic ideals before
all others, to work for the happiness of the greatest number
may be to him his own greatest joy, and beside this work and
this joy, he will esteem as nothing perils, hardships and
calamities. " Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord ;
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count
them but dung that I may win Christ." In the spirit and
enthusiasm of Paul a man may devote himself to the realisation
of the most general of altruistic purposes and find therein his
own most complete satisfaction. Objectively considered, this
may not secure to a person his own individual Summum Bonum;
subjectively regarded, however, it does so in such a case. And
to establish such a state or habit of mind that the individual is
happy only in devoting himself to the highest altruistic ends
is for the interest of the race generally. The general ethical
Summum Bonum is the maximum happiness of the greatest
number ; that such a good be realised is the greatest desideratum
for human kind. Therefore in the education of individuals it is
proper to inculcate as a principal end of volition and action the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. Each man ought to
make it a principal end ; for the obligation indicated by the
word ought arises from the social condition of mankind, and has
no meaning except with reference to a man's connexion with
sentient beings other than the Ego. A person ought to do this
or that because the interests of others require that he should,
and the ultimate reason for the force of this imperative is his
subjective pleasure of society, demanding the presence, comfort,
and help of his fellows. If then a person ought with respect
to other sentient beings to make the ideal of highest general
happiness a principal end, and can be made to take his greatest
pleasure in doing what he ought, he has followed the best
means to achieve his individual Summum Bonum. As the
world progresses and the spirit of altruism becomes more far-
reaching and pervasive, this coincidence of the ethical
Summum Bonum with the egoistic Summum Bonum grows
more complete. While the coincidence .is incomplete, however,
it will not always be true that the happiness of self is best
reached by seeking the happiness of the many as an end, though
it will be true that egoistic happiness will be best secured by
The Summum Bonum. 81
aiming at the happiness of some others than self, and not by
aiming principally at one's own happiness. Yet the interest
of the many will unyieldingly demand that the highest happi-
ness of the greatest number be cherished and favoured as a chief
end by each individual, and this interest of society will always
create an ethical imperative to follow this chief end, whose
influence never can be wholly null upon any one, but which
will be increasingly felt. The nearer any individual can come
to making the ethical Summum Bonum his supreme end, the
more fully will he satisfy the requirements of this social
obligation.
If a person have no very general ends at all but is governed
by more particular ones, nevertheless his particular ends will be
determined for him by his circumstances, and his course so
shaped by his environment as to make his life perhaps as happy
as if he selected general ideal ends and consciously followed
them. He drifts with the current, and its onward flow carries
him forward and the stream constantly presents ends for him to
direct his attention toward, though he may not know what will
.succeed them or whither they will take him. This is the situa-
tion of a very large fraction of mankind ; they live from hand
to mouth, from day to day, and know not what will become of
them ; but nature provides for and takes care of them, seeing to
it that they do not fail to get a share of happiness. Sometimes
they are happier indeed than many of those who seek to pilot
their lives by general ideals and whose aims are grander, more
intelligent, and seemingly more worthy.
In conclusion, therefore, let it be observed that in the light of
psychological facts, brought out by the most accurate observa-
tion, and made more evident by a rigid analysis of mental
phenomena, the Epicurean doctrines, amplified in some direc-
tions, to be sure, and limited in others, but still substantially
unimpaired, furnish us with the key which solves the problems
connected with the Summum Bonum ; and that despite mis-
understandings, and obloquy heaped upon it, theirs is after all,
in the words of Balzac characterising the teachings of Francis
Eabelais, " that good philosophy to which we shall always be
obliged to return ".
DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON.
V. EEPLTES TO CEITICISMS ON THE DATA OF
ETHICS.
AN ethical writer who was required to treat of right and
wrong conduct, while saying nothing about any purpose to be
effected by conduct, would be greatly perplexed. Were he
forbidden to bring in the thoughts of good, better and best, in
relation to results, moral distinctions among actions would not
be easily expressed. I make this remark because Mr. Sidgwick,
in his article in MIND XV1IL, entitled " Mr. Spencer's Ethical
System," quoting from me the phrase, " conduct falling short of
its ideal," remarks :
" The frankly teleological point of view from which, in this book, Mr.
Spencer contemplates the phenomena of Life generally, seems worthy of
notice ; since in his Principles of Biology he seems to have taken some
pains to avoid ' teleological implications '."
That a science which has for its subject-matter the characters
of the ends pursued by men and the characters of the means
used for achieving such ends, can restrict itself to statements in
which ends are not implied, is a strange assumption. Teleology
of a kind is necessarily involved ; and the only question is whether
it is of the legitimate or illegitimate kind. The contrast between
the two may readily be shown by a biological illustration. If I
speculate concerning the stony shell of a gromwell-seed, so hard
that it is uninjured by the beak of a bird which swallows the seed
and effectually resists the grinding actions of the bird's crop ; and
if I argue that this hard shell was provided for the purpose of
protecting the seed, and thus securing its eventual germination ;
I am arguing teleologically in the vicious way. If, on the
other hand, my interpretation is that among the seeds of some
remote ancestral plant, one with an unusually thick shell passed
away uninjured by a bird's beak and stomach, while the rest
with thinner shells were broken up and digested ; and if I infer
that among the seeds of the plant originating from the undi-
gested seed, generally inheriting this greater thickness, those
most frequently lived and propagated which had the thickest or
hardest shells, until, by survival of the fittest, shells of this
extreme density, completely protective, were produced ; and if I
argue that maintenance of the species was throughout this pro-
cess the end more effectually subserved ; I. am also arguing
teleologically, but in -the legitimate way. There enters the
conception of a cause for the genesis of the hard shell, which is,
in a sense, a final cause not that proximate cause constituted
Replies to Criticisms on "The Data of Ethics". 83
by the physiological processes going on in the plant, but a cause
remote from these, which, nevertheless, so far determines them
that in its absence they would not exist. And it is thus with
biological interpretations of structures and functions in general.
The welfare of the organism, or of the species, is in every case
the end to further which a structure exists ; and the difference
between a legitimate and an illegitimate teleology is that, while
the one explains its existence as having gradually arisen by
furthering the end, the other gives no explanation of its exist-
ence other than that it was put there to further the end a final
cause of the " barren virgin " sort.
Throughout the Data of Ethics, as throughout every ethical
treatise, ends are constantly in view, and the interpretations
have unceasing reference to them. I have, indeed, in a chapter
on " The Physical View " of Ethics, treated of conduct as low
or high, according as it subserves in a less or greater degree,
maintenance of a moving equilibrium ; which is, I think, a
more unteleological way of regarding it than has been followed
by any ethical writer. In this chapter the evolution of that
which we ordinarily conceive as higher conduct, is presented as
a process expressible in terms of matter and motion. For the
implication of the argument (in harmony with an argument
contained in two chapters in the Principles of Biology on direct
and indirect equilibration) is that, inevitably, those aggregates
in which the moving equilibrium is the best, are those which
remain outstanding when others disappear; and that so, by
inheritance, the tendency is to the establishment of an ever-
better moving equilibrium : higher conduct is defined apart even
from consciousness apart from alleged human ends or assumed
divine ends. When, in the next chapter, it is shown that what
we call, in physical language, a better moving equilibrium, is, in
biological language, a better fulfilment of functions, and, conse-
quently, a life which is at once wider and longer ; the implica-
tion is that a wider and longer life being the end, conduct is to
be judged by its conduciveiiess to this end; and throughout
two subsequent chapters this point of view is maintained. But
these chapters are nowhere illegitimately teleological. Had I
accepted the moral-sense doctrine as ordinarily understood
had I alleged in mankind a supernaturally-given consciousness
of obligation had I asserted that men are endowed witli sym-
pathy to enable them the better to co-operate in the social state ;
I should have been chargeable with teleological interpretation
of the vicious kind. But since my interpretation is avowedly
opposed to this since I regard those faculties which produce a
conduct favourable to welfare under the conditions imposed by
the social state, as themselves the products of social life, and
84
Replies to Criticisms on " The Data of Ethics ".
contend that they have step by step established themselves by
furthering social life, the charge seems to me peculiarly in-
applicable.
Another criticism made by Mr. Sidgwick is that I have not
given that disproof of Pessimism which, for the substantiation
of my doctrine, I am bound to give. He writes :
" Now, after all that has been said of the importance of considering
human conduct in connexion with the ' universal conduct ' of which it is a
part, I think that this transition from * quantity of life ' which was stated
to be the end of the latter to 'quantity of pleasure' is too rapidly and
lightly made. Pessimism, as Mr. Spencer himself says, stands in the way,
declaring that life does not bring with it a surplus of agreeable feeling.
We expect therefore a scientific confutation of Pessimism ; and I am unable
to perceive that this expectation is ever adequately realised. Indeed I am
unable to find any passage in which Mr. Spencer expressly undertakes
such a confutation. And yet he can hardly think that pessimism is suffi-
ciently confuted by demonstrating that the common moral judgments of
mankind imply the assumption that life, on the average, yields a surplus
of pleasure over pain. This is not establishing morality on a scientific
basis. "
I am surprised that one so acute in- making distinctions as
Mr. Sidgwick, should have so greatly misapprehended my posi-
tion. It is perfectly true that I nowhere expressly undertake a
confutation of Pessimism ; but it is also true that it nowhere
devolves upon me to do this. If Mr. Sidgwick will re-read the
chapter in which the controversy of Pessimism versus Optim-
ism is referred to, he will perceive that I have uttered no judg-
ment concerning the issue, and that, for the purpose of my
argument, no such judgment is called for. My motive for
comparing their views was to show that " there is one postulate
in which pessimists and optimists agree. Both their arguments
assume it to be self-evident that life is good or bad, according as
it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling." By
proving that the two schools have this postulate in common, I
a'm not committed to any judgment concerning the truth of
either of their conclusions. I have said that if the pessimist is
right " actions furthering its [life's] continuance, either in self or
others, must be reprobated," while, conversely, they must be
approved if the optimist is right : the implication being that
opposite systems of ethics emerge according as one or other of
their estimates of life is accepted, but that both systems pro-
ceed upon the assumption that happiness is the end of conduct.
The sole object of the chapter is to show " that no school can
avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable state of
feeling called by whatever name gratification, enjoyment,
happiness". Surely it is one thing to contend that optimists
and pessimists agree in the belief that life is of value only
Replies to Criticisms on " The Data of Ethics ". 80
if it has, on the average, an accompaniment of desirable con-
sciousness, and another thing to contend that it has such an
accompaniment. Had Mr. Sidgwick said that by the general
argument of the work I have tacitly committed myself to the
optimistic view, he would have said rightly. But, as shown,
my reference to the controversy was made without any such
purpose as that of justifying optimism ; and my position was
clearly enough implied to be that the arguments of the work
are valid only for optimists.
But now, having pointed out that the conclusions contained
in the Data of Ethics, in common with the conclusions contained
in ethical treatises at large, can reasonably be accepted only by
those who hold that life in the aggregate brings more pleasure
than pain, or, at any rate, is capable of bringing more pleasure
than pain, I go on to show that- the tacit optimism which per-
vades the work, has a wider basis than Mr. Sidgwick recognises.
He says that " in Mr. Spencer's view, pessimism is indirectly
confuted by the argument given as an ' inevitable deduction
from the hypothesis of evolution' which shows that 'neces-
sarily throughout the animate world at large, pains are the
correlatives of actions injurious to the organism, while pleasures
are the correlatives of actions conducive to its welfare '." This
is true as far as it goes ; but, ignoring as he does all passages
concerning the universal process of adaptation, Mr. Sidgwick
omits a large part of the evidence favouring optimism. The
chapter on the "Kelativity of Pains and Pleasures" sets forth and
illustrates the biological truth that everywhere faculties adjust
themselves to the conditions of existence, in such wise that the
activities those conditions require become pleasurable. The
pains accompanying the inactions of faculties for which changed
conditions have left no spheres, diminish as the faculties de-
crease ; while the pains accompanying the actions of faculties
over-taxed under the new conditions, diminish as the faculties
grow, and become pleasures when those faculties have acquired
the strengths which fulfilment of the conditions requires. This
law is alike inferable a priori and proved a posteriori, and yields
a qualified optimism as its corollary an optimism qualified by
the conclusion that the life of every species of creature is happy
or miserable according to the degree of congruity or incongruity
between its nature and its environment ; but that everywhere,
decrease of the misery or increase of the happiness, accompanies
the inevitable progress towards congruity. Whence it follows
that in the case of mankind, pessimism may be locally true
under certain conditions (as those which have fostered the creed
which makes annihilation a blessing), while optimism may
be locally true under conditions of a more favourable kind ;
86 Replies to Criticisms on " TJie Data of Ethics".
but that with the increasing adaptation of humanity to social
life, the excess of pleasures over pains which warrants optimism,
must become ever greater. And here let me point out in
passing, how, in so far as . judgment of an ethical system
depends on the tacit acceptance of optimistic or pessimistic
views, it can be rightly guided only by a knowledge of biological
laws. Mr. Sidgwick is at one with moralists in general in
thinking that the truth or falsehood of moral doctrines may be
determined without study of the laws of life. He asks " In
what way then does Science that is, Biology, Psychology, and
Sociology provide a basis for this 'truer ethics'"; and in a
large measure the purpose of his criticism is to show that such
science does this in no appreciable way. Above, however, we
see that the acceptability of a system of ethics, depending as it
does on the pre-acceptance of optimism or pessimism, depends
on the pre-acceptance or pre-rejection of certain ultimate biolo-
gical generalisations. It is, indeed, looked at broadly, a remark-
able belief that while ethical science is concerned with certain
phenomena of life, it is a matter of indifference in judging about
these phenomena, whether the laws of life are known or not.
The way in which Mr. Sidgwick ignores biological generalisa-
tions is curiously shown in a subsequent passage, in which,
respecting the ethical method I contend for, he says :
" For instance, its scientific claims are plainly declared in chapter v.,
on ' Ways of Judging Conduct ' ; from which we learn that Mr. Spencer's
way of judging it is to be a high priori road. He will not rely on mere
generalisation from observation of the actual consequences of different kinds
of conduct ; it is the defect of current utilitarianism that it does not get
beyond these merely empirical generalisations ; Mr. Spencer, on the other
hand, proposes to 'ascertain necessary relations' between actions and their
consequences, and so to ' deduce from fundamental principles what conduct
must be detrimental and what conduct must be beneficial'. Those are
brave words, &c."
If, concerning an artillery officer who, instead of ascertaining
experimentally the ranges given by certain elevations of his gun,
calculated these ranges from the laws of motion and atmospheric
resistance, Mr. Sidgwick were to say that he pursued the " high
priori road," he would apply this expression with much the
same propriety ; since the method I contend for is that of de-
ducing from the laws of life under given conditions, results
which follow from them in the same necessary way as does the
trajectory of a cannon-shot from the laws of motion and atmos-
pheric resistance. All developed science may be characterised
as " high priori " if the drawing of deductions from premisses
positively ascertained by induction is to be so called. Had I
given no explanation of my meaning, I should have been less
surprised at the passage above quoted. But by a series of
Replies to Criticisms on "TJie Data of Ethics". 87
examples, beginning with the innutrition of a limb which
follows tying of its main artery and ending with the social
mischiefs caused by calumny, I have, in 22, shown what I
mean by the derivation of ethical principles from the laws of
life ; and I have, in subsequent chapters, exhibited this deriva-
tion systematically. Nevertheless, because, during our transi-
tional state, in which humanity is changing and social conditions
are changing, this method does not suffice for development of a
code of conduct in full detail, Mr. Sidgwick, ignoring the
derivations of the leading moral restraints in the section I have
named, and in the subsequent chapters, thinks the reader will
be " disappointed ". With equal reason might he represent the
biological student as disappointed because, from physiological
laws as at present ascertained, the details of pathology and
therapeutics cannot be inferred.
All this, however, is introductory to Mr, Sidgwick's criticism
on the view I take of the relation between Absolute Ethics and
Relative Ethics. My position is that, as all ethical theory is
concerned with ideas of worse and better in conduct, and that
as the conception of better involves the conception of best,
there is, in all cases, an ideal conduct tacitly assumed ; that
before valid conclusions can be drawn, this ideal conduct must
be conceived not in a vague and shifting way but definitely and
consistently ; and that no definite and consistent conception of
ideal conduct can be framed without assuming ideal social con-
ditions. Mr. Sidgwick does not, I think, show that this position
is untenable, but contents himself with raising difficulties. Into
the details of his criticism I cannot follow him without occupying
too much space. I may, however, deal generally with the view
he finally implies, that such an ideal is useless, and that the
theory of human and social evolution has no practical bearing
on the guidance of conduct. He says :
" Even if we could construct scientifically Mr. Spencer's ideal code, I
do not think such a code would be of much avail in solving the practical
problems of actual humanity. . . . Even supposing that this ideal
society is ultimately to be realised, it must at anyrate be separated from us
by a considerable interval of evolution ; hence it is not unlikely that the
best way of progressing towards it is some other than the apparently
directest way, and that we shall reach it more easily if we begin by moving
away from it."
And Mr. Sidgwick concludes that "the humble and imperfect
empirical method " can be our only guide.
Here, then, we have a distinct statement of the opinion that
for practical purposes it comes to the same thing whotlnT we
do or do not entertain an ideal of conduct and of society. In
our estimate of a proximately best, it will make no diil'erenco
88 Replies to Criticisms on " The Data of Ethics ".
whether we have or have not any conception of an ultimately
best. So long as the immediate effects of a measure promise to
be good, it is needless to consider whether, while achieving them,
we cause changes in men and society, and whether, if we cause
changes, these will carry men and society towards, or away
from, their highest forms. This position may be dealt with
first generally and then more specially.
The empirical method, as upheld by Mr. Sidgwick, estimating,
as well as may be, good and evil results, that is, totals of
pleasures and pains, postulates as a necessary basis for its
conclusions, constancy of relation between pleasures and their
causes and between pains and their causes. If, from experience
of men as we now know them, it is inferred that a certain
policy will be conducive to a surplus of pleasures over pains ;
and if the establishment of that policy, say by public institu-
tions, is considered as therefore ethically justifiable, or rather,
imperative ; then the implied assumption is that the surplus of
pleasures over pains producible by this course in existing men,
will be also producible in their descendants. This, however,
cannot be inferred unless it is assumed that men will remain
the same. Hence the question whether men are or are not
changing, becomes an essential question. If they are not chang-
ing, the empirical estimates may be valid. If they are changing,
these estimates must be doubtful, and may be entirely false. It
needs but to contrast the pleasures of combat, which a Norseman
conceived as those of his heaven, with the pleasures pursued by
a modern man of science, or to contrast the repugnance which a
savage shows to continued industry, with the eager pursuit of
business by a citizen, to see that this change in the relations
between actions and the accompanying feelings, is no nominal
difficulty in the way of the empirical method. It becomes
manifest that if humanity is undergoing modifications, then,
guidance of conduct by direct valuations of pleasures and pains,
assuming as it does that what is true now will continue to
be true, is a guidance likely to be erroneous. Be it a policy
advocated, a law passed, an agency set up, a discipline used, an
injunction urged, if its sole warrant is that of furthering the
happiness of men as they are, then, if men are becoming other
than they are, furtherance of their happiness in future cannot
be inferred, and there may result hindrance to their happiness.
Mark, now, another implication. If it is admitted, as it
must be, that guidance by estimated surplus of pleasures over
pains, as now observable, is vitiated if the relations between
actions and feelings change ; then it must also be admitted that
guidance by such estimated surplus can be made trustworthy,
only by knowledge of the ways in which these relations change.
Replies to Criticisms on "The Data of Ethics". 89
If we simply know that these relations between actions and
feelings will change, without knowing how they will change,
then we simply know that our empirical guidance will go wrong,
without knowing the way in which it will go wrong. Hence
the question, whether there is at work that adaptation of con-
stitution to conditions which the doctrine of evolution implies,
becomes the cardinal question. If, recognising the relativity of
pleasures and pains, we conclude that those activities which
social life necessitates in men, tend to become more pleasur-
able, while the pains consequent upon the restraints on unfit
activities diminish, then the question of first importance becomes
What general form of activities is it to which humanity is
being adjusted ? What are the ideal social conditions to which
men's natures are being so moulded that they will have no de-
sires out of harmony with those conditions ? If we can frame a
conception of the ideal social state, and of human conduct as
carried on in it, then we have in view an ultimately best, serving
to help us in discovering the proximately best, we have a means
of correcting whatever empirical guidance may be obtained by
valuation of pleasures and pains as now experienced ; since,
beyond the immediate effects of any course, we are enabled to
see whether the remote effects are such as further or hinder the
required re-moulding of human nature.
The contrast between Mr. Sidgwick's belief and mine re-
specting the relation between ethical doctrine and the theory of
human and social evolution, will best be shown by an analogy.
In the moral education of a child, proximately good results
may be obtained in various ways. Its crying may be stopped
by a bon-bon; or its mother may alarm it by a threat; it may be
led to learn a lesson by fear, or by the promise of a treat, or by
the desire to please ; and in later childhood there may come, on
the part of the father, a control which maintains order by regu-
lating every action, or one which allows a considerable amount
of freedom and concomitant experience of good and evil results.
Is it or is it not desirable to keep in view the fact that presently
the child will be a man, and to frame a conception of what the
man ought to be ? Very frequently the mother, pursuing the
empirical method and seeing immediate benefits follow, ignores
the question of this ideal and the conduciveness of her discipline
to achievement of it ; and not uncommonly the father, especially
if of the clerical sort, making numerous peremptory rules, con-
siders scarcely at all whether his much-regulated boy is acquiring
the qualities which will make him a self -regulating man. Shall
we say that such proximately beneficial methods are the best
which can be devised ; or shall we not rather say that there
can be no good education which does not bear the ideal con-
90 Replies to Criticisms on " TJie Data of Ethics".
stantly in view, and consider methods partly in reference to
their immediate results, but still more in reference to their
ultimate results ? And if so, must we not say the same with
respect to adult humanity, which undergoes an education by
social discipline ? Of course if Mr. Sidgwick agrees with those
who hold that human nature is unchangeable, his position is
tenable. But if he admits that man is adaptable, it becomes of
some importance to consider of every proposed course, whether,
by the entailed modification of conditions, it furthers or hinders
progress towards the highest conditions and the highest human
nature accompanying them. Though our steering must doubtless
be proximately guided by recognition of rocks and sandbanks,
yet, if we believe in a haven to be eventually reached, it is
needful from time to time to consult the compass, and see
whether, while avoiding the rocks and sandbanks, we are also
moving towards our haven.
Had this reply to Mr. Sidgwick been published immediately
after his criticism, I should probably have said no more in
defence of my views. But there have since appeared in MIND
two other criticisms, respecting which it now seems needful to
say something. The first in order of date is that of Prof. Means
(No. XIX.). Space will not allow me to deal with it more than
briefly.
Prof. Means considers that I am unjustified in saying of
current Utilitarianism that it is purely empirical, and in con-
trasting it with what I distinguish as rational Utilitarianism.
Considering that, as we have just seen, Mr. Sidgwick, who is
now the foremost representative of Utilitarianism as hitherto
conceived, argues against me that it must continue to be purely
empirical, the injustice of my allegation is not apparent. By
way of showing that Mr. Mill, in his Logic, takes the same view
that I do, Prof. Means says :
" The very illustration used by Mr. Spencer in regard to ' the course of
one who studies pathology without previous study of physiology ' as
resembling the usual course of moralists, is one used by Mill for precisely
the same purpose : ' Students in politics thus attempted to study the
pathology and therapeutics of the social body, before they had laid the
necessary foundation in its physiology V
And there follows what seems to be an insinuation that I was
cognisant of this passage. Some thirty years ago I probably
was. I read Mr. Mill's Logic in 1851 or 1852, and save those
parts which, in successive editions, have concerned the amicable
controversy carried on between us respecting the test of truth, I
have not read it since. I go on to remark that, as the passage
itself shows, and as appears more fully on turning to the volume,
Replies to Criticisms on "The Data of Ethics". 91
the analogy as used by Mr. Mill refers to social science ; while
the analogy is used by me in elucidation of ethical science.
Prof. Means says it is "used by Mill for precisely the same
purpose ". Now though it is true that politics and morals are
intimately related, the belief that they are identical is, I think,
peculiar to Prof. Means, and is likely to remain so.
Let us, however, turn to the main issue whether the Utili-
tarianism of Mr. Mill and previous writers of the same school,
did or did not recognise that dependence of ethical laws upon
the laws of life, which I have insisted upon, and did or did not
propose to establish them deductively from such laws. To
whatever extent it may be true that utilitarians have been con-
scious of a relation between rules of right conduct and the
furtherance, direct or indirect, of vital activities, there could not
come the full conception of a resulting method, until biological
generalisations of the widest kind had been reached and accepted
as data for ethical reasoning. Now up to recent times, biological
generalisations of this widest kind had either not been reached
at all, or were known only by naturalists, and accepted by very
few of these. In Bentham's day, the consequences deducible
from the universal law of adaptation, could not take their
place in ethical speculation, for the reason that, in the sense
involved by the doctrine of Evolution, this law had not been
heard of by ninety-nine cultivated people out of a hundred, and
was pooh-poohed by nearly all those who had heard of it.
Again, whatever occasional observations had been made respect-
ing the relations of pleasures and pains to bodily welfare, could
not lead to any such ethical conclusions as those involved by
acceptance of the doctrine of Evolution, which implies that
life of the sentient kind has continued and developed only in
virtue of these relations. Nor, without the doctrine of the rela-
tivity of pains and pleasures, established by a wide biological
induction, could there be completed the necessary basis for a
scientific ethics. Similarly, into that division of ethics which is
concerned with its psychology, the theory of mental evolution
enters as an indispensable factor. Though Mr. Mill did not
combat the hypothesis of inherited mental modifications, yet he
never adopted it in such a way as to qualify his experiential
interpretation of ideas and feelings ; and, consequently, he wa*
debarred from entertaining that view of the moral sentiments
and moral intuitions, which yields an explanation of their vary-
ing functions under varying social conditions, and affords a
warrant for inferring their ultimate adjustment to an ultima t>
social state. In brief, then, the laws of life and of mind,
referred to by me as those from which a scientific ethics is to
be deduced, are laws which were either not known, or not
92
Replies to Criticisms on " The Data of Ethics ".
admitted, by utilitarians of the empirical school ; and it was
therefore not possible for them to entertain that conception of
rational ethics which I have put in antithesis to empirical
ethics.
Prof. Means comments on the contrast I have drawn between
justice as an end and happiness as an end. He quotes me as
saying that
Justice " ' is concerned exclusively with quantity under stated conditions,
whereas happiness is concerned with both quantity and quality under con-
ditions not stated '. It refers to ' the relative amounts of actions, or products,
or benefit?, the natures of which are recognised only so far as is needful for
saying whether as much has been given, or done, or allowed, by each con-
cerned, as was implied by tacit or overt understanding, to be an equiva-
lent'."
To which he objects that
" ' Differences of age, of growth, of constitutional need, differences of
activity and consequent expenditure, differences of desires and tastes,' which
Mr. Spencer thinks impossible to be estimated by a utilitarian, must all be
estimated before any course of action can be said to be equivalent to any
other course. And if a comparison of pleasures is impossible, this estimate
is impossible."
The reply is that justice as I have denned it, justice as formu-
lated in law, and justice as commonly understood, is satisfied
when those concerned have so acted that no one has been tres-
passed against by another, and, in case of contract, each has
done all that was agreed to be done by him. If there has been
direct aggression, greater liberty of action has been taken by the
aggressor than by the one aggressed upon. If there has been
indirect aggression by breach of contract, such greater liberty of
action has again been taken : one has broken the understanding
while the other has not one has seized some advantage beyond
that given as an equivalent, while the other has not. Justice is
not concerned with equality between the pleasures men gain by
their respective courses of action, but only with equality
between the freedoms they take in their respective courses of
action ; and if neither by direct nor indirect trespass have these
been made unequal, there is no injustice. If it be said, as by Prof.
Means concerning wages given for labour, that very often men
are practically coerced by social arrangements into making agree-
ments they would not otherwise have made; then, the injustice
exists not in the agreements unwillingly made, but in the social
arrangements which have interfered with free volition. If, as
appears from his argument, Prof. Means holds that justice com-
prises, not simply a regulation of actions such that each man
shall leave others as much freedom to pursue their ends as he
himself takes, but that justice involves the establishment of
Eeplies to Criticisms on " The Data of Ethics ". 93
equivalence between advantages gained by co-operation, then
the reply is that I am not concerned with justice as so con-
ceived. There are socialists who hold that there should be an
equal division of benefits among men, irrespective of the values
of their several labours. To many it seems unjust that the luinl
work of a ploughman should bring in a week, not so much as
a physician easily gains in a quarter of an hour. Some persons
contend that it is unjust that children born to the poor should
not have educational advantages like those of children born
to the rich. But those deficiencies in the shares of happi-
ness some men get by co-operation, which arise from the
inferior natures they inherit, or from the inferior circumstances
into which their inferior ancestors have fallen, are deficiencies
with which justice, as I understand it, has nothing to do. The
injustice which entails on posterity diseases and deformities
the injustice which inflicts on offspring the painful results
of stupidity and misconduct in parents the injustice which
compels those who inherit incapacities to struggle with re-
sulting difficulties the injustice which leaves in comparative
poverty the great majority whose powers, of low order, bring
them small returns, is an injustice of a kind lying outside of
my argument. We have to accept, as we may, the established
constitution of things, though under it an inferiority for which
the individual is not blamable, brings its evils, and a superiority
for which he can claim no merit, brings its benefits ; and we
have to accept, as we may, all those resulting inequalities of
advantages which citizens gain by their respective activities.
But while it does not devolve upon me to defend the order of
Nature, I may say again, as I have said at greater length already
(69), that only in virtue of the law under which every creature
takes the good and bad results entailed by its inherited organisa-
tion, has life advanced to its present height and can continue to
advance. A so-called justice which should equalise advantages
apart from capacities, would be fatal ; while the justice, rightly
socalled, which insists that each shall be as free as others to
make the best of his powers, and that nothing shall intervene
between his efforts and the returns they naturally bring (as
decided by agreement) is beneficent immediately and remotely.
This is the justice which, as an end, I have contended is more
intelligible than happiness as an end ; and I decline to be
entangled by Prof. Means in the difficulties which arise when
there is substituted a justice which contemplates equivalence of
results.
The remainder of Prof. Means's criticisms I must pass over
with the remark that, throughout, they similarly display an
unusual facility in identifying things which are different.
94
Replies to Criticisms on " The Data of Ethics ".
I turn now to the article of Mr. Alfred W. Benn " Another
View of Mr. Spencer's Ethics " contained in the last number of
MIND. Here, too, I must limit myself to the earlier criticisms.
Mr. Benn blames me for expressing a positive opinion respect-
ing the inevitableness of the hedonistic view of morals. He
says :
" To declare pleasure a necessary form of moral intuition must in the pre-
sent state of the controversy be pronounced a piece of unwarrantable
dogmatism."
As commonly understood, dogmatism implies authoritative asser-
tion without the giving
of reasons. Considering that the
passage to which Mr. Benn refers, closes a chapter devoted
to an examination of all the various standards of goodness
in conduct ; and considering that the analysis aims to show,
and does, I think, show, that happiness as an ultimate end is in
every case involved ; it seems to me an unusual application of
the word to characterise as dogmatic a proposition which sums
up the results of the inquiry. A dogmatism which appeals step
by step to the judgment of the reader, is of a species not before
known.
I remark this by way of introduction to Mr. Benn's first
criticism. Respecting my statement that optimists and pessi-
mists by their arguments both imply acceptance of the hedonistic
view, Mr. Benn says :
" Here with all deference I must observe that Mr. Spencer is doubly if
not trebly mistaken. In the first place, although Schopenhauer and his
school are hedonists, it is perfectly possible to be a pessimist without
thinking that pleasure is the end of life and that we do not get enough
of it. Some persons if they were convinced that certain knowledge was
unattainable, even if they expected it to yield them no pleasure, might
regard that as a reason for preferring non-existence to existence. In. the
second place, as it is generally better if possible to meet your adversary on
his own ground, an optimist who believes that life affords a surplus of
pleasurable feeling may very well advance that argument without con-
ceding that such a surplus alone makes life worth having. And, thirdly, as
a matter of fact the optimists do not make this concession. M. Caro, an
eminent representative of the spiritualistic school in France, has distinctly
declared that, granting the excess of pain over pleasure to be possible and
even probable, he still remains an optimist, that evan an unhappy life is
worth living, and that suffering is preferable to nonentity."
The first of the three proofs that I am mistaken is curiously
hypothetical. " Some persons " " might regard " non-existence
as preferable to existence, if they thought " certain knowledge
was unattainable," even if they expected no pleasure from
attaining it. Disproof of my statement concerning the beings
we know, by the help of supposable beings, is not, I think, very
satisfactory. But passing over this, let me point out that if the
Replies to Criticisms on "The Data of Ethics". 95
attainment of "certain knowledge" were an adequate motive for
existence, and inability to attain it a motive for preferring non-
existence, it is difficult to conceive otherwise than that the
attainment of it would be a satisfaction ; and a satisfaction of
whatever nature is a kind of pleasure. To say that the attain-
ment of the knowledge was not expected to yield them any
pleasure, is to say that they would regard the attainment of the
knowledge with indifference ; and if they were indifferent to the
attainment of it, how could attainment of it be regarded as a
sufficient reason for prefcrrincj existence to non-existence ?
Mr. Benn's second disproof, somewhat hypothetical also, does
not, I think, much strengthen his case. He says :
" An optimist who believes that life affords a surplus of pleasurable feeling
may very well advance that argument without conceding that sucli a sur-
plus alone makes life worth having."
Is this really another disproof, or only the same re-stated ? With-
out naming any end, other than pleasurable feeling, which
" makes life worth having," it alleges that even an optimist may
believe in such an end. I do not see that by leaving this end
unspecified, and supposing an optimist who thinks it a sufficient
end, the argument is made different from the last ; and the same
reply serves. The end, of whatever nature, being one which it is
desirable to attain rather than not to attain, implies satisfaction
of desire or pleasure. The third argument states in the concrete
that which is stated in the abstract in the preceding two, and is
the sole argument. This argument is that M. Caro thinks " even
an unhappy life is worth living ". Now I suspect that were M.
Caro cross-examined, it would turn out that the unhappy life
which he thinks worth living, is one which, though it brings
misery to the possessor, does not bring misery to others, but con-
duces to their happiness. 1 If M. Caro means that life is worth
having even on condition that its possessor, suffering misery
himself in common with all individuals, shall aid them in
living that they may continue to suffer misery, and shall beget
and rear children that they, too, may pass lives of misery ; and
if M. Caro means that misery is to be the fate of all, not only
here but during the hereafter he believes in ; then, indeed, and
only then, does he exclude happiness as an end. But if M. Caro
1 Since this was written I have referred to M. Caro's essay, and find he
says that if there is really an excess of suffering in the average of human
lite, "il ne faut pas s'empresser d'en conclure que le pessimisme a raison,
quo le mal de la vie est absolu, qiC il est incurable." Which makes it clear
that M. Caro had in the background of his consciousness the conception of
misery to be diminished, that is, happiness to be increased, as a reason for
tolerating present misery ; and probably this conception was not wholly
absent when he wrote " la souffrance vaut mieux que le neant ".
96 Replies to Criticisms on "The Data of Ethics".
says he believes that even under such conditions life would be
worth living, then I venture to class him with those who have
not practised introspection. I once heard a person assert
that a cat thrown across a room could drop in the middle
if it pleased ; and, presumably, this person thought he could
himself do the same. The defective consciousness of his '
mechanical powers which this person displayed, is, I think,
paralleled by M. Caro's consciousness of his mental powers, if
he thinks he can believe that existence would be preferable to i
non-existence did it bring pain to all men throughout all time.
Mr. Benn, however, regards this testimony of M. Caro as con-
clusive. If there is anyone who says he thinks that universal -
and eternal human misery is better than non-existence, we must
accept his self -interpretation as settling the question ; for men
never misconceive their own thoughts or fail to understand their
own feelings. And then Mr. Benn continues :
" A fortiori would such persons maintain that a perfectly neutral state of
consciousness, a life totally devoid both of pleasure and pain, is worth
having. Thus the appeal to authority completely breaks down, a single
recusant being enough to invalidate it."
Passing over the question whether any such recusant exists,
it may be as well, before admitting the alleged breakdown,
to ask what is the meaning of the word ' worth/ as used in i
the above relation. There presents itself the problem to define
' worth ' in terms which exclude all reference, direct or indirect,
to satisfaction, or pleasure, or gratification. It is required to
find a case in which men, or things, or acts, are contrasted as;
having worth and as being worthless, without there entering the
conception of preference; or if the conception of preference enters,
then it is required to state what kind of preference it is which
takes place between things of which one is not liked more than
the other ; or if difference of liking is admitted, then the question,
to be answered is what kind of liking is it which does not con-
note pleasure. Similarly with the words used in a sentence i
which shortly follows :
" For the question is not whether pleasure is a good and pain an evil,
but whether pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil."
Which question at once raises the inquiry for the kind of evil
which, neither proximately nor remotely, to the actor or to any
other being, now or hereafter, produces any pain. Until somt
such kind of evil has been pointed out, 1 do not see any proposi-
tion against which I have to contend : there is merely th<
alleged possibility of a proposition.
As already hinted, I cannot follow further the course of Mr
Replies to Criticisms on " Tlie Data of Ethics ", 97
Benn's argument, but must leave its validity to be judged by
that of this first portion. The only remark I will add, concerns,
not a matter of argument but a matter of evidence.
to my account of the origin of the religious sanction, Mr.
says : " It seems a pity to disturb such an ingenious and symme-
trical theory, but I am not aware that it is supported by any
external evidence, while there are strong reasons for dissenting
from it ". Does Mr. Benn mean that no such external evidence
is contained in the Data of Ethics ? If he does, then the reply
is that such evidence, occupying more space than that afforded
by the entire volume, would have rather too much interrupted
the thread of the argument. Does he mean that I have not
given such external evidence elsewhere ? Then the reply is
that in the first division of the Principles of Sociology, evidence
so great in quantity is set forth, that I have been blamed for
over-burdening my argument with it ; and a further reply is that
if Mr. Benn wishes for still more such evidence, he will find
abundance of it in Nos. II., III., IV., V. and VI. of the Descrip-
tive Sociology, where the religious ideas of some eighty un*
civilised and semi-civilised peoples are described in detail. In
disproof of my view concerning the genesis of the political and
religious controls, Mr. Benn goes on to say : " Modern inquiries
into the history of jural conceptions show that among primitive
men kings were not legislators but judges " ; and by way of
showing what happens among "primitive men" he instances
" the original judgments or Themistes " of the Greeks. On this
my comment is that Mr. Benn seems unacquainted with
inquiries, more " modern " than those he refers to, which show
that theories about primitive ideas and institutions, based on
facts furnished by historic peoples, are utterly misleading. The
origins of religious and jural conceptions and usages, Mr. Benn
thinks may fitly be sought in the traditions of the early Greek
world; though, as Curtius remarks (Bk. I. 136-7) this "is
not ... a world of beginnings ; it is no world still engaged in
an uncertain development, but one thoroughly complete, matured
and defined by fixed rules and orders of life ". For myself, in
seeking for origins, I prefer to look for them among peoples who
have not yet arrived at a stage in which there are metal
weapons and metal armour, two-horse war-chariots, walled
towns, temples, palaces, and sea-going ships.
I had originally intended to notice briefly, certain other criti-
cisms one by Prof. Calderwood, which formed the inaugural
lecture to his class at Edinburgh in the session of 1879, and was
afterwards published in the Contemporary Review ; and the
other by Prof. Wace of King's College, which was first addressed
7
Notes and Discussions.
to the Victoria Institute, and also afterwards published in the
Contemporary Review. But I have already occupied as many
pages of MIND as I can reasonably ask for ; and, further, I can-
not longer suspend more important work for which niy time and
energies are already insufficient. Eeplying to criticisms is,
indeed, a bootless undertaking, save in those cases where
the positions defended are further elucidated, and so rendered
more acceptable to those who are not committed to antagonist
views. On such as are committed to antagonist views, replies,
however conclusive, produce no appreciable effects ; and especi-
ally is this so when such antagonist views are involved in
theological systems.
HERBERT SPENCER.
VI NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
RECENT RESEARCHES ON HYPNOTISM.
Last January, Herr Hansen, a Danish ' magnetiser ' widely known
throughout Germany, gave a series of public exhibitions in .Breslau,
which lasted several weeks and were very largely attended. Well-
known citizens came upon the platform, and after looking fixedly at
a bright glass button which they themselves held some eight inches
from and just above the level of their eyes, fell more or less profoundly
into the hypnotic state. The popular attention which the Slade-
Zollner scandal has so recently drawn to spiritism with its phenomena
of trance and medhamship, together with the weird mysticism which
is so fundamental and so easily-recognisable a trait of the Sclavonic
type of character, combined to make these exhibitions the sensation
of the hour in Breslau. Many forms of superstition which seemed
forgotten were warmed into life in a way now impossible in most
communities farther west, until the authorities of the city and of the
university invited Professor Heidenhain to press forward with inves-
tigations which he had already begun, and to follow Hansen upon the
same platform, repeating and explaining in a more scientific way
the experiments of the latter. Hansen cordially co-operated and
lent himself to many forms of experimentation, conforming to all
required conditions of observation so far as his engagements elsewhere
would allow.
Before describing Heidenhain's experiments, it should be mentioned
that the physicist, Weinhold, prompted also by Hansen's performances
in Chemnitz, had investigated the conditions by which an abnormal
inhibition of the will could be brought about. 1 These he found, as
1 Hypnotische Versuche^ von Professor Adolph F. Weinhold, Chemnitz,
1879, pp. 28.
Notes and Discussions. 99
Braid, whose work is but little known in Germany, had done, to be
passes, fixation, rubbing, &c. Sometimes, when other means faik-ti,
the hypnotic condition was caused by walking the subject up, down,
and around, at all arbitrary paces and angles, till he became per-
fectly passive to a gentle but relatively irresistible force ; sometimes
by a strong appeal to the imagination, by means of solemn music, and
an array of mysterious apparatus. According to Weinhold, the hyp-
notic condition begins in a gradual loss of taste, touch, and the sense
of temperature. Next colours are imperfectly distinguished, then
forms grow indistinct, and then the eye is immovable and nothing is
seen. The ear never slept, in his experiments. The subject believes
and at last does all that is commanded. Although not all persons can
thus influence or be influenced, both powers are not specifically dif-
ferent from powers which all possess. The identification of these
phenomena in man with those observed by Preyer in frogs, hens, &c.,
was an important step, and indicated that they were as susceptible
of physiological explanation as is the halo of ' odic ' light which
often seems to the subject to surround the hypnotiser, and which is a
real and natural creation of the fancy of the former out of the sub-
jective light ( Eigenliclit ) of his own eye.
In response to a courteous invitation of Professor Heidenhain, the
writer of this Note, then residing in Leipsic, spent a week in Breslau
and witnessed the following phenomena, most of which have been
more fully described by Professor Heidenhain. 1
An officer brought in several stupid but burly soldiers from the
barracks, who spoke only Polish, and, as far as could be made out
afterwards, had never heard of such performances. Each one was
given a loud-ticking watch to hold ta his ear, and told to listen in-
tently, while the colonel threatened them savagely if they fell asleep.
In five minutes two of them were in a profound cataleptic sleep, insen-
sitive to pain, and on being awakened ten minutes later, declared they
had not slept. The professor's brother, a tall, athletic, duelling
medical student, the picture of health, and said to be a scholar of
much promise, has been hypnotised on an average two or three times
a-day for two months, and scoffs at the idea of being the worse for it.
The writer was invited to stroke the ball of this student's left thumb
with his own forefinger as lightly as possible, and always in the same
direction. Very soon the student's thumb, then the hand, then the
arm and shoulder, were in a state of violent tetanic cramp, which
passed down the right arm, then down the left leg, then the right,
and then extended to the muscles of the jaw and to those of the
neck. The whole body was rigid and trembling, and the power of
speech was gone. Directed by the professor, I struck the left arm
smartly with the open palm of rny hand, and the cramp instantly
1 Der sogenannte thierische Magnetismus: Physiologische Beobachtungen
von Dr. Rudolf Heidenhain, ord. Prof, cler Physiol. u. Director des > Physio-
logischen Instituts zu Breslau. Vierte vermehrte Aunage, Leipzig, 1880.
Translated into English by L. C. Wooldridge (Kegan Paul, 1880).
100
Notes and Discm
vanished ; his brother started as from a sleep, looked confusedly
around him a moment, then seemed to recover consciousness, and,
remarking that he had had rather a strong dose, walked across the
room and drank a glass of beer.
A constant touch on the back of the neck, between the first and
second vertebrae of some subjects makes them perfect imitative machines.
Every motion, look, word, inflexion of the person on whom the atten-
tion is fixed, is exactly imitated; a long English sentence, e.g., with
extreme and grotesque inflexions, was repeated almost perfectly, in
every detail, by an old workman in the hospital. The instant the
finger is removed from the neck, the repetition stops, often in the
middle of a word.
Nor is this the strangest. With a number of his subjects, Professor
Heidenhain and his colleagues are able to hypnotise one half of the
brain and body, the other half remaining normal. One half the face
smiles, the other remains in the familiar immobile, waxy, cataleptic
state. One arm and leg can be moved at will, the other not ; one eye
sees distinctly, the other imperfectly, or not at all. When the right
side is hypnotised, aphasia is produced ; but not, or only exceptionally,
when the left side is affected. This is, of course, in accordance with
pathological observations which locate the speech-centre in or near the
left cerebral convolution, and with the anatomical fact that most of
the so-called pyramidal or volitional fibres cross soon after leaving the
brain. If the person thus affected be told to make some simple
.motion with the finger of the normal side, e.g., to rotate the thumbs,
the one about the other, and to continue the motion without cessation or
interruption while observing another rotate his own thumbs, now in
one, now in another direction a task easy enough in the normal
condition the half-hypnotised person, though believing himself in
the full possession of his faculties, finds this impossible. He must
stop every time the experimenter changes, and generally reverses the
motion for an instant, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary ; but
is immediately able to correct the error and go on as directed. This
is almost invariably observed, and is explained by supposing that one
half of the brain, being reduced to the condition of an imitating
automaton, is mechanically compelled by the retinal impressions to
repeat the motion as seen, and that the normal half must correct this
impulse by a special act of volition later.
Even one eye alone may be hypnotised, in which case colour-blind-
ness is caused. Prof. Colin, of Breslau, has made these phenomena
an object of special investigation, and has used not only Seebeck's
worsted patterns, but Hirschberg's ingenious method of detecting
simulants by the crossing of perpendicular lines seen stereoscopically,
and even Stilling's yet more confusing tables for detecting and
measuring the degree of colour-blindness; but without discovering
any traces of feigning. A hypnotised eye which has gazed for a
moment at brilliant-coloured figures which seem only variously-shaded
grey, when the colours are removed and the eye then suddenly
awakened, sees the complementary after-image of the colours which
Notes and Discussions. 101
it has never perceived. The fact that slightly wanning the eye-ball,
by pressing it gently with fingers which have just been vigorously
rubbed, speedily restores the power to perceive colours, indicates that
the circulation of blood in the retina is affected ; while the fact that
atropine removes this induced colour-blindness, or makes it impossible,
may perhaps indicate that it is in some way connected with the cramp
of the ciliary muscle. The facts thus far observed in this line are
generally thought to be irreconcilable with Helmholtz's theory of tlnvo
fundamental colours, but to be more or less explicable upon the hypo-
thesis of Hering.
With earlier hypnotisers, ' mesmerisers,' or ' magnetisers,' those
experiments were successful, almost universally, with women only.
Prof. Heidenhain's observations have been entirely on men, and
have succeeded with about one student in twelve. With all, the
first time is the hardest ; and, while many grow so sensitive that a
very slight influence makes them immediately unconscious, others,
after a while, grow unsusceptible again, and finally lose entirely the
power of being affected. Some acquire the faculty of hypnotising
themselves, and others, when told that at a certain hour they are
requested or influenced to sleep, do so without any of the ordinary
means, and without even the presence of another person. Hallucina-
tions are readily caused, if a few verbal hints are given. With some
subjects, fibrilar twitches in various muscles, accompanied by other
symptoms of increased excitability of the spinal and medullary
centres, follow the experiments, which in such cases are always dis-
continued. Rheumatic patients often make movements with their
limbs which seem impossible in their ordinary state. Far-sighted
persons always see much nearer than usual. Cramp of the muscles
of accommodation is caused in others so intense that they can read
type of almost invisible fineness at a distance of an inch or less from
the anterior surface of the cornea. The hand- writing in this condition
is extremely bad ; and some patients, under certain conditions, begin
at once to write backward. Heidenhain believes that the blood-vessels
on the affected side are expanded, and that a new method of localising
the functions of the brain may be developed, from the effects of vary-
ing local irritations. As a general rule, with many exceptions, anaemic
persons were found to be most easily affected.
A different conception of these phenomena has more recently been
developed by Professor Berger, a colleague of Heidenhain, who lays
chief weight upon " the psychologic moment of conception [ Vorstel-
lung\ and attention V He observed that when the tongue was stroked
from the root toward the tip it was thrust outward. If the stroking
was in the reverse or transverse direction the movement of the tongue
was the same. If the finger was placed on the outer angle of the eye
and the skin gently stroked toward the temple, upward, downward, or
toward the root of the nose, both eyes were turned in the direction of
1 See the Breslauer Arztliche Zdtschrift, 1880, Nos. 10, 11, and 12, "Hyp-
notische Zustande und ihre Genesis," von Professor O. Berger.
102
Notes and Discussions.
the stroking. By operating thus on both eyes at the same time, but
in different directions, the optic axis can be made to diverge, and in a
single case one eye was turned upward and the other downward. If
the stroking was persisted in in the same direction it often happened
that the face and finally the whole body turned toward the same side
as the eye-ball. So too the eye-ball and eventually the body of the
hypnotised patient was turned in the direction of a noise. Artificial
dreams and hallucinations, in some cases even of taste and smell, were
evoked in more than twenty individuals. These were observed to
arise spontaneously only in a very few cases, and in these their dura-
tion was very brief. Some slight suggestion was generally necessary.
Musical sounds suggest all the details of a concert which is described
and apparently heard with much minuteness of detail. A slight tap
or a shake suggests a fight, and evokes plastic, mimetic gestures. If
the hands are folded the patient believes himself in church and per-
haps at prayer. When salt water is tasted and the patient is told it
is beer, he complains that it is sour; if told that it is coffee, he declares
that it tastes of grounds. All this while the skin is somewhat anal-
gesic with more or less anaesthesia. The patient distinguishes painful
and pleasurable feelings more readily than the more specific qualities
of sensation.
Berger believes that the sensory irritation which Heidenhain regards
as the chief genetic moment is only a means to an end, and that the
cause of these states and phenomena is essentially psychic. If the
attention is diverted, the manipulations are of no effect, while the
chief aim of the hypnotiser must be to direct and localise the imagi-
nation consciously or unconsciously. Every specific group of move-
ments, which have been well compacted by association, can be
stimulated or inhibited by any means which command and control
the attention. In answer to the objection that these conditions can
be caused during cataleptic sleep, Berger urges that in sleep dermal
irritations are still effective, and reminds us that the Vorstellung can
cause many familiar somatic effects which the will cannot. A so-called
medium in an honest trance does not become cataleptic, although the
dermal irritation and the central excitability are about the same as
that of an ordinary hypnotic patient, because the reflex action does
ot result in an entire inhibition or laming of the will. The different
results obtained from different persons are due to difference of con-
ception or imagination. Berger's conclusions then coincide mainly
with those of the commission which reported to the French Academy;
and the prospect of obtaining exact scientif c explanations of these
phenomena seems indefinitely postponed. At the same time much
good must result for the pathology and physiology of the nervous
system. Attention is drawn to the therapeutic value of the "neural
treatment," arid the necessity of making it methodic. If a morbid
direction of the imagination can cause disease, the reverse may
aid in curing it. Nervous sleeplessness, certain forms of croup, hys-
tero-epilepsy, &c., are real diseases, however much the imagination
may be implicated in their symptom-complex. These Berger
Notes and Discussions.
believes he has helped or cured by hypnotism psychically caused.
Concomitant changes in the condition of the walls of the cerebral and
spinal blood vessels, causing local modification of temperature, are also
likely to be demonstrated, and it seems not improbable that these
changes may be more or less definitely brought under the category of
reflex-action.
The latest contribution to this subject is from Herr Schneider, a
teacher of zoology, at present Professor Haeckel's assistant, 1 who has
written suggestive pamphlets on The Sensation of Rest, and Distin-
guishing, as well as the comprehensive treatise on The Animal Will
noticed in the last number of MIND by Mr. Sully. The author is
ingenious though not always exact or lucid. He attempts to explain
hypnotism according to the fundamental conceptions to the develop-
ment of which his writings are devoted. Consciousness, he thinks,
begins when a rudimentary animal " distinguishes " by reacting dif-
ferently upon different impressions. First conditions and then things
are thus distinguished, and different centres soon begin to act inde-
pendently. Even the lower reflex- centres distinguish and are
therefore in a rudimentary sense conscious. Most, if not all, sensations
exert (and perhaps exist as) " instinctive " motor-impulses which may
or may not be strong and concentrated enough to result in actual
motion. Knowledge and will are of course mere developed forms of
sensori-motor processes, and like them adaptive. It is a law of
normal consciousness that the reproduction of any sensation or per-
ception can have no greater effect than their production had. But
consciousness is normal only when many different impressions are
acting upon it at the same time from different directions and of dif-
ferent species, each modifying, complementing, but above all inhibiting
the natural impulse of motor reaction of the others. Hence the most
rational actions can result only from the best and most manifold com-
bination of all these elements of consciousness. High degrees of this
all-sidedness are rare even in the most healthy or the greatest men.
Feeling, passion, and particularly attention, which when concentrated
eliminates the effects of large tracts of sensory activity from conscious-
ness, limit normal broad irradiations and conductivity within the
higher nerve-centres. Thus abnormal and extreme one-sidedness of
consciousness is the explanation alike of love and jealousy, and of som-
nambulism or hypnotic automatism. Impressions made upon the skin
and muscles, if restricted to their own immediate reflex effects, and
intensified by narrowing down the broad current of consciousness to
this nervous arc alone, cause insensibility, stiffness, and cramps.
Visual sensations, under corresponding conditions, cause imitative
movements, and auditory impressions give rise to vocal reproductions,
obedience to commands, dreams, &c. These three forms of reaction
correspond to Herr Schneider's three classes of instinct.
The abnormal phenomena in question were hitherto less familiar in
1 Die, Psychologisclie Versuche der hypnotischen Erscheinungen, von G. H.
Schneider, Leipzig, 1880, pp. 79.
104 Notes and Discussions.
Germany than in France, England, or the United States, and although
science is baffled for the present in its search for exact results, it is of
no slight importance that the causes and conditions of these states are
now better understood than even by Braid. The phenomena of
' trance ' and * niediuinship ' are again demonstrated to consist in
abnormal nervous states which any tyro can more or less control.
Practical methods of treating certain forms of nervous disease are
already being modified by these results. Pathological classifications
and laboratory themes, proposed for physiological investigations of
nervous functions are likely to be affected ; while psychology receives
not only a valuable budget of suggestions and apercus, but is strongly
encouraged and confirmed in the fundamental assumption of psycho-
physics that all the secrets of the soul are somehow or other bound up
in those of the nervous system. 1
G. STANLEY HALL.
NOTES ON AN INFANT,
THE following notes, based on Mr. Darwin's most interesting and
accurate report of the unfolding of the senses, emotions, &c., in one of
his own children (MiND VII.), are offered as a small contribution to
this interesting subject, on which observations, so constantly at hand,
ought to be more often carefully made. They concern the writer's
infant son, and extend from the moment of birth through a period of
9 months.
Sucking. The first thing the child did when left alone a few
minutes after birth, was to suck the blanket in which he was
wrapped.
When hungry, he would cram his hands into his mouth with
varying precision, and suck them hard. This was observed ever since
birth, and seemed to be adopted without hesitation as a means for
temporarily appeasing hunger.
At 4 days old, he pushed away his mother's breast when satisfied.
The touch of a warm hand did not induce sucking movements.
No practice seemed to be required for directing the hands to the
mouth.
Sneezing was always accompanied by violent movements of all the
limbs, the thighs being flexed on the abdomen, the forearms bent,
and the elbows thrust forward.
The purpose of the flexion of the thighs on the belly was probably
partly to relieve the tension of the suddenly contracted abdominal
muscles, but the movements of the arms (and partly those of the legs
1 For two interesting popular sketches see E. Gscheidlen, " Die Ersch-
eimingen des sogenannten thierischen Magnetisnms im Liehte der Natnr-
wissenschaft," in Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, Nos. 3, 4, and 5, 1880.
Also R. Eiihlmann, " Die Experimente mit dem sogenannten thierischen
Magnetismus," in Gartenlaube, Nos. 8 and 9, 1880.
Notts and Discussions. 105
also) probably had for their cause the necessity for relief of what
is called a * nervous discharge ' of great amplitude, such as a
sneeze.
Crying was performed at first without any squaring of the mouth.
The sound can be exactly expressed by "nga" as pronounced in
German. This must have been produced by closing the fauces by the
contact of the pillars of the fauces and the soft palate, so as to send
all the sound through the nose; the vowel sound being then produced
by separating the soft palate and pillars of the fauces and allowing the
sound to come through the mouth.
The child appeared to cry at first for three reasons: (1) from a
feeling of loneliness or fright on awakening from sleep, which was
relie yed by being taken in the mother's or nurse's arms, or even by a
touch; (2) from hunger; (3) from pain. The cries seemed to be all
different in character.
Smiling was reported at 5| weeks, but not certainly observed before
the end of the 8th week. It was often accompanied by sucking
movements. This shows the association of two pleasurable ideas.
Weeping. Tears were shed two days before the end of the 14th
week.
Seeing. The eyes were first fixed on a candle when a week old.
On the same day, the eyes were fixed on one of the parents for the
first time.
Opening of the eyes was accompanied by wrinkling of the skin of
the forehead ; the wrinkles, being horizontal, were due to the frontalis
muscle. They resembled those produced in adults during an effort to
open the eyes when tightly closed, either on account of very dazzling
light or of a foreign body in the eye ; but were probably only
necessitated by redundancy of skin, which is very observable in a
young child and most young animals. This wrinkling gradually
ceased.
The 9th day was the first on which anything like habitual opening
of the eyes occurred.
It was not before the 14th day that the child took notice of persons
or moving objects.
From the time that he began to use his eyes, bright light gave him
much pleasure, and he never blinked except 011 a change from com-
parative darkness to bright light ; when the moment of this change
was past, he would gaze for a long time with much apparent delight
and with wide-open eyes at a lamp or at the gas, however bright.
This fact makes it unlikely that the frowning mentioned above was
due to being dazzled. He was first able to see himself in the glass at
8 weeks old, the experiment having been often used before.
Hearing. During the first week the child would not start at any
noise however sudden, when unaccompanied by vibration of the room
or bed. For instance, no notice was taken of hands loudly clapped
close to his ear ; but slamming of a door made him start. Just the
same starting was observed immediately after birth when the scale in
which he was being weighed went down with a jerk.
106
Notes and Discussions.
.
It was very difficult to decide when the child really heard first.
At 14 days old he would turn his eyes to his mother when she spoke
to him, but even then did not start at sudden noises however loud,
unless accompanied by jerks or vibrations ; so that the apparent power
of hearing his mother's voice may have depended on his feeling her
breath on his face, for it was only when her face was turned towards
him while she spoke that he turned his eyes towards her.
In connexion with the late appearance of this sense, we must
remember that the tympanum at birth is packed with areolar tissue
which only gradually becomes absorbed after birth.
Reflex Actions. Among these may be noticed the spasmodic start
which occurred on any jar or vibration, previously noticed, and also
the fact that micturition was always or nearly always indicated by a
slight shiver.
The slight provocation necessary for producing a convulsion in child-
ren is a well-known sign of their great irritability to nervous stimuli.
Exactly at 4 weeks old the child started at sudden noises if unex-
pected, but would not start twice at the same noise if not excessively
loud.
Taste. The child rejected all things given to him cold, even milk,
but would take various things not especially nice (such as cod liver
oil) if warm. The temperature seemed to be of more consequence to
him than the taste.
Voluntary Movements. The arms were far more purposive in their
movements than the legs from the very first. The movements of the
arms from the first were like those of striking with the fists, the fists,
however, being only partially clenched.
Walking. When one day less than 19 weeks old, the trial was
made of supporting the child on the floor with the feet just touching
the ground, and moving him forward. The movements of the legs
were always alternate and purposive, each step being perfectly formed ;
though the feet were lifted unnecessarily high, there was no hesitation
nor irregularity. Only when he was lifted too high for one or other
foot to touch the ground was this alternate movement interrupted, the
foot which failed to reach the ground making a fresh step. It was
obvious that the contact of one foot with the ground was the stimulus
for moving forward the other foot.
Attempts at Talking. From 9 months the child distinctly imitated
the intonation of the voice when any word or sentence was repeated
in the same way several times.
About the 13th week he began to appear to attempt to join in
conversation with a variety of articulate sounds, if talking was going
on in the room.
Fear. The first symptom of fear was noticed at about 9 months.
It was excited by an unusual sound in the room, but not in the
child's immediate neighbourhood ; he opened his eyes very wide and
burst out crying. The second occasion was at about 10 months,
when sound was again the exciting cause ; a toy was given him which
squeaked on pressure, he burst out crying, and cried whenever it was
Notes and Discussions. 107
offered him, but in a short time he got used to it, became very fond
of it, and made it squeak himself.
I have one or two remarks to make on Mr. Darwin's paper. Ho
says : " On the 7th day I touched the naked sole of his foot with a
bit of paper and he jerked it away, curling at the same time his toes,
like a much older child when tickled ". Such reflex movements can
be provoked in utero, and can be utilised in obstetric operations fur
distinguishing a hand from a foot, the hand closing on the finder.
Kicks can be excited even through the abdominal walls by sudden
movements, and by direct contact in the way of tickling.
With regard to the words " mum " used by Mr. Darwin's child,
and " ham " used by M. Taine's to express food, I would suggest
that both were invented subsequently to the use of solid food, for Mr.
Darwin's infant invented "mum" at 12 months, and M. Taine's in-
vented " ham " at 14 months. Both words seem to be the result of a
vowel sound during mastication. Let any one try to eat or move his
mouth as in eating, pronouncing at the same time any vowel sound.
He will find that each vowel is closed by the letter " m " which is
common to " mum " and " ham ". " Mum " is the result of " u " with
the mouth first shut, then opened, then shut. " Ham " (probably
without the " h " aspirated, especially as an aspirated " h" is too much
for the recti abdominis muscles of an infant) is the result of an " a "
similarly treated.
That " ni " is one of the earliest acquired consonants, appears from
the word " mama ".
I would also suggest that the word " mumble," used of a dog
growling while gnawing a bone, is probably onomatopoetic, and to be
similarly explained. I do not know the etymology of the Latin word
" mando ".
F. H. CHAMPNETS.
FREE-WILL : A REJOINDER TO DR. WARD.
I. My article, Dr. Ward on Free-will, in April last, MIND XVIII., has
elicited an elaborate reply from Dr. Ward in the Dublin Review for October ;
in which, as might be expected, he does three things, controverts my
objections, re-states his own theory, and criticises what he supposes to be
mine. My answer must necessarily be brief. The plan of MIND does not
admit the voluminous repetitions which are apparently but so many
u congenial efforts " to the Scholastic periodical, and serve, for aught we
know, like mesmeric passes to deepen the "dogmatic slumber" of the
regular patients.
This being so, since I cannot go through his reply in all its detail, I
must have recourse to selecting the most fundamental points, trusting that
my replies on these will be sufficiently conclusive to show by implication
the unteiiability of his positions as to the rest. I begin with the general
remark that, whereas Dr. Ward frequently taxes me, wrongly as I think,
with misconception of his meaning, lie very frequently and palpably mis-
conceives mine. There is one page in particular, near the beginning of his
108
Notes and Discussions.
article, where lie comes to what he calls " the critical issue " between us,
p. 274, which is full of misconceptions. I am there represented as saying
in effect, that the " spontaneous impulse " is the outcome of the entire cir-
cumstances external and internal of the moment. But I never say this or
anything like it ; I do not admit the analysis into " spontaneous impulse "
and " anti-impulsive effort " at all. I argue at some length (MiND XVIII.,
pp. 234-235) that it is an arbitrary and unfounded assumption. But to
this argument Dr. Ward has given not a single word of reply. It is not I,
then, who identify the " spontaneous impulse " with the total of circum-
stances, as Dr. Ward represents me. I hold indeed that the act of choice
is the outcome of that total, but I include in the total, not indeed Dr.
Ward's " spontaneous impulse " and " anti-impulsive effort," but the facts
which Tie distributes, and not I, under those two heads. He grouncllessly
supposes that I identify what lie calls the " spontaneous impulse " with the
total circumstances, external and internal, of the agent at the moment of
choice ; whereas my total of circumstances includes the motives or reasons
for what he calls " anti-impulsive effort " as well. If he will look again at
those three passages of my article which he refers to at p. 274, he will see
that there is not a word about " spontaneous impulse " in them. Conse-
quently the contradiction in terms, with which he endeavours to saddle me
at p. 282, does not attach to my argument. I shall presently show that it
really attaches to his own theory.
Secondly, I will take his reply to my examination of two of his instances,
the tooth-brushing case, and the Christian military officer case, at pp. 283
and 284. His reply is founded on a similar mistake to that just signalised,
and consists in asserting that my version of those cases omits the " anti-
impulsive effort," on which he relied for disproving determinism, de-
scribes them as cases of merely " congenial effort," and represents them
falsely in consequence as compatible with determinism. " We alleged
phenomenon A as disproving Determinism ; and Mr. Hodgson replies that
phenomenon B does not disprove Determinism " (p. 283). But my argu-
ment really is, that the facts of these cases are explicable without recourse
to the arbitrary distinction between " spontaneous impulse " and " anti-
impulsive effort ". I showed (MiND XVIII., pp. 235-6) that the motives of
so-called spontaneous impulse and the motives of so-called anti-impulsive
effort are alike in the point which is relevant to the nature of their
connexion with the act of choice, however much they may differ in
other respects ; that they are alike in being determinants of choice. I
deny that the motives and the actions induced by them can be put into
two antagonistic classes for the purpose of explaining the process of volition ;
but I do not deny the existence of the motives and actions in question.
This Dr. Ward calls omitting the fact of "anti-impulsive effort," and
inserting only the fact of " spontaneous impulse " and " congenial effort ; '
founded on it. He tacks, to use a parliamentary phrase, his distribution of
the facts to the facts themselves ; so that, with him, to deny the distribution
is to deny the facts. And thus he represents me here and elsewhere (pp.
274, 275, 294), as agreeing with him as to the distribution of the facts, and
differing as to the fact of their occurrence. The truth is the very reverse.
I agree with him entirely as to the facts alone, and as to the possibility of
their occurrence ; I differ as to their distribution and interpretation.
Dr. Ward well knows that his distribution of the facts under these two
heads, and not the occurrence of the facts alone apart from that distribution,
is the crucial and critical point for his theory. Hence his extreme anxiety
to have it admitted, that his opponents agree with him on the question of
distribution, and differ on the question of fact. Hence also his anxiety to
show that the distribution is an ultimate and immediate fact of conscious-
Notes and D isc ussio ns. 109
ness. He alleges that its truth, is obvious to all intelligent persons who are
not puzzle-headed (p. 277). Also that it is immediately and " clamorously"
testified by consciousness, along with the "Ego" itself, which m ik.-s the
anti-impulsive effort (pp. 292, 293). The "Ego," and its m-iking anti-
impulsive effort, and the character of that effort as " anti-impulsive,"
in Dr. Ward's eyes three facts in one, given immediately and indivisibly in
consciousness ; just as in old times the sight of the sunrise was thought to
testify immediately to the fact that the sun moved and not the earth. Now
I shall not repeat my argument on these points. I shall content myself
with turning the tables on Dr. Ward, with respect to that contradiction
with which he endeavours to saddle me.
Let it be granted argumenti gratia that I have an immediate conscious-
ness that I exist, that / exert anti-impulsive effort, that the effort is anti-
impulsive. Now I say, if I have such a power, surely it lies in my nature
to have it. How can / have a power of resisting impulse without that
power belonging to me, founded either in my nature alone or in my nature
under its actual circumstances 1 Yet Dr. Ward expressly maintains that
the power of anti-impulsive effort is independent of my nature (p. 270), and
independent of my mental constitution as well as external circumstancas
(p. 299). I quote these passages for the sake of definiteness ; but that this
is his position is clear from every line of the article. Dr. Ward maintains
that we have a power which is independent of our nature. What can he
mean ? What is an " Ego " which is independent of its own nature ?
But the contradiction just signalised is not merely to be drawn by con-
struction from Dr. Ward's supposed intuition of the Ego. It is apparent
from his own statement of the case against determinism, in which (p. 281)
he himself does what he charges me with doing, namely, identifies the act
to which the agent is disposed by the entire circumstances external and
internal, at the moment of choice, with the act which is in accordance with
his " spontaneous impulse ". He then alleges that the agent sometimes
performs a different act from this ; and that thereby determinism is dis-
proved. " If, then, I act at any moment otherwise than according to such
impulse I act in some way different from that to which my entire circum-
stances of the moment dispose me " (p. 281). I therefore retort upon Dr.
Ward the very words which he seeks to apply to me : " If you mean any-
thing, it must be, (1) that my whole assemblage of existent circumstances
(external and internal), by their combined influence, dispose me to one
stable, definite course ; and (2) that at the same moment they do not, by
their combined influence, dispose me to that course, but to some other. A
contradiction in terms " (p. 282).
I am disposed to agree heartily with Dr. Ward when he says, at the be-
ginning of this same paragraph (p. 282), " It is a contradiction in terms to
say that my entire circumstances of the moment can possibly dispose me to
anti-impulsive effort." For the entire circumstances of the moment include
the agent himself and all his powers. If they cannot dispose to " anti-
impulsive effort," then " anti-impulsive effort " is a vain imagination, which
is just my opinion.
But still further, the " anti-impulsive effort," according to Dr. Ward, is
induced by reasons or motives of three distinct kinds, (1) virtue or duty to
God, (2) permanent self-interest in this world, (3) permanent self-interest
in another world (pp. 285, 287). Now it is only as part either of the agent's
nature, or of his internal or external circumstances, that these or any other
reasons can induce or justify his action, or stand in any relation to it.
Whatever may be meant by anti-impulsive effort, then, it is clear that it
cannot be independent of the agent's nature and circumstances, of what is
otherwise described as his entire circumstances external and internal.
110
Notes and Discussions.
But the character of the anti-impulsive effort is a point on which Dr.
Ward specially charges me with having entirely failed to apprehend his
meaning. He says, " On many various occasions such is our contention
it is matter of direct and unmistakable observation, that this or that act is
an act of anti-impulsive and not of congenial effort. He [Mr. Hodgson]
argues, as though we accounted this quality of the act to be a mere matter
of inference ; and he contends that our inference is not conclusively estab-
lished " (p. 285). Nothing can be a greater misconception than this charge
of misconception on me. I really argue, not as Dr. Ward represents, but
as though he accounted it matter of experience and refused to account it
matter of inference ; and then proceed to argue that he is wrong in doing
so. These are my words : " Dr. Ward claims to have an immediate know-
ledge of the agent, or soul, per se, in cases of conscious anti-impulsive effort,
and claims it as an essential part of the facts of which anti-impulsive effort
consists. But the existence of this knowledge requires proof, &c." (MiND
XVIII., pp. 232-3). And referring to this afterwards, " Dr. Ward's reply
must be, as shown above, that we have an immediate intuition of the soul
per se, in the very moment of conflict. And to this I now make the further
reply, &c." (ibid., p. 240). How then can Dr. Ward say, that I argue " as
though we accounted " this quality of the act a mere matter of inference ?
Dr. Ward's article offers many other tempting openings for reply, but I
confine myself to the strictly necessary. One more objection only I will
advert to, an incidental one, quoted by him from a critic in the Spectator,
d propos of his instance of the Christian military officer. " How in the
world," says the critic, " can a desire derive strength from its fixity ? We
can barely imagine a desire deriving fixity from its strength, but certainly
not strength from its fixity. Let a desire be ever so permanent, yet if it be
but faint it will be overcome by a stronger desire." The officer in Dr.
Ward's instance had " a firm resolve, by God's grace, to comport himself
Christianly ". And I argued that this " resolve " involved a desire (say to
live according to the Divine law) which derived its strength from its fixity
in his mind. I think it is not difficult to see how it would help to combat
the vivid desire of revenge. It would poison its sweetness by constantly
suggesting its incompatibility with peace of mind, so that, as often as the
idea of revenge occurred, there would arise amari aliquid with it. And it
would also call up by association a host of habitual ideas, all antagonistic
to the indulgence. It is true that we must consider the relative strength of
desires as they are at given moments, and in the present case at any moment
when the desire of revenge may be supposed to rise into consciousness in
conflict with the resolve to obey the Christian law. But it is not requisite
to suppose the resolve victorious at all such moments ; it is enough for Dr.
Ward's purpose if it is victorious at any one of them. And my argument
is that, when it is victorious, its strength is owing in great measure to its
being based upon fixed or habitual desires, or ideas including desires ; which
would hold good notwithstanding that the resolve itself may (as Dr. Ward
now urges, p. 284) have been adopted immediately before. The Spectator's
argument seems also to imply, that the vividness of desires is the only ele-
ment to be considered in trying to estimate the relative quantities of pleasure
which they may be supposed to contain. But the recollection that a plea-
sure is a deliberately chosen and approved one, which is to be reckoned to
its " fixity," is surely a distinct and additional element of pleasure in it.
II. I turn now to another branch of the subject. Dr. Ward concludes
his article with some criticisms on what he supposes to be my theory of
free-will. But he has naturally a very imperfect idea of what my theory
is. He classifies me roundly and without qualification (p. 298) as a Hedon-
istic . Determinist, which I think anyone who had weighed the Chapter
Notes and Discussions. Ill
entitled " The Logic of Ethic " in my Tlwory of Practice, Vol. II., ch. ii., and
especially 83, would hesitate to do. Even such indications as my article
in MIND afforded he does not appear to have made much use of. Judging
from the words which he puts into my mouth at p. 300, he thinks that I
maybe compelled to content myself with a merely nominal and illu-ive
freedom, a sense of freedom without the reality of it ; that the reality of it
is incompatible with my form of determinism. He has paid no attention
to the words in which I distinguish his view of freedom from my own,
where I say that I do not, as he does, "oppose liberty antithetically to
necessity" (MiND XVIII., p. 228). The meaning of this must now be
briefly drawn out.
I decline to oppose liberty antithetically to necessity, because they are
things belonging to two different orders of ideas. Necessity belongs to the
logical, and liberty to the causative or in better phrase the efficient order.
Necessity when said of things or events means a certain character attaching
to them, namely, that of uniformity or inviolability in their arrangement,
in their sequences and co-existences, and is opposed not to liberty but to
contingency. The order of efficiency, or (as we may also call it) causation or
conditioning, is the actual realising of this order. If we speak of necessity
as being found in this order, we have or ought to have a quite different idea
in our minds from that of uniformity, namely, the idea of compulsion. The
term necessity is an ambiguous one. Applied to the logical order of things
it means unifoimity, applied to the efficient order of things it means com-
pulsion. Freedom also is similarly ambiguous. It is opposed to necessity
in both its senses. Opposed to necessity in its sense of uniformity, it means
contingency, hap-hazard, lawlessness. Opposed to necessity in its sense of
compulsion, it has no synonym but itself. The true and proper meaning of
freedom is freedom as opposed to compulsion. And the true and proper
meaning of necessity is necessity as opposed to contingency. Thus, freedom
being opposed to compulsion, and necessity to contingency, there is no
antithetical opposition between freedom and necessity.
This distinction between the two orders, the logical and the efficient,
with the distribution of necessity to the former and freedom to the latter,
is an indispensable preliminary to comprehending the free-will controversy.
Determinism is a doctrine based upon the logical order and applied to the
efficient. Determinism maintains the uniformity of nature, necessity as
opposed to contingency, but says nothing whatever about compulsion or
non-compulsion of agents in the efficient order. A determinist is perfectly
at liberty to maintain the freedom of the will. No logical objection can be
made to him merely on the score of his determinism. The question of
freedom has nothing to do either with necessity in the sense of uniformity,
or with its opposite, contingency ; it is a question of compulsion or non-
compulsion ; and for my part I cannot avoid attributing freedom to every
existing thing, in such a way as to be a co-element with compulsion in the
actions that take place between the thing and its environment. But I hope
to have an opportunity before long, in another connexion, of returning to
this more abstruse part of the free-will question.
Now I venture to repeat, in spite of Dr. Ward's "emphatic" denial
(p. 299), that the meaning I attach to the term free-will is the Beaming
attached to it by mankind at large. By freedom, whether of the will or
anything else, men at large mean freedom from compulsion. AVhat know
they or care they about uniformity of nature, or predestination, or reign of
law ? They feel their freedom : no fact can be more certain to them ; they
have an immediate sense of it. And note what this implies ; it implii-s that
freedom is to them a fact and not a theory. If freedom as opposed to m-rrs-
sity was what they immediately felt, and meant by the term freedom, they
112
Notes and Discussions.
would have an immediate sense of a theory. Freedom from compulsion can
be immediately felt ; but freedom as opposed to necessity must first be
thought. Observe too, how inevitably the language we use in describing
human choice and action implies the universal presence of law, as where in
the Prayer-Book freedom is identified with the service of God, " whose ser-
vice is perfect freedom ". Observe too, how frequently compulsion is implied
when we speak of the absence of freedom, as when we say that a man is
the slave of his passions. Freedom from one law involves subjection to
another law, so that we are never free from law, but often from compulsion.
It is when people begin to theorise that they begin to substitute a free-
dom which must first be thought for a freedom which is immediately felt.
They vainly imagine that the freedom which must first be thought is the
only real freedom, and that the felt freedom is delusive. The task which
they ought to propose to themselves, on the other hand, is also to think the
felt freedom ; to explain it without substituting a thought freedom for it.
Nothing is easier, nothing is more common, and few things are more per-
nicious, than to explain a thought which you have first introduced, and
call it explaining a fact.
People then get puzzled, when they begin to theorise, with the double
senses of necessity and freedom. I feel I have the power of choice between
A and B, they say, and yet how is it that from all eternity it has been
decided which I shall choose ; has been decided before I was born, conse-
quently not by me but for me ? The distinction of the two orders is the
only key to this difficulty. In the foregoing sentence, having the power of
choice, being decided by me, and decided for me, are ideas belonging to the
efficient order. Decided from all eternity is an idea belonging to the logical
order. It says nothing about either by me or for me It means that the
Omniscient knows whether / shall choose A or B, It is not decided effi-
ciently until I actually make the choice. Until that moment the conditions,
antecedent and co-existent, are not in combination. The efficiency is in
me, the knowledge in him. But whether that efficiency is compulsory on
me or not, of this nothing whatever is said by the words decided from all
eternity. It depends on how the me is defined, what is included in it, and
what are its relations to its environment.
Thus it is that the ordinary man gets into confusion on the subject of
free-will, the moment he begins to theorise about it, and for no other reason
than for \vant of distinguishing between the two orders to which freedom
and necessity respectively belong. This is the- same confusion in which Dr.
Ward is entangled ; and so completely that sometimes he seems to hold a
perfectly causeless freedom or liljerty of indifference, at other times, as I
remarked in my former article, he speaks the language of determinism, par-
ticularly when he emphasises the reasonableness of anti-impulsive action.
For the confusion is one which it is hopeless to remedy by the Scholastic
means, by supposing a soul-entity endowed with a power of free action, an
agent invented ad hoc. The difficulty is not where to find a free agent, but
to show what free action is, and how it is possible. What is free action, we
ask ; and are told it is the action of a being expressly endowed with a
power of acting freely. Singular infatuation !
It harmonises with this view of the matter, to find Dr. Ward putting
forward as a statement which on my principles I must reject, that " when I
successfully resist my will's spontaneous impulse, I do so by my own
intrinsic strength and personal exertion " (p. 290). Substituting the' words
strong lower desire for spontaneous impulse, in order that Dr. Ward may not
again suppose me to grant the correctness of his nomenclature, so far from
seeing anything in this to reject, I see nothing but what I earnestly main-
tain. The question is not whether this is done by the agent or not, but
Notes and Discussions. 113
what the analysis of his doing so is. The analysis of the resistance not the
fact of it determines whether Dr. Ward's view of freedom or lain
And I remember a similar use made of the expression "a dead 1:
think by the same critic in the Spectator from whom Dr. Ward quoted tin;
objection noticed above; as if the fact of a "dead heave" being made
against some powerful temptation proved of itself the truth of Dr. Ward's
analysis of it. Granted the "dead heave " is made and that we make it,
what is the we, and how do we make it 1 When will empiricists see that
the really important questions in philosophy are analytical ones ?
Dr. Ward imagines that I stand quite alone among determinists in my
use of the word freedom (p. 299), and almost alone among contemporary
determinists in writing as a Theist (p. 298). Also that, as to a moral
government of the world and similar questions, "very few non-Calvinistio
Determinists will be found " on my side (p. 300). He seems to have diffi-
culty in realising that Scholastic empiricism has opponents who stand on
ground very different from materialistic empiricism, or that the Scholastic
doctrine of free-will can possibly be rejected, unless by those who deny
free-will itself. As to my own isolation, I rejoice to think that he is en-
tirely mistaken. Leibniz who, so far as I know, was the first to propound
the doctrine of Determinism, strictly so-called, certainly held free-will as
part and parcel of it, and precisely in the sense that I do. He based deter-
minism on the principle of " Ratio Sufficiens," and opposed it to the oppo-
site errors of the liberty of indifference on one side, and compulsion on the
other. Dr. Ward must certainly have read his De Libertate. It occupies
less than a page in Erdmann's edition, p. 669. " Libertas indifferentire est
impossibilis. Adeo ut ne in Deum quidem cadat, nam determinatus ille est
ad optimum emciendum, et creatura semper ex rationibus internis externis-
que determinatur." And again : " Deus cum sit perfectissimus adeoque
liberrimus, determinatur ex se solo. Nos vero, quo magis cum ratione
agiinus eo magis ex nostrse naturae perfectionibus determinamur, hoc est
liberi sumus."
My theory is identical with that of Leibniz both in its practical outcome,
the conception of liberty, and in the essentials of its logical basis. But I
introduce a further distinction, for the sake as I hope of greater clearness,
that of the logical and efficient orders. And what I mean by the logical
order, in this place, is that list of final modal categories, arrived at in my
Philosophy of Reflection, Vol. I., p. 421, The Actual, The Conditionally-
necessary, and The Necessary ; which are the specially philosophical cate-
gories, to which every thing that exists must ultimately be referred.
Leibniz's necessity and contingency belong to this order ; his liberty,
spontaneity, and compulsion, belong to the efficient order. The contin-
gency of which Leibniz speaks is purely logical not real ; he denies real
contingency altogether, calling it the indifferent. He has no real indeter-
mination. But a real indetermination is indispensable as the basis of that
kind of liberty which Dr. Ward maintains, and which I cannot in any way
distinguish from what Leibniz calls liberty of indifference.
The first strictly deterininist theory, therefore, was a free-will theory, a
free-will and not a compulsory determinism. Leibniz held both the uni-
formity of the course of nature, under the name of the principle of Ratio
Sufficiens, and also the doctrine of free-will. This also is how he was
understood by one of his most illustrious disciples, Moses Mendelssohn, of
whose words I will avail myself to express what I have yet to say on the
subject, by quoting two short passages which put this whole question in
tin- dearest light :
"Predestination appears to some incompatible with self-determination,
as if no freely-choosing being could act according to his good pleasure if it
8
114
Notes and Discussions.
were decided beforehand that he will act in this particular way and no
other. But as I see the matter, this is a dull thought, a plain absurdity.
Predestination is perfectly compatible with self-determination ; it in no
wise hinders the action of the chooser, because the activity of choice has its
ground in the idea of the purposed end and in nothing else ; because pre-
destination is not the cause of the willing, and changes nothing therein, but
merely agrees with it. True, nothing takes place in the will which is not
decided in the predestination ; but the idea and value of the purposed end,
and not the predestination, are the ground of the will ; these alone give the
preponderance to pleasure or displeasure, to desire or aversion." ( Ueber die
tieele, in Sammtl. Werke, Wien, 1838, p. 362.)
The second passage is from a Dialogue, in which one of the persons asks,
speaking of Spinoza, " But what could have led him to deny freedom to the
Deity 1 " To which the other, who represents Mendelssohn, replies :
" Innocently here if anywhere he fell into error. He regarded the
indifferentia cequilibrii as the only real freedom, an error which he shares
with innumerable orthodox philosophers. But he had the acumen to per-
ceive, that the choice of an intelligent being is always determined by
motives ; regarding that indifference therefore as impossible, he denied
freedom to all intelligent beings. Leibniz has happily exploded this error,
and irrefragably proved that true freedom consists in choice of the best ;
and that, while motives determine the will and exclude hap-hazard, they
can never set up a necessity. But only think of human perversity ! That
Leibniz should have passed well nigh for a Spinozist, for developing this
idea ! " (Gesprache, in Werke, as above, p. 487.)
It is plain, then, to send one parting shot into Dr. Ward's ample target,
that no Leibnizian or Free-will determinist can possibly use the language
which Dr. Ward, by a palpable (though I need hardly say unintentional)
misrepresentation, puts into the mouth of his kind-hearted sophist, who is
made to say (p. 302), in consoling a friend writhing under the torture of a
just remorse, that his self-indulgent conduct was infallibly and inevitably
determined for him, by his circumstances external and internal. No ! By
him as well as for Kim must be his language. And according to the propor-
tion which the by bears to the for (other things being equal) will be the
keenness and pressure of his remorse. No man can plead, because no man
can feel, that he and his nature are two.
SHADWORTH H. HODGSON.
ON THE DEFINITION OF INSTINCTIVE ACTION.
One of the questions in Psychology set at the last Second B.'A.
Examination of the London University was the following : " Give the
popular meanings of the term Instinctive Action, and assign it a pre-
cise scientific connotation ". I was much struck in reading nearly two
hundred answers to this question by the want of any common conception
of what is included under the term. Thus some answers identified it
with reflex action, others with habitual action, others again with the
apparently unniotived ' instincts ' of the lower animals. Some said
the differentia was the absence of conscious volition, others that it lay
rather in the peculiar origin of the actions as antecedent to individual
experience. Those who know most about the present condition of
psychology are aware that one of its pressing wants is a set of
Notes and Discmsions. 115
well-understood clearly defined terms. It may not be amiss then to
try to render the meaning of this term more precise.
I would submit that there are good reasons for taking the term
instinctive to refer to the origin or history rather than to the present
nature of the action. The absence of conscious purpose is not a mark
of instinctive origin, but this last is a mark of the former characteristic,
and must therefore be viewed as the more fundamental. Where we
desire to express the nature of an action as devoid of clear conscious
purpose, the expression automatic suffices, ^t the same time it is
plainly necessary to mark off actions known as instinctive from reflex
actions which have a similar origin, since the former differ from the
latter in the important respect of being accompanied by consciousness,
though not conscious purpose. Reflex and Instinctive movements
would thus form two species of the genus Primitive or Inherited
actions. This distinction, I may observe, is in no way opposed to Mr.
Spencer's interesting mode of connecting instinctive with reflex actions,
since it makes no assumptions respecting the ultimate origin of these
actions.
Having now circumscribed our subject-matter and determined the
point of view for observing it, let us proceed with our tentative defini-
tion. What marks off instinctive action is priority to (individual) ex-
perience and acquisition. We may thus define it after the manner of
Prof. Bain as ' untaught ability '. But a moment's consideration will
show us that what is meant by instinct contains more than a substitute
for acquired knowledge how to do a thing : it includes as well an
equivalent for a purpose or volition to do something based on a memory
of past satisfactions. Just as the term habit means both absence of
conscious purpose and absence of conscious cognition of means, so the
term instinct points to both factors. In other words, instinctive action
is antecedent to individual experience in a double sense : it is not
only an unlearnt action, but an unmotived one. I should therefore
include in the definition the fact of the action being not purposive,
though imitating such a voluntary action in being beneficial to the
agent. From the point of view of the evolutionist both these aspects
of instinct might be connected by means of a biological principle,
such as that an organ which has performed a certain kind of function
retains a disposition to go on working in that particular way.
Our definition would include the familiar animal instincts and also
certain human actions or germs of action. Thus the impulse to move
the lower limbs alternately (which one can observe in a child of two
months by letting it gently touch one's lap with one foot) is the in-
stinctive element in walking. On the other hand, spontaneous random,
actions, supposing such to exist, would, in opposition to Prof. Bain's view,
be excluded from instinctive actions, and this not because they are t*jx>/t-
taneous for I have intentionally left open the question whether instinc-
tive actions properly so called require an external stimulus or may not
in some cases be wholly due to the force of an internal impulse work-
ing strongly at the moment but because they are random. So far as a
movement is the mere overflow of stored-up nervous energy, and has
116
Notes and Discussions.
no definite quasi-purposive character, it is best regarded as a mechanical
result of present conditions merely. It is only when the apparently
spontaneous movement manifestly takes the direction of some organised
disposition that it betrays the instinctive character. Thus it is quite
easy to distinguish, in the movements of the arms of a child of two
months old, vague spasmodic movements '' knowing no law,' and others
which approximate to the direction of one of the most deeply organised
varieties of muscular action, namely, the raising of the hand to the
mouth. I should call the latter, in so far as they are independent of
individual experience, instinctive, but not the former. Of course, it is
not easy to draw the line between certain kinds of instinctive and
random movements, especially as it may be contended that the latter
must in every case correspond to some of the habitual actions of the
race. Yet I think that the distinction is worth preserving.
. I may just add that instinctive actions need not show themselves
at the very beginning of life. To adopt a distinction of German
physiologists we may speak of them as inherited, though not neces-
sarily innate.
With respect to feeling and its expression and to intellectual actions
(perceptions, &c.), the term instinctive if retained should, I think,
similarly point to origin and not to present nature.
JAMES SULLY.
THE DOCTRINE OF MIND-STUFF.
Mr. F. W. Frankland (now of the Registrar-General's Office,
Wellington, New Zealand) has recently read before the Wellington
Philosophical Society a paper " On the Doctrine of Mind-stuff," in
which, besides claiming that it was arrived at by himself and other
persons as far back as 1870 independently of the late Professor Clifford,
and giving a short exposition of it in accordance with part of Clifford's
article in MIND IX., " On the Nature of Things-in-theinselves," he thus
attempts to carry out the doctrine farther :
"In what relation does the doctrine of Omnisentiency or Mind-Stuff
stand to the various theories which have been propounded for explaining,
911 the principles of rational mechanics, the phenomena of the physical
universe ? In what relation does it stand to the theories of atoms, ether,
ultramundane corpuscles, ring- vortices, and the like 1 Now, in the first
place, it does not either exclude or supersede them. There is nothing in
the doctrine of Mind-Stuff incompatible with any of these mechanical
theories. The theories in question are one and all of them statements of
quantitative relations among possibilities of feeling, and are not in any way
concerned with the noumenal realities on which these possibilities depend.
The universe of matter is a complex of possibilities of feeling, and these
possibilities are found to stand in certain quantitative relations to one
another. These relations are of two orders, relations of sequence and
relations of co-existence. The former are believed to depend, without
exception, on causal relations relations spoken of as the laws of nature ;
the latter are space-relations, and may be described as fads of structure.
Notes and Discussions. 1 1 7
All the mechanical theories I have alluded to, therefore, and indeed all
mechanical theories that can be framed, are affirmations either of mechanical
laws or facts of structure, or both. Setting out from the relation
sequence and facts of structure which we observe to exist among the j-<
bilities of sensation which constitute the material world, the ]>h\>i.al
investigator does one of two things. He either infers, by a complete induc-
tion, the existence of such and such causal relations, and then deduces
facts of structure which are not capable of "being observed ; or, he assumes
the existence of certain facts of structure, and perhaps also of certain
causal relations, and shows that by known causal relations these will lead
to the observed facts of structure. In the former case, his process is one
of scientific demonstration, in the latter he constructs a scientific hypo-
thesis. To the former category belongs the reasoning by which we infer
that matter consists of molecules (in other words, that its structure is dis-
continuous), and that there is an ether ; to the latter, belong such hypotheses
as those of ring-vortices and ultra-mundane corpuscles. But now, observe,
we are throughout dealing with quantitative relations among abstract pos-
sibilities. The whole of mechanical science deals with such relations. It
is in no way concerned with the inner qualitative nature of the real
existences on which these possibilities depend. These real existences are
aggregations of Mind-Stuff. Psychology is the only science which deals
with them ; and even that deals only with the most complex of them.
Therefore the Doctrine of Mind-Stuff can in no way supersede the neces-
sity of, still less can it exclude, these mechanical explanations of the
universe.
" But although the principles of rational mechanics, and the Tiypotheses
by which, in conjunction with the former, it is sought to explain the
observed phenomena and structure of the material world, are in no way in
conflict with our doctrine, we shall presently see that they may come to
have a very important bearing on the determination of the particular form
which that doctrine ought to assume. For the doctrine asserts that the
possibilities of sensation which constitute a material object, correspond to,
and depend for their existence on, some reality outside us or 'eject' of
which Mind-Stuff units are the elementary constituents. Hence every
conception of mechanical science must denote what would be called in
mathematics some function of Mind-Stuff. Matter, defined as that which
has mass or inertia, must be a function of Mind-Stuff. Motion, force, and
energy, must be functions of Mind-Stuff. The interesting question then
suggests itself : Wliat functions, severally, are mass, momentum, energy,
&c., of the noumenal reality which we have designated Mind-Stuff ? This
question has been touched upon in a profound passage of the late Professor
Clifford's review of a work entitled Tlie Unseen Universe. Professor
Clifford there indicates that the answer to the question, if it can be
answered, must depend on the knowledge we can gain respecting Mind-
Stuff itself knowledge which can only be acquired within the domain of
psychology. Our feelings, he points out, have certain relations of contiguity
or nextness in space, exemplified by contiguous elements of a visual image,
and certain relations of sequence in time, exemplified by all feelings what-
ever. * Out of these two relations the future theorist must build up the
world as best he may. Two things may, perhaps, help him : there are
several lines of mathematical thought which seem to indicate that distance
and quantity may come to be expressed in terms of position, in the wide
sense of an analysis situs, while the theory of the curvature of space hints
at a possibility that matter and motion may be expressed in terms of
extension only.' l
1 " I take this to mean, that if we admit as a possibility that the properties of
118
Notes and Discussions.
" Now it is my ambition to follow out the line of thought here indicated.
It would be impossible to do so fully within the limits of a single paper,
but a beginning may be made. In the first place I desire to supply what I
conceive to be a serious omission in Professor Clifford's enumeration of the
data respecting Mind-Stuff which the ' future theorist ' has at his disposal.
Feelings not only have relations of contiguity or nextness in space, and of
sequence in time, but they also have two other quantitative aspects of very
great importance, namely degrees of intensity and differences of volume. We
are conscious that sensations differ in intensity ; thus an acute pain is felt
to be a more intense sensation than a faint smell. Also, we are conscious
that sensations of about equal intensity differ in something we call volume
or massiveness : thus a sensation of general weariness, though perhaps felt to
be of about equal intensity with a particular ache, is distinguished (apart
from its qualitative difference) as possessing greater mass or volume. Lastly,
we know that there exist causal relations among our feelings. Thus the
group ol ideas l characterised as the realisation of a danger is followed by
the emotion of terror, and the constancy of the sequence indicates that we
have here to deal with a causal relation. Hence the data we possess are
these : a complex of feelings perpetually undergoing transformations,
causal relations between successive feelings, relations of contiguity or next-
ness among a few of the synchronous ones (though this appears to be an
exceptional phase of psychic structure, only to be found, as far as I am
aware, among simultaneous visual impressions which co-exist in a space or
manifoldness of two dimensions), qualitative resemblances and differences,
variations in intensity, and variations in volume or mass. These are the
materials from which we must construct our conception, save as to certain
spots necessarily a very dim one, of the noumenal world. And these are
the materials which we must connect, in the best way we can, with the
elementary factors of our conception of the world of phenomena. We must
endeavour to establish a correspondence between feelings, their causal and
topical relations, their intensities and volumes, on the one hand, and the
dynamical conceptions of mass, momentum, force, energy, &c., on the other.
Now, as a preliminary to the working out of this correspondence it will
perhaps be advisable to take a brief survey of the ultimate dynamical con-
ceptions, and of their relations to one another.
" Our first step will show us how thoroughly interdependent all these
conceptions are. Matter can only be defined as that which possesses inertia
as that which requires a force proportional to its amount (designated its
mass) to effect a given change in its motion (either a change in velocity, or a
change in direction, or both) in a given time. Force, again, can only be
defined as that which causes a change in the velocity or direction of the
space may show a sensible divergence from the Euclidean standard, if we consider
very small parts of it we get at a way of defining matter in terms of the space
which it occupies. An ultimate atom of matter (perhaps infinitesimal as com-
pared with the chemical atom) would on that view be merely an infinitesimal
crumple in space. All physical science would then be reduced to transcendental
geometry, and space-elements would be the analogues of Mind-Stuff units.
" The former parts of Professor Clifford's suggestion can only mean, as far as I
can see, that space may be not only not homogeneous in ultimate structure, but
not even infinitely divisible. It may consist of indivisible units. In that case
there would be such a thing as absolute magnitude, and measuring would be
reduced to counting. The space-unit would then be the analogue of the Mind-
Stuff unit."
1 " An idea is merely a combination of derivative feelings which are severally
faint copies of more vivid primary feelings. In the present case there is included
also an unique element called belief alluded to in an earlier portion of this paper."
Notes and Discussions. 1 1 9
motion of matter. It is tacitly assumed, though not often expressed, that
the only thing which can cause such a change in velocity or direction i.s the
co-existence of other matter. This amounts to saying that force is a ivl.-i-
tion of co-existence between different portions of matter. But every relation
of co-existence in the material or phenomenal world is a relation of mutual
position in space. Hence force is a relation of mutual position between
different portions of matter. Motion, in the kinetic, or dynaiuira
opposed to the merely kinematical sense, is a change in the position of
matter, and is completely determined when the mass of the moving body
and the kinematical conditions of the case are given. The notion of energy
does not require the introduction of any fundamentally new conception.
Hence the phenomenal world is accurately described if we speak of it as a
cqniplex of motions, varying in infinite ways as regards mass on the one
hand, and velocity and the other kinematical aspects on the other, tending
severally to constancy in all these respects, but having a mutual action on
one another, determined by their relations of co-existence, and, therefore,
undergoing perpetual transformations. Now mark the parallelism. The
noumenal world, we have seen, may be described as a complex of feeling-
elements, or Mind-Stuff units, having, just as motion has, extension in Time,
varying in infinite ways as regards volume, intensity, and quality or timbre,
having a mutual action on one another, determined by their mutual rela-
tions of co-existence, and undergoing perpetual transformations. Is this
parallelism something more than a parallelism? Without attempting to
justify it in this paper, I would hazard the conjecture that motion is Mind-
Stuff, that volume of feeling is mass, and intensity of feeling velocity.
Professor Clifford seems to have believed that motion and Mind-Stuff were
identical, and indeed to have hejd the belief in a much more dogmatic
form than I should be inclined to do ; but the other two identifications
are, as far as 1 am aware, quite new. The degree of light which cerebral
physiology may be capable of throwing on the question must be estimated
by abler minds than my own : but one implication of my hypothesis has
struck me as favourable to it. If matter in MOTION be Mind-Stuff, it follows
that if matter were ever at absolute rest, it would no longer correspond to
any noumenal existence. It would become a pure abstraction one term of
a product, the other term of which was zero. Does not this appear in har-
mony with the hypothesis of Sir Win. Thomson, which makes all the atoms
of ordinary matter, and all the particles of which the ether is composed, to
consist of a rotational motion in an incompressible frictionless fluid 1 The
stoppage of the vortex-motion would be the obliteration of both atoms and
ether ihe annihilation of the sensible universe. The perfect fluid at rest
would be, on my view, a mere nullity. No noumenal existence would
correspond to it, and it would, in fact, merely represent the potentiality of
massiveness among feelings.
" Two other identifications will at once suggest themselves, and may be
relied on with greater confidence than any of the three preceding ones :
First, the causal relations among elements of feeling will have their coun-
terparts in the causal relations among motions of matter, i.e., they will have
their counterparts in the dynamical laws of the universe. And secondly,
the relations of synchronism among elements of feeling will have their
counterparts in the relations of synchronism among the motions of matter,
i.e., they will have their counterparts in the space-relations of the universe.
Certain passages in Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology seem to
indicate that he entertains a similar belief.
"And now, one more thing follows. The nexus of causation which
obtains among the feeling-elements, or Mind-Stuff units, i.e., among ilu>
elements of the noumenal world, must be at least as complex as the corre-
120
Critical Notices.
spending nexus which obtains among the motions of matter, i.e., among the
elements of the phenomenal world ; and it may be indefinitely more so. For
the phenomenal world depends for its existence on the noumenal world, and
is in fact only a particular aspect of the latter that aspect, namely, which
the noumenal world presents to its own most complex strands, the percipient
beings that grow lip in its bosom. Nor can the elements of the phenomenal
world derive any complexity from the interaction of the noumenal elements
which they represent with the complex structure of the percipients. For it
is the especial triumph of the mechanical theory of the universe to have
eliminated all these complexities, and referred the affections of the various
senses to the same source. Thus the sensations of light and warmth we
receive from a fire, are both referred to the radiant energy of the ether
which intervenes between the fire and ourselves. Hence we may be certain
that the nexus of causation in the noumenal world is at least as complex as
the dynamical nexus of the phenomenal world. But it may be indefinitely
more so. There may be many causal relations in the noumenal world which
have no types in the phenomenal world, though we may be certain that
every dynamical relation in the phenomenal has its anti-type in the noumenal
world. The phenomenal world is a projection, so to speak, of the noumenal
world on the plane of observation, and much complexity may be lost in the
process of projection. In the same way the space-relations of the pheno-
menal world must be paralleled by a nexus, at least equally complex, of
synchronous relations in the noumenal world. But the complexity of the
latter may be greater by any amount than that of the former. There may
be facts of structure in the noumenal world which have no representatives,
so to speak, in the world of phenomena. It has always seemed to me pro-
bable that this was the truth which Spinoza had in his mind when he said
that extension was only one out of a perhaps infinite number of attributes
possessed by the universal substance. The possibility in question shows
that there is nothing in the doctrine of Mind-Stuffier se Professor Clifford
to the contrary notwithstanding to negative the belief either of the spirit-
ualist or of the theologian. It may or may not be the tendency of physio-
logical research to exclude the conceptions with which these two classes of
thinkers are concerned, but this exclusion can certainly not be the result of
an acceptance in its most general form of the doctrine here described. On
the other hand, there is equally little in it to encourage or lend assistance
to theological belief. The proposition that there is a dim quasi-sentiency
pervading the world, is as far removed as possible from the proposition that
there are intelligences unconnected with any brain, and this latter proposi-
tion, which is the essence of all spiritualism and theology, can derive no
support from the former. In regard to theology, then, the doctrine of
Mind-Stuff is neutral. It may rather be described as monistic than as
materialistic. It affirms that there is only one Existence that which
Herbert Spencer speaks of as the ' Substance of Mind ' and that the sup-
posed dualism of matter and spirit is an illusion."
VII. CEITICAL NOTICES.
Tlie Brain as an Organ of Mind. By H. CHAELTON BASTIAN, M.A.,
M.D., F.K.S., Professor of Pathological Anatomy and Clinical
Medicine in University College, London. With 184 Illustrations.
London : Kegan Paul, 1880. Pp. 708.
Dr. Bastian has put into these seven hundred pages the results of
Critical Notices. 121
not a little independent thought and inquiry, besides reproducing in a
convenient form a good part of what is generally known upon his
subject. Apparently, he has not aimed at giving a complete account
of the present state of research into "brain as an organ of mind".
Even on topics that specially occupy his attention, his information, wide
and varied though it be, is apt to fall short of the reader's natural
expectation. For example, he discusses the question of the localisation
of cerebral functions as it was left by Dr. Terrier in 1877, and has
nothing to say on the later investigations of Goltz, Munk and others.
On the other hand, there is large reference to views propounded by
himself more than ten years back, before the new era of experimental
activity began. It would seem that he has been mainly concerned,
during the whole interval, to note those particular advances in neuro-
logical science that had a bearing on his own earlier views. These, we
may take it, are now set forth in the present volume with full maturity
of expression ; and our interest is to understand what are the special
contributions to the knowledge of mind in relation to the brain or
nervous system which so painstaking and enthusiastic a worker as Dr.
Bastian professes to have made.
The book has a certain disorderly appearance from the way in which
neurological and psychological chapters are mixed up throughout, and
the treatment, in detail, is not in fact as clear and orderly as it might
be, especially in those more important chapters towards the close where
the threads of the whole inquiry are drawn together. It is not
very easy to make out what it is exactly that Dr. Bastian does think
on several of the most vital points which he discusses there at no
insufficient length ; but, as regards the book generally, there is a defi-
nite plan running through it, as was indicated in the short notice that
he furnished to MIND XIX., p. 434, though nowhere clearly in the
treatise itself. The plan is, after some consideration of a nervous
system and sense-organs generally (pp. 1-69), to describe them as they
appear in the lower animals up to birds (pp. 70-137), and then, in the
light of a general consideration of mind as it can, at bottom, be known
only subjectively in man, to make the best suppositions possible as to
the kind of mental life which the behaviour of those animals appears to
warrant (pp. 138-253) ; next, to follow the same order of double treat-
ment in the case of quadrupeds with more particular reference to
quadrumana (pp. 254-331) ; and finally, in the latter half of the book,
to carry it out in the case of man as far as Dr. Bastian thinks it can
as yet be carried or, at least, upon the particular lines in which he
himself is most interested.
Dr. Bastian does not tell us at the beginning, but long before he has
done says plainly enough, what he means by Brain and Mind in calling
one the organ of the other. His views on this point, which are some-
what peculiar, claim special attention in these pages and will not be
overlooked ; but it will be convenient first to note the main points of
interest or importance which the exposition offers, on what may be
called the common understanding generally accepted by Dr. Bastian
himself of a relation subsisting between mind and the nervous
122 Critical Notices*
system. We may pass over the initial considerations as to the uses
and origin of a nervous system : they are partly a reproduction of cur-
rent opinions (Mr. Spencer's and others'), partly dependent on that
theory of the origin of life with which the author's name has become
so much identified. Touching structure, he is disposed to regard the
neuroglia as at all events in some cases entering into the circuit of
nerve-currents, but he has no such view of its pervading importance as
Lewes was inclined to form or as Dr. Edmund Montgomery has (in
MIND XVII.) definitely expressed, and he rather supposes that it is
the "matrix wherein and from which new nerve-fibres and new nerve-
cells are evolved in animals, of whatsoever kind or degree of organisa-
tion, during their advance in reflex, in instinctive or in intellectual
acquirements ". A third introductory chapter deals with the use and
nature of sense-organs, since these are so predominant in the nervous
systems of the lower orders of animals first to be studied. Here,
without referring to the manner and order of development of sense-
organs as now traced by embryological inquiry, Dr. Bastian gives a
view of the organs of special sense on the common supposition of their
being evolved from the simple form of touch ; distinguishing besides a
class of " visceral sensations," of large account for the animal life, as
well as the so-called muscular sense, though this last is here only
mentioned in order to be reserved for treatment at the human stage. 1
The outcome of the following chapters, in which, as before said, the
author first makes a comparative survey of the structure of the nervous
system in lower animals (from mollusks to birds) and then, in view of
human self-consciousness, seeks to interpret the facts recorded of their
external behaviour, is that mental life in such lower forms is mainly
sensorial and grows more complex with the increased variety of sense-
endowments. Besides adducing the evidence of anatomical and
physiological facts in support of this conclusion, Dr. Bastian would
contend, generally, for the measurement of intelligence by sense-
endowment upon the psychological grounds (c. xii., on " Sensation,
Ideation and Perception," and elsewhere) that higher manifestations of
mind can be shown to have a relation to sense, and that the simplest
sensation (in us) can be shown to involve conscious discrimination, &c.
His expressions, however, seem to want guarding for the purpose he
has in view. When he broadly asserts (p. 182) that " Sensation is, in
fact, a complex rather than a simple mental process : it is invariably
compounded of Cognition and Feeling," one would like to know
1 The reason given (p. 69) for the reservation is that, as ' muscular sensa-
tions ' follow or accompany and do not of themselves incite movements,
they can be known only subjectively or as they are described by our fellow-
men. But, on this showing, Dr. Bastian need not confine himself to saying
that "it is obvious we can know nothing about them among Invertebrate
Animals " : we can know as little of them in any Vertebrates that are
speechless.
On occasion of Hearing, Dr. Bastian does not omit to make reference to
the part played by the Semicircular Canals in the direction of head aiid
other movements.
Critical Notices. 123
from him, with some explicitness, what then is to be taken as
"simple" in the mental life of the lower animals. Perhaps c. xi., on
"Kefiex Action and Unconscious Cognition," is meant to supply part
of the answer to this question, but as the Cognition there spoken of is
mere " organic discrimination " we are still left to seek.
At the farther stage of his double line of exposition, when he
reaches the anthropoid apes, Dr. Bastian finds such unmistakable evi-
dences of intelligence and emotion (like ours) connected with or
growing out of their still more varied sense-experience, that he cannot
suppress the exclamation, what might their mental advancement not
become if only they could help each other forward, in generation after
generation, by that means of articulate speech which, in a later chapter
entitled " From Brute to Human Intelligence" (somewhat oddly thrust
into the midst of his account of the structure of the human brain), he
signalises as the distinctive instrument of mental development in man.
Other points in the chapters devoted to the lower animals we must
here pass by ; remarking on the sketch of animal psychology as a whole
that, however interesting and suggestive, there is either too much or
too little of it too little for an effective understanding of the par-
ticular subject, too much in relation to the general drift of the book.
Coming to the chapters that deal expressly with man, we have first,
in a hundred or more pages, a view of the pre-natal development, of
the size and weight, of the external configuration and of the internal
structure of the human brain. Here Dr. Bastian, at various points of
his full and careful exposition, has results of original anatomical
research to bring forward, though not of a kind that need detain us. It
is from c. xxiv. (p. 477) onwards that more detailed notice becomes
necessary. Chapter xxiv. professes to deal with the functional relations
of the principal parts of the brain. It hardly carries out the promise
of its title. There is first an ingenious speculation as to how the
cross-relation between the cerebral hemispheres and the lateral halves
of the body may have arisen where it first is manifest in fishes and
become more pronounced in the higher classes of animals. Then
follows a section on the functional relations of the cerebral hemispheres
which seeks to throw light on " the duality of body and unity of
mind " ; but with no particular result. Dr. Bastian can only say
(p. 485) that while the great commissure, the corpus callosum, seems
more obviously to correlate the sensorial regions of the two hemi-
spheres, it must also be supposed to connect mediately the emotional,
intellectual and volitional regions ; for is there not " manifestly a
unity in our emotional, intellectual and volitional, as well as in our
sensorial consciousness " ? Observations of that kind or such as other-
wise make up this section carry us a very little way. Finally, in the
chapter, there is presented a rather careful digest of the manifold views
that have been held as to the structural relations and functions of the
cerebellum ; but when Dr. Bastian proceeds to state his own compre-
hensive view which shall include all the portions of truth contained
in any of the others, it is done in words that suggest more questions
than they answer: "The Cerebellum is a supreme motor centre for
Critical Notices,
reinforcing and for helping to regulate the qualitative and quantitative
distribution of outgoing currents, in voluntary and automatic actions
respectively ; or, more briefly still, it is a supreme organ for the rein-
forcement and regulative distribution of outgoing currents." How the
cerebellum works in relation to the corpora striata, which at a later stage
are made of more account for the effecting of movements, is not in any
way suggested. 1 Altogether, there is not much to be learned about " the
functional relations of the principal parts of the brain" from, this
chapter.
In the next chapter, " Phrenology : Old and New," Dr. Bastian
begins to draw more definitely to conclusions. Here, after a historical
sketch of earlier theories of localisation of mental functions, he sub-
jects to special review Dr. Ferrier's allocation of the different senses to
particular regions of the cortical substance of the hemispheres. He
seems willing to grant that Dr. Ferrier may have detected parts of the
brain-surface that are specially involved in the action of the five senses,
but he protests vigorously against the notion that the work of each
sense is transacted at the particular spot or * centre ' assigned. The
truer notion of " perceptive centres," he very reasonably maintains, is
that which he himself had long before suggested widely-diffused and
interlacing (though still always definite) complexes of cells and fibres.
In the matter of detail, he objects also to the supposition hazarded by
Dr. Ferrier that the centre for visceral sensations may be in the
occipital lobes. The occipital lobes, being later evolved, are, he urges,
least of all likely to be concerned in a class of sensations that count
for so much in the mental experience of the lower animals, but must
rather be supposed to subserve the higher intellectual functions.
It is in this chapter too that Dr. Bastian first expressly brings for-
ward his doctrine of the ' Muscular Sense,' though it has to be filled in
from supplementary passages scattered through succeeding chapters
and from a small-type appendix of some ten pages devoted to a critical
survey of opinion upon this vexed topic. The subject is one of those
which Dr. Bastian took up at an earlier time and on which he now
seeks formally to recapitulate his previously published views which, in
the main, time has only strengthened for him. Brought together from
this place or that, his chief points may be shortly stated thus. There
is no ' muscular sense ' as the name for an original kind of simple
1 At the later place, p. 586, he can only say : " The corpora striata con-
jointly with the cerebellum are doubtless specially called into activity by
the cerebral cortex, in ways which are most important though they cannot
be precisely defined". The statement, p. 508, that "the cerebellum may
be regarded as an enormously developed supreme motor centre" is not
easily reconciled, so far as the word ' supreme ' is concerned, with what is
later said of the corpora striata. Nor, in face of Dr. Bastian's account of
Instinct in c. xiv., is it easy to understand the force of his remark about
the cerebellum on pp. 509-10 : " That it should appear to have nothing to
do with Instinct . . . notwithstanding the fact that it is a recipient of
fibres from all kinds of 'sensory' nuclei, is as much in harmony with
reason as with experiment in view of the reflex functions which have been
assigned to it."
Critical Notices. 125
experience had in the fact of impulse being sent outwards from the
brain to the muscles by motor nerves (as Bain, Wundt and otln-:
more or less in supposing). A muscular act must first be proceed in _j
at the periphery before there can be any question of our becoming
sensible of it, and we do become thus sensible through ingoing imj>
sions by afferent nerves alone without any backward currents in tin;
motor nerves also (as Lewes was inclined to suppose). But the ini^in^
impressions by afferent nerves are not only to be set down to the head
of touch or the related common sensibility (as Ferrier and others sup-
pose). Besides conscious impressions from the skin overlying the
muscles, or from deeper-seated parts connected with the muscles, or
from the muscles themselves, there are other unfelt impressions " which
guide the motor activity of the brain by automatically bringing it into
relation with the different degrees of contraction of all muscles that
may be in a state of action ". These last, which Dr. Bastian formerly
supposed to pass inwards by afferent fibres from the spinal motor cells
(short of the muscles), he now thinks are sent inwards from the
muscles themselves, equally with the conscious impressions that come,
therefrom. That they must be allowed for as an independent element
in so-called * muscular sense ' is proved for him by pathological cas3s
in which, though both superficial and deeper sensibility were normally
present, the power of co-ordinating movements was lost when the eyes
were shut. And, generally, it is by interpretation of pathological cases
that he is led to maintain each of the foregoing positions. Taking
account of all the various elements together, he prefers to speak of
them as making up a complex " Sense of Movement" or Kinaesthesis
which must be supposed to have its diffuse ' centre ' in the brain like
other senses ; though the " kinaesthetic impressions " are in this
always peculiar that they are results not, like other sense-impressions,
causes of movement. None the less, though they do not initiate
movements only guide in the keeping up of movements once begun
he thinks they may in the ( ideal ' form be equally effective with
other sensations in initiating the acts called ' ideo-motor '.
Deferring remarks upon any part of this doctrine, let us first follow
Dr. Bastian in his next two chapters which may be said to complete
his view of cerebral action : they are entitled, respectively, " Will and
Voluntary Movements" and "Cerebral Mental Substrata". If, in the
matter of sensory centres, he can accept Dr. Ferrier's results as par-
tially true, he is wholly opposed to that investigator's complementary
conception of ' motor centres '. Those limited areas of the convolu-
tions bounding the fissure of Rolando whence Ferrier supposes that
conscious voluntary impulses are sent out to this or that muscular
organ, are, in Dr. Bastian's view, not to be called * motor ' at all, but,
if anything, ' sensory,' like the others lying farther behind. He takes
up this position mainly on the ground of a general analysis of the
process of volition. Voluntary action, he finds, is such as is deter-
mined by an intellectual stimulus only more complex than in ideo-
motor action, and represents nothing in the way of conscious experience
but what may be expressed in terms of sensation or ideation. To posit
126 Critical Notices.
under the name of ' motor centres' special parts of the cortical substance
for a function undistinguishable from what is elsewhere called ' sen-
sory,' is therefore unwarranted. Dr. Bastian is of opinion that nothing
can properly be called * motor centre ' higher than the corpora striata
(and cerebellum), that the fibres running downwards from the cortex
to the corpora striata are as strictly internuncial as those interposed
between any sensory and any motor ganglion in lower centres, and
that the cortical substance itself is wholly used up for ' sensory ' pur-
poses, meaning perception, ideation, &c. Without committing himself
expressly, he evidently leans to the supposition that Terrier's cortical
' motor centres ' may be more especially involved in the reception of
that class of impressions which he calls kinaesthetic, or at least that
portion of them (felt or unfelt) that are not properly tactile and trace-
able to the presumed centre for touch situated in quite another region.
And whatever difficulty there may be in imagining such an oddly
dislocated structure as Dr. Bastian's " kinaesthetic centre " would then
become, it must be allowed that he tries to proceed with much more
consistency than Dr. Ferrier ; who, after scouting the notion of a mus-
cular sense distinct from touch and common sensibility, cannot describe
the general working of the brain without speaking of his 'motor
centres ' in terms which imply the existence of * muscular sense ' in
the most pronounced form contended for by Bain or Wundt. Dr.
Bastian remarks this inconsistency in Terrier (p. 599), and it can have
escaped no attentive reader of The Functions of the Brain.
But we may now see that Dr. Bastian, much as he strives to the con-
trary, perhaps cannot help falling into what is radically the same kind
of inconsistency. As far as his general conception of brain-action can
be made out from the three chapters last referred to, he seems now to
make Kinaesthesis of no account at all for mental processes, since they
may go on perfectly well without it, and now to interpolate it as a
necessary link between the other senses and movement in a way that
practically amounts to the whole function ever claimed for ' muscular
sense '. If, as he supposes, muscular action must first be in actual
process at the periphery before there can be any sense of it or, as he
otherwise puts the supposition, if Mnaesthesis is always result, not
cause of, movement then movement in the human system cannot
well be thought to be kept up or " guided " under other conditions
than those from which it sprang, and these are supplied by passive
sensibility, special or common. If Idnaesthesis, then, is of no account
in the case of actual movement if it is no source of sensori-motor
action how is it to become the source, as Dr. Bastian declares it, of
ideo-motor action 1 The ' idea ' (to use Dr. Bastian's term) of a sensa-
tion, like sound or colour, which regularly initiates movement can
easily be understood to initiate movement also, but how is an ' idea ' of
movement to become a cause of movement when a sensation of move-
ment is not a cause of movement but only a result ? On the other hand,
if it be the fact, as Dr. Bastian in general maintains, that voluntary
action and ideo-motor action, involving an ' idea ' of the movement
to be carried out, are more immediately started from the " kinaes-
Critical Notices. 127
thetic centres," then must the condition of these correspondent with
such ' idea ' stand in a very different relation to the state of the sys-
tem during actual movement from that in which the condition (say)
of the auditory centre correspondent with an ' idea ' of sound stands
to the condition of the same centre in the case of actual sensation.
Now this radical difference is what Bain and Wundt seek to convey
when they oppose ' muscular sense ' or ' feelings of inner vation ' to
all modes of * passive sensation '. The only way, in fact, to escape
positing such a difference of conscious experience with the difference
of nervous attitude is to deny that there is any sense or experience
whatever in connexion with muscular activity first or last.
The subject cannot, on this occasion, be pursued farther, but it must
be added that, in any case, Dr. Bastian's " Sense of Movement " is
inadmissible as a substitute for * muscular sense '. However unsatis-
factory this term may be, it is intended to mark something very differ-
ent from what the proposed substitute pointedly conveys. The
1 muscular sense,' whatever be its precise physiological conditions as
involving ingoing currents or not is the name for a kind of simple
mental experience presumed to accompany the innervation of muscles.
The experience is not of the muscles as innervated or of the objective
consequences that follow sometimes apparent movement of limbs,
&c., sometimes strain without apparent movement. When " Move-
ment " as such is subjectively apprehended by us, the experience is of a
very complex perceptual order, not to be expressed by the term " Sense,"
even though the fundamental factor of the experience may be supplied
by the so-called muscular sense : there is involved also an intuition of
space (no matter, whether original or derived) with much else besides.
So far, therefore, from promoting the settlement of the question as to
the physiological conditions of the various kinds of simple sense-
experience, Dr. Bastian indefinitely complicates the problem by his
" Sense of Movement " or new-fangled Itinaestliesis. The like objection
is to be made to his occasional use of the term " Space-sense " borrowed
from De Cyon.
The remainder of Dr. Bastian's work still nearly a hundred pages
is mostly taken up with the question of Language (spoken and written),
treated in the light and for the confirmation of his general doctrine
of brain-action. Here, once more, he but expounds in a maturer shape
views set forth " in embryo " before. The subject is treated in full
detail from the pathological side, and as an attempt to discriminate
and classify, upon definite principles of physiology and psychology, a
great variety of morbid affections that are apt to be confounded, the
long c. xxix. (pp. 613-72), on " The Cerebral Relations of Speech and
Thought," is worthy of all praise. Even the next and concluding chap-
ter of all, while professing to set out " further problems in regard to
the localisation of higher cerebral functions," is almost entirely devoted
to a summary of results concerning the function of Speech. With any
other of the questions involved in an assertion of thorough-going ivlu-
tion between mind and brain Dr. Bastian does not attempt to gruppl* 1 .
He gives as a reason for so abstaining, that it is hopeless to proceed
128
Critical Notices.
with any of them till the question of speech is determined ; but,
though this is plausibly said, more especially in view of his repeated
declaration that all higher mental action depends on speech, and though
he deserves thanks for doing his best upon the one question which his
experience as a physician enables him to treat with some thoroughness,
his limitation of the inquiry has the inevitable effect of making his
volume, for all its length, a rather imperfect treatise on the subject
which it professes to handle. There are other questions, perhaps not
less manageable than that of speech, for example to mention but one
that of Attention as raised in Wundt's Physiologische Psychologie in
1875, and just touched by Dr. Ferrier in 1877, which should hardly
be passed altogether by in a bulky volume that proposes to treat of
mind in relation to brain in the year 1880. Evidently, as before said,
Dr. Bastian has been less concerned to write a fairly exhaustive work
up to date than to bring together a large quantity of varied materials
bearing upon those few aspects of his subject in which he happens to
take a special interest.
It still remains to see how Dr. Bastian conceives of Brain and of
Mind as related to one another in the way of organ and function.
The point is first distinctly brought forward in c. x. on " The Scope
of Mind," and his deliverance there is often repeated afterwards in
such terms as these : The organ of mind is " that portion only of the
nervous system which has to do with the reception, the transmission
and with the vastly multiplied co-ordination of * ingoing currents ' in all
kinds of nerve-centres " ; it does not include any part concerned in the
transmission of the ' outgoing current ' downwards from the cortical sub-
stance of the hemispheres. The reason he generally gives for such limi-
tation is the total absence, as we have seen upon his view, of all conscious
experience in connexion with the emission of impulse to muscles ; though,
even if this were the fact, the reason might hardly be sufficient, in
view of the declarations we shall presently hear from him as to the
nature of mind. Accepting it, however, we are still in a difficulty.
If all structures leading downwards and outwards from the cortex are
upon this ground no part of the organ of mind, neither, it would seem,
can the afferent lines of the system be any part of that organ, since of
(or rather with} any process going on in them short of the cortex there
is also no conscious experience. Or, if it be said that the afferent
lines are part of the organ because the cortical processes (wherewith
we are conscious) are excited through them, surely the like must be
said of the efferent lines also, when it is not otherwise than through
these that the " movement takes place of which there is afterwards a
" kinaesthetic impression ". Dr. Bastian indeed, in his eagerness (as
we may suppose) to be rid of a particular doctrine of the l muscular
sense,' does not hesitate at one place to say that " the processes of
motor centres seem to lie even more truly outside the sphere of mind
than the molecular processes comprised in the actual contraction of a
muscle," since these latter " are at least immediately followed by
' ingoing ' impressions whilst so far as we know that is, so far as any
evidence exists the former are not " (p. 600). Now, there is of
Critical Notices. 129
course a sense in which anybody may allow that tho muscles, inter-
posed as they naturally are between the peripheral ends of the fibres
that run from and the fibres that run to the brain, are a part of tho
organ of mind. But so long as there is a meaning in speaking of the
brain and nerves as composing one ' system ' implicated with tho
mental life, it is idle to speak of the muscles which lie external to it
as having a closer organic relation to mind than the whole motor side
of the system has. "The division of the nervous system into brain,
spinal cord and sympathetic system," Dr. Bastian urges with another
purpose (p. 151), "is one which, though justifiable enough on ana-
tomical grounds, is much less so from a physiological point of view
the nervous system is really one and indivisible ". It is odd then to
read immediately afterwards of " certain reservations " that must be
made, so that only " almost the whole nervous system " can be regarded
as (in the widest sense) the organ of mind. There is peril in attempt-
ing to limit and distinguish thus without the semblance of a principle.
As to Mind, Dr, Bastian is mainly concerned in dealing with its
" Scope," to find an expression which shall represent it as not
limited to conscious experience without the awkwardness (or worse) of
resorting to the use of contradictory compounds like ' unconscious
sensation/ &c. First, however, he begins by dwelling upon the peculi-
arity of our knowledge of mind that it starts from and always in-
volves the data of direct subjective consciousness, and he is so little
disposed to make light of these as to declare (in a truly philosophical
spirit) that, " strictly speaking, all knowledge whatsoever of any other
natural phenomena is still but the expression and the summation of
our own conscious states ". At the same time he vehemently protests
against the notion that Mind is the name of " something having an
actual independent existence an entity ". " The term Mind," he
says, " no more corresponds to a definite self-existing principle than
the word Magnetism " ; and apparently he finds nothing in his philo-
sophical interpretation of " natural phenomena," cited in the last
sentence but one, to keep him from adding that " conscious states
. . . . are dependent upon the properties and molecular activities
of nerve-tissues, just as (!) magnetic phenomena are dependent upon
the properties and molecular actions of certain kinds or states of iron ".
It is this notion of an independent entity, he declares, that entails the
error of supposing Mind and Consciousness to be commensurate, mid
though the grounds of the consequence are not made very clear, let it
be noted as Dr. Bastian's conviction, in passing. As said before, his
main concern then becomes to fix the notion of mind or mental pheno-
mena as more extensive than conscious experience and to do this in
a less contradictory way than by speaking of unconscious feeling and
the like; and the aim is distinctly meritorious, even though, el<c-
where in his book, he may be as ready as another to use the very
compounds he condemns.
In point of fact the difficulty is solved by being, as Hamilton would
have said, ' eviscerated '. The question presents itself to Dr. Bastian
more especially in thi$ form. : Mind as we are subjectively conscious of
130
Critical Notices.
it appears as " a mere imperfect, disjointed, serial agglomeration of feel-
ings " &c., while the nervous processes upon which we have reason to
believe these disconnected feelings &c. are dependent are parts of one
great continuous complex ; must we not then suppose that mind is
more than the broken series of feelings &c. that we are conscious of,
and should w r e not suppose the wrcconscious states to be something else
than " feelings " or the like, which are conscious states ? The answer
is that the name Mind should and must be enlarged so as to cover
along with conscious states, dependent as these are on nerve-actions,
" other mere unconscious nerve-actions which are contributory to rather
than directly associated with conscious states" (p. 150) provided
always (pp. 148, 9) these be not outgoing currents. Sometimes Dr.
Bastian's expression is so far different that instead of " nerve-actions "
he says " results " of nerve-actions ; but that he means nothing but
objective nerve-processes or " bodily conditions " is proved by his argu-
ing (pp. 149-50) that the objection to coupling such with conscious
states under the one head of Mind is based upon our ignorance of the
true relation between subjective states and nerve-processes. Are not
motions, he goes on to say (recurring at this pinch to the philosophical
point of view), after all known to us only in terms of feeling 1 ? And
who is to declare that there is (as he puts the point more plainly on
p. 608) "no kinship between states of consciousness and nerve-actions"?
All which appears to come to one or other of two things either
that in dealing with Mind there must be no reference to the nervous
system or brain at all but only to certain different kinds of feeling ; or
that we may assume nerve-processes (always excepting outgoing currents)
to be mental occurrences as much and in exactly the same sense as any
state of which we are subjectively conscious. The one alternative can-
not suit Dr. Bastian desiring to write about Brain as an Organ of
Mind from the point of view of the positive sciences. The other can
hardly seem to anybody a step towards clearness of scientific vision.
Leaving aside his philosophical considerations as irrelevant to the
question in hand, we get from Dr. Bastian a solution which simply
confuses that distinction of subjective and objective occurrences upon
which the phenomenal treatment of Mind is based.
Why too does Dr. Bastian, from the ground whereon he places him-
self, make in the closing words of his treatise (p. 690) that protest
against the doctrine of so-called Automatism that it is " one in which
all notions of Free- Will, Duty and Moral Obligation would seem
. . . . to be alike consigned to a common grave, together with
the underlying powers of self-education and self-control " 1 If he is
sure of one thing, first or last, it is that while conscious states
may be " a mere imperfect, disjointed, serial agglomeration," there
is throughout life an unbroken continuity of nervous processes. The
very purpose of his book is to show that whatever may be included
under Mind (which with him is no more an independent entity than
Magnetism), it can all be expressed as function of a material organism.
Kay, on the very last page but one, when he is leading up to his solemn
conclusion, he has it that "just as it is the very material motions on
Critical Notices. 131
which Heat depends which do the work ascribed to Heat, so do th--
very material motions on which Consciousness or Feeling d'-ponds do
the work which we ascribe to Feeling ". How then does his own
position differ from so-called (miscalled) Automatism 1 Let him show
us how he more than the ' Automatists ' can rescue " Free Will " from
the tomb. As for " Duty and Moral Obligation," it is somewhat late
in the day to speak of them, as kept alive by any particular theory of
mind.
On the whole Dr. Bastian cannot be said to have written a satisfying
book. Still he has written one that is full of the most varied infor-
mation, collected with unwearied diligence and no common earnestness
of purpose ; he has propounded a general theory of brain-action which
displays a much juster appreciation of the complexity of the facts than
some other theories in vogue ; and his psychological observations, while
always based upon solid study, not seldom give evidence of remarkable
insight. Psychologists would do well to have the book by them for
reference on many subjects.
EDITOR.
Spinoza : His Life and Pliilosopliy. By FREDERICK POLLOCK, Bar-
rister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and
Honorary Doctor of Laws of the University of Edinburgh.
With portrait of Spinoza. London : Kegan Paul & Co., 1880.
Pp. xlii., 467.
Mr. Pollock's book aims not only at being understood by those to
whom Spinoza is little more than a name, but also at contributing
towards the work of his critical interpreters. To any reader interested,
in the life and doctrine of the great thinker, it will strongly recom-
mend itself by literary merits of no common order, as well as the
evidence of large-minded love of truth and thorough mastery of its
subject. Such as are specially concerned with its topics will hail it
as one of the best monographs ever written of a philosopher by one
of his warm admirers.
The Introduction contains a careful survey of editions and other
publications relating to Spinoza and his teaching. It may be worth
mentioning, in addition, that there were at least two different editions
of the Tract. Theol.-Polit. in 1670 1 ; that Dr. Stern recovered in
1872 an interesting fragment from a lost letter 2 ; that the Wolfen-
biittel library possesses a fourth portrait with some claims to authen-
ticity 3 ; and that Prof. Windelband, then of Zurich, delivered a lino
1 Cp. Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundr. der Gesch. der Phil., 5te Aufl., III.,
p. 66. As to a first edition of the Opp. Posth., which Stolle reports to have
been published at the Hague, there are strong reasons for beliejinffi that
the German traveller misunderstood the oral statement of his Dutch
witness and that such an edition never existed.
2 Ueberweg, ib., p. 67. It came out of a letter from Oldenburg to Boyle,
printed in the latter's Works.
8 Supplement^ ed. Van Vloten, p. 360.
.122
.Critical Notices.
address on the anniversary in 1877. 1 The book had left the press
just before the Spinoza Committee at the Hague resolved to prepare a
trustworthy edition of the philosopher's works, and Mr. Nijhoff
published his fine reprint of the original Dutch Colerus.
In the first two chapters we have a substantial account of the life
and correspondence of Spinoza. Here again Mr. Pollock has taken
full advantage of his acquaintance with Dutch scholars and their
language. We may however observe that the Collegiant communities
(pp. 17, 22), amongst whom the outcast Jew found a refuge, were but
an offshoot from the Remonstrants (the party driven out of the State
Church by the Synod of Dordt), whereas in Amsterdam the
-Remonstrants had their ministry and theological seminary as early
as 1629 and 1634. 2
Chapter iii. deals with the ideas and sources of Spinozism. It
begins with a just discrimination between the ideas, which are the
living and really momentous part of philosophy, and their technical
embodiment, which is always more or less of an artificial kind and
destined to decay. The leading idea with Spinoza is the unity and
uniformity of the world, and this is conceived as a principle at once of
transcendent speculation and of scientific research. The system is an
altogether original attempt to unite, and even identify, two distinct
currents of thought ; one derived from an early study of Jewish and
Renaissance thinkers, the other from later meditations on Descartes
and the mathematical physics of the time. Mr. Pollock enters into
some details in order to show that Spinoza was an "attentive reader in
both those departments of learning, but one who reserved his own
judgment, and, while haunted through life by certain traditions of
ontology and of mathematical demonstration, knew where to lay his
hand on ideas of vital importance, which he built up into a grand
construction entirely his own.
The reader having thus been made acquainted with the man, the
surroundings in which he moved and the studies that set him thinking,
the ground is prepared for a searching analysis of the works he left
to the world. Such is our author's penetration, that one will not find
it easy to raise an objection which he has not thought of meeting
beforehand. Of his contributions to exegesis we may just mention
his remarks on res aeternae, fades lotius universi, and the double
meaning of idea.
The key to the right understanding of Spinoza's works is the know-
ledge of their final object. Unlike Descartes, who was content to see
his way clearly as a man of the world in peace with its established
1 Printed in Vierteljahrsschrift fur wiss. Phil., I., pp. 419-440.
2 Also, the Cartesian professor to whom Albert Burgh had written (p. 75)
was called Cranen or Kranen, and not Craane ; and the Lange Boogaard
was not at Amsterdam (p. 447) but a country seat near Schiedam (SuppL,
p. 298). One feels half obliged to apologise for remarks like these at a time
when a writer like Prof. Fowler (Locke, p. 13) makes Cleve the capital of
Brandenburg.
Critical Notices. 133
powers, and by his own confession * treated metaphysics as of minor
account, Spinoza yearned in his heart of hearts for perfect happiness as
a rational being in full communion with his fellow-men. In the modern
conception of the universe, as a consistent whole accessible to reason
in all its parts, he found satisfaction for the deep aspirations awakened
by his early masters; and for the religious significance and powerful
attraction of his doctrine we are certainly indebted to its affinity, not-
withstanding its modern tendencies, with ancient and mediaeval
contemplations of the highest order. The dominance of his rational
conception of the world he rightly saw to depend, not so much on
great wealth of experience or much exercise of discursive reasoning, as
on a firm grasp of the ultimate data of sense and thought. Reliance
of the mind on its own competence involves a corresponding belief in
the nature of things ; and this is at the same time the necessary con-
dition of all true science and sound practice, and of an adequate notion
of the all-ruling Deity. Particular discoveries cannot increase the
belief, but they serve to specify the actual order of nature, and by
those very means add to our knowledge of God himself. Spinoza
expressly wants to understand the order of given reality. He takes
care to exclude the offspring of mere imagination, a passive condition
of the mind, subject to special natural laws. But he so utterly disdains
the abstractions in which the degenerate Aristotelians whom he knew
of appeared to find the object of their wisdom, as to earn from Mr.
Pollock the appellation of a thorough-going nominalist.
Nevertheless he expects to derive a proper understanding of things
from their true definitions. Of course he must have admitted real
kinds of some sort as a consequence of the uniformity of nature ; but
then he insists upon definitions that contain the immediate cause of
the thing, and account for its properties, so far as it is< considered by
itself, Now this postulate embraces a precise indication of the kind
of thing meant, together with the conditions to which its existence is
invariably linked in the order of nature : the OT/. together with the tio-n.
Only, the tto-n understood by Spinoza is profoundly distinguished from
that of Aristotle by his resolute rejection of all final causes. Not that
he claimed to possess many definitions answering his demand ; but
such he took to be necessary for science proper, and he could afford
to wait for the progress of rational research, because the happiness
which he sought as the chief good was brought about by keeping true
to its principle.
Like other reformers, Spinoza himself has greatly added to the per-
plexities of his interpreters by an extensive borrowing of forms of
thought and speech designed by others in a different spirit from his
own. He too was obliged in a measure to speak the language familiar
to his public, and. moreover, there was a real connexion between his
speculations and those of the past, that was apt to go counter to the
free development of ideas in his own mind. In such cases critics can
hardly expect ever to agree upon the exact distance that separates a
1 Lettres, Paris 1657, I., p. 117 ; ecL Cousin, IX. p. 131.
Critical Notices.
genius from his contemporaries or from the intellectual leaders of our
own age. While some writers see little in Spinoza beyond reminis-
cences of his varied reading thus losing the chance of accounting for
his remarkable influence upon modern thought Mr. Pollock is not
unlikely to incur the reproach of making him too much of a modern
thinker in a scholastic garb, and undervaluing his theology. Be this
as it may, his point of view enables him to discern features of the
system too readily overlooked.
On the other hand, we should be on our guard against assuming that
any favourite theory of our own days held in common with' Spinoza
must needs be a clear gain upon his predecessors. It sounds to-day
like a plausible doctrine, that the worlds of thought and extension are
two aspects of the same thing. What has been fairly proved is, that
certain phenomena of body and mind are regular concomitants and
subsequents; so that it becomes highly advisable, wherever we find
phenomena on the one side, to search for corresponding ones on the
other. Still, even supposing that we might stretch our evidence so far
as to affirm that the whole of bodily life is fitted somehow with a
psychical counterpart and vice versa, we should scarcely be justified
in inferring that both sides of the web must offer the same variety and
distribution of details, as long as we have not the slightest knowledge
of what makes the two one. Moreover, in order to eke out our scanty
means of information, we are driven to devise psychical facts beyond
the reach of the subject, or unconscious consciousness. And we are
finally landed in the dread Unknowable when we try to realise that
not only the processes in the nervous system but all others in the
organism, even before affecting that system, are assumed by the
complete theory to have their mental accompaniments ; nay,
that, outside the animal system, plants growing, salts crystallising,
bullets striking a target, are in a similar case. From another point
of view, it is rather questionable whether anything really definite is
conveyed by declaring that mind and matter are aspects of the same
thing, especially aspects not relative to a spectator. Either the thing
as distinguished from its aspects, or else the connexion between the
aspects that constitute the thing, remains " an unapproachable reality
behind the things we feel and know" (p. 299, cp. p. 163), in fact
a f.irj ov in Platonic phraseology. Instead of adopting Spinoza's famous
Substance and Attributes as the solution of a difficulty, one might for
the present simply acknowledge a far-reaching parallelism between
mental and bodily phenomena, honour the sage as we do a Heraclitus
and Parmenides, and to our own case apply Mr. Pollock's rule in ano-
ther place (p. 156), that "it is better to be a wanderer than to dwell
in castles in the air ". JSTo doubt all science proceeds on the assump-
tion, that all reality it recognises is amenable to mental representation ;
but admitting as we now do that for the elements of knowledge we
are indebted to experience internal and external, and that our experience
is human at its best, it is no idle clause to add that science understands
things " so far as we can understand them " (p. 164).
As our author shows (ch. yi.), Spinoza himself holds our perception
Critical Notices. 133
of another body to be the mental reverse of a state of our own body
as affected by the other. He is fully aware of the inevitable associa-
tion of ideas, and the fragmentary and inadequate character of human
experience. On the other hand, he has no doubt that we all li
adequate ideas of such generalities as matter and motion, and even of
the absolute nature of attributes of God. Formidable as this statement
looks, and notwithstanding its over-confident employment in ontology,
it also includes an expression of reliance on the native forms of thought,
which, applied to such experience as we obtain, will afford its scientific
interpretation, and so lead to ever incomplete but, as far as it goes,
genuine knowledge. But then it is needful that everything be subject
to the invariable ordjr of nature ; and accordingly Spinoza, when he
comes to the study of human life, declares for absolute determinism.
On such grounds the rival of the lonians and Eleatics is able to con-
struct his yet unsurpassed doctrine of the emotions (ch. viL). In all
existence he sees, not a mere passive presence, but an active power of
self-assertion, and this not only in ultimate elements of being but in
their compounds as long as they exist 1 ; among others the complex
structure whose two aspects we call the human body and mind. In
this case the self-assertion takes the form of a continuous effort (on the
mental side a desire) towards power and fulness of life. Whatever
helps that effort affects the mind with pleasure, whatever hinders it,
with pain. So pleasure and pain increase and diminish the mind's
perfection (as their physical correlates do that of the body); and both,
together with desire, are " the primary elements of which, according to
the variety of objects, all human passions are compounded ". Besides
the " passions " excited from without, there is a similar group of
emotions occasioned by contemplating the vicissitudes of the mind's
own rational activity. And from these simple beginnings Spinoza
draws the whole of his elucidation of human interests.
He straightway undertakes to make it available for the bettering of
human life (chs. viii., ix.). One of his most profound observations is,
that emotion can be controlled only by another emotion stronger than
itself. He puts his trust not in a power of abstract reason to subdue
the emotions, but in the emotion of love 2 arising from a rational view
of all things. Good and evil are what is conducive in the long run
to pleasure and to pain, that is (as he explains it) to greater and to lesser
perfection or fulness of active existence. Now there can be no question
of man's good without the good of society of which he is by nature a
1 "We need not stop to enquire, as modern adapters should not omit to
do, what is properly the "self" asserted, maintained, or preserved in the
case of a compound incessantly changing its components and its qualities,
Is it a manner of grouping considered as an entity, or what else ?
2 When Mr. Pollock says (p. 302) that " intellectual love is not an emo-
tion," we must allow that it is not an affectiis according to the scholion at
the end of the Ethics, or what Prop. 42 just before it calls a libido. Still it
is an affectus in the more general sense of III., Prop. 58, to the neighbour-
hood of which we are referred in the proposition just quoted. (']>. also
IV. Prop 7 ; V. Prop. 7, Prop. 15 demonstr.
136
Critical Notices.
member. The condition of progress is not a solitary contemplative
life but a constant exchange of cordial goodwill and assistance with our
neighbours, to which end Spinoza gives most wise and noble advice.
As to our personal improvement, the first step is to see the various
emotions that agitate mankind in their true character; the next, to
realise " the rational contemplation of the order of the world, and of
human nature as part thereof " ; which contemplation is inseparable
from the most powerful of all emotions, love of God, the ever-present
and immutable Being of our being. The love of God is the chief good
that men pursue under the guidance of reason ; and we can wish it for
others as much as for ourselves. Thus the apparent self-seeking from
which we started finds its natural development in the truly religious
conception of clinging to the Rock of Ages in fellowship with all man-
kind. Only there is that which must for ever separate Spinozism from
Christian theology : the Deity not a person, Passion instead of Sin,
Humanity its own Redeemer, the serenity of Insight superseding con-
trition by Repentance. Regarding eternal life, Mr. Pollock well
observes that the most sublime interpreters of religious systems have
always known how to distinguish it from persistence after death, and
in so far anticipated Spinoza's view of the eternity of mind, which is
based upon Aristotelian traditions. Withal it is essential to his system,
that the mind has no duration nisi durante corpore ; and this it would
be difficult indeed to reconcile with any of the established creeds. If
on this subject as on others he appears to court the approval of theolo-
gians by conforming to some of their language, we may surmise not that
Descartes saved him in time from becoming a mystic (p. 303), for he
would scarcely have appreciated Descartes but for a kindred rationalism
in his own constitution, but that Spinoza, like other great thinkers,
accounted for the vitality of popular tenets from, their foreshadowings
of rational truth, and was fain to claim alliance with the truly pious
of all parties. A longer life than was vouchsafed to him would have
left him time to explain himself more clearly still on this as on other
matters.
In treating of the political theories of Spinoza (ch. x.), Mr. Pollock's
professional learning makes him the most competent of all expositors.
He clearly shows how Spinoza, with his Attic ideal of bene agere et
laetari, takes " a wider and a more generous view of human life "
than Hobbes, to whom, as his wont was, he owed instruction but not
the allegiance that some suppose. The man who has been misread into
an apologist of brute force, was really " a firm and consistent supporter
of political liberty," and of so much individual freedom as the condi-
tions of social order appear to allow. It would have been an advantage
to possess his never-completed account of democracy ; not, however,
that he had much occasion to illustrate it from " domestic examples "
(p. 338), for the United Netherlands of his time were to all intents and
purposes a federal aristocracy. The view of mere social distinctions
quoted on p. 335 is characteristically Dutch, and the last words of
the passage read like a profession of faith of the De Witt party as
opposed to the exceptional status of the House of Orange.
Critical Notices. 1 37
Beside his philosophical doctrine intended to mark the way of
ration to such as are capable of sustained thinking, Spinoza as
place to theology as a beneficial rule of life for plain men who do not
enter upon philosophy (ch. xi.). The creed he recommends for tin's
purpose is simple enough ; it affirms nothing beyond a supreme beiii-_ r ,
to be worshipped for the sake of salvation by showing justice and
charity to all men. Obedience to moral law is the important point,
and the real value of prophets and their preaching depends on tln-ir
power to inculcate this one duty, wherever men crave for an outward
revelation, and are unable to apprehend morality as the dictate of
reason. Hence, in spite of Spinoza's daring criticisms of the Bible,
his reverent sympathy with Biblical and especially Gospel religion as
professed by his simple-minded friends. Whether, as Mr. Pollock
confidently expects, the distinction between " one creed for the few
and another for the many " will ever cease to be a necessity of human
nature, may remain an open question, but to his confidence we owe a
burst of eloquence (pp. 369-372) of which it will be well to take
account before again complaining of the want of fervour in modern
convictions.
The last chapter consists of an interesting sketch of the reception
and fortunes of Spinozism in the world of science and letters down to
the present age. For this as for other master-pieces of speculation
the best praise is in the fact, that the nearer we come to the leading
men of to-day the more it is seen to grow into the reverence and even
the affection of posterity. We may decline to adopt its conclusions
on many important problems, but to the suggestions of lofty thinking
and worthy living with which it abounds, not even its old opponents
are able to close their hearts altogether. And we may add, as a sign
of the times, that at the recent jubilee of the senior professor of theo-
logy in the whilom Calvinistic university of Leyden, his pupils know
of no gift more fit to be offered to their venerable teacher than a piece
of sculpture by M. Collinet, a basso-relievo of the bust of Spinoza.
In five appendices Mr. Pollock gives a reprint of the rare English
Colerus ; the ordinance of the High Court of Holland against the
Trad. TheoL-Pol. (why not translated into the author's expressive
English ?) ; additions to the published Letters ; the circular of the late
Spinoza Committee ; and a genealogical scheme intended to illustrate
Spinoza's position in the history of philosophy. A handy index
facilitates the use of this admirable volume.
J. P. N. LAND.
La Science sociale contemporaine. Par ALFRED FOUILLEB. Paris :
Hachette, 1880. Pp. xiii., 424.
The attraction of M. Fouillee's work lies in the hope, held out in
the preface, of harmonising discordant theories of society. The
recent advances of Sociology, and its prospective occupation of the
entire social field, have brought it into competition with the older
system which was already in possession of the ground. The radically
138
Critical Notices.
different methods of approaching the facts seem at first to lead to
results that are irreconcilably at variance with one another. Meta-
physics, following that movement of the World-spirit which arrives
finally at a consciousness of itself as embodied in society, gives birth
to a Philosophy of History which regards social phenomena as the
work of a Spirit whose laws of activity can be determined only by an
examination of its essential nature. Science in its slow upward pro-
gress at length reaches the social order, discovers that it is based upon
all lower orders of existence and is a continuation of their activities,
and evolves a Sociology which contemplates society in its material
aspect, as a physical structure whose functions obey the laws which
govern all matter. No two systems could well be more opposed than
to all appearance these are, and so long as both remained immature
they appeared to have little in common. Further growth disclosed
unexpected resemblances, and now it is possible to trace so large a
number of parallelisms as irresistibly to suggest the idea that the one
is the complement of the other, and the two are divided halves of a
unity. On some such conception as this is M. Fouillee's work founded.
He describes his object as being to reconcile the idealist and the realist
schools of Social Science. He takes as the expression of the idealist
view the theory that society originated in a social compact, and he
shows how the nature and ends of society can be so explained. By
the realist school M. Fouillee, of course, understands the scientific
tradition, which he expounds on its accepted physiological basis. A
third book treats of that collective social consciousness which, though
long familiar to metaphysicians, was first approached from the empiri-
cist side by M. Espinas in a work reviewed in MIND XIII. Books
iv. and v. are excursions into the field of Applied Sociology, and
apply the author's reconciling ideas to the political problem of the
right of the State to punish, and the wider question of the true founda-
tion of social brotherhood. A concluding book sums up the series of
discovered syntheses.
The main defect of the work will appear from this resume. Being
evidently unacquainted with philosophies of society which are idealist
in the sense that they make it consist of a system of ideas, the author
has fallen back on that other sense of the term according to which
idealistic theories are theories that embody an ideal, and he adopts the
doctrine of a social compact as such a theory. With this narrowing of
its scope the interest of the work as a " reconciliation " vanishes. The
systems left -zmreconciled cover one-half of the ground ; the system recon-
ciled, though both true and important, will account for but one element
or aspect of the social life. An examination of the latter, on M.
Fouillee's lines, may possibly disclose what this aspect is. We are
first of all struck by the high pedigree of tire hypothesis of a social
compact. M. Eouillee writes as if Rousseau were the author of it, yet
he himself cites a fragment from Epicurus where the doctrine is ex-
plicitly stated. We may add that it can be traced under one form or
another all through the Middle Ages, and by the time that Rousseau
began to write it was already a commonplace. Rousseau, indeed,
Critical Notices. 139
rendered it the service of popularising it, as well as the more question-
able service of putting the imaginary original contract into words. ( )n
the other hand, it has been condemned with remarkable unanimity by
politicians and divines, by metaphysicians and sociologists, by jurists of
the critical and jurists of the historical schools. Thus encompassed with
a cloud of witnesses and gainsayers rather discredited witnesses and
very authoritative gainsayers M. Fouillee shows courage in placing the
"figment" in the foreground. His courage soon deserts him. If the com-
pact was not made at the commencement of society, it is difficult to see
how it can have been made at any later stage ; if it does not explain the
origin of the social union, it can hardly be made to explain the nature
and ends of the union. Yet in exactly this inconsistency M. Fouillee
seems to involve himself. He speaks of Rousseau as having undergone,
in common with his century, an intellectual mirage, and conceiving
that as the beginning which is only the ideal and will be the end of
society. M. Fouillee gives up his cause too lightly. The unbroken
tradition of an original compact may be regarded as a philosophical
myth which bears the same relation to the facts as religious myths, and
ought like them to be explained and not simply rejected. It may be
the residue or reflection of a critical stage in the history of man when
a struggle occurred, once for all or perhaps repeatedly, between the
centralising and the dispersive tendencies, in which the centripetal
gained the mastery. There is nothing absurd in supposing that instead
of electing to live in society the primitive human families might have
chosen the solitude of the carnivores. There are semi-social groups
even now in existence which may be the survivors of groups that did
so choose. It is possible that the vast interval which separates savage
man from his non-human congeners was occupied by those which
refused the social alternative and perished in consequence of their
refusal. Whatever may be the worth of this speculation, it is no
answer to the theory in question to say that we have no knowledge of
the formation of societies in this way. We have no knowledge of the
real origination of societies in any way, but it is a confirmation of the
theory to find that there is no single social relation at the known
beginnings of which we do not find the voluntary element or the
element of contract. M. Fouillee has decidedly understated this part
of his case. He mentions, after Rousseau, the voluntary character of
marriage. All recent inquiry into the formation of the sexual union
shows that alike among the animals and among men, if choice is the
privilege of the male, acceptance or rejection is the prerogative of the
female. The industrial relations are in all stages of society more or
less voluntary. The voluntary element is continually emerging in the
formation of auxiliary associations. Voluntary leagues for war or
plunder (as described by Tacitus in Germany) sometimes migrate and
found peoples. The feudal bond (as has been pointed out by Guizot)
was in part a voluntary contract, perpetually renewed. And the con-
tract upon which Government partially rests is daily renewed by oalli-
taking and elections, and is implied in resistance and rebellion,
in political abstinences and emigrations. The origin of the social
.40-
Critical Notices.
union being thus to a great extent voluntary, what is consequently
the nature of it 1 Here we come into the presence of two opposite
theories. According to metaphysicians, a new kind of being,
a new order of existence, has been created a State with a per-
sonality and therefore rights of its own. Nominalists hold, on the
contrary, that a State is a mere aggregate of individuals, and, as
spoken of individually, a convenient fiction. M. Fouillee, forgetting,
it seems, that his design was to harmonise discordant views, and for-
getting also that he had accounted only in part for the origin of society
by means of a compact, which for that reason will only in part explain
its nature, ranges himself with the latter. Whatever other ties may
bind society together, the truly human bond, he says, is an act of the
will, and this, he argues, is nothing more than a new relation among
the individuals performing the act. The answer to this seems to be
threefold. If " truly human " means solely human, then society is not
solely human, but is in great, perhaps in greater, part animal. Secondly,
a mere aggregation of kindred elements creates a new compound sub-
stance, and though the social union is more than a chemical union, it
is that at least, as it inherits the properties of all lower aggregates.
And lastly, M. Fouillee makes a fatal concession in admitting that a
new relation emerges, for the rise of a new relation between two or
more individuals (the author is right in saying that numbers do not
affect the result) alters the nature of the individuals exactly in pro-
portion to the extent of the relation. It does not follow that the
metaphysicians are justified in claiming for the State rights which are
not those of any or all of the individuals composing it ; and here we
agree with M. Fouille'e. But the rights of individuals must be under-
stood in their largest sense. Any particular individual is a mere point
in the infinite line, a mere link in the unbroken chain of individuals,
and the rights of all the individuals of a generation are a mere fraction
of the total rights of which the State is trustee. The State stands
for the past and future, as well as for the present, of existing indi-
viduals. It would be unprofitable to follow the author in his discus-
sion of the objects and functions of Government from this point of
view. He rears his theories upon too narrow a foundation. The sig-
nificance of the doctrine of the social compact lies in its being an
expression of the fact that it was kinship and community of nature
which brought, as it keeps, men together, and that no form or functions
of government ought to exist or be exercised which are based upon
force. But force, too, has had its share in founding society, in build-
ing it up, in holding it together ; and this is one half of the idealist
social theory which M. Fouillee has failed to state as the correlative of
the other. The two together would form part of a Subjective Soci-
ology which would bear the same relation to Physiological Sociology
that Subjective Psychology bears to Physiological Psychology, and
which would investigate the sexual appetency, the parental and filial
affections, the social attractions and repulsions, and generally all forms
of the social consciousness.
The second part of the work is taken up with Physiological Soci-
Critical Notices. 141
ology. Here the same questions arise as in the previous part. "What
are the origin, nature, ends, and functions of society roiisid.
physically 1 M. Fouillee omits to discuss the origin of the social union
from this point of view, though it is probably in this direction that
a solution of the problem is to be looked for. He passes at once to
the nature of it, and adopts the accepted position that it is an organism.
This position has recently been assailed (see MIND XX., 488) on the
ground that it is based on a false physiological theory the cell-
theory ; but the analogy between the social and the individual organ-
isms, which is almost as old as language, has an unbroken tradition,
and has been shown to hold good in the minutest details, is inde-
pendent of any theory. With this analogy Sociology stands or falls ;
if it is untrue, Sociology can be nothing more than a collection of
empirical generalisations. M. Fouillee gives the usual proofs, with
two additional arguments. First, the social, like the individual, organ-
ism is a compound individual consisting of a multitude of lives moving
towards a final equilibrium. Unfortunately for the argument the com-
posite character of the individual has just been strenuously denied and
to all appearance disproved. Dr. Edmund Montgomery's masterly dis-
cussion (MiND XIX., XX.) leaves hardly any room for doubt that the
organic individual is a unity, and sociologists were already prepared
to accept the inference that the social organism is likewise a unity.
M. Fouillee maintains, secondly, that the individual and social organ-
isms are equally characterised by spontaneity, or an innate tendency
towards their own preservation and development. In answer to this
we may quote Drysdale (Protoplasmic Theory of Life, p. 199), who
says that " true spontaneity of movement is . . . just as impossi-
ble to" the protoplasmic molecule " as to what we call dead matter".
With respect to the social organism, the notion of an intrinsic tendency
towards evolution has now been rejected (see Spencer, Appendix to
First Principles, p. 574). The premisses thus breaking down, the con-
clusion the author deduces would seem to fall with them. It is to the
following effect. There is unefinalite inter ieure, a blind co-operation
of the parts towards a common end, exhibited by all organisms. In
organisms arrived at self-consciousness a consciousness of the ends of
their being arises, and the co-operation becomes intelligent. This is
effected by means of idees-forces ideas that are forces, operative idras,
/
which react on the organism and promote its development on the lines
along which it is perceived to be moving. The application of his
argument to the social organism is as follows. Society is moving
towards a state in which all its relations will be regulated by free con-
tract. Contract becomes an idea consciously entertained by a society.
But all ideas are forces that tend to realise themselves. The idea of
contract is being realised by society. Society consequently is becoming
un orc/anisme contractual an organism governed by contract. Science
and philosophy are thus reconciled and the world-old dispute between
idealism and realism happily composed. It is too good to be trur.
M. Fouillee leashes two utterly incongruous ideas. Organism and con-
tract are incommensurable in thought and mutually exclusive in fact.
142
Critical Notices.
Herzen has shown that consciousness arises in the individual at the
point where organisation ceases, and quits the ground it has occupied
as organisation takes possession of it ; organisation chases conscious-
ness, which retreats before it. It is the same with society. Contract
governs, at least in part, every social relation at the outset ; but as fast
as each relation gets regulated by fixed arrangements or, as we say, is
organised, and society becomes to that extent an organism, the freedom
of action which contract implies ceases to be possible ; the organic and
the contractual are alien spheres. Thus falls the keystone of the arch
which was to have bridged the gulf between matter and mind,
The remainder of the work is occupied with questions of great but
subordinate importance. By a natural transition the author passes
from the physical to the mental aspect of society and asks whether,
resembling the individual in being an organism, society also resembles
it in possessing a consciousness. He is unable to admit that it does.
He even goes the length of denying real unity to the individual con-
sciousness. The individual consciousness is a compound of the simul-
taneous action of milliards of cerebral cells, and its apparent unity
arises from the superposition of millions of images. It is similar with
society. The social organism possesses no single consciousness, and
is not even under the illusion of possessing one. The argument rests
in both cases upon what we believe to be a misconception. The indi-
vidual is not composite but a unity. Society in like manner is not an
aggregate formed and cohering by contract, but a whole which has
parts. Not the unity of the whole but the wholeness of the parts is
the illusion.
Space fails us to discuss M. EouilleVs applications of his theories,
which have an independent value. The first treats of the right of
society to punish crime, which might have been traced back on its
physical side to the mechanical law that action and reaction are equal
and opposite ; M. Fouillee, however, rejects the notion of an equiva-
lence between crime and punishment. He also discusses the duty of
society to redress collective wrongs, and a chapter in this connexion
on reparative justice does honour to the writer's character. The second
attempts to find a natural sanction for the feeling of brotherhood and
other social precepts, and it is well that such sanctions should be dis-
covered. But no statement of the foundation of duties is complete
which rejects as mysticism the religious sanctions.
J. COLLIER.
Pddagogische Psyclwlogie. Ein Versuch von GUSTAV FRIEDRICH
PFISTERER, Seminarrektor in Esslingen. Gutersloh : C. Bertels-
mann, 1880. Pp. vii., 340.
Just now when a special interest is awakened in the Science of
Education in this country, it may be useful to inquire how this science
stands in the country where it has been most completely differentiated
and elaborated. Germany is rich in works on Pcedagogik, and some
of her ablest psychologists have taken pains to work out their peculiar
Critical Notices. 143
conceptions of mind into the form of a practical doctrine of education.
This direction has been specially followed out by Herbart, Berieke and
their followers. As the author of the present work tells us in his pre-
face, " the largest number, and in some respects the ablest of the
productions of recent Pwdagogik are completely dominated by the
psychology of Herbart and Beneke ". Since with all the good work
that this psychology has done it must now be regarded as undergoing
a process of supersession, it seems time that the newer developments of
psychological science in Germany should reflect themselves in current
theories of education. Our author seems to have felt this, and his
work is an attempt to bring up educational ideas to the present high-
water mark of psychological advance.
Herr Pfisterer, it may as well be said at once, can hardly be con-
gratulated on having accomplished the task which he proposes to
himself. Although he has read a number of authors, his reading
seems to have been of a rather desultory kind. The writer whom he
has best understood and most completely assimilated is Lotze ; but
even Lotze when measured by the present condition of psychology of
Germany seems almost to belong to the Herbartian school. iX T ext to
Lotze, J. H. Fichte, Ulrici and Lazarus appear to be our author's
favourites. "Wundt is indeed referred to, and so too is Horwicz, yet
it is evident that the writer has not penetrated far into the meaning of
the newer physiological psychology. He firmly takes his stand on the
idea of a spiritual substance, a metaphysical mind, which if not rigged
out with all the fanciful mechanical apparatus which Herbart and
Beneke, each in his own way, attributes to it, is still regarded as
endowed with a number of wonderful half-inystic impulses. Thus in
his Introduction the writer describes the activity of the soul as con-
sisting of the combination and interplay of different polar opposites, as
that of being and becoming, of centre and periphery, of independent and
dependent existence, and so on. After this we shall not expect much
of scientific insight into his subject. How far Herr Pfisterer is from
availing himself of the results of a strictly scientific psychology may
be seen by a glance at his account of the doctrine of association. It is
incorrect, he remarks (after J. H. Fichte), to say that an idea calls up or
draws along with it another idea : such a calling up is always an activity
of the mind itself. " It is this which frames a connexion, that
somehow interests it, between two or more ideas, either at once on
their first reception, or later in the free play of its fancy" (pp. 98, 99).
A mystery is resorted to, a play of unconscious mental activity, while
the obvious alternative of a physiological basis is not even glanced at.
The writer evidently thinks he is doing much for the science of
Ptedagogik by thus substituting the idea of occult spiritual activities
for the dead mechanism of the Herbartian school. But it may be
doubted whether by so doing he is bringing the science of Education
into a fruitful relation to the latest results of psychology.
Yet in spite of his want of a wide psychological training and his
leaning to quite gratuitous hypotheses respecting the innermost nature
of mental activity, our author manages to write a very interesting and
144
Critical Notices.
instructive volume. He has a clear perception of the relation of psy-
chology to education, and sees that it is the laws of mental develop-
ment which must specially be applied to the subject. In order to
make his work more practical if less scientific in form, he adopts the
alternative of tracing mental development as a whole in the successive
stages of early life, infancy, childhood (from the second to about the
seventh year) and early youth (the school period from this last to about
the fifteenth year). Under each of these divisions he describes and
seeks to explain the unfolding of the various activities of intellect,
feeling and will. In this way he is able to give a more complete
concrete picture of the mental life of a particular stage of development
than if he had sought to work out the progress of each of the three
great phases of mental life separately. Herr Pfisterer is, one would
say, an experienced observer of early life, and many of his remarks
are striking and valuable. Thus for instance he meets the common
idea, which is found even in scientific works, that the infant carries
objects to its mouth for the purpose of tasting and eating them by the
sensible suggestion that this action is due to the fact that " the tactual
nerves of the lips are owing to the experience of sucking more early
developed than those of the hands" (p. 44). The handling of the
whole subject of children's play as distinguished from occupation and
work properly so-called is careful and suggestive. Play is regarded as
the outcome of imagination and spontaneous individual impulse. The
author would have been able to go further and account for the common
forms of play among the two sexes if he had availed himself of
Mr. Spencer's theory of inherited active dispositions of a definite
character answering to the most permanent occupations of the race.
But unfortunately our author seems to know nothing of the doctrine
of evolution, which affords many a valuable suggestion to the student
of childhood. This is all the more regrettable since more than one of
the innate impulses which are here attributed to the child, as the
Sprechtrieb) the impulse of attachment to others and so on, appear
to receive an easy explanation from the evolutionist's point of view.
English psychology has perhaps made too little of those innate disposi-
tions, emotional, intellectual and active, and the work before us is so
far valuable as it points distinctly to the unfolding of definite tenden-
cies at particular periods of early life. Only, these innate promptings
must not be regarded as something ultimate but referred to the influ-
ence of that vast region of human activity which has helped to mould
and shape each one of us.
The author's treatment of the more practical side of the subject is
marked by considerable ability. Amid the conflicting views on edu-
cational subjects which are to be met with in Germany as here, Herr
Pfisterer takes up the thoroughly common-sense ground of opposition
to all extreme doctrines. Here his manner reminds us often of that
carefully balancing method of Lotze, our author's favourite master.
Thus, for example, on the subject of Kindergarten occupations he dis-
tinguishes between what is psychologically sound and " the specula-
tive-mystic accessory ideas and caprices " in Frobel's system. And
New Books. 145
while praising the practical part of it as eminently adapted to chili
of four or five years he objects to younger children undergoing the
system, since for their stage of development play and not occi;
tion is the natural thing, and a kind of play that can best dispense with
any interference from without.
JAMES SULLY.
VIII. NEW BOOKS.
[ These Notes do not exclude, when they are not intentionally preliminary to, Critical
Notices later on.}
The Power of Sound. By EDMUND GURNEY, Late Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge. London : Smith, Elder, 1880. Pp. 559.
The distinctive points of this important work will be fully reviewed
in the next number of MIND.
" My chief object (says the author), after certain preliminary explanations,
has been to examine, in such a way as a person without special technical
knowledge may follow, the general elements of musical structure, and the
nature, source, and varieties of musical effect ; and by the light of that
inquiry to mark out clearly the position of Music, in relation to the
faculties and feelings of the individual, to the other arts, and to society at
large." " One word may be said as to arrangement. My primary concern being
with the ^Esthetics of Hearing, and in particular with Music, the various
analogies and contrasts which other regions of experience present have been
introduced in connexion with the different divisions of the main subject ;
which has led to a somewhat sporadic notice of other arts. To those who
believe in transcendental links, making all the arts One, this treatment may
appear unsatisfactory ; but it certainly conduces to the distinctness of my
humbler line of argument."
Epicureanism. By WILLIAM WALLACE, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
Merton College, Oxford, LL.D ? , St. Andrews. London : Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1880. Pp. 272.
Stoicism. By Eev, W. W. CAPES, Fellow of Hertford College and
Reader in Ancient History, Oxford. London : S.P.C.K., 1880.
Pp. 252.
These two small volumes are the first of a series of Manuals on
Ancient Philosophies, to stand by the side of the other series on Non-
Christian Religious Systems, on Ancient History from the Monuments,
&c., which the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, acting by
its Committee of General Literature and Education, has lately, with
remarkable liberality of spirit, been publishing.
Epicureanism is a thoughtful and scholarly piece of work. ^ It
consists of an introduction giving the general bearings of Epicureanism
to Greek, thought generally ; of a most interesting sketch of Epicurus
and his age and of the Epicurean brotherhood ; and then, after an
account of the documentary sources, of an orderly and well-rounded
10
146
New Books.
exposition of the system, followed by a concluding historical sketch
of its later fortunes and influence. The author enters with sufficient
sympathy into his subject, and is singularly fair-minded in his judg-
ments, which, it need hardly be added, are independently formed. On
the whole, the little book may be pronounced a model-work of its
kind.
Stoicism is well and interestingly written, but the author gives only
a meagre account of the system as it was wrought out among the
Greeks, and is somewhat rhetorical in his expansion over the series of
its Roman representatives. There is not much trace of independent
judgment, and the treatment is apt to be tendenzib's directed more to
edification than enlightenment.
Descartes. By J. P. MAHAFFY, M.A. Edinburgh & London : Black-
wood, 1880. Pp. 211.
This volume opens the Messrs. Blackwood's Series of " Philosophical
Classics for English Readers ". Professor Mahaffy has taken pains
with the life of the philosopher. He goes for himself to the original
sources and, while independently sifting the available evidence (in-
cluding the results of later researches), is able, with his practised
pen, to present a really attractive sketch of the man and all his varied
activity. He is not as successful with the philosophy. Except for
incidental references in the life amounting in all, no doubt, to some-
thing considerable little more than the last fourth of the volume is
given to the exposition of Descartes' system of thought. The author
speaks, in fact, of giving, upon the philosophy, only a "short appendix
to Descartes' life," though the Prospectus of the Series would lead one
to expect a good deal more. Neither does the exposition, while short,
bring the cardinal points of the system into as much prominence as
was still possible. The fundamental position of all, so important for
the future history of philosophy as well as for Descartes' own system,
is strangely slurred over, on p. 149. On the same page, it may also
be remarked, the principles of Contradiction and Causality get mixed
up (probably by misprint). The "A. Bouillet" of p. 4, repeatedly
quoted afterwards under the same surname, must be meant for F.
Bouillier. A welcome feature of the book is a good autotype rendering
of the Hals portrait in the Louvre.
Unconscious Memory. By SAMUEL BUTLER, Author of Erewhon, &c.
Op. 5. London : Bogue, 1880. Pp. 208.
The body of Mr. Butler's Op. 5 consists of a translation of the re-
markable lecture " On Memory" delivered by Hering in 1870, fol-
lowed by a translation of the long chapter on " The Unconscious as
Instinct " in Von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious. He is
enabled to elucidate his own views 011 Evolution, as propounded in
previous works, by showing (in some additional chapters) how they
substantially agree with Bering's positions and how they are opposed
to Yon Hartmann's. Readers who do not go beyond English should
New Books. 147
thank him for the translation of Hering's lecture which long
attracted attention as a singularly bright and pointed exposition of thu
thesis that all fixing and reproduction of effects wrought in organised
matter may, by analogy with the changes believed to be wrought in
the brain on occasion of conscious memory, also be spoken of as a kind
of " memory ". Before coming to the serious part of his undertaking
for he has now become serious and even a little pedantic as he gets
on with his views Mr. Butler provides some entertainment for the
T, in his earlier vein. With perfectly sustained gravity, he
records the whole course of his own evolution as a writer where and
how he was situated when this or that idea came into his head, to be
afterwards set down in one or other of the Opp. The story leads finally
up to a terrifying exposure of the arts whereby Mr. Darwin " and his
friends " thought to elude the blows aimed at the doctrine of Natural
Selection in Op. 4 a book, says Mr. Butler, in which " I was hardly
able to conceal the fact that, in spite of the obligations under which
we must always remain to Mr. Darwin, I had lost my respect for him
and for his work ". This, in its way, is inimitably said, and there
are many more sentences, up to the last of all in chap. 5, quite as
good. Clearly, though he may have grown serious otherwise, Mr.
Butler carries still about with him the " memory " of old powers.
The Story of Philosophy. By ASTON LEIGH. London: Triibner, 1881.
Pp. 210.
This book, which aims at presenting concisely and in popular lan-
guage the history of the rise and progress of Greek philosophy before
Christ, is " the result of several years' reading and research ". The
reading, apparently, has been confined to English works or works in
English upon the subject. The research, not said whither, has not
been without result. Socrates, we learn, was " an insignificant little
man," but had been " a brawny broad-shouldered youth " with
" muscles twisting about his arms and against his shoulder-blades like
brown snakes " ; his mother's name was " Philarete " (not Phaenarete) ;
it was to " Esculapeius " that he owed that last cock. Again, Plato
began life as a " brown babe " and a " black-eyed infant " ; his father
was "Aristocles" (not Ariston), his grandfather " Aristony "(not
Aristocles). Many more new or interesting facts of this description
could be quoted from Mr. Leigh's pages, but these may suffice, by way
of specimen. There is much less of philosophy than of philosophers
in the book. Thus Aristotle the man takes up twelve pages, while
his " philosophy and works " are disposed of in less than five. Still
these too, few as they are, enshrine many novelties. For instance :
" Aristotle examined sixteen, forms of the syllogism. If the first and
second premisses be inverted, a wrong conclusion must follow. To give an
example of a'defective syllogism : No work of God is bad : The passions of
men are the work of God : Therefore the passions of men cannot be bad.
It required a Socrates to set straight the crooked syllogistic method, which
was most likely undreamt of during his life-time."
In another vein of observation, we get this conclusion to the notice
of Pyrrho :
148
New Books.
" When we read history we find that the doubters however magnificent
their powers, however tremendous their efforts have failed to establish a
lasting footing in the world of thought. Who talks of Luther, the bold
enemy of Catholic Christianity, now ? Where is the word ' Protestant ' ?
Where are the followers of the various seceders from recognised belief, even
in the Christian era," &c.
The present Story is but the prologue to a work that will soon follow
on " The Progress of Philosophy after the Birth of Christ ".
Wish and Will : An Introduction to the Psychology of Desire and
Volition. By GEORGE LYON TURNER, M.A. London : Long-
mans, 1880. Pp. 356.
" The following pages (says the author) were printed in the first instance
for use in the college class-room, and not with a view to publication.
. . . Had I from the first had the needs and tastes of the general reader
in view, the form in which the matter is presented would probably have
been somewhat different. . . . The points to which I would specially
ask attention as peculiar in their treatment, if not absolutely new, are the
following : The position assigned to Desire as involving an essential
contrast and distinction between * Wish and Will ' ; an essay at the psycho-
logical investigation of the functions, the range and the methods of opera-
tion of Volition (as the proper introduction to the great controversy as to
Liberty and Necessity), a thing (never to my knowledge) fairly attempted
before ; a careful investigation of the Nature and province of Law with a
view to determining its relation to Volition ; a somewhat detailed examina-
tion of the mutual relations of Volition and Character (including a special
effort to grapple with the subtlest form of the argument of the Necessarians
on that question) ; and a brief reference to the ontological significance of
its phenomena."
Guide to the Study of Political Economy. By Dr. LUIGI COSSA,
Professor of Political Economy in the University of Pavia.
Translated from the Second Italian Edition. With a Preface
by W. Stanley Jevons, F.K.S. London : Macmillan, 1880.
Pp. xvi., 237.
Professor Jevons, in his short preface to this anonymous translation
of Prof. Cossa's work, says it " presents, in a compendious form not
only a general view of the bounds, divisions and relations of the
science, marked by great impartiality and breadth of treatment, but it
also furnishes us with an historical sketch of the science such as must
be wholly new to English readers ". The Historical Part makes two
thirds of the whole.
Contributions to the History of the Development of the Human Race.
Lectures and Dissertations by LAZARUS GEIGER, Author of Origin
and Evolution of Human Speech and Reason. Translated from
the Second German Edition by DAVID ASHER, Ph.D., Corre-
sponding Member of the Berlin Society for the Study of Modern
Languages and Literature. London : Triibner, 1880. Pp. 156.
Five Lectures delivered within the last four years of the author's
life, 1867-70, on " Language and its importance in the history of the
Development of the Human Race," "The Earliest History of the Human
Race in the light of Language, with special reference to the Origin of
New Books. 149
Tools," " Colour-Sense in primitive times and its Development," "The
Origin of Writing," and " The Discovery of Fire " ; with an Essay
on " The Primitive Home of the Indo-Europeans " written just before
his death as the first of an intended series of similar dissertations. 11 it-
presentation of Geiger's linguistic views, in his own words, to English
readers, is welcome, though it be only in these popular lectures and
not in their more systematic form. The lecture on " Colour- Sense,"
delivered as far back as 1867, has a special interest as giving the
starting-point of so much recent discussion and inquiry. Dr. Asher
deserves thanks for his thought of translating these pieces and for the
performance.
The Philosophy of Art : Being the Second Part of Hegel's Aesthetih,
in which are unfolded historically the Three Great Fundamental
Phases of the Art-Activity of the World. Translated and accom-
panied with an Introductory Essay giving an Outline of the entire
AesthetiTc. By WM. M. BRYANT. New York : Appleton.
Pp. liv., 194.
The first and second parts of this translation, dealing with Symbolic
and with Classic Art, are rendered from M. Ch. Benard's modified
French version, but not without constant reference to the German
original. The third part, on Romantic Art, is taken straight from
the original, M. Benard's variations there becoming much more fre-
quent and fundamental. The greater portion of the translation
appeared previously in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy ; the
Introductory Essay, in The Western. The translator hopes to be able,
in due time, to render the entire work available to English readers.
L Education des le Berceau : Essai de Pedagogic experimentale.
Par BERNARD PEREZ. Paris : Germer Bailliere, 1880.
Pp, viii., 302.
The author here follows up his psychological sketch Les trois
premieres Annees de I' Enfant, reviewed in MIND XII., 546, by applying
his own and all available results first to the question of the Moral
Education of the infant ; whence he will proceed shortly to deal, in a
separate work, with the question of Instruction. Moral education
(as well as instruction), he supposes, may begin at least " from the
cradle," if not earlier. It consists in regulating " the innate forces that
impel to action," Sensations, Emotions, and Volitions. The moral
education of the Senses ; culture of the Intellectual Emotions ; rela-
tions of Sensibility and Activity ; culture of the Social Emotions ;
development of Moral Habits and Moral Sense are the main topics
of the book. The treatment is thoroughly fresh and concrete. M.
Perez has studied multitudes of children at close quarters, and gives
the actual facts upon which he founds his prescriptions.
La Vie inconsciente de VEsprit. Par EDMOND COLSENET, Ancien
eleve de 1'Ecole normale, agre'ge' de philosophic, docteur e"s lettres.
Paris : Germer Bailliere, 1880. Pp. 277.
The author does not occupy himself with the Unconscious as a basis
of metaphysical speculation, but seeks, as a psychologist, to study the
150 New Books.
whole body of facts suggestive of an unconscious mental life. These,
after a preliminary examination of the doctrine as originated by
Leibniz, he groups under four heads Facts of Knowledge, Deter-
minations (voluntary or necessitated), Tendencies (principles of
activity, natural or acquired), Facts of Sensibility (feelings of pleasure
or pain, inclinations, passions). His general position is indicated in
the following quotation :
" Beneath the luminous surface that lies open to internal observation,
there stretches a region obscure and unperceived, peopled with psychologi-
cal phenomena of which we grasp only the final effects in their various com-
binations and modifications. The apparent causes do not suffice, at any
moment, to explain our emotions, our sensations, our volitions even. Every
conscious fact is rooted in the unconscious. To explore this hidden region
unattainable by intuition, resort must be had to induction and hypothesis,
based on the analysis of facts."
Gescliiclite der Psyclwlogie. Von HERMANN SIEBECK, Professor an
der Universitat Basel. Erster Theil, Erste Abtheilung : " Die
Psychologic von Aristoteles ". Gotha : Perthes, 1880.
This is the first instalment of a work which promises to fill a serious
gap in scientific literature. The author, considering that psychology
is becoming, if it has not already become, an independent science,
believes that its progress now will in no small measure depend upon a
true understanding of the results that have been actually attained
during the whole past time when mental inquiry has been pursued as
a part of general philosophy. He sets himself therefore to disentangle
from the general history of philosophical thought all distinctively
psychological matter, and to do this in a form that will not repel the
cultivated reader while it satisfies the demands of the professional
inquirer. The whole work will be in three volumes. The second
half to come of the first will include the entire Aristotelian movement,
with its Patristic and Scholastic consequences ; the second volume will
bring the record down to the end of last century ; leaving for the third
the account of all the increased activity of the present century psycho-
physical as well as psychological. In the present instalment of the
first volume, the author leaves aside the subject of Oriental psychology
as one that he cannot treat at first hand and for other reasons, but he
does not take up the earliest beginnings of Greek inquiry without some
reference to the still more primitive notions of mind and body found
among uncultured races. Once embarked upon the stream of Greek
philosophy, he works in a careful and exhaustive manner. Plato is
treated at a length of nearly a hundred pages. We shall look with
interest to his next Part, which will more decisively test his ability to
supply all that is wanted in a History of Psychology. It is to be
hoped that his account of the Schoolmen's views will not be too much
of an " iibersichtliche Darstellung ".
Zur GescMctite und Begrundung des Pessimismus. Von EDUARD
VON HARTMANN. Berlin : Duncker. Pp. xvi, 141.
This is a curious contribution to the history and defence of Pessi-
mism from the pen of its foremost living teacher. The chief point of
Miscellaneous. 15]
the volume is the attempt to extract a pretty complete system of
hedonistic or * eudaemonistic ' pessimism from the writings of Kant.
The importance of this attempt calls for a fuller notice in a ]
number of MIND. [J. g.J
Die Philosophie der MytJwlogie und Max Muller. Von Dr. EUGEN
VON SCHMIDT. Berlin : Duncker, 1880. Pp. 108.
A theory of the Pre-Christian development of the consciousness
of Deity in general, followed by a more special investigation of Greek
mythology, particularly in reference to Hermes, Hestia, and Pallas
Athene, as representing the natural powers of light, heat, and thunder.
The author, in opposition to Prof. Max Miiller's method of direct
mythological interpretation, would start from the prior investigation of
the psychological laws of mental development in man.
Der Widersprucli im Wissen und Wesen der Welt. Princip und
Einzelbewahrung der Eealdialektik. Yon Dr. JULIUS BAHNSEN.
Erster Band. Berlin : Grieben, 1880. Pp. xix., 462.
" Under the pressure of unfavourable times there ventures here into
publicity a work that even under friendlier constellations would have had
to struggle for existence. Half from choice, half from necessity, it has seen
more than the proverbial nonus annus go by while it has been growing; yet still
it cannot say that its hour has struck. The world is still too much enamoured
of its fancied exact knowledge not to turn its back upon a critical investi-
gation that aims at nothing less than undermining the logical foundations
of all cognition. . . . Whether and when the second half of the work,
dealing with ethical relations, may hope to see the light, cannot at present
be determined."
IX. MISCELLANEOUS.
The recently formed " Aristotelian Society for the Systematic Study
of Philosophy " entered on its second Session in October last. It does
not belong to any sect or " school " of philosophy, but was formed by,
and chiefly consists of, students who meet for the purpose of mutual
assistance and encouragement in the prosecution of philosophical en-
quiry. The opening address of the session, on " Philosophy in relation
to its History/' was given by the President for the year, Mr. Shadworth
H. Hodgson. Information as to terms of membership, &c., will be
given by the Hon. Secretary, Dr. A. Senier, 1, Bloomsbury Square,
W.C.
Dr. Ludwig Buchner's Geistesleben der Thiere will appear in an
English dress early in January. It is now being translated, with the
author's permission, by Mrs. Annie Besant, and will be the first of a
series of works which will appear under the name of the " International
Library of Science and Freethougbt." Dr. Ernst Haeckel has also given
permission that one of his books shall appear in the same series, and
has offered his drawings for its illustration. Dr. Biichner's work is
intended to show that the intellectual powers of man take origin in the
lower animals, and that there is no distinction of kind between the so-
called instinct of the lower animals and the reason of mail.
152
Miscellaneous.
EEVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. Vme Annee, No. 10. Ch. Richet Du som-
nambulisme provoque (I.). G. Lyon Un idealists anglais au xviii. 6 siecle.
Krantz Le pessimisme de Leopardi. Varietes (H. Marion Le nouveau
programme de philosophie). Analyses et Coinptes-rendus. Rev. des Period.
No. 11. H. Spencer Les institutions politicoes : I. Preliminaires. Ch.
Eichet Du somnambulisme provoque (fin). Th. Ribot Les desordres
partiels de la memoire. P. Tannery L'education platonicienne. Analyses,
&c. Rev. des Period. No. 12. L. Liard La methode et la mathematique
universelle de Descartes. G. Compayre La folie chez 1' enfant. H. Spencer
II. De 1' organisation politique en general. Notes et Discussions (J.
Delboeuf Sur la fusion des sensations semblables). Analyses, &c. Notices
bibliographiques. Rev. des Period.
LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. IXme Annee, Nos. 33-45. W. James
Le sentiment de 1'effort (34-6, 39-41, 45). C. Renouvier Que faut-il
entendre par des limites de la liberte morale 1 (37) ; Politique et social-
isme : I. La question du progres (39) ; II. La question du progres : Herder
(43) ; III. La question du progres : Kant (44). Anonymous Le material-
isme par rapport a la liberte et a la morale (35) ; Le materialisms par
rapport a la religion et a 1'ideal (41) ; Le jugement d' Albert Lange sur le
christianisme (42), sur la question du progres et les doctrines des economistes
(45) ; Un discours sur le prejuge (44).
LA FlLOSOFIA DELLE SCUOLE ITALIANS. Vol. XXII. Disp. 1. P. L.
Cecchi La storia della cultura et le scienze filosofiche a' tempi nostri. T.
Mamiani Sulla psicologia e la critica della conoscenza : terza lettera al
prof. S. Turbiglio. M. Panizza Antropologia : la fisiologia del sistema
nervosa nelle sue relazioni coi fatti psichici. Bibliografia, &c. Disp. 2.
F. Tocco Filosofia di Kant : 1'analitica dei principii. T. Mamiani Sulla
psicologia, &c. : quarta ed ultima lettera, &c. A. Chiappelli Del vero
senso dell alria nel Filebo platonico. Bibliografia, &c.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIE, &c. Bd. LXXVIL, Heft 2. E. Pfleiderer
Kantischer Kriticismus u. englische Philosophie (II.). Hasbach Die
Beziehungen der Aesthetik Schopenhauer's zur Platonischen Aesthetik
(Schluss). G. Runze Kritische Darstellung der Geschichte des ontolo-
gischen Beweisfahrens seit Anselm (L). Erganzungsheft. F. Kern Ueber
Demokrit von Abdera u. die Anfange der griechischen Moralphilosophie.
Recensionen.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR VOLKERPSYCHOLOGIE u. SPRACHWISSENSCHAFT.
Bd. XIL, Heft 3. H. Steinthal Die erzahlenden Stiicke im funften
Buche Mose. K. Haberland Die Sitte des Steinwerfens u. der Bildung
des Steinhaufens. 0. Fliigel Ueber die Entwickelung der sittlichen Ideen
(Forts.). Beurtheilung.
VlERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FUR WlSSENSCHAFTLICHE PHILOSOPHIE. Bd. IV.,
Heft 4. J. Jacobson Ueber physische Geometric. F. Tonnies Anmer-
kungen iiber die Philosophie des Hobbes (III.). C. Sigwart Logische
Fragen : Ein Versuch ziir Verstandigung (I.). Recensionen. Berichtigung
von W. Schuppe. Selbstanzeigen, &c.
Other BOOKS, &c., received : W. Stanley Jevons, Studies in Deductive
Logic, London (Macmillan), pp. 304 (See MIND XX. 589) ; M. W. Mac-
dowall W. S. W. Anson (after W. Wagner), Asgard and the Gods, London,
(Swan Sonnenschein & Allen), pp. 326 ; Anonymous, Thoughts on Theism,
<fcc. (8th Thousand, Revised and Enlarged), London (Triibiier), pp. 80 ; C.
S. Peirce, On the Algebra of Logic, I. (Reprinted from the American Journal
of Mathematics, Vol. III.), pp. 57 ; J. Steinfort Kedney, The Beautiful and
the Sublime, New York (Putnam), pp. 214 ; E. Swedenborg, Ontology, trans,
by P. B. Cabell, Philadelphia (Lippincott), pp. 40 ; M. Panizza, La Fisio-
logia del Sistema Nervoso nelle sue relazioni coi Fatti Psichici, (2nd Ed.), Roma
(Manzoni), pp. 258.
No. 22.] [Ap ril
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
I. MONISM.
MOST readers of MIND will remember the late Professor
Clifford's brilliant ]>; i] ><-i " On the Nature of Things-in-theniselves"
(No. IX.). At the time that paper was first published, I was
struck with some difficulties in the argument, which I did not
subsequently see noticed in any of the reviews of its author's
collected essays. The main reason why I only now venture to
put them forward is that I did not exactly know how far the
theory had been taken seriously : it seemed at any rate to have
excited curiously little attention, for a doctrine which, if right,
would be so neatly and exclusively right, and if wrong, should
apparently be susceptible of easy and precise confutation. A
Note in the January number of this journal, however, showed
that others have long been occupied with the idea, and believe
it capable of great development. And in addition to this, the
tone of some : criticism on the subject of Spinoza sug-
gested certain more general difficulties in the whole position of
dogmatic Monism, which might, I thought, gain in force from
comparison with t iherent in Clifford's peculiar form of it.
A very few A\ I' introduction will serve to indicate the
way in which the problem presents itself to ordinary minds.
and the point at which Clifford takes it up.
I imagine that the stages which the mind normally goes
through, a ds the question of the existence of things
external to the perceiving consciousness, are these.
11
154
Monism.
The first stage is one which uuinstructed persons scarcely
ever, I think, get beyond: the unquestioning idea that the
things they see would be somehow there, lying about in space,
whether or not there had ever been any mind to perceive them ;
that when they are there, a substance, or a something, underlies
their sensible qualities, and is quite external to the feeling in the
percipient. Clifford's view on the other hand, is that the ex-
ternality divined by uninstructed persons is simply the element
of externality in the "social object," the conviction that the
object is a real or possible object to other minds outside one's
own. This view certainly does not agree with my experience,
even as regards persons of good general education.
The next stage arrives, to most of those who pass beyond the
first stage, when Idealism of the Berkeleyan type is first pre-
sented to them ; and generally, I think, the first impression is
that such Idealism is a flawless theory of existence. The more
obvious difficulties that we need an explanation why my
feelings and yours often exactly correspond, i.e., why we simul-
taneously perceive the same object ; or again, that objects
change in the absence of minds, i.e., we find their qualities on
successive occasions differing by amounts only to be reached (as
our general knowledge of phenomena teaches us) by gradual
steps, which steps have had no representative in consciousness and
suggest therefore an unknown substance which is not mind
these difficulties, I say, may be logically met by Berkeley's
hypothesis of an eternal and ubiquitous mind. But Idealism of
this type seems often to be held in a vague and unphilosophical
way by persons of poetical temperament, with whom the all-
embracing mind is rather a notion congenial to their religious
instincts, than perceived to be logically necessary to the scheme.
By far the most important stage, however, is reached when
a person first realises that each feeling and thought is accom-
panied by definite movements of brain-substance. 1 (It will
1 In the absence of any knowledge of brain, the same stage would be
represented by the recognition of unvarying correspondence between
mechanical and measurable facts, such as vibrations, and sensuous impres-
sions or secondary qualities, such as those of colour and sound. But in these
days of physiology, all the mechanical facts are at once realised as producing
and running up to material changes in the brain ; so that it is with this
crowning point of the material side of the phenomenon that we naturally
associate its sensory counterpart. And I cannot but think that this direct
localisation of all the various mechanical counterparts of sensation in one
organ, which everyone thinks of as a part of himself, and which has ob-
viously had its own material development contemporaneously with the
development of consciousness, though it does not logically alter the puzzle
of the correspondence, tends to make it far more vividly realisable to those
who have not technically studied philosophy.
Monism. 155
save trouble to speak throughout as if these inmost nervous
processes, which indubitably exist, could actually be perceived
by an outside spectator.) As long as you and I were looking at
the same object, and our parallel streams of feeling thus closely
resembled each other, some hypothesis of action of mind on
mind, or of both as reflections of God's mind, might possibly
seem to account for the resemblance, without the supposition of
an external non-mental reality. But when you watch the
object, and / watch (as I may suppose myself to do) the move-
ments of your brain, then each item of your impression of the
object, each thing in your consciousness, will have a counterpart
in an item of my impression of your brain, which will be a
thing in my consciousness : that is, the series of your feelings
will present an exact parallelism, without the slightest resem-
blance, to the series of my feelings. And the total difference of
this parallelism of feelings without resemblance, from the paral-
lelism with resemblance when we were both looking at the same
object, suggests far more strongly than the latter alone did that
the source of the parallelism is external to our two minds.
The dawn of this notion I should call the dawn of a philo-
sophical conception of a dualism in mind and matter, as opposed
to the unphilosophical conception of externality described as
the first stage. That is to say, your brain, with its movements
corresponding to yet wholly unlike your feelings, is the sort of
matter in respect of which that dualism first presents itself in
our day as an urgent philosophical problem.
The attempts at transcending the dualism have of course
made up a great part of the history of philosophy. They may
be classified roughly under three heads. Either (1) mind and
matter may be kept parallel, as sides or representations of some
unity common to both : or (2) matter may be put behind mind :
or (3) mind may be put behind matter. The actual divisions,
however, are far more numerous. The first mode splits at once
into three. Thus the unity may be made a substance of which
thought and extension are attributes, as in the theory of
Spinoza, which however has probably now no single literal
adherent. Or the duality may be transcended, as in modern
Phenomenalism, by regarding the two terms as aspects of the
same fact, while rejecting any sort of absolute substance. Or,
again, in the conception of the unity not as a substance but as a
process, in which consciousness and phenomena alike consist in
a mutual determination of subject and object, brought about
through the one reality of Thought, we have the most fruitful
modern form of Idealism. As thus defined, this last form of
the first mode may really be equally considered a form of the
third; though to English ears the third mode (as defined by
156
Monism.
the putting of mind behind matter) rather suggests the older
Idealism, which knows nothing of these mutual determinations,
but makes the subject merely hold together a series of feelings.
And it may be added that these Idealistic forms of Monism
further agree in the negative characteristic that they neither of
them recognise the existence and facts of Twain as the kernel of
the whole problem; they neither of them reduce the general
problem of mind and matter to the particular problem of mind
and brain, and thus their solutions, however valuable in other
ways, leave the prime mystery unsolved. The second of the above
three modes, on the other hand, the one which puts matter
behind mind, has faced the facts of brain ; but the doctrine
founded on that recognition has been too crude to deserve the
name of philosophy. Its crudest expression of all was the
dictum that thought is a secretion of brain : and we find rather
a softening of expression than an actual development of idea in
the more recent phrase that thought is a function of brain ; which
would naturally imply that the relation is of a kind precisely
similar to that which respiration bears to the lungs, or co-ordina-
tion of movements to the brain. What is meant by some of
those who use the phrase is doubtless nothing more than the
truth, that the movements of mind are correlated with nervous
processes. But in that sense they might with equal accuracy, and
less chance of misleading, call brain or rather brain-movements
a function of thought : and at any rate their position has no
claim to be called monistic ; the name Dualism, apart from any
dogmatic theory, having at least the advantage of keeping the
real crux in view. 1
1 Mr. Spencer and Lewes must be certainly designated dualists, though
the fundamental dualism in their case is other than that of matter and
mind or of physical and psychical events. Mr. Spencer does indeed use
the word in the latter sense, as conveniently descriptive of our experience,
e.g., when he says that we must "rest content with that duality of our
symbols " (the physical and the psychical, Force and Feeling) " which our
condition necessitates": but he still imagines that mental and neural
process may really be "faces of the same thing," and his philosophical
dualism lies deeper. His radical position as a realist is that "Being is
fundamentally divisible into that which is present to us as mind" (and
this cannot but include nervous processes, which are real or imagined
objects in our mind just as much as any other phenomena) "and that
which, lying outside of it, is not mind". We certainly seem justified in
adding, not only not mind, but not even Mr. Spencer's unknown " substance
of mind "; since the substance of mind could scarcely be identified with
something "lying outside of mind". The above definition of realism
seems thus necessarily to drive us to two unknowns, not the single un-
known put forward as a bare possibility in 63, and as a certainty in 273,
of the Psychology; but either way we equally get a duality, whether
between two unknowns or between the known and the unknown. As
regards Lewes, it is perhaps easier to show that he ought to have con-
Monism. 157
We have still remaining, however, another form of the third
mode ; which, while agreeing with the second mode in its ex-
plicit recognition of the facts of brain, agrees with other forms
of Idealism in putting mind or something of the nature of mind
in the position of sole reality. It has lent itself to development
at any rate to this extent, that it has surmounted some of the
more obvious difficulties of Idealism, can be represented, in
Clifford's words, as " a necessary consequence of recent advances
in the theory of perception," and can be stated, as he has shown,
with thoroughly scientific precision ; his particular statement of
it being, I should suppose, by far the most comprehensible and
attractive that has yet appeared.
I come now to the argument itself. It is distinctly divisible
into two parts. The main aim of the first part is to prove that
every bit of what I call matter, even inorganic matter, is corre-
lated with feelings, or rather with "those remoter elements
which cannot even be felt, but of which the simplest feeling is
built up," just as facts of that particular organic piece of matter
which I perceive as your brain are correlated with that infi-
nitely complex web of feelings which constitutes your mind ; i.e.,
that in a manner varying infinitely in complexity, but one in
kind, all matter is correlated with " mind-stuff," just as the
most highly organised matter that we know of is correlated with
mind. The proof, admirably given, is briefly this : that I am
obliged to infer ejects, feelings of yours, things out of my con-
sciousness, in correspondence with certain sorts of matter (your
brain) ; and as the line of ascent from inorganic matter to the
highly organised matter of your brain is an unbroken one, there
is no point in the ascent at which I am at liberty to begin to
infer facts out of my consciousness, and therefore I must infer
such facts, in the shape of mind-stuff of an extremely elemen-
tary kind, even at the bottom. This method of proof, I may
sidered himself a dualist than that he did so. Being far more confident
than Mr. Spencer in his identification of "neural tremors" and feeling,
and far less aware of a uniting and permanent something with which no
correlation of neural tremors is possible, he is able to hold a large amount
of monistic language : but, believing in an objective world which does not
arise in consciousness, as including that world, objective to a subject, which
does so arise, he equally with Mr. Spencer postulates an unknowable, in
the face of which the Monism becomes impossible to maintain. For we
cannot make the neural tremors a connecting link between the world
which does not arise in consciousness and the world which does. The
phenomena of nerve-matter, as presented or represented in a mind, must
bear precisely the same relation (which , whatever it is, is not identity) to
the including extra-phenomenal existence as do any other facts of percep-
tion. Mind and non-mind are thus left confronting one another, without
their duality being the least affected by the notion of inclusion.
158
Monism.
observe, exactly corresponds with what has been said above :
that brain is the sort of matter in respect of which the opposi-
tion of mind and matter comes naturally to a philosophic crisis :
it is from the observed correlation in this particular case that
Clifford argues to every other case, and, starting thence, is led
to credit all matter with having some mind-stuff belonging to it.
The aim of the second part of the paper is to prove that such
mind-stuff, which in the first part " we have seen reason to
think of as going along with the material object," is neither more
nor less than the reality not a reality but the reality of the
material object, represented in our minds as that object ; in
other words, that the universe consists of nothing but mind-
stuff, some of which is, while some is not, woven into the com-
plex form of minds. The words I have italicised will serve to
mark at once the point in respect of which acceptance of the
first part of the paper contains no ground for acceptance of the
second. That every object implies an eject, that every object
we perceive has mind-stuff going along with it, all who accept
the earlier argument must admit. The second part confines all
external reality to this external reality : and it is in the inde-
pendent argument by which Clifford attempts to prove this
latter point that my first difficulty lies.
He takes as an example a man looking at a candlestick, and
finds in the situation four terms : (a) the candlestick, an object
to me ; (&) the " cerebral image " of the candlestick (i.e., the
particular state of man's brain which is correlated with his
perception of the candlestick), also a (supposed) object to me ;;
(c) the man's perception of the candlestick, the "mental image";
(d) the external reality to which this perception corresponds.
These are disposed in the following proportion :
(1) The external reality :
(2) The man's perception of the candlestick : :
(3) The candlestick as object to me :
(4) The man's brain as object to me.
He then proceeds to say : " Now the candlestick and the
cerebral image are botli matter ; they are made . of the same
stuff. Therefore the external reality is made of the same stuff
as the man's perception or mental image, that is, it is made of
mind-stuff." The perception, he adds, imperfectly represents
the external reality, as the particular affection of brain-matter
imperfectly represents, while corresponding point for point with,
the phenomenal candlestick.
Now let us substitute, in terms (2) and (4) of the above pro-
portion, my perception of the candlestick and my brain as object
to me, for the man's perception and the man's brain. The primd
Monism. 159
facie objection to this substitution, in that I cannot at the same
moment have the candlestick and my brain as an object, has no
real validity. Practically, of course, I can no more examine the
man's molecular processes than I can my own : but as I know
they go on, and could be fully described and delineated were the
physical means of examination adequate, I am at liberty to sup-
pose myself witnessing them in the case of his brain ; and as
regards my own, nothing more is wanted than that, since the
candlestick itself and my brain as I watch it cannot even be
supposed to be objects to me simultaneously, my brain in that
condition shall be an object subsequently represented to me,
e.g., by accurate descriptions and diagrams. So the proportion
will become :
(1) The external reality :
(2) My perception of the candlestick : :
(3) The candlestick as object to me :
(4) My brain as object to me.
But (2) and (3) are now identical ; so that the neatness of
making out the two first terms to be of one kind of stuff, and
the two last of another, is found to have depended on the mere
artifice of imagining two people to be concerned instead of one. 1
But examining further into what is implied in the proportion,
we find more than this to complain of. The things in terms
1 Clifford has himself turned the third person into the first, apparently
without noticing the effect on his argument. He then orders and words
thus :-
The physical configuration of my cerebral image of the object :
The physical configuration of the object : :
My perception of the object (the object regarded as complex of my
feelings) :
The thing-in-itself.
Here the first term (which in the former case was the fourth, the order
having been inverted) = My brain as object to me ; and the second
term (which in the former case was the third) = The candlestick as
object to me ; so that again the second and third terms are identical,
as in the proportion in the text. The wording, and especially the
clause between brackets, tend greatly to conceal this fact : but a moment's
thought makes it clear that the "physical configuration of the object" is
my perception of it, including all the items of impression of which that
perception is made up ; and the " complex of my feelings " is merely the
complex of these same items. The latter phrase unfortunately suggests,
beyond the mere perception of the object, the various ideas and associations
which may be connected with that particular object, and hence gets an un-
warrantable appearance of meaning something different from the " physical
configuration ". The existence of such ideas and associations is clearly quite
irrelevant to the argument ; it is just a chance of my individual experience ;
and I may substitute for the candlestick an object perceived for the first time,
in connexion with which I had no previous ideas and associations.
160
Monism.
(3) and (4) are interdependent : for whatever the mode of rela-
tion may be, we have no evidence that perception of an object
can take place without corresponding brain-affections. Carrying
then this interdependence with terms (1) and (2), I have to say
that the it, the external reality with which I can never come in
contact, is dependent on my possible perception of it ; and also
that my mind depends for a mode of its being (for my percep-
tion of objects is a mode of being of my mind) on that whose
essential character it is to be for ever outside it. And the
question then occurs how, qua mind-stuff, I could ever become
aware of its existence ?
Clifford's answer is that it is represented in my mind. The
word must not conceal the fact, which the proportion makes
evident, that mind-stuff is made to act on mind-stuff as object
acts on object, e.g., as candlestick acts on brain-matter. Now
object can act on object, or (in the ordinary phraseology) the
presence of the candlestick causes certain affections of my brain,
because both candlestick and brain belong to the phenomenal or
objective order, i.e., to an order of things which are comprisable
in my single mind, and among which I find universal relations
of sequence and coexistence, conveniently expressed by words
like cause and law. And the stretch of imagination to conceiv-
ing similar relations as existing between my mind and a reality
external to my mind is, of course, a vast one whatever that
reality may be, and is disguised but not diminished by calling
the mode of relation or action representation. But the view
which refuses to what is "represented" as matter any other
reality than that of mind-stuff introduces a difficulty wholly of
its own. For suppose all matter to become highly organised,
and by a parallel process all mind-stuff to become woven into
minds (this being obviously a quite allowable hypothesis, since
the validity of Clifford's argument does not the least depend on
whether some of the mind-stuff in the universe does or does not
remain in an elementary condition) ; or if it be thought simpler,
imagine that the amount of reality in the universe is reduced to
two minds. Each of these then is represented in the other as a
material brain, an object of which we may suppose them (as
we have supposed ourselves throughout) to have complete
means of perception. But as a mind, at any rate according to
Clifford's view of it, is its contents or perceptions for the time
being, each of these perceiving minds, according to him, would
le a material representation of the other : therefore each would
be a material representation of a material representation of
itself. But to call this a reality is surely to try to get visible
content into two mirrors facing one another in empty space ; or,
on the supposition of a multitude of such minds, into a universe
of mirrors.
Monism. 161
And though this objection can be more simply stated on the
above supposition that no mind-stuff is supposed to remain in
the tmcombined and elementary condition, but that all there is is
fitted together into the texture of perceiving minds, yet when
the objection has been once granted on this supposition, it is
easily seen to be equally applicable to a universe in the condi-
tion Clifford describes. For by the undoing of some of the
superfluous minds we have imagined, and the reducing of their
elements of feeling to the uncombiued state, by the withdrawal,
that is, of their power to represent, we should clearly not be
endowing them with any additional reality or power of being
represented : to destroy them as mirrors cannot be made to give
them the necessary opacity of objects, without reinstating
about as marked a distinction between mind and matter as the
old one which Clifford is anxious to transcend.
This difficulty of getting objective content into the universe
shows itself equally strongly in a portion of Clifford's paper
which has not yet been mentioned, his doctrine of the gradual
development of conscious minds through the interweaving of
elements of mind-stuff. On his theory, a single unit of mind-
stuff is a thing-in-itself : it would be equally real were there
nothing besides itself in existence ; since for that which is far
too elementary to perceive objects, it could not matter that there
were none to perceive. As the units gradually combine, how-
ever, there result minds, i.e., existences which cannot be con-
ceived without objects; and the puzzle is to get, out of a
universe of mind-stuff units, the means of identifying or con-
necting the process of independent combination of some of them
into minds in which objects are an essential part, with the
representation therein of others, which do not enter into the
combination, as these objects. For simplicity's sake, let us say
that a mind results from the interweaving of elements A, B, and
C, and let D stand for external bits of mind-stuff. Now a mind
is not first made and then provided with perceptive contents ;
the process of formation is a process of getting such contents, a
process of developing perception of objects. Thus Clifford's
interweaving of A, B, and C, things-in-themselves wholly inde-
pendent of D, must yet depend throughout on the existence of
D, and the product is not merely a means of representing, but
an actual representation of, this external existence; that is,
things which have no relation to a reality outside them can
only combine in virtue of that reality, and in combining become
that relation. In other words, from the piling together of units
which for reflecting purposes are so many lumps of lamp-black,
there gradually results not only a mirror, but a mirror which
reflects the wall on which it hangs.
162
lomsm.
It is worth remarking how utterly different is the difficulty
here from that involved in the simultaneous development of
nerve-matter and consciousness. In that simultaneous develop-
ment, however inexplicable it may be, we have at any rate an
interdependence of one definite order of events with another
definite order of events. In Clifford's universe we have an
order of events, the interweaving of mind-stuff units, depending
on something which is not an order of events at all a progres-
sive establishment of relations made possible through, and
issuing in a representation of, relationless elements described
by him as far simpler than the simplest feeling, and stationary
therefore in the same proportion.
My difficulties so far have been concerned with the object,
both in itself and in its relation to the gradual formation of
minds. But Clifford's account of the subject seems open, on its
own account, to equally grave objections. lie considers that
the sense of a uniting personality is not given in the actual
moment of feeling, but in subsequent reflection ; and " consists
in the power of establishing a certain connexion between the
memories of any two feelings which we had at the same
instant ". At the instant, a feeling exists an und fur sick, and
not as my feeling : " but when, on reflection, I remember it as
my feeling, there comes up not merely a faint repetition of the
feeling, but inextricably connected with it a whole set of con-
nexions with the general stream of my consciousness " ; and
this memory again, so far as it is itself a feeling, is absolute,
Ding-an-sich. "The feeling of personality, then, is a certain
feeling of connexion between faint images of past feelings " ;
personality is " the property of the stream of feelings that part of
it consists of links binding together faint reproductions of
previous parts ".
The metaphor of the complex stream, or of interlacing strands,
is convenient; but the true metaphor for a combination of
elements each of which is a Ding-an-sich must surely be a rope
of sand. All the phrases used to describe the mode of compli-
cation lie open to Prof. Green's pitiless indictment of the
modern empirical psychology, in assuming the unifying con-
sciousness which they profess to account for. How can I
remember anything as my feeling, in the absence of a unity
which is neither my past nor my present state, but which by
its persistence gives a ground for their relation ? Does not the
very word remember express the whole vital difference between
a feeling and the fact that / had a feeling ? Again, this unity
certainly does consist partly in "the power of establishing a
certain connexion" between the memories of simultaneous feel-
ings ; but how is this connexion to be got out of the separate
Monism. 1G3
feelings which it connects ? Still more, how is it possible to
call such a link itself a feeling, a member of a stream of
feelings ? How can the fact of a relation be also one of the
terms to be related ? l
And this difficulty of getting a unified consciousness, which
consists in the perception of a world of facts or relations, from
any manipulation whatever of unrelated feelings, naturally
suggests a reconsideration of the argument which attributed
the elements of feeling even to inorganic matter, on the assump-
tion of the continuity of simple feeling with developed con-
sciousness. The argument, it will be remembered, was, that I
find a continuity in matter from the elaborate combinations in
your brain, in association with which I know that ejects or facts
out of my consciousness exist, down to the simplest inorganic
forms ; when then I trace the chain of matter upwards, it
seems impossible to say at any particular point, " Here ejects
begin ; here I may begin to assume the existence of facts out of
my consciousness, in association with the matter which is an
object in my consciousness " ; and the alternative is to assume a
parallel continuity of ejects in association with all matter down
to its simplest forms. This argument from continuity certainly
appears strong; though the attribution of reality to feelings,
or elements of feeling, which are out of relation to a conscious
subject, and are not determined by even so elementary a rela-
tion as that of sequence, is susceptible of very effective attack.
But the continuity, if it exists, is only of things qua ejects, of
things as determined solely by the fact of being out of my
consciousness : and the quality of ejectivity, common to the
"mind-stuff"' elements of a stone and to the mind correlated
with your brain, 2 clearly need not imply the possibility of a
combination of one into the other which Clifford has assumed.
We might therefore grant the stone its ejectivity, without
granting that " reason, intelligence, and volition are properties
1 A similar objection might of course be urged from the side of brain ;
the perception of brain-processes being as dependent on a persistent subject
as any other order of facts. A less obvious but equally valid argument is
this : that such brain-movements as are correlated with feelings would not
be thought of as a unity or a complex at all, except through a latent pre-
supposition of that unity of consciousness which the correlated feelings are
supposed to constitute. I could as much get the unity of complex inter-
weaving from the movements of motes in a sunbeam as from the mere
juxtaposition, in the space of your brain, of a number of separate occur-
rences, sequent on a number of separate sorts of external stimuli.
2 If I compare the external reality of the stone not with your mind but
with mine, even this common quality of ejectivity disappears, and I am
bidden to call "mind-stuff" that of which not a single quality of mind,
positive or negative, can be predicated.
Io4 Monism.
of a complex which is made up of elements themselves not
rational, not intelligent, not conscious ". But we should then
be leaving the cardinal problem of consciousness just what it
has always been, and totally untouched by Clifford's theory.
Somewhere in the chain, as he admits, consciousness appears
for the first time : the evidence is too strong to admit of this
being carried down to the bottom : and to say at any particular
point, " Here consciousness, i.e., a sense of relations, begins " is
only rendered less startling than to say, " Here ejects begin," by
the assumption of the continuity of one with the other; the
assumption, that is, of relations set up by and among things of
which the primary hypothesis is that they are excluded from
relations. Nor can the difficulty be in any way evaded by
dwelling on the gradualness of the development of conscious-
ness. The very first time that any creature perceived a change
from one feeling to another, an event had occurred which is as
strong an argument against Clifford's account of mind-formation
as any that could be brought from the mental workings of a
Shakespeare or a Newton.
The question here discussed is, in Clifford's words, " one in
which it is peculiarly difficult to make out precisely what another
man means, and even what one means oneself ". Nevertheless
his exposition is so characteristically lucid that it is difficult to
imagine one has mistaken his meaning : and the very fact that
not a tithe of the ingenuity that went to the propounding of the
<loctrine is necessary to the discovery of its flaws is, I think,
suggestive in relation to the whole subject of Monism, in
respect, at any rate, of its profession to face the brain-difficulty.
From its earliest appearance in the system of Spinoza, down
to this latest and most plausible shape which it has received
from an eminent man of science, such Monism has had the
air of being par excellence the scientific theory of the universe :
and it is the emphasis which has been given to this notion in
recent criticisms of the earlier form of the doctrine, that led me
back to the difficulties I had found in the later one, and to a
reconsideration of the general validity of the claim. There is
not wanting, however, a more special connexion between these
two particular aspects of the Protean doctrine, amounting in-
deed, according to these recent views, to a vital affinity : for
Mr. Pollock, in his truly admirable work on Spinoza, has indi-
cated the mind-stuff theory as really latent in Spinoza's system,
and as what Spinoza himself would have arrived at, "if he had
not been unconsciously haunted by a remnant of Cartesian
dualism ". And this position may be first briefly examined.
One point of identity must certainly be conceded : Spinoza
Monism. 165
does indisputably conceive of something of the nature of mind
as going along with all extended matter. But this piece of
agreement cannot annul other points of the system which seem
fatal to that " latent idealism " which Mr. Pollock extracts from
it. This " latent idealism," which, once established, is enabled
by the above positive conception to take a mind-stuff form, 1 is
itself arrived at by a negative route. In some admirably written
pages, Mr. Pollock proves that all Spinoza's attributes except
Thought are superfluous ; but instead of treating this as a
refutation of Spinoza, he modestly insists on giving Spinoza the
potential credit of the refutation. The proof is unanswerable ;
and we may amuse ourselves with supposing that, had Spinoza
been one of our contemporaries, he would have appreciated, and
might even himself have supplied, the argument. But such
suppositions can hardly be seriously read back into the philo-
sophy of a past age. We readily grant that, if anyone is born
into a philosophical epoch which is not dominated by Cartesian
dualism, he runs a good chance of not being haunted thereby :
but to speculate what Spinoza's line of theory would in such a
case have been seems rather like speculating what sort of person
one would be oneself if one had had some one else's ancestry.
The data are too vague and too inextricably intermixed : it is
always a little too easy to take the particular elements in a
philosopher which can be seen to lead to a consistent develop-
ment, and to ascribe to these a central position in his mind, of
1 In the course of his statement of the mind-stuff theory, Mr. Pollock
uses one argument not used by Clifford, and worthy of notice as suggesting
an objection which will reappear further on, that science and metaphysics
are not quite the same thing. He argues that the unknowable substratum
of objects must be of the nature of mind on the following ground : that
there is one peculiar kind of unknowable which is undoubtedly of that
nature, viz., other peoples' minds (the existence of which is for each of us
a matter of inference, not of immediate knowledge), and that it is unscien-
tific needlessly to multiply causes and conditions ; so that this recognised
mediately-known sort of unknowable may and must do duty for the reality,
also unknowable, divined as underlying phenomena. I do not know that
any direct or precise argument can be brought against the validity of this
reasoning : but I cannot but think that we should be foisting some element
of the known into the unknowable even in the act of supposing it valid.
The hypothesis of an unknowable non-mental substratum of matter may
be attackable in other ways ; but it goes too deep to be seriously affected
by a likelihood of parsimony in unknowables. The argument of parsimony
has its origin and its force in our experience of physical conditions and
efficient causes on the plane of the knowable, where the conditions are
modifiable and the superfluous causes get eliminated by degrees : it can
hardly seem convincing against a hypothesis, siiyyestcd on independent
grounds, of a mode of being which, as absolutely unmodiliable and un-
knowable, is not more likely than unlikely to be identical in suUstamv
with another unknowable.
Ibb Monism.
which he himself gives no indication. At any rate, when we
go to Spinoza's actually stated scheme, with all its patient
elaboration of construction and undoubting confidence of tone,
we find elements, impossible to treat as accidents or excrescences,
which are stubbornly inconsistent with the position represented
by Mr. Pollock as almost within his grasp ; so much so, that
that position (if I may hazard a guess) would have caused him
quite as much surprise as any other modern form of Monism ;
so much so, I may even say, as to preclude any confidence that,
had his life been miraculously preserved, he would now be in
agreement with Clifford rather than with Mr. Spencer.
Thus, in the very proof to which I have referred, of the super-
fluity of all the attributes except Thought, Mr. Pollock neces-
sarily points out the entire mutual independence of Spinoza's
attributes : and this obviously involves the conclusion that
Extension could exist (it is for Spinoza to say in what manner)
if the independent attribute of Thought were eliminated, just
as much as it involves Mr. Pollock's conclusion that Thought
(including the perception of things as extended) could exist if
the independent attribute of Extension were eliminated. In
Mr. Pollock's own words, Spinoza " would never have admitted
that the material world is extended only in respect of our per-
ception ". The same contradiction of Idealism reappears in the
consideration of God. Though Spinoza's God is a thinking
being who can think infinitely in infinite ways, Mr. Pollock has
expressly remarked how he is " not exclusively or eminently a
thinking being," any more than man is, who is corporeal and
extended just as much as thinking. Everywhere there is the
same irreducible and independent parallelism of extension and
thought, of the untenability of which Mr. Pollock himself
would have convinced me, had I needed convincing: my dif-
ference from .him lies simply in holding that the parallelism
must be reckoned as belonging not to the accidents but to the
essence of Spinoza's philosophising; that the flaw, however
much at the time inevitable, is too radical for one to judge of
how Spinoza's mind would have worked, or what his system
would have been, without it.
Nor can I follow Mr. Pollock in crediting Spinoza with any
sort of anticipation of modern Idealism even in the single
respect of rejecting the unknowable. Mr. Pollock's own view
is that "it amounts to a contradiction in terms to speak of
* unknowable existence ' or ' unknowable reality ' in an absolute
sense," and that existence must be identified with " the possi-
bility of being known and perceived"; and he is fain to find
this view in his favourite philosopher, of whom he says that
" there can hardly be a reasonable doubt that for him to exist
Monism. 167
and to be intelligible were all one". For Spinoza to exist and to be
intelligible have not always been found all one by his readers ;
but, flippancy apart, while the idea in Mr. Pollock's mind is per-
fectly clear, in Spinoza's mind it was, even if present, mixed up
with what amount to total contradictions of itself : and this fact
has not, I think, been exactly brought out in Mr. Pollock's very
felicitous account of the particular difficulty in the system with
which it is connected. The difficulty is the old one propounded
by Tschirnhausen. The attributes being infinite in number, and
an attribute being " that which the understanding perceives con-
cerning substance," how is it that our understanding perceives
(beyond itself) only one of these attributes, viz., extension.
Spinoza's answer, as simplified by Mr. Pollock, is that " every
mode of every attribute other than thought has a several mind
or modification of thought to itself," so that " the modes of
thought " (i.e., in this connexion not minds, but sorts of mind,
called here by Spinoza infinite ideas) " are numerically equal
to the modes of all the other attributes together ". But Spinoza
says more than this : he says, and the consistency of his system
demands that he shall say, that these modes of thought other
than our mode or mind, and corresponding to other attributes
than extension, "have severally no connexion among them-
selves ". In other words, these various " modes of thought "
are as different and unconnected among themselves as the
disparate and self-complete attributes correlated with them ;
they are not related in the least as my thought to your thought ;
and their contents are unable, not only actually but essentially
unable, to exist in our mind, standing to it in a totally different
relation, e.g., from that held by the world of sound to a man
born deaf. 1 Are we then justified in calling them thought,
merely in order that esse may still verbally = percipi ? Our
thought, from its simplest to its most complex manifestations, is
a connected whole of a certain kind : to postulate something else
of another kind and call it thought, for the sake of accommodating
the unknowable with a possibility of being known, is merely to
shift the bugbear of unknowability from the object to the sub-
ject. The difficulty of saying with Mr. Spencer that an unknow-
able object exists, cannot be evaded by saying that the object in
1 It is perfectly true, as Mr. Pollock says, that " we can conceive, though
not imagine, relations of thought to other worlds, analogous to those which
we perceive between thought and extension ". Such another world of
unimaginable objects might be exemplified by the world of sound in
relation to the thought of the deaf man. But it seems to me even more
impossible to reduce what Spinoza has actually said to anything like this
than to make out that his explanation, were this its meaning, would be
consistent or adequate.
168
lonism.
question, unknowable to us, is knowable by a "knowledge" which
has no relation to what we call knowledge, by that therefore
of which all we have a right to say is that it does not know.
Even Mr. Pollock seems to consider " an intelligence other than
ours" (p. 167), and "consciousness not analogous to human
consciousness " (p. 352), as legitimate expressions : but that they
should seem legitimate in the sense which Spinoza's theory
demands is simply owing to an ambiguity of language. We
are familiar with the idea of an intelligence similar to but
indefinitely transcending our own in power and knowledge:
percipi may be quite fairly translated "possibility of being
known and perceived," in a way which allows the North Pole,
or even the molecular movements in the centre of Sirius, to be
included in it just as much as the paper I am writing on. But
the sense is totally changed if the supposed " possibility '' is not
just an increase in the content and scope of those affections
which we call perceiving and knowing, but involves the assump-
tion of affections, still called perceiving and knowing, which
have no relation to our affections ; and only through this tacit
passage from an intelligence other than ours in the sense that
Newton's was other than mine, to a verbal figment which pro-
fesses to retain in some way the substance of knowing while
dispensing with all its predicates, is it possible to claim for
Spinoza the credit of discarding the unknowable. Such an
abuse of words would be quite parallel to the familiar moral
fallacy of calling God good, while refusing to apply to his sup-
posed actions and purposes the criteria through which alone the
idea of goodness has been established.
So much, then, for the relation of Spinoza to his putative
metaphysical offspring ; as regards which, so far as I may have
differed from Mr. Pollock, I have done so by the aid of his own
admirably candid and lucid exposition. As regards the more
general question of the scientific character of Monism, as repre-
sented in Spinoza, I feel that the difference lies deeper. Mr.
Pollock's treatment of this topic seems to me, indeed, almost
the only real blemish in his brilliant work ; and the same
remark applies to the review of that work by one, at least, of
its ablest critics, Mr. Leslie Stephen. Mr. Pollock sums up
his account of Spinoza's monistic theory, in its bearings on the
problem of the connexion of brain and mind, as follows :
" Not that his metaphysical principles are in themselves unable to fur-
nish means of dealing with the problem : on the contrary they very much
simplify it. The puzzle of sensation, when considered in the usual way, is
that there is a relation between the heterogeneous terms of consciousness
and motion. Something happens in my optic nerves, physiology may or
may not be able to say exactly what, and thereupon I see. Can my sensa-
tion of sight be said to resemble the thing seen, or the images on my two
Monism. 169
retina?, or the motions in. the optic nerves, arid if so, in what sense ? These
questions are essentially insoluble on the common supposition that body
and mind are distinct substances or orders in nature. If body and mind
are really the same thing, the knot is cut, or rather vanishes. The problem
of making a connexion between the inner and the outer series of phenomena
becomes a purely scientific one. It is no longer a metaphysical paradox, but
the combination of two methods of observing the same facts, or facts be-
longing to the same order ; and the science of physiological psychology can
justify itself on philosophical grounds, besides making good its claims by
the practical test of results." On Spinoza's principles, he says, " to ask why
mind should correspond with matter is like asking why the convexity of a
curve should answer to the concavity ".
On which Mr. Stephen remarks :
" If Spinoza's way of putting this is not satisfactory, . . , he grasps the
true difficulty and understands the conditions of a satisfactory answer " ; and
adds, "He strikingly anticipated the general tendency of modern thought
in regard to a problem which we must admit to be still unsolved. . . .
Till language has been brought into conformity with philosophic thought,
all attempts to express the undiluted truth must be more or less failures."
Such language seems to confound the aims, methods, and
possibilities of science with those of metaphysics. The unity and
continuity of nature, which it was Spinoza's great merit to have
grasped, is a unity and continuity of things in my consciousness,
objective facts, in the ever-advancing knowledge of the relations
of which, the conception of unity and continuity is ever becom-
ing more full and complete. But if I had been placed in chaos,
with powers the same in kind as I actually possess, (i.e., the
power of knowing an objective order,) but infinitely increased in
degree, so that I could have deduced the whole chain of evolu-
O '
tion down to the formation of brains, I could have had not the
faintest prophetic inkling of the dawn and development of any
consciousness external to my own. If at this moment I knew in-
timately every idea and feeling of every mind in existence, and
every inmost and minutest nervous process which accompanied
each, my knowledge of the infinite number of facts in which the
parallelism was displayed would not go a single step towards
establishing for my mind a unity or continuity between what I can
or might perceive, the nervous processes in other people's brains,
and what I can never perceive, the accompanying feelings in other
people's minds : or, to put it more generally, if such minute
knowledge became universal, it would not go a step towards
establishing a unity or continuity between physical facts, per-
ception of which can be shared with all the world, and psychical
facts which are essentially unshareable. Even putting other
minds aside, the sole imaginary case in which I could get unity
between my own perceptions and my own brain-movements,
would be the barren one of watching the actual brain-movements
12
170
Monism.
that accompanied the act in which they themselves were
watched.
The issue is really so simple that an attempt to show that the
problem is solved or ultimately soluble is liable to suspicion just
in proportion as it is complicated and hard to follow. No con-
ceivable process or progress of thought can get behind the fact
that whether two things, known as distinct, (such as brain-
movement on the one hand and any other fact, objective or
ejective, on the other) can be further known to be sides or
aspects of one thing, depends on whether the knower's position
relatively to them can be altered. And in the present case, the
multiplication of these pairs of distinct though correlated facts,
is not such as brings with it any possibility of that alteration of
conditions which is so prime a factor of our experimental know-
ledge : it is a mere blank and unmodifiable parallelism of lines
whose parallelism and consequent inability to meet is their sole
knowable relation. The difficulty therefore is not met but
masked by the convenient words aspects and sides ; since these
receive their only meaning from their application to perceived
objects, with regard to which position can be altered and condi-
tions variously modified. And the curve simile, so far from
being helpful or approximative, is radically delusive. For if we
take a concrete case, where it is possible to regard the convexity
and concavity of a curve as two distinct but corresponding
things, e.g., the surface of a rounded body accurately enclosed in
a removable covering, the convexity and concavity present the
closest resemblance in several respects : thus the arcs subtending
their corresponding portions are identical, and the gradation of
curvature of each at each corresponding point is identical. This
illustration therefore, and any analogous one, must necessarily
suggest just that essential resemblance of the corresponding
terms, the entire absence of which is the distinguishing charac-
teristic of the case supposed to be illustrated.
Yet it seems, according to Mr. Pollock, that one need only
state body and mind to be the same thing, or aspects of the same
thing, to have the right to consider that the problem has become
practical instead of theoretic, and that the registration, not the
existence, of the correspondences of brain and mind is henceforth
the only thing we need exercise ourselves about. A problem is
doubtless simplified by ignoring all that makes it problematic.
The assumption of that which we can never know may leave us
with delightfully unpuzzled minds for recording that which we
have never doubted : but that is the only sense in which it
could " furnish means of dealing " with anything. If then, in
saying that "physiological psychology can justify itself on philo-
sophical grounds," Mr. Pollock means that the accurate observa-
Monism. 171
tion of the synchronous changes of nerve-matter and conscious-
ness is more justified as an intelligent pursuit by a " philo-
sophical " and improvable assumption put behind it, we reply
that it stands as little in need of any such justification as the
study of chemistry or botany; if he means that attention to that
branch of experience justifies itself as tending to confirm a
monistic solution of the philosophical difficulty, we reply that
experience of two orders can never come any nearer to being
experience of one. If in saying that Spinoza " understands the
conditions of a satisfactory answer," that "the problem is still
unsolved," and that the truth cannot be expressed " till
language has been brought into conformity with philosophic
thought," Mr. Stephen means that the difficulty is being gradu-
ally sapped, that the problem is one admitting of approximative
solutions, he surely fails to recognise that all materials for
approximative solutions are wanting ; that the riddle is not one
in respect of which facts can be discovered and evidence
amassed, but remains perfectly isolated and ultimate, without a
single avenue leading to it or from it. For psychological obser-
vation, for tracing the evolution of consciousness on the one hand
and of the physical organism on the other, ample materials
exist : but psychology and evolution, if every fact relating to
both were at this moment known, would not bring us an inch
nearer to adjusting the claims of Monism and Dualism. Spinoza
failed, not because he was the rough-hewer of a comprehensive
idea which needed the labours of many other workers for its
perfect elaboration, but because his idea contained no sort of
workable stuff. To extol his metaphysical position as an exten-
sion of the view of the unity of nature, is to extol it for precisely
that wherein its weakness is manifested, the effort namely to
get from a doctrine whose whole force lies in experience a
momentum which should carry it beyond the confines of
experience.
It may be noted, moreover, in passing, that Mr. Pollock seems
to make rather too much of his text, both as to the extent of the
discoverable connexions between physiology and psychology,
and as to the bearings of those connexions on the latter science.
A propos of Spinoza's firm grasp of a parallelism of complexity
between body (Spinoza would now doubtless have said brain)
and mind, he remarks that " there could not be a more distinct
or positive declaration of the necessity that psychology, if it is
to be a serious branch of scientific inquiry, shall go hand in
hand with physiology, and verify its results, as far as possible,
by physiological observation ". It seems to me that Spinoza's
own case is enough to refute the view as thus stated ; for his
numerous and admirable psychological observations certainly
.72
lomsm.
demanded no physiological knowledge. A firm grasp of the
general fact of the invariable correspondence between nervous
and mental processes means something quite different from
imagining that we know or ever can know the parallelism in
detail, or that in this sense the studies of the two sets of things
can " go hand in hand ". Did every step in psychology depend
on exact knowledge of physiological counterparts, psychology
might have waited for ever: fortunately, however, there is
nothing to prevent its being made an exact study on its own
account, a possibility which we might safely affirm even were
it not in course of being rapidly realised. Our knowledge of
the physiological counterparts, on the other hand, is, and seems
destined to remain, of a comparatively rough and rudimentary
sort. The gist of the matter lies in ultimate nervous processes
which are of course utterly beyond our reach ; but putting
molecular motions aside, the broadest facts, the most elementary
functions of the various parts of the cerebrum and the part
played by them in connexion with the simplest perceptions and
volitions, are still matters of dispute ; while even the most
general physiological translations of psychological laws (e.g.,
the limiting and differentiation of areas of nervous discharge,
corresponding to increasing defmiteness of perception), are
rather reasonable hypotheses than results of experiment. Nor
do I see how such principles, however interesting as matters of
knowledge, can be truly said to " verify " or in any way affect
the psychological facts which must necessarily be observed
quite independently.
I am, of course, not charging either Mr. Pollock or Mr.
Stephen with imagining Spinoza's form of Monism to be demon-
strable or even probable : but they both seem to regard his at-
tempt as in the right line, as containing a germ likely to fructify,
and parallel with the ideas which draw ever fresh certainty and
vitality from fresh experience. They both seem to class Monism
as one of the instances a Triton among the minnows, of course,
but still belonging in kind to the instances in which the unity
of nature, if not yet absolutely established, at any rate ought to
commend itself as a scientific truth to persons with clear heads
and a sense of analogy : and they thus look on Spinoza's theory,
however faulty in detail, as corresponding ' to the general tend-
ency of modern scientific thought. I should have said, on the
other hand, that modern scientific thought, in its cruder forms,
had simply ignored metaphysics ; and in its more intelligent
forms, had clearly recognised that the radical distinction between
brain and mind can as little be bridged over by the multiplica-
tion of correspondences as by the bold assumption of a common
substance. And as among monistic systems Spinozism has
M. fienouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 173
no superiority in the way of connexion, so neither has it any
superiority in the way of compatibility, with the teachings of
science. Pure Idealists and pure Phenomenalists may accept
those teachings to the full ; and if they leave the brain-and-mind
riddle unanswered, it may be because they perceive " the con-
ditions of a satisfactory answer " to be unattainable. So little
is a " unity of nature " in metaphysical tendencies a scientific
postulate. Indeed the only hope, a forlorn one as I have tried
to show, of establishing a special claim for Spinoza seems to lie,
after all, in definitely connecting him with the mind-stuff
theory ; which has a truly scientific character in its emphatic
recognition of the essential distinction of object and eject, and
of brain as the object at the centre of the difficulty ; and which
at any rate is remarkable as being at present the one form of
Monism, dealing explicitly with brain as well as thought, which
possibly might be claimed as answering to the prophecies hinted
by Mr. Stephen, or as justifying us in feeling with Mr. Pollock
that the time-honoured crux is henceforward reduced to scien-
tific questions of physiological psychology. I was surprised
therefore to find no more explicit mention of Clifford's attempt
in that recent treatment of the monistic position in juxta-
position with which I have here presented it : for it at all
events professes to do that to the doing of which Spinoza has
been represented as pointing the way. But on the one hand,
the questions with regard to it which have been here raised
seem to need answering ; and on the other hand, the fact
(if it should so turn out) that they indicate flaws, is not more
suggestive of the hopelessness of dogmatic Monism, than the
consideration that this latest and most scientific form of it might
really be equally claimed as a theory of Dualism ; the admission
of absolute existences below the level of consciousness seeming,
as we saw, to reintroduce the old duality of knowable and
unknowable under cover of the so-called mind-substance.
EDMUND GURNEY.
II M. KENOUVIER'S PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY.
1 )URING the Hegeliao supremacy, it is said, the great question
decisive of every man's position was Are you Ontologist or
Psychologist ? The great corresponding question at present is
Are you Philosopher or Scientist, are you Metaphysician or
Empiricist ? The importance of M. Eenouvier's system is, that
it is a thorough-going system of Phenomenism, and yet is philo-
sophical, larger than science, and metaphysical in that sense of
174
M. Renouvier's Philosophy r . Psychology.
the term in which it is opposed at once to ontology and to em-
piricism. This was sufficiently shown in my former article
(MiND XXI.), which carried us to the end of the Logic, the first
of M. Eenouvier's two fundamental works. We have now to
deal with the second, the Psychology}-
After the analysis of the phenomena of consciousness for
themselves, given in the Logic, comes naturally the examination
of them in the living concrete form in which we experience them,
namely, so grouped as to form the functions of conscious beings ;
and this examination is Psychology, which is the complement of
the Logic, and that in two ways. First, the divisions of the
Psychology are given by the categories of the Logic, the functions
of conscious beings demarcated by the fundamental distinctions
of the phenomena of consciousness. And secondly, Psychology
is the first and most general of that group of philosophical
sciences which the Logic concluded by establishing, sciences
seated, as it were, astride the frontier of the seen and unseen
worlds, and, in virtue of that double character, dealing with
probabilities and beliefs suggested by man's moral and intellec-
tual nature.
The Psychology accordingly falls into three Parts. The first
coincides most closely with what is commonly understood by
psychology, the examination of the functions of conscious living
beings ; the second treats of the problem of Certitude, and forms
the bridge to the third and last, which examines Kant's three
great problems, Immortality, Liberty, and God.
" We will treat successively the universal data of human nature in rela-
tion to the different functions of consciousness in which they make their
appearance, and for this purpose we will follow the guiding thread of the
categories, going from the simplest and most abstract to the most complex,
which are the most real. We shall next be able to treat the question of
certitude, and then the nature and arrangement of the sciences. After
which, returning to our most general object, we shall extend our view to
the probable sphere open to man's development in the world, and to the
physical and moral laws which govern his destiny." (I. 10.)
The passage from the Logic to the Psychology is formed by
the consideration, that personality/ which is the last of the nine
Categories, is implied, in the concrete, as the condition of all the
rest. The Logic gave us, in order of ascending complexity,
the nine categories of Eelation, Number, Position, Succession,
Quality, Becoming, Causality, Final-causation, and Personality.
When we turn to their concrete realisation in experience, we
must begin with the last, since it is only in the representations
of some given personal consciousness that the phenomena of
this and all the categories are known to us.
1 Traite'de Psychologic Pationnelle. 2nd edition, 3 vols. Paris, 1875
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 1 , "
" Man, then, is a certain centre, a meeting point, of the categories, be-
cause they are, in him, the laws comprehending (enveloppantes) all that he
knows or can know, and, from another point of view, because they compre-
hend him also by gathering together to form that eminently complex and
special compound, which is the union of his body and his person." (I. 4.)
If we consider man under those relations only which belong
to the categories of number, position, succession, change, with
certain inherent qualities, but abstracting from sensibility, we
get, as our object, man physical and organic. And this is the
first division of the subject. (I. y.)
If to these categories we join that of personality, in a given
consciousness, and as a centre of experience, we have man sensi-
tive, a something opposed to phenomena other than himself.
This is the second division of the subject, fib.)
Now Causality and Final-causation are inseparably attached
to Personality ; and accordingly the addition of these gives us
the final divisions of the subject :
" When in man, as a being self-represented to self, we envisage particu-
larly act and cause conscious of itself, we get the will : man is will. When
we envisage tendency and purposed end, we get emotion ( passion) : man is
emotion. When we envisage any of the personal functions as it were re-
flected by a kind of reduplication of consciousness, we get understanding
and reason : man is intelligence. (I. 6.)
Supplementing this rough classification, taken from the first
preliminary chapter, with later statements, we find the place of
intelligence, which is here left somewhat uncertain, much more
definitely marked. Eeflective consciousness is the central point
of the whole classification of functions, and divides them into
two parts, a lower and an upper portion, the lower including (1)
man physical and organic, (2) man as sensibility, in connexion
with which are treated the laws of association, (3) man as in-
telligence, including reason, use of symbols or signs, and language.
The upper portion contains (4) reflective consciousness, (5) man
as emotion (passion), (6) man as will ; and the treatment of
these subjects is followed by chapters on the decline or degrada-
tion of consciousness, on the relation between the higher and
lower functions, on the relation between emotion and conscious-
ness, and on the question of liberty, which concludes the first
Part of the work.
Eeflective consciousness, then, is the centre of the whole.
At the beginning of the chapter which treats of it, we read as
follows :
" The divisions which I have hitherto brought forward bear on laws
which, while combined in man under the law of consciousness, are yet
essentially characteristic of the not-self : relation, number, position, suc-
cession, becoming, quality. The functions which depend on these cate-
gories, namely, comparison, numeration, imagination, memory, trains of
176
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
thought, reason, have a common character, which is that of subordination
of the representing to the represented element in the representations. From
this point of view we may call them by a common name, that of intelli-
gence." (I. 215.)
Intelligence, then, when not incorporated with reflection, but
considered per se, comes in last and highest of the lower functions
of man, the higher being constituted by reflection and intelli-
gence in union with emotion and volition.
" The sequel of the inquiry, enabling us to define the nature and bear-
ing of the facts of emotion and force " [will] " in man, will show in what
sense, and up to what point, the affective principle and the volitional prin-
ciple are to be distinguished from one another and from intelligence.
Admit these elements as logically irreducible, as our analysis of the cate-
gories has already shown, in a general way, that they are, and man will
appear to us, from this point onwards, as a synthesis of three forms essential
to the existence and laws of consciousness and its variations. To these we
must join the forms of sensibility, a fourth necessary condition, inherent as
a general rule in the production of phenomena of experience under the
laws of extension, and united in human nature with the different organic
and physical functions which make part of these phenomena." (I. 217.)
Appended to the first preliminary chapter are some " Observa-
tions," in which with equal force and subtilty M. Eenouvier both
expounds his own position and distinguishes it from that of two
opposite psychological schools, opposite to him, and also to each
other, and justifies its title of Rational Psychology. His own
words will best explain his scope :
" The foregoing chapter defines the nature of a rational psychology, such
as we can conceive it at the present day. Formerly this name designated
<i pretended science, founded on metaphysical a prioris, wherein people
flattered themselves that they demonstrated apodictically the existence and
the immortality of a separate soul. There men studied the faculties of the
soul, as so many mysterious entities joined to a main entity. But the
method which is really rational must fix its attention on psychical pheno-
mena and the investigation of their laws. The powers of the soul are then
nothing else than certain of these laws, that is to say, that series of pheno-
mena, definite in kind, are bound to evolve themselves in time, in such
manner as the laws express, under appropriate conditions." (I. 11.)
There we have his opposition to ontologlcal psychology.
" Rational Psychology may rightly be called also empirical psychology,
inasmuch as it moves by observation of the facts of consciousness. But it
does not allow that this observation of facts can be emancipated from the
principal laws constitutive of the observing mind. That which makes it
rational is, that it does not separate the psychical facts from the forms of
grouping them which are given in the categories." (I. 12.)
There we have his own middle position.
" There is a psychological doctrine which aims at absolute empiricism,
and would like to deduce, not merely state as facts, such laws as those of
space, time, and others not less irreducible. I have spoken of the associa-
M. Renouviers PJdlosophy. Psychologi/. 177
tionist school on nlany occasions in the Logic. As it is after all impossible
to undertake any mental analysis without supposing laws, or mental syn-
theses, previously given, the associationist school itself has necessarily taken
a law as point of departure. It has chosen the law of association, or con-
nexion and sequence of ideas, which appeared to it the most indispensable
of all ; and not Avishing to assume others, as it must have done if it had dis-
tinguished various modes of association or grouping, it has assumed that a
previous entirely empirical conjunction (rapprochement) and habit are the
sole agents of all connexion in observed phenomena. Now this is an
hypothesis for which the associationist school offers no direct justification,
and which is contrary to the conditions of thought actually observable, that
is to say, to the existence of laws inseparable from thought itself. It is
attempted to justify the hypothesis a posteriori, by deducing these laws, and
explaining tlieir original formation ; but then it is impossible to avoid
petitions of principle, as I have shown in my criticism of Stuart Mill and
Mr. Bain. But even with the aid of this illusory method the associationists
have not made their reduction complete, as their system requires thereto
do. For instance, time, memory, and in fine the mind itself, offer an in-
vincible resistance. Why it is so will be understood, if we reflect that the
question is to demonstrate the origin of the laws constitutive of the mind,
while basing the demonstration on connected phenomena, the connexion of
which is intelligible only in the form of those very laws ! " (I. 12, 13.)
There we have his opposition to the psychology of the asso-
ciationists ; and I do not know where the fundamental objection
to tlieir theory has been either more clearly stated or more
powerfully urged.
Having thus obtained a general view of M. Renouvier's posi-
tion, it is necessary before going farther, to inquire what is the
validity of his mode of transition from the Logic to the Psycho-
logy, which we have seen consists in this, that the object-matter
of the Psychology is the actual and concrete realisation, or ex-
emplification, of the abstract categories of the Logic. I seem to
myself to find a lacuna in M. Renouvier's theory here, which,
owing to the critical point at which it occurs, is a serious one.
It is this, that no account is given of the passage from the one
general system of categories, embracing consciousness and exis-
tence at large, to the particular individual conscious beings who
have partial and different perceptions of existence at large, and
are the objects of psychology. The lacuna (if it be one) is
covered from observation by an ambiguous phrase in the second
sentence of the book :
" The categories are the general laws of representation. The only re-
presentation of which we can speak with assurance is the human. It is in
it that the categories are given to us, as is also the matter of experience.
The categories posit the forms of this matter, the rules of this experience."
<I. 1.)
To call the categories laws of human representation is true so
far as kind goes ; When we speak of representation we mean
178
M. Eenouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
is enough for general
such representation as man's ; and that
logic or metaphysic. But it does not necessarily imply a
plurality of particular conscious beings. This is a fact which
must be accounted for separately. A single universal conscious-
ness would equally satisfy the requirement of being a realisation
of the categories, and would equally be a human consciousness,
though on a vast scale. We suddenly find ourselves, on opening
the Psychology, in presence of individual particular conscious-
nesses ; we have before us " a given consciousness, with a certain
content of experience, the elements of which it combines " (I. 5),.
one consciousness generalised and representing all ; and yet no
account is given of how this plurality comes into the field.
That surely is a lacuna.
It would be no answer to say, that plurality is found in the
categories. So likewise are quality, number, limitation, &c., in
short all the forms which are requisite for understanding objects
when once they are given in perception or imagination. The
question is, how there come to be more conscious centres of the
categories than one ; more realisations of them than one sub-
jectively, when there is but one world represented objectively ?
The categories may perhaps be conceived as necessarily bound
up with a living, personal, representing being. But what is
there to show that this being is not an Absolute Mind ?
There is only one way, in my opinion, of meeting this diffi-
culty, and that is by avowing it ; only one way of filling the
lacuna, and that is by placing there a distinction, the distinction
between nature and history, justifying it by metaphysical
analysis. We then, at this point, frankly leave philosophy and
enter upon science (though always under guidance of philoso-
phical distinctions), in entering upon the subject of psychology.
Unless we make this avowal, and draw this (or some equivalent)
distinction, we shall inevitably find ourselves treating the notions
of things as if they were the things themselves, and making
those notions (in this instance the categories) into efficient con-
ditions of the existence of the things. We shall have an a
priori psychology founded on metaphysical laws, a psychology
which would be inadmissible as science, even though the laws
were true in metaphysic, which is not wholly the case with the
categories, as I have in some measure shown in my former
article.
M. Eenouvier does not, in my opinion, escape this almost
inevitable consequence ; and it is shown by his application of the
categories to determine the functions of consciousness in psycho-
logy. He lays great stress on this application. In speaking of
the methods of psychology, in his chapter on reflective conscious-
ness, he says :
M. Renoumer's Philosophy. Psychology.
" I have applied to the first categories this method of classification which
I am surprised to find is new. Eeaders can judge whether it gives results
unconstrained and well co-ordinated. It would not have escaped Kant,
had it not been for the singular pre-occupation of mind which led that
great man to admit the data of ordinary psychology at the very moment
when he was aiming at subjecting the whole content of the mind to criti-
cism. He believed he could obtain the categories by deduction, not per-
ceiving that, in order to avoid positing as a priori facts those notions upon
which all other notions depend, he was accepting other notions which had
nothing but authority in their favour, and even the definition of which was
extremely imperfect." (I. 214.)
Kant, I imagine, saw what M. Eenouvier does not see, that over
and above the forms in which consciousness worked, among
which are the categories, there must be something working in
those forms. The forms are one thing, the worker another ; and
the worker cannot be resolved into the forms alone, but is some-
thing concrete or empirical, a compound of form and matter.
Again, even supposing M. Eenouvier's categories to be the true
ultimate forms of thought, they yet give no reason why some
are applicable to particular cases, and others not. Granting
they are applicable to the course of nature, still they give no
explanation why that course takes its actual windings under
them. There is a particular stream of events, the history of the
world, to be accounted for. Causation of one thing by another
is what science has to investigate, not the general applicability
of forms of thought to all things.
The old psychology, rightly abandoned by M. Eenouvier, saw
this also. The soul and its faculties were efficient causes. The
soul furnished at any rate a professing explanation of how con-
sciousness arose in certain particular beings. The consciousness
with which psychology deals is consciousness defined by its
time, place, and conditions of existence, that is to say, in con-
nexion with its organism. But the consciousness with which
metaphysic and M. Eenouvier's Logic deal, is consciousness de-
fined by the objective world which is its counterpart and con-
tent. Without some theory of causation, that is, of the condi-
tioning of particular things by one another, in order to their
coming into or departure out of existence, psychology is no,
science at all, but a mere reflex of metaphysic. Causation is the
feature which distinguishes psychology, as the first of the
sciences, from metaphysic the condition of them all. If on the
other hand we assume causation from the first, and begin with
the facts of consciousness grouped as they are grouped in psycho-
logy, then we get no metaphysic at all, no philosophy properly
speaking, but merely a generalisation of psychological laws : we
get, not what M. Eenouvier professes to give us, a Psychology
based on General Logic, but a General Logic based on Psychology.
180
M. Renouviers Philosophy. Psychology.
I am not charging M. Renouvier with ignoring this difference ;
he himself remarks at one place : " The knowledge of causes,
such as is within our reach, is without value for philosophy ".
(I. 26.) Still less am I charging him with excluding cause from
psychology, which he certainly does not, as will be evident from
the very next point which falls to be considered. But my ob-
jection is, that he has nothing in his theory corresponding to
these admitted facts, and that I call a lacuna.
At length then we may take M. Eenouvier to be fairly
launched. The transition from the Logic being accomplished,
the Psychology begins. Here the first question which occurs,
in the case of a psychologist who gives up as untenable the
notion of a soul as entity, is this, how he replaces it. Re-
placing the soul and its faculties by phenomenal states of con-
sciousness, what is the relation in which he conceives these to
stand to the organism ? The soul and its faculties were regarded
as exercising a real causative agency ; does he conceive the states
of consciousness, which he now makes the object of psychology
in. their stead, as doing so too ? Does consciousness re-act on
the organism ? Is a state of consciousness ever a necessary
link in the chain of events intervening between an impression
received by the brain and the movement fin nerve or muscle)
which follows it ? Or, on the contrary, does he conceive that
the states of consciousness, exercising no re-action, are never
links in such a chain, but are merely the accompaniments and
the evidence of processes in the organism which are physical
in their whole extent, so far as their causation is concerned,
notwithstanding that they are knowable and nameable only by
means of their conscious accompaniments, as actions for instinc-
tive or desired ends ?
M. Renouvier leaves us in no doubt of his view on these
points :
" The facts of consciousness prove that there exists also a commencement
and a term of phenomena in representations as representative. Between
the action and re-action of the substantialist (materialist) school, there
interposes (in a whole order of cases) a fact which physics and biology
cannot lay hold of in their special order of observation, with their methods
and instruments, a fact which 011 the other hand they cannot deny, con-
sciousness itself. Sensibility properly so called and the emotions are not
terms in the series of the centripetal and centrifugal modifications given in
the field of natural science, and nevertheless it is the case that they mark
the specific end of some of these modifications, and the origin of others.
The solution of continuity in respect of the kind of the phenomena is in-
evitable. And be it remarked, that I do not yet speak of the will." (I. 360-1.)
His theory is, that representations of certain higher kinds, as
distinguished from the innervations on which they depend, are
M. Renouvicrs Philosophy. Psychology. 181
necessary causal links in the sequences where they occur, con-
tributing to determine their issue ; and among these representa-
tions he does not include states of will. The will is a further
and deeper causal agency still, acting on and in representations,
which have, alone and independently of the will, a causal agency
upon the organism. The will may call up in the brain a
representation of a desired end, but it is the representation
which determines the movement to realise the end. Five
distinct cases of the agency of representations are enumer-
ated ; (1) instinctive movements with obscure consciousness of
them, and where the representation of the end may be either
clear or obscure ; (2) movements following emotions, where the
movements themselves are not foreseen or even represented at
the moment ; (3) similar movements following the imagination
of real objects ; (4) similar movements following the imagination
of objects regarded as merely possible ; (5) movements following
a volition. (I. 367-8.)
As to the will, in its relation to these determinations, we find
him saying at another place, after repeating the foregoing enu-
meration :
" The will can precede a great number of these facts of locomotion which
occur at other times without will ; and it precedes none of them which may
not in certain cases occur spontaneously. We know besides, and it is uni-
versally admitted, that a movement is never attributable to the will as such
(volonttf formelle), unless the imagination first envisages it, unless a certain
end -which consciousness proposes, consequently a certain emotion, stands
as its motive. On this simple view of the case we must conclude, it would
seem, that what we call the will is not, properly speaking, cause of loco-
motion, that there is ambiguity and bad logic in so taking it. Hence the
division of movements into voluntary and involuntary is without signifi-
cance for biology ; the real difference between them lies entirely in the
representations, one set of facts occurring in consequence of a consciousness
which fashions and fixes itself by setting some of its own states in opposi-
tion to others, and the other set of facts arising with an unreflected, or con-
fused, or obscure consciousness, or even one altogether unassignable,
whether of the movement itself or of its purpose." (I. 394.)
We see how clear and peremptory is M. Renouvier's rejection
of the alternative theory, that which, in psychology, denies
causality to consciousness altogether, and has been nicknamed
the " conscious-automaton " theory. He maintains, we have
seen, that in five different cases consciousness exercises a real
power, and impresses a new direction on the organism. The
next question is, at what precise point does this re-active agency
strike in ? Do all representations, as distinguished from pre-
sentations, exert it ? Is it a property of the pleasurable or
painful quality of the representations, so that those which are
pleasant cause a movement to retain or increase them, those
which are painful a movement to avoid them ? We have seen
182
]/. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
that volition does not furnish the demarcation, neither does the
emotional character of states of consciousness as distinguished
from the imaginative, nor the imaginative as distinguished from
the emotional, as we see from both kinds being included in the
five cases.
M. Renouvier's statements on this point are not pushed so far
as might be wished ; nevertheless his meaning is clear so far as
it goes. It is, that reflective consciousness, including volitional,
emotional, and intellectual functions, enables consciousness to re-
act on the organism. Below the point of reflection, we have the
inferior functions which belong properly to biology, above it the
superior functions which belong to psychology. This, then, is
the turning point of re-action, where the lower functions cease
solely to govern the higher, and the higher begin to re-act upon
the lower. But it will be remarked that this point is still left
vague, inasmuch as the functions of intellect, volition, and
emotion, are included in the moment of reflection which gives
the demarcation. It is rather a tract than a line which is given
as the frontier.
" When the being is envisaged at that degree of phenomenal evolution
where we have him as a complete organism with emotional and volitional
functions, a new and inverse order of causality takes effect ; observable, it
is true, only within the limits of the higher animality, but that is enough,
and the law which I put in evidence has just that significance. The func-
tions which are raised to the level of consciousness subordinate to them-
selves and govern, more and more, the inferior functions, and nature in
some sort changes her front. The study of the first order of development
belongs specially to biology. That of the inverse order is my subject ; and
my analysis, fixing on facts of consciousness, has to follow them up to the
precise point at which the organic phenomena begin, of which they are the
causes." (I. 357.)
The vagueness which I have just remarked seems to be a con-
sequence of M. Renouvier's method. He demarcates the functions
by his categories, as we have already seen, and this leads him
away from close analysis of the facts ; their grouping suffices
him. The categories are a real hindrance of analysis. They
make the functions for this practical purpose as obstructive as
if the operations which they describe were called by the old
name of faculties.
But this is not their only fault. When we ask how M.
Renouvier conceives the causal action of states of consciousness
upon the organism, or how he would describe, even in quite
general terms, the mode of its operation, a question which must
be asked and answered before we can conceive the action as a
reality, we get no reply whatever from him, any more than from
others ; all alike are in total darkness on the point. What we
get instead is a statement of the true way of conceiving the
J/. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 183
notion of causality ; and that is a very different thing. It is
true that,
" When the order of sequence of two acts is clearly perceived and de-
fined, e.g., from an organic to an emotional function, or reciprocally, we
may give the name of cause to antecedents of either kind, and that of effect
to the consequents. That is saying that a force is interposed between these
acts, in such a way that the one occurs when the other is given. But this
force is distinctly not a virtue which passes from one subject " [meaning
ens] " to another, to inform it, which is an unintelligible hypothesis ; neither
is it the immanent evolution of an unique subject and that subject's acts,
without anything new, original, and irreducible coming in ; but it is the
result of the harmonic unity of the phenomena included in development
(dans le devenir), or of a law above which we are totally unable to posit
anything intelligible ". (I. 353-4.)
In admitting, as I have admitted, that this last sentence is true,
I do not include M. Benouvier's interpretation of it, namely,
that his category of causality is the true expression of the
general term " harmonic unity ". We may use the term causation
for the relation of conditioning and conditioned. And if the
facts permitted, we might call a state of consciousness the cause
of a state of nerve, just as properly as vice versa. But the facts
do not permit it, and to this M. Renouvier, like so many others,
is blind. It is not enough to say, as he and others do, that we
do not know even in the most general way, how consciousness
depends on states, or movements, of organism, as if that was
sufficient to establish a parallel with our ignorance how states,
or movements, of organism can depend on consciousness. There
is this further fact, that we know organisms existing (apparently
at least) without consciousness ; but we have no knowledge of
states of consciousness floating free without organisms. Until
it is shown that there are, in the organism, states of conscious-
ness which are not dependent on innervation, the presumption is
in favour of subsequent states of consciousness depending, not on
prior states of consciousness, but on innervations underlying the
prior states of consciousness. Innervations are thus conceived
as conditioned and determined by innervations, and not by states
of consciousness ; and the states of consciousness which accom-
pany them are conceived as depending throughout, not on each
other, but on the sequence of the innervations. We can indeed
analyse the sequence of states of consciousness, and discover
their general laws, but the causation which determines them is
in the laws of the underlying innervations.
Take the case for example of a musical phrase being heard
and exciting the vocal organs to reproduce it. We dwell upon
the pleasure of the sounds, it is said, and the feeling of pleasure
alone accounts for our dwelling on them. We then try to sing
them, and here again the wisli to hear them repeated determines
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M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
the effort. Thirdly, we may succeed more or less in the repro-
duction, but here again the perception of the likeness or unlike-
ness of the sounds produced to those originally heard guides us
in the tentative efforts we make. It thus appears as if three
states of consciousness as such, a feeling, a wish, a perception,
are necessary conditions of our singing the phrase. But it is
forgotten that each of these states of consciousness has its under-
lying state of innervation. The presumption surely is, that the
innervation underlying the feeling of pleasure in the sounds
originally heard is different from, being a modification of, the
innervation underlying the mere perception of the sounds with-
out such pleasure. Its action upon the innervation of the vocal
organs must therefore likewise be different. So again the wish
to hear the sounds again has its own modification of innervation,
different from that of the mere pleasure of hearing, still more
different from that of the mere perception. The same may be
said of the third state of consciousness, the perception of the like-
ness or unlikeness which is said to guide our tentative efforts,
which, as combined with the pleasure and the wish, is different
from a mere perception of likeness and unlikeness. It may,
and indeed must, on this theory be held, that, if everything re-
mained the same in the innervation, and the consciousness alone
was suppressed, without altering the underlying modifications of
the innervation, then the musical phrase originally conveyed to
the ear would stimulate the vocal organs as before, and would
be reproduced by the organism just the same as when conscious-
ness accompanied its action.
If it is objected that this theory logically throws on the sole
shoulders of physical agency the enormous burden of accounting
for all the facts of evolution and design in nature, all the phen-
omena of vital, conscious, instinctive, and social development, I
think there needs be no hesitation in admitting it. It is
thorough-going materialism within the limits of science, lut not
beyond, and that is the important point for philosophy. Con-
sciousness is the final cause, the reXo?, of all matter. That con-
sciousness of a particular kind should arise in it, is the purpose
which it serves. Consciousness is also that out of which it
arose ; how we cannot construe to thought, because our ideas
of modes of causation are all derived from matter, and presuppose
its existence. It is only within a material world that real effi-
cient causation, meaning always by this phrase the phenomenal
conditioning of one thing by another, is scientifically intelligible.
Non-material causation is a cadre which we have no means of
filling up. But science may fairly hope some day to be able to
give the differentia of the various forces or modes of motion
characterised as mechanical, chemical, vital, and vital with con
M. Eenouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 185
sciousness, with the potentialities of which matter was endowed,
when it first rose as an island in the ocean of consciousness,
destined to contribute in some special manner to the develop-
ment of its matrix. Matter springs out of consciousness and
works towards consciousness again. Why, then, need we
hesitate to admit that its forces are by themselves competent to
the work which consciousness originally imposed upon them ?
I dwell on this point at great but I hope not tedious length,
because it is the first and most essential point to be determined
by any psychologist who rejects the " entity " theory of soul.
Psychology being a science, aiming at establishing causal de-
pendences, and not merely like metaphysic, or M. Renouvier's
General Logic, at subjective analysis of consciousness, where,
it must be demanded of the psychologist, where does he place
his real nexus of causation ? In the states of consciousness ? or
in the innervation ? or now in one, now in the other ? or in both
at once ? If now in one, now in the other, or in both at once,
then what sort of nexus is it imagined to be ? We know the
sort of nexus in innervation ; we know what is supposed to be
the nexus in the " faculties " of the entity ; but a mixture of
both is unintelligible, and a causal nexus between states of con-
sciousness, as such, derives all its plausibility from supposed
mental forces underlying the phenomenal states of consciousness.
Several psychologists of the empirical school have thought
it possible to psychologise without a prior hypothesis on this
> fundamental question. They have thought it feasible to leave
the agent or Subject in the state of an unknown something, an x
so to speak ; to have their thoughts a chaos on the point; to
have no opinion as to where the real causative nexus in con-
sciousness lies. They are content with registering and classify-
ing the facts. If this course were strictly and consistently
adhered to, psychology would establish no other than merely
empirical laws, as they are called ; that is, general facts not re-
ferred to the causal nexus which groups them, like Kepler's laws
until connected with the law of gravitation, or like nominal in
contrast to real definition.
When more than this is aimed at, yet without a prior hypo-
thesis as to the causative agency, the result is merely to substi-
tute final for efficient cause at the critical moment. When, for
instance, we say that a sense of pleasure stimulates action by
which we retain it and dwell on it, as when an agreeable warmth
prompts a movement towards the hearth, the pleasurable sen-
sation which is put forward as a real link in the chain of events,
and therefore in the character of an efficient cause in action and
re-action with states of innervation, is really a final cause, not
an efficient one. That is to say, it renders intelligible to us, the
13
186
M. Eenouvier's Philosophy, Psychology.
spectators, the action of movement towards the hearth, by
making it look reasonable; but it gives no account of how
pleasurable sensation acts efficiently on nerve. It is not pre-
tended that it is a final cause to the agent, for it is precisely
in spontaneous actions, actions below volition, that it is brought
forward as an explanation. What is a final cause to spectators is
put forward as an efficient cause to the agent. On this subreption
of final cause, in the place of efficient, a very large part of
empirical psychology at the present day depends. Empirical
psychologists who are not " conscious automatists " are in the
dilemma of either going back to the " soul and its faculties," or
else of building their science on " final causes ".
We shall now understand M. Eenouvier's position. It is a
far better one than that of those empirical psychologists I have
spoken of. He boldly adopts final causes as efficient in adopting
the categories. A category of final cause means final cause as an
ultimate and irreducible law of thought, constitutive of the uni-
verse. After that, there is no difficulty, if consciousness does
not appear always as efficient, as, e.g., in volition, still its action
can be subsumed under the case of reasonable actions for ends,
as they appear to spectators ; spectators can bring them under
the category ; and the category admits no further question. His
theory is sufficient, consistent, intrepid, and illusory. That of
the empirical psychologists is illusory only.
I now come to a point introductory to M. Renouvier's theory
of volition, 1 mean his view of what are called the laws of associ-
ation. Here again there is a certain similarity, and at the same
time a difference, between his views and those of the associa-
tionists. The similarity lies in the method, the difference in the
result. Like them, M. Eenouvier does not see the advantage,
perhaps I might say the necessity, of strictly distinguishing the
spontaneous action of the conscious being from his action as
governed either by sensation from without or by volition from
within. He does not ask in what ways it is the tendency of the
conscious being to act, when left solely to his own prompt-
ings, isolated, at any given moment, from further influence of
the external world, and previous to the arising of volition in
consequence of the train of thoughts and feelings which then
spontaneously occur to him. If any specific laws of this spon-
taneous action (spontaneous redintegration, as I have termed it,
from Sir W. Hamilton's establishment of redintegration as its
primary law) could be discovered, it would lead us into the very
heart of the conscious agent's nature. But as the question is
usually treated, and as it is treated by M. Renouvier, the very
possibility of there being any spontaneous tendencies in redinte-
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 187
gration is ignored, inasmuch as the distinction and isolation of
the state to be examined is neglected.
Contiguity and similarity, which are commonly assigned as
the laws of association, have yet to make good their claim to be
laws of spontaneous redintegration. If they were the only laws
of association, they would be incompatible with any theory but
the tabula rasa theory of the mind, inasmuch as they express
solely the influence exerted on the mind by experience. The
difference, therefore, between M. Eenouvier and the association-
ists, from this point of view, is not an important one ; for he
includes all the laws of association under the one word habit,
notwithstanding that this term covers with him a very different
content from theirs, and first and foremost the categories them-
selves. (I. 130.) The mechanism of the mind itself together
with its experience is what M. Eenouvier means by habit, his
objection to the associationists being this that they make this
mechanism the product of experience alone. (I. 243, Obs.)
His view is briefly this :
" When the train of thought has not its immediate origin in the functions
of consciousness guided by emotion or by will, it is from habit that it
results ; and this case is very common, as much for man as for animals.
But I shall treat elsewhere of the law of habit. Here it is enough to lay
down as a fact, that thought reproduces itself, by a spontaneous movement,
in that order, whatever it be, which is once given or repeated, though
primitively due either to experience, or emotion, or reflection, or will."
(I. 132-3.)
Association of ideas thus belongs, r according to M. Eenouvier,
to the lower group of functions, though receiving acquisitions
from the higher, and is entirely dependent on habit, whatever
may be the source of the ideas associated, the re-active power of
the mind beginning only with reflection, emotion, and will. He
denies what seems to me a real initiative taken by conscious
agents at the point of spontaneous redintegration, but makes up
for this denial, as we shall presently see, by placing an initiative
of a very different kind at another point, namely, at the moment
of conscious volition.
At length we reach M. Eenouvier's theory of will and emotion,
which leads directly to his theory of liberty, the central doctrine
of the whole book, being the chief foundation of Certitude. The
theory of will constitutes the psychological basis of that of
liberty, its other basis consisting in certain metaphysical or logi-
cal conceptions. The two functions of will and emotion (by
which latter word I throughout this article translate M. Eenou-
vier's passion) are defined respectively by the categories of
causation and final-causation. As to emotion :
188
M. Eenouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
" Every emotion exists on condition of an end proposed ; and with the
ends the emotions vary, as sensations vary with their causes.
The ends being laid down in consciousness itself, which cannot be said
the causes of sensations, analysis can base the nomenclature of the emotions
on that of their ends." (I. 250.)
The will has a separate basis and a separate existence from
emotion :
" When we look at the function of will directly, and define it by the
category of force or causality, which binds facts by subjecting them to a
law of constant sequence, we see nothing in it which necessarily implies
attraction or preference or pleasurable feeling of any kind. Following
this route which is beyond suspicion (irrdprochable), it is difficult to compre-
hend so many philosophers identifying will with desire. Envisage this
latter emotion by itself, it will appear no less distinct. It is enough to
remark, that desire may arise for an object of which we do not know
whether it be realisable, and that it may continue without being followed
by any effect either external or in consciousness only. In contrast to this,
the name of will has never been given but to representations joined to the
effort of an act which aims at realising an object internal or external, and
followed by those consequences of the act which nature permits. If it
were not so, would all men clearly understand that we can desire involun-
tarily, and can will without desiring ; and can we deny that they do so
understand ? " (I. 226-7.)
I for one deny it unhesitatingly, in the sense in which desire
and will are used in this passage, though there is a vague sense
in which it is undeniable. When in common parlance we speak
of willing without desiring, we mean willing what is not
pleasant except as it is desirable to do a painful duty or deny
ourselves a gratification. And besides, if more than this was
meant by common parlance, it would cut the ground from M.
Kenouvier's description of the will as " representations joined to
the effort of an act which aims at realising an object internal or
external". To aim at realising anything involves desiring its
realisation.
Lingering a little on this description of the will, let us ask
at what point of the phrase just quoted M. Eenouvier finds its
real characteristic. The name of will is clearly given to repre-
sentations of a certain kind. But are they representations of an
act which aims at realising something ? Or are they representa-
tions of the abstract effort involved in such acts ? It cannot be
the first, for that would take the will out of dependence on the
category of causality, and make it depend on that of final causa-
tion, by involving a final cause in the definition of will. It
must therefore be abstract effort that M. Eenouvier identifies
with will, supposing him to accept this description as true ; and
abstract effort, with its existence guaranteed by a category of
thought, is an abstract " entity," if ever there was one.
How there can be will without desire is, I must confess, to
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 189
me inconceivable. True; the element of effort is distinguishable
in all such cases of desire as are also cases of will ; you can have
desire without that effort, but you cannot have the effort without
desire ; effort is an element in the total which cannot exist
separately. It cannot be defined but by the end which the total
state of consciousness aims at, that is, either objectively by the
object desired, or subjectively by the gratification of the desire.
As a phenomenist M. Eenouvier ought to hold, that the effort
in volition is what it is knoivn as. Now it is known only as
feeling. But M. Eenouvier bases it on the category of causality,
an irreducible law of thought, and therefore he assigns to it, as
he logically must, a reality corresponding to the law, quite
irrespective of the phenomenal feeling, the sense of effort in
volition.
Let us now turn to the formal definition which M. Eenouvier
gives of volition, and of will as the general term embracing the
particular acts, in the chapter entitled " Man as will, or auto-
motive representation ". He begins by premising as a truth of
experience, " an appearance but an incontestable one," that
" In the course of the representations which group themselves or form
sequences, constituting what we are when we think we have the direction
of ourselves, we especially identify our consciousness with that representa-
tion which at each moment seems to come up (seproduire) without previous
efficient cause, that is to say, which seems first to cause itself, then to de-
termine the other representations." (I. 296-7.)
After enlarging on facts of this kind comes the formal defini-
tion :
" I understand by volition the character of an act of consciousness which
represents itself, not as simply given, but as being able, or having been able,
to be, or not to be, aroused or continued, without any other apparent
change than that which is connected with the representation itself in its
summoning or averting the representation." (I. 301.)
This definition, he says, though it may seem obscure, yet ex-
presses the actual fact, and in connexion with the fact we must
understand it ; " we are at the nodus of human consciousness ".
It is not difficult to see what is the fact intended ; it is the fact
known as the sense of freedom ; this is the fact which supplies
M. Eenouvier with his definition of the will. As he himself
says, a few pages farther on :
" In defining the will, I have defined liberty, since liberty is a potency
(puissance), and I have not considered the will otherwise, nor yet out of
consciousness, or elsewhere than in man. . . . The question relates to
the potentiality of future events, evidenced in certain representations, evi-
denced as ambiguous according to all appearance, and becoming a volition
in the act of representation which resolves itself and determines itself
among several possibles. There is nothing but analysis in that." (I. 306).
190
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
Again, in the chapter on the relation between the higher states
of consciousness and muscular movements, from which I have
already quoted in another connexion, he thus returns to the will :
" We have envisaged the will in its own proper theatre, when it is seen
at the origin of all and each of the ramifications of the trains of reflective
thought in man. We could not give an account of the function by which
it projects, connects, and varies its acts, when believing itself free, unless
we characterised the representation as voluntary, and as capable of sum-
moning, sustaining, and suspending itself, in the midst of that matter of
ends and images which instinct and experience accumulate for it, and from
which it borrows its elements. That is the real and true place occupied by
the will." (I. 395).
Observe now this last touch in conclusion :
" This theory brings to unity the system of relations between representa-
tions and movements, and raises into another sphere the fact of volition
properly so called, sign or fact corresponding to which biology can discover
none in her domain. It is very different with sensations, emotions, and
imaginations." (I. 396-7).
The italics are mine. I wish to emphasise the point they
indicate, in order to show the close similarity between M.
Eenouvier's theory and what may be called ego theories and soul
theories. There is held in all alike a supra-physical creative
agency, making new beginnings and interrupting the continuity
of events (I. 304) ; but in M. Eenouvier's theory, this agency
resides in and is exercised by states of consciousness, self-caused
or automotive representations, and has its reality guaranteed by
the category of causation. That is what is distinctive of his
theory ; and it is a distinction which, though real, is yet not
enough, in my opinion, to justify his theory, in respect of the
point now under discussion, being called phenomenism, if the
others are stigmatised as absolutism. Categories, as irreducible
laws of thought, are pro tanto destructive of its phenomenist
character.
Here would be the place, if I could attempt to give a com-
plete account of M. Eenouvier's work, to mention the various
collateral speculations which group themselves round the main
line of thought ; the nature of life, for instance, the presence of
final cause in nature, the conception of an universal philosophical
language, and especially what is perhaps the most valuable, as it
is the most prominent, feature of all, the theory of mental and
moral vertige, the yielding and abandonment of consciousness to
its lower impulses, letting go its hold on the promptings of reason
and will ; in connexion with phenomena which are shown to be
of kindred origin, such as double personality, sleep, sleep-walking,
and so-called mesmeric influence. Gladly would I dwell upon
M. Eenouvier's warm advocacy of all that contributes to real
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 191
dignity and independence of character, especially in education,
in connexion with his theory on these topics ; a point which
comes out most prominently perhaps in his criticism of Pascal
(II. 41-8). But to go through all this, or attempt to mention
the many profound and luminous remarks with which the whole
work is strewn, would be impossible without trenching on the
space, already too small, for following out the main current of
the theory. Keeping then to that current, I come at once to the
question which is the staple of all M. Eenouvier's speculation,
the question of Free-will.
And here I will begin with a remark of M. Renouvier's,
which stands with him at the opening of the subject ; it is that
in England, where, he pays us the compliment of saying, the
education of the will is perhaps somewhat more advanced than
on the continent, the men of thought are almost without excep-
tion determinists, while on the contrary " those peoples whose
diploma'd philosophers and whose theologians (of the Jesuit
school) vie with each other in teaching a nominal free-will, find
interposed between them and practical liberty the obstacle of a
priesthood and a government, instituted as they believe by
this liberty, but always for its destruction" (II. 51-54). It
seems, then, that the fruit of maintaining a nominal free-will is
despotism, that of denying it liberty. Let us see what kind of
free-will M. Renouvier maintains.
M. Renouvier's handling of Liberty falls naturally into three
portions, (1) in connexion with its basis, the will ; (2) in con-
nexion with certitude, of which it is a basis ; (3) in connexion
with indeterminism or real contingency as a general fact of
existence as a whole, which takes us up into the highest and
most problematic region of philosophy. To begin with the first
of these.
The position which he assigns to his own doctrine is that of a
mean between two opposite errors, indifferentism, or the tenet
of the so-called liberty of indifference, on one side, and deter-
minism on the other. Both theories, he says, require the notion
of a separable will, a will separable from the representations in
which it is manifested. Such a will must be conceived as in
itself wholly indifferent to any motives or any decision. But
this separation of a " pure will " being really a chimera, the de-
terminists easily show, as against the indifferentists, that willing
is the moment of preponderance of one motive over others, the
place of the pure will being taken by a mathematical point, and
the image of a balance of motives being introduced. (II. 63-73).
He then proceeds :
" The liberty which we can admit is that character of a reflective and
voluntary human act, in which consciousness posits in close union the
192
I mourner's Philosophy. Psychology.
motive and the motor identified with herself, while affirming that other
acts, exclusive of that first mentioned, were possible at the same instant.
*This possibility, whether apparent only or real also, is the most distinct
title of liberty, the clearest element in its definition." (II. 73-4.)
Let us now see how this is worked out and justified. How
does he conceive the identification of motive and motor with
each other and with consciousness, at the moment of volition ?
Just above, in criticising determinism, he had said :
" Deny that beyond the passive and received impressions, in deliberation
properly so called, there ever arises a motive into which that which is called
will does not already enter as an element ; affirm that, in such cases a
tnotive is always a willed motive, that is to say, now summoned (tfvoque')
among other motives equally possible ; and the determinist argument is
at once upset." (II. 71.)
Again, he speaks of free acts as not being uncaused ; " their
cause is the man, in the totality and plenitude of his functions ".
(II, p. 86.)
Determinists, in my opinion, need not hesitate to follow M.
Eenouvier in both these statements, and yet keep their deter-
minism intact. The question is, what is " that which is called
will," and how does it enter as an element into motives ? It is
not necessary for determinists, as M. Eenouvier imagines, to hold
that all the motives which they speak of in their image of the
balance are motives externally impressed on the deliberating
agent (however defined) at the moment of action, that the agent
vanishes to a point, and exists only " to yield to communicated
movements ". (I. 69.) On the contrary, the agent at the moment
of deliberation is a concrete being, capable of re-acting as well
as being acted on, of moulding his motives as much as they
mould him. The nature and character of that re-action and
moulding of motives is the question at issue. The point insisted
on as essential by determinists is the subjection of the re-action
(as well as the action) to law. But, says M. Eenouvier, " Qui dit
loi, entend necessite. Eien de plus vrai et de plus legitime"
There it seems to me is his mistake. By necessity he means
compulsion. But there are many determinists who do not use
either necessity or law in that sense.
Now it is M. Eenouvier's theory of the will (" in defining the
will I have defined liberty ") that determines the sense of the
statements quoted. When he says that the will enters into a
motive as element, he means that an agency, the reality of which
is guaranteed by a category, begins a new series of events in the
world, appearing in the form of a self-caused representation, a
motif automoteur. (II. 72.) I have already said that this theory
seems to be as ontological in character as anything can be. It
is also wholly unconstruable to thought. It contains three
M. Eenouvier' s Philosophy. Psychology. 193
unintelligibles ; first, the notion of an absolutely new commence-
ment ; secondly, that of a causa sui, a thing which causes itself
to begin to be ; and thirdly, that of real contingency, which we
shall come to consider in its place. If the free agency of man,
" man in the totality and plenitude of his functions," could be
established only by a theory like this, its case would be desperate
indeed.
M. Eenouvier imagines that all determinists are of one school,
that they either deny free-will, or may be logically compelled to
deny it on their own premisses. He forgets that, from the time
of Leibniz at any rate, there has been a school of determinists
who maintain free-will, though insisting at the same time on the
universality of law, the uniformity of nature. Previously there
had been but two conflicting views generally current, that of
free-will and that of necessity. Those were necessarians who,
defining liberty as the absence of external compulsion, denied
it of the will, which they held was always constrained by some-
thing external to itself. But Leibniz, by opposing necessity to
logical contingency, distinguished it as a logical category from
compulsion, which was an efficient agency ; which distinction is
the true note of determinism, and justifies the name as distin-
guished from necessarianism. On this basis, though he did not
work it out to full clearness, Leibniz propounded the theory of
the determination of the will by the nature of the agent in con-
junction with motives ; by which he at one stroke based its
freedom on logical, not real, contingency, and distinguished this
freedom from what he called " liberty of indifference ". Leibniz
and those who agree with him may be called free-will deter-
minists, to distinguish them either from necessarians or from
compulsory determinists. Indeterminists on the other hand are
those who, holding free-will, base it not upon a merely logical,
but upon a real contingency or indetermination. Of this number
is M. Eenouvier.
It is not, I think, difficult to show that free-will is perfectly
compatible with determinism.
The beginning of the whole question is the sense of freedom,
and its relation to real freedom, with which it must not be con-
founded. But the mode of distinguishing the two must be
attended to. The sense of freedom in deliberating, choosing,
and deciding, is not distinguished from real freedom as testimony
is distinguished from the thing testified, so that the two are
separable from each other ; but as a subjective aspect is dis-
tinguished from its objective aspect, e.g., the Berkeleyan sensa-
tions and ideas of matter from matter itself. Both aspects are
equally real and equally true. The question is, what they
import.
194 M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
In judging of this, we must fix our view on the subjective
aspect, the sense of freedom, for that is what real freedom is
known as ; which is an obvious phenomenist canon. Here comes
in that other cardinal distinction in philosophy, which is through-
out neglected by M. Eenouvier, who puts his categories in its
stead, as I showed in my former article ; I mean the distinction
of percept and concept. The sense of freedom (and consequently
real freedom) is a percept, a percept in what I have elsewhere
called primary consciousness, entering into reflection, but not
yet made into a concept. We perceive ourselves in the act of
deciding, before perceiving ourselves decided. The uncertainty
attaching to the fact of inchoateness in the act of deciding is
what gives us the sense of freedom ; of which the inchoateness
itself is the reality.
Now all such acts, when looked at as completed and making
parts of a train of events, are looked at as concepts, or rather as
percepts in direct consciousness (as I have called it elsewhere),
the formation of which depends on conception. We have before
us no longer the act per se, as it looked while going on, but we
have before us the completed act, in connexion with what pre-
ceded and with what is to follow it. When we put the question,
whether acts looked at in this second way are really free or
really necessitated, the answer must be, necessitated. An action
is an agent in motion ; a completed motion is a determined act,
an act determined by the agent itself. To call completed acts,
acts looked at in this second way, free (as in saying that some
completed acts are free and others necessitated), is to introduce
a contradiction into the free acts and into the very notion of
freedom, by supposing it free and fixed at the same time and in
the same respect.
Now what M. Eenouvier does, in common, I must confess,
with the great majority, is this : he opposes liberty and necessity
as mutually exclusive, which they are only when said of events
taken in this second way, as concepts, or as completed events
and parts of a series. Only one of the two contradictories can
then be true of them, and M. Eenouvier contends that, in many
cases, it is liberty. Determinists contend that it is always
necessity ; and this is not contradictory to, but rather presupposes,
the reality of freedom and the sense of freedom, said of those
same events in their inchoate state, or said of man while acting.
It will, I suppose, be objected, that this theory reduces the
freedom of man to the level of that of stones or billiard-balls,
the things usually taken as types of necessity. But this objec-
tion arises from the separatist prejudice of seeing in the universe
a mere collection of individual objects or groups of objects, each
of which has a rounded-off nature of its own, wholly apart from
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 195
that of others. Abandon this piece of superficiality, and there
is nothing lowering to man in the present theory. Freedom alone
is the same in all things, and common to all ; the differences lie
in the different phenomena with which it is accompanied, in the
various degrees of richness, complexity, and moral value, of the
free agents, man being at the head of the scale.
" To every Form of being is assigned
An active Principle.
* * * *
This is the freedom of the universe." 1
Observe, to every form. And why ? Because the character of
inchoateness attaches to all action, to everything that occupies
duration of time.
Hence the significance of the remark made above, that M.
Eenouvier overlooked the initiative taken by the organism in
spontaneous redintegration, and replaced it by an initiative of a
different kind, a wholly new commencement, at a further point,
namely, volition. The organism is always re-acting on its im-
pressions. Without re-action there would be no perception, the
threshold of consciousness would never be reached ; without re-
action there would arise no trains of images or feelings in the
organism left to itself ; and without re-action again, this time
accompanied by sense of effort, there would be no voluntary
direction of the spontaneous trains. This last re-action is the
most marked of all, we are conscious of it for itself ; it is a
turning point often (not always) slowly reached but instantly
followed by rapid and often vigorous energy, a moment marked
by the decisive " I will " or " I won't ". This character of decision
distinguishes volition from desire, out of which it arises and to
which it gives effect.
Two further remarks are requisite on the conception of freedom
which I have now put forth. The first is, that it affords a basis
for free will, corresponding to and replacing the conception of a
free creative and self-originated power held by indeterminists.
So that I am enabled to go beyond the view of perhaps the
majority of determinists, compulsory determinists as I have
called them, who define human freedom as a man's power
to do as he pleases, implying that he can never please as
he pleases, but that, though he does as he pleases, he pleases as
he must ; that is, deny the freedom of the act of choice. Now
this arises from their looking at acts as completed events, and in
connexion with others, to the neglect of their inchoate character ;
looking at them, in fact, in the very same way as the indeter-
minists do ; only that then they deny, and very truly, that acts
1 Wordsworth. The Excursion, Book IX. 1.
196 M. fienouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
of choice are any exception to the law of uniform causation,
while the indeterminists invent a peculiar power or faculty of
liberty, in order to take them out of that law.
But consider steadily for a moment the phrase, cannot please
as he pleases ; for it opens a door into the very heart of the puzzle
of this question. It covers two very different senses ; (a) that
a man cannot please as he does please, which is a contradiction
in terms ; and this of course is not the sense in which the phrase
is used or implied by determinists ; and Cb) that, though the
deed is determined by his choice, his choice is determined by
some other conditions, which is the truth. But mark that here
the act of choice is considered, not by itself, but in connexion
with conditions, separate from it in thought, just as the
deed, which is one thing, depends on the choice, which is
another. Look, however, at the act of choice by itself, as
in sense (a), and then I hold that, the contradictory of sense
(a) being true, (namely, that a man can please as he pleases),
and pleasing or choosing being therefore the ultimate fact upon
the analysis of which the whole question hangs, the act of choice
is an act in which man becomes conscious of the freedom or
activity which he shares, in Wordsworth's language, with " every
form of being ". The freedom of the act of choice thus depends
upon the agent of the will being something concrete or empiri-
cal, exercising a re-action, and not being empty of content and
therefore imaginable as wholly or passively determined by ex-
ternal agents, which is the doctrine of the compulsory determin-
ists.
The second remark is, that the basis spoken of is a basis only.
It does not prevent us, when a further supposition is introduced,
from distinguishing some acts as free and others as compulsory ;
for instance, when we speak of a man as being the slave of his
passions, or on the other hand when the " service " of the highest
ideal is spoken of as " perfect freedom ". In all such cases, we
are no longer speaking of man's freedom generally, or as a whole,
but we are introducing a further supposition ; we are identifying
the man with one part of his nature as distinguished from
another part, in the two cases mentioned with a higher part as
distinguished from a lower, or what is the same thing, with one
set of motives as distinguished from another set. Either part,
either set of motives, may dominate the other ; and then the part
dominating is free, and the part dominated is brought into sub-
jection. But in either case, the acts of the man are free, in the
fundamental sense of the term, and the distinction introduced is
a distinction, not between freedom and necessity, but between
freedom and subjection, which gives the term freedom a very
different sense, namely, that of freedom from external compulsion ;
M. Eenouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 197
this conception, at the same time, being no longer restricted to
the man's outward acts, as the compulsory determinists hold,
but extended and applied to his inward acts of choice as well.
Briefly, then, to sum up the position of the free-will determin-
ists. There are two senses of freedom*, (1) freedom from law, (2)
freedom from compulsion. The act of choice is often free from
compulsion, is so always indeed, so far as it is strictly an act of
choice, choice implying this freedom. It is never free from law,
the laws namely of the agent's own nature and those of his en-
vironment. But in saying this it must be remembered, that we
are regarding the act of choice as a completed act, as a member
in a chain of conditions, and we are abstracting from that moment
of inchoateness, in virtue of which when regarded alone, as it is
in the instant of choosing, every act appears to be free in every
sense, even from law. Observe that this moment of inchoateness
is the central point of the whole theory, and that which gives it
unity. For on this moment of inchoateness depends, as we shall
presently see, that sense of freedom which is also a sense of
power ; our ignorance of the law (which nevertheless really
exists) enabling us to feel our own energy (which obeys it) not
as law but as energy. Which is saying in other words, that our
sense of freedom from compulsion, which is real freedom, depends
on our momentary imagination of the absence of any limit
whatever.
I pass over the collateral support which M. Eenouvier attempts
to deriA r e for his thesis of liberty from the doctrine of chances,
his examination of the " loi dite des grands nombres " ; I pass
over his criticism of J. S. Mill ; his reply to M. Proudhon ;
and the many acute remarks interspersed everywhere in his
pages. I repeat what I said in my former article, that refutation
is in no wise my object, but rather to exhibit the main outlines
of his system, with the main distinctive principles upon which
it rests ; pointing out nevertheless some cases where it seems to
derogate from its own avowed character of Phenomenism, in con-
sequence of the introduction of irreducible categories, or laws of
thought.
One point, however, ought not to be passed in silence, which
is the acutely stated argument for real liberty drawn from
the moral law. And this will form the natural transition to the
second branch of the subject, liberty as a basis of certitude. " If
everything is necessary," says M. Eenouvier, " then moral judg-
ments, the notions of right and of duty, have no foundation in
the nature of things ". And this he proceeds to develop :
" There cannot have existed a duty to do that which the event has shown
to 1)0 impossible ; there cannot have existed a right of demanding what the
event has declared was not to Le. We are in fact admitting " [by holding
198
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
necessity] " that the only possibles among imagined futures are those
which are realised. Therefore there is no right, no duty, in the past, be-
yond that which was and which is. Therefore, also, no right, no duty in
the present, for it may well be that our ignorance enables emotion to attach
itself to what is impossible, and judge it to be good, or the imagination to
construct a more satisfactory order than that of experience ; but it cannot
make the impossible exigible." (II. 58.)
" There cannot have existed a duty," &c. Surely there can,
if the agent who is the subject of the duty is himself the cause
of its impossibility. The discrepancy between the agent's own
moral ideal and his own act is what his conscience reproaches
him with ; and the sense of that discrepancy is the very essence
of a reproving conscience. In the words of a very close and
subtil observer of these matters, " the good that I would I do
not : but the evil which I would not, that I do ". (Rom. vii. 19.)
And the agent identifies himself with his ideal and not with his
act, distinguishes his true self from his actual but (as he hopes)
temporary self, so long as he listens to the voice of conscience.
M. Renouvier is tacitly supposing that the impossibility is
imposed on the agent from without ; as if it were a case of im-
prisonment, and the prisoner reproached for not escaping. He
treats the case of freedom to choose as if it were a case of freedom
to do what we choose, the hindrances to which latter are external.
Now necessity includes not only necessity imposed on one thing
by another thing, but also necessity in the action of a thing con-
sidered by itself. Thus, though all action is alike free, namely,
in its inchoateness, yet all is alike subject to law, and therefore
necessary. During the inchoateness of an act of choice, the
agent represents both alternatives as possible ; that is, he is un-
certain of the relative strength of his own motives ; the comple-
tion of the act of choice alone shows what that relative strength
really was in the given case. I remark also, that the agent's
representation of both alternatives as possible is not the subjec-
tive aspect of their being both really possible, but is the objective
aspect of the agent's feeling of uncertainty about them. Sense
t)f freedom, objective aspect, inchoateness ; sense of uncertainty,
objective aspect, representation of alternatives as equally
possible.
M. Eenouvier returns to the charge in the third Part :
" If, of two acts between which we balance, one only was possible in
reality, the moral law, which at the moment should command the act which
necessarily will be, and forbid the one which necessarily will not be, or
which should command the one which will not be and forbid that which
will; that moral law would be a vain, ridiculous, fantastic, or odious
injunction, according to the kind of authority which was attributed to it."
(III. 164-5.)
Not at all. Another feature of the moral law is here missed,
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 199
besides its intimateness as just noticed. The moral law contains
its motive in itself; it is an ideal which has attractive power,
and aids in its own fulfilment. If not obeyed now, it may be
next time ; the effort to obey it, fruitless now, bears fruit in the
future. And still more is this the case, if it is efficacious to pro-
duce obedience now. M. Eenouvier is supposing that the moral
law is like the decree of a sovereign, to be obeyed or disobeyed
by a subject, only without the sanctions which give it efficacity.
Moral law is not merely civil law minus sanction. I cannot
think that M. Eenouvier shows his wonted subtilty in these
objections, which involve a complete departure from his own
strongly urged principle of regarding man as a concrete agent,
" in the totality and plenitude of his functions," and introduce
him as an abstract entity. They are arrows from the scholastic
quiver.
When therefore he says, that " the belief in the real contin-
gency (ambiguite) of future events is a condition of the moral
function of consciousness," (III. 165), that is, of conscience, I see
in this, not a demonstrated fact, but a statement of that errone-
ous mode of distinction between sense of freedom and real freedom
which I have noted above. Conscience does not require for its
operation a 'belief in real contingency ; it requires a perception of
real freedom. It does not rest on a belief which may be errone-
ous, and at any rate demands independent proof. It has nothing
to do, so far as its basis is concerned, either with the doctrine of
contingency or with that of necessity ; nothing to hope from the
one, nothing to fear from the other.
When M. Renouvier, touching as he thinks the very core of
the question, demands that we shall judge the determinist theory
by asking what actions would result, if the agent were to decide
" with the distinct and constant conviction in his mind, that he
can do at each instant only what he does, can will only what he
wills, can desire only what he desires " (II., p. 325) ; the sup-
position involves an actual impossibility. In cases of choice, up
to the very moment of decision, the action being yet inchoate,
the agent's position is that forward-looking attitude of mind
which is uncertain, and represents opposite alternatives as alike
possible. Up to the moment of decision he cannot have the
conviction that he can do only what he does, &c. ; because as yet
he is doing nothing, his doing is still future, inchoate up to the
moment of decision. He may indeed pause to reflect, that what
he will do will be only what he could do ; but then what lie
could do is the very thing which he does not know, which his
choice, still pending, is about to decide. He may, I say, pause
to interpose that reflection ; but in so reflecting he abandons the
simply forward-looking attitude of mind, and adopts the position
200
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
of a spectator ab extra, looking through the spectacles of a
general truth ; from which position he returns before making his
choice. It is impossible for him to adopt both positions at once,
so as to import into the forward-looking attitude the theoretical
knowledge of determinism proper to the position of a spectator.
From this forward-looking attitude the sense of freedom is
inseparable. And what is important to notice is this, that the
agent's safety lies in keeping strictly to the forward-looking
attitude. The sense of freedom is a sense of power ; it increases
the force of the will in choosing the best course ; which is the
true meaning of the possunt quia posse videntur. To interpose a
speculative reflection on the grounds of that freedom and power,
even if it be in favour of the free-will doctrine, is to taint and
impoverish the act. It is the origin of Casuistry in the bad
sense of the term.
But this same sense of freedom, which M. Eenouvier calls ap-
parent freedom and belief of real freedom, is a fact which in truth
carries with it real freedom as its own obverse aspect ; real free-
dom being, according to M. Eenouvier, as he frequently states (e.g.,
II. 61, 89, 322) a doctrine logically indemonstrable, as he holds
also the counter doctrine of determinism to be likewise. Deter-
minism then, at least in the form which I have now given it,
puts real freedom on a firmer basis than the opposite doctrine
even professes to do. Fortunately M. Eenouvier admits, that
this apparent freedom, this mere belief in real freedom, is a
sufficient basis for a whole system of morals, jurisprudence, and
politic ; to which view we owe what is in my opinion the most
valuable fruit of his labours, namely, his great work, the Science
de le Morale, as I remarked in my former article ; and this is the
" derogation " which I there spoke of. For if merely apparent
freedom is a sufficient basis for a full and final system of practi-
cal truth, the discussion of its reality remains invested with a
speculative interest only, and the speculative interest is sundered
from the practical. In my view they are united ; and the sense
of freedom is a sufficient basis for Ethic just because it is more
than mere appearance and mere belief, in short because it is
freedom, the thing itself. Deny the existence of freedom as
antithetically opposed to necessity, that is, embrace Determinism,
and you eo ipso assert freedom, both as a reality in itself and also
as a firm basis of Ethic, requiring no demonstration but that
which is given by analysis of the phenomena.
Coming now to the second branch of the subject, the doctrine
of Certitude and its foundation in liberty, the immediate sequel
of a passage already quoted, as to the dependence of morals
on contingency, will show M. Kenouvier's conception of the
M. Jh'jivt'vier's Philosophy. Psychology. 201
relation between certitude and contingency, which is precisely
similar :
" Lastly, if everything is necessary, error is as necessary as truth, and
their titles are equal, barring the number of men who hold to either of
them, which number may change to-morrow. The false is therefore true,
inasmuch as necessary, and the true may be false. Madness has nothing
against it but its weakness ; error, nothing but its inconsistency." (II. 58-9.)
Observe, in the first place, the pure assumption that, if truth
and error agree in being necessary, they agree in everything ; that
there is no other essential difference between them. Observe,
secondly, the quiet dismissal of a conception which is, I venture
to say, essential to phenomenism, namely, that consistency is the
final test of truth. For, if not, something not capable of being in
consciousness must be supposed, as that with which opinions are
to be in harmony.
M. Kenouvier's argument seems to be : (1) there must be real
contingency, since otherwise there is no difference between truth
and error, but (2), if there is real contingency, then free belief is
the only test of truth, in matters where doubt is possible, because
it alone is a maker, as well as a perceiver, of truth. " We make
error and truth in ourselves, by putting ourselves, after free
examination, into contradiction or agreement with external
realities, the affirmation of which is not necessarily imposed on
consciousness." (II. 349.)
Perhaps the following passage is the highest expression of
what M. Eenouvier claims for liberty in matter of certitude,
showing how far in the direction of making truth liis theory leads
him :
" Whatever may be the thought of the world around us, concerning any
of those truths on which men vary from age to age, and on which they dis-
pute, if my conviction is entire, if I hold with all my reason, if I love with
all my heart, if I embrace with all my will, the object of my belief, then
the highest degree of certitude is found for me in that which, externally
regarded, seems the lowest." (III. 84.)
Liberty, it must be remembered, means, by M. Eenouvier's
definition, the freedom of the will in reflective action which is
emotional and intellectual as well as volitional. It has always
a content of thought and feeling. This he explains at length, by
distinguishing the three elements which are found in cases of
certitude produced by liberty ; for instance :
"We cannot affirm anything systematically without some representation
of a group of relations as true, nor without an attraction of some sort or
other which leads us to engage in the truth perceived, nor without a deter-
mination of the will which fixes itself at the moment when it might be
possible, as it seems, to suspend the judgment, either to seek new motives
and reasons, or even to abandon itself simply to the impulses which arise."
(II. 136.)
14
202
'enouvier s Philosophy. Psychology.
Every truth being formed in this manner, there is evidently
a part of it which is due to our choice and will that it should be
true. This brings us to what certitude in itself is ; what are its
nature and characteristics. For since the will enters for some-
thing into all truths that are certain, and the mode in which
they are established affects them with a certain volitional
character, certitude is in its nature a belief. We hesitate and then
decide ; it is therefore also founded on preliminary doubt. The
necessity of doubting first, and doubting everything, is strongly
insisted on. Doubt is called the distinguishing characteristic of
the cultivated and enlightened mind. " On the contrary the
ignorant doubt little ; dullards less ; madmen never." (II. 152.)
That certitude is a belief, is the cardinal point in M. Eenou-
vier's theory concerning it. It is not opposed to seeing, not
opposed to knowing; but seeing and knowing are themselves
cases of belief. " We ought to say that we believe we see, and
that we believe we know, and always that we believe" (II. 131.)
And this is apparently the truth intended, when M. Eenouvier
says that the central thought of the chapter quoted from is
derived from one to whom he acknowledges the deepest obliga-
tions, " whom I now must frankly call my master," J. Lequier ;
and fragments from whose writings, given at considerable length
in the present work, are masterpieces of that kind of introspec-
tion which consists in tracing back and questioning, tracing
back and questioning again, at every conclusion drawn in a train
of thought, the validity of the reasons for drawing it. Lequier
was a Catholic, but, says M. Eenouvier, a very liberal one. His
ultimate canon of certitude seems to be this, " We are never sure
that there is evidence, but when there is bad faith in doubting ".
(II. 177.) And again, " A truth superior to all human imagina-
tion and idols : that when one believes with the firmest faith
that one possesses truth, one ought to know that one believes
it, and not believe that one knows it." (II. 195.)
Very good, I reply ; there is then, after all, a difference in kind
between believing and knowing, since you say we ought to know
that we believe. If knowledge were a species under the genus
belief, and not opposed to it as species to species under the genus
judgment, this difference in kind would be taken away ; for we
should then have only a greater or less belief that we believe,
not a knowledge of it. Now nothing can make the word belief
import a greater certainty than the word knowledge. And there-
fore the very name, the scholastic name, certitude is suspicious,
implying as it does a belief which is also knowledge, and sug-
gesting a wish to juggle something out of the less certain into
the more certain category. The difference between knowledge
and belief is for analysis to ascertain ; and here again, in my
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 203
opinion, it is the very same defect in analysis as before, that
leads M. Kenouvier to bring knowledge under belief. I mean
his failing to see the precise mode in which thought grows out
of perception ; which vitiates, in my opinion, his account of the
part due to volition (liberty as he calls it) in establishing beliefs.
But before showing how this is, we must follow up M. Eenou-
vier's distribution of the affirmed phenomena or judgments which
fall under certitude. He arranges them under two Orders.
Tacts of the First Order of Certitude are (1) the general modes
of consciousness, memory, personal identity, the reasoning
powers, the categories ; (2) a phenomenal external world ;
(3) the existence of men and other living beings ; (4) the
general laws of the external world organic and inorganic.
(II. 235 ff.) Facts of the Second Order include everything
else : " A second order of certitude will embrace the funda-
mental decisions not admitted into the first. It will be
characterised by the larger place occupied by doubt, emotion,
and will, in establishing truth, either by individuals or in the
course of history." (II. 320-1.)
Doubt and belief apply to all phenomena of both orders, to
everything in fact that involves a judgment, or combination of
sensations, the existence of which per se, and while they last,
not even Pyrrhonists doubt. Doubt attaches in a feeble measure
to judgments of the first order, in a large measure to those of the
second ; but still so, that, even in the first order, we are com-
pelled to recognise " that every affirmation of reflective conscious-
ness is 'subordinated, in consciousness, to the determination to
affirm. There is found the explanation, there the leading into
captivity of the profound principle of Pyrrhonism." (II. 320.)
The classification is not into facts which we can, and facts which
we cannot, help believing ; but into facts which we have small,
and facts which we have great, power of doubting. Every
fact waits, for its certitude, on our determination to affirm it ;
and our determination to affirm it is, as we have seen, a concrete
fact made up of intelligence, volition, emotion, inseparably united
in reflection. Affirmation of that kind is a belief.
Now we come to the point where I said M. Renouvier's
analysis appeared to me defective. It is true that volition enters
into every affirmation, but it does so without regard to the con-
tent of the affirmation. It has one purpose and only one, namely,
to see what is to le seen. It is the effort of attention which we
give to any object, in order to perceive it clearly and distinctly.
This makes all reasoning practical, even though its object is
purely theoretical ; this single purpose is enough for that. But
if any other purpose or interest is combined with the pure effort
of attention, this makes the reasoning practical in an additional
204
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
sense ; we have then an interest in affirming this rather than
tluit ; in this sense it is not true, that volition enters into all
affirmations ; and this is the sense which M. Eenouvier's theory
requires. When it is said that volition enters into all affirmation,
it is only as constituting it formally that it does so. The matter
affirmed or denied is not affected thereby. But this distinction,
which marks off conception, reasoning, and logical affirmation,
from perception, is not drawn by M. Eenouvier ; who, for want
of it, attributes far more than its due to volition in forming
beliefs, and erects no logical barrier to the wildest attempts that
might conceivably be made by enthusiasts to believe as true
what they wish to be so. " Bad faith in doubting," when faith
is to be kept only to self, is unsound as a criterion of objective
truth. Honesty indeed with oneself is an essential requisite ;
but it is a negative condition only, a sine qua non ; we may
believe many absurdities honestly.
M. Eenouvier of course stands perfectly clear of the wish to
smuggle foregone conclusions of any kind into philosophy, as the
whole tenor of his work shows. What he is looking for is some
synthetic principle, over and above the categories, but springing
out of them, which shall lead to some particular cosmogony, the
categories applying to all alike. He adopts what he tninks is
the principle of the Practical Eeason, and so far I have no objec-
tion to make. But I contend that his analysis of the practical
reason is wrong, and wrong in a way which gives an illegitimate
scope to volition and desire, under the name of liberty, in framing
theories. In fact, although all affirmation depends, for its form
as affirmation, on volition, yet, as to its content, there are some
affirmations which we make because we will it, and others
which we make because we cannot help it. The former consti-
tute belief without knowledge, and are always accompanied by
doubt ; the latter constitute knowledge in which belief is
swallowed up, and of which doubt is impossible.
The question between knowledge and belief is, of course, a
very old one. I cannot think that M. Eenouvier has made it
clearer. It is really one of the questions which depend on a
prior, but often tacit, adoption of either an absolutist or a pheno-
menist view of existence. All knowledge appears to be belief,
if you tacitly suppose an existence which might appear differ-
ently from what it does appear. You then ask a reason why
this appearance is as it is, or why it appears at all. Then you
say you have belief of it, irresistible it may be, but still belief.
If on the other hand you take phenomena to be co-extensive
with existence, then all constant phenomena are cases, not of
belief, but of knowledge, for there is no further possibility of
their contradictories being true.
The value and
significance of
M . IZenouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. '205
such constant phenomena may vary with the other facts, in
relation to which they stand ; but so far as they go, they are
irreversible, and we have true knowledge of them, though in-
complete. Again, then, we find M. Eenouvier, led by his analysis,
departing from his own doctrine of thorough-going phenomenism.
The transition to the third branch of the subject, the founda-
tion of liberty in the nature of things, may be shown best by a
passage in which "liberty in itself" is treated:
" I shall complete the definition of liberty, to justify belief in which is
the object of this chapter, by characterising it as the ultimate essence and
proper substance of the human person, or, continuing to use the scholastic
terms, as the principle of individuation of that person ". (II. 359.)
He regards it as a "primitive fact beyond which we
cannot go " (II. 364) ; refusing to consider the idea that
it is produced in us by the creative will of a prior being
who is himself free, as an explanation. This, he truly says,
would be only assuming the same fact twice, putting " crea-
tion of creation " in place of creation simply, and " liberty
to create free beings" in place of liberty alone. (II. 362-3.)
Neither will he regard liberty as explained by saying, that it is
the necessary outcome of causation. Causation can never explain
how a " power of escaping causation " can exist. " Causality, I
have often repeated, does not explain the effect by the cause,
unless the proper nature of the effect enters into the definition
of the force " [producing it] " and consequently of the cause
itself qua cause, which destroys the pretended explanation."
(II. 365'.) Very true. Freedom, in M. Eenouvier's sense, cannot
be explained by causation. But in that case what becomes of
the category of causality, as an ultimate law, of which the will
is, as we saw in the Logic, the chief instance ? Here is, apparently
at least, an admission that it breaks down at the crucial point.
In fact, at the beginning of this third branch of the subject, a
complete change in the point of view takes place. Hitherto M.
Eenouvier has been demonstrating the fact of liberty in the will ;
now he is seeking the ground of this fact. His solution is, that
the ground of liberty in the will is liberty as the principle of
individuation ; " an aptitude of man to reflect, to deliberate, to
will, to create by will, instead of yielding to the vertige of repre-
sentation " ; " a power to dominate (primer) his other functions " ;
a power " not self- caused but a datum " ; and " establishing
itself at the passage from the animal to the human nature " in
him. (II. 360.) Liberty is thus the cardinal and general fact,
of which will is a case. Accordingly, to render it in some sort
intelligible, he has recourse to an earlier category, that of Becom-
ing, Devenir. " The true doctrine of liberty," he says, " makes
us consider the world as an order which becomes, and makes
206
f. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
itself, ( dement et se fait), not as a pre-established order which has
only to unroll itself in time" (II., p. 364.)
Human liberty has thus its root, so to speak, in nature at
large. But how, it may still be asked, does this explain that
feature of liberty whereby it is the " fact of commencement,"
" commencement itself, the existing being itself, without other
possible explanation," as M. Eenouvier characterises it farther
on ? (II. 366.) The only answer is, that it does not explain it ;
this category also breaks down :
" The mystery of liberty is the last and highest form of that mystery
which we have touched in the fact of pure actual becoming, in that of first
commencement, in that of an existent (de Vetre). The mystery of pri-
mordial data is the inevitable extremity of speculation and of things, for
everything has had a beginning, the prior process in infinitum being con-
tradictory." (II., p. 366.)
The devenir is thus one form of the mystery, and liberty is
another. But why a mystery at all ? I see only a mystification,
A first or uncaused commencement is no mystery, but a gratui-
tous puzzle. It is imported by the theory, not found in the facts.
It comes from taking categories, or laws of thought, as the ulti-
mate laws of consciousness, and letting them override time as a
form of perception. The form of time then asserts its real power
over thought, and you have the contradictory notion of a first
'beginning, which, as first, presupposes time both before and after
it, and yet as beginning has nothing before it at all. There are
doubtless mysteries in the world, but this is not one of them.
How real contingency is possible, how it can even be con-
strued to thought, is also left unexplained. It is taken as part
of the ultimate fact of liberty. We must believe it, whether we
can understand it or not. Yet to believe what we can in no
degree understand, is to believe an empty word. Elsewhere
(Philos. of Reflection, II. 414-22) I have endeavoured to show
that real contingency, that is, contingency involving opposites
equally possible in fact as well as in our representation, is not
thinkable ; it is a word and not a thought, consequently not a
reality. Yet before evidence in its favour is admitted from
liberty, from morality, from certitude, the logical possibility of
the thing itself ought certainly to be made clear. Without that,
it is only a difficulty the more, in the way of accepting liberty
itself.
Against this " nest " of contradictions resulting from M.
Eenouvier's theory he would, I suppose, set off the one contra-
diction which he imagines to be involved in the determinist
theory, that of a realised infinite. But this, as I have shown in
my former article, does not attach to any theory so far as based
upon forms of perception, as determinism is, whatever it may do-
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology. 207
to scholastic hypotheses of " substances ". Liberty and Infinity
are notions which go naturally together, being alike based on
perception ; but once close the circuit, so to speak, by introducing
either the notion of substance or categories of thought as ulti-
mate, and then liberty can be had only at the cost of contradic-
tion. M. Benouvier has the choice : either liberty is true, and
then the categories are insufficient, or the categories are suffici-
ent, and then liberty is a delusion.
The conception of liberty as the essence of man carries us over
at once to the third Part of the Psychology, that which treats of
" The Probabilities concerning the moral order of the world," and
has for its themes, Immortality, Liberty, and God. Here we
enter upon ground the possession of which is the peculiar char-
acteristic of M. Benouvier's sciences of Critique Generate, namely,
upon the unseen world of probabilities and belief which those
sciences embrace at once and together with the seen world of
positive science. Before closing the second Part of the Psycho-
logy, an admirable classification of the sciences is sketched out,
based on the old threefold division into Moral, Logical, and
Physical, and (inter alia) reconstituting the Moral group by re-
ferring its sciences to the larger head of General Criticism
(Critique Generate), thus giving them a distinctly philosophical
basis. The results are tabulated in the Summary ( For midair e)
appended to the Psychology, which will be found an useful aid
to students.
Moral liberty is the efficient link between man in his mortal
state, in the seen world, and man in his immortal state in the
unseen world. " Immortality is the right to progress, liberty is
the using it." (III. 180.) As to the third problem, the nature
and existence of God, two aspects must be distinguished in
immortality, one relating to the individual, the other to the con-
stitution of the world which makes individual immortality
possible, " a most general law which assures the means of realis-
ing individual ends ". The object of this supreme conception is
God. (III. 185-6.)
Now the conception of immortality and that of God depend,
apart from their realisation by liberty, upon a category or law of
their own, namely, upon the category or law of final causation
(Finalite). What is the validity of this conception, and what
application are we entitled to make of it ? Here M. Benouvier's
analysis is excellent. Final causes, he says, have no place in
the special sciences, which are or ought to be occupied with
efficient causes only. They are essential, on the other hand, to
the moral and political sciences. (III. 109.) This by no means
implies that they are not traceable in the phenomena treated by
208
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
the special sciences, but that, where they are so, they are im-
ported by the modes of observation or reasoning which man
brings with him.
There are two ways in which final causes may be regarded ;
first, the relation of means and ends may be contemplated simply
as fact ; secondly, it may be contemplated in its origin, as in
putting the question whether design implies a designer ; and M.
Eenouvier keeps strictly to the first. (III. 112, 115.) " Every
change implies a final cause (fin)!' (III. 113). Still in the in-
organic world this relation is shrouded in obscurity. It is in the
organic world that it begins to be clearer, and more and more so
as we ascend the scale ; so that there we can describe it by its
general characteristics, as a mutual adaptation of properties to
functions, or in M. Eenouvier's words " the constant arrangement
of facts for constant ends " (III. 113), and say that, with regard
to the individual, " the law of final cause, recognised in the
individual being, may be strictly enunciated as the existence
of a destiny of that being ; for a destiny is nothing but the end
which we spontaneously pursue in virtue of an order established
in nature." (III. 124.)
This brings him directly to state the question of immortality :
" Can we make a legitimate induction, from the known and
partial destiny of certain individual beings, to a general arid in-
definitely prolonged one of the same beings ? " (III. 125). His
answer is yes. If ends are to be realised at all, it is for individu-
als that they must be so ; since it is only for an individual that
an end has value or even meaning. " Shall we console Sisyphus
by promising him annihilation and a series of successors for
ever, to roll his stone still higher, the stone always to fall back,
the successors always to be annihilated ? " (III. 131.) But
are ends to be realised at all ? The affirmative is implied in the
law of final cause itself. Some fulfilment it must have :
" When we look at the ends which appear to be implied in those rela-
tions which are known to us, we say that the laws of the universe tend to
constitute individual beings and to preserve them ; and we believe, by an
induction thenceforward legitimate, due to the moral forces of consciousness,
that these beings are temporarily and for sense effaced at certain points of
their career, because they are a part of vaster, but equally individual,
functions, the course of which is withdrawn from our actual means of
observation." (III. 130.)
This of course is a mere outline of the argument. Its strength
lies in showing what those " known relations " are, which point
to a fulfilment after death. What M. Renouvier has chiefly in
view is the moral law, and its ideal harmony, which cannot be
realised for individuals on earth. He builds also on the instinct
of immortality, which he says points to a realisation of some sort
M. Rci'iim i: iei ''s Philosophy. Psychology. L' < ) '. )
or other. (III., p. 170-2.) The real question is, of what sort ?
Now the two tendencies spoken of in man point to the two char-
acteristics of the realisation ; the first is virtue, the second happi-
ness, and the realisation of both must consist of the harmony
between them. On the other side, two facts militate against
the realisation of this harmony ; one is physical evil, which is
summed up in one word, death ; the other is moral evil, of the
existence of which there is but one explanation, and that is the
fact of liberty, and but one cure, the exercise of liberty. The
moral law is a real cause acting efficiently in nature ; it changes
the state both of individuals and of society. There is progress
towards an ideal end, the harmony of virtue and happiness,
effected by means of liberty, along with diminution both of
physical and of moral evil. Death only remains wholly unaffec-
ted. We ask then, Is death annihilation of the personality ?
Nothing ever has proved, or ever can prove it. Against it we have
the whole force of the facts which constitute man's moral tenden-
cies, powers, and ideas. Such is briefly M. Kenouvier's argument,
the gist of which I have tried to gather from various passages
(e.g., III., 154, 155, 171, 172, 181-4). But I must remind the
reader that it cannot be properly appreciated from so brief a
sketch. I pass over, too, his subtil and acute criticism of Kant's
theory of the practical reason, in its bearing on the three pro-
blems which are to both of them the great problems of philoso-
phy. Unwillingly, but my limits are all but reached. In fact
to treat properly a work so full of varied matter as M. Kenou-
vier's would require thrice the space at my disposal.
I pass over, too, his critical sketch of the various hypotheses
which may be entertained as to the conditions of existence of
immortality, its " physical means " as he calls them ; remarking
only that it will well repay study ; and this brings us to the
last chapter of the work, " Eational Hypotheses as to the nature
of God ". On this subject, and with reference to this chapter, I
have already spoken in my former article, in connexion with
the question of Infinity. I need not dwell upon it farther.
Some few general remarks only I would make on the whole
method. Paghtly in my opinion does M. Eenouvier take the
practiced reason as his clue to the unseen world, a future life,
and ( Jod, as Kant also did ; and rightly also does he reject, what
Kant retained, the non-phenomenal character of the unseen.
But there is a distinction wanting in his system, owing to im-
perfect analysis, which makes his whole theory insecure. There
is wanting the distinction between what we must necessarily
think as belonging to the unseen world, and what therein is
matter of probability only. Without this distinction, the whole
content of the unseen world becomes merely probable, and at
210
M. Renouvier's Philosophy. Psychology.
the same time its anthropomorphism becomes more full of detail.
The categories are so coarse an instrument, that on the one hand
they do not permit us to distinguish knowledge from belief in
kind, but only in degree, certitude itself being set down as a
belief ; and on the other, they include so much, they let pass so
many particulars in which the unseen world must resemble the
seen, that it becomes a mere reflex of man's nature. Man
psychological, so to speak, is carried over into the unseen world,
and not merely man metaphysical ; since functions corresponding
to all the categories may be employed with equal right in en-
deavouring to imagine it.
It is on two and only two grounds, in my view, that we must
affirm the existence of the Unseen, which are therefore also the
only strictly necessary elements in our conception of it, (1) the
fact that infinity and free action are bound up as percepts in all
objects of thought, and (2) that the law of thought itself, its
form not its content, involves attention, and therefore expecta-
tion of a better. These and these only are the elements in the
analysis of consciousness which necessitate the affirmation of an.
unseen world, and are the necessary features in it for conscious-
ness. The rest, the filling up of the picture, as we may call it,
are what M. Kenouvier represents all knowledge to be, proba-
bilities greater or less, objects of belief.
In filling up this picture of the unseen world, the moral law
with its content, the moral nature of man in the concrete, is, as
M. Eenouvier most truly holds, our only sure guide. But to
apply this alone, to apply it as if it were the whole of our means,
that is, without drawing the distinction of what is strictly
necessary in it and what is not, is really to dwarf the unseen to
the measure of the seen, to reduce God to be only in the likeness
of men. It is carrying anthropomorphism too far, by making too
unrestricted use of it.
On the other hand, philosophy cannot affirm the existence of
God, as a necessary truth. It belongs to the filling up of the
picture, not to its necessary outline, to its content not to its
form. When God's existence is affirmed to be necessary, the
necessity is in the feeling not in the thought ; and the thought
follows and depends on the feeling. It is a belief founded upon
love ; that is to say, it is faith. The logical validity of this belief,
or in other words, the right to believe, if you have the love, is
assured by philosophy, inasmuch as it shows that disproof of it
is impossible. But the positive motive is for religion, not
philosophy, to supply.
All the objections, then, which I have found myself obliged
to make to M. Renouvier's philosophy, resolve themselves into an
M. Renoumcr's Philosophy. Psychology. 211
objection that his analysis is not pushed far enough, leaving
untouched his general basis of phenomenism, except so far as it
is imperilled by imperfect analysis. In the present article the
main points of objection have been three : (1) the connexion
between metaphysic, or logic as he calls it, and psychology, (2)
the doctrine of liberty and contingency, (3) the construction of
the unseen world. As to the first, he does not seem to have
sufficiently distinguished between subjectivity in philosophy and
subjectivity in psychology ; between consciousness or representation
representative as equivalent to all its objects or representes,
irdv-ra ra Trpdj/j.ara, and consciousness in its history or mode of
completing its system of representations representatives, in which
it is specially dependent on one among all its representes, namely,
the living orgajiism in connexion with which it seems, in each
instance, to arise. As to the second point, the profound convic-
tion of the fact of freedom has led him, in the absence of a dis-
tinction between percept and concept, to a theory of freedom in
which it appears as the contradictory of necessity, and so
succumbs to the reflection, that without necessity there is no
thought. As to the third point, there the defect in analysis con-
sists in not distinguishing precisely what are the necessary ele-
ments in all thought, as contrasted with those parts of the
content which are not necessarily combined with them.
All these questions are, I think, fairly open to discussion. Far
be it from me to dream of dogmatising upon them. And no one
can be entitled to be heard with greater respect than M. Kenou-
vier himself, no one can speak with greater weight. In any case
the fundamental, or as he would say enveloping, doctrine of
Phenomenism is secure, and constitutes the very atmosphere of
thought, in which alone all further discussions can live and
move. Without such a basis being laid, the bearing of all argu-
ments, whether analytic or constructive, is liable to constant
misconception ; and such a basis M. Eenouvier has been the first
to lay, in his system of philosophical phenomenism. Philosophi-
cal, not merely empirical ; not phenomenism of the kind which
turns away from, but of that which faces, the ultimate problems
of thought. With Philosophical Phenomenism M. Eenouvier's
name and fame will be indissolubly associated.
SHADWOETH H. HODGSON.
III. THE LOGIC OF DICTIONAEY-DEFINING.
THERE is great scope for the operation of logical principles in
the field of Dictionary-defining (taking that word in its widest
sense as including all the modes of grouping and of setting forth
the meanings of terms), if only these principles were firmly
grasped and consistently applied. But, unfortunately, lexico-
graphers in general have not been ambitious in the matter of
logical attainment, and, confining ourselves to English, the latest
of them have failed to diminish the shortcomings of their pre-
decessors. Indeed, we may rather say they have signalised
themselves by making several conspicuous additions. Eor,
aiming at comprehending in one work a variety of distinct pro-
vinces, they have dissipated the strength that they ought to have
concentrated, and what behoved to be their main object has been
subordinated to others of an inferior rank, or else has been so
combined with them as to suffer seriously from the process. The
result has been exactly what we should have expected. In the
attempt to do many things, nothing has been done well ; and
our dictionaries, as a rule, are in a lamentably unsatisfactory
condition.
Our quarrel with them is twofold. On one hand, they contain
a mass of confusing mischievous extraneous matter ; on the
other hand, they are vitiated by many grave defects of order and
of method. Their errors are partly of omission, and partly of com-
mission. On the side of commission, we have the attempt to
define the undefinable, an inordinate and misleading use of
etymology, an altogether inadequate conception of the range of
correlativity and of its value : and, on the side of omission, we
have the total want of discrimination of synonyms, the ignoring
of certain useful defining expedients (e.g., adducing an apt and
easily-intelligible phrase), little or no systematic grouping of the
various meanings of words, or else grouping on a plan that breaks
down in the working, and (not to multiply particulars) the
absence of any consistent separation of the scientific and the non-
scientific significations.
It will now be our object to follow out these things a little in
detail ; noting as we go along the weak points in the ordinarily-
accepted methods of word-handling, suggesting modes of improve-
ment, and using the accredited dictionaries in illustration.
Definition.
We start with the subject of defining, strictly so called. It
is of first and vital importance that the dictionary-maker should
The Logic of Dictionary -defining. 213
have this subject thoroughly at command. Nothing less will
serve than that he be fully master of the logic of the matter, and
both willing and able to apply it. He must have continually
before him the marks of a good and, therefore, of a bad de-
finition (i.e., he must, as far as possible, avoid tautology or
repeating in an altered form the word to be defined, inadequacy
or not emptying the term of its whole contents, complexity or
the use of terms more difficult to understand than the one to
be explained) ; he must know what words can and what words
cannot be defined ; he must have a clear insight into the " con-
tent " of terms, so as to be able to exclude irrelevant significa-
tions and to discriminate subtle shades of difference ; he must
be familiar with the principles of Classification and of General
Naming ; and he must know and, as far as may be, respect the
doctrine of logical Division.
To begin with the most fundamental of these points the de-
finable and the undefinable. Of the latter class are all ultimate
notions, and many notions that, although not ultimate, yet cannot
be understood without experience of the thing itself. To the
former class belong the vast majority of terms ; all that remain
after the undefinable and the partially definable are subtracted.
But between the two classes there lies' a disputable region
Lucanus an Apulus anceps and the exact boundaries of this
region may themselves be matter of debate. Speaking generally, it
contains a number of derivative terms that may be defined with
effort, but that, nevertheless, are practically useless until the
situation represented by them actually occurs ; terms in whose
case a verbal description conveys to the ignorant no idea what-
ever or only an idea that is very vague and hazy. A just appre-
ciation of these distinctions would at once suggest the proper
modes of treatment ; but a just appreciation is exactly what we
look for in the dictionaries, and do not find.
Ultimate notions cannot be defined. Yet let us turn to any
of the best and most widely-used dictionaries, and at every step
we see this fact ignored, and laboured descriptions offered of
what is to be settled simply by an appeal to individual experi-
ence. We have indeed got beyond the stage that irritated Locke
when Motion was set down as " the act of a being in power, so
far forth as in power," and Light as " the act of perspicuous, so
far forth as perspicuous " ; but the principle that prompted these
ridiculous performances holds its ground as ever. Motion is still
" change of place, or change of posture," as though change did
not itself imply motion ; and Light is " that which shines and
enables us to see, or which produces vision," in entire oblivion of
the circumstance that shining, seeing, vision cannot themselves
be understood without a reference to light. Life, again, is some-
214 The Logic of Dictionary-defining.
times represented as " vital force," sometimes as " state of
living," sometimes as " animate existence " ; and we swallow it
all as though in these phrases we were imbibing real knowledge,
or, perhaps, we are best pleased with the effort that describes it as
" that state of animals and plants in which the natural functions
and motions are or may be performed ". Heat, again, is given
as " sensation of warmth," and Warmth is referred back to heat,
in profound unconsciousness that the operation borders on the
ludicrous ; while the changes are duly rung on Form, Outline,
Shape in order to produce Figure, and Figure in turn plays
an important part in producing them. The whole class moves
in a vicious circle, or else is set forth in inadequate explana-
tions ; and, either way, incalculable damage is done to the public
understanding, which accepts all in entire simplicity and has no
conception of the sleight-of-hand that is being practised on it.
The thing, then, to be fully realised at this stage is, that in
every simple idea or ultimate notion we have something that
must be started from, something that must be taken for granted,
something to be referred to individual experience, and that
except in the case of correlatives, where, together with a thing,
we can produce its opposite nothing can be done in the way of
making the meaning more intelligible or clearer. When we
have said of Light that it is the opposite of Darkness, with a
partially opposed correlative in Shade, we have said all on the
subject that words can say. Cold and Heat are mutually impli-
cated, and their names may be brought together with effect ; but
beyond that we cannot go. These experiences, one and all, are
ultimate, and as ultimate they must be accepted, and the words
that stand for them must be allowed to stand without note or
mark or comment.
But what is true of ultimate notions without exception, is also
true of a large class of derivative notions, of such as, although
not primary elements of our sensibility, yet refuse to be made
plainer by verbal analysis. Of this kind are many of the statical
and dynamical conditions of matter and, more especially, certain
acts, attitudes and movements of the body sit, stand, lie, hold,
fall, rise, carry, walk ; of this kind, too, is much of our complex
mental furniture fear, love, wonder, trust ; and of this kind are
many of our social relations help, take, give, get, bring, say,
shew, ask. It can scarcely be said that these are ultimate ; and
yet, in trying to make them intelligible by verbal description, we
simply " multiply words without knowledge ". Thus, we take
Help ; and, on turning up the dictionary, we find it described as
" aid, assist, relieve ". We next turn to Aid, and the definition
is " help, relieve, assist ". Assist, in like manner, is " aid,
relieve, help," and Believe is " help, assist, aid ". It is similar
The Lofjic of Dictionary-defining. 21 c
with Hold, Give, Get, Stand, and the others. They all move in
a uniform see-saw, and when we reach the end of each round we
find ourselves exactly where we were at the beginning. Now
there is, manifestly, much to be complained of here ; but with a
little care and attention matters might be mended. For it is to
be observed (and the fact has some philosophical interest) that
undefinable terms are as a rule prolific in (so-called) synonyms.
If, then, the terms themselves were left as undefinable and their
synonyms, with the necessary discriminations, arranged under
them, all would be plain. Let Help, for instance, be frankly
stated as strictly unexplainable, or, which is the same thing,
let it be left with definition blank, and then let the allied
terms " aid," " assist," relieve " be given under it as species
of helping with the necessary distinctions, and let the same plan
be adopted with Give, Get, and the rest, advantage being taken
of contrast where contrast is of service, and at once the con-
fusion disappears, and just notions of the nature of this class of
terms are imparted. It is thereby shown to all and sundry that
to demand a set definition of each and every word in the language
is wholly unreasonable, and that the attempt to meet this demand
is simply vicious and illusory. There is indirectly taught a
valuable and wholesome lesson in Logic, and grateful light is
cast upon the eyes that must otherwise remain in darkness.
It is perhaps slightly different with the third class of unde-
finables, and here a margin must be left to the discretion of the
handler. If it is possible even with an effort to reproduce verbally
such situations as are represented in buy, sell, promise, breathe,
chew, choke, ruin, threaten, lend, borrow, start, refuse, there will
always be a temptation to give the definition ; but, in many, if
not in most of these laboured efforts it will be found that, how-
ever exact they may be analytically, they fail to make them-
selves intelligible unless first the situation they depict has been
matter of experience, or unless it can be shown there and then
to the eye. In these, as in the previous cases, " a view of the
thing itself is its best definition," and where this cannot be had,
it is on the whole desirable to keep back the verbal presentation
and to be content with a simple blank.
But in some cases this can be had. We know the power of
illustrative engravings ; and these, when appearing in the pages
of a dictionary (if they are good and judiciously selected), afford
a considerable aid towards elucidation. They are no mean help
in the case of the partially definable, and may be serviceable also
where definition strictly is out of the question.
But what now of those terms that are quite within the scope
of definition terms that do represent situations that can be
verbally reproduced ?
216
Logic of Dictionary -defining.
One mode of treating these (an inferior one) has already come
before us. We have seen the use to be made of correlation in
certain instances ; we have only now to recognise that correlative
presentation may be more widely useful, and that, as a general
supplement to a strict logical analysis, it is an important auxili-
ary : indeed, it is but logical dichotomy or bifurcation in a parti-
cular application of it. Correlatives are either diametrically
opposed (as light dark, up down), or their opposition is simply
partial (truth error, man woman, father son) 1 ; but in either
case, the method holds, and, in either case, adducing the corre-
lative is like bringing forward an apt illustration it illumines
by a very simple contrivance.
There is need, however, of caution here. Our dichotomy is
not of that type represented by the stock example, " Man not-
man " : where neither word nor thing is countenanced in cur-
rent-English. There " not " or " none " is employed to mark the
negative side of a thorough-going bifurcation ; the term to which
it is attached is made to gather up in it the whole of the parti-
culars excluded by the other term set over against it in the par-
ticular universe : but in English (according to established usage)
" none " or " not " conveys the notion of irrelevance. When we
say " non-moral," we do not simply intend to complete the uni-
verse of which " moral " is the other member ; what we mean is,
that, as to the case in hand, morality has simply nothing to do
with the matter. And then, as to the process itself, it is too
vague to have much practical utility. What we want, commonly,
is an antithesis of a different and more decided character ; and
this, where we have not two separate words for the purpose, is
readily enough found in expressive prefixes such as we see in
" immoral," " irrational," " unreasoning," and the like.
We have next the help of etymology. But how far does this
extend ? It is here that we join serious issue with the diction-
aries.
That etymology lias considerable value for the purpose in
hand, cannot reasonably be doubted. It often grasps with great
exactness the central idea of a term, and thereby supplies the
key that will unlock the door. But oftener still it is beside the
point and will mislead us. There can be no question that many
etymologies are such as to be quite unmeaning to the ordinary
intelligence, and their effect is simply to breed confusion. Of
1 Correlatives are also contextual. Tims, owing to the particular con-
junction of words in a narrative, " attack " may be made to assume the form
of a correlative to " resistance " ; but the natural correlative of resistance is
" submission," and the true correlative of attack is " defence ". Contextual
correlatives (like contextual synonyms and contextual meanings) should
have no place in a dictionary.
The Logic of Dictionary -defining. 217
this class are tragedy, comedy, metaphysics, star, planet, stage,
bizarre, and many more. It is equally unquestionable that there
are others that are not simply unmeaning, but that produce abso-
lutely false and erroneous impressions. No one coming for the
first time on the word Manufacture would be able to extract its
correct meaning from any amount of study of the etymology.
" Something made by the hand " must at best convey but a very
meagre idea, and the idea is worse than meagre when we re-
member that manufactured articles are now-a-days mostly pro-
duced by machinery. The word Poison, from potio (a drink),
will scarcely of itself suggest the current signification ; neither
will bare etymology serve us in asylum, automaton, barometer,
manifest, malefactor, sophist, impertinent, extravagant, plagiarist,
martyr, and unnumbered instances besides.
The rule, therefore, to be laid down is, that in every cae
where the etymology is either unmeaning or misleading, it should
be wholly ignored. It ought to be introduced only where it serves
to make clear the central thought of the term under consideration,
and then, in that case, it ought not to be brought in simply as a
parenthesis, but should be worked into the definition itself.
That is the rule : and, in the face of present usage, it may
seem a bold step to bring it so emphatically forward ; but the
need for a strict observance of it is most imperative and urgent,
as will be seen by any one that cares to open a modern dic-
tionary and to note the evils that persistent infringement of it
has produced. To this cause (if we mistake not) he will ascribe
much of the inconsistency and confusion that he meets with ;
but we shall be greatly surprised if he does not ascribe to it also
much of the current bad definition, and, especially, that in-
veterate lexical evil habit of trying to define the undefinable.
Lexicographers seem to have thought that giving the root-
meaning of a word was actually defining, or, at least, that it was
the first step towards the achievement ; the next being simply a
move forward on the same line or in the same direction. At
the very opening of their course they went astray, and promis-
cuous etymology misled them.
In dictionary definition, much use is naturally made of per
genus et differentiam. Great care, however, ought to be taken in
the application of this method ; for genera, although logically
simpler than species, are not unfrequently hard to understand,
and it is no easy matter sometimes to grasp the nature of a
specific difference. It is important also to take care that, when
once a genus is fixed upon as the point of reference for a series,
it shall be rigorously and consistently adhered to throughout the
series. Thus, we agree to define the following by genus and
difference, and we adopt as our genus Relation. We obtain
15
The Logic of Dictionary -defining.
under it as species, with their specific differences Proportion,
Eatio, Symmetry, Ehythm. It certainly would not conduce to
clearness if, in the definition, these terms were referred one of
them to Eelation, another to Proportion, another to Eatio, and
so on ; much less if they were used indiscriminately : skipping
thus from genus to subaltern genera is practically most objec-
tionable. Yet this is what we actually find in common use.
In a received authority, Proportion is given as " comparative
relation of parts, portions, shares," &c. Immediately after, it
is put down as " identity, similitude, or equality of two
ratios ". Then it stands as " symmetry ". In the same work,
Eatio figures inter alia as " proportion," " relation ". Symmetry
is " due proportion," " a certain relation," " proportion " simply.
Ehythm is " symmetry of parts," " proportion " ; while Eelation
itself is " ratio," " proportion ". And this is but a type of a
very common confusion ; found, not in one dictionary alone,
but more or less in all.
But besides strictly defining, and occasionally in lieu of defi-
nition, it is sometimes useful to take advantage of an apt and
striking phrase, especially if that phrase happen to be well
known and commonly received ; just as it is useful in treating
abstract notions to adduce well-chosen concrete examples. In
this way, Exacerbate may be represented as " adding fuel to
the flame ". " Man of parts " is a very good substitute for a
Wit. Irresolute is " without ballast ". " Silent as the grave "
well expresses what is meant by Taciturn. We exactly hit the
idea of Consequentiousness in the familiar expression " large as
life ". Amend is " to turn over a new leaf " : and Dwindle is
to " grow small by degrees and beautifully less ". The practice 3
obviously, has its value ; but it is a practice that lends itself
very easily to abuse.
We have already spoken of logical dichotomy in its con-
nexion with correlation. Curiously enough, the dictionaries have
tried it mainly in that sphere where it is not applicable. They
have confined it to correlatives of negation, to those words dis-
tinguished in our language by means of the prefixes dis, un, &c.
But it is just here where it does not hold. In very many cases,
we cannot adequately translate these prefixes either by " not,"
or " want of," or " without ". Plainly, these negatives cannot
mark degrees of absence or privation ; neither can they express
more than the mere negation implied in a term, whereas it is
often requisite to take notice of the positive idea conveyed, and,
in some instances, the positive idea is the chief one. Thus,
Difficult is but meagrely defined as " not easy " ; " not seemly "
fails to bring out the notion of offensiveness that Unseemly
contains ; Untrue and Irreligious have elements of falsehood
The Logic of Dictionary-defining. 219
and impiety in them that the negative rendering allows to
escape : and the inadequacy of the method is further seen if we
operate on such terms as disaffirm, disrepute, disregard, dis-
affect, disallow ; indifferent, illogical, impertinent, infinite ; un-
clean, unholy. But the remedy is not far to seek. Where simple
negation or privation alone is present, let the common rendering
be retained ; where special degrees have to be marked, it will
not as a rule be found difficult to obtain appropriate expressions ;
where the positive ideas come prominently forward, why not
refer to these direct ? There is no particular objection to our
representing Disaffirm as a species of contradiction, or Untruth
as a species of falsehood ; Uncleanness is the presence of nasti-
ness and filth, and Illegal is what is contrary to law. We may
perhaps trace the common practice to a desire for uniformity of
rendering, or, more probably, to an undue regard to etymology.
But uniformity of rendering is one thing, and exactness of
rendering is another ; and it is the very end of definition to be
exact, even should the letter of etymology be interfered with.
Exactness, however, must not be confounded with logical
sufficiency. The former is always indispensable, the latter is in
some cases beyond our reach. We refer particularly to Natural
Kinds. In dealing with these, considerable latitude must be
allowed in a dictionary, ranging from a simple appeal to indi-
vidual knowledge to an attempt at enumeration of properties,
clenched with Dr. Eeid's much ridiculed et caetera. Incomplete-
ness is not the only defect here ; there must also be a freer use
of the separable accidents of a thing than Logic would willingly
sanction, and some of the defining canons must be content to
relax their strictness. We do not, of course, mean this as an
excuse for rough-and-ready methods of defining, or for slovenli-
ness of execution, much less do we intend it as an encourage-
ment to purposely bad definition ; we simply state a fact, and
draw attention to a peculiarity of the dictionary, for which
there seems to be no thorough-going remedy. In the animal,
vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, insignificant properties may
be used for discrimination, and descriptions scientifically in-
sufficient may serve the turn. Thus, Horse, in the animal
world, cannot be otherwise defined in a dictionary than as a
well-known quadruped, used as a beast of burden and in war ;
even although there may be other animals (e.g., the elephant) that
would answer to this description. Cat, Dog, Hen are similarly
situated ; an accident or two must serve to mark them off : and
so with the others. It is the same in the kingdom of minerals.
Gold is sufficiently defined for dictionary purposes when its
colour is specified and its weight and value assigned, when it is
given as yellow, heavy, and the most precious of the metals ;
220
The Logic of Dictionary -defining.
and there would be an exuberance of detail if we noted furthe
its use as a coin of the realm and the fact that it does no
tarnish. A few of the properties of Oxygen, followed by an e
caetera, is all that can be insisted on in denning that term; whiL
Carbon, Hydrogen, and the others must be content with :
similar treatment. It is still the same in the world of plants
A sense of the ludicrous may prevent our following the commoi
practice and denning Cabbage as " a culinary vegetable whicl
grows into a head " ; but all the same we cannot here insist 01
fulness any more than elsewhere ; less must satisfy us thai
what would be demanded by the strict logician.
And yet the handling of this department need not be so ver
inadequate as it usually is. Comparatively insignificant mark
may in certain cases be adduced, but there is a limit to this an<
a rule has to be followed. Not every mark will suit the purpos
in hand, nor can we dispense with the necessity of a studiei
and careful selection. Guidance, in any particular instance
may be got from an examination of the different accepte<
meanings of the term in question. Thus no definition of th
word Horse will answer that does not refer to that animal's us
in warlike operations, for it is this warlike employment tha
gives us the signification " cavalry ". Those attributes of Ca
and Bog, again, must have a place that give us " feline " am
"canine". "Aquiline" and "bovine" point to qualities tha
must find their way into our descriptions of Ox and Eagle
The bigness of " the largest quadruped " yields " elephantine "
and no definition of Gold will be sufficient that does not contai]
a reference to its colour, which supplies us with the distinc
meaning " golden ". The marks may not be scientific, they ma;
not be the deepest and most important, they may not even b
exclusively distinguishing marks ; but if they be such as hav
struck the common intelligence and have become embodied ii
the language, we dare not omit them ; they are material to b
utilised and worked upon and added to, if we care, but not to b
summarily dispensed with.
This insufficiency, however, is not confined to Natural Kinds
it has wider, far-reaching bearings : and what its nature and it
limits are will be seen from the answer to the following question
How far is the lexicographer at liberty to alter the signification
cf words ? Is he rigorously tied down to the common denotation
It is his function to give us meanings, but these meanings mus
be such as are in actual use : can he do anything beyond ? On
thing is plain and evident, that he must not omit in his defini
tion of a term any legitimate constituent that has given rise t<
separate senses : his analysis must be thus far complete that i
excludes nothing that popular usage has rightly included. Bu1
The Logic of Dictionary -defining. 221
further, if he does go beyond the sphere of popular inclusions,
he must be careful to import no element that would militate
against these ; he must not so revolutionise as to overturn the
established denotation. Hampered by these conditions, it is
plain that his operation must sometimes fall considerably short
of the highest point of logical attainment. He cannot recon-
struct classes ; he is subject to an imperious dictator whose
regulations he may surpass, but which he cannot go against ; he
need not be logically inaccurate, but he must sometimes rest
satisfied to be logically insufficient.
We may exemplify with Cause. The two ideas of this word
giving meanings are Power and Origin. Any analysis of the
term must cover these ; but if, in view of the philosophical
associations attaching to antecedence, it were thought proper to
include this also, or rather to give explicit expression to it, the
tiling could easily be done. That notion does not shut out a
single constituent entering into the vulgar conception, neither
does it introduce a revolutionary element ; it simply gives
fulness to what was before needlessly incomplete.
It is different with Monarchy. We know how logicians
have treated this, and what is the view taken of it in poli-
tical science. Monarchy, we are told, is to be restricted to
absolute monarchies ; limited monarchies are Eepublics. But
the lexicographer cannot listen. Monarchy is not commonly
employed in this restricted sense, and lie is not the person to
confine it. Limited or absolute, Monarchy is for him " govern-
ment by a sovereign," and " government by a sovereign " it
must remain.
His function, then, determines the limits of his operation. It
is not his to overturn usage. The most that he can do is to ac-
cept the best usage and, for the rest, to wait till this best has
grown better till men's notions have expanded and improve-
ment has been made in their modes of giving them expression.
Synonyms.
From Definition, we turn next to the discrimination of Syno-
nyms ; a point of considerable logical interest and of great prac-
tical importance, but entirely unknown to the dictionaries. It
consists for the most part in tracing specific differences, and is
often a matter of great delicacy of operation. Of course it can-
not, under the limitations of space imposed upon a dictionary,
l ear there to full advantage ; it must necessarily be incom-
ji'cte, though, so far as it goes, it ought to be exact. Incomplete-
ness, as we have just seen, is the besetting sin of lexicography ;
but it need not be greater than is absolutely unavoidable.
222
The Logic of Dictionary -defining.
In most languages synonyms are abundant ; and they afford
us, on examination, a means of drawing very important philo-
sophical conclusions. Thus, when we find Hebrew rife in
words expressive of religious and ethical ideas, we may infer
from that circumstance alone the mould in which the Hebrew
mind was cast, and the nature of the objects that most occupied
the Jewish attention. Again, from the abundance of psycho-
logical and metaphysical terms in Greek, we see at once the
distinguishing peculiarity of the Greek genius, its leaning
towards the intellectual and the philosophical ; while the practi-
cal character of the Eomans is gathered from the abundance of
Latin synonyms in the sphere of the social and the useful.
This tendency to multiplication of synonyms which increases
with the increase of a nation's experience and with the advance
of accuracy and precision in thinking creates no small difficulty
in the handling of words. It calls for subtle discriminative
powers, and necessitates devices suitable for presenting to the
eye, as well as to the mind, those shades of meaning that th$
different allied terms are intended to convey.
The difficulty, great in all cases, is particularly great in Eng-
lish, from the circumstance that English is a mixed language.
Partly Norman, partly Anglo-Saxon, its terms intersect and over-
lap in a wonderful and perplexing fashion, and words originally
coextensive in their uses soon separate and acquire distinctive
significations ; they are rarely, throughout the length and breadth
of their application, identical.
We may illustrate with Happiness and Felicity. These were
no doubt at one time equivalent : the second is just the Latinised
form of the first. But, through lapse of time and from a diversity
of causes, the second has contracted shades of difference that the
other is unfit to exhibit. " He expressed himself with much
felicity " is by no means the same thing as " he expressed him-
self with much happiness," while " happiness of diction " is but
a sorry substitute for " felicity of diction ". So, too, with Fidelity
and Faithfulness : both originally equivalent, their present uses
are far from coextensive. It is the same with Ease and Facility,
Brevity and Shortness, Levity and Lightness, Luminous and
Lightsome, and a host of others. Earely do we find a Saxon
term that tallies in all the extent of its meaning with one of
classical formation, and vice versa ; and it is simply misleading
to place the two side by side as exact equivalents without any
attempt at discrimination.
But even within the same branch of the language discrimina-
tion is needed. Conjecture, for example, is Latin ; so too is sup-
position; but the terms are not interchangeable: neither are
Theme and Topic (from the Greek), nor Kind and Kindly (from
The Logic of Dictionary-defining. 223
the Saxon). The distinction has to be noted between Termination
and Finale, between Temporary, Transient, Transitory, and
Fugitive, between Flare, Flicker, Glare, and so forth; while
double non-Saxon equivalents (such as, Nomenclature and Phrase-
ology (Greek and Latin), Trope and Figure, Dictionary and Lexi-
con, Insanity and Frenzy) introduce a further complication.
What then shall be done ? Is there no means whereby the
drawbacks of the present system may be avoided ? If the diffi-
culties cannot be cancelled, can they not be reduced in
magnitude ? Perhaps it may be thought that the proper way
would be to treat each word separately ; and that would certainly
be preferable to the ordinary method, by which synonyms are
set down as absolutely convertible. But, surely, a better plan
may be devised, and, perhaps, we may be helped towards it by
the following considerations.
On examining a list of synonyms, we find four noteworthy
points : (1) Some synonyms derive their distinguishing mean-
ing simply from the context, from their logical relation in the
sentence, from the word or words wherewith they are connected,
from the place they occupy in the writer's thoughts or in the
writer's argument. (2) Others are distinguished simply by
this, that the one is the more familiar, the other the more
dignified, formal, or imposing term (rise, origin ; begin, com-
mence ; yearly, annual ; warlike, bellicose ; flow, flux ; death,
demise ; buy, purchase). (3) Difference in degree or vividness
differentiates others ; while (4) the large majority have nice and
subtle demarcations.
In dealing with the first of these classes, there is little diffi-
culty. Although in any special connexion there is only one
word that is the word although none else can suit so well ; still,
purely contextual synonyms are with very rare exceptions
beyond the scope of the lexicographer ; they ought simply to be
excluded. lii the case of dignity and formality, it will be
sufficient that this discriminating mark be noted. When degree
is the ruling feature, we may use the linear method of presenta-
tion, the arrangement following the order of intensity ; and
when two or more terms express the same degrees they would
be united by the alternative conjunction " or ". Thus, Unkind
expresses a certain reprehensible quality in agents or in actions.
The same quality, but in stronger degrees, is expressed by the
words Harsh, Cruel, Barbarous, Brutal, Savage. After, there-
fore, defining Unkindness, it would be sufficient to say :
Stronger degrees of the same quality expressed by harsh, cruel,
barbarous, brutal, savage. So, again, Unhappiness points to a
certain measure of pain arising (as Butler would say) from a
faculty's not having its object. Higher measures are implied in
224
The Logic of Dictionary -de fining.
Misery, Wretchedness. Difficulty has under it, arranged in an
ascending series, Hard, Laborious, Arduous. Servitude has
Slavery, Bondage.
These, clearly, can be manipulated with comparative ease.
The difficulty rests chiefly with the others.
Now of these we may recognise two classes : (1) where the
synonyms attach themselves to a simple idea or an undefinable
situation ; (2) where they are connected with a complex notion.
But in either case the procedure is the same, only in the latter
case it is somewhat longer. When we have a simple idea or
undefinable situation to deal with, the method is, to set down
the synonyms in a line, arranging them in groups, each group
being marked off from the others by a semicolon ; and then to
append, in as few words as possible, the requisite explanation.
It is the same method, with a slight addition, when we have to
deal with a complex notion. The plan is, to break up the notion
into its constituent elements, and under each to arrange the
grouped synonyms in separate clusters, each group being pre-
ceded by its ruling idea (placed within brackets) and the note of
explanation following. We shall make this plain by a few
examples.
Let us begin with the undefinable word Hot. Its synonyms
are ardent, burning, glowing ; fiery, scorching. By placing
these under the term Hot, it is at once seen that they all agree
in having this in common "heat"; but by grouping them in
the way that we have now done, and by using the distinctive
punctuation, it is further evident that the first three form one
group, and the other two a second. It only then remains to add
a note expressive of the distinctions within the groups them-
selves. This could be done very shortly, and the whole would
stand as follows : Hot. Synonyms : ardent, burning, glowing;
fiery, scorching. Note. Of these, the first three differ simply
in degree [it would not be necessary to state which is the
strongest, which the weakest, if it were once understood that in
expressing degree we always arranged in an ascending order] ;
the two others denote (with difference in degree) the injurious
or destructive energy of heat, the idea of fitfulness also
being conveyed in the former.
As an example somewhat more difficult, we may take Give.
This too is undefinable, and has for synonyms : Grant, afford ;
impart, bestow, confer. The note here, after the linear punctu-
ated presentation, would be : The giving denoted by the first
two terms is that in answer to a desire ; the difference being
that the desire in the first instance is outwardly expressed (as
in a prayer, petition, or request), but not necessarily so in the
second. The idea common to the second group is that of com-
The Logic of Dictionary-defining. 225
xnunicating ; but, while " impart " does not go beyond this, the
other two members add the idea of benefiting, with this differ-
ence that " bestowing " is done graciously, " conferring " con-
descendingly.
Argue, again, gives the synonyms Debate, discuss ; dispute,
contend : whose note would run thus : The idea common to
the first two is that of sifting arguments, examination in detail
being prominent in the latter. " Dispute " and " contend " are
the different sides of the same process ; one being to argue
(i/jainst a position (the side of the assailant), the other being to
argue in its favour (the side of the defendant).
These, again, are the synonyms of Get, viz., obtain, acquire ;
gain, win ; earn ; attain, procure : and this is how we should
discriminate them: Of' these, "obtain," "acquire," "gain,"
" win " carry in them the idea of effort ; but whether that effort
be one's own or not is not brought forward in the first, while
personal effort and time are connoted by the other three ; the
last (the second of which is the more vigorous term) having in
addition the idea of competition. When reward or desert is the
prominent conception, " earn " is the word employed. When
we look mainly at the end to be reached, at the mark proposed
beforehand as the goal, we use " attain " ; and " procure " has
reference to the use of means.
Probably few notes would extend to a greater length than
that needed for the synonyms of Guess (conjecture, surmise ;
supposition, hypothesis, divination), which would be given as
follows : All these agree in this, that to a greater or a less
extent they imply a leap in the dark. When we hazard a state-
ment about something unknown without beforehand having
reason to believe that we shall hit the mark, that is strictly
speaking a " guess ". When we have some reason (but a very
slight one) to believe that what we are to say about the
unknown is correct, then that is " conjecture " ; and a strong
conjecture, in things practical, is called a " surmise ". When,
again, we have considerable confidence in our statement about
the unknown, when there is every likelihood of our being cor-
rect, that is to frame a " supposition " ; and a supposition
philosophically considered as employed in science is called an
" hypothesis ". " Divination,'' again, is a combination of natural
:;icity or shrewdness with hazard ; claiming at the same time
a certain prophetic or predictive power.
Once more, we may take Leaning, whose synonyms are
bent, inclination, bias ; proneness, propensity ; tendency, turn.
The note runs : Of these, " bent " and " inclination " are the
most vivid terms, and both refer to the twist or leaning of the
mind in a particular direction to the fact of its deviating from
226
ogic of Dictionary-defining.
the normal line or standard ; the first pointing to a permanent
or lasting deviation, not necessarily so the second. " Bias " also
implies deviation ; but, while these have nothing reprehensible
attaching to them, " bias " has : it is used when the departure
from the straight is considered irrational. When this departure
has a strictly moral character, we use the words " proneness "
and " propensity ". Both of these are now employed mostly in
an unfavourable sense, and, of the two, " propensity " is the
stronger, and expresses best the unreflecting nature of the cen-
surable proclivity. " Tendency " and " turn," again, look mainly
to direction : neither of them brings prominently forward the
notion of departure from a given line (like " bent " and " incli-
nation "), neither of them carries in it the idea of what is either
irrational (like " bias ") or wrong (like " proneness " and " pro-
pensity ") ; but, while the direction of the former may be owing
either to nature or to habit, that of the latter is solely an affair
of nature. " Turn " expresses an innocent preference for a thing
as suitable to the taste, or as falling in with a natural capacity
or appetite.
When now we proceed to the handling of complex notions,
we have no need (as has just been said) to change the method;
we have simply to expand it.
Let us operate on the word Cause. The two meaning-
giving ideas contained in this word are productive power and
starting-point or origin. Each of these has its group of
synonyms. From the first we obtain, producer, efficient ;
motive, reason, inducement. From the second, source, origin.
Before presenting these, it would be necessary to note that such
are the two ideas (so far as synonyms are concerned), which
could be done by means of brackets ; and then the ordinary
presentation would follow. Thus : Cause. Synonyms :
(Productive power) producer, efficient ; motive, reason, induce-
ment: (Starting-point) origin, source. Note. Of these, the
first two are used of physical causes, and are simply correlative
ways of viewing the same thing. The next three are mental ;
" motive " being the general name for whatever determines
choice. When the motive allies itself with our inclinations and
desires, it is " inducement ; " when with our rational nature, it
is " reason ". Of the remaining two, " origin " is commence-
ment simply : add to this the idea of continued existence and
unfailing supply, and we have " source ". " Source " is perma-
nent, and perhaps remote, origin, to which we may recur at
pleasure.
Our next example shall be Law. There are three ideas to be
noted here : guidance or direction, authority, and obligation..
Synonyms : (Guidance or direction) precept, rule, regulation :.
The Logic of Dictionary -defining. 227
(Authority) injunction, order, command ; edict : (Obligation)
decree, statute. Note. Of these, the first three differ simply in
the degree of generality with which they express the guidance
of law ; the first being the most general, the last the most
specific. "Injunction," "order," and "command" are law's
authority in different degrees of strength. " Edict " has the notion
of publicity or publication prominent. " Decree " and " statute "
give prominence to the bindingness of law ; but " statute " is
lasting, while " decree " is for a temporary and special occasion.
From these examples it will be seen that discrimination of
synonyms is a thing quite possible within the compass of a
dictionary. We may not be able to be so exhaustive as we
should wish, but it is always something when salient differences
are exhibited ; and it were even something though we went no
further than placing synonyms in a list by themselves and ar-
ranging them in separate groups. The space at the lexico-
grapher's disposal sets limits to the operation, but more space
will be at his command when he ceases to define the undefinable,
and when he omits the irrelevant etymons that at present occupy
his attention.
Perhaps it may be asked, On what principles do we select the
word under which a list of synonyms is to be placed ? why, for
example, arrange "harm, injury, damage," under Hurt, rather than
otherwise ? what is the special propriety in considering " aid >
assist ; succour, relieve " under Help ? The answer is, We ex-
amine the group and discover the notion that all the members
have in common, and that determines the presiding term. Thus,
we take the list " Enquire, investigate, search ; inspect, examine,
scrutinise," and, on examining it, we find that, while the first
three represent in different degrees the effort needed to discover
something that awakens curiosity, and the second three refer
to the minuteness and detail implied in the process, the
third bringing forward the idea of sifting or critical inspection,
the one thing that they all share in is seeking, and so Seek is
the proper word to stand as heading. Again, " abuse, humiliate ;
disgrace, dishonour ; degrade ; debase," fall naturally under
Humble. " Comfort, enjoyment, joy ; happiness, felicity ; bles-
sedness, bliss " are all species of Pleasure ; while Confinement
gives " imprisonment, incarceration, immuring ". The selection
is by no means arbitrary, but is rationally determined : it is
reached by an application of the logical process of elimination.
Meanings.
A word still remains to be said on the grouping of different
senses. This follows the same principles as before ; and, indeed,
228
The Logic of Dictionary-defining.
synonymous grouping not urifrequently exhausts the subject,
and dispenses with the need for any other. Where, however,
need remains, the first thing to be done is to make a strict arid
thorough scrutiny of the lists, with a view to purging them of
contextual and irrelevant meanings. No one that has not looked
specially into the matter has any conception of the extraordinary
number of dictionary meanings that are simply contextual and
irrelevant and such, therefore, as ought to be entirely discarded.
Thus, under Light (as opposed to Heavy) we find among other
things " easily suffered or performed," " easily digested," " not
afflictive" meanings all determinable by contextual circum-
stances : so too with " slight, not great," " under influence of -
intoxicating liquors ". Life, again, (as manner of living), has re-
ference to happiness or to misery, to virtue or to vice ; but this
is contextual and ought to be excluded : so, also, meanings like
the following "blood, the supposed vehicle of animation,"
<l living form," &c. As an extreme instance we may take the
preposition "To". This, properly, has but one meaning, viz.,
*' motion in the direction of " ; and yet in one dictionary we find
the meanings set clown as five, in another as eleven, in Dr.
Latham's Johnson as twenty-two (exclusive of Johnson's six
adverbial meanings and his phrases), and in a fourth as twenty-
three (with similar exclusions) !
Suppose then the preliminary purging finished, the next
thing is to arrange in the most exact and least objectionable
manner the meanings that remain. This will be an easy or a
difficult task according as these meanings attach to a simple or
a complex term, and according as they are numerous or few.
Sometimes it will be in our power so to group them as to show
the order of evolution (the logical, not necessarily the historical,
order), to exhibit at each stage the connecting link between a
signification and the one that follows. But this will be com-
paratively seldom. Meanings ramify and interlace in puzzling
fashions, and, then, intervening significations have frequently
grown obsolete, or perhaps they were never in use at all and the
link necessary to complete the series exists only for the philolo-
gist. Where, however, it is possible to exhibit the order of de-
velopment, it is well to take advantage of it ; there is no other
mode that so conduces to clearness. Thus, Eccentric gives us
the evolving series "not having the same centre as another
{used of circles), out of the usual course (applied to conduct),
odd " ; a series in which the one meaning slides naturally and
easily into the other. So, too, the proper order in arranging the
meanings of General, after that word has been discriminated
from abstract and universal, is " not special, common, public,
vague ". Active, again, has " smart, nimble, busy ". Sad has
Tin- Logic of Dictionary-defining. 229
" heavy, serious, casting down, cast-down or dejected ". Damp
(the verb) has " moisten, chill, discourage, depress, check " : and
so with others.
But meanings are not, as a rule, so easily classified as this ;
they group themselves round different, and sometimes opposite,
ideas, and they are complicated by scientific and technical as-
sociations. Now where under the same word we have two or
more sets of meanings, it is of great importance that these should
be kept entirely separate, and it is of much importance also that
technical and scientific uses (including the philosophical and the
religious), in so far as they do not naturally arise out of the
others, should be presented in separation. Total separation, too,
should be made between meanings of the same word that are
contradictory (such as we find in oblige, let, invaluable,
priceless, obnoxious) ; while words themselves that have a
similarity in form but are nevertheless distinct words (such as
" cleave " to ding to and " cleave " to divide, " hind " a peasant
and " hind " the female of stag, " light " the opposite of darkness
and " light " the opposite of heavy, " host " as hospes, " host " as
hostis, " host " as hostia ; " mass " from massa and " mass " from
missa, " race " from radix, " race " from raiz, and " race " from
raes) should be treated as distinct. In the first case, each
separate group should be ranged in a separate sentence, and
the differences within the groups themselves should be marked
by means of the comma, the semicolon, and the colon. In the
second case, each word must be dealt with apart.
Of complex groupings, we may produce a few examples.
We take the noun Point. This, in its central conception,
stands for " the sharp edge of anything ". It contains, therefore,
at least two ideas smallness and sharpness ; and each of these
gives its group of senses, while a separate and almost incongruous
signification is added by Geometry. From smallness (after the
list has been duly purged) we get " mark or dot," with a special
application in writing and another in music ; " exact place " ;
" precise thing (to be aimed at or considered) " ; in Geography,
" a headland or promontory ". Sharpness gives us " sting," as in
an epigram. Now these (the governing ideas being bracketed
as in synonyms) would be fitly presented thus : Point. Mean-
ings : (Smallness) mark or dot ; in writing, used for dividing
sentences and clauses ; in music, placed at the right hand of a
note to raise its value one-half : exact place : precise thing : in
Geography, a promontory or headland. (Sharpness) Sting of
an epigram. In Geometry, position.
Stage, again, means platform for exhibition, and it is applied
also to distance. The groupings should follow this twofold
application.
230
The Logic of Dictionary -defining.
Again, there are two series of meanings attaching to the
word Hurt, according as the injury contemplated is physical or
mental.
It is a bad arrangement when the secular and the religious
bearings of Office are mixed up as follows : settled duty or
employment ; business : act of good or ill : act of worship ; for-
mulary of devotion : peculiar use : a place for business : a bene-
fice with no jurisdiction attached.
The meaning of "palm off" in Impose must be isolated from
the other meanings, which all spring naturally from the (ety-
mological) idea of " laying on ".
Term has two groups according as the idea of limit does or
does not predominate ; and by itself would stand the algebraic
signification " a member of a compound quantity ".
Once more, the various senses of Chance group themselves
around the two conceptions absence of known cause and absence
of set purpose or intention.
The presentation of Mind might be : Mind. The anti-
thesis of Matter and Space ; the unextended as opposed to the
extended. Divided into Feeling (including Sensation and Emo-
tion), Intellect, and Will. Synonyms : Soul, Spirit ; of which
the first is the immortal part of man, in opposition to Body,
which is mortal, and the second is the highest principle of man's
nature, whose exact antithesis is Mesh. Meanings : (Intellect)
thoughts or sentiments, belief ; remembrance. (Will) choice,
intention. In Scripture, sometimes taken for disposition}-
These, then, are the various points of interest in connexion
with the dictionary-handling of terms. In order to give a full
and satisfactory presentation of a word, three things have to be
carefully attended to, its Definition (or non-definition, as the
case may be), its Synonyms, and its different Meanings. Each
requires the utmost delicacy of treatment, and no pains should
be spared to give to it the full precision and completeness that
the case admits of. Our complaint against the dictionaries is
that this has not been done. Too much has been attempted in
some directions, too little in others. Grave remediable errors
1 It may perhaps be thought that something might be made of the com-
mon division of meanings into Literal and Figurative. But, clearly, this
division has many drawbacks. In the first place, a figure, strictly speaking,
derives its force from the connexion in which it is employed ; wrest it from
this connexion, and its force is gone. An exception must be made in the
case of figures of Contiguity (metonymy) ; but then the meanings here can
be best arranged in the ways above suggested. Again, we cannot make a
separation between the literal and the figurative in many cases where we
adopt the evolving-presentation. Once more, such a separation is for the
most part incompatible with synonym-discrimination.
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 231
and defects are still rampant, and a dictionary on strict logical
principles is as much a desideratum now as ever.
WILLIAM L. DAVIDSON.
NOTE. The above suggestions have been confined to English Lexicogra-
phy ; but it is evident that the principles advocated are applicable, mutatis
mutandis, to other languages than English. They are applicable, for
instance, to the ancient languages : and it is to be observed, to the shame
of English lexicographers, that certain Classical dictionaries, though
equally defective (and with much better excuse) in the matter of ultimate
notions, are far ahead in the matters of synonymous discrimination and
logical groupings. A case in point is the Latin dictionary of Lewis and
Short. It is further to be observed that the same principles, with the
necessary qualifications, might be profitably applied in the English "School-
books " ; most of which are in a pitiable state of confusion, as to the defini-
tion and explaining of terms.
W. L. D.
IV. BUCKLE AND THE ECONOMICS OF KNOWLEDGE.
IT seems at first sight like a satire on the teaching of Henry
Buckle that, nearly twenty years after his death, public interest
should be more attracted by the pettiest details of his personal
life .than by the intellectual achievements but for which those
details would never have been recorded, or, had they been
recorded, would never have been studied. It might be urged
that this was just the sort of gossip from which he desired to
set history free, and to substitute for it an inquiry into the
general laws by which men's actions in their totality are deter-
mined. Yet many of these details strikingly illustrate a peculiar
and neglected aspect of his philosophy. For he held that
moral and affectional motives are all-powerful with the indi-
vidual, although exercising an inappreciable influence on masses
of men acting together. Accordingly he considered that much
which ought not to find a place in history might very properly
be relegated to biography ; regarding the latter, indeed, as not
susceptible of scientific treatment. His life, then, if it does not
verify his entire philosophy, at least does not contradict it. It
may also be taken as confirming and deepening the personal
impression made long ago on his more sympathetic readers.
There are passages in the History of Civilisation which show
plainly enough that Buckle was full of deep tenderness and
ardent enthusiasm. But without Mr. Huth's biography we
should not have known how thoroughly good a man he was.
Every page exhibits him to us as a genial companion, a judicious
232
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
adviser, a devoted friend. But we learn little more about his
peculiar cast of intellect than that he had a memory even greater,
if possible, than Macaulay's. For the rest, nothing that Mr.
Huth has published tends to elucidate the causes, whether
general or special, which made his philosophy what it was.
Fortunately, however, the information required for that purpose
is easily accessible. Next after his country, parentage and early
associations, Buckle's true antecedents and environment are to
be found in the school of thought to which for the most part
he belonged. The object of this article is to show what tenden-
cies he represented, and in what particular directions he at-
tempted to work them out.
The English thought of the last half century, so far as it is
really English and not a revival of old dogmas or an importation
from the Continent, has been, under its most general aspect, a
philosophy of freedom, individuality, spontaneity, experimental-
ism. Foreign observers often take it, superficially enough, for
mere empiricism, the fit expression of a national character which
they persist in regarding as narrow, selfish, and materialistic, in-
capable of wide ideas or of lofty aspirations. That such a people
should also have created the richest poetic literature of modern
times is an anomaly which they do not feel called upon to explain.
Perhaps a little reflection would show them that our art and our
philosophy, so far from being opposed, are products of the same
imaginative genius working in different directions. It would
then be understood that if we appeal to experience, the enlarge-
ment and not the limitation of knowledge is what we have most
at heart ; and that our utilitarianism is not the substitution of a
low for a high standard, but of a progressive for a stationary, a
social for a personal morality. Moreover, the English habit of
individual liberty combines with the restless English imagination
in leading our foremost minds to adopt whatever abstract theories
offer the widest scope to spontaneity, to freedom of enterprise,
to variety of choice. It was his thorough comprehension of this
tendency and the consistent manner in which he brought it to
bear on speculation that qualified John Stuart Mill to be for so
many years the leader of English thought. His Essay on Lilcrty
only expresses more briefly and clearly the fundamental aim of
his larger works, which was to show that existing beliefs and
customs, resting as they did on experience, might be superseded
by a wider experience. He has told us himself that this was
the aim of his Logic ; and the drift of his Political Economy is
evidently to exalt as much as possible the part played by free
and conscious human agency in the distribution of wealth. That
the system of Mr. Herbert Spencer is from beginning to end a
philosophy of liberty and individualism need only be stated to
Suckle and the Economics of Knowledge, 233
be perceived. We know from his own declaration that the
whole series of works composing it were undertaken with a view
to its ethical conclusion, and we know also that his ethical
ideal is a society where the component parts interfere to the least
possible extent with one another. Thinkers of a more limited
scope are dominated by a similar tendency. Mr. Darwin has,
so to speak, projected the experimental method into nature, and
shown that it is the condition not only of scientific progress, but
of all vital progress^ whatever. Spontaneous variation and
natural selection correspond exactly to repeated trial and failure
followed by eventual success ; and among animals also those
families prosper most where there is most diversity developed,
in other words, where originality is least trammeled. The same
idea is present in Professor Bain's theory of voluntary action,
which offers a parallel to Mr. Darwin's theory of organic evolution
the more remarkable from its having been worked out before the
latter was published. According to it, all sorts of movements
are spontaneously set up by young creatures, and only those
muscular combinations survive in memory that experience proves
to be associated with pleasurable feeling, or with relief from
painful feeling. Another instance of the prominence given to
experimental freedom by English thought is the place which
Professor Jevons assigns to hypothesis in his Principles of
Science, particularly in the chapter on " The Character of the
Experimentalist," where it is very clearly explained that scientific
discoveries are not made by divination but by repeated guesses,
most of which are utterly wrong. The two greatest works of
modern English historical literature, Grote's Greece and Macau-
lay's England are both, but the former more especially, pleadings
in favour of political liberty. Even those writers who, like
Carlyle and Mr. Ruskin, on the whole approve of despotism
rather than of democracy, cannot avoid doing homag6 to the
English spirit. For the attraction of arbitrary power to
Carlyle was that it enabled exceptionally gifted individuals to
carry out their designs without let or hindrance ; and Mr. Euskin
protests against machinery because it destroys the personality
of the workman, his free initiative and spontaneous energy.
Even the breezy criticism of Mr. Matthew Arnold may be men-
tioned in this connexion as a help to the emancipation of thought
from routine methods and from party ties. Finally, the English
Positivists, while accepting a continental philosophy, distinguished
for its animosity to many forms of liberty, are so far faithful to
the traditions of their own country as to lay special emphasis on
that part of Comte's doctrine which demands the liberation of
the spiritual from the temporal power.
This general tendency of English thought was most fully
16
234
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
accepted by Buckle. As a writer, love of liberty was his ruling
passion ; as a philosopher, the idea of liberty was the centre of
his system. Although a devoted student he preferred it even to
knowledge.
" Liberty," he exclaims, " is the one thing most essential to the right
development of mind and to the real grandeur of nations. It is a product
of knowledge where knowledge advances in a healthy and regular manner ;
but if under certain unhappy circumstances it is opposed by what seems to
be knowledge, in God's name let knowledge perish and liberty be pre-
served. Liberty is not a means to an end, it is an end itself. To secure it,
to enlarge it and to diffuse it should be the main object of all social ar-
rangements and of all political contrivances." x
But the necessity for choosing between knowledge and liberty
was not likely to present itself to him in a practical form. Each
was conducive to the other ; each in its way was a realisation of
mind, an expression of inward spontaneous energy. He con-
ceived that the love of knowledge was, equally with the love of
wealth, inherent in man, and was enough to account for all pro-
gress when allowed free play by the presence of favourable
material conditions and the absence of artificial restraints. This
notion was, in truth, a generalisation from his own peculiar cir-
cumstances. The elder Buckle had been engaged in business, and
had bequeathed a competence to his son which enabled the latter
to devote his whole time to intellectual pursuits. Although averse
from office- work he kept up the traditions of business and carried
them into philosophy. Political Economy supplied a natural
connexion between the basis and the superstructure of his exist-
ence. From that science as from a centre all his other studies
branched out, and from it he borrowed the method by which
they were arranged. It was, then, quite natural that he should
look on Adam Smith as the greatest man that Scotland had ever
produced, and on the Wealth of Nations as the most important
book ever published. He himself aspired to be the Adam Smith
of a still more comprehensive science, and to found the Economics
of Knowledge.
Buckle's opinions were formed at a time when laissez-faire was
the undisputed law of political economy, and his early manhood
coincided with the stirring period of agitation for free-trade, an
agitation in which we are told that the young student was
intensely interested. Thus at a very early period his specula-
tions were biassed by a strong prejudice against governmental
interference ; and his plan for extending the laws of wealth to
knowledge required that something analogous to the protective
system should be discovered in the intellectual sphere. This is
why Buckle tries to bring bad government of every kind under
1 Miscellaneous Writings, I., 44-45.
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 235
the heading of protectionism, and why he looks on churches in
particular as associations invested with a kind of speculative
monopoly, to the great detriment of scientific industry. Anti-
clerical rather than anti-theological, his attitude is, in this repect,
exactly the reverse of that taken up by Auguste Comte, who
highly approved of ecclesiastical organisation, but wished to
utilise it for a new sort of teaching.
But, over a large part of the globe, human intelligence had to
contend with an even more formidable enemy than the protective
spirit, an enemy, indeed, to whom the unconquerable pertinacity
of that spirit was, in most instances, due. Such was the point
of view from which Buckle regarded Nature. He speaks of her
as carrying on a perpetual warfare with man, sometimes victori-
ous, sometimes vanquished, but always tending to thwart and
drag him back to her own level. It is astonishing that one who
formulated this fundamental antithesis so sharply, and who in
other respects has so frequently expressed his adhesion to the
popular metaphysics of twenty-five years ago, should ever have
been charged with materialism. A notion has somehow gained
currency that Buckle proposed to deduce the history of every
country from its physical geography. Nothing could well be
more unlike the truth. He distinctly marks off the regions
where, in his phraseology, nature was subordinated to man from
those where man was subordinated to nature ; and it was with
the former that, as a historian of civilisation, he was almost ex-
clusively concerned. The idea that human beings and human
societies are themselves natural products had apparently never
occurred to him. This, however, was not for want of acquaint-
ance with the theory of evolution, the basis of which he had fully
accepted. Writing some years before the appearance of Mr. Dar-
win's Origin of Species, he alludes to fixity of species as an " old
dogma " on which successful attacks had already been made 1 ;
and in the same passage he assumes that phenomena of every
order have always been determined by their own laws without
any interference from without. But he was averse from accept-
ing the absolute dependence of mind on brain, nor could he well
have done so consistently with his passionate faith in its im-
mortality. Hence his scornful doubt that the human mind could
be handed down like an heirloom 2 ; his opinion that the intel-
lectual and moral faculties do not improve ; and his deliberate
omission of race from the physical conditions which a historian
has to consider. Even where he does admit physical influ-
1 History of Civilisation in England, Vol. I., p. 806, note. The referen-
ces throughout this Article are to the original edition in two volumes.
2 Miscellaneous Writings, L, 17.
236
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
ences they are of a very indirect character, and they are just
those which would be picked out by the economist and the
literary student rather than by the physiologist. Nature wars
against political liberty by producing over-population, and so
enabling landlords and capitalists to concentrate all power in
their own hands. She wars against intellectual liberty by the
multiplication of extraordinary and terrifying phenomena which
stimulate the imagination at the expense of the understanding.
Buckle seems to have confounded an originally rapid rate of
increase in population with its final increase up to or beyond
the limit of subsistence. The latter is theoretically possible
under any conditions of climate, food and soil ; and it is not
necessarily involved in the former. The existence of vast plains
isolated from the rest of the world, whether fertile or barren,
seems a likelier cause of despotism than any other that can be
named ; while, conversely, whatever geographical circumstances
are favourable to the development of several independent
national centres, near enough for active intercourse with each
other, but protected by natural frontiers against mutual aggres-
sion, and similarly situated with regard to the world at large-
such regions, in short, as Greece, the basin of the Mediterranean,
and Western Europe generally are also favourable to liberty.
It would seem also that the aspects of nature have much less to
do with superstitious beliefs than Buckle supposed. For such
beliefs were originally diffused over the whole earth under very
similar forms ; they have not remained constantly associated
with awe-inspiring scenery ; and where such an association does
exist, as for instance in South America or the East Indies, it can
be better explained by difficulty of communication with the
centres of enlightenment than by any direct influence exercised
on the imagination.
My object, however, is not so much to criticise Buckle's
views, as to show in what modes of thought they originated.
And here we have a remarkable verification of the guiding
principle laid down at starting. Following the true English
method, our philosopher construes universal history not as an
organically connected whole, but as a great collection of spon-
taneous experiments on the possibility of human progress.
Mind is scattered broadcast over the whole earth, but in only a
few instances does it meet with conditions favourable to its
development. Everywhere outside Europe civilisation was ar-
revsted, either because wealth could not be accunmlated at all,
or because it could not be diffused so widely among the masses
as to enable them to understand and act on the ideas put for-
ward by men of genius. In Europe a new set of forces, his-
torical instead of geographical, coma into play, and a series of
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 237
eliminations bring us at last to England as the only country
where mind has been able to manifest its inherent powers of
expansion on a scale wide enough to furnish materials for
determining the natural law of all progress. By an equally
ingenious train of reasoning Guizot proves that civilisation can
best be studied in France ; a country which Auguste Comte, on
quite different grounds, also erects into the normal type of
intellectual evolution. No doubt the patriotic bias spoken of
by Mr. Herbert Spencer has something to do with these pre-
ferences; but a deeper reason will be found in the character
impressed on every philosophy by the social conditions under
which it is framed. A thinker who translates the ideas of his
own nation into abstract formulae will naturally find that this
same nation best satisfies the requirements of his particular
system. He may even extend the method to particular periods,
and imagine that the world was never so enlightened as when
his theory of what it ought to be first became fixed.
Besides his patriotic feelings, there was probably another
strong; motive which induced Buckle to select a single countrv
O
for the application of his new method. This was the desire to
simplify the hypothetical science of history, which, but for some
such artifice, threatened to become unmanageably complex and
difficult. The same consideration throws some light on his
celebrated rejection of morality as a factor in the progress of
civilisation. None of the author's theories provoked so much
hostile criticism at the time of their first publication, nor were
any of them supported by such weak and inconsistent argu-
ments. It will perhaps be worth while to glance at the prin-
cipal assumptions which those arguments involve. They are as
follows : (1) The innate moral dispositions do not change.
(2) Moral truth is not progressive. (3) Innate disposition and
knowledge between them account for the whole of moral
conduct. (4) Moral forces exercise no great or lasting effect on
human affairs. Of these four propositions three are refuted by
the history of slavery alone. It was not always known that
slavery is wrong, nor, in fact, was it always wrong ; the percep-
tion of its iniquity was made more active by religious feeling ;
and its abolition was in great part due to the excitement thus
produced. With regard to the alleged stationariness of the
innate moral dispositions by which term of course nothing
more than sympathy need be implied everything goes to prove
that on the average civilised children are born with a better
nature than savage children, or than their own remote ancestors.
It is, however, conceivable that, conceding the existence of
moral progress, more may have been done for human happiness
by purely intellectual progress. One great example of a benefit
238
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
due entirely to the latter is, according to Buckle, the compara-
tive infrequency of war in modern times. His argument is a
perfect nest of fallacies. The stimulus given to war by intel-
lectual causes such as individual genius and the adoption of
new beliefs by whole nations or sections of nations, is entirely
ignored. It is taken for granted that the invention of gun-
powder localised the military spirit in a separate class and
thereby weakened it, whereas the localisation seems to have
been greater before gunpowder came into general use l ; nor was
it likely that war should become less popular when its risks
were confined to a particular class than when they were shared
by the whole community. That national quarrels are dis-
couraged by the diffusion of sound economical doctrine is
doubtless true; but the false doctrines from which those
quarrels formerly sprang were equally intellectual forces.
Buckle gives as a reason for neglecting the influence of legisla-
tion on progress, that the best laws are those which have been
passed for the repeal of bad ones ; he does not consider how
easily the same argument might be turned against his own
favourite theory of social dynamics, a remark which applies
equally to that other great intellectual triumph, the decline of
religious persecution. For, so far, it is the most intellectual
religions that have been the most intolerant; and modern
thought in winning liberty has only won back what ancient
thought enjoyed everywhere except in Athens. Nor is this all.
Another influence adverse to war is, we are told, the great
increase of travelling due to the extension of locomotion by
steam. Different nations are brought into closer contact with
one another, their mutual esteem is thereby increased, and their
hostile feelings are proportionately diminished. Now, what is
this mutual esteem if not a moral motive, brought into play,
indeed, by intellect, but itself the determining antecedent ?
And, to make the self-contradiction worse, we learn that the
reason why men's respect for each other grows with their
mutual intimacy, is that the good in human nature considerably
outweighs the bad. If so, what becomes of the position that
virtue and vice exactly balance and neutralise each other's
effects ?
Apart, however, from these obvious objections, there is a
deeper objection to the theory, which, so far as I know, has
never yet been pointed out ; namely, the indistinctness of the
whole antithesis between moral and intellectual laws. Buckle
saw clearly enough that duty is partly a matter of knowledge,
without seeing that all knowledge must, as such, be intellectual;
1 See Macaulay's Essay on Macchiavelli.
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 239
and he altogether failed to observe that the pursuit of science
must equally, as a mode of action, come under moral laws. A
life's devotion to the pursuit of truth demands no inconsider-
able amount of temperance and courage; while candour in
dealing with the opinions of others, and readiness to test one's
own opinions thoroughly, imply a degree of fairness and dis-
interestedness not inferior to that which may be displayed in
the performance of any other duty.
In estimating the influence of religion, literature and govern-
ment on civilisation, Buckle finds his task greatly simplified by
the previous elimination of morality ; the immediate effects of
these three agents (to which art should have been added a,s a
fourth) being exercised on action rather than on knowledge ;
while again the consciousness that morality depends upon such
complex conditions was a further motive for leaving it out of
account altogether. Yet even so the questions raised in this
connexion are most inadequately treated in the chapter specially
devoted to them. So far as literature is concerned, Buckle him-
self subsequently took up a totally different position, expatiat-
ing eloquently on the stimulus which poetry gives to scientific
discovery, and on the importance of keeping the intellect in
perpetual contact with the emotions (II. 502); for which purpose,
as need hardly be observed, literature is our most valuable
auxiliary. His remarks on this head remind us of what Pro-
fessor Tyndall has since said, and a little farther reflection
might have led him to anticipate what the same authority has
stated with respect to the moral basis of intellectual work.
Such considerations would, however, have been inconsistent
with that thorough-going parallel between knowledge and
wealth, between logic and political economy, which our author
was bent on establishing ; for the laws of material industry, as
he had learnt them, were completely dissociated from morality
and from disinterested emotion. It is not a little curious that
two other English thinkers, Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert
Spencer, should almost simultaneously have been carrying
economic principles, the one into zoology, and the other into all
philosophy. For the " struggle for existence is avowedly based
on the Malthusian law of population ; and the formula of
evolution grew out of an attempt to place the doctrine of laissez-
faire on a truly scientific foundation. Buckle uses both prin-
ciples, although on a much more limited scale ; he explains the
tropical civilisations, as we have already seen, by the advantage
which an unrestricted multiplication of human beings gave to
land and capital over labour ; he explains the European civilis-
ations as a constant struggle between governmental interference
and the natural development of intellect; and we shall presently
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
see that lie forces deduction and induction into an analogy with
the production and distribution of wealth.
It sometimes happens that a philosopher errs not by following
his own ideas too far, but by not following them far enough ;
and I cannot help thinking that Buckle would have been better
inspired had he pushed his parallel one step further, and in-
troduced the theory of exchange into his intellectual economics.
He would then have seen that the importation of knowledge
from one country into another is the very condition of its
progress ; that for the community as well as for the individual
isolation means death ; that no nation however gifted can sub-
sist on its own mental stores; and that truth acquires an
altogether new power when transferred to a fresh soil. He
would not then have held that the laws of intellectual or any
other progress are best ascertained by studying their action in a
country secluded, so far as possible, from external interference.
And he would also perhaps have perceived that the decay of
the great tropical civilisations arose partly from this very seclu-
sion, partly from the reaction of the barbarism by which they
were surrounded on every side, entailing as it did an ever increas-
ing preponderance of the military spirit together with a crushing
burden of taxation within. As it is, he unconsciously bears
witness to the truth which he failed to recognise in its full force.
England, which he declares to be the one country least affected
by foreign influences, does in reality owe much of her intellec-
tual greatness to those very influences. The circumstance that
we did not formerly travel much abroad for pleasure, or receive
many visitors from the European continent, is comparatively
insignificant. We traded round the world ; we received books,
inventions, discoveries, and ideas from all quarters. One is
almost ashamed to mention the Eenaissance, so much has been
written and talked about it of late years, and so fatally asso-
ciated is it with the jargon of a frivolous dilettantism ; but I
cannot help noticing what a void is produced by its total
absence from the pages of this historian. He seems to think
that, towards the close of the sixteenth century, men suddenly,
and for no particular reason except the negative one of ecclesi-
astical decay, began doubting what they had hitherto believed,
and that modern enlightenment sprang as spontaneously from
their doubts. The truth is, that they questioned one set of
beliefs because they had become familiarised with another and
contradictory set, embodied in the classic literature of Greece
and Rome. Nor was the intellectual life of England dependent
only for its first awakening on an external stimulus, it was
sustained through the whole seventeenth century by continual
contact with the minds of other nations ; while no sooner was
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 241
their influence partially withdrawn, as happened in the eighteenth
century, than it fell into a speedy decline. Buckle has noticed
the dearth of speculative genius which followed the deaths of
Locke and Newton, but he has failed adequately to explain it.
Curiously enough too, the explanation which he does offer is
inconsistent with his own principles. According to him it arose
from the diversion of the national genius partly into practical
pursuits, partly into political contests (I. 808). Here then are
two most serious disturbances, totally unconnected with the
protective spirit, not allowed for in his general philosophy of
history, and all the more dangerous that they are likely to gain
instead of losing strength with advancing civilisation. That,
however, he exaggerates their effect during the period referred
to, will become evident when we consider how much greater
their activity has since become without proving incompatible
with a brilliant revival of science and philosophy. If we ask
what was the cause of that revival, Buckle will himself supply
us with the answer. He attributes it first to the influence of
the Scotch school, and then to the "sudden admiration for
German literature of which Coleridge was the principal ex-
ponent" (I. 809). Only prejudice could have prevented him
from acknowledging our obligations to France as well. Turning
now to other countries, Buckle continues to furnish fresh evi-
dence of the same truth the intellectual interdependence of
nations. He tells us that France, enervated by the despotism
of Louis XIV., was only saved by a wholesale importation of
English ideas ; and that the German intellect was raised to an
even abnormal activity by contact with those eminent French-
men who flocked to the court of Frederic the Great (I. 217).
English and Greek literature had, by the way, much more to do
with that extraordinary fermentation than Maupertuis and his
colleagues ; but as Buckle unhappily did not live to sketch the
history of German thought, I need not press the point. Another
striking illustration is offered by the history of Spain. Nothing
in his whole work is more interesting than those condensed
and vivid pages in which Buckle shows how, after having been
brought to the lowest ebb of misery by her priesthood and her
government, that unhappy country was restored to something
of her former prosperity by the efforts of a foreign dynasty.
Yet, strange to say, he seizes on this opportunity to push home
the lesson that " no progress is real unless it is spontaneous "
(II. 99). That Spain temporarily fell back from the position
won for her by Charles III. may be true enough. But did she
become again what she had been a century before ? And has
she made no progress since then ? The revolution of 1868 was,
comparatively speaking, a failure, as indeed the revolutions of
242
Bwkle and the Economics of Knowledge.
England and France at first seemed to be also, but at any rate
it revealed the existence of a sceptical feeling diffused through
the entire Spanish nation, and an utter decay of the old loyalty,
which according to our philosopher are the most essential
requisites of progress ; and this scepticism, whatever may be its
value, is altogether an importation from France and Germany,
and, we may suppose, was first set on foot by the reforming
zeal of the Bourbons. The derivation of Scotch philosophy
from England and France is not noticed, although the influence
of the latter at least had already been pointed out by Carlyle
in his essay on Burns. 1
The preference shown by Buckle for home-grown over im-
ported knowledge may have been suggested by Adam Smith's
analogous preference of agriculture to manufactures, and of
native industry to foreign trade. But when he declares the
protective spirit in church and state to be the great enemy of
intellectual progress, and therefore of all civilisation, the very
form of the expression places its economical derivation beyond
a doubt. Here he is quite at home, and his whole soul is
thrown into the work. The polemic against protection occupies
the larger portion of his history, and it was this that won for it
such a resonant and far-reaching successv From a literary point
of view the success was well deserved. I, at least, know of
nothing in any work of the kind marked by such intense,
sustained, victorious passion, the passion without which, as>
Hegel says, nothing great can be achieved, and which, in this
instance, is rendered more formidable by the imposing array of
facts brought up to support it at every step. To us of the
present generation Buckle's words have a more individual dis-
tinctness and a more immediate interest than to his own con-
temporaries. For, since they were written, there has been a
revival of the protective spirit under a new form, and in many
quarters it is proposed that the old authoritative methods should
be used to consolidate and extend reforms initiated by very
different means. Endowment of research, endowment of Catho-
lic professorships, compulsory education, compulsory temperance,
compulsory thrift, interference with freedom of contract, and
Socialistic velleities of every kind these are but the various
parts of a system against which Buckle, had he lived, would
have protested not less energetically than Mr. Herbert Spencer,
now the sole surviving theorist of English liberty. 2 It behoves
1 In one passage Buckle speaks of " that interchange of ideas which is
likely to become the most important regulator of European affairs" (I. 223).
But he omits to notice that it has always been tneir most important
regulator.
2 Seconded, I must add, on particular points, by Mr. Grant Allen and
Mr. Auberon Herbert.
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 243
us then to examine with especial care the arguments by which
his thesis is supported, and the historical examples by which he
has endeavoured to verify them.
The protective spirit, as has been already observed, is twofold.
It may either interfere with men's actions, or with their beliefs,
or with both. In France it chiefly took the direction of political
tutelage, in Scotland of ecclesiastical intolerance, in Spain of
both combined ; the consequence being that in the last named
country progress was completely arrested, while in the other two
it has been irregular and unhealthy. The French Eevolution
was a reaction against the protective spirit, and its destructive
violence was due to the rigour of the repression which provoked
it. Few liberal thinkers will deny that Buckle's criticisms on
the past and present condition of the countries just enumerated
contain a large amount of truth. It is quite another question
whether the wide generalisations founded on his historical survey
are equally to be trusted. To begin with, it seems to me that
the assumption of a fixed antithesis between the people and their
rulers is eminently misleading. Economical writers are perfectly
justified in treating it as a constant factor in their science, for
interferences with industry on a large scale can only be carried
on through the agency of legislation, and they frequently arise
from a real opposition of interests between the community at
large and a small minority of capitalists or landlords who have
got possession of the central authority. A country may also be
governed by a foreign race, possibly for its own good, but at any
rate without its own consent or co-operation, like India at the
present moment ; or again it may be dominated by a priesthood
sprung from its own ranks and speaking its own language, but
to all intents and purposes the soldiers of an alien power, and
quite out of sympathy with its real opinions ; but apart from
these exceptions every government is really representative, even
when it is not created by the popular vote, and merely gives a
sharper expression to the collective will or to the prevalent
beliefs of the people. Sometimes the rulers will be a little in
advance of their subjects, and sometimes a little behind them ;
but, to use a favourite formula of our author's, deviations in one
direction will be compensated by deviations in another. Here
the government will be too interfering, and there too remiss ; but
in either case the error will be attended by counterbalancing
advantages ; and probably each nation will have something to
learn from the other. Everywhere there will be obstacles to
progress ; but they will arise far more from the natural inertia
of the human mind, varying with race and geographical position,
than from the distribution and application of political power ;
and they will equally affect all classes of society.
244
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
Again, Buckle seems to confound under the common name of
political protection five distinct ideas : (1) Despotism of any
kind ; (2) the concentration of power in a few hands ; (3) the
favouring of one class at the expense of others ; (4) interference
with individuals for their own good ; and (5) the feeling of
personal loyalty towards a hereditary chief. He even goes so
far as to identify what is called a paternal government with a
" government in which supreme power is vested in the sovereign
or in a few privileged classes " (I. 557). Yet surely the govern-
ment of Turkey is not paternal; nor is the development of demo-
cracy unfavourable to benevolent interference with private inter-
ests, as the present tendency of legislation in England proves.
Buckle also associates economic protection with political abso-
lutism and centralisation, although in the United States it
flourishes under conditions the very reverse of these ; while only
a few years after the publication of his first volume, free-trade
was imposed on France by a despotic ruler.
Undoubtedly there are countries where the principle of
authority is highly developed, and others where it is restricted
within very narrow limits ; but to say that the former are
necessarily animated by a spirit unfavourable to scientific pro-
gress is probably more than Buckle would have ventured to
assert in so many words ; although on putting his various ex-
pressions together this is the only interpretation that they will
stand. Yet it is notorious that science has received great en-
couragement from many absolute rulers both in ancient and
modern times. In France it made great progress under the old
regime. In Germany it has co-existed with a complete absence
of political freedom. Perhaps he would have held that mere
knowledge was an insufficient return for the sacrifice of indi-
vidualism and spontaneity ; but we have only to deal with his
clear and categorical assertions (1) " that the progress of man-
kind depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena
are investigated, and on the extent to which a knowledge of
those laws is diffused " ; and (2) " that the great enemy of this
movement is the protective spirit " (II. 1). Now I maintain
that whatever else the history of France proves, it does not
prove the second of these propositions. Let us consider what
arguments it suggests to Buckle. He does not, indeed, discuss
the endowment of research put in practice on a large scale by
Louis XIV., but he censures the encouragement given to litera-
ture by that monarch on grounds which, if they are worth any-
thing, must equally apply to science. As usual the principles
invoked are purely economic. We are told that
" Every nation which is allowed to pursue its course uncontrolled, will
easily satisfy the wants of its own intellect, and will produce such a litera-
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 245
ture as is best suited to its actual condition. And it is evidently for the
interest of all classes that the production shall not be greater than the want ;
that the supply shall not exceed the demand. It is, moreover, necessary to
the wellbeing of society that a healthy proportion should be kept up
between the intellectual classes and the practical classes. It is necessary
that there should be a certain ratio between those who are most inclined
to think, and those who are most inclined to act. If we were all authors,
our material interests would suffer ; if we were all men of business, our
mental pleasures would be abridged. In the first case, we should be
famished philosophers ; in the other case we should be wealthy fools.
Now, it is obvious that, according to the commonest principles of human
action, the relative numbers of these two classes will be adjusted, without
effort, by the natural, or, as we call it, the spontaneous movement of
Society/
The obvious fallacy lies in supposing that literature is useless
when those who are engaged in its production cannot live on the
sale of their works. The idea of doing anything for posterity is
quite ignored. And we are vainly left to imagine how the book-
market is to provide needy philosophers not only with the
necessaries of life, but also with the instruments of research,
such as libraries, observatories, laboratories, and collections of
natural objects, in the absence of state-aid, and even of private
munificence, for that too must be excluded if we are to apply
the law of supply and demand with complete consistency. To
suppose that such aid, even when granted on a liberal scale,
would impoverish the rest of the community is absurd, especially
when we consider how largely scientific discoveries contribute
to the national wealth. .Nor can it be contended that the ener-
gies of scientific men are weakened by the receipt of public
assistance (as those of other producers might be), so long as it
does not exceed their real wants. Had our author lived to write
his promised sketch of American civilisation, he would perhaps
have found that the want of accumulated knowledge which,
according to him, is a serious obstacle to the progress of the
United States (I. 220) may be traced to a want of endowments
for the support of learning in that country.
Buckle, however, in the chapter to which I have been referring,
evades the real issue by speaking at one time as if the interests
of science or philosophy were identical with those of literature,
and at another time as if the two were opposed. The former
view is expressed in the passage just quoted, the latter in his
subsequent arguments. We are told that Louis XIV., by en-
couraging art and poetry, arrested the great intellectual move-
ment which had been in progress before his accession to power.
It may be doubted whether any courtier ever attributed such
omnipotence to a monarch as this republican historian. Here,
again, an economical analogy is falsely applied. Because capital
can be readily transferred from one employment to another, it does
246
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
not follow that the same is true of brains. It is, indeed, evident
from the facts furnished by Buckle himself that, before Louis
XIV. assumed the direction of affairs, the French intellect was
already executing the evolution ascribed to his mischievous
interference with the natural course of thought. For " the
poets, dramatists, painters, musicians, sculptors, architects, were,
with hardly an exception, not only born, but educated under
that freer policy, which existed before his time " (I. 648). A
fortiori their career must have been already decided before his
majority. That epochs of scientific and of artistic excellence
should alternate with one another is, in truth, a regular law of
history, and the same phenomenon has repeated itself at other
periods when the cause, whatever it may be, evidently lay deeper
than the vicissitudes of court favour. It is another question
whether the intellectual sterility which marked the latter half
of Louis's reign is to be attributed to the protective system.
Looking at our own Victorian age as it now is, compared witli
what it was twenty years ago, and at the present wretched state
of French literature as compared with the generation of 1830, I
am inclined to think that here also we are in presence of some
mysterious rhythm according to which many more great writers
are born at one time than at another.
Passing from the protective spirit in politics to the protec-
tive spirit in theology, I must again call attention to the con-
fusion of ideas lurking under a style of exemplary clearness.
The somewhat heterogeneous forces represented by clericalism,
asceticism, intolerance, and superstition are lumped together
under a single heading; while the last of these terms is
sometimes used to denote supernatural beliefs lying out-
side theology, and sometimes any amount of supernatural-
ism going beyond Buckle's own theistic creed. Some-
times the clergy are dangerous because they teach certain
doctrines ; at other times the doctrines are only dangerous be-
cause of the authority which they give to an organised class
whose interests are opposed to progress. Sometimes the study
of theology is attacked as a waste of power, because it deals with
subjects not admitting of any certain information ; at other times
because it propounds theories inconsistent with experience.
Under cover of such ambiguities^ the Scotch and the Germans
are equally spoken of as being more superstitious than the Eng-
lish ; although most of the faults with which Scotland is re-
proached are present in England to a considerable extent, and
not present at all in Germany. Moreover, the evils indiscrimin-
ately associated with $ie protective spirit in theology, so far
from being always combined, are often found to be inconsistent
with one another. Asceticism is not the rule of established
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 247
churches, but of those religious teachers who are thrown, for
their support, on the voluntary contributions of the people. It
is also notorious that the latter class, precisely because they
are not protected, that is to say, not educated at the public ex-
pense nor admitted to the society of the higher orders, are
generally distinguished by the greater illiberality of their senti-
ments. Again, a real theology, however largely intermixed with
error it may be, is widely removed from the mere popular and
spontaneous superstitions with which Buckle habitually confounds
it, by the systematic cohesion of its dogmas, and by the severe
intellectual effort implied on the part of those whose duty it is
to assimilate and to defend them. It is no accident that so
many savants should be the children of Protestant clergymen,
and that so many philosophers should have been theological
students in their youth. Even as a formidable enemy, Catholi-
cism may have rendered valuable services to free thought, by
nerving its advocates to the most strenuous efforts and obliging
them to find counter-solutions for the great problems to which
the churcli had already provided an answer. Buckle knew well
that industry does not attain its highest development in regions
where the wants of life are most easily supplied. He might
have inferred from that significant circumstance that the
intellectual energies gain fresh strength from the obstacles
against which they contend. It would have been worthy of
an English philosopher to point out that, in the intellectual
sphere also, competition is needed to secure efficiency ; that
great thought has always been aggressive and defiant ; and
that the weakening of its antagonist may dangerously react
upon itself.
After considering the causes by which knowledge is impeded,
we pass to its own laws, to the conditions under which it is
extended. Here the analogy between intellectual and industrial
economics, which throughout has been our guide, is completed.
We are taught to consider knowledge, like wealth, under the two
heads of accumulation and diffusion. By the former, progress is
made posssible; by the latter, it is actually effected. Had
Buckle been really, what so many writers fancy, he was, a
disciple of Auguste Comte, he would here have availed himself
of the results already reached in the Positive Philosophy. The
law of the three stages was ready to hand, together with the
classification of the sciences according to their logical and his-
torical order of evolution. His true master, however, among con-
temporary thinkers is not Comte but Mill ; he combines the
System of Logic with the Principles of Political Economy ; he
looks on deduction as the great instrument by which knowledge
is accumulated, and on induction as the great instrument of its
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
diffusion. 1 We have to lament that his whole case is not before
us, for it was in the unwritten chapters on Germany and America
that these two processes were to have been more particularly
studied. I believe, however, that the method chosen was a mis-
taken one, and that its inadequacy may be demonstrated from
the portions which he lived to complete.
It would appear, to begin with, that Buckle had either no
clear idea of what is meant by induction and deduction, or ideas
which were the reverse of true. And here let us pause to observe
that Buckle, while professing to discard the methods employed by
metaphysicians for investigating the laws of mind, and setting
very little value on the positive results which they have at-
tained, 2 has in fact borrowed the whole framework of his system
from these very metaphysicians, without acknowledgment and
without criticism. He justly censures Eeid for multiplying
unproved assumptions. Yet he had a common-sense system of
his own; only he never got so far as Eeid; he never consciously
formulated it to himself. Preoccupied with the idea of general
laws as the one great object of knowledge, he forgot that, before
laws can be even looked for, a preliminary mental analysis is
needed, sometimes of infinitely greater difficulty and importance
than any subsequent part of the inquiry. But, as nobody can
move an inch without such an analysis, he takes for granted the
distinctions of common language and common thought, without
perceiving their purely relative and provisional value. It is only
by studying the history of these distinctions that we can free
ourselves from their tyranny. Buckle, apparently, had never
done so, and, not having mastered them, they have mastered
him. They are perpetually misleading, or tripping him up, or
gathering in a hopeless tangle about his steps. So it is with the
antithesis between nature and man derived from the Greek
Sophists ; the antithesis between the intellectual and the moral
derived from Aristotle ; the Socratic confusion of dutifulness
with knowledge ; and the assumption of an immemorial un-
changing moral code, smacking strongly of intuitionism. Then,
again, we have the scholastic separation of the imagination from
the understanding ; and on it is superimposed a theory that art
is due to the one and science to the other. This supplies him
1 This is nowhere stated in so many words, but I think as much may be
gathered from the contrast drawn between Germany and America, I.
224, and the retrospect in II. 579 ff.
2 He mentions as the sum total " a very few of the laws of association "
(one would like to know how many there are altogether), " and perhaps I
may add the modern theories of vision and of touch " (I. 151). Yet out
of these materials nearly the whole of a new psychology has been con-
structed.
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 249
with a ready explanation of the disproportionate development
of art in Italy and Spain ; the imagination being stimulated to
excess in those countries by the more imposing aspect of
nature as compared with Northern Europe. It seems to have
escaped his notice that in art the Belgians far surpass the
Swiss, while in science the relation is reversed. Elsewhere, as I
have already observed, he does justice to the scientific uses of
the imagination, but straightway proceeds to confound it either
with a knowledge of the emotions or with the emotions them-
selves. These, he incidentally declares, " are as much a part of
us as the understanding " which has never been denied and
adds that " they are as truthful " and " as likely to be right "
(II. 502) ; a doctrine which, if it has any meaning at all,
would immediately reopen the floodgates of superstition, and
reverse the conclusions elsewhere maintained by its author.
But of all the ideas that Buckle has borrowed from the
" metaphysicians," he has used none so freely as their theories
concerning the distinction between induction and deduction;
and nowhere is his want of philosophical training more pain-
fully evinced, and this in three different directions: (1) as
regards their abstract nature; (2) as regards their historical
exemplification; and (3) as regards their connexion with the
accumulation and diffusion of knowledge. His account of the two
methods is, at first starting, sufficiently accurate, though rather
vague. " Induction is from particulars to generals, and from the
senses to the ideas ; deduction is from generals to particulars,
and from the ideas to the senses" (II. 419). But on proceeding
to explain what are the general propositions from which deduc-
tion sets out, he makes the following extraordinary assertion :
"The deductive thinker invariably assumes certain premisses, which
are quite different from the hypotheses essential to the best induction.
These premisses are sometimes borrowed from antiquity ; sometimes they
are taken from the notions which happen to prevail in the surrounding
society ; sometimes they are the result of a man's own peculiar organisa-
tion ; and sometimes . . . they are deliberately invented, with the
object of arriving, not at truth, but at an approximation to truth." To
which he adds that, "a deductive habit, being essentially synthetic, always
tends to multiply original principles or laws; while the tendency of an
inductive habit is to diminish successive analysis " (II. 420). Yet we have
been previously told that " the inductive philosopher is naturally cautious,
patient, and somewhat creeping ; while the deductive philosopher is more
remarkable for boldness, dexterity, and often rashness" (II. 419).
One need only look at the mathematical sciences, which are
universally admitted to be deductive, to see the absurdity of all
this. To ascend from the part to the whole must always be
cceteris paribus a more daring and hazardous process than to
descend from the whole to the part. The truth is that what
17
250
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
Buckle had in his mind throughout was not the opposition
between two kinds of reasoning ; but between reasoning on the
one hand, and observation and experiment on the other. For,
he mentions America as an extreme instance of the inductive
spirit, and Germany of the deductive. Now, the Americans are
well known to be excellent observers, but they have not contri-
buted much to our stock of generalisations, either by the dis-
covery of new, or by the resolution of old laws ; while German
philosophy is remarkable for its habit of challenging current
assumptions, and for its constant endeavour to construct systems
out of the fewest possible first principles. Yet this interpreta-
tion, while it gives an intelligible meaning to some passages, is
irreconcilable with others which seem to confound induction
with the general principle of all reasoning, the demand of a
proof, while deduction is represented as the submission of
reason to unsupported authorities. Accordingly the one method
is characterised as theological, and the other as anti-theological
(II. 411 ff.). The distinction cannot, in my opinion, be main-
tained. Particular facts may be, equally with general proposi-
tions, taken for granted or accepted on faith, and theological
systems not only may be, but have been, built up out of such
alleged facts, with no more aid from general assumptions than
is necessary to any inductive process whatever. And the errors
of such a system, or of any system, may often be most effectu-
ally overthrown by showing that it involves a contradiction,
either of its general propositions with each other, or of those
propositions with their logical consequences, that is to say, by
deductive reasoning. It has even been held that the function
of syllogistic logic is essentially negative, that it only amounts
to the complete elimination of self-contradiction from thought.
Buckle most unfairly opposes the rigorous and scientific em-
ployment of the one method to the loose and popular employ-
ment of the other, thus altogether missing the close connexion
which recent logicians have shown to subsist between them.
When Buckle proceeds to illustrate the different types of
reasoning by a survey of the literatures where he supposes
them to be exemplified, his original misapprehension is con-
tinued and reinforced by other misapprehensions in the inter-
pretation of those literatures. The Scotch intellect in the
eighteenth century is chosen as an example of the deductive
spirit; and the tendency of Scotch metaphysicians to assume
the existence of ultimate principles in the human mind is given
as an especial instance of its operation. An historian might
perhaps be equally justified in taking Hume, Adam Smith;
James Mill, and Thomas Brown, who all pursued the contrary
method, as the genuine representatives of Scotch philosophy.
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge 251
But, passing over this objection, is it not obvious that we have
here a confusion of psychology with logic ; that to insist
(whether rightly or wrongly) on the indecomposable character
of certain mental phenomena ; to maintain even that we have
internal sources of knowledge independent of experience is an
entirely different thing from preferring one kind of demonstra-
tion to another? It might as well be said that the chemist who
believes in the indecomposable character of the so-called ele-
ments, is more deductive than he who seeks to resolve them all
into a single substance, as that the a priori psychologist is so
distinguished from his analytical rival. Indeed, of the two I
should say that he who evolves all the manifold varieties of
consciousness from the combinations of a few simple feelings,
approaches nearest to the mathematical, and therefore to the
deductive method. The common-sense school, as their very
name implies, were not reasoners at all; they never went
beyond a superficial description and classification of the mental
phenomena.
In dealing with the origin of this so-called philosophy,
Buckle is equally at fault. According to him its method is
theological, its results are secular and liberal. The truth
however is that Hutcheson, the founder of the school, borrowed
his innate principles from Shaftesbury and Butler who, being
English, ought, on our author's view, to have taught the con-
trary system ; while the habit of assuming their existence, once
introduced, found high favour with orthodox Scotchmen because
it seemed to make for the spirituality of the soul and the
supernatural origin of conscience; thus furnishing a welcome
support to those dogmas by which they were still powerfully
affected. We are told that, in Scotland, the intellectual classes
have long been remarkable for " boldness of investigation and
freedom from prejudice" (I. 225). I believe all continental
critics will agree with me in thinking that they have been,
comparatively speaking, much more remarkable for narrowness
and timidity.
It is quite in accordance with his singular view of method,
that Buckle should declare Hume's metaphysical essays an
exception to the generally deductive character of Scotch philo-
sophy. For Hume was both the most sceptical of all thinkers,
and the one who carried the experiential system farthest. Yet,
looking not at the matter but at the logical form of those
essays, I do not see how they can be distinguished from his
other writings. For reasons already suggested, I should be
inclined to consider them better examples of deduction than of
induction. But, properly speaking, there is a stage at which
speculation is so little developed that it cannot be brought
252
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
tinder any strictly defined type of reasoning at all. Its method
is then that of analogy, a rough attempt to interpret the
unknown in terms of the known. The Natural History <>f
Religion is a good example of this process. Hume, without
investigating the evidence furnished by travellers, declared that
polytheism was the natural religion of savages. Does it follow
that his conclusions were evolved out of his own mind ? By
no means. He argued from the widest experience that the
more abstract and universal a notion is, the more difficult is it
to grasp ; and that the higher manifestations of mind follow
instead of preceding the lower. In fact, he argued from all
that was already known by experience of children, of unedu-
cated persons, and of savages, to what still remained to be
known of these last. To collect the facts about savage belief,
and then to restate them in abstract terms, would not have
been induction, because it would not have been reasoning of
any kind, but simply description.
Buckle's account of Adam Smith is open both to these and to
other criticisms. The works of that great thinker are repre-
sented as a perfect type of the deductive method. The Theory
of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations are interpreted
as complementary portions of a single science, having for its
object the reduction of human nature to law. The peculiarity
of the scheme is that the two grand motives of human action
are separately considered, and treated apart from each other's
disturbing action. These two motives are sympathy and sel-
fishness ; the one is discussed in the Moral Sentiments, the
other in the Wealth of Nations. By a logical artifice, each in
turn is assumed to be the whole factor in human conduct ;
although in reality their effects are always conjoined. Buckle
exemplifies what he supposes to have been the method of Adam
Smith by a singularly unlucky illustration from geometry. Eeal
lines, he tells us, always have both length and breadth, but the
geometrician, in order to avoid insoluble complications, assumes
that they possess the former attribute only. We are not
informed whether he subsequently rectifies his omission by
postulating lines which have breadth without length ; but to
complete the parallel he certainly ought to do so. A much
more pertinent illustration would have been furnished by
dynamics, which really does begin with the effect of forces
taken singly, and afterwards proceeds to study them in com-
bination. I conceive, however, that no such idea ever entered
the head of Adam Smith as is attributed to him by his admirer.
His two great works would, indeed, according to Buckle's
theory, serve, not to complete, but to contradict and upset each
other. For, be it observed, they do not study simple tendencies
Buckle, and the Economics of Knowledge. 253
b'ut actual concrete facts of history and everyday life. To say
that whatever men feel and think and do is the effect of their
sympathies, and then to say that it is the effect of their selfish-
ness, would, if these two forces were necessarily opposed to one
another, be simply an unintelligible paradox. But the Theory
of Moral Sentiments is, as its very name implies, an inquiry
into the origin of certain feelings, which are nowhere assumed
to exercise a paramount influence over human conduct ; nor,
although they are derived from sympathy, do they exhaust its
manifestations. Neither do sympathy and selfishness, in Smith's
view of them, either divide the whole field of human nature, or
reciprocally exclude one another. 1 The tendency to give and to
seek for sympathy does not, in its original form, imply any self-
sacrifice, arid, in its more complex manifestations, is eminently
favourable to that desire for wealth which Adam Smith regards
as the principal cause of economic progress. Thus the Wealth
of Nations, so far from taking up a psychological position
opposed to, or lying outside, that of the Moral Sentiments,
simply assumes the existence of desires which, in that work,
had been explained, whether rightly or wrongly, as a particular
manifestation of cur social feelings. Moreover, even if its
reasonings were based on the supposition that selfishness (in its
narrowest sense) is the sole spring of action, they would not
give a complete account of it, but only of so much as is concerned
with the production of economical phenomena ; while, again,
the analysis of those phenomena embraces a variety of topics
with which the science of human nature, properly so called, has
nothing whatever to do.
But if Adam Smith's works do not, when taken together,
constitute a deductive psychology, can it be said that each of
them singly is an example of the deductive method ? Certainly
not according to Buckle's own definitions. For the Theory of
Moral Sentiments makes no unsupported assertions ; it perpetu-
ally appeals to experience ; and, instead of multiplying ethical
principles, seeks to reduce them to one. Neither does ' the
Wealth of Nations reason down from causes to effects, but, con-
trariwise, ascends from effects to causes, which, we are elsewhere
informed, is a process characteristic of induction (II. 515). We
begin with the division of labour, and are gradually led on to
exchange, to the circulating medium, and to the different ele-
ments of price. Our modern systems are arranged on the
opposite plan; they follow the objective order of things, not
1 That is, according to the present use of terms, which is also Buckle's.
Adam Smith says that sympathy is not a selfish principle, using selfish in
a much narrower sense than ours.
254
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
the subjective order of thoughts. It is true that Adam Smith
does not obey the rules of induction laid down by Bacon ; but
then no science ever was, or ever could be, constructed in
accordance with those rules. The same remark applies to
Scotch physical philosophy. No doubt, it was largely hypothe-
tical, conjectural, and not immediately verified by experience.
But when was there ever a physical philosophy of which the
same could not be said? Buckle does, indeed, draw a very
marked distinction between the literatures of Scotland, on the
one hand, and of England and France on the other. The
former alone, according to him, was deductive, the latter two
were inductive. But, had he taken pains to analyse the pro-
ductions of English and French philosophy from the logical
point of view, he could hardly have failed to notice how little
they differed, in that respect, from the Scotch systems. He
admits that Harvey and Newton used the deductive method.
But Harvey and Newton between them represent half the scien-
tific English intellect of their century ; and if we add Hobbes, who
assuredly reasoned from generals to particulars quite as much
as, if not more than, Adam Smith, the balance will incline
heavily against induction. Observation and experiment were,
it is true, the favourite employment of English science in the
eighteenth century; but these are only subsidiary operations,
not to be confounded with the generalising process itself.
With regard to the French philosophy of the same period, only
a preconceived theory could have made anyone blind to its pre-
dominatingly deductive character. To prove this, I need only
quote what M. Taine, a most competent authority, has stated on
the subject :
" Suivre en toute recherche, avec toute confiance, sans reserve ni precau-
tion, la methode des mathematiciens ; extraire, circonscrire, isoler quelques
notions tres-simples et tres-gdnerales, puis, abandonnant 1'experienee, les
comparer, les combiner, et du compose artificiel ainsi obtenu, deduire par le
raisonnement toutes les consequences qu'il enfenne : tel est le precede
naturel de 1'esprit classique. 11 lui est si bien inne qu'on le rencontre
egalement dans les deux siecles, chez Descartes, Malebranche et les partisans
des idees pures comme chez les partisans de la sensation, du besoin physique,
de 1'instinct primitif, Condillac, Rousseau, Helvetius, plus tard Condorcet
Volney, Sieyes, Cabanis et Destutt de Tracy. Ceux-ci ont beau se dire
sectateurs de Bacon et rejeter les idees innees ; avec un autre point de depart
que les Cartesiens, ils marchent dans la meme voie, et comme les Cartesiens,
apres un leger emprunt ils laissent la 1'experience." L'Ancien Regime, I.
262-3.
It may be added that pure mathematics and astronomy, of
which the former had always been deductive, and the latter had
recently become so, were the sciences most successfully cultiva-
ted by Frenchmen at this period ; that Haiiy, the great ininera-
Suckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 255
legist, was, according to Buckle himself, indebted to deduction
for his famous discovery; and that the igneous and aqueous
hypotheses in geology, which are given as instances of the same
method when respectively employed by a Scotchman and a Ger-
man, had already been similarly employed by Buffon, a repre-
sentative French thinker. But the syllogistic character of the
French intellect is so notorious that it would be wasting words
to illustrate it at greater length.
Such a profound misconception of the logical methods, whether
considered in the abstract or the concrete, may have either
produced or originated with an equally profound misconception
of their sociological function. In order to carry out his parallel
between the economics of industry and the economics of intellect,
Buckle, as we have already seen, associated the accumulation of
knowledge with employment of the deductive method, and its
diffusion with the opposite procedure. Greece, Scotland and
Germany are examples of the former ; England, France and
America of the latter. The nations belonging to the first group
are remarkable for great breadth and boldness of speculation,
but also for the deep gulf left between the intellectual classes
and the mass of the people ; while, in nations belonging to the
second group, fewer great thinkers have arisen, but enlighten-
ment has been more widely diffused, and, in England at least,
a more regular development of civilisation has been secured.
Three distinct grounds are offered in explanation of this alleged
fact. Deductive reasoning rests on unproved assumptions. So
also does theology, the great obstacle to intellectual progress;
therefore it cannot be overthrown by a method partaking so
largely of its own spirit. I have already taken occasion to show
that this argument is invalid. The assumptions of science, not
being accepted on authority, cannot favour authority ; and false
assumptions may be dialectically, as well as experimentally,
overthrown. I have now to add that, granting the French philo-
sophy of the last century to have been both deductive and scepti-
cal, the possibility of a close connexion between the two charac-
teristics is demonstrated ; and a further proof will be found in
the circumstance that English scepticism has always flourished
most when deduction has been most generally employed. Buckle's
second explanation is much more plausible. Where philosophers
are removed from contact with the people, they will remain less
affected by popular prejudices and less concerned about the con-
sequences of their teaching. For that reason the physical schools
of Ionia and Magna Grsecia were far more daring in their denials
than the ethical schools of Athens. Nevertheless, when the people
have once become thoroughly sceptical their sympathy and sup-
port will give a fresh impetus to advanced thought among their
256
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
teachers. That is just what is happening in Germany now.
On the other hand, where the people are both educated and
bigoted, such a mere trifle as logical method will not prevent
them from exercising the sternest control over their university
professors. Hence the official science of Scotland is remarkable
for its orthodoxy. Even Adam Smith was obliged to show of
what edifying religious applications his moral theories admitted ;
and the conservative tendencies of the " common-sense " school
have already been mentioned. So far the respective influence of
the two systems, as viewed by Buckle, is negative rather than
positive. The one, according to his theory, does, and the other
does not, remove the causes of popular superstition. The one
does, and the other does not, leave the foremost minds completely
free to work out the remotest consequences of their speculations.
We now pass to the positive reason why induction should con-
tribute more powerfully than the rival method to a general
diffusion of knowledge. We are told that this is because the
observations on which it rests, being accessible to a far greater
number of minds, are proportionately better appreciated and
more readily accepted than the abstract reasonings of deduction.
Possibly our author may have had in his mind various passages
where Aristotle describes induction as clearer, more persuasive,
and more popular than the syllogism, which, on the other hand,
is more cogent, and corresponds better to the order of natural
causation. Such a distinction, however, applies rather to the
loose illustrative induction of the Greeks than to the rigorous
observations and experiments of modern science, where
the facts are often much more abstruse than the inferences
founded upon them. What these facts are can only be known
to a few ; the vulgar either remain ignorant of their existence or
else take it on trust ; and, when faith is once admitted, all kinds
of conclusions may profit by it equally, irrespective of the evi-
dence on which they rest. Again, when Buckle says that " for
one person who can think, there are at least a hundred persons
who can observe " (II. 582), he forgets that induction, being a
process of reasoning, is necessarily a process of thought. Nor
has the greater or less difficulty of understanding and practically
applying a principle when once discovered, anything to do with
the kind of investigation by which it has been reached, or of proof
by which it has been established. It might also be easily
maintained that while the tendency of generalisation is to lead
us away from experience, the tendency of deduction is to lead
us back to experience. A new truth may easily commend itself
to the popular mind by explaining a multitude of phenomena
which never would have suggested it to the original discoverer,
serves to
Nothing
extend a knowledge of scientific theories so
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 257
much as the inventions by which they are utilised. But both
the making and explaining of inventions are essentially deductive
processes ; they are the application of general laws to concrete-
facts. The truth is that, while all knowledge tends spontaneously
to spread, the means by which its diffusion can be hastened have
little or nothing to do with the order of investigations by which
it was first obtained. The remark may seem commonplace, but
popular education is not a question of logical method at all. It
depends primarily on scholastic machinery, and more remotely
on religion, literature, and government, that is to say, on agencies
which Buckle has summarily excluded from his scheme of intel-
lectual progress.
The theory of logical economy equally breaks down when
we come to examine its historical verification. It is not true
that Greek philosophy had no power to diminish popular super-
stition. One need only compare Euripides with Aeschylus, or
even Xenophon with Herodotus to appreciate its effect. With-
out it, indeed, the conversion of the Roman world from a natural-
istic polytheism to an ethical monotheism could never have been
accomplished ; without it Eoman jurisprudence could not have
been rationalised ; without its revival mediaeval darkness could
not have been so speedily dissipated. The case of Germany is
still stronger. No doubt, the state of German middle-class edu-
cation leaves much to be desired, and, by all accounts, is rather
deteriorating than improving. No doubt, also, there is a deep
division between the intellectual classes and the rest of the
people. But this is due far more to the literary peculiarities of
German philosophy than to its method of research. The public
are repelled by speculative treatises, not because they reason
from first principles, but because they are detestably written. A
profoundly speculative work like the Philosophy of the Uncon-
scious will run through several editions, if its style be but toler-
ably good. For the same reason Buckle's own book has had a
great success in Germany greater even than in England
although its method is rather deductive than inductive. But
whether German philosophy be popularly studied or not, the
scepticism now diffused through every class in Germany bears
witness to the immense influence which it exerts on public
opinion. If it is to be taken as a symptom of superstition that
the Scotch churches are " still crowded with devout and ignorant
worshippers," (II. 589), it must surely be taken as a symptom of
the contrary that the German churches are so scantily attended.
Whatever Buckle says of Scotland is just what a continental
critic would say of England, and if so, every such charge would
redound to the discredit of the inductive method which is sup-
posed to have regulated our civilisation. Again, one would sup-
258
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge.
pose from Buckle's language on the subject that the northern
and southern divisions of Great Britain were sundered either by
a difference of language or by an impassable frontier, instead of
reading the same books, profiting by the same discoveries, and
carrying on an uninterrupted exchange of ideas. Whatever our
literature has done for ourselves, it ought to have done, although
perhaps not to an equal extent, for the Scotch. A less ingenious
theorist than Buckle would probably have been contented with a
more obvious explanation of whatever bigotry still survives in
Scotland. Having once struck deeper root, the theological
or puritanical spirit has naturally remained stronger in that
country than in England or France, but there seems no reason
for believing that Scotland compares with them, in that respect,
more unfavourably now than at any time during the last three
centuries. Granting that she is not yet on a level with them it
does not follow that she has not made equal progress in the same
period. And if, as will hardly be denied, she is no longer (for
good or evil) in the religious condition of the seventeenth century,
why should not the change be attributed, at least in part, to her
philosophy ? It is no little matter that she should have pro-
duced two such writers as Burns and Scott, at once so national,
so popular, and so filled with the secular and humanistic spirit
of modern civilisation. Surely their appearance, coming when
it did, together with that of the numerous minor luminaries who
surrounded them, was not unconnected with the triumphs
already won by their predecessors in the more abstract spheres
of thought. And if Scotch literature cannot truly be said to
have exercised no influence on the national spirit, neither can it
be said to have received none in return (II. 586). If the
Scotch thinkers, with one exception, let theology alone, this was
not from any incapacity on their part to call in question its
fundamental assumptions ; but because they either shared its
beliefs, or were deterred by the strength of public opinion from
openly assailing them. And the solitary exception, Hume,
differed from his contemporaries not because he employed the
inductive method, but because he lived a good deal abroad, and
never held a university professorship at home.
We have seen, then, that the philosophy of individualism,
when carried from the economics of material industry into the
more complex economics of mental energy, gives rise to miscon-
ceptions and inconsistencies at every step. After the whole
weight of human progress has been thrown on advancing know-
ledge, the basis of knowledge itself is so isolated, so narrowed,
so weakened by internal disintegration, that the resulting strain
terminates in a complete collapse. Where the analogy of
material industry might have been profitably employed, it is
Buckle and the Economics of Knowledge. 259
neglected. Where the laws regulating production, distribution,
and governmental interference are inapplicable, they are
forcibly imposed on the phenomena. Standing by the ruined
edifice we ask ourselves on what other plan it could have been
built. The answer is that, first of all, the materials which our
architect pushed aside must be properly utilised. We must not
isolate from each other forces which are only different aspects
of a fundamental unity, inseparable in the completed idea no
less than in the living fact. We must overcome these scholas-
tic antitheses of nature and man, morals and intellect, imagina-
tion and understanding, emotion and reasons, induction and
deduction. We must cease to look on the governing classes as
eternal blunderers and bullies. In the history of our race,
everything is natural, everything is human, everything emo-
tional, imaginative, and moral. I will even say that, using the
word religion to denote the provisional synthesis of these various
agencies, and extending the word government to all forms of co-
operation, whether spontaneous or permanently organised, every-
thing is religious and governmental. Still more, if possible, must
we recognise within each department a necessary consensus of
functions. Whatever makes for the accumulation of knowledge
makes also for its diffusion, and reciprocally. Without hypothesis
there would be no induction, and without experience no deduction.
The one process, as Professor Jevons has shown, is an inversion
of the other. Moreover, the generalisations with which our in-
quiries begin are partial and precarious ; their growth in solidity
and in sweep is proportioned to the number of particulars
successfully explained by their application. Neither can the
intellect of any nation continue to advance without perpetual
excitement from its neighbours ; and it is here, I think, that we
can learn the most valuable lessons from Buckle. He was right
in assigning a distinct scientific genius to each of the great
civilised peoples ; but the narrowness of his own economic
scheme prevented him from discerning what were, in each
instance, the differential characteristics. I firmly believe, how-
ever, that such a comparative psychology is possible, and that
even now its outlines might be traced. For example, at the
beginning of this article I have attempted to show that there is
a unity of composition running through the most divergent
manifestations of our modern English philosophy. But this is
a vein of thought which cannot be worked out any farther
within my present limits.
It would have been impossible to tell beforehand what view
of history would be taken by the studious son of an English
merchant, whose opinions were formed during the great agita-
tion for free-trade. But, when we know by experience what
260
Notes and Discussions.
view lie actually did take, the theory seems to be in perfect
harmony with a social environment of which it was the most
interesting, though not the most highly organised nor the most
enduring expression. In endeavouring to represent Buckle's
philosophy as something more than a mere product of indivi-
dual genius,- 1 have been faithful, amid all differences, to that
most general principle which it shares with every philosophy
worthy of the name, and which it has contributed so powerfully
to enforce. Twenty-five years ago the idea of law, universal and
unbroken, was almost a paradox. It is now almost a common-
place ; and among those by whose efforts so vast a change in
public opinion was accomplished must be placed the name of
this noble thinker, whose learning and eloquence have not often
been singly equalled, and, in their combination, have never, to
my knowledge, been approached.
ALFRED W. BENN.
V.NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS.
PROFESSOR WATSON ON TRANSCENDENTALISM.
The 6th chapter of my Defence of Philosophic Doubt has been un-
fortunate enough to provoke an attack from Professor Watson which
appeared in MIND XX. The subject of this chapter is primarily the
Transcendental Philosophy as at present expounded or rather ad-
umbrated in England, and indirectly the philosophy of Kant on
which this English transcendental philosophy is professedly based. On
Kant Professor Watson is understood to be a competent authority :
and for this, if for no other reason, his strictures deserve some notice
from me. But I must premise my observations by remarking that
now as previously in the chapter which has elicited his criticisms
I shall avoid as much as may be dealing with Kant directly. I must
decline to add to all the difficulties inherent in a philosophic contro-
versy of peculiar difficulty the further difficulties which beset any one
who pretends to decide as to which of the various inconsistent opinions
expressed or apparently expressed by Kant, was the one he really
entertained.
The first serious criticism which Professor Watson makes against
me arises from no difference of opinion between us but from a miscon-
ception on his part as to my meaning. He seems to imagine (p. 530)
that I hold it to be the duty of the philosopher to prove all the
"special facts of observation" and "all the special laws of the natural
sciences " : a duty which Professor Watson very properly describes
as a "heavy burden". I do not recollect any passage or even any
phrase on which such a view of my meaning could be founded. I am
surprised that it could be held even after reading the chapter against
which Professor Watson's attacks are directed, and I feel certain that
Notes and Discussions. 261
it could not survive a perusal of my whole book. It is true no doubt
that there is no belief with the grounds of which Philosophy is not in
a sense concerned. But it is also true that there is no proposition
formally demonstrated with the proof of which Logic is not in a sense
concerned. It is not, however, (as I need hardly remind Professor
"Watson) the business of logicians to supply appropriate syllogisms
for every conclusion which may be syllogistically deduce'd.
This criticism however is the prelude to one of more importance,
which raises a question of great moment on which there really appears
to be a difference of opinion between Professor Watson and myself.
" The special facts of ordinary knowledge and the special laws of the
natural sciences are not," he says (pp. 530-531), " propositions which the
philosopher seeks to prove but data which he assumes. Of all our know-
ledge the conclusions reached by mathematics and physics are those which
we have least doubt about ; and hence I do not understand how Mr. Balfour
can object to the philosopher assuming to start with 'the truth of a large
part of what is commonly called science'. I have no objection to find with
Mr. Balfour's assertion that a philosophy must consist partly of premisses
and partly of inferences from premisses. I should certainly prefer another
mode of expression. . . . but as Mr. Balfour probably only means to
say that there are certain facts which do not stand in need of proof by
philosophy and certain conclusions which it is the business of philosophy
to prove, I am content to accept his way of stating the case. My objection
lies against what he very strangely supposes to be the premisses of Tran-
scendental Philosophy. The actual premisses of Kant are the special facts
of ordinary experience in the widest sense and especially the facts and laws
of the mathematical and physical sciences."
Nothing can be plainer than the meaning of this passage, and
nothing, I admit, would seem more clearly to express a view of Philo-
sophy opposed to my own. While I hold that it is the business of
Philosophy to furnish a rational basis for Science, Professor Watson
and Kant, according to Professor Watson, say that Science should
supply the rational basis of Philosophy unless indeed Professor Wat-
son is prepared to distinguish between the rational basis of Kant's
system and his "actual premisses". No difference of view can be
well more profound, and if it really exists between the Kantians and
myself I have only to say that I am sorry to have misunderstood them,
and still more sorry to have introduced into my book a discussion
which had it been founded on a true view of their opinions must, for
that reason alone, have necessarily been irrelevant. As Professor
Watson would have seen, if he had looked at any part of my essay
beyond the chapter he criticises, the main object I had in view was to
examine the various methods by which philosophers have sought to
establish the principles which Science assumes : and which, if they be
not established, leave Science a mere system of dogmatic assumptions.
It is manifest that in pursuing such an inquiry 1 could have no con-
cern with philosophers who think with Professor Watson (p. 535)
that the truths of science " are the facts from which they start, not
the conclusions which they desire to reach " ; and who must apparently
be credited with the remarkable opinion that the conclusions of mathe-
262
Notes and Discussions.
matics and physics, since they are the portions of our knowledge
"which we have least doubt about " (cf. p. 531), are more certain than the
premisses from which they are inferred. Holding these views, it is only
natural that Professor Watson should take the " strongest exception "
(p. 532) to the manner in which I have stated the Transcendental
Problem : and I admit at once that it is neither the way in which Kant
and his followers state it, nor is it the way in which it is most con-
veniently stated for getting a general view of the Kantian System.
But I must point out that I was neither writing a history nor an ex-
position of that or of any other system. I came to Kant, and
to Kant's recent expositors in this country, to see if I could get a
solution for a particular problem ; and had that problem been precisely
identical with the one which these philosophers had in view when they
wrote, doubtless I should not have had to present their doctrines
in any other shape than that which they had themselves chosen.
Unfortunately it was not so. Kant never dealt with scientific scepti-
cism in its simplest and most direct form : and he never dealt with it
at all out of connexion with metaphysical dogmatism. His system
was framed in order to answer questions suggested by the speculations
of his predecessors : it is not unnatural therefore that some change in
its form should be required before we can conveniently determine
whether it can furnish a solution of difficulties with which his prede-
cessors, including Hume as known to Kant, did not concern themselves.
Had then Professor Watson understood the point of view from which
my book was written, he would have seen why it was that I repre-
sented the Transcendentalist as asking the Sceptic to admit as a starting
point the trustworthiness of (say) some fact of immediate perception.
Such facts are certain, and are certain in themselves, i.e., are not
matters of inference; they are therefore fitted to be the basis of a
system of knowledge. Could the Transcendentalist show that in such
facts are necessarily involved the fundamental principles of Science
could he even show this of causation and the persistence of the (so-
called) external world he would unquestionably have done much
towards establishing a Philosophy of Science. I was forced to the
conclusion, after as careful a consideration both of the general method
of Transcendentalism and of such particular application of it as I could
give, that this had not yet been done. It is the less to be regretted
as Professor Watson seems to be of opinion that it has never even been
attempted. If so it is entirely unnecessary to waste time, so far as
my criticisms are concerned, in showing the philosophic soundness of
the Transcendental system. Sound or unsound, it gives no answer to
the question I wish to ask, nor key to the problem I wish to have
solved.
" The difficulty," says Professor Watson (p. 532), " is not a quantitative
one. Nothing is gained by reducing the facts postulated to a minimum so
long as the sceptic is asked to admit a fact at all ; and if he does admit
such a fact as the imme'diate perception of a colour or taste, why should he
refuse to grant the carefully established laws of the special sciences ? Is
the evidence for the consciousness of the law of gravitation less urgent than
the evidence that a coloured object is perceived 1 "
Notes and Discwsions. 263
If Professor Watson will reflect on various considerations which I
have given at length in my book, he must, I think, perceive that the
difficulty is to a certain extent a quantitative one, that there are a
great many reasons why we should give more credit to immediate per-
ception of colour and taste than to the laws of the special sciences,
and that the evidence for the consciousness of the law of gravitation
is much less urgent than the evidence that a coloured object is per-
ceived. To the language of the last sentence I have quoted, I must
indeed take as great exception as I do to its apparent meaning. When
we believe that we are perceiving a coloured object we do not do so
on any evidence at all. The belief is immediate. Such phrases as
the ' evidence of our senses ' or * the evidence of consciousness ' are,
when used in such cases, either metaphorical or erroneous. And, again,
what is " the evidence for the consciousness of the law of gravitation " 1
I cannot admit that we can properly be said to be conscious of the
law of gravitation ; nor, that if we could be so conscious, any evi-
dence for the fact would be either possible or necessary. I do not
however desire to indulge in any merely verbal criticisms. It is
sufficient if I have made it plain (1) that my method of stating the
Kantian doctrine of phenomenal knowledge, however ill-suited to a
general exposition of the Kantian system, was a necessary preliminary
to obtaining the answers to the only question I happened to be con-
cerned with viz., what are the rational foundations of our scientific
conclusions ; and (2) that Professor Watson thinks that this
question is absurd, partly because he holds that many of our scientific
conclusions are more certain than any other knowledge we possess (p.
531) and are in particular more certain than our immediate percep-
tions (p. 533), and partly because these conclusions are the premisses
of that very philosophical theory on which I had erroneously supposed
that Kant and his followers founded them.
It must not, however, be supposed that in Professor Watson's view
transcendental doctrines are only related to scientific conclusions as
inferences are to premisses. On the contrary, if it is the business of
the Transcendentalist to start from the special truths of science (p. 535),
it is not less, it appears, his business to shew that these latter are
"universal," "absolute," " necessary," or " objective " (pp. 531, 532,
537). Now what is the precise character of this operation ? Professor
Watson has told us in language of the clearest description that it
cannot include any proof of their truth, since he holds, as we know,
that their truth is the primary assumption of philosophy. Neverthe-
less the following quotation seems difficult entirely to reconcile with
this opinion :
"If the sceptic," says Professor Watson (p. 531-2), "is so unreasonable as to
ask the philosopher to prove the truth of any law of physics, the philosopher
will at once refer him to the physicist : all that he pretends to do is to
shew that the law is not a mere fiction of the individual mind, but can be
accounted for by the very nature of human intelligence. On the other
hand, should the theory advanced be such as to reduce our knowledge to a
mere series of individual feelings, we shall of course have to admit that the
264
Notes and Discussions.
parts of individual consciousness have no universality or necessity ; we
shall, in other words, be compelled to say that there are no facts in the
ordinary sense of the term, but only supposed facts or, if you will, fictions.
It will no longer be safe to say that there is a real connexion between
objects, but we may at least say that there is a real connexion between
what we ordinarily understand by objects."
It appears then that, even according to Professor Watson, Philoso-
phy, no less than Science, has important, if somewhat obscure,
functions in the region of scientific proof. "While Philosophy tells
us that there is a " real connexion between objects," Science shews
that there is a "real connexion between what we call objects".
While Philosophy shews that a law is not " a fiction," Science shews
us that it is " true " ; and, lastly, while Philosophy shews that a law
is " universally " true, Science shews that it is one which should be
accepted by every individual in the universe. It would appear, then,
from this extract that, so far as the manufacture of scientific proof is
concerned, the principle of the division of labour as between Science
and Philosophy is carried out to a very extreme point and with a
degree of refinement which makes the paucity (so far) of the actual
result all the more painfully conspicuous.
The perplexity into which we are thus thrown respecting the real
view Professor Watson holds as to the relation in which Philosophy
stands to scientific proof is increased rather than diminished by a
further perusal of his criticisms. For he tells us (p. 533) that in the
mathematical and physical sciences certain metaphysical principles are
tacitly assumed and that the philosopher has forced upon him the
duty of " justifying them if possible ". If this be a duty forced upon
him, the Kantian philosopher (according to Professor Watson) would
seem also to be forced by an equal necessity to argue in a circle. He
starts, we are told, from the conclusions of the mathematical and
physical sciences : and in the course of his investigation he finds
himself obliged (if possible) to justify the assumptions on which the
premisses from which he reasons ultimately depend ! Again (p. 537)
Professor Watson says :
" Kant invariably assumes the truth of the mathematical and physical
sciences, and only asks how we are to explain the fact of such knowledge
from the nature of such knowledge itself. It is true that he qualifies this
unlimited statement so far as to admit that the special sciences are ulti-
mately dependent for their truth upon philosophical criticism ; but the
qualification applies, not to the special truths which form the body of the
sciences, but to the universal principles which they take for granted, and
which, strictly speaking, belong to metaphysic."
But what I should like to know is the value of Kant's " invariable
assumption " when so qualified 1 What is the use of the most
vigorous assertion in one sentence when it is followed by so enormous
an admission in the next 1 Kant (according to Professor Watson, p.
537) would have thought it "mere folly to ask philosophy to prove
what no one denies," though at the same time he thought it the
business of philosophy to establish the principles on which " what
nobody denies " finally depends for its proof. Consistency, verbal
Notes and Discussions. 265
consistency at all events, is not to be expected in Kant : but we
have some right to ask that his modern exponents should do some-
thing more than repeat his inconsistencies in a crude and unqualified
form. The facility with which Professor Watson does this arises
perhaps in part from that "thorough familiarity with the subject " of
the Kantian philosophy, which he says, p. 543, (I fear only too truly)
that I am deficient in, and which, I doubt not, he possesses to an
eminent degree. This familiarity, however, has its dangers. To
contemplate all speculative questions from the inside, so to speak, of
our particular system, may indeed give the " sureness and lightness of
touch " in dealing with that system which Professor Watson feels to
be so deficient in my reflections on the Transcendental Philosophy.
But it has some tendency to render the philosophical critic incapable
of approaching his favourite system except on its accustomed side and
by a path well trodden by previous expositors, and may render him
insensible to the difficulties, and even to the contradictions, which
appear in it when it is looked at from an unusual point of view.
However this may be, Professor Watson must make his choice
between two views regarding the Kantian philosophy which cannot
both be true, but for both of which some support may be found in
his criticism on me. Either Transcendentalism intends (among other
things) to give a rational foundation to science, or it does not. If it
does, then let it avoid assuming the truth of that which it proposes to
prove. If it does not, then it would seem to be merely a hypothesis
framed to account for the fact that we have scientific knowledge, and
it will require a previous investigation (very much needed in my
opinion) to show what that knowledge is which we can properly be
said to have. If this latter alternative be accepted by the Transcenden-
talists (which, in spite of Professor Watson, I cannot entirely believe),
then, of course, nobody who, like myself, is chiefly concerned with
the justification of beliefs need trouble himself further about the
matter. If the former, it will hardly be possible to carry on a
discussion usefully as to the details of Kant's proof with any one
who, like Professor Watson, says that the thing to be proved is more
certain than any other part of our knowledge, and has moreover the
peculiar property of supplying the premisses by which its own truth
is to be demonstrated.
I therefore do not go further into the details of Professor Watson's
criticism : though I may perhaps mention that it is somewhat hard to
accuse me (p. 545) of thinking that " the Transcendentalist seeks to
make good his position by analysing after the method of formal logic
the ordinary or uncritical knowledge which we all possess," consider-
ing that, while I have said nothing, so far as I know, to justify this
opinion of my views, I have actually (p. 97) contrasted the logical
with the transcendental manner in which one truth is involved in, or
implied by, another.
Since writing the above it has occurred to me that perhaps Professor
Watson has only seen my article in MIND XII. (to which alone he
18
Notes and Discussions.
refers) and is unaware of the existence of the book for which that was
written, and in which it has since been incorporated. If this be so it
would account in part for the misconception as to my point of view
under which he labours, though it does not, I think, necessitate any
alteration in the remarks I have made above.
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.
MR. SPENCER'S PSYCHOLOGICAL " CONGRUITIES " (i.).
In issuing a Third Edition of his Principles of Psychology, Mr.
Spencer has interpolated a new Part between his " General Analysis "
(VII.) and his final "Corollaries" (formerly VIII., henceforth IX.).
The new Part (VIII.) consists of 48 printed pages, so numbered as
not to interfere with the old paging, and is entitled " Congruities ".
It was designed, in the original scheme of the work, as a summary
that should bring the several lines of argument to a focus ; but
hitherto was omitted partly because the author " thought that the
harmonies he proposed to point out were so conspicuous that all
readers would perceive them". This has "proved to be ill-grounded ".
Various of his critics, instead of recognising the harmonies that he
thought conspicuous, have enlarged upon the incongruities. More
especially in the question as between Eealism and Idealism, he has
failed to satisfy the adherents of either.
For myself, I agree with him in thinking that his conclusions
were fully to be gathered from the previous editions. At least, I find
in the new Part nothing but what I had in substance learnt before ;
while I fully admit that the reader will derive considerable benefit
from the summary now given. As to Mr. Spencer's feeling of disap-
pointment at the result of his attempt to mediate between the extreme
views, I will only say, at this stage, that I think the Eealists are to
blame ; for he is as much at one with them as they could reasonably
desire.
The additional Part, however, is a summary of the entire plan of
the work ; and reproduces, in short, clear statements, all the leading
positions. It is but a feeble expression to say that I am in close
agreement with Mr. Spencer in all his cardinal doctrines as to the
laws of mind, and the connexion between the subjective facts and
the material organisation. I add farther my conviction that he has
thrown an immense amount of new light upon the whole subject ;
and rendered intelligible, and even simple, some of its greatest diffi-
culties. The reference of the phenomena to the scheme of Evolution
is made up of an array of facts, from which each one can draw his
own inference.
The additional Part now under consideration, taken of course with
the entire work, affords an opening for some critical observations ;
and I will select two of the more salient points : one of these being
the law of Association of Ideas, the other the problem of External
Perception. My 'remarks, on the present occasion, will be confined
to the first of the two.
Notes and Discussions. 267
I must, however, be allowed a passing remark upon Mr. Spencer's
expression " The substance of Mind is in its ultimate nature inscru-
table ". This is a form of language that is common, but, in my
opinion, unscientific. The statement is usually paired with a similar
one as to Matter. Now, I am not aware that there is any substance
of mind. The word, to me, has no meaning ; suggests no idea what-
ever. I cannot say, therefore, whether there is anything that I should
care to scrutinise, or that I should be the better for knowing, sup-
posing the present veil to be removed. Certainly, in respect to matter,
we seem to know all that is to be known, as far as regards the ultimate
properties. What we should desire, both in the one and in the other,
is to generalise to the utmost the whole of the phenomena, and trace
out with precision their consequences and workings. If there be
anything underneath all this, which a grudging power hides from the
view, we need say nothing about it ; to us, the curtain is the picture.
So much in passing.
Mr. Spencer has his own way of stating the ultimate law of
the Association of Feelings and Ideas, making out only one law, of
which the foundation is Similarity, and the adjunct Contiguity. He
admits both processes, but arranges and develops them in a peculiar
manner. It would no doubt be interesting to compare the advantages
and disadvantages of his treatment with the more usual treatment,
which I have followed, whereby Contiguity and Similarity are taken
in entire separation, with the admission, of course, that they work
together in every act of mental reproduction ; but this comparison
should be made by an impartial third party. Whatever way the
operation is rendered, we must allow that the great fact of education
is the joining of one mental element to another ; the second being
distinct from the first. Mr. Spencer would call the stringing together
of the A, B, C, principally Similarity, incidentally, Contiguity ; I
call it principally Contiguity, but involving also Similarity. However
we name it, the physical counterpart is undoubtedly a process of
nervous growth or fusion ; this goes on quicker in some things, and
in some circumstances, than in others ; and both psychological theory
and educational practice are interested in stating the conditions of
rapidity with correctness and precision.
The distinction between emotional states and intellectual states,
Mr. Spencer expresses by the contrast of " feelings " and " relations
of feelings " ; and he justly remarks that the most relational of feel-
ings are the most associable. I should express the same thing, by
saying that Association proceeds pari passu with Discrimination.
The doubtful doctrine comes into the foreground, when he says, " the
relational element of mind, as shown in mutual limitation, in strength
of cohesion, and in degree of clustering, is greater between feelings of
the same order than between feelings of one order and those of
another". To this he assigns the physical counterpart "that the
bundles of nerve-fibres and clusters of nerve-vesicles belonging to
feelings of one order, are combined together more directly and inti-
268
Notes and Discussions.
inately than they are with the fibres and vesicles belonging to feelings
of other orders ". Again, " Hence the fact that mutual limitation,
clustering, and cohesion, characterise visual feelings in their relations
with one another, and tactual feelings in their relations with one
another, more than they characterise the relations between visual
feelings and tactual feelings, corresponds to a trait in the order of
environing phenomena as they are habitually impressed upon us ".
Now, I believe all this to be quite correct, on the supposition that,
by associability is meant grouping according to likeness solely ; as in
putting things into classes ; making the sensation of a circle bring up
in idea former impressions of circles. In so far, however, as this is
not the whole fact of association ; in so far as association ever implies
linking one thing to another thing distinct from it, through the cir-
cumstance that the two have stood side by side in the actual view ;
I do not think that the law will hold. I believe farther, that to omit
this aspect is to omit the leading fact in acquisition ; a fact which
Mr. Spencer cannot desire to exclude, or, if he does, he will not get
people to go along with him.
It is important for us to ascertain (1) the comparative associability
of the sensations of the separate senses, each within itself, and (2)
is the comparative associability of each as coupled with every other
sight with sound, sight with touch ; hearing with touch, and so on.
On the first point, I think it is an admitted fact, for which good
reasons can be assigned, that sight is at the head, and hearing next ;
the interval between the two not being great. A plausible case could
be made out for equality, by dwelling strongly upon the extreme
instances of endowment in the ear ; as in musical geniuses. But,
resting on the law that associability follows discrimination, a case may
be made for sight, on the ground that the sense of retinal magnitude
is the most delicate sensibility in the human mind ; in proof of. which
it is enough to cite the reduction of all accurate modes of measure-
ment to the discrimination of visible magnitude by the eye.
While hearing comes close upon sight, there is a long interval
between it and touch ; while the difference between touch, and the
two remaining senses is not great ; nor is there a very great difference,
if any, between smell and taste. When we pass from the regular
group of the five senses to the organic feelings (called by Mr. Spencer
" ento-peripheral "), there is a very wide chasm, of separation, which I
am accustomed to look upon as the reason why these were not sooner
included in the list of Senses. The early psychology regarded sensa-
tion chiefly if not exclusively as the portal of intelligence ; and in this
view, the five senses are all that deserve special mention.
But now to the question as to the comparative associability of the
senses, one with another, when the fact of linking contiguous and
differing feelings is made prominent. We will consider first the two
highest senses. I will at once assume that the associability of sights
with sights, placed in contiguity, is the highest of any; and will raise
the question by comparing, in respect of associability, sounds with
sounds, and sights with sounds.
Notes and Discussions. 269
Laying the stress, then, upon the fact of linking, and not of classing
or identifying, I do not regard Mr. Spencer's argument from the
nervous structure as conclusive. I consider all that part of the theory
of the nervous structure that refers to the deeper intellectual processes,
to be somewhat vague and indefinite. This much, I think, we can
say with reasonable probability ; namely, that in order to contiguous
association, the nerves of the senses concerned must spread out in an
ample mass of the hemispheres of the brain, involving both cells and
fibres, and that, assuming the nerves of sight and the nerves of hearing
to have a large medium of cerebral connexion, associations may be
formed between the two, just as readily, as between nerves of either
sense by itself. The question is not foreclosed by anything in the
nervous arrangements as known to us. In short, we must refer
directly to the state of the facts, as given in our experience of our
several sense-acquirements.
iNo w, what do we find in comparing the association of Sounds and
Sounds, with the association of Sounds and Sights? As regards Sounds,
our best example is language, as remembered by the ear. Take the
sequence sun, moon, stars committed to memory from being heard.
This is an association that we know to be very easily formed ; for in
the course of early years, many thousands of such groupings are stored
in the memory ; although the process is not seen in purity now as it
was before the age of writing, when one man held in his memory the
Iliad and the Odyssey. Take next, the association of Sounds and
Sights, as in learning the names of visible things ; when, for example,
we associate with the sun as seen, the name, sun ; with the moon, its
name, and with a star the name. Consider the enormous extent of
this operation, and how rapidly it proceeds ; and I venture to say,
that we are not entitled to regard it as inferior to the stringing
together of sounds. I do not claim for it a superior adhesiveness,
although such is my own private impression, which I might support
by reasons ; I merely affirm that the cohesiveness of sounds and sights
is at least on a par with the cohesiveness of sounds and sounds, and
challenge the production of any decided evidence to the contrary.
Let us now descend the scale of the senses. The cohesion of
Touches with Touches is manifestly inferior both to the cohesion of
Sights with Sights, and to that of Sounds with Sounds. The question
then comes, Is it superior to that of Sights and Touches 1 I answer
No : and maintain farther it is greatly inferior ; a series or aggregate
of touches is much less cohesive, than a touch and a visible picture.
The mutual suggestion of sights and touches is a very large region of
our education ; the associations are extremely numerous, and the rate
of acquirement not much less rapid, than the rate of acquirement in
the two highest senses.
So with Odours and Tastes. These are largely and quickly asso-
ciated with visible appearances ; and, it would be against all experience
to maintain that the association is inferior in plasticity to that of
Odours with Odours, or of Tastes with Tastes.
The case of Organic Feelings is the most striking of all. These are
270
Critical Notices.
slow and hard to associate with one another ; their ideal persistence
and recoverability is of a very low order ; and it is a patent fact that
our principal means of recalling them in idea is through their as-
sociation with the higher senses, and most of all with sight. The
detail of examples would be endless. If we wished to restore the
successive feelings of an attack of illness, we should have to think
of the visible surroundings and incidents at each stage. The feelings
of Cold and Heat are associated with visible things, and visible situ-
ations, by whose presence they are readily and strongly recalled.
The Emotions properly so called, as Love, Anger, Fear, and their
numerous derivatives, have very little mutual associability ; they
acquire all their ideal fixity by attachment to visible appearances, in
the first place, and to sounds, in the second. I take this to be the
very law of their being. I grant still, that in the mere point of view
of classing, through Similarity, their grouping with one another is
ready enough ; one fright will class itself with previous ones ; but
when a fright is associated with any contiguous experience, it links
itself by preference with the visible situation, and after that, with
something audible.
Searching for a law of heterogeneous association, I conclude that the
facility of contiguous association between two different senses, is as the
rank of each in the intellectual scale. Sight and Sound, would be at
the top ; then Sight and Touch, Sound and Touch, Sight and Smell
or Taste, Sound and Smell or Taste : and so on. What is called
topical memory, the connecting of the different divisions of a speech
with the parts of a building familiar to us, depends on the supposed
ease of connecting mental states in general with visible things.
A. BAIN.
VI. CEITICAL NOTICES.
The Power of Sound. By EDMUND GUENEY, late Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge. London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1880.
Pp. xi. 559.
This volume aims at giving a complete and exhaustive account of
the nature and effects of music. While it has a distinct practical and
popular aim in reference to musical culture and criticism, and while a
considerable section of it is taken up with the criticism of current ideas
with respect to the art which are by no means philosophical, it is in
the main a very serious attempt to re-cast the philosophy of the sub-
ject. More than this, although chiefly concerned with music it
systematically discusses its various problems in connexion with those
of the other arts, and thus contains a rough theory of art as a whole.
In carrying out his design, Mr. Gurney with thorough independence
re-examines the whole psychology of the subject. Even the great
authority of Helmholtz, which he of course accepts with reference to
Critical Notices. 271
the physiology of musical sensation, he is quite ready to dispute when
it is a question of accounting for the more complex emotional effects
of the art. His views are always fresh and striking, and carefully
worked out by help of a wide and exact scientific knowledge. In
some respects his doctrine may be said to amount to a new psychologi-
cal prulcijoiiii'iM to all future art-theory. Thus in every way the volume
is one which demands careful notice at the hands of the psychological
student. In the present review I shall confine myself mainly to the
leading psychological ideas on which the whole of Mr. Gurney's ela-
borate argument is based.
Our author begins by marking off the higher aesthetic senses from
the lower. Here he follows pretty closely previous writers, including
Mr. Grant Allen. The superiority of the two higher senses consists
in their perception of form as contrasted with mere ' colour ' or sensuous
quality, and this superiority is finally to be connected with the "ex-
treme delicacy and complexity" of their organs the possession of "a
multitude of terminal elements capable of separate individual action
. . . combined with extremely rapid recuperation; a combination which
renders them most rapidly sensitive to an immense number of differences
ki the impressions they receive " (p. 10). With respect to the physiolo-
gical basis of the pleasures and pains of these senses, Mr. Gurney rejects
the theory elaborated by Mr. Grant Allen that this consists in " the
maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue". I think he
shows conclusively that a formula which seeks to express the facts by
means of a ratio between stimulation and wear and tear must be in-
adequate. It may indeed be doubted, as it has been by Fechner,
whether any formula relating to mere quantity of stimulation is suffi-
cient. Wundt's attempt to bring bitter tastes, &c., under the idea of
an excessive stimulation, ingenious though it is, has rather a forced look.
And, as Mr. Gurney conclusively proves, the phenomenon of musical
discord, appearing as it does when the conditions of fatigue are mani-
festly absent, refuses to be regarded, as Helmholtz would regard it, as a
case of ordinary nervous wear and fatigue. At the same time one cannot
help wishing that Mr. Gurney had discussed this subject of the relation
of pleasure to stimulation in the light of the newest foreign views,
more especially those of Wundt and Delbceuf, before arriving at the
conclusion that " the origin of pleasure is inscrutable ".
While the eye and the ear have this capacity for the perception of
form in common, there is a noticeable difference between them. The
eye habitually groups its impressions into wholes, the ear not so. And
this is not sufficiently accounted for by saying that the one organ has
to do with space, the other with time : for relations in time are as
easily perceived as those in space. The reason is rather that, excluding
human speech, every-day sounds do not occur in a definite order cor-
responding to an objective order (as verified by touch) in the same
way as every-day visual impressions occur. And while there is this
infrequency in the occurrence of sound-form, there is a still greater
infrequency in that of pleasurable or beautiful form. In connexion
with this relation of the sensibilities of the eye and the car to facts of
272
Critical Notices.
the environment, Mr. Gurney has an interesting discussion of the way
in which the colour-sense and the tone-sense arose. He agrees with Mr.
Grant Allen that the colour-sense is of no recent origin though he
makes no reference to the views of this writer. He argues ingeniously
that neither natural selection nor direct adaptation can have had much
to do with the development of the higher degrees of colour-discrimina-
tion, though he seems to me much more happy with regard to the
second point than to the first. And certainly the argument is a little
incomplete by its omitting all references to Mr. Allen's theory that the
colour-sense in man or his predecessors was developed in connexion
with his frugivorous habits. In the case of the ear, the difficulties in
understanding how the power of discriminating tones as distinguished
from noises grew up are, as Mr. Gurney clearly shows, much greater
still. Yet even here where he shows his best manner in pointing out
the obstacles to hasty theorising, he seems to me to slightly overstate
the difficulty. No doubt the power of distinguishing noises is generally
of more use to an animal than that of recognising pitch. Yet, in the case
of man at least, it may be plausibly contended that the perfect discrimin-
ation of vocal sound as to its quality or timbre and general level or
height, even of the rough and constantly shifting sound which seems to
characterise primitive speech, would involve an organ for the discrimin-
ation of pitch. And if so, we may imagine, as I have elsewhere tried
to show, that among all gregarious and social species endowed with a
vocal organ, to the members of which it would be an advantage mutu-
ally to discriminate shades of feeling by their effect on the timbre and
the pitch, fixed or varying, of the vocal utterance, the structures sup-
posed to be specially concerned in the perception of musical quality
would tend to be evolved by natural selection.
After a very careful examination of the peculiarities of the material
of music or " unformed sound," Mr. Gurney proceeds to give his
definition of an art. A work of art is essentially an organism, by
which is meant not only that it presents a complex arrangement and
interdependence of parts, but that " its life and growth is from
within ; that it does not (like a piece of mechanism or a scientific
treatise) appear as an external result, bearing to its author's activities
the relation merely of a manufactured article to a machine ; but is an
actual picture of the activities themselves, of the author's living ideas
and emotions, whose only result is to be reborn as part of others'
lives " (p. 45). In other words, in a work of art the subjective
imaginative factor outweighs the objective factor, whereas in other
human products the reverse relation holds. Further, it is a differentia
of a work of art that it should present form to one of the two form-
percipient senses, the eye and the ear ; and this narrowing of the
definition excludes prose fiction which does not appeal to a sense by
means of a form.
If now we compare abstract form as addressing itself to the eye
and to the ear, we shall find certain well-marked differences. Among
these may be mentioned that while in visible structure, as it appears
in architecture, the element of form presents itself in the whole, the
Critical Notices. 273
parts "being regarded in relation to this and having but little indivi-
dual value, in musical structure it presents itself rather in the individual
subjects which go to make up the whole. In music the contiguous
parts of a subject have a degree of coherence and necessary connexion
to which there is nothing corresponding in the arrangement of archi-
tectural details. Another point of dissimilarity is that association
-appears to play a much more prominent part in visible than in audible
form. Once more it would seem, so far as I understand Mr. Gurney,
that the beauty of architectural form, though not completely accounted
for by any principle of an ordered variety, yet lends itself much more
easily to such an explanation than musical form. From which last
two circumstances it would follow that we have in the effect of
musical form something peculiarly mysterious and unanalysable. And
accordingly Mr. Gurney does not hesitate to refer the enjoyment of
music to a unique faculty.
In these earlier chapters we have already shadowed forth the two
cardinal ideas respecting music of which all that follows is but an
expansion and enforcement. Speaking generally, one may say that
there have been two ways of explaining the delight afforded by music,
that of the formalists who find the secret of its beauty in certain laws
of structure, and that of the idealists or associationists who refer it to
the peculiar suggestions of the art. Mr. Gurney is, broadly speaking,
a formalist and not an idealist ; that is to say, he thinks suggestion is
no essential ingredient in music. On the other hand, he differs from
previous formalists in denying that the beauty of form can be analysed
or rationally grounded on general principles. His work has thus a
two-fold negative purpose, to show how small a part association plays
in musical enjoyment, and to prove the incompetence of current
principles of form to account for the characteristic effects of good as
contrasted with bad music. His argument proceeds by a very careful
and complete examination of musical structure. Deviating slightly
from the order which the writer himself adopts, I shall seek first of
all to summarise his view of musical form as something which is
susceptible of no rational explanation. After this I shall give the
conclusions which he draws from this examination with respect to the
part played by association in musical enjoyment.
The essential part of music to Mr. Gurney as to Helmholtz is
melody. Harmony adds certain elements of form, but these are of
much less consequence than is commonly supposed. Melodious form
consists of a fusion of two independent things, relations of time, or
.rhythm, and relations of pitch. The indispensableness of the former
is ably maintained against Wagner. It is shown by examples that
melody becomes formless when robbed of rhythm. Equally important
is the fact that melody is a mode of movement through fixed steps
or intervals of pitch. It is this peculiarity of musical structure which
entitles it to the name " Ideal Motion," by which is meant a motion
that yields a form. It is to be noted that each of these factors of
musical form admits of great complexity and wide variety of arrange-
ment, and so the combination of the two gives to any particular form.
274
Critical Notices.
a special and unique character. Thus the rhythm of a melody is
something thoroughly individual, being by no means determined by
the mere time or bar-division. As Mr. Gurney ingeniously shows, a
slight alteration of rhythm will completely alter the character of a
familiar tune. And as with the special relations of rhythm, so with
those of pitch. In this way an individual melody constitutes some-
thing distinctive, corresponding to an organic individual. And it is
in intimate and indissoluble union with this individuality of musical
structure that the beauty of the art is to be found. So far as any
general principles could inform us, including those of rhythm and
pitch relations themselves, there is nothing to differentiate good
melody from bad.
This conclusion leads Mr. Gurney to consider the relations of reason
and order to beauty in general in a chapter a part of which was
originally published in MIND XVI. He takes Lessing's Laokoon as a
signal instance of "the failure of logical analysis to penetrate the
essence of beautiful work ". He seems almost annoyed with the Ger-
man critic for having referred beauty to "things which a person without
the slightest artistic genius could and would think of as naturally as
an artist," as for example the considerations which led Kubens to
choose a particular moment in his representation of the resurrection
of Lazarus. It seems probable, however, that our author is need-
lessly vexed with Lessing, who in writing the Laokoon was far
enough from dreaming that he was penetrating the whole secret of
plastic art, but confined himself to the much humbler task of deter-
mining the difference in the modes of treatment in painting and
poetry so far as these depend on differences in their material. Going
more generally into the alleged principles which underlie beauty, Mr.
Gurney seeks to show that such attributes as symmetry and unity
under variety are characteristics or rather " the definition " of all
forms, and not specially of beautiful form. Neither a visible form nor
a melody owes its "vital beauty" to any discoverable principles of
connexion or order. Consequently the idea of intelligent arrange-
ment emphasised by Helmholtz and others cannot in the least account
for this beauty. The case of musical form illustrates this incom-
petence of reason most strikingly. For, as has been observed, there
is a degree of cogency or " absolute Tightness " in the successions of a
worthy musical composition which does not seem to hold good in the
case of visible form.
Just as no laws of form are adequate to account for the endless
variety of musical beauty, so no principle of association will suffice.
Thus the amount of resemblance between music and physical motion
does not entitle us to say that the former suggests the latter. The
ideal motion of music has no parallel in any kind of motion in space.
Just as it suggests no definite objective facts or ideas of these, so it
can suggest but little of the internal and more especially the emotional
life. A great deal of music cannot be said to have a distinct emo-
tional character at all, the utmost that can be said about it being that
it is cheerful, energetic, and so on. In truth the expression of emotion
Critical Notices. 275
is always exceedingly limited, and when it is to be found must be
regarded as an accidental accompaniment of music rather than an
essential ingredient of it. In connexion with this thesis, Mr. Gurney
gives us an exceedingly good analysis of the musical qualities of
speech and of verse, on the ground of which he contends that the
amount of parallelism between the two is very slight, and quite insuf-
ficient to maintain the theory of musical expression put forward by
Mr. Herbert Spencer. To Mr. Gurney music could not have been
evolved from primitive emotional speech in the way in which it is
often supposed to have been. In its simplest germinal form it
involved a distinct musical faculty. In a sense, however, Mr. Gurney
allows a considerable range to the effects of association. He cordially
accepts Mr. Darwin's theory that sequences of musical tones were
first given forth by our pre-human ancestors at the wooing time. In
this way, he contends, the proper pleasure of music, or the gratifica-
tion of the musical faculty, would become enriched by reproductions
of the various powerful feelings incident to the occasion. This then,
says Mr. Gurney, explains the power of music on our feelings, its
impressiveness as distinguished from its alleged expressiveness, as also
the fact that it is only when the musical faculty is first satisfied by
good music that this impressiveness appears. In other words, we are
delighted with music only so far as beautiful, but when this beauty
is present it retains all the advantage of having first revealed itself to
the human ear in moments of extraordinary emotional exaltation.
No one who reads this account of the nature of music and of art
in general will fail to be struck by the author's fine penetration. Mr.
Gurney has a rare and exceedingly estimable feeling for the complexity
of art-problems. In his opposition to vague theorising and in his
exhibition of the element of individuality in all art-work he is, I
think, performing a real service to art-theory. He combines a
delicate sensibility to their effects with an acute analytic intelligence..
His work is on the whole, I think, the best account of what musical
art is and is not, to be found in our language, and possibly in any
language. Yet while thus so masterly and exhaustive in certain
respects it seems to me to err by way of extreme opposition to extant
theories of the subject. Thus it is one thing to see the complexity of
art-effects, to recognise how subtly they vary in different cases, and
another thing to say that they are essentially irreducible to nameable
laws and conditions. Mr. Gurney's hypothesis of a unique faculty
is specially open to Prof. Bain's objection to all hypotheses of the
sort, that they assume that analysis has reached its final stage. The
psychologist is perfectly well aware that it is exactly in the region of
aesthetic impression that his methods of analysis may be expected to be
most baffled for a time through the intricate fusion of effects. I may
be allowed to observe that I myself, whom Mr. Gurney in his friendly
references to my essays on music appears to think tainted with the
error that music is explained, have written an essay with the oxpivss
intention of proving that there is in all art-impressions, and especially
that of music, an indeterminable unanalysable factor. Yet while
276
Critical Notices.
recognising this characteristic difficulty it seems to me perfectly legiti-
mate to affirm that the exquisite and inexplicable beauty of certain
forms does rest on discoverable grounds even though these cannot
yet be assigned. And this in part because we can already formulate
certain general conditions of aesthetic effect. Mr. Gurney appears to
me to draw a too hard and fast line between beautiful and unbeautiful
music, though it must be added that his concessions go to show that
it is quite impossible to say where exactly the line should be drawn.
To the scientific psychologist, however, there is no such distinction.
Beauty is nothing but a special accumulation of pleasurable elements
and passes into the simply pleasant by insensible transitions. It is, as
Mr. Cyples has well said, a massing of grateful impressions. To use
the happy expression of Fechner (Vorschule der ^Esthetik), every
agreeable element in a work of art is in the direction (im Sinne) of
beauty. The element of order in one of those vulgar and wearisome
tunes which Mr. Gurney rightly despises after all counts for some-
thing, as might at once be seen by contrasting it with an unordered
sequence of notes. And further, and this is the main point, it may I
think be urged against Mr. Gurney's view that the conditions of the
distinguishing beauty of excellent art are to some extent already
discoverable. In no case of an admittedly beautiful melody are we
wholly helpless in trying to define these conditions. Something may
be set down to discoverable elements of form, as that very freedom
which Mr. Gurney appears to look on as something inexplicable.
The charm of a good deal of the best music is due, and is consciously
referred to, some striking departure from familiar directions, which
however is at the same time not otherwise disagreeable. It is curious,
by the by, that in an art which owes so much to a perception of
individual freshness, Mr. Gurney nowhere assigns any esthetic value
to the humble quality of novelty. A cultivated musical sense is a
demand for a certain newness of combination within given limits
fixed broadly by organic sensibility, less broadly by the intellectual
need of an ordered variety of worthy contents, and still less broadly
by previous musical experience and tradition. Any composition
which satisfies these conditions will appear at least interesting, and
its beauty will be, generally speaking, guaranteed when the degree of
agreeable divergence from the common run of compositions reaches a
certain height, provided always that it is in itself a worthy and
sufficiently complex result. For in such a case the sense of freshness
at a first hearing will survive as a recognition of individual distinc-
tiveness.
' Speaking generally,' I said ; by which I meant so far as the beauty
is attributable to a mere happy arrangement of agreeable elements.
But I differ fundamentally from Mr. Gurney in thinking that a good
deal of the distinctive beauty, even of non-vocal music, is due to num-
berless vague associations more especially with vocal utterance. This
seems to me to be borne out by the fact that we irresistibly strive to
describe the effect of good music as one of emotional declaration.
However hopeless the task may be, this does not prove that there are
Critical Notices. 277
not affinities to be expressed, but only that they are too numerous and
divergent and too subtle to be consciously grasped and defined. Mr.
Gurney's argument against Mr. Spencer is, I think, conclusive up to a
certain point. Undoubtedly the resemblances between music as we
now know it and speech are not close : undoubtedly different kinds of
emotional speech sometimes have the same musical qualities. Never-
theless this does not disprove the contention that, in a general way,
music represents vocal utterance (a fact indeed which Mr. Gurney con-
cedes) ; or that a particular melody tends to call up certain groups of
feelings rather than others. The very fact mentioned by Mr. Gurney
that speech is the one natural species of formed-sound, or sound group-
ing itself in successive masses, would lead one to expect that music will
in numberless ways carry back the auditory imagination to this. And
the facts emphasised by Mr. Spencer seem to me to show conclusively
in how many ways music must, imperfectly no doubt, reinstate the
effects of vocal utterance. Is it not surely more philosophic to say
that the more recent yet far extending ages of human converse with
their vast accumulation of emotional experience must have had at
least as much effect on music as the very remote and at the same time
limited experiences of love-making among our pre-human Jubals 1 Mr.
Gurney may say that the link of association is distinct in the two
cases. But one may still ask whether the pleasure given to some
anthropoid ape by the exercise of his embryonic musical faculty can
easily be supposed to resemble either in quantity or quality the plea-
sure given to a fully-developed modern ear so closely as to account for
this wonderfully far-reaching transmission of emotional effect. And
this a priori historical mode of reasoning is, I think, borne out by
present average individual experience, in which musical beauty is often
inextricably bound up with obscure suggestions of feeling, as for ex-
ample in some of the passages from Beethoven quoted by Mr. Gurney,
and in which bare form ceases to be generally interesting when, as in
the more learned sorts of polyphony, it departs in its severe and highly
artificial regularity too widely from vocal utterance to yield any such
suggestions.
I think, then, that we are in a position to divine vaguely and im-
perfectly where the characteristic beauty of different compositions lies.
Mr. Gurney's ably developed argument is really telling only against
the mere formalist who holds that all beauty is resolvable into uni-
versal principles of form and against the mere idealist who asserts that
suggested emotion exhausts the mystery of musical charm. As against
one who thinks that musical beauty is too complex a product to be ex-
plained by any one principle and depends on a subtle blending of
many distinct influences, his argument looks very much like a fallacy
of composition : The charm of music is due neither to this, that, nor
the other cause : therefore it is not due to all taken together.
If I am right Mr. Gurney's hypothesis of a unique faculty is an un-
necessary deus ex machina ; as he rightly, I think, recognises the prin-
ciple of association to be as often resorted to. Apart from this I do
not see that Mr. Gurney's idea derives much support from the conten-
278
Critical Notices.
tion that the ideal motion of music is something sui generis, for surely
there is some analogy between the form- yielding motion of music and
the form-yielding motion of an object moving in space. IS or do I
think that the idea of a unique faculty is greatly aided by the
supposition of a special cogency in musical sequence, which I suspect
is very much a matter of custom general or special (where the melody
has become familiar) and depends on the fact, too lightly touched on
by Mr. Gurney, that melody is essentially a response to a continually
renewed attitude of expectant attention. And then there seems to me
to be the positive objection to this hypothesis that as Mr. Gurney
more than once frankly and generously admits, there is no perfect con-
sensus among individuals and peoples at the same level of development
as to what constitutes the proper object of approval of the supposed
musical faculty.
I have accented the points of disagreement between Mr. Gurney and
myself because his work is avowedly a friendly challenge to current
theories of music. Yet I would not close this notice without testifying
to the delight and instruction which the reading of his work has
afforded me. It is a mine of valuable thought for every lover of the
art> JAMES SULLY.
Contributions to the History of the Development of the Human Race.
Lectures and Dissertations by LAZARUS GEIGER. Translated by
David Asher, Ph.D. London: Triibner, 1880. Pp. 156.
The six essays in this little volume consist of fugitive pieces in
Geiger's lighter manner, translated for the most part into singularly
good and idiomatic English by another German writer, Dr. Asher.
They are, of course, marked by that bold and original type of thought
which characterises all Geiger's work : yet it is perhaps to be regretted
that the brilliant philologist should have been first introduced to the
English public by means of these comparatively slight and shadowy
lectures. They do not fairly represent the soundest part of his think-
ing, and they are sometimes a little hasty or hazardous in their specu-
lation. Geiger was one of those fertile originators who, like Oken,
strike out many new and brilliant ideas, only a few of which will
ultimately stand the test of rigorous investigation. Such men are
invaluable in their way, but they are best illustrated by their best
work, where their knowledge of their subject-matter is most complete
and so saves them to some extent from the danger of too rapid hypo-
theses. These essays, however, are not concerned for the most part
with those philological questions in which Geiger was so thoroughly
at home : they deal rather with side-issues of the connexion between
philology and the general history of human development ; and here
the author's comparatively exclusive philological standpoint often
gives a doubtfully correct bias to his course of thought. More-
over, the late rapid progress of opinion in England on all questions
effecting the origin and early history of mankind has left Geiger's once
Critical Notices. 279
bold speculations rather behind ; so that we must constantly bear in
mind while reading his lectures that most of them were delivered some
ten or twelve years since, when Darwinism was still young, and when
prehistoric archaeology was not yet an open book in Germany as it has
long been in England. All these considerations somewhat diminish
the value of the work at the present point of psychological evolution.
Only three out of the six essays come directly within the scope of
this journal. In the first, on " Language and its Importance in the
History of the Development of the Human Race," Geiger puts forward
a little indefinitely a truth which has been more definitely pointed out
here by the late Professor Clifford, namely, that our whole conception
of the universe has been largely moulded for us beforehand by the
language which we have learned as children. Besides the blank forms
of thought handed down to us directly by heredity, we indirectly in-
herit a developed set of conceptions, some of them highly metaphysi-
cal, embodied in the words and idioms which we pick up half
unconsciously in early childhood. Feelings originally dim and unde-
fined become definite by being fixed in language. At the present day,
he says, we feel vaguely that there is a certain German type of face
differing in certain particulars from the French type of face : but
wherein exactly the difference consists we should find it hard to for-
mulate. ISTow if we suppose a time when there was no distinct word
for Hack or white, then the men of that time would have an equally
vague idea of the difference between a negro and a European. If,
again, there was a time when man had no separate word for lamb, dog,
or cat, we should find, he asserts, that the perception of differences be-
tween these species would be much less distinct than it is at present.
It may be doubted, however, whether Geiger has not here pushed the
argument too far : for, though we may admit that language has proved
invaluable in fixing and giving definiteness to our conceptions, we may
object on the other hand that we often have very definite pictures of
a species new to us, before we acquire any special name for it. Of
course, we are aided by the fact that we can give a name to
each of its properties its shape, its colour, its parts, its relations to
known species : still, allowing for all this, we cannot hold it proven
that the mere absence of a name could have made man in any stage
underestimate the importance of so marked a distinction of sensation
as that of white and black. Geiger goes on to contend that in the
lower animals, and especially the mammalia, the sense of sight plays
but a subordinate part, that visible objects interest them but little,
and that smell takes the leading place in their consciousness. But in
the quadrumana, he says, the visible world assumes more importance :
and in man, it rises to the highest rank. The lower races of humanity
still depend largely upon scent : the higher races depend almost wholly
upon sight. And language, Geiger thinks he has discovered, " origin-
ally and essentially expressed only visible activities ". Thus we see
both why man alone has developed a language, and why sight has
obtained more and more the hegemony in the hierarchy of his senses.
This aperfu is ingenious, even luminous for Geiger is above all a sug-
80
Critical Notices.
gestive thinker : but its facts as given are too few and doubtful to be
quite conclusive. Furthermore, a fundamental error seems to lurk in
the attempt to illustrate the theory from the original roots of the
Aryan language. This is an error which runs all through Geiger's
thinking inevitable, perhaps, in Germany at least, at the time he
wrote ; but none the less fatally vitiating all his conclusions. For he
always treats the original Aryan language as though it were a primitive
tongue, a representative of the first stage in human speech-formation.
But we now know that man has been essentially man, and therefore
in all probability has possessed the faculty of language, for at least
200,000 years, and probably for far more : and as a consequence that
it is ridiculous to look upon any existing tongue as primitive. And
we know that it is above all ridiculous so to look upon the Aryan
tongue, a tongue apparently evolved only some seven or eight thousand
years since, and spoken by a highly advanced race which possessed a
knowledge of metals, agriculture, cereals, ploughs, ships, and wheeled
carriages in short, all the prime elements which go to make up what
we call civilisation. When we have got foot down to pad, we must
remember that pad itself goes back, in all probability, several hundred
thousand years, through a vast series of earlier and now forgotten forms.
The second lecture, on " The Origin of Tools," shows this peculiarity
still more strikingly, though no doubt in a more allowable form. Geiger
argues that all words for tools are directly traceable to earlier words
for bodily actions ; and therefore there must have been a time when
man possessed no tools at all. To the anthropologist and archaeologist
this conclusion itself is now almost a truism : yet as man had many
tools before the last glacial epoch, it is doubtful whether the evidence
of the Aryan language can do much towards establishing its validity.
That " man had language before he had tools " is possible, though not
probable : but we can hardly agree with Geiger that it " admits of
complete proof from language ". Such expressions as the following
show a wonderful narrowing down of mental vision to the last few
millennia: "The art of weaving or matting is of primaeval date; it
plays a part in the earliest religious myths". On the whole, one can
hardly believe that the Aryan language has preserved for us traces of the
earlier state of things before the invention of tools : for even the first
neolithic tongues must have been full of words for knives, needles,
thread, scrapers, awls, and axes, all of which had been known in
palaeolithic times. And it is incredible that the Latin verb sculpo " at
first implied only scratching with the nails," when we reflect that even
the cave-men carved admirable figures of animals in bone or ivory.
The vague observation that " the figure of man seems to be a decided
indication that the tree must have been his original habitation " cer-
tainly sounds strangely crude to a generation familiarised with the
exact investigations of Darwin, Huxley, and Ha'ckel.
The third lecture, on " The Development of Colour-Sense," the pre-
sent writer has elsewhere considered at length, and he has no further
remarks to add upon it here. In this case, again, Geiger seems to
have been misled by his too exclusive consideration of linguistic data.
Critical Notices. 281
The remaining essays deal with subjects less cognate to psychology
or philosophy. One on " The Origin of Writing," traces the alphabet to
a source in picture-writing. Another, on "The Discovery of Fire,"
derives it from the sacred use of a wheel, representing the sun, and so
originating the fire-drill : but as the proofs of this development are all
taken from the Aryan mythology, while fire was familiar to the palaeoli-
thic men, and apparently to the miocene progenitors of man, neither
of whom are known to have been sun-worshippers, it can hardly be
accepted without cavil by the modern anthropologist. The last essay, on
" The Primitive Home of the Tndo-Europeans," gives ingenious reasons
for believing that the Aryan race originated in Germany, not in Central
Asia. On the whole, unwilling as one may be to pass so hard a judg-
ment, these papers can scarcely be regarded now otherwise than as
the result of much cleverness and originality, decidedly manque. The
lights are brilliant : but they are false lights after all. Yet the book
is well worth reading, were it but for its ingenuity and suggestiveness.
GRANT ALLEN.
L 'Education des le Berceau. Essai de pedagogic experimental. Par
BERNARD PEREZ. Paris: Germer Bailliere, 1880. Pp. viii.
and 302.
M. Perez has now followed up his interesting observations on the
growth and habits of young children (Les trois premieres Annees de
V Enfant, MIND XII. 546), by the practical application of the knowledge
thus gained to the doctrine of education. In his own words, "comme
j'ai esquisse une sorte de psychologic premiere, j'ai voulu ebaucher
aussi, selon mes humbles forces, une pedagogie premiere ". With the
best authorities on the subject, he regards moral education in other
words, the formation and maintenance of a healthy mind as of no
less importance from the earliest infancy, and no less fit to be care-
fully studied by parents and teachers, than the maintenance of bodily
health. He does not undervalue direct intellectual instruction, that
part of education which too often does duty for the whole, and usurps
its name, being itself weakened by such isolation : but he deals mostly
with an age not yet ripe for lessons. To English readers it will be
satisfactory to find that full justice is done to our countrymen.
Locke, almost the father of the science of education, whose work at
this day astonishes us by its good sense, and in many parts is as fresh
and as much to the purpose as when it was written, is frequently
quoted with honour by M. Perez. Nor is acknowledgment wanting
for our living writers, Mr. Bain and Mr. Herbert Spencer. This
book, like its forerunner, is clearly and pleasantly written, and is by
no means addressed exclusively to specialists in psychology or educa-
tion.
M. Perez begins with the education of the senses (for he rightly
holds that nothing in the infant's training is too slight to have a
19
282
Critical Notices.
moral tendency and significance) ; then he proceeds to the intellectual
and social emotions ; and he concludes with a chapter on the forma-
tion of moral habits in general. A critic who finds very little to
criticise is perhaps (though this may seem paradoxical) not the best
person to do justice to a book ; and such, I must confess my case to
be as touching this one. The advice given by M. Perez on the con-
duct of education is both in principle and details practical, sensible,
and liberal. The governing general idea of his book an idea which
is now among competent persons almost beyond the reach of discussion
is that the business of the educator is not to enforce mechanical
rules and habits from without, but to develop the nascent powers in
the right direction from within. Children should be rather led and
encouraged to teach themselves than directly taught. So in matters
of conduct they should not be dosed with formal precepts, but brought
by insensible degrees to collect a sort of moral code for themselves out
of the example and guidance afforded by particular occasions. What
M. Perez counsels as to children's games may be applied to almost the
whole of their life : " Ni gene, ni exces, une liberte surveillee ". And
most parents (in France, perhaps, even more than in England) might
safely be advised to err on the side of too little rather than of too
much control.
In the first part of the book, which deals with the training of the
senses, there is little controvertible matter : the importance of simple
and healthy habits is naturally the main point. On the question
whether the pleasures of taste, and corresponding privations, are
convenient to be used for purposes of reward and punishment, M.
Perez holds with Mr. Bain and against Locke that they are ; nature
having given us in this a powerful, useful, and (within just limits)
harmless instrument of discipline, and the reasons urged against it
wanting substance. I think, however, and not wholly without
warrant of experience, that where the principles advocated by M.
Perez are otherwise applied with reasonable diligence to a reasonably
favourable subject, the question of positive reward and punishment
will be found to remain very much in the background. There is
indeed one point of general discipline, not discussed by M. Perez,
which may deserve to be considered : I mean whether at a certain age
it may not be fit, in view of the child's eventual relations to other
masters and superiors, to form betimes the habit not merely of
obedience, but of prompt and absolute obedience ; if so, what age is
ripe for this, and how the end may be best attained. I see no reason
why we should not be able to cultivate a perfect but intelligent
obedience as much superior to that which is produced by mere com-
pulsion as the trained officer's is to the raw conscript's. It may here
be noted that M. Perez justly holds, against some well-meaning
theorists, that children are not to be constantly reasoned with. It is
well to explain the reasons for a command afterwards, if they can be
understood ; but law itself is imperative, not discursive.
In an interesting chapter on "le sens naturaliste" (meaning the
infant's notions of the world in general and the scale of animate and
Critical Notices. 283-
inanimate nature) M. Perez gives wholesome warnings against
troubling young children with metaphors and hypotheses they cannot
understand. As he does me the honour to quote my own opinion,
published some time ago in MIND, in support of Mr. Spencer's denial
that children ascribe life to inanimate things, I may add that this
opinion was forced on me by observation quite against my previous
belief. The moral drawn from this is that, children not being
animists, we shall do no good by trying prematurely to make them
supernaturalists.
M. Perez has much to say on children's games : with Locke he
would have playthings to be simple, and disapproves the costly
mechanical toys of which there are now far too many. Playing at
soldiers and all military toys are especially rebuked by him, war being
too serious a thing to be thus trifled with. In the matter of dolls he
enters on what seems almost a forlorn hope ; for he finds such grave
objection to them that he would either do away with them or, if that
cannot be, keep them down as much as possible. But, after all, the
objection seems to apply principally to overmuch pomp and luxury in
the fashion and apparel of dolls, as to which no sensible person will
differ from M. Perez. A waxen idol of nearly life-size, dressed with
no less cost than the living figure would be, is certainly not a desir-
able plaything. But this the children find out for themselves. They
care for a ragged doll as much as a new one ; indeed they go on quite
happily playing with the old ones until they are confiscated by
superior authority as too disreputable. A more general and substan-
tial objection is that the doll engrosses its possessor in a perpetual
fiction amounting in extreme cases to illusion. M. Perez tells a story
of a boy of three years old who for some time lived in a kind of doll-
monomania. Dolls, no doubt, have their dangers ; and so have plays
and novels for persons of riper years. But I do not see that we are
more justified in condemning dolls indiscriminately for children of
five years old, than in condemning plays and novels indiscriminately
for young men and women.
A point on which M. Perez will meet with no disagreement, in
England at any rate, is the use of cold water and fresh air, to which
he gives some pages. In the matter of aesthetic education he warns
us against forcing children's taste. The aesthetic faculty, such as
adults have it, is of slow growth; and it can only make children
affected and insincere to encourage them to fancy they have it. But
M. Perez would not neglect the aesthetic environment. As to music,
for instance, he would not let a child be habitually sung to by
people who sing out of tune. The songs should be lively and
simple, such as the child can honestly enjoy, and sentimental excite-
incut should be avoided. As to fairy tales, M. Perez is even harder
on them, than on dolls, and I do not quite follow his argument,
which, considering its novelty, is somewhat meagre. He seems to
think that when children find out, as they must, that fairy tales are
not true, there is apt to be a crisis of disappointment and premature
scepticism. Both the fact and the conclusion seem to me disputable.
284
Critical Notices.
So far as I have observed, I think an intelligent child enjoys a fairy
tale just as we enjoy a romance, that is, well knowing it to be fiction.
And I can see no possible harm in children becoming aware at an
early age that not all stories which are told are true. " Ceux qui
veulent que leurs enfants croient a la Bible et au catechisme ne
doivent pas commencer par les avertir que les aventures du Petit-
Poucet et du Chaperon-Rouge ne sont pas articles de foi." This may
be a good reason ad hominem for people who want their children to
believe blindly in creeds and catechisms. But it is odd that M. Perez
should use it. For my part, I believe most firmly though not his-
torically in Grimm's Tales, and do not admit any one to be com-
petent on this question who cannot answer off-hand why and since
when the sole has had a wry mouth. But peradventure Grimm is not
known in French nurseries, and French children have not even the
chance of hearing how the fish of the North Sea chose a king, or about
the fisherman's wife who would be Pope, or the animals who set out
to be magicians at Bremen. If so, great is their loss ; though one
may doubt if modern French would be adequate for the rendering of
the Marclien. Seriously, M. Perez' theories both on fairy tales and
on dolls appear to be manifestly contrary to the general experience of
mankind. Securus judicat orbis terrarum. Dolls and fairy tales
pleased our ancestors thousands of years ago, have pleased the
children of all nations in all historical times, and will, I venture to
think, continue to please our posterity for at least as long a time as
we need think about.
It is a rather favourite supposition of modern writers that the indi-
vidual child goes through the mental experiences of the race : it is
used, for example, to explain a dramatic and personifying instinct
which is said to be observed in children. M. Perez thinks all this too
doubtful to have any practical application. " Je croirais plutot,"
he says, " que le savant transporte a la vie du jeune enfant les faits
appris par lui dans 1'histoire des anciennes societes." And, whatever
the historical significance of the impulse to mimicry may be, he is of
opinion that it ought by no means to be allowed to develop itself
without bounds, and that adults ought even to be specially careful
before children to restrain any peculiar tricks of language or action
that would be likely to provoke imitation.
Among other points well handled by M. Perez are the danger of
repressing children's confidence not only by actual harshness, but by
a cold or constrained manner (adults, as he truly observes, can be
quite as shy with children as children with adults) ; the growth and
guidance of the sense of right and wrong ; and the cultivation of will
and decision.
In conclusion, I may mention that many amusing anecdotes of
children are to be found scattered through M. Perez' book. He has
given us in this and his former works a kind of literature of which
psychologists and educators ought to have much more, and his
works are good examples of their kind.
F. POLLOCK.
Critical Notices. 285
Znr Gescliiclite und Begriindung des Pessimismus. Von E. VON
HARTMANN. Berlin : Duncker, 1880. Pp. xvi. 141.
This work, a bare mention of which was made in MIND XXI., is
intended to be a sort of justification, logical, practical, and historical,
of the author's system of pessimism. Although one-half of it is
devoted to the further elucidation of the writer's views, and to the
meeting of objections urged by more than one critic against these, the
reader of his previous works, including the large treatise on the
Moral Consciousness, will find little, if anything, that is materially
new. This expository half of the book consists of three chapters
headed, "Can Pessimism be scientifically established?" "Is Pessi-
mism injurious?" and "The Significance of Suffering" (from the
natural, rationalist, theological, and other points of view). The work
will probably serve to recommend the author's doctrine to the popular
mind by its characteristic clearness of statement and presentation of
pessimism in its least repellent aspect.
To the philosophic student the first half of the volume which deals
with Kant's position in relation to pessimism is by far the more im-
portant. This section headed " Kant as the father of Pessimism " is
a very seriously executed study of the development of the views of the
Critical Philosopher on the question of the worth of life. Herr von
Hartmann has done a real service in here bringing together Kant's
different utterances on the subject with the view of obtaining, in spite
of its gradual development and modifications, a consistent doctrine ;
though whether this presentment of Kant's views is in all respects just
and adequate may perhaps be doubted.
Our author's view of Kant's position is briefly this. He is as much
the source of Schopenhauer's " eudsemonistic pessimism," as he is of
the " evolutionistic optimism " of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
" Schopenhauer could quite easily have taken all the contours of the
richly coloured picture of his pessimism out of Kant's writings, if he
had no in self-reliance shapen them out of his own pessimism, of feel-
ing (Stimmungs-pessimismus)" This assertion is certainly largely justi-
fied by the numerous quotations from Kant's writings which follow.
The philosopher's repeated and often eloquent utterances on the short-
comings, disappointments, and positive miseries of human existence
have a distinctly ethical aim ; namely, the demonstration of the folly
of making pleasure the end, whether as individual or as social happi-
ness. To use Herr von Hartmann's expression, pessimism was with
Kant an ethical postulate. Yet, according to our author, this pessi-
mism of Kant was not, as in Schopenhauer's case, the outcome of
individual temperament, but was the result of scientific reflection. His
"theoretic" establishment of pessimism (as distinguished from the
"practical" establishment just referred to) consists first of all of a
" moral pessimism of indignation " (Entrustungs-pessimismus}, that is
to say, an assertion of the inherent moral depravity of mankind,
and of a Eudaemonologie or hedonistic pessimism, which affirms on
psychological and other grounds the excess of pain over pleasure and
286
Critical Notices.
the necessary increase of this excess as the race advances. This pessi-
mistic view of progress as judged by a hedonic standard bears traces
of the influence of Rousseau's writings. Yet Kant found a way out
of this gloomy doctrine of history, so opposed to the spirit of his age,
by an evolutional optimism, namely, the idea that the distinctively
human moral dispositions cannot be freely evolved in the individual
but only in the race, and that consequently, by an ethical necessity,
progress must tend to the moral perfection of man.
In his account of this part of Kant's doctrine in relation to the later
systems of pessimism the writer confines himself to exposition. When,
however, he passes to the consideration of Kant's " transcendent opti-
mism," namely, the idea that the end of happiness and of moral self-
realisation are to be harmonised in another, transcendent, intelligible
world (by help of which the philosopher seeks to rise out of his
eudaemonistic pessimism, as he has risen out of his moral pessimism
of indignation by help of his evolutional optimism), Herr von Hart-
mann has some effective arguments to urge against Kant's procedure.
A certain ready skill is certainly shown in this criticism of Kant's
position as inconsistent with his own ideas, a skill for which the reader
of Herr von Hartmann's works will be fully prepared.
JAMES SULLY.
A History of Greek Philosophy from the Earliest Period to the time of
Socrates. Translated from the German of Dr. E. ZELLER by 8,
F. Alley ne. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1881. Pp. xiv.,
642, 541.
This translation of Part I. of Professor Zeller's Philosophise der
Griechen, is a very valuable addition to our English philosophical
library. Miss Alleyne has brought to her task the same skill that she
displayed five years ago in translating the section on Plato, and she is
to be congratulated on the smoothness and accuracy of her rendering.
The merits of Professor Zeller's work have been so long recognised
that it would be out of place to dilate upon them now. The author's
exhaustive treatment and ripe judgment make it in many respects the
standard book on the subject. To the German faculty for thorough
research, Prof. Zeller adds the rarer quality of never losing himself in
the details of his own erudition. He is sympathetic without ceasing
to be critical, being neither soured in his estimate of the philosophers
by a conviction of the futility of their speculations, nor warped in his
views of history by a dogmatic adherence to a particular system. He
: has burst the bonds of Hegelian formulas, so far as they tend to cramp
the historical investigator ; and, while holding as before to a rational
connexion and progress in philosophical systems and in history, he is
content to await the demonstration of this from facts, even though the
demonstration have not all the " rigour and vigour" which the first
followers of Hegel (more than Hegel himself) demanded. In this
respect Dr. Zeller has grown mellower with increase of years, and we
Critical Notices. 287
feel under his guidance that he has no points of his own to make, but
aims only at attaining the fullest view of the historical phenomenon.
The General Introduction to Greek Philosophy occupies the first
180 pp. of the translation and treats of the origin, the character, and
the general course of the development of Greek thought with much
wideness of view and fulness of culture. Philosophy is exhibited in
its connexion with the inner characteristics of Greek life and culture.
Professor Zeller repudiates the theory of the Oriental origin of Greek
philosophy, and shows that this belief was the product of the universal
fusion of races, creeds and philosophies that began in Alexandria. If
we except the totally untrustworthy statements of Neo-Pythagorean
and Neo-Platonic writers of that period the basis of testimony on
which the theory rests is extremely narrow. " All develops itself
quite naturally from the conditions of Greek national life." The
legend of the Seven Wise Men and the ethical saws that meet us in
the gnomic and lyric poets of that time mark the transition from the
Homeric and Hesiodic stage of reflection to the more conscious thought
of Thales. It may be worth while to refer to Prof. Zeller's classifica-
tion of the Pre-Socratic schools, as it affords on the whole the best
bird's-eye view of these two hundred years of speculation. All, he
insists, are nature-philosophies in spite of the idealistic turn occasionally
given to the language. The three oldest schools the Ionian, the
Pythagorean, and the Eleatic he groups together more closely, as
searching simply for the ground or substance of things, as " demanding
what things are in their proper essence, and of what they consist.
The problem of the explanation of becoming and passing away, of the
movement and multiplicity of phenomena, is not as yet distinctly
grasped." This problem was brought forward by Heraclitus, who
thus forms in a way the centre of Pre-Socratic thought. Prof. Zeller
neither constructs Heraclitus out of the Hegelian logic, like Lassalle,
nor misses his real significance, like Ueberweg, by ignoring, with an
equal spice of party zeal, the gulf which separates him from the older
lonians. Zeller's discussion of the position and teaching of Heraclitus
is full and very fair and moderate in statement. The theories of
Empedocles, the Atomists, and Anaxagoras may be regarded as
attempts to combine the assertion of an unchanging ground or essence
with the patent fact that all is in motion and change. We may look
at their principles as a rude reconciliation of Parmenides and
Heraclitus. In the case of all these the unchanging is matter ; the
principle of motion is with Empedocles the mythical forces of love
and hate, with the Atornists mechanical action in empty space, and
with Anaxagoras the spiritual or semi-spiritual principle of 1/01)9. The
introduction of this new principle by Anaxagoras led to the Sophistic
Aufkldrung and the teaching of Socrates.
The publishers promise a translation of Dr. Zeller's section on
Aristotle at an early date. As the Socrates, the Plato, and the
Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics have been before the English
public for some time, the student will then possess a complete history
of Greek Philosophy down to the end of the second century B.C. It
288
New Books.
would seem from the advertisement sheet that the publishers intend
the translation to close here. This is to be regretted on many
grounds. The history of Greek philosophy in the centuries imme-
diately before and after the beginning of our era is less known in this
country, but it is of quite peculiar interest from its connexion with
Christian thought. We would fain hope, therefore, that the pub-
lishers may see cause to reconsider their resolve. Prof. Zeller is at
present engaged upon a new edition of his Part III., the first
section of which includes more than the English Stoics, fyc. When
the revision is completed, it is perhaps not too much to hope that
the whole remnant may be included in the English translation.
ANDREW SETH.
VII. NEW BOOKS.
[These Notes do not exclude, when they are not intentionally preliminary to, Critical
Notices later on.]
Locke. By THOMAS FOWLER, Professor of Logic in the University of
Oxford. (" English Men of Letters.") London : Macmillan,
1880. Pp. 200.
Treating Locke as a " Man of Letters," as one, moreover, who was
not a mere student but was all his life in contact with public
affairs, Prof. Eowler has given the greater part of his volume to the
biographical sketch. The narrative is well told, and forms a very
readable account of the circumstances of Locke's life. Unfortunately
there is less to be said for the account and estimate of his philosophical
work; the skill which guided Prof. jEowler through the life seems
to have forsaken him here, and while he is evidently afraid of making
his subject technical he fails to make it interesting. The worst fault
is the want of breadth and firmness of treatment noticeable throughout;
and as the limits of the book put detailed discussions out of the
question, it is to be feared that the uninstructed reader will hardly
carry away a very definite idea of Locke's distinctive achievements
and merits. Mr. Eowler's tenderness in obtruding philosophy on his
readers is carried to an excess, for if philosophers like Locke and
Hume are included among " Men of Letters," the inclusion must
have been due to their philosophical eminence and the influence they
have exerted on thought. Sometimes, however, one is tempted to
think that the author is not sufficiently in earnest about philosophy
himself. It is not taking the Essay seriously enough to speak of
" the great variety of interesting topics which it starts " (p. 149), or to
recommend the Fourth Eook in twelve lines as treating " under the
head of Knowledge" of "a great variety of interesting topics" (p. 143).
Prof. Eowler seems, besides, entirely to ignore the importance of Book
IV., for he says that "had Locke's Essay ended with the Second
New Books. 289
Book we should hardly have detected in it any incompleteness".
Locke's design, however, as he explains it himself, was " to inquire
into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together
with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent " (Book I.
ch. i. section 2) ; and these are, almost in so many words, the headings
of chapters of the Fourth Book. The Essay is more than empirical
psychology ; it is a theory of knowledge ; and the whole would be
incomplete without the discussions in Bk. IV. as to the " extent " and
''reality" of our knowledge, " universal" and "trifling" proposition?,
our knowledge of existence, and the spheres of probability, reason, and
faith, to which the theory of the origin of our ideas in Bk. II. is in
fact only preliminary. r . ~ -,
Adam Smith. By J. A. FARRER, author of Primitive Manners and
Customs, &c. (" English Philosophers.") London : Sampson
Low, 1881. Pp. 203.
Sir William Hamilton. By W. H. S. MONCK, M.A., Professor of
Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. (" English
Philosophers.") London : Sampson Low, 1881. Pp.192.
As if Messrs. Blackwood's set of " Philosophical Classics " were
not enough, there is published simultaneously by Messrs. Sampson
Low & Co. a series of "English Philosophers". The Editor's Preface,
given in the second and later issued of the two volumes here placed to-
gether, draws the lines on which the present series is to be conducted :
" We seek to lay before the reader what each English Philosopher
thought and wrote about, the problems with which he dealt, not what
we may think he ought to have thought or written. Criticism will be
suggested rather than indulged in, and these volumes will be exposi-
tions rather than reviews. ... In the summary will be found a
general survey of the main criticisms that have been passed upon the
Philosopher who forms the subject of the work." It may be doubted
whether it is possible to carry out such a programme. Of course all
are agreed that an undistorted statement of the philosopher's views is
the sine qua non of an exposition ; but an organic account of the
philosophic systems of the past cannot be given except by one who
estimates them from a point of vantage. We ask from him only that
his standing-ground be not so narrow as to cramp his powers of appre-
ciation and his historic sense, as he assigns to each particular
philosopher his share in the collective work of philosophy. The
function of criticism may be denied, but it will assert itself in every
case. It is implied even in the process of bringing out into relief the
distinctive and really important doctrines of the philosopher who is
being treated. A perfectly uncoloured account of a philosophy would
be nothing better than a mere lifeless abstract of its author's works.
And a public which has little enough taste for the philosophers in the
original, where thought is wedded to illustration, and the transition
from point to point is made with the needed fulness of argument, will
290
New Books.
hardly be won by summaries which want both the freshness and
the fulness.
Some of these remarks have been suggested by Mr. Farrer's Adam
Smith, with which the present series opens. The book itself does not
call for much notice : but it is to be hoped that the other contributors
will take a higher view of their task than Mr. Farrer has done. Adam
Smith is treated in the baldest and narrowest sense as the author of
the Theory of Moral Sentiments ; and what Mr. Farrer has given us
is substantially a condensed reprint of that book, stripped of all that
makes it agreeable reading in its original form. The divisions of the
original are followed with the exception of a few transpositions which
commend themselves to Mr. Farrer's sense of order. Prefixed is a
short biography of Adam Smith, and appended is some account of the
objections raised by Jouffroy and Dr. Thomas Brown to the founding
of morality on sympathy. These, it is said, " will best serve to
illustrate what have been considered the weak points in the general
theory". This method of criticism at second hand is eminently
unsatisfactory. We do not wish to know what Jouffroy or Dr.
Thomas Brown thought about Adam Smith ; we want some one
standing in the current of present-day thought who will speak with
authority and lay his hand both on the weak and the strong places of
the theories he examines.
Professor Monck's Hamilton contrasts very favourably with the
Adam Smith. A certain dry ness of treatment is the only fault that
can be found with it. The information is very closely packed, and it
is probable that the book will be of more value to those who already
know Hamilton's works than to such as are approaching him for the
first time. The former class will welcome it as a studiously, even
laboriously, fair account of the Hamiltonian doctrines. Views which
were elaborated by Hamilton at different times and in different con-
nexions, and which, if not irreconcilable, were at least left unrecon-
ciled by their author, are brought together by Professor Monck and
shaped into such consistency as the materials allow of. Professor
Monck is not bound in any scholastic sense to the Hamiltonian
doctrines, but his general sympathy with the thought he is expound-
ing enables him to construct Hamilton, so to speak, from the inside. He
has conscientiously endeavoured to put the best sense on his author's
words, and his sympathy often leads him to a point of view from
which seeming discrepancies may be reconciled. The echoes of the
controversy caused by Mill's Examination linger subtly in the book,
affecting a statement here and there ; but Professor Monck's account
of Hamilton is a more sober and accurate estimate than it was possible
to obtain in the heat of the controversy. The disjecta membra of Sir W.
Hamilton stood much in need of such a service as is here rendered
them ; and quite independently of the ultimate value of Hamilton's
views and speculations, Professor Monck's book is a valuable contri-
bution to the study of the subject. Its value lies not so much in
anything new that it offers as in its summation of results ; it is clear
and compact, and likely to be of permanent use to the student, p . ^ -i
New Books. 291
Butler. By the Rev. W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A., Honorary Canon of
Peterborough. (" Philosophical Classics for English Readers.")
Edinburgh and London : Blackwood, 1881. Pp. 177.
Mr. Collins's book (which contains a fine portrait of Butler, remark-
able for the softness of its finish) falls into two nearly equal parts, the
first dealing with the Sermons and Butler's ethical teaching, the second
with the Analogy and its bearing on the religious controversies of
Butler's age. The second part is much more successful than the first,
though in both there is wanting an organic view of the whole, and, as
a consequence, any general criticism of Butler's principles, method and
results. An account of the Sermons, in order, by the help of quota-
tions, with reference to Aristotle on particular points, cannot be said
to be the best method of approaching Butler's ethical theory. It
implies the want of a stand-point from which to judge Butler's place
and work ; and this is not supplied in the short and rather uncritical
chapters on " Modern Ethical Theories" and " Comparative Views of
Conscience." These show the same tendency of treatment ; a succes-
sion of summaries giving the views of different unconnected individuals
is substituted for a sketch of the general movement of thought in its
different streams. What was indispensable was some estimate either
of the ultimate value of Butler's principle of Conscience or of the
relation of his theory to the present state of speculation on the
subject ; and the references in chap. iv. do not in any vital way fulfil
this requirement. The complete change that has come over ethical
speculation as a consequence of the Critical Philosophy and the
general recognition of the principle of evolution, receives no adequate
emphasis. A short comparison with Paley is the main attempt to
connect Butler with later ethical thought, but there is no attempt at
an estimate of principles, beyond the judicially balanced dictum that
" Paley 's moral rule may claim at least to be more clearly and tersely
expressed than Butler's ". This tantalising deliverance is of a piece
with the statement about the " Intuitive " and " Inductive " schools,
viz., that " both theories have their vulnerable points which have
been vigorously attacked by their opponents ". As already mentioned,
the author moves more freely in his account of the Analogy. r A Q -i
[A. o.J
Berkeley. By A. CAMPBELL ERASER, LL.D., Professor of Logic and
Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. ("Philosophical
Classics for English Readers.") Edinburgh and London : Black-
wood, 1881. Pp. 234.
This newly issued volume in the series of Philosophical Classics for
English Readers, edited by Professor Knight, not only is admirably
conceived and executed for the more immediate purposes of the series,
but has a permanent philosophical value. It is the first attempt, as
Professor Eraser claims, to present " Berkeley's philosophic thought in
its organic unity," and more especially " in connexion with his personal
history ". Nobody, of course, could perform this task with the easy
mastery of Berkeley's Editor, and he is to be congratulated on the
292
New Books.
opportunity which the present series has given him of returning once
more to the familiar gro.und. Since Prof. Fraser published his larger
Life in 1871, new material of some importance has turned up in about
eighty letters from Berkeley to Sir John Percival, afterwards Earl of
Egmont, within the period from 1709 to 1730, and this has been freely
used. An extremely interesting new portrait is given from a picture
that was taken at Rome, in Berkeley's earlier manhood under thirty-
five. Another occasion may be chosen to remark on some points in
this which we may now regard as Prof. Eraser's final presentation of
his favourite subject Meanwhile the volume may be strongly recom-
mended to the attention of all philosophical readers.
The Science of Beauty : An Analytical Inquiry into the Laws of
^Esthetics. By AVARY W. HOLMES-FORBES, M.A., of Lincoln's
Inn, Barrister-at-Law. London: Triibner, 1881. Pp. 200.
Apart from a certain lightness of tone and what looks like haste in
execution, the author's essay differs from the old-fashioned " inquiry "
of a century ago chiefly by its candid assumption of " idealism," in the
sense of subjectivism or relativism. His analysis is summed up in
four propositions, which the book illustrates in detail : (1) The sub-
jective element of beauty consists in the emotion of admiration. (2)
The objective element of beauty consists in the quality of suggestive-
ness [by way of association]. (3) Beauty attaches only to utility.
But (4) the appearance of beauty varies inversely with the appearance
of utility. The proof of the last proposition or u law" consists in an
attempt to show that in proportion as a thing is useful it is less likely
to be thought or called beautiful or (if artificial) to be " ornamented ".
It is a superficial kind of proof, even when it is not obviously forced.
The author, if he means his third proposition seriously, should find
some other way of giving it the necessary limitations and modifica-
tions than by such a loose paradox as his fourth.
Seven Lectures on the Doctrine of Positivism.
London : Reeves & Turner, 1880.
These Lectures, delivered at the Positivist
" not meant for Positivists, but for any who
acquainted with the leading features of the new
and religious system "; and they carry out the
They contain, at the same time, the usual
exclamation against later inquiry.
By J. KAINES, D.Sc.
Pp. 122.
School in 1879, were
may wish to become
philosophical, political
intention fairly well,
amount of Positivist
Mind in Animals. By Professor LUDWIG BUCHNER. Translated with
the Author's permission from the German of the Third Revised
Edition, by ANNIE BESANT. London : Freethought Publishing
Co., 1880. Pp. xii. 359.
The work here translated appeared first in 1876. Its title is mis-
leading. The author deals only with ants, bees, wasps, and spiders,
adding a few pages on beetles. He has collected his matter with some
New Books. 293
diligence from many books, but puts it loosely together. There is a
short historical Introduction, including some general remarks on
Instinct. The author finds in the facts which he brings together proof
" that the same intellectual or spiritual principle, call it reason, under-
standing, soul, instinct or propensity, pervades the whole organised
series". There is here something noteworthy in the expression, as
coming from him.
LOCKE'S Conduct of the Understanding. Edited with Introduction,
Notes, &c., by THOMAS FOWLER, M.A., &c. Oxford : Clarendon
Press, 1881. Pp. xxiv. 136.
The Editor adopts the words of Hallam who " cannot think any
parent or instructor justified in neglecting to put this little treatise in
the hands of a boy about the time when the reasoning faculties become
developed " ; and furnishes this handy reprint with an Introduction,
mainly biographical, and thirty pages of Explanatory Notes at the end.
(In the biography he repeats with some aggravation the odd error noted
by Prof. Land in MIND XXL, 132 n.)
Mathematical Psychics. By F. Y. EDGEWORTH. London : Kegan
Paul, 1881. Pp. 148.
The author, who is known to the readers of MIND, by his article on
"The Hedonical Calculus" in No. XV., thus describes the scope of
his work :
"The psychical first principles of Maximum Pleasure (Individual and
Universal) are identified with the physical first principles of (in a wide
sense) Maximum. Energy. Life is dimly viewed as a sort of pleasure-
mechanism : a system of explosive engines whose stored energy is let on by
the tremulous movements of a delicate magnetico-hedonic system, itself
obedient to a physical maximum-principle. A system of interacting
pleasure-machines, each tending to individual maximum pleasure-energy,
finds its equilibrium either by way of war, or contract. Contract between
' economic ' (self-interested) agents is in general and except in the special
case of a perfect market indeterminate: in cases of monopoly, of trades-
unions (the mathematical doctrine of which is very heterodox), of co-opera-
tive association, and sundry other kinds of commercial, and almost every
sort of political, bargain or pact. Whence the widespread need of arbitra-
tion. The principle of arbitration between self-interested contractors, it is
mathematically argued, is the general interest, the greatest possible utility of
all concerned. Thus the Economical leads up to the Utilitarian Calculus ;
in the mathematical view of which the most striking peculiarity is perhaps
a certain aristocratic feature of preference and selection, recalling Plato more
than Bentham."
Conscious Matter, or the Physical and the Psychical universally in
Causal Connexion. Ey W. STEWART DUNCAN. London : Bogue,
1881. Pp. 128.
" The object of this little treatise," says the author in his preface, " is to
remove certain formidable barriers to the progress of modern psychology.
. . . It is an attempt to bridge the chasm between physical and psyili-
logical science ". And thus (pp. 62-3) : " The essential difference between
294
New Books.
the mental and physical is such as can only be expressed by such words as
Beceiving Imparting the received ; Feeling Acting or causing to feel,
Suffering Causing to suffer. . . . Now since every part of matter
alternately receives and imparts the influence it receives, I see no valid
reason for objecting to the hypothesis that all matter is alternately psychical
and physical when it alternates between the two states of receiving an
influence and imparting the received influence." On p. 73, he exclaims :
" The days of the Concomitance-theory are numbered, for the Theory of
Alternation is destined to supplant it. To the older theory, therefore, I
desire to bid a final and respectful adieu ! "
The Beautiful and the Sublime. An Analysis of these Emotions and
a Determination of the Objectivity of Beauty. By JOHN STEINFORT
KEDNEY. New York: Putnam, 1880. Pp. v. 214.
This is an attempt to discover the conditions of beauty as a subjec-
tive state of emotion, and then to determine beauty as an objective
quality. The view taken, though worked out in a manner peculiar to
the author, approximates to the well-known doctrine of spiritualistic
philosophers. " The symbolic correspondence of anywhat in nature to
the subjective ideal of the perfect physical life constitutes its beauty
for such appreciant." The world about us presents in general such a corre-
spondence, being the manifestation of the Divine Spirit, which is thus
the " last secret " of Beauty. The work is written in a somewhat rhap-
sodical style, and is not always clear. It is characterised by a distinct
vein of mysticism. At the same time it contains many good obser-
vations and criticisms. The work is an illustration that mysticism in
speculative conceptions is not incompatible with keen insight into
everyday homely fact. ry ^ -
La Mort et le Diable : Histoire et Philosophic des deux Negations
supremes. Par POMPEYO GENEB, De la Societe" d'Anthropologie
de Paris. Precede d'une lettre a 1'Auteur de M. Littre, Membre
de FAcade'mie francaise. Paris: Keinwald, 1880. Pp. xl., 780.
M. Littre 's letter (pp. xv.-xxxiv.), written five years ago, while the
book was still in progress, welcomes it as the work of a young Spanish
convert to positivism, and as a proof of the fruitf illness of positivist
ideas. The author, in writing from a distinctively positivist point of
view, does not conceive this in any narrower sense than M. Littre"
himself. His work is of a very elaborate character, and falls into two
main parts. In the first, dealing with Death and Immortality, he
begins with a historic sketch of the conceptions among the chief
civilised peoples, ancient and modern, down to the era of the French
Revolution ; and follows this up with a philosophical discussion of
Life and Death, Body and Soul, and Immortality, in the light of the
latest results of science ; before drawing the practical positivist con-
clusion. The second part, in like manner, traces the historic evolution
of the idea of Evil through all its personifications, and then considers
it philosophically, again with the practical application. It is a learned
and thoughtful, and also a well-written book : ambitious in design,
and not coming short in execution.
New Books. 295-
De la Connaissance de Soi-meme. Essais de Psychologie analytique.
Par CHARLES LOOMANS, Professeur des Facultes de Philosophie
et de Droit et ancien Recteur de 1' Universite* de Liege.
Bruxelles: Muquardt, 1880. Pp. 574.
The author's psychological analysis has a value for himself chiefly
as it is found to lead upon every line to one general philosophical
conclusion the truth of spiritualism, as distinguished from any vague
form of idealism by its definite position of the three ideas of Liberty,
God, and Immortality ; but it has also much independent merit. It
is disposed in six parts (between an Introduction in which the rela-
tions of philosophy and psychology are determined, and a Conclusion
in which the ultimate philosophical inferences are drawn) : (1) The
fundamental Method of psychology ; (2) The notion of Mind ; (3)
The fundamental Faculties ; (4) Intelligence ; (5) Intellectual Sensi-
bility; (6) Will. While adhering in the main to the subjective point
of view, the author is forward to use all the side-lights of modern
inquiry ; and in describing the tripartite division of mind, which he
frankly accepts, he deserves special credit for not neglecting the social
developments of intellect, feeling, and will. His general position,
psychological as well as philosophical, is indicated in his dictum
" The idea of mind is the idea of individual and personal energy ".
Infini et QuantitS. Etude sur le Concept de I'lnfim en Philosophie
et dans les Sciences. Par F. EVELLIN, Ancien Eleve de 1'Ecole
Normale superieure, Agrege de philosophic, Professeur de philo-
sophie au Lycee Saint-Louis. Paris : Germer Bailliere, 1881.
Pp. 272.
This is a remarkably thorough investigation of the notion of Infinity,
more especially in relation to Quantity. The author claims as the
result of his inquiry that, upon his principles, mathematics is freed
from all contradiction, internal or external, and brought into harmony
with itself and with the other sciences ; so that reason is recognised in
the system of human cognition, as in the system of things, by the
mark of unity. But he is not less concerned to make manifest the
necessity of metaphysic as the only reconciler of the sciences. The
main drift of his thought regarding Infinity is conveyed in the
following passage :
" The Infinite, being incompatible with reality, has no place in the
sciences of nature or, more generally, in the concrete sciences, whether they
refer to matter or mind. It has not and cannot have access except in that
order of speculations where the possible is substituted for the real, the idea
fur the fact; while even there its use becomes legitimate only as it is
resolved into the only intelligible notion corresponding to it, that of the
Indeterminate or Indefinite. The infinite outside of us, the infinite con-
sidered objectively, is impossible. It is only in thought that it exists and
with purely virtual existence, as then representing the excess of power over
act, of the faculty which is not, over the operations of the faculty which
alone are, exhausted."
29G
New Books.
The treatment is in three parts : (1) The Infinite in Nature ; (2)
The Infinite in Mathematics ; (3) The Infinite in Philosophy ; with
an introductory section, containing a short history of the Infinite, the
different view of the problem as had by imagination and reason, and
preliminary definitions.
Les Maladies de la Memoire. Par Th. RIBOT, Directeur de la Revue
Philosophique. Paris : Germer Bailliere, 1881. Pp. 169.
The following summary of the author's conclusions gives the best
notion of the scope of this interesting monograph :
" Memory is a general function of the nervous system, based on the
property its elements have of conserving any modification received and of
forming associations. These associations, resulting from experience, may
be called dynamical, as opposed to natural or anatomical associations. The
conservation is assured by nutrition, constantly renewed. The reproductive
power depends chiefly on the circulation. All that is essential in memory
is thus connected with the fundamental conditions of life. The rest
consciousness, exact localising of recollections in the past is only higher
manifestation. . . .
" These preliminaries established, we have classed and described the
diseases of memory " chiefly by way of example, and with these results :
(1) "Memory must be resolved into memories"; (2) "Destruction of memory
follows a law " . " In the case of general dissolution, the invariable order is
recent facts, ideas in general, sentiments, acts. In the best-known case of
partial dissolution (forgetting of signs), the invariable order is proper
names, common names, adjectives and verbs, interjections, gestures. In both
cases, the course is the same retrogression from the newest to the oldest, from
the complex to the simple, from the voluntary to the automatic, from the
less to the more organised. The law is verified by the rare cases where the
dissolution has been followed by restoration in the inverse order. It
affords an explanation of particular extraordinary revivals, as being a return
of the mind backwards to conditions that seemed for ever gone. The law
is connected with the physiological principle that degeneration first
attacks the most recent formation ; and with the psychological principle
that the complex disappears before the simple, because it has been less
often repeated in experience."
La Fisiologia, del Si sterna Nervoso nelle sue Relazioni coi Fatti Psichici.
Del Dottor MARIO PANTZZA, Primo Assistente alia Cattedra di
Clinica Medica nella R. Universita di.Roma. Seconda Edizione.
Roma: Manzoni, 1881. Pp. 258.
This book contains a critical examination of what the author calls
the two postulates of the physiology of the nervous system : (1) that
the nerves are conductors of sense-impressions from the periphery
to the nerve-centres and of the motor impulses of the will from the
nerve-centres to the muscles ; (2) that external objects, to be perceived,
have to make impressions on the organs of sense. The examination
satisfies him that both assertions have no foundation in experience
and are altogether contrary to truth. At the same time, he thinks he
is able, by a historical line of inquiry, to show how they have acquired
the credit they possess. For himself he will prove, in another work
New Books. 297
to which the present one is only introductory, that the physiology of
the nervous system is in a condition to solve its difficult problems
without recourse to these or any other hypotheses, but keeping simply
to facts. We must wait for the promised work before attempting to
appreciate the exact force of his present criticism. It is easy to point
out deficiencies in the present theory, and make a plausible case against
it from the loose psychological expressions of many of its supporters.
If the author can put the " facts " in altogether new light, it will be a
remarkable achievement. The erudition displayed in his present
inquiry deserves acknowledgment.
Zwangsmdssige Lichtempfindungen durch Schall und venvandte Ersch-
einungen auf dem Gebiete der anderen Sinnesempfindungen. Yon
EUGEN BLEULER, Cand. Med u. KARL LEHMANN, Cand. Med in
Zurich. Leipzig: Fues, 1881. Pp. 96.
This research by two Ziirich medical students was started by a
peculiarity in the experience of one of them, who regularly associates
particular representations of colour with sounds and other sensations.
The phenomenon has been previously remarked as occurring in parti-
cular individuals, e.g., by Feclmer in his Vorschule der ^Eesthetik, and
is related to the phenomena of visualisation lately investigated by Mr.
F. Galton in this country ; but the authors conducted their inquiry
independently, and have collected and ordered with care a large quantity
of evidence on the subject. Their main conclusions are thus expressed
in their own technical terms :
(1) Bright photisms are roused by high sound-qualities, strong pains,
sharply defined touches, small forms, pointed forms. Dim photisms by the
opposite.
(2) High phonisms are roused by bright light, sharply defined touches,
small forms, pointed forms. Deep phonisms by the opposite.
(3) Photisms with sharply defined forms, also small photisms and pointed
photisms are roused by high sounds.
(4) Red, yellow, and brown are frequent photism-colours ; violet and
green, rare ; blue stands between.
(5) There is not uniform agreement in different people.
(6) Unpleasant primary sensations can rouse pleasant secondary ones and
vice versa.
(7) The secondary sensations are hardly mere affected by psychical pro-
cesses than primary ones, and otherwise are invariable.
(8) The disposition towards secondary sensations is hereditary.
(9) Traces of them are very widely diffused. They were found of the
more decided form in one-eighth of all the people interrogated.
(10) They are as common in the sane as in the insane.
Theismus und Pantheismus. Eine geschichtsphilosophische Untersu-
chung. Von Dr. W. WEISENBERG, Decent der Philosophic.
Wien : Faesy n. Frick, 1880. Pp. 267.
The author begins his " historico-philosophical inquiry" on p. 1 the
moment we turn his title-page, and never once draws breath till he
runs down on p. 267. There is no table of contents, not a single
20
298
Miscellaneous.
heading to mark the way he goes, and it is something that he conde-
scends to give the reader at least the help of paragraphs. Theism " is
the philosophy of progress in belief in the true, good, and beautiful,
and of progress in hope and love ". Pantheism is just the opposite.
S&in und Erkennen. Eine fundamental-philosophische Untersuchung.
Von Dr. JUL. BERGMANN, ord. Prof, der Philosophic an der Uni-
versitat zu Marburg. Berlin : Mittler, 1880. Pp. 191.
Following upon the author's Reine Logik, noticed at length in MIND
XVII. 139, we have here his treatment of the question of Being in
relation to the results there reached. The discussion falls into the five
sections : ( 1 ) The problem of Identity in the opposition of the Existent
and the rightly Represented, (2) the content of the notion of Being,
(3) the origin and value of the notion of Being, (4) the first step to
solution of the problem of Identity, (5) the form of cognition of the
Existent as such.
Illusions. By JAMES SULLY, Author of Sensation and Intuition, &c.
"International Scientific Series." London : Zegan Paul.
" This forthcoming work aims at giving a complete psychology of Illusions.
The term is taken in its wider popular signification, as including errors of
Memory, and even certain errors of Belief, in so far as these approximate in
their immediate self-evident force to false intuitions of sense. About one-
half of the work is taken up with the Illusions of Sense, including Dreams.
A considerable space is allotted to Illusions of Memory. In a final chapter
the writer seeks to make clear the relation of the scientific to the philo-
sophic treatment of the subject of illusion."
Symbolic Logic. By J. VENN, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer, Caius
College, Cambridge. London : Macmillan.
" The aim of this forthcoming work is to give a full account of the
nature and objects of that system of Logic of which Boole was the principal
originator. It gives a critical explanation of the principles involved,
pointing out what is the relation of this system to the ordinary one, and
to what extent it involves a generalisation of the latter. Some historical
account is given of the earlier attempts in this direction, from the time of
Leibnitz onward, as also of the functions and employment of diagrammatic
aids in Logic."
VIII. MISCELLANEOUS.
The following letter appeared in the Athenceum of Jan. 22nd :
" The death has been announced (at Kingstown) of a man whose name is
not familiar to many readers, and yet whose early history excited in its day
a long philosophical discussion. Dr. Jencken, when I came to know him,
was a physician practising near Dublin, a man of large education, of
liberal views, and of far more than ordinary culture. He was an accom-
plished musician ; he was well read in metaphysics ; he was learned in the
deeper and more obscure branches of his profession. And yet up to the
age of seventeen he had been stone-blind, and had only commenced his
education by reading after a painful and tedious operation and much
Miscellaneous. 299
resulting delicacy. His case is one celebrated among physiologists and
psychologists as Dr. Franz's case, that physician having operated on him in
the year 1841, and having published his account of it in the Transactions of
the Royal Society in that year. The experiments of Dr. Franz upon his
patient brought out some facts so important as to the primitive knowledge
of extension by sight that it was taken up against the Association school
by those who believe in space as a primitive form of intuition. From this
point of view I had myself urged it against John Stuart Mill, and his lust
reply to me (in the third edition of ' Mill on .Hamilton') conceded that, if
the facts in Dr. Franz's case were accurately stated, his own views would
require modification. The controversy rested there with Mill's death, and
I was busy with other work, when one day Dr. Jencken called on me, and
introduced himself as the actual patient in the case. He had not known
at the time of Dr. Franz's paper, as the matter had been foolishly kept
secret from both the patient and his family ; and it was only after his
settlement near Dublin that he accidentally, in reading a course of philo-
sophy for his own improvement, discovered that his case had been the
subject of a long discussion. Mill was dead, but Dr. Jencken came to talk
with me, and deliver his impressions as to the merits of the controversy. I
know that he had no objection to my stating here the main facts.
" It was, unfortunately, thirty years since the time of the operation, and
therefore it may be urged that his recollections may not have been accurate.
All I can say is that he was a man of singular candour as well as of acute-
ness, and that this wonderful crisis in his life had made the strongest im-
pression upon him. He believed firmly that his recollections were perfectly
accurate, and spoke with great confidence. At all events, he had made up his
mind that as soon as he saw, he immediately saw and distinguished figures
by that sense alone. This agrees with Dr. Franz's report. But what he
added to me was very remarkable. I asked him whether the first objects
of sight appeared very odd and strange to him. He said that as to colour
they did, but that as to outline or figure they were so exactly what he had
expected from touch, that he should have been surprised had they been
different. He repeated this to me in various forms, adhering to the fact.
This statement should have been made public long ago, when others could
have tested it by further questioning of an intelligent and willing witness.
Unfortunately, various engagements and distractions prevented its timely
appearance, and now this able and interesting man is gone to his rest. The
fact remains that a man who partially recovered his sight at the age of seven-
teen, so as to use one eye well, and to become a learned and competent
judge, decided this question in favour of the original power of discriminat-
ing figure by sight alone. " J. P. MAHAFFY."
The Platonist, "a monthly periodical, devoted chiefly to the dis-
semination of the Platonic Philosophy in all its phases," is announced
to appear, under the charge of Thos. M. Johnson, Osceola, Mo. U.S.A.
(present address). The price to English subscribers will be 8s. yearly.
Among other features of the journal, " the republication of the
writings of Thomas Taylor, that noble and most genuine Platonist of
modern times, will be made a specialty ".
Mr. James Spedding, the devoted biographer of Bacon and editor
(with R L. Ellis and D. D. Heath) of his works, died on March 9th,
at the age of 72, from the effects of an accident on March 1st.
The Rev. W. Cunningham has been appointed to act as deputy, at
Cambridge, for Professor Birks, who is disabled.
300
Miscellaneous.
KEVUE PHILOSOPHIQTTE. VIme Annee, No. 1. A. Fouillee Le neo-
kantisme en France, (i). La morale criticiste. E. Naville Les conse-
quences philosophiques de la physique moderne. H. Spencer De
1'integration politique. Notes et Documents (Descartes et la Convention
Nationale). Analyses et Comptes-rendus (Fowler's Bacon's Novum Orga-
num, &c.). Rev. des Period. No. 2. A. Espinas La philosophic en Ecosse
depuis le commencement du 18me siecle : premiere periode. H. Spencer
De la clifferenciation politique. H. Lachelier L'enseignement de la philo-
sophic dans les universites allemandes. Analyses et Comptes-rendus (E.
Krause et Ch. Darwin ; Erasmus Darwin, &c.). Rev. des Period. No. 3.
J. Delboeuf Le dernier livre de G. H. Lewes. Ch. Secretan La
religion, la philosophie et la science. H. Spencer Des formes et des forces
politiques. P. Tannery L'education platonicienne (ii). Analyses et
Comptes-rendus (M. Guthrie, On Mr. Spencer's Formula of Evolution, &c.).
Rev. des Period. Correspondance.
LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. IXme Annee, Nos. 46-52 ; Xme Annee,
Nos. 1-6. C. Renouvier La doctrine economique de 1'harmonie des interets
suivant la critique d' Albert Lange (46) ; L'education populaire (48) ; Poli-
tique et socialisme : (iv.). La question du progres : Hegel (49) : (v.).
Turgot (51): (vi.). "L'etat theologique de 1'esprit humain" (52), (vii.).
" L'etat metaphysique de 1'esprit humain " (2) ; F. Pillon L'utilite de la
confession (47) ; J . Milsand L'anatomie du radicalisme (48, 50) ; W.
James Les grands hommes, les grandes peiisees et le milieu (51, 52, 1).
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIE, &c. Bd. LXXVI1I. Heft 1. E.
Pfleideref Kantischer Kriticismus u. englische Philosophie (iii.). E.
Scharer Johann Anton Ferdinand Rose aus Liibeck. W. Schuppe Das
System der " Erkenntnisstheoretischen Logik ". E. Westerburg Schopen-
hauer's Kritik der Kantischen Kategorienlehre (i.). Recensionen (E. Caird,
Philosophy of Kant, &c.). Notizen. Bibliographie.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR VOLKERPSYCHOLOGIE u. SPRACHWISSENSCHAFT. Bd.
XII. Heft 4. H. Siebeck Die Entwicklung der Lehre vom Geist
(Pneuma) in der Wissenschaft des Alterthums. F. Misteli Herbart's
Sprachauffassung im Zusammenhange seines Systems. O. Fliigel Ueber
die Entwicklung der sittlichen Ideen (Schluss). Beurtheilungen (G. Allen,
Der Farbensinn, &c.). H. Siebeck Nachtrage zur Lehre von Pneuma.
PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Bd. XVI. Heft 9. W. Schuppe
Das Verhaltniss zwischeii Kant's formaler u. transcendentoler Logik. Th.
Lipps Die Aufgabe der Erkenntnisstheorie u. die Wundt'sche Logik.
Recensionen u. Anzeigen. Literaturbericht. Bibliographie, &c. Heft 10.
A. Stadler Das Gesetz der Stetigkeit bei Kant. Recensionen u. Anzeigen
(R. Adamson, Ueber Kant's Philosophie, &c.). Literaturbericht, &c.
VlERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FUR WISSENSCHAFTLICHE PHILOSOPHIE. Bd. V.
Heft. 1. F. Paulsen Was uns Kant sein kann ? Eine Betrachtung zum
Jubeljahr der Kritik der reinen Vernunft. C. Sigwart Logische Fragen :
Ein Versuch zur Verstandigung (ii.). Erklarung von W. Schuppe. Erwid-
erung von C. Sigwart. Anzeigen. Selbstanzeigen, &c.
Other BOOKS, &c., received : M. C. Hime, Morality : An Essay addressed
to Young Men, London (Guest), pp. 152 ; Lord Queensberry, Spirit of the
Matterhorn, London (Mitchell), pp. 31 ; E. Shirreff and Others, Essays on
the Kindergarten, London (Swan Sonnenschein and Allen), pp. 149 ; J. W.
Powell, Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages, with Words, Phrases
and Sentences to be collected, 2nd ed. with Charts, Washington (Govt. Print-
ing Office Smithsonian Institution, &c.), pp. 228.
ERRATUM. In No. XXI. p. 103 n. the title of G. H. Schneider's pamphlet
should have been : Die psychologische Ursache der hypnotischen Erscheinungen.
No. 23.] LJ ul 7> 1881.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
ITHE HISTOEY OF THE WOED 'MIND'.
THE word ' Mind ' is a great word. It is invested with a
highly important function in the English language ; and the
steps by which it has reached that position are interesting
to trace. It has every title to be called a great word. Eor,
in the first place, the word covers a large area of signification,
and comprises a number of subordinate words which have their
field within its province. All words of supraphysical significa-
tion, such as Sense, Emotion, Memory, Reflection, Discernment,
Instinct, Reason, Intelligence all these and many more do but
express severally some particular aspect of that power which is
comprehensively designated as Mind. When the signification
of a word is a large and commanding one, when its associations
are dignified, and when its use is so frequent that the word may
be called an indispensable word, then we have the elements which
constitute what we mean by a great word.
It adds to the impression of greatness, if such a word is par-
tially shrouded with the obscurity of age ; if it is not too per-
fectly transparent ; if in fact we must ascend into some previous
era to get an intelligent view of its present position. For
example, Law is a great word and so is Science. Perhaps there
is not much to choose between these two words in respect of
area, dignity, indispensability. But one of these words has a
haze of remoteness about it, while the other is as transparent as
21
302
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
a piece of new glass ; and I suppose all would agree that Law is
a more impressive word than Science. All the conditions
here indicated meet upon the word Mind ; it is comprehensive,
dignified, indispensable, and it has moreover the impressiveness
which a venerable mantle of antiquity confers.
And yet further, a special interest attaches to this word, from
the circumstance that it is peculiar to the English language. It
has existed indeed in the raw material of its physical form before
our people were planted in this island : the group to which it
belongs is common to many languages, but it has made for itself
this high and permanent seat in the English language only.
How recently the operation was completed, we shall see as we
proceed. But we must begin far back, among the earliest records
of our people.
It might perhaps be imagined that at the distant epoch here
contemplated there were as yet in the languages of the bar-
barians no considerable words regarding the mental region, no
anciently established and deep-rooted words to express the supra-
physical, invisible, spiritual side of human nature. Such an idea
would be a mistake, and we must seek to avert it at the very
outset. Not only so, but we must endeavour to establish the
full persuasion of a contrary opinion. For this purpose it may
be convenient to employ independent testimony. Jacob Grimm,
in his Preface to Andreas und Elene, p. xxxix., speaking of points
of similarity between the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian
poetry, observes that the ancestral speech was rich in expres-
sions for the spiritual side of human nature. He continues
H y g e and m y n e animus, Icelandic h u g r and m u n r bear a signifi-
cant relationship to Huginn and Muninn the wise ravens of Odin
through whom he gathers information, just as each man explores the world
with his senses and reflection. Moreover, s ef a and geliSu answer to the
Icelandic s e f i and g e S as sense and thought ; m 6 d and f e r h S are rather
animus in the practical signification of bravery and courage ; h r e S e r and
b r e 6 s t express the seat of intelligence in the body ; w ilia is the resolu-
tion, voluntas.
These definitions are not of much value : they convey the last
impressions of the writer rather than any firm usage. Such
mental words were indeed numerous, but they were vague, and
perhaps they were numerous because they were vague. I have
quoted this passage more for the benefit of the author's name
than for the solid value of the contents. It will at least show
that there were plenty of mental words, and save me from the
need of enumerating words which would have no associations
for most readers.
There are, however, three words which deserve a particular
notice, two of them for the great positions they have held and
The History of the Word ( Mind '. 303
continue to hold, and the third for its past celebrity and its
historical relation to our present subject.
The first is the ancestral word which in Anglo-Saxon was
sawul, and in Moesogothic saiwala. This word has been thought
to be connected with sea, Anglo-Saxon s&, Moesogothic saiws,
from a root signifying motion and life. However this may be,
the word corresponded in signification to Greek yfrvxtf and Latin
anima, arid in the wake of these words it passed into the domain
of Theology, where it is permanently established as German
Seele and English soul. A pointed illustration of the correspon-
dence between anima and sawul is afforded by a passage in the
Anglo-Saxon Manual of Astronomy, where a caution is given
against confusing the breath with the soul : Nis na seo orftuns
o o o
J?e we ut blawaS and inateoS ure sawul, ac is seo lyft J?e we on
lybbaS : i.e., The breath which we exhale and inhale is not our
soul, but is the air upon which we live.
The second is the word for spiritus ; Anglo-Saxon gast, Ger-
man Geist, a word that is meagrely represented by the modern
ghost, and maintains its ancient dignity only in that connexion
where it is written with a capital initial. That these two words
fill the same places in English and German theology, is due
to intercommunication in Christian times, but the original fact
that the words were common to the two languages is evidence
of their ancestral antiquity.
The third is a word that may at first sight seem hardly worthy
to be grouped with the other two. Its greatness is a thing of
the past ; it is indeed enumerated above in the quotation from
Grimm among words of old poetic status, but in modern English
it is rather lost in the crowd. And yet it is for our immediate
purpose of more consequence than either of the former ; it is as
I may say the pedestal of the great word which I have under-
taken to describe. The word of which I speak is Anglo-Saxon
mod, O.H. German muot, German Muth, English mood. Its origin
is so obscure that we must renounce the attempt to trace it. In
meaning it corresponded to the Latin animus, the impulse of
thought and action : and in the mediaeval poetry it means passion,
humour, temper ; just as in the Children in the Wood :
But he that was of milder mood,
Did slay the other there :
In German, Muth bears various senses, but the stock idea is
animal spirits, courage. Such appears also to have been in Anglo-
Saxon the fundamental sense of the word, but by the earliest
date at which we touch it, it had become the most general and
comprehensive word for the inner man, and the most capable of
being compared with and rendered by our present Mind. Indeed
304 The History of the Word ' Mind '.
this mod seemed to fill the whole area of the vaguely appre-
hended inner part of human nature ; as against the physical
and visible outer part. Among HroSgar's abundant praises of
Beowulf, the fullest is comprehended in a single line where
mcegen, main, physical force, is coupled with mdd :
Ipn eart mregenes strang and on mode frod. Beowulf, 1845.
(Tliou art strong in main, and wise in mood.)
And this phrase on m6de, which here is quite presentatively em-
ployed, became so frequent, and so subtilised by the frequency
of its application, that it attained the refinement of a pronominal
symbol, thus : Ic cwcecf on mode, I said within myself.
The book which best exhibits the higher pretensions of mod
is Alfred's version of the Philosophice Consolatio of Boethius.
This is not a mere translation, but a free adaptation of the text
to the translator's own thoughts and experience. He plays many
variations upon his original. Whereas in the Latin the dialogue
is between Philosophy and Boethius, we find in the Saxon ver-
sion an impersonation of the Mind, under the name of frcet Mod,
and this character takes the part of Boethius. If on the one
hand ficet Mod seems to be the faculty that is dejected and needs
consolation, yet on the other hand it is a power that can ex-
change reasons with Philosophy. We have here a satisfactory
evidence if not of the exact sense attached to the word,
yet of the fact that it was the most preferable word to represent
the whole inward nature of man, passive and active, moral and
intellectual.
At the same time it is plain that the word was not
universally accepted as a chief exponent of the inner man ;
when admitted into such a function it was generally com-
bined with other words. Of itself and by itself it naturally
gravitated to that first and most habitual sense, of the condition
of the animal spirits. When it is to be used in the higher
sense it must have the support of a determinative accompani-
ment. The testimony of Alfred's Boethius is indeed valu-
able, but we must remember that it is peculiar. This is no
average book, but the study of one who separateth himsejf
and intermeddleth with all wisdom. Expressions in the English
of King Alfred have often a pitch of elevation which is given
to them for the occasion, and sometimes if you meet them in the
ordinary walks they hardly look like the same words.
There is a vast interval between such primitively simple words
as sawul, gast, mod, and any sort of compound, even though of
that earliest native type, the compounds with ge-, to which our
word belongs. Its original form was GEMYND, and it was the
substantive to an old verb geman, I remember ; an old preterite
The History of the Word ' Mind '. 305
used as a present tense, exactly like and equivalent to the Latin
memini, which is moreover a cognate. The preterit-present
geman made its plural gemunon, they remember, and its past
participle gemunen, and here we see the u that accounts for the
y in gemynd.
Any word whose pedigree is so clear, though justly counted old
in our time, must be considered as recent by comparison with such
a prehistoric word as mod. G-emynd is one of those comparatively
recent formations which, like gecynd nature, gesccad discretion,
however old chronologically, have the marks of their making dis-
tinct and fresh upon them. And yet, with all this recency of
stamp, it is found in our earliest writings, namely, in Ulphilas,
in the form gaminfri remembrance.
It is missing in High German. The nearest relative to our
word that is found in German is a word that springs, not from
geman but from an ascendant of geman, from the verb of which
geman is formally the preterite, namely, minan connected with
memini, and mens, and Sanskrit MAN think, remember ; and
so again with the Pangothic man (homo) the thinking creature ;
and with all these we must associate the Greek jueVo? force, and
the Homeric ^k^ova I think of, yearn for.
In the Metrical English Psalter published by the Surtees
Society, a book which represents Northern English of the
thirteenth century, we find the well-known words of the eighth
Psalm, " Quid est homo quod memor es ejus 1 " translated thus :
" What is man, that thou mines of him ? " and this mines looks
like the original radical verb minan.
From this root-verb there sprang a word which has been
famous in German literature. The High German Minne from
the idea of Eemembering became specialised to that of Love ; it
stood as the vox propria of romantic love in the poetry of
chivalry from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, and the
masters of this poetry were known as Minne-Sdnger, singers of
Love. In process of time however the word degenerated so
much from its high poetic and religious aspect, that in the six-
teenth century being no longer socially available it was allowed
to drop and die out, only to be revived again in the middle of
the eighteenth century as a quaint archaic gem of the mediaeval
poetry. Such is the history of the nearest relative to our word
that is found in the High German branch.
This will perhaps be enough about the antecedents and con-
nexions and earliest surroundings of our word : we will now
begin to follow its progress. At first it betokened remembering,
and of this signification we may observe three gradations :
(1) The form was gemynd (fern, and neut.), and its first
meaning is simply Remembrance, Memory. It lias no other
306
Tlie History of the Word ' Mind '.
sense in the Beowulf, where it appears in two conspicuous
passages. The hero dying enjoins that his warriors should
rear on the site of his bale-fire a mound to be called Beowulf's
Barrow :
se sceal to gemyndum miimm leodum
heah hlifian on Hrones nsesse (1. 2805).
.;
ople.)
(It shall tower aloft on Hronesness for a remembrance to my peop'
The other passage speaks of rich heirlooms worn for personal
ornament, and such wealth is called " maSSum to gemyndum/'
treasure for remembrancings, treasure memorial.
In an eleventh century memorandum of a Guild that
flourished at Abbotsbury, one of the members bequeaths to the
fraternity the Guildhall with the ground it stands on, " for a
perpetual remembrance of himself and wife" "him and his
gebeddan to langsumum gemynde ". Cod. Dipl. 942.
A more internal illustration of this sense occurs in The
Wanderer, where it stands for the exercise of memory :
J>onne maga gemynd mod geondhweorfeS (1. 51).
(When memory of friends rushes through the mind).
In the fifty-first Psalm it stands for the faculty of Memory.
" Delictum meum coram me est semper," is thus rendered :
" Mine synna beoft symle beforan me, on minum geniynde " :
where the latter words have been added for explanation, and
they signify " in my memory ".
(2) Immediately springing out of the former, is the sense of
Monument, Memorial : a work of art to preserve and keep up
memory.
In JElfric's Homily for St. Stephen's Day, Dec. 26, there is
repeated reference to the Gemynd of the saint : " Geneosodan
Sa halgan cyrcan on J?sere ]?e waes ftaes wuldorfullan Stephanes
gemynd " r= " They visited the holy church in which was the
glorious Stephen's monument". It appears plainly from the
context that the object meant was a reliquary shrine.
Again in the same author: we read how that Philip the
tetrarch founded Csesarea Philippi, calling the place Caesarea
after the Emperor, and Philippi " for his agenum gemynde " for
a memorial of himself, Vol. I., p. 366. In such a connexion as
this the word seems to abut on the sentiment of celebrity, fame,
gloire : and so in another place of ^Ifric, where he is comment-
ing on the fact (strange to his hearers) that Herod's son should
be called Herod, he continues
Ac hit wses gewunelic on t)am timan ]?set rice menn sceopon heora
bearnum naman be him sylfum, ]?8et hit wsere geSuht ]?ses Se mare gemynd
Saes feeder (5at5a se sunn, his yrfenuma, wses geciged ]?8es feeder naman.
I.e., but it was customary at the time that rich men should give their
The History of the Word ' Mind \ 307
children names after themselves, that the father's distinction might seem
the greater, when the son, his heir, was called by his name. I. 478.
(3) A third and historically very important meaning is Com-
memoration. In the language of the Calendar the Commemo-
ration of Martyrs is "martira gemynd". ^Elfric begins a
Sermon for the day of the Inventio Crucis (May 3) with these
words : " Men 5a leofestan, nti to dasg we wurolaS J?sere halgan
Kode gemynd": "Beloved people, now to-day we celebrate the
Commemoration of the holy Rood". And a Commemoration
Day was gemynddceg, just in the same sense in which we shall
see a like expression come prominently forward by-and-by in
the fifteenth century. A good place to see it with all explicit-
ness, is in Cod. DipL 353. This sense had a great career, which
will arrest our attention again. And it runs back into high
antiquity. We have some meagre fragments of a Moesogothic
Calendar, and the gaminpi appears there exactly as gemynd in
the Saxon Calendar. Indeed gaminjri seems to have covered
just the same area for the Goths of the fourth century as
gemynd did for the Saxons of the eighth or tenth : it is used for
memory, remembrance, in the translation of Ulphilas, as 2 Tim.
i. 3, "I have of thee remembrance in my prayers night and
day": "Haba bi ]mk gamin J?i in bidom meinaim naht jah daga".
The above three meanings make a group of almost inter-
communicable senses ; and when we find two out of three in
the Moesogothic remains of the fourth century, we feel ourselves
on sure ground in regarding these senses Memory, Monument,
Commemoration, as the original significations of the compound
Gemynd.
(4) We seem, however, to touch even in Anglo-Saxon litera-
ture upon some nearer approaches to the modern sense of the
word. One might indeed point out places in which gemynd can
be perfectly translated by the modern word Mind : thus in a
place of the Exeter Book where Mr. Thorpe has so translated
it:
Ips&t is healic ned
monna gehwilcimi }>e gemynd hafaO (p. 27, ed. Thorpe).
(That is sublime counsel for every one that hath mind.)
Indeed, the general impression obtained by following this
word down to the close of the Anglo-Saxon period is this : that
it had arrived almost exactly (to compare small things with
great) at the same position that, after battling with storms, and
being kept for centuries out of port, it reached again in Shake-
speare. In Shakespeare's time, as we shall see below, the word
was capable of standing for anything emotional, mental or
spiritual, but it did not in a distinct manner represent Mcns as
it does now. So likewise, in the close of the Anglo-Saxon
308
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
period, we find gemynd able to stand for Mind in a general
Shakespearian way, but not at all sharply responsive to the
sense of Mens. On the contrary, the stock word to translate
Mens with down to ^Elfric's time was still mod ; this was the
Anglo-Saxon word that without context stood over against
Mens; as may be seen in Mr. Zupitza's edition of ^Elfric's
Grammar, p. 14.
From the foregoing it appears that Mind took its departure
from a beginning in which it meant Remembrance. But if we
look in the dictionaries under Mind we shall see that the cata-
logue of significations generally ends with this sense, instead of
beginning with it. In the sematology of the word Dr. Johnson
has been followed with small and unimportant variations. His
definitions were arranged as follows: (1) The intelligent power;
(2) Liking, choice, inclination, propension, affection; (3) Thoughts,
sentiments ; (4) Opinion ; (5) Memory, reinembrancy. Here we
see that the fundamental meanings are ranged last, and the
latest usage is placed first, so that the historical order of deve-
lopment is as nearly as possible reversed. But to return.
Our best evidence of the progress of the word along its
future path arises from its combinations with elder words,
and especially with the word mod. It has already been ob-
served that this word held in early Saxon times the place most
nearly analogous to that of Mind with us now. This power
has so completely departed from the word that it may be hard
for the reader to accept the statement. All our present asso-
ciations of this word are with ideas of humour, temper, high or
low spirits. And this was the old foundation of the word : the
sense of Mind grew on this as an apex from a base ; the
elevation has decayed, and the basement remains. In Anglo-
Saxon a man might be mddes Ui&e blithe of mood, or modes
geomor sorrowful of mood : he might be modes fus prompt of
mood, i.e., courageous, ready for action all these of the ground
meaning ; but then farther he might also be modes gleaw in-
genious, skilful, prudent of mood; and the qualities of mod
thus connoted were summed up in the compound mod-crwft
faculty of mind.
Where the intellectual aspect of mod is intended, we find
some more distinctly mental word assigned to it as a companion.
Thus mddes freaht Mods counsel ; or modes gemynd the Gemynd
of the Mod ; as where in Cciedmon it is said of Tubal Cain that
He through cunning force smith -crafty was
f and }nirh modes gemynd manna rarest
\ and through mod's gemynd first of all men
invented the ploughshare. Or, the two are coupled, as where
the same poet describes the patriarch drunk with wine :
The History of the Word ' Mind '. 309
On ferhftcofan freste genearwod
mode and geinynde :
marvellously like Virgil's coupling of mens with animus in his
description of the wild enthusiasm of the Sibyl :
Magnam cui mentem aninrnmque
Dehus inspirat vates, aperitque futura.
But this more precise use of mod by the addition of a
determinative is seen most effectively in the compounds which
were made with mod for a base. They naturally fall into two
groups, those which concern Feeling and those which concern
Thought. Examples of the former: mod-Hsgung worry: mod-
cearu anxiety : mdd-cwdnig querulous : mod-earfoff distress :
m6d-gepyldig enduring: mod-geomor sorrowful: mod-glced joyous:
mod-hete hatred: mdd-hwcet impetuous: mdd-lufe love: mod-
rof haughty : mod-sefa disposition, temper : mod-seoc morbid :
mod-sorg sorrow : m6d-sw{& resolute : mod-pracu fortitude :
mdd-prea horror : m6d-pry$o stateliness : mod-wlanc insolent.
Examples of the latter : mod-crceft ingenuity : mod-crceftig
clever: mod-gehygd meditation: mod-gemynd mental activity,
thought : mod-geponc the same : mdd-gepoht the same : mod-
(jleaw sagacious : mod-hord the hoard of the Mod, the thoughts :
mod-snottor discerning : mod-wen opinion, literally, mood-
weening.
It was hardly possible without a muster of examples to
convey an impression of the great province of mod, or to esti-
mate the nutriment it could supply to words in its partnership.
Out of these we will select three as most to our purpose:
namely modgemynd, modyeponc, modgepoht. These were power-
ful compounds, expressive of a vague sense of greatness in
the powers of human thought. It was out of this group that
Mind rose to its present office, and we can almost recognise in
each one of thess words a capable equivalent of Mind, though
they were not as yet by any means strictly attached to that
signification. In the Elene, when the advice of learned men is
required, they are described as pa pe leornungcrccft purh
modgemynd mceste hefden those who science of learning through
mental ability most had, i.e., those who by mind had most
learning. But as to the expression of pure intelligence, perhaps
modf/eponc, and modgcpoht were more prominent than modge-
mi/nd. When Caedmon describes the surpassing excellence of
mind with which God had endowed the Archangel, he speaks
thus : ccnne hczfde he swa swi&ne geivorhtnc, sioa mihtigne on his
niodgepohte, one had he made so strong, so mighty in his mind.
For an example of modgeponc, I will quote the closing lines of
Alfred's Boethian Metres :
310
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
Man ana gseS metodes gesceafta
mid his andwlitan tip on gerihte :
mid ]?y is getacnod ]?ret his tredwa sceal
and his modge]?onc ma up ]?onne niSer
habban to heofenum ; ]? Ires he his hige wende
ni<5er swa ]?ser nyten. Nis ]?aet gedafenlie
]?cet se modsefa monna asniges
niSerheald wese and }?eet neb upweard.
(Man only goeth of the Maker's creatures,
with his countenance (lifted) upright :
by that is betokened that he his trust shall
and the thought of his mind more up than beneath
hold towards heaven ; lest he his heart turn
netherwards like the neat. It is not suitable
that the mood and affection of any of men
down-lurking should be and the look upward.)
As the word gcpoht will claim attention again by - and by, it
will be well to have illustrated its importance and the fulness
of its competition with gemynd for the function of expressing
intelligence. In Exodus xxiii. 8, where our Bible says " The
gift blindeth the wise," and where the Vulgate has " munera
excsecant prudentes " this text being embodied in Alfred's
Laws, or the Prologue to them, takes this interesting form :
" ForJ?oii hie ablenda]? ful oft wisra monna ge)?oht," which compels
us to use Mind in the translation, as Mr. Thorpe has done : " for
they blind full oft the minds of wise men ".
The competition of Qepoht and Gemynd will occupy us again
presently, when we come to speak of Chaucer : but first there is
another word that claims our attention.
The assertion may perhaps be ventured, that seldom if ever
does a word of the first importance reach its station by a simple
and un chequered career. The symbol- verb to be affords a ready
example of this remark. The plurality of roots which in most
languages have a share in this verb and give it a patched appear-
ance, are a lasting evidence of the fact that several words were
in the running for an office so vital for all the higher operations
of language. In like manner the word Mind had many rivals
before it reached the goal. The demolition of the Saxon standard
of the language, and the formation of new centres of literary
English, had for a long time the effect of obscuring whatever
progress Gemynd had formerly made. In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries the word that mostly stood in its place was
wit. The Saxon form Oewit had meant sense, perception, con-
sciousness : in Solomon and Saturn (1. 23) it stands for that which
distinguishes man from beast : as iufeoh lutan gewitte, cattle with-
out reason : and the five senses were " the five wits " through
Saxon and mediaeval times, down to Shakespeare, who has it
thus : " four of his five wits went halting off," Much Ado I. 1.
The History of the Word ' Mind '. 311
But in the Ormulum which is our best source for the thirteenth
century, this word appears to hold nearly the place which we
now assign to Mind. The promise of the tempter to the first
man is thus conceived : "And tu shallt habbenn witt and skill in
alle kinne thinge," i.e., "Thou shalt have knowledge and ability in
all kinds of things ". Adam was tempted to desire greater mental
powers than God had given him, and the faculties of which he
desired more are enumerated as " innsihht and witt and shred and
skill," that is to say, " insight and intelligence and discernment
and ability ". Plans conceived in the mind are said to be in the
" herte and wit " : a man who intends to make a chest has the
chest in his " herte and wit " before the tangible object is pro-
duced : all creation is said to have been previously in the " herte
and wit " of God : the Divine Logos is represented as the " wit
and word " of God. In such cases it seems plain that a word
which commonly stands for sense, understanding, discretion,
prudence, is raised as near as could be to the office now filled by
Mind.
In all the twenty thousand lines of the Ormulum the word
minde appears but on one occasion ; if we may so completely
trust the Glossary of Dr. White, lately revised by Mr. Holt,
as to reason from it negatively. And I believe we may. On
this single occasion the word witt accompanies mind, and it be-
comes a nice and critical question what value we are to assign to
each. The context treats of the nature of the human soul, and
its affinity with the nature of God. A quotation may be useful :
And sawle is ec wurthlike shridd
Thurrh Godd inn hire kinde,
With undffithshildignesse, and ec
With witt and wille and minde ;
And for thi nemneth Drihhtin Godd
The sawle his onnJicnesse,
Forr thatt tey bathe, sawle and Godd,
Sinndenn withutenn ende,
And hafenn minde and wille and witte.
(And the soul is eke worthily endowed by God in her nature, with
immortality, and eke with wit and will and mind ; and therefore the
Lord God nameth the soul his likeness, for that they both, the soul and
God, are without end, and have mind and will and wit.)
This looked at first like an ascending series, but as the ladder
is alternately planted on either end, Which (we may ask) is the
head of the ladder ? The moral world is in the middle,
having on its one side the stores of experience, and on its
other side the creative originating intelligence. Which of
these two is minde meant for ? In the light of the past we
should say minde must be the stores of understanding and
memory, but in the light of the future we should assign this
312
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
place to witt, and see in the passage a forecast of the modern
status of Mind. The rarity of the word Mind in Wiclif, and its
numerical relation to wit is remarkably the same as in the
Ormulum ; but there is this difference, that in Wiclif there is
no ambiguity about the direction in which the word points.
In an inquiry like the present, the evidence of carefully made
translations from standard writings is of the highest value : and
therefore it will be worth while to see the Wicliffite usage at full
length. Indeed I am bound, in the interest of the argument, to
quote the passages at large, because the object here is, not merely
to show that mynde when used by Wiclif was used in a narrow
sense, but much more to show, how numerous are the occasions
on which the word is not used, where now it would be used, and
where it was used in the Bible diction of the sixteenth century.
The Wicliffite versions appeared between 1380 and 1390, and
they were made from the Latin. Accordingly I group the
passages first according to the Latin word, and then subdivide
them according to any diversity in the original. The English of
1611 is joined with the Latin and Greek. (The meaning of the
asterisks will be explained later.)
Memoria (fjiveia), Mention, Remembrance.
Rom. i. 10 : Y make mynde of zou euere in my preieris.
Eph. i. 16 : Makynge mynde of zou in my preieris.
Phil. i. 3 : I do thankyngis to my God in al mynd of zou.
1 Thes. iii. 6 : And that ze han good mynde of vs.
Memoria (^V^/JLOO-VVOV), Memorial.
Mk. xiv. 9 : Schal be told in to mynde of hir.
Acts x. 4 : Thin almesdedis han stied up in to mynde.
Sensus (vovs), Mind.
Lk. xxiv. 45 : Thanne he openyde to hem wit.
Rom. i. 28 : Bitook hem in to a repreuable wit *.
xi. 34 : Who knew the wit * of the Lord.
xii. 2 : But be ze reformed in newnesse of zoure wit.
xiv. 5 : Ech man encrees in his wit.
1 Cor. i. 10 : Be ze perfit in the same wit *.
ii. 16 : Who knew the wit * of the Lord. . . .
wit * of Crist.
xiv. 19 : Y wole speke yue wordis in my wit *.
Eph. iv. 17 : In the vanyte of her wit *.
Col. ii. 18 : Bolnyd with wit * of his fleisch.
2 Thes. ii. 2 : That ze be not mouyd soone fro zoure witt *.
Rev. xvii. 9 : And this is the witt *, who that hath wisdom.
Sensus (Siavota), Mind.
Col. i. 21 : Enemyes bi wit *.
Mens (vovs), Mind.
Rom. vii. 23 : The lawe of my soule *.
25 : Bi the soule * seme to the lawe of God.
we han the
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
Eph. iv. 23 : In the spirit of zoure soule *.
1 Tim. vi. 5 : Corrupt in soule *. ) corrupti
2 Tim. iii. 8 : Corrupt in undirstonding *. j mente.
Tit. i. 15 : Soule * and conscience.
Intelligentiae (j/o^ara), Minds.
Phil. iv. 7 : Youre hertis and vndurstondingis *.
So far I have been contented with quoting from Professor
Skeat's very handy little reprint of the second or revised Wic-
liffite version of the New Testament, as being the less archaic of
the two, and every way sufficient for our inquiry. But here we
.come on a place, that deserves to be exhibited in both the versions,
after the splendid quarto volumes of Forshall and Madden, in
parallel columns :
Mens (vovs), Understanding : 1 Cor. xiv. 14, 15.
Forwhi if I preye in tunge, my For if y preye in tnnge, my
spirit preieth ; forsoth my mynde, spirit preieth ; myn vndurstondyng
or resoun, is without fruyt. There- is with outen fruyt. What thanne ?
fore what thing is 1 I schal preie y schal preye in spirit, y schal
in spirit, I schal preie arid in mynde, preye in mynde ; y schal seie salm
orresoun ; I schal seie salm in spirit, in spirit, y schal seie salm also in
I schal seie salm in mynde, or mynde.
resoun.
This passage is very much to our purpose : because it exhibits
our word in or near to the sense we are specially interested in ;
because here we have mynde for mens (1/01)9) ; and above all,
because the sense of novelty and of transition is well marked in
the elder version, by the explanatory accompaniment "or reason".
The only other place in which I have found mynde in these
versions with an approach to the modern sense is in Matt. xxii.
37 (with the synoptic parallels) : " Thou schalt loue thi Lord
God, of al thin herte, arid in al thi soule, and in al thi mynde,"
where the word represents mens (Sidvoui), and where it is to be
noted, that there are in the N.T. at least five other places with
the same Latin and the same Greek word, where mynde has not
been used, but either soid or thought. This passage is the more
valuable because heart and sold hedge up the sense of mynde,
and with the help of mens, secure the meaning against doubt.
The great effect of our examination of Wiclif is to leave the im-
pression that the word Mind had made little way towards filling
the place of the Latin mens. An examination of Chaucer and
Gower tends the same way. With them the prevalent sense of
mind is still Memory :
And as the bokes maken minde.
Gower, Cowf. Amantis, vii.
A tale, which cometh now to minde.
Id. p. 206 ed. Pauli.
314
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
Almighty God, that saveth all mankynde,
Have on Oonstaunce and on hir child som mynde !
Chaucer, C.T. 5328.
In olde Romayn gestes men may fynd
Maurices lyf, I bere it nought in mynde.
C.T. 5546.
We even find it coupled bilingually with Memory,
And westward in the mynde and memory
Of Mars, he hath imaked such another.
C.T. 1908.
In one place it signifies memory as part of consciousness :
She said she was so mased in the see,
That she forgate hir mynde, by hire trouth.
C. T. 4947.
And yet Chaucer also displays the word in a manner which
comes indefinitely near to its chief modern use, when he employs
it as the counterpart of the body, thus :
foule lust, luxurie, lo their ende !
Nought oonly that thou feyntest mannes mynde,
But verrayly thou wolt his body schende.
C.T. 5345.
And neigh the castle swiche ther dwelten three :
That on of hem was blind, and might not see,
But it were with thilke eyen of his mynde,
With which men mowen see whan they been blind.
C.T. 4972.
There seems so little to distinguish between this and the
modern use of the word, that it becomes all the more strange
why Chaucer avoided the word when he was rendering the Latin
mens or the Italian mente. It has been observed by Mr. Bern-
hard Ten Brink, that when Chaucer had these words before him,
he habitually rendered them by the word Thought. The line in
the House of Fame II. 16 :
Thought that wrote al that I mette
is after Dante Inferno II. 8 :
mente che scrivesti cio ch' io vidi.
In Boethius IV. Prose 1, the Latin " pennas etiam affigam tuse
menti " is rendered by Chaucer, " I shal ficche fetheres in thi
thought " : and a little further on, " quas cum sibi velox mens
induit," is rendered " when the swift thought hath clothed it self
in tho fetheres ". It is curious to observe that in both these
places the Old High German version uses muot (i.e., our
mod ) : " Ih kistello ioh ana dinemo muote die fettacha . . .
unde so daz snella muot sie ana getuot."
In these examples the two words Mind and Thought appear
as rivals for a certain prominence, and the latter seems to have
The History of the Word ' Mind '. 315
temporary possession of that place in which the former is now
indisputably established. Perhaps one might say of Mind, as
the word is now used, that it is the thing in which Thought
resides, the subject of thought, the power which thinks. We
cannot represent to ourselves the acts of thinking or of feeling,
or of resolving, without some place to lodge them in, and that
place is the Mind. Mind is coextensive with the capacity for
experience, coextensive with consciousness, even with the
faculty of sensation ; but it has a special relation to Ideas, and
when the word is used acutely, it means the faculty of Ideas.
There can be no doubt that in the latter stages of its history
the Latin mens has acted powerfully as an attraction. But in
the examples from Chaucer we saw that he regarded Thought
as the most fitting English word to represent Mens. The
change therefore that has taken place in the position of the
word since Chaucer's time is very considerable, and it is one
which may reasonably provoke some curiosity.
I think that an historical explanation can be given. The
popular use of the word Mynde in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries was so intimately associated with the religious custom
of commemorative masses for the Dead, that it seemed unfit for
any signification that was of a totally different kind. In fact
the use of the word for obits or periodical commemorations of
departed relatives may be said to have stopped the way, and
retarded the movement of the word Mind towards its destined
station. For already there can, I think, be no doubt that the
attraction of Mens had begun to operate. The examples from
Wiclif seem to exhibit this plainly.
I apprehend then that the retarding obstacle was the popular
use of the word Mynde for days and occasions of Commemora-
tion, whether yearly or monthly, and that the obtrusion of this
idea was too strong to allow the word to approach that post to
which in other respects it was manifestly called. A good col-
lection of facts in illustration of the prevalence of this use may
be seen in Brand's Popular Antiquities, ed. Hazlitt, Vol. ii.,
p. 229 : where it is' also said that this use of the word is still
retained in Lancashire. The following is quoted from Fabyan's
Chronicle :
In 1493 died Sir Roberde Chichely, Grocer, and twice Mayor of
London, the which, wylled in his Testament that upon his Mynde Day a
good and competent Dyner should be ordayned to certeyn pore men, &c.
The same historian left elaborate directions for his own
"Moneth is Mynde". Anne Barneys in a letter written about
1536 to Thomas, Lord Crumwell, speaks of a Month's Mind in
which there were as many as a hundred priests in attendance.
316
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
More recently, Sir Henry Piers, in his Description of West
Mecdli, describes the continuance of the practice and its name :
In Ireland, after the interment of a great personage, they count four
weeks ; and that day four weeks all Priests and Friars and all Gentry, far
and near, are invited to a great Feast, usually termed the Month's Mind.
And not only these recurrent obits, but also the periodical
Commemoration of Benefactors to public institutions were
called by this name. At All Saints Church in Bristol there
existed, I know not how recently, a yearly custom of reciting
the List of Founders and Benefactors, like the Commemoration
at Oxford, and this ceremony went by the name of the General
Mind.
We now pass on to the sixteenth century, and here our great
source is the diction of the Bible translation with its successive
revisions, extending from 1525 to 1611. And as we confine
our view to the New Testament, we are struck with the almost
finality of the stamp that William Tyndale imparted to the
work in 1525 : and we shall therefore take particular notice of
his usage of our word. Through our first two groups in which
Wiclif has mynde, but our Bible of 1611 has mention, remem-
brance, memorial, Tyndale has not retained mynde in a single
place, and his word is in nearly every instance the same that is
familiar to us now. In the groups that follow, where we have
now mind but Wiclif had some other word, the asterisks in the
Wiclif quotations signify how often Tyndale has mind, and
accordingly how closely his steps have been followed by sub-
sequent revisers. We may therefore dismiss this branch of the
evidence with the remark; that whatever progress the Bible
diction of the sixteenth century exhibits upon Wiclif in regard
to the career of our word, was already mature in Tyndale's
time, that is, in the third decade of that century.
And now came the Eeformation, of which the effect was to
abolish services commemorative of the dead ; and if I have been
right in thinking that the general use of the word Mynde in
connexion with those religious customs was a
retarding in-
fluence, which counteracted the tendency of the word to imbibe
the spirit of mens, and to become its English representative, we
may henceforward consider that it is liberated from that ob-
struction.
However it is to be accounted for, whether in the manner
here intimated or in some other, it is a palpable fact that in the
second half of the sixteenth century, the word Mind was
prevalent as a favourite or fashionable word, a word of vogue :
it was employed on all available occasions, like some new and
fascinating toy. The second half of the sixteenth century rises
up in the literary chronology of England over against the
The History of the Word ' Mind '. 317
second half of the fourteenth century, like mountain ranges
facing each other and separated by a spacious valley that has
almost widened to a plain. How great is the contrast between
the avoidance of the word by Wiclif, and its free employment by
the Bible translators of the sixteenth century is only partially
intimated through the quotations already given. Only partially;
for two reasons. In the first place, because our Bible diction is
in its bulk a hundred years older than its reputed date ; and in
the second place, because these quotations were confined to the
New Testament. Had we no better material than the Transla-
tions for proving the immense spring our word made in the
second half of the sixteenth century, it would only be possible to
establish the fact by a constructive piece of argumentation.
But we have the best of all materials, the works of a great and
varied dramatic poet, and we shall see how Shakespeare's free
use of the word contrasts with the shyness of Chaucer.
That the word occurs a vast number of times in Shakespeare
may readily be seen by the Concordance of Mrs Cowden Clarke
or the Lexicon of Dr. Alexander Schmidt. But the numerical
prevalence is a small part of the matter. It is the indefinable
range and universality of a word that seems always in place
wherever any action or affection of the internal constitution of
man is to be designated. I can think of no better means of
exhibiting this than by the diversity of rendering which the
word has received in a careful foreign version. For this purpose
I select Guizot's (Euvres completes de Shakspeare, first -because
the translator knew the language he was translating, and secondly,
because it is in prose. A poetical translation would evidently
be useless here. I have in some cases added the renderings of
a German translation, but this I could not complete, because
my German prose Shakespeare, that of Eschenburg (Zurich,
1798), breaks into poetry sometimes. I will group the quota-
tions under the French words which answer to Shakespeare's
mind in Guizot's translation.
A
Ame
Jewels move a woman's mind. Two Gent. III. 1, 91. Herz.
A mind that envy could not but call fair. Twelfth Night. II. 1, 26. Her::.
The error of our eye directs our mind. Troilus V. 2, 108. Herz.
I have a mind presages me such thrift. Merchant I. 1, 175. Herz.
Not sick unless in mind. Merchant III. 2, 236, 237. Gemiith.
Your mind is tossing on the ocean. Merchant I. 1. Gemiith.
Both in mind and in my shape. Errors II. 2, 196. Beides an Seel
und Leib.
The mind shall banquet though the body pine. Love's L. Lost, I. 1, 25.
Geist.
While Gloster bears this base and humble mind. 2 Hen. VI. I. 2, 62.
Denkart.
22
318
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
Esprit.
All dedicated to closeness and bettering of my mind. Tempest I. 2, 90.
Geist.
To still my beating mind. r Temp. IV. 1, 163. Herz.
Complete in feature and in mind. Two Gent. II. 4, 69. Gemiith.
Which never laboured in their minds till now. Midsr. Night V. 1, 73.
Seelen (but this in poetry).
Men's minds mistrust ensuing dangers. Rich. III. II. 3, 42. Herzen (in
poetry).
A proverb never stale in thrifty mind. Merchant II. 5, 54.
That song will not go from my mind. Othello IV. 3, 30. Sinn.
Being over-full of self-affairs, my mind did lose it. Midsr. Night 1. 1, 114.
Coeur.
Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude Troilus V. 2, 110.
He bears an honourable mind. Two Gent. V. 3, 13.
So hard to me that brought your mind. Two Gent. I. 1, 132.
Some messenger that might her mind discover. Two Gent. II. 1, 155.
He bears too great a mind. Jul. Gees. V. 1, 112.
Memoire.
How is it that this lives in thy mind ? Temp. I. 2, 49.
This present grief had wiped it from my mind. 2 Hen. IV. I. 1, 211.
Bearest thou her face in mind ? Antony III. 3, 32.
But when I call to mind your gracious favours. Two Gent. III. 1, 6.
Call we to mind. 1 Hen VI. III. 3, 68.
Let me put in your minds if you forget. Ric. III. I. 3, 131.
Pense'e.
He tells you flatly what his mind is. Shrew I. 2, 75.
Be not of that minfl \-Rich. II. V. 2, 107.
Your betters have endured me say my mind. Shrew IV. 3, 75.
There are worthiefe acoming will speak their mind. L.L.L. V. 2, 579.
Sentiments (plural).
Keep in that mind. Merry Wives III. 3, 71.
Keep your ladyship still in that mind. Much Ado I. 1, 113.
And all the world was of my father's mind. As You like It I. 2, 215.
Continue still in this so good a mind. 2 Hen. VI. IV. 9, 17.
And in a tedious sampler sewed her mind. Titus Andron. II. 4, 39.
These are some of the French words of more frequent oc-
currence as equivalents for mind, but there are a vast number
of places in which none of these more obvious ones have been
found to fit. In Lear I. 3, 15 ; "whose mind and mine in that
are one"; the French is intention. In Coriolanus I. 1, 175;
" With every minute you do change a mind " the word is reso-
lution. In All's Well I. 3, 22 ; "he and his physicians are of a
mind" the word is d' accord. In 1 Hen. IV. II. 4, 114 ; " I am
not yet of Percy's mind " the word is caractere. In Cymbeline
V. 4, 212 ;" I would we were all of one mind, and one mind
good" the word is idee (sing.). In Twelfth Night I. 3, 105;
" I am a fellow of the strangest mind " the word is idees (pi.).
The History of the Word ' Mind '. 319
In As You like It IV. 1, 96 ; "I would not have my right Rosa-
lind of this mind " the word is fagon de penser. In Muck
Ado I. 3, 63 ; " would the cook were of my mind " the word is
avis. In L.L.L. IV. 2, 33 ; " being of an old father's mind "
the word is sentiment (sing.). In Lear IV. 7, 63 ; "I fear I am
not in my perfect mind " the word is sens. In Hen. VIII. II.
4, 34 ; " Sir, call to mind that I have been your wife " the word
is souvenir (subst.), and the German is erinnert Euch.
This by no means exhausts, I do not say the number of times
the word occurs in Shakespeare, but even the varieties of phrase
to which the French translation has recourse. In a large num-
ber of instances it is rendered by a verb, as rappeler d, to put any
one in mind ; songer a, to have a mind of ; se souvenir de, to have
something in mind ; me le remettre, to put it in my mind : nous
nous expliquerons, break our minds at large, 1 Hen. VI. I. 3,
81 : while in the well-known line, " God put it in my mind to
take it hence," 2 Hen. IV. IV. 5, 179, the verb is inspirer.
If now we cast our eye back over the past description, we
cannot but be struck with the great change in the position of
the word since the fourteenth century, when it appeared to
Chaucer unfit to represent the Latin mens and the Italian mente.
In Shakespeare we see it ready to make its appearance upon
every occasion which touches the inner side of man or of human
conduct. The phrases in which it figures are of various kinds,
and they have sprung from various sources. It looks as if the
exuberance of its flow might betoken the appliance of some fresh
impulse, or the withdrawal of some impediment. I apprehend
that both had in fact happened ; what the hindrance was has
already been surmised : the impulse was certainly nothing else
than the enlarged familiarity with the Latin mens, and the con-
geniality of those philosophical writings in which that word so
repeatedly presented itself.
But if in the Elizabethan era the word is freely and copiously
used, its sense is indefinite. For every phase of thought, feeling,
sentiment, opinion, inclination, fancy, temper, humour, disposi-
tion ; the word mind serves on all occasions to express anything
whatever that is of the inner sphere of human nature. It is not
exactly that the word is used as a comprehensive word, because
all these affections come under one reiminfy idea ; it has not
O O '
come to this as yet : but rather, that the word has distanced
all its old rivals in its province, and it is now recognised as the
current term in vogue for all such phenomena. Like some vague
nebulous expanse, it is capable of consolidation, but it is not yet
consolidated. Hardly anywhere in Shakespeare, not even in
; ' Whether 'tis nobler in the mind " has the word arrived at that
locality and compactness which is felt in Milton's " The mind- is
320
The History of the Word ' Mind '.
its own place ". If we compare it with the word Soul, we shall
see the difference. The theological term is concentrated, indi-
vidual, almost personal ; and this quality it owes to the bracing
effect of its continually standing face to face with its antithesis
the Body. The time was come for the Mind as the intellectual
region and organ of ideas to win recognition and to be individual-
ised in its turn. The whole upheaval of new thought in the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries was, not less in word than in deed,
for the establishment of Mind. The Soul truly was a region and
an organ of ideas where then was the vacant place to be occu-
pied by Mind ? We may perhaps put it somewhat as follows :
If we take the Good, the Beautiful, and the True as a convenient
summary of the chief heads of Ideas, we may say that the Soul's
approach was by the way of the Good, and that there had risen
up in humanity a fresh demand that the whole province of
Thought should be newly explored by the way of the True.
The Middle Ages had entered by inheritance upon the grand
possession of Faith and Eeligion ; and they had degenerated
from the passion of extending it with love, into the policy of
defending it with jealousy. The artistic and poetic faculties had
indeed been admitted into fellowship with religion ; but philo-
sophy had been timidly watched, sparingly encouraged, and con-
fined to authorised fountains of premisses : in short, she had
been denied her liberty, until that liberty was vindicated (not
without blood) by the strong and irrepressible self-assertion of
the human Mind.
Theology could not have done without such a term as Soul,
nor could the rising Philosophy proceed far on her way without
some sharp and succinct expression to represent the inner side
of Man, of Nature, and of All Things. The Ionian Anaxagoras
had relieved the weight of mystery by his hypothesis of zxW
as a power independent of matter and guiding its movements ;
Eoman philosophy had resorted to Mens for the motive agency
in rerum natura; these now mingled with English thought,
and close at hand was a native English word almost echoing
Mens, which, though familiar in every mouth, was as yet un-
attached to any strict function in its province, and the natural
consequence was that it gradually came to supply the demand
for a term in English which should stand, like Miens, as the
antithesis and counterpart of Matter.
J. EARLE.
II THE SUBSTANTIALITY OF LIFE.
I.
IT will be my endeavour in the following pages to demonstrate
the substantiality of life ; to render evident the actual existence
of an identical, indivisible, perdurable, and self-sustaining sub-
stance, of which the transient phenomena, arising in conscious-
ness, are but inherent affections. I wish, experientially, to
reinstate the underlying entity, dissipated by Berkeley and
Hume.
I have to set about this ambitious task in a rather humiliating
manner, namely, by first assuming everything which I eventually
hope to establish. I am, however, determined not to conceal
any part of my working-apparatus; and do, therefore, openly
presuppose as existing, and ready for action, the entire human
individuality with all its faculties, assisted too by every
available means of sense-extension.
This express postulation of the whole thing under discus-
sion will probably be considered a petitio principii of the most
glaring kind. But, without its full admission, I confess I cannot
proceed a single step towards my aim. My consolation is, that,
in starting with so bold and sweeping an advantage, I am only
strictly adhering to the common usage of all sciences. For no
philosopher will deny that, in the investigation of even the
most elementary physical or mental event, it is always the
feeling, thinking, and manipulating human being that con-
stitutes the sole realising agent. Known, or unknown to the
observer, it is his own matured sensibility and sentience, that
actually furnish the colour and standard of any quality or value,
which he may have objectively ascertained.
Indeed, whether we are viewing present phenomena of
mechanical impact or chemical activity, or imagining primeval
geological evolutions, or forecasting developments of the future,
the great postulate, tacitly underlying all our observations and
speculations, is the pre-existence and unimpaired efficiency .of
the complete human individual. These things are so, were so,
will be so ; but only when realised by beings like ourselves.
The nebular hypothesis, the atomic theory, the ultimate
chemical element are as every philosopher is well aware-
hypothetical facts conceived in no other form and material than
that of specific human feelings, and they can, therefore, be true
only when we add : " Thus these legitimately surmised realities
would appear to spectators of our kind ".
Our organised lives form the broad, steady and indispensable
ontological basis of all impressions and ideas, of all actual con-
322
The Substantiality of Life.
nexions and fulfilments whatever. We cannot ontsoar our
nature. We cannot eliminate any part of ourselves. Our
whole individuality is present in every inquiry; and it is always
some peculiar group of our own aroused faculties that we are
contemplating in any kind of investigation.
It is true that in the framing of our metaphysical schemes,
we have from time immemorial been striving to transcend the
sphere of our personal endowments. But it needs only sufficient
candour to become aware that in all these attempts we have
merely objectified, as groundwork of our cosmological construc-
tions, sometimes one and sometimes another set of our own
vital activities, and have then endeavoured to complete the
totality of existence by identifying with this particular portion of
ourselves all that was first left behind of our naturally indi-
visible being. Sometimes the whole, and sometimes only a part,
of our sensations are thus hypostatised as primordial elements
of the entire universe. At other times, it is the thinking or
reasoning energy that is made to account for everything. Then
the will. Then some special emotional affection. Or, again,
a potentiality of all these subjective factors. Never anything
but detached faculties of our own being, and with no other
result than the transfiguration of the cosmos into a distortedly
projected semblance of our personal abilities.
Philosophical systems become very transparent when viewed
from this organic standpoint. As authority or custom may
happen to incline us, we play fast and loose with the various
potentialities of our organisation, extolling and depreciating
them in turns. A special importance and dignity, however,
necessarily attaches to that portion of our nature, which is
conceived as the causative source of the rest. Therefrom the
whole conduct of life receives its characteristic tinge. For it
will not fail essentially to influence the bent of our strivings,
whether we attribute effective priority and controlling supremacy
to the senses or to the intellect, to the sensualised or to the in-
tellectualised appetites. A system of ethics can be scientifically
grounded only on a correct knowledge of vitality. With what
uncertain feelings of propriety has humanity been wavering
between the extremes of organised capacities, now for a little
while getting into the wholesome and fruitful mean, and then
again consuming itself in wasteful lust, or stagnating in sterile
precepts !
Considering then, that the earnestness of our aims will always
be directed towards the fostering of what we believe to be the
embodiment of the truest potent reality, would it not be wise,
once for all, ungrudgingly to acknowledge the position actually
occupied in nature by the complete and indivisible human or-
The Substantiality of Life. 323
ganisation ? For, is not this individual and monadic totality, in
fact, everywhere the really substantiating agent, the creative
power whose subtle and intricate modes of normal reaction
constitute the whole universe of experience called nature ?
And is not at all times the value of any other thing rigorously
determined in every respect by the actual efficiency of the
appreciating agent, by his realising qualifications then and
there ?
The individual human organisation forms, indeed, the actual
incorporation and potential medium of all fulfilment. When-
ever this truth becomes adequately established and understood,
it will impart an incalculable impetus to existence, will bring
designedly about, " whereof our nerves are scant," " more life
and fuller ". For, to recognise how in our transitory frame, by
means immeasurably transcending the reach of personal volition,
there has become embodied the life-worthiness of the illimitable
past, is to receive the wealth of our being as a sacred trust, and
to own a binding mission to labour for a progressive future.
But it is easy to profess a faith, hard to give it a solid
foundation. The philosophical arbitrariness of thus dogmatically
constituting ourselves the pre-endowed and realising centre of
the world, lies, on the one hand, in the difficulty of accounting
under this assumption for our own origin and development, on
the other hand, in the difficulty of reaching, from such a focal
position of mere subjective consistency, any kind of reality
outside our own mind.
It must, however, be remembered that these two per-
plexities have irrepressibly confronted systematic thought, from
whatever side it may have attempted to assimilate nature.
The former difficulty has generally been allayed by traditional
beliefs or hap-hazard conjectures. The latter has formed the
main puzzle and theme of philosophy ever since Parmenides
and Zeno first directed the attention of thinkers to the strange
incongruity obtaining between the ideally completed world
permanently resting in mind, and the fragmentary world
transiently and incoherently figured by the senses.
Meditative reflection necessarily leads to the discovery of a
disposition of ideas ever tending towards all-embracing unity
and repose. Direct observation, on the contrary, is beset by a
rush of phenomena ever moving through inexhaustible kaleido-
scopic constellations.
In the world of thought-conception, the fundamental relation
between ideas appears to be one of graduated co-inherence, of
involuted union; any detached notion forming an integral part
of a pre-existing and wider totality. In the world of sense-
perception the fundamental relation between phenomena seems
324
The Substantiality of Life.
to be one of more or less orderly sequence and change, a regu-
lated passage from one state into another.
In the realm of ideal or logical subsistence, things are, even
through discursive reasoning, more and more adequately recog-
nised to be what they are for all times. In the realm of
physical or phenomenal display, existences are perceived con-
tinually to cease to be what they were, and to become something
entirely different.
To which of the two orders then belongs genuine reality?
To the ideal, to the physical, or to both ? And how are these
so disparate, and yet so intimately interblending worlds to be
reconciled, to be comprehended as co-operant parts of one and
the same totality ?
This is the great dilemma of the immutable and the flowing
order that has perplexed philosophers for more than 2000 years,
and we also, in spite of so many baffled attempts, are still per-
severing in the endeavour to gain access to the secret. From
"ideal realism," i.e., the projection into transindividual and
autonomous existence of the logical order, to "empirical realism,"
i.e., the projection into transindividual and autonomous existence
of the physical order, every imaginable combination has been
essayed. But, however contradictory to each other these sundry
philosophical constructions may be, they have one and all
received their cue in direct continuity from the Eleatic anti-
nomy. This one idealistic apergu has undeniably formed the
fertile source of all our systems. The atomic systems, the
sceptical systems, the Socratic systems of antiquity avowedly
take their rise from this same unquenchable fountain-head of
doubt. And it would be unpardonable in us who owe to
ancient Greece almost our entire culture, not generously to
acknowledge also the philosophical inheritance which it has
bequeathed to us, and which it seems to me we have not yet
succeeded in very essentially improving.
Is not the problem of the relation and intercommuni-
cation of the thinking and the extended substance, of the
intelligible and the sensible world, which has formed the
subject-matter of philosophy since Descartes, merely a revival
of essentially the same puzzle concerning reality ? Even the
Critical Philosophy, with its copious appliances and minute
distinctions, has it not after all only elaborately fortified the
Eleatic position by deepening the gulf between the foreign
influences underlying the chaos of appearances arising within
our sensibility, and the transcendental subsistence of their
conceptual transfigurations ? Kant's great effort to reconcile
through reason the intelligible and the sensible world has
proved a failure like all former attempts. In the system of
The Substantiality of Life. 325
critical idealism, the conceptual order mentally fashioned and
qualified resides as infallible actuality, as ideal and undeviating
object, in a general superindividual consciousness. But where,
on the other hand, do we find sustained the reality of the
affecting powers, of the things outside consciousness ? What
can it avail passionately to denounce as mystical and fantastic
previous forms of idealism, and peremptorily to decree by dint
of reason the existence and efficiency of an outside world,
when there is no imaginable way left open by which external
influences can at all specifically qualify the passive and empty
forms of sensibility pure ideal time and space ? And, besides,
if the influences that are admitted somehow nevertheless to
affect our sensibility are actually things-in-themselves, and if our
intelligible Ego also belongs to that order; then, as all spon-
taneous and synthetical activity emanates from the intelligible
Ego, is it not likely that under such conditions reason would
indeed recognise the transcendent nature of things-in-themselves,
would reconstruct from the incoherent data given to sensibility,
by force of its own transcendently derived faculties, the
eternal aspect of the intelligible world ?
The transcendent oneness of subject and object, the identity
of thought and being involving the existence and supreme
reality of an absolute substance the very doctrine enunciated
by the Eleatic sages certainly constitutes one of the only two
philosophical positions that can at all be consistently occupied.
Transcendentalism in any of its forms necessarily leads to this
consummation.
But, before indulging in extreme prospective fulfilments we
have first of all scientifically to secure a path that will not lead
us astray in our search after true existence.
Starting then, as we anyhow must, from our own individu-
ality, we find that, within us, by dint of the secret powers of
our nature, there arises a series of phenomena, a complex phan-
tasmagoria of things and events, in every respect the creation of
those intrinsic powers. Nevertheless, in certain aspects, these
mental phenomena seem most obviously to represent existences
and occurrences, having subsistence in a region not occupied and
governed by our own being. The problem, the supreme problem
of the theory of knowledge, is either to prove that the reality of
the world, which appears to subsist outside consciousness, is
altogether an illusion ; or, accurately, to demonstrate the mode
of inter-dependence and inter-communication, unifying not only
the two seemingly heterogeneous spheres of mind itself, but uni-
fying, moreover, the powers inherent in mind with the forces
extrinsically influencing the same-
It is a plain and incontestable truth, that all we know, and
326
The Substantiality of Life.
all we can know, of things is simply what may become revealed
of them vicariously and sympathetically as affections of our own
being. Our own sensibility is the foundation of all our supposed
knowledge of an external world, and our consciousness can be
composed of nothing but our own feelings. It is therefore quite
clear that conscious sensations can only result from the action of
powers already belonging to ourselves, already forming part of
our constituted individuality. Thus the whole universe, of
which we become aware, resolves itself into a congeries of sub-
jectively sustained and combined ideal states. It forms a crea-
tion in mind, mysteriously accomplished and upheld. And,
however fleeting in all its time-manifestations, it nevertheless
symbolises some enduring presence. What then can be the true
nature of the comprising and sustaining something, fragmen-
tarily revealed in the desultory flashes of conscious life ?
We cannot wonder at the suasion of logical conceptions, at the
preponderance and supreme realit} r so often and so emphatically
assigned to the ideal world, when we consider that all qualities
predicated of any subject whatever are always recollected as an
incorporated part of our mental being, and are, moreover, on due
consideration, found to form, from the very beginning, a subjec-
tive group of affections, momentarily singled out from the bound-
less possessions of ideality, and somehow projected and consoli-
dated into the semblance of outside subsistence. Intrinsically
and ideally are shaped, qualified, discriminated, and unified all
phenomena, all influences that affect the senses, that outwardly
or inwardly modify sensibility.
It cannot be denied that, when thus realised in its inclusive
or ratiocinative aspect, the universe, established in mind, opens
to the reflecting subject an insight into an organic enchainment
and essential communion of all phenomenal affections. Deep
inwardly beyond the fretted screen of temporal occurrences are
truly recognised the eternal ideas that sustain the scattered and
perishable manifold. And it would be strange, indeed, if the
fervent soul, exulting in this inalienable wealth of widest
thought and emotion, were not to feel the limitations of its own
individuality melting into infinity ; if its whole being, amplified
and completed, did not seem in blissful consummation to be
merging into the One-and-All.
But, on the other side, in their perceptual or phenomenal aspect,
the contents of mind do not reveal themselves as co-inhering
in one and the same indivisible and identical substratum of
thought. On the contrary, thus viewed, ideas seem merely to
constitute more or less collective remembrances of previous ex-
perience. They are, in fact, recognised as only representing
groups of concrete sensations, held together by similarities ob-
The Substantiality of Life. 327
taining between them, and they are found to be associated with
each other by laws that originate in the phenomenal order, i.e.,
in the coexistence and sequence of experienced affections. Our
consciousness then discloses itself, as composed of nothing but
the orderly appearance and reappearance of sensations and
perceptions, inscrutably arising and incomprehensibly vanishing.
"We have, no doubt, to admit a centripetal as well as a cen-
trifugal view of nature. How are these two opposite orders
connected with each other ?
It is true, whatever way we may be looking, sound reasoning
ends in shutting us up irresistibly and most thoroughly within
the magic circle of our solitary mental subject. Nothing from
outside can in its own essence and likeness penetrate this total
isolation, or coerce to foreign modes of action the intrinsic pro-
clivities of so private and specific an autonomy. But, even
then, without the least direct reference to external influences,
what a contrast between the two poles, or rather between the
central and the peripheral capacities of our mental being !
What divergent revelations of ideal reality are inevitably forced
upon us by a mere change in the adjustment of our mental
vision ! By fixing our attention exclusively on the conceptual
or central order we consistently become transcendentalists. I
do not mean transcendentalists of the compromising or critical
kind, but genuine transcendentalists, beholding the transpheno-
menal essence of things, the everlasting glory of archetypal
being. By restricting our view to the perceptual or peripheral
order we inextricably become sensational empiricists, receiving-
all our grounding knowledge in the form of sense-impressions,
and being compelled, therefore, to adopt nominalistic idealism
in which everything is phenomenal and evanescent.
In this idealistic dilemma, one question is uppermost with
our practical sense : " In which direction may we eventually
hope to burst through the secluding spell which wholly en-
compasses our individual microcosm ? " Will it be through
its centrifugal or through its centripetal activity that our mind ,
will succeed in rationally establishing vital and fertile relations
with the macrocosm of Otherness, with the great universe of
non-coinciding actualities ? We desire, designedly and unre-
servedly to open our being either to the central or to the peri-
pheral influx whichever way the creative tide may flood our
existence with higher life.
However legitimately our reason may seem to imprison us
within the narrow confines of pure individual idealism, our
strongest instincts carry with them the conviction of outside
powers influencing us all round. Our whole active nature, our
emotional and our volitional propensities revolt against the dreamy
328 The Substantiality of Life.
and illusionary self-seclusion imposed upon us by ratiocination.
Irresistibly impelled, we rush out of self to grasp realities beyond.
Our most urgent needs, and our most exalted desires, alike leap
the bounds of self-sufficiency. Not only our immediate appetites
crave appeasement through the appropriation of externalities,
but our tenderest sympathies hasten to bestow on other lives the
most precious and ideal worth of our own being, and our loftiest
pleasures make us zealous to mould foreign existences into the
perfect shape of ideal purpose.
Nevertheless, in thus attributing actuality to relations that
common-sense unhesitatingly believes to subsist between our-
selves and an outside nature, we are evidently altogether
transgressing our power of rationally dealing with the data of
consciousness. For, how can our reason, a pure mental faculty,
under any solicitation whatever, be rendered competent to
transplant subjectively inherent ideas into a foreign region of
altruistic subsistence, whereby they become elevated to the
transcendent dignity of self-consistent realities ? This, however,
is. exactly the licence we have been indulging in, when we
allowed our instinctive or conscious promptings to overreach the
spell-bound circle of subjective idealism. For this purpose we
had to assume as existent, on the one side, a bodily organisation
or executive apparatus governed by our mind, but by no means
coinciding with the same in its reality ; on the other side, we had
to postulate independent external existences in efficient inter-
action with ourselves. All these realistic feats were, no doubt,
most fluently accomplished by us. But we shall have to admit
that their philosophical justification remains to the present day
the great unrealised desideratum of the theory of knowledge.
Theoretically, we still find ourselves locked up within a sphere
of dreamlike apparitions, which we call our mind, and now the
puzzle is how, conformably to reason, to win our way back again,
not only to the things beyond our skin, but also to the special
vital appurtenances contained within that bodily envelope.
The fact is, we are psychologically debarred from the access
to any pathway leading to outside existences. Our mind cannot
go out of itself to meet other things and to blend with them,
nor is it anywhere open to the entry of foreign beings.
We have once for all to put up with this fundamental truth.
It can never be subverted. But examining the aspect of ideal
nature yielded on the one side by the logical, on the other side
by the phenomenal propensities of our mind, we discover in
both these orders certain definite voids created by unsatisfied
relational implications, which implications are distinctly con-
nected with the positive properties of mental occurrences as such.
Here it is above all the evident orderliness, manifesting itself in
The Substantiality of Life. 329
the combination of ideas that seems to imply something ex-
traneous to mind, coercing single mental states into coherent
and consistent connexions. First, there is thus suggested some
substratum supporting and perpetuating for reproduction the
successive mental states. And then, as we do not find anything
in mind itself to account for the coalescing of its disparate
moments into specific configurations following each other in
regulated sequence, we are induced to infer an influence of some
kind controlling this grouping operation. Moreover, the ideal
order thus compelled seems to subserve purposes transcending
purely ideal capacities. Somehow, namely, we have ourselves
the power of imposing permanent changes on the coalesced
appearances or perceptions, which changes evince themselves
thereafter as forming part of the mind-compelling influences.
For instance, I feel coerced to realise the definite and complex
mental state which I call a sheet of paper. By the exertion of
certain activities within my power I now change the appearance
of this sheet of paper so that it consists of ten pieces instead of
only one. Henceforth, this transformation does constitute part
of the mind-compelling order. I shall be forced to perceive ten
pieces whether I wish it or not.
It is true I become aware of all this solely through the
medium of subjective feelings, but some hypothesis has to be
framed to account for the fact of compulsion, which fact cannot
be included in the operations performed by the mind's own
spontaneity. We give expression to this experience of outside
compulsion by assuming causative agents as instigators of our
compelled mental states. We know positively only the latter,
but infer therefrom the existence and efficiency of the former.
Physical forces or energies are nothing but such hypostatised or
substantiated causes of compelled mental states, and the science
of externalities consists in the construction of an hypothesis of
energies that will adequately explain the facts and relations of
the peculiar order of phenomena, apparently derivable from
direct sense-stimulation.
It will, however, be best frankly and distinctly to avow that
we do not possess within our purely mental constitution any
rational premisses from which could be deduced the seat and
nature of the compelling influences. The supposition of powers
outside our individual minds will ever form the standing de-
sideratum of belief and knowledge, without which not a single
scientific or practical step can be taken, and which has on each
special occasion to be made good by prompt hypothetical
assumption. All activities of our nature are moulded on this
transindividual supposition, and receive their cue from it. But,
as regards the special conceptual framing of the hypothesis, the
te Substantiality of Life.
sole guarantee of its correctness can only be afforded by the
adequacy of the conception to account for all facts and relations
of the so-called outside world.
Thus it happens that the following question has played a
great part in philosophy, and still continues to arise : Is our
mental being centrally or peripherically coerced ? Does the
compelling influence work centrifugally or centripetally ? From
intellectual emotion to thought and sense, or from sense to
thought and intellectual emotion ? It is of supreme practical
importance that this query should be decisively answered.
Which of the two chief assumptions can best explain the
scheme of nature : the transcendental or the experiential hypo-
thesis ; the central or the peripheral influx ?
II.
Leaving out of sight the relation of sensations to the surmised
extraneous source of their excitation, and taking the immediate
and elementary affections of the mind as simply given, the main
problem of philosophy, since Locke, has been that of the
synthesis of sensations and perceptions.
Sensations, as such, are experienced singly and unconnectedly
yet in consciousness they are found coalesced with a number of
other remembered sensations into distinct percepts. A percept
is an integrated assemblage of present feelings, an individual-
ised set of impressions and ideas ; yet, discrete as these mental
objects seem to be, they are found conjoined with each other so
as to form, not only a coherent totality of configuration, but
also an endless train of regulated sequence. Whence this
correlative union and orderly procession? In the concrete
appearances themselves there is evidently nothing discernible
that could in any way account for their definite disposition and
connexion. Therefore, somewhere in the hidden recesses of the
manifesting structure, there must reside a power, which coerces
the unconsolidated and successive manifold of sense into a well-
regulated system of conscious appearances. The question is :
In what manner, and in which of the provinces of the feeling,
thinking and willing mind is this synthetic power exerted ?
" No connexions among distinct existences (impressions or
perceptions) are ever discoverable by human understanding.
We only feel a connexion," says Hume.
" As a connexion does not impress our senses, but has to be
made by ourselves, it does not belong to the receptivity of the
subject, but to the spontaneity of the understanding, of which it
is a function a priori," says Kant.
The antagonism of our two leading philosophies is tersely
&>
The Substantiality of Life. 331
expressed in these most contrary opinions regarding mental
synthesis. According to Hume, our judgments about the
conjunction of phenomena are based on an association of impres-
sions and ideas established, and at last rendered indissoluble by
custom. The inference, i.e. t the mental transition- from a present
impression to the idea of its cause or effect, is an action, not
executed by reason, not accomplished by an original energy of
the understanding, but wholly impelled by experience. Because
two definite impressions have often been experienced in im-
mediate sequence, therefore the presence of one of the impres-
sions irresistibly calls forth the remembered idea of the other
impression, and this automatic association is under such circum-
stances furthermore accompanied by a peculiar sentiment, which
assures us of the reality, or objective validity of the connexion,
making it appropriate and safe for us to act upon the ideal
suggestion.
The strength of this view lies in the demonstration of the
fact, that inferences concerning the actual connexions of
phenomena are derived from experience, and that they take
place in the sensible sphere of the mind, take place there with
an energy independent of the promptings of abstract thought
and deliberate volition. Direct judgments about matter-of-fact,
genuine synthetical judgments, which declare that because a
certain something is present another certain something is also
present, or because a certain something has just happened,
another certain something has also happened or is about to
happen, such immediate conclusions concerning reality are
altogether experiential in their origin, and occur under the sway
of a present impression as automatic and sense-derived mental
manifestations. It has become more and more certain, since
this novel discovery of a whole world of unreasoned conclusions,
that judging-operations of this kind, unconsciously performed
within the domain of perception, constitute indeed the very
groundwork of our natural relations and practical doings. Thus
far we are undoubtedly conscious automata, and we cannot
help suspecting, that some kind of organic constitution must be
at the bottom of this fundamental process of organic inference,
or mental reflex-action.
The chief shortcomings of Hume's Association-hypothesis
consist : (1) in the omission of an explanation why the ideas
so necessarily connected with their suggesting impressions are
themselves moreover truly realisable in nature as actual sensa-
tions why the heat, suggested merely as idea by the flame, can
also then and there be made good as an impression ; (2) in the
complete ignoring of any synthetical medium, and of any
synthetising power.
332
Substantiality of Life.
The former shortcoming is intentional. Hume deliberately re-
fused to account for the origin of impressions, and had conse-
quently to avoid any allusion to the correspondence of the causally
suggested ideas with their realising sensations. This is, however,
just the point in causation most difficult to explain, and upon
which the relation essentially turns. We are most anxious to
learn how this consummation of matter-of-fact inference takes
place ; how the right sensation or impression comes to fit in at
the right moment ; how, for instance, the actual heat of the
flame happens to be there to make good its suggested idea.
This is a problem for the bare insight into which the 18th
century was not yet ripe. It can be scientifically solved only
with the help of the hypothesis of connatural evolution, a
hypothesis which we shall have occasion to consider when its
bearings on causation have to be discussed.
The other shortcoming of Hume's philosophy, or rather its crea-
tion of an absolute void beyond consciousness, is a necessary con-
sequence of its premisses. Starting with nothing but single and
elementary impressions, and their fainter copies, the ideas, it
was impossible for experience, with only such clear-cut consti-
tuent pieces, to put together anything but a mosaic mind, a
mind composed merely of clusters of elements. Of course,
this aggregational compounding of our conscious existence was
not quite ingenuously feasible. Memory and Association,
though only manifest in their concrete results, had nevertheless
to be indirectly recognised as forming part of the mental
mechanism. Custom could not operate" on nothing. In order
to establish its connexions it had to work on the same secret
resources that originally and spontaneously furnished the copies
of impressions, and it had to work also on the hidden spring of
ideal transition or inference. But, notwithstanding this surrep-
titious drawing on Memory and Eelativeness, we have to admit
that, in consciousness itself, the reproductions and associations
are found accomplished without our becoming in the least aware
of the means which have brought about these complex and
flowing results. Here then, we have a clear exhibition of
unconscious powers producing conscious effects, and we may
once more parenthetically remark that it lies near to suspect
organic foundations for the automatic processes evincing them-
selves as memory and association.
With Kant, mental synthesis is a subjective operation,
intrinsically initiated, directed and executed. According to
him, the coherency and order of phenomena are wholly due to
original faculties of the mind. It is true", he peremptorily
maintains that these a priori faculties are exerted only on
material impressed on our sensibility. But he allows nothing
Tlie Substantiality of Life. 333
actual in the sense-material to affect, in any way, its subsequent
synthesis. From somewhere, empirical stuff is kaleidoscopically
received in the passive forms of sensibility, making up there a
contiguous, but utterly unobjectified manifold. Thereupon
synthesis begins. First the raw-material is congruously sorted
and loosely connected. Then it is objectively and conceptually
cemented together for good. All this is done by a certain
spontaneous activity, emanating from our innermost being, the
identical Ego, and differing toto genere from sensibility. This
identical Ego, to which all synthetical processes refer, and
without which the" confused sense-material would ever remain
unshaped, uncombined, unrelated and unconceived, is not itself
phenomenally manifest, but belongs to the intelligible world.
Its inalienable powers, however, evince themselves as functions
a priori in the various modes of conjunction, through which the
phenomenal world receives its universally valid coherence and
unity.
The strength of this view lies in the recognition of a unitary
system of innate synthetical powers, through which the particu-
larly and severally experienced sense-affections receive their
general relational significance.
The chief failings of the view are : (1) its non-appreciation of
the actual correspondence, uninterruptedly subsisting between
the ideally connected order, and its realisable sense-affirmations :
(2) its non-acquaintance with the conspicuous sphere of auto-
matic sense-judgments or percepts.
Thus, the Aggregation-theory of mental composition fails to
recognise a primordial medium, in which connexions are actually
established, and in which they then potentially subsist. The
Transcendental theory of phenomenal coherence mistakes the
conception and naming of combining processes for the actual
powers that in reality unconsciously accomplish the conceived
synthetical results.
Evidently, there lies somewhere, within the compass of
nature, a fixed range of unremitting and controlling activity,
from whose solid industry the orderly manifold of consciousness
emerges ready-made, and to whose steadfast toil and safe-keeping
the whole constancy and communion of the phenomenal world
rests entrusted. It is plain, however, that the facts of individual
consciousness do not themselves disclose the quickening source
whence they spring. We have here nothing but a succession
of distinct conscious states, nothing but a mere outflow of ever
so many single feelings and thoughts. Something, nevertheless,
there needs must be beyond this bare sequence of mental
components, something harbouring them all, and persisting
inexhaustibly one and the same. The countless changing and
23
The Substantiality of Life.
passing states of consciousness obviously issue from some
unperishing matrix, and there subsists some binding, living
constitution, in which synthetical results, once achieved, there-
after safely and retrievably abide.
But where are we to seek for such a substantial entity ?
Students of philosophy, who have earnestly pondered over
the great theme of the synthesis of mental constituents, will
have found every aspect of the question deepen into a still more
fundamental problem.
Sensations and thoughts, the sole agents through which
existences are revealed to us, are themselves ephemeral effluences,
arising momentarily and as suddenly vanishing. How then can
anything more enduring than a single sensation or a single
thought become part of our consciousness ? How can that,
which is permanent in nature, be in any way manifested by that
which is only a perishing semblance ?
To gain an approach to this chief enigma of philosophy, we
will first explore it in its least complicated presentation. The
most immediate and elementary fact of consciousness is un-
doubtedly that which is called a sensation or impression. So
many aerial beats, for instance, strike the tympanum in a second,
and give rise to a corresponding multiplicity of vital beats in
the auditory tract. It is certain that the sensory impulse
received and vitally responded to, consists of numerically dis-
crete units of action, of which, moreover, each ceases to be, as
soon as its successor becomes present ; now, notwithstanding
this serial ingress of non-adhesive and momentarily perishing
shocks, the sensory result appears in consciousness as a synthe-
tised, homogeneous, and enduring whole, as one single coherent
impression.
I venture to say that this simple statement contains as much
unsolved mystery, as may well be condensed into any problem.
Indeed, we need only find the true explanation of this one
elementary mental occurrence, and with it would be opened to
us the most profound secret of mind ; for it is obvious that the
very life-spring of memory and personal identity is involved in
its solution. We should then know, how the unity of our being
is maintained amidst its multitudinous affections, and how these
relational affections are substantially preserved, in spite of their
phenomenal or conscious evanescence.
Time, and everything in it, reveals itself as made up of
consecutive moments, each preceding instant lapsing into
nothingness at the birth of the next. To our conception time
seems ever fleeting away as irrecoverable, past, ever sliding out
of sight into the illimitable vacancy of that which is no more,
and sinking along with it all its weight of conscious wealth.
The Substantiality of Life. 335
Sorrows and joys, sensations, thoughts and actions, no sooner
are they realised than they are pushed out of the way again, to
be followed by others, in new succession. Yesterday has run
out never more to return, and all that is thus passed, is gone
by for good.
What magic power is it then, that, nevertheless, contrives to
save the complete and intricate fabric of our mind from the
nihilistic perils of these its timely wanings, that even succeeds
in turning its irrecoverable losses to permanent gain ?
Here we find ourselves inevitably brought face to face with
this most solemn question concerning the nature of our inner-
most being. Shall we continue to evade with easy and empty
phrases the stern meaning and relentless admonitions implied
in its actual manifestations ? Shall we conceal from ourselves
the true mission of our lives, which is not to swoon back into
the pristine bliss of all-comprehensive being, but laboriously
to uplift higher still the now precious, pain-wrought inheritance
that actually is ours ?
Not that the wondrous sphere of ideality is at all to be
denied. There exists in all truth as a firm reality, and not
merely as an illusive fancy the veritably ideal. But surely its
world-embracing picturings are not woven of hyperworldly
preconcerted thought, but of thought cosmically, slowly, solidly
concerted from the first responsive quivering of blind life to its
loftiest visions of sympathy and beauty. Thought is the bloom,
the sublimation of life, not its fount and origin. And life itself
does not scatter and darken the luminousness of transcendent
thinking, but irradiates with revealing brightness the concen-
trated influences of dark and thoughtless things.
The two great cosmological conceptions, which are now
struggling against each other for supremacy in human conscious-
ness involve inevitably as ultimate result the decision : Whether
life be indeed a deplorable aberration from the original fulness
of thought-steeped being ; or whether it be rather a desirable
unfolding of more and more intense and ample world-conscious-
ness.
The question here immediately at issue is : How from the
conscious outflow of particular feelings and thoughts can the
nature of their common source be inferred ?
We find a very remarkable concurrence of the opinions of our
two standard philosophers, with regard to this recondite problem
of personal identity or individual substantiality. They both
emphatically declare the impossibility of forming a philosophical
conception of it.
Hume without much ado roundly asserts : " We have no idea
of external substance, distinct from the ideas of particular
336
The Substantiality of Life.
qualities, nor have we a notion of mind, distinct from the
particular perceptions." This is plain and just reasoning for
one who looks upon perceptions as " distinct and independent
existences," and for whom mind, therefore, can mean only an ,
aggregate of such perceptions, or indeed, not even that much.
But Kant, to whom, on the contrary, perceptions (in Hume's
sense of the term) are nothing but indistinct and dependent
appearances, and to whom, above all, the unity of consciousness
is an undoubted and supreme fact, how is it that, with such j
diametrically opposite views, he nevertheless fully corroborates
the experiential doctrine, that we know only mental states and j
that mind as a substance is not cognisable ?
Kant also finds, as the result of his profound introspective 1
research, that " when I enter most intimately into what I call j
myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or
other". When I eliminate all attributes, that which I deem,
substantial remains unknown. Our reason is discursive, and
thinks only in predicates, consequently we can never through
reason reach the ultimate subject of all these predicates. The
true Ego is only a sentiment accompanying all conceptions,;
but it can never become a conception itself. The Ego which we
know is only empirical, is altogether made up of particulars. I
In time, in the " inner sense," nothing enduring is found, nothing,
therefore, which could at all justify us in substantiating a think-
ing entity. The intelligible, identical Ego, which constitutes
the unity of consciousness, must ever remain unrecognised, foi
it can never itself become an appearance, and it is only appear-
ances that can be grasped with our understanding. Of course
it very readily occurs that the unity, apprehended in the syn
thesis of thoughts, is taken for a unity actually perceived, actually
appearing. This, however, is a mistake, which may be callec
the " surreption of the hypostatised consciousness," a mistake
which is at the bottom of all rational psychology, of all psycho-
logy which professes to derive its doctrines from data riot experi
ential.
This is the deliberate confession of the most scrupulous anc
also one of the most penetrating of philosophers ; one who ir
his ripe age after a life of preparative meditation had sel
himself to establish transcendentalism on an irrefragable basis
First, he believed a few months would suffice for the task, fo:
he was already in possession of the entire groundwork of hif
system. But eleven long years of concentrated contemplatioi
elapsed before he had accomplished the work to his own satis
faction. He then felt bound most impressively to warn al
thinkers that no legitimate way can be discovered by which w<
are allowed understandingly to pierce beyond what is given ii
The Substantiality of Life. 337
experience, and that in experience only the synthetised manifold
of sense is found. "Noumenorum 11011 datur scientist".
What then is to be done ? Is there, indeed, no method left by
which we may, nevertheless, secure some cognisable foundation
on which efficiently to ground the phenomenal display of the
perishable manifold ? Are we, in all reality, irremediably con-
demned to remain for ever utterly ignorant concerning that
which gives unity and consistency to our being, and therewith
unity and consistency also to the rest of the perceived and con-
ceived universe ?
It behoves us most carefully to consider this critical position,
and to follow therein indications of natural truth with no less
conscientious awe than Kant himself.
Hume and Kant are right. Self-consciousness does not afford
us any knowledge of personal identity. Introspection does not
teach us in what manner the manifold of experience is inhering
in a substantial Ego ; does not make clear how it is that all pre-
dicates refer to an ultimate subject ; how it happens that time,
carrying away our feelings and thoughts, does nevertheless not
rob us of our mental possessions ; how, on the contrary, these
become the firmer rooted the more lavishly we dispose of them.
To escape from hopeless scepticism, it will be appropriate to
remember here the fundamental hypothesis of all knowledge,
the hypothesis connaturally preconcerted, and everywhere
desiderated in experience, therefore also unhesitatingly adopted
by instinctive and practical life. This hypothesis consists in
the hypostatising of definite causes or forces outside conscious-
ness in correspondence with the definite impressions and per-
ceptions inside consciousness. All science of existences over
and above the appearance of our own mental states is based
on this one supposition. Consequently the question now before
us may, from this point of view, be thus expressed : Can the
substance in which mental affections inhere, become an object,
an appearance to an observing mind ? Can it be viewed, by
dint of conscious states, as an outside existence ? If so, then
a science of it can properly be framed in the same manner as
all other sciences are framed. In other words : The unknown
confluence of powers, which constitutes a person or individual,
can it affect our sensibility in such a manner as may enable us
through definitely occurring and varying modes of this our
sensibility to recognise just as we recognise any other thing
or event the secret giving substantiality to a person or indi-
vidual thus observed ?
It is undeniable that the something, to whose being we are
ascribing individuality, impresses most intricately, delicately
and specifically our senses, appears within our sensibility a
338
The Substantiality of Life.
complete and complex unity of conformations and features,
being thus perceived by us with surpassing distinctiveness and
precision. A strange perversity of thought has hitherto marred
the transcendent glory of this inscrutable mystery of sympa-
thetic revelation. By affixing opprobrious names to it, calling
it " perishable and corruptible body," or " senseless and inert
matter," prejudice has succeeded in vilifying that which in the
whole range of our experience is pre-eminently psychical : an
abiding entity fixedly mirrored in mind on the sensitive foil of
its transitory feelings.
This phenomenal presence, or bodily appearance, attests
indeed a most miraculous display of constancy, affinity and
intelligibility. In the depths of my own being I find stead-
fastly subsisting the full symbol of another existence, whose
proper constitution and intrinsic essence ever evades my reach.
But lo ! in spite of all this exteriorising and excluding other-
ness, we are not foreign to each other in our innermost natures ;
for I, who am now so definitely and intimately affected by your
actuality, do possess on my part the secret virtue of likewise
impressing your being with a similar fulness of sympathetic
recognition, becoming to it an understood and reliable presence.
When we turn from the contemplation of that part of our
personality which we find generalised from the experience of
conscious states as such, and which we call our mind, to the
contemplation of an outside personality as revealed to us through
the medium of our senses, we are struck with the infinitely
diversified and elaborate contrivances which here evidently
concur in the constitution of such a personal or individual unit.
Though we recognise this only symbolically in modes of our own
consciousness, still we may rest assured that a corresponding
intricacy of constitution belongs irrelatively to the nature of the
personality affecting us. Whatever personality may be in its
own self, independently of our viewing it, it must necessarily be
something at least as complex as the organisation by which its
existence attests itself in our minds. Therefore, whatever this
perceived organisation discloses to us, we may with perfect con-
fidence symbolically attribute to personality as such, for it
necessarily corresponds to some trait in its affecting or stimulat-
ing power.
It is this exquisitely attuned connatural parallelism of
stimulated and stimulating states which renders science or
knowledge of any kind possible. The appearances in space and
time are specifically stimulated affections. Let the regulating
rhythm in the stimulations be subverted, and all knowledge is
at an end. We have then only delirious exhibitions continuing
The Substantiality of Life. 339
so long as the intrinsic capacity of the organic structure is not
exhausted.
Through the study of organisation we discover that conscious-
ness accompanies only the functions of the highest, most
concentrative, and therefore, most central parts of the organic
individual ; that, however, the remotest details of its constitution
all contribute towards this structurally centralised aud function-
ally centralising consummation of its personal unity. And we
find, moreover, that this intrinsic consummation of organic
forces is destined to become at last effective in extrinsic results,
through the instrumentality of the volitional or executive part
of personality. In truth, we discover that we have a wonder-
fully more complicated and extensive consistence than we are
immediately conscious of ; but that fortunately this deficiency
in the general subjective feeling of ourselves can be remedied
by objective study.
The special information which we are now desirous to obtain,
is : Whether, among the symbolic occurrences of organisation,
there can be detected any clue to the secret of personal identity
or individual substantiality, a secret which, as all thinkers know,
will not yield to purely introspective research.
We learn, as an indubitable fact of organisation, that every
functioning portion of an organism accomplishes its task only by
losing some integrant part of its substance, by parting with
some constituent elements of its molecular constitution. It is
clear that this mutilation would infallibly incapacitate it for a
renewed functional effort equal to the first if some provision
were not made for the complete restitution of its functioning
substance. A sensory nerve, for instance, after a single respon-
sive beat could not be in a condition adequately to respond
to a second beat, if its functionally deteriorated substance had
not been meanwhile promptly restored to its full integrity. If
all the auditory pulses which go to make up a certain homo-
geneous sound, were not received and transmitted with equal
responsive energy, the quality of the resulting sound could not
possibly appear homogeneous. If, on placing one's finger upon
something which awakens in the mind the sensation of specific
touch, the functioning substance of the affected nerves suffered
disintegration without adequate reintegration, then it is cer-
tain that no two moments in the sensation would be alike.
Identity of function necessarily presupposes identity of
functioning substance. It is an unquestionable fact that a
substance in functioning undergoes disintegration. Conse-
quently, it is equally unquestionable that identity, manifested
in two consecutive moments of any kind of organic function,
must be due to the reconstitution of the functioning substanc".
340
The Substantiality of Life
What is thus true of the many relationally functioning parts
of an organism, must be true of the organism as a whole. If
inequalities in the constitution of the entire organic unit, arising
from excess of function of one or other of its organs were
not duly equalised through correlative reconstitution, then
identity of such an organic unit would be out of the question.
The central changes wrought by the irruption of continually
varying combinations of peripherically stimulated function would
soon completely transform the structure of the central substance,
in case the organic unit had not the power of renovating itself
as a whole. What would become of the vaunted stability of the
world of thought, if the random intrusion of phenomenal dis-
turbances could permanently upset the perennial, the change-
conquering equilibrium of the central substance, or rather of the
complete monadic individual in whose unity and indiscerptibility
the soundness of our mind and body safely reposes ?
We feel, let us say, thoroughly tired out. The agitating
appearances of the bright day have seemingly obliterated our
previous store of confirmed knowledge. We search in vain with-
in our exhausted mind for what we used readily to find there.
Our will is impotent to summon up its legions of vassal thoughts.
Our inner eye strays over emptiness. Let us then no longer
wilfully resist, but fully and trustily yield ourselves up to nature.
Softly and securely she closes all inlets of rousing impressions,
withdraws the hum and stir of foreign presences, steeps our
whole being in darkness and oblivion. And now, from out the
unconscious depths of vital constructiveness our existence is
made whole again, our lost possessions reinstated. We are,
once more, ourselves, organically reconstituted, awakening to
renewed activity, prescient bearers of all the guiding Past.
The philosophical import of these organic facts cannot be
mistaken. Our personality is identical amidst its multifarious
modes of functional yielding, only because its unity and in-
tegrity is adequately maintained by means of reconstitution.
And it remains identical only in so far as such rehabilitation to
complete structural identity actually takes place. This perfect
state of substantial identity is however, fortunately, only ap-
proximately, and never fully attained. Adequately realised, it
would at once put an end to all development, would produce an
undeviating sameness of vital states, without individual growth,
and without generical evolution. There can be distinctly traced,
within the scope of individual life, a progressive cycle of anti-
identical modifications. The natural growth of a being involves
a constant deviation from its personal identity. It leads through
pre-established stages of evolution to generical maturity, a con-
dition of existence, in which the growing person has reached a
The Substantiality of Life. 341
higher, a transindividual identity with the culminating status of
its kind. This identity of adult beings of the same species is
again only approximate. If in individual growth it regularly
happens that personal identity is made to diverge from unifor-
mity through generical influences, it also happens that the
individual has in its turn the power of effecting changes in the
identity of the genus. Simultaneously with growth, there occur
further deviations from personal identity, caused by the acquisi-
tion of individual experience. Excellences of any kind, thus
acquired, over and above those already organically embodied in
the constitution of the genus, go, through transmission, to
heighten the generical standard.
The identity, which we find manifested in vitality, is kept
in this manner everywhere flowing and progressive, but it is an
essential identity nevertheless, an identity so indispensable to
life, that upon its strict conservation depends wholly, not only
the consistency of our own personality, but also the appearance
and order of the entire universe, as known to us.
Personal identity is grounded in an order of efficiency un-
thinkably more unfathomable than any thought of ours, than
any kind of intelligibly discernible potentiality ; unthinkably
more substantial than anything found in conceptions! revela-
tion. It is perpetual experience, immemorial memory incorpo-
rated, systematised, and ever organically resuscitated.
For those, who can find no commensurable transition from
their subjective feelings of mental mobility and subtlety to
their objective feelings of organic stability and solidity, it may
prove serviceable to give heed to the intimate nature of
organisation. Not through the firmness of its constituent par-
ticles, but only through its composition as a whole and through
the specific mode of its activity, does the living substance
possess any degree of consistency and constancy. The sundry
successive sets of constituent particles, which one after the
other are forced in and out the specific cycle of vitality, are
playing but a very ephemeral part in the phenomena of life.
The peculiar arrangement and activity, which determine in all
respects the nature of the living individual, are themselves
occurrences intangible enough as actual presences. But the
specific arrangement with its accompanying activity is during
its perpetuation, moreover, quite newly and incipiently caught
up from other pre-existing specific configurations and activities
by most rudimentary collocations of particles ; and these mere
beginnings of organic new formations are ultimately developed
into the full likeness of their genealogical prototypes, solely by
dint of the transmitted compository influence. Thus, in endless
train, the bare peculiarity of arrangement is being transferred
342
Substantiality of Lift
ire.
cending
according
as such, from one individual to another ; an imperishing posses-
sion, very obviously secured by something altogether trans-
the identity of material constituents, on which
to some all genuine permanency is based. The
successive material embodiments are completely broken up and
scattered to the winds, yet the ' form ' indelibly endures. One
and the same persisting presence is ever visibly underlying its
many changing and perishing presentations, is moulding with
perennial potency all accruing stuff into its exact type of organic
conformation, compelling it, for a while, to subserve only its own
unitary purposes.
All this means, the recognition, indeed, of a hyperin-
dividual actuality, much of the same order as Platonic ideas
professed to be; but the conception is experientially, not
transcendentally derived. The Platonic idea was the reminis-
cence of an archetypal order only intelligibly existent, and
connected with our sensible world of ectypal manifoldness
merely by help of a supernaturally pre-established harmony.
The organic idea is the symbolical representation in human
conception of the actually embodied synthesis of a sensible
manifold, realised in thought by help of a naturally established
harmony between the perceiving subject and the perceived
object. The former idea was the expression of an ideal estrange-
ment, the latter of an actual concordance.
The conception of our own individual identity forms part of
the organic idea, and receives, as we have seen, its explanation
from organic occurrences.
The substantiality of our being, as vaguely hypostatised by
introspection, is actually the same organic fact of reconstitution
under a somewhat different aspect. Vital occurrences of any
kind, sensory functions naturally included, are in all truth varying
modifications of one and the same identical and indivisible
organic unit. We have here a display of most manifold appear-
ances and events, a continual outflow of most diversified specific
energies. Yet the manifesting entity indiscerptibly endures.
It lasts undiminished and undivided amidst all its changing and
perishing modes. It lavishly spends itself without suffering any
substantial loss.
This fact, evident but unexplained, has constituted the great
paradox in philosophical interpretation, the inevitable stumbling-
block of all systems. The insoluble mystery of substantiality,
the " final inexplicability " of all schools, and with us of that of
Kant as well as that of Hume, of that of Hamilton as well as
that of Mill, has consisted in the impossibility of conceiving
how anything can remain actually and indivisibly the same under
constant intrinsic changes and timely expropriations. Or, as
The Substantiality of Life. 343
John Mill puts it, " How something which has ceased, or is not
yet in existence, can still be in a manner present ".
Duration, not as the sum total, but as the support of changes,
has thus remained a philosophical perplexity, beyond the reach
of sober thought. It was distinctly felt that time with its con-
tents cannot possibly be a mere rope of sand, yet it was not
understood from what perdurable and unrelinquishing influence
it receives unifying consistency and relativity.
This ancient mystery is scientifically cleared by the recognition
of the reconstitutive power of the organic unit as an indiscerp-
tible totality. This assertion may be thus confidently made,
because it can be witnessed without a chance of error how by
redintegration the living substance preserves its identity amidst
continual functional changes.
What more can be affirmed of any substance, not thus experi-
entially given but otherwise imagined, than that amidst its vary-
ing affections it constitutes an identical, indivisible, perdurable,
and self-sustaining focus of energy. The deepest philosophical
discussions have always turned on these essential attributes of
substantiality ; but the performance of putting together a true
substance out of these well-conceived p 
