Full text of "Mind"
HANDBOUND
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF
TORONTO PRESS
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OP
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS:
JOHN THOMSON AND J. F. THOMSON, M.A.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
EDITED BY
GEORGE GROOM ROBERTSON
PROFESSOR IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
VOL. Xll.-iSSy.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON ;
AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1887.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME XII.
ARTICLES.
/) PAdE
// BAIN, A. On ( Association '-Controversies 161
'/ BRADLEY, F. H. Association and Thought 354
/ DAVIDSON, W. L. The Logic of Classification .... 233
DEWEY, J. Knowledge as Idealisation 382
GURNEY, E. Further Problems of Hypnotism . . . 212, 397
JAMES, W. The Perception of Space . . . . .1, 183, 321, 516
MAUDSLEY, H. The Physical Conditions of Consciousness , . 489
RIGG, J. M. The Place of Hypothesis in Experimental Science . 549
SIDGWICK, H. " Idiopsychological Ethics " 31
WARD, J. Psychological Principles (iii.) ' }~ 45
WINTERTON, F. Philosophy among the Jesuits .... 254
RESEARCH.
CATTELL, J. McK. Experiments on the Association of Ideas . . 68
GALTON, F. Supplementary Notes on " Prehension" in Idiots . 79
JACOBS, J. Experiments on "Prehension" 75
DISCUSSION.
BAIN, A. On Feeling as Indifference 576
BRADLEY, F. H. Why do we remember forwards and not backwards ? 579
DEWEY, J. " Illusory Psychology " 83
HODGSON, S. H. Subject and Object in Psychology . . 423
MACKENZIE, W. L. Recent Discussion on the Muscular Sense . 429
MORGAN, C. LI. The Generalisations of Science .... 88
TOWRY, M. H. On the Doctrine of Natural Kinds . . . .434
WARD, J. Mr. F. H. Bradley's Analysis of Mind . . . .564
CRITICAL NOTICES.
ADAMSON, R. J. Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken . . . .122
ALLEN, G. M. Guyau, Les Problemes de I'Esthe'tique contemporaine . 119
CATTELL, J. McK. G. T. Ladd, Elements of Physiological Psychology 583
EDITOR J. Dewey, Psychology 439
MONCK, W. H. S. Anon., Scottish Metaphysics Reconstructed . . 447
MORGAN, C. L1.--E. Gurney and others, Phantasms of the Living . 275
RASHDALL, H. J. M. Wilson, T. Fowler, The Principles of Morals . 589
RITCHIE, D. G. B. Bosanquet, The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy
of Fine Art (tr.) 596
SETH, A. T. H. Green, Philosophical Works, ii 93
STOUT, G. F. W. Knight, Hume 443
SULLY, J. J. Delboeuf, Le Sommeil et les Reves . . . .115
B. Perez, La Psychologic de V Enfant . . . .282
H. Hoffding, Psychologic in Umrissen d-c. . . . 606
WHITTAKER, T. C. Renouvier, Esquisse tfune Classification systc'-
matique des Doctrines philosophiqucs 100
W. Wuridt, Ethik 285
VI CONTENTS.
PAGE
WHITTAKER, T. M. Carriere, Die philosophischc Weltanschauung der
Reformationszeit (2te Aufl.) ....... 451
J. Delboeuf, La Matiere brute et la Matiere vivante 601
NEW BOOKS.
Alexander, A. Some Problems of Philosophy 469
Ardigo, R. Opere Filosofiche, iv. ....... 626
Arr^at, L. Journal d'un Philosophe 623
Bain, A. English Composition and Rhetoric, i. (new ed.) . . . ' 298
On Teaching English ....... 298
Bastian, A. In Sachen des Spiritismus d-c 308
Begg, W. P. The Development of Taste 136
Bergmann, J. Ueber das Schone ....... 629
Best, G. P. Morality and Utility 617
Bigg, C. The Christian Platonists of Alexandria . . . .301
Binet, A., and Fere, C. Le Magne'tisme Animal .... 144
Biran, M. de Science et Psycliologie (ed. A. Bertrand) . . . 625
Bithell, R. Agnostic Problems 616
Bolsche, W. Die naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Poesic . 478
Bonatelli, F. Discussioni gnoseologiche 305
Bordier, A. La Vie des Sgcie'te's
Bouillier, F. Nouvellest Eudes familieres &c.
Brewster, H. B. The Theories of Anarchy and of Law
Burnouf, E. La Vie et la Pense'e ....
Butler, S. Luck, or Gunning ? .
Carneri, B. Entwicklung und Gliickseligkeit
. 473
. 467
. 302
. 294
. 147
Carriere, M. Diephil. Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit (2te Aufl.) 309
Carroll, L.The Game of Logic . . 613
Cesca, G. La Teorica della Conoscenza nella Filosofia Greca . . 628
Cope, E. D. The Origin of the Fittest ....
Cunningham, W. S. Austin and his Place in Christian Thought . 136
Darmesteter, A. The Life of Words 134
Davidson, W. L. Leading and Important English Words . . 135
Delboeuf, 3. Une Visited la Salpetritre . ^ . . . . 304
Desjardins, A. Les Sentiments Moraux au 16e Siecle . . . 472
Dewey, J. Psychology 301
Druskowitz, H. Wie ist Verantwortung und Zurechnung moglich ? . 150
Edgeworth, F. Y.Metretike 466
Ende, U. van Histoire Naturelle de la Croyance, i 623
Ercole, P. d'Notizia di Pietro Ceretti 146
Eucken, R. Zur Wiirdigung Comte's u. des Positivismus . . . 477
Featherman, A. Social History of the Races of Mankind, ii. . . 295
Fe"re, C. Sensation et Mouvement
Ferraz, M. Spiritualisme et Libe'ralisme ...... 472
Ferrier, D. The Functions of the Brain (2nd ed.) .... 132
Finck, H. T. Romantic Love and Personal Beauty . . . .611
Fischer, K. History of Modern Philosophy; Descartes and his School
(tr. J. P. Gordy, ed. N. Porter) 464
Fitzgerald, P. V. On the Principle of Sufficient Reason . . .614
Fleming, W .Vocabulary of Philosophy (4th ed., H. Calderwood) . 300
Fonsegrive, G. L. Essai sur le Libre Arbitre 621
Fowler, T .The Principles of Morals, ii. 466
Frith, 1. Life of Giordano Bruno 296
Fullerton, G. S.The Conception of the Infinite ~&c 468
Gass, W.Geschichte der christlichen Ethik .... 306, 474
CONTENTS. Vll
PAGE
Goldhammer, L.Die Psychologic Mendelssohn's .... 305
Gurney, E., and others Phantasms of the Living .... 135
Guyau, M. Ulrreligion de VAvenir 143
Haldane, R. B. Life of Adam Smith 618
Hartraann, E. v. Die deutsche ^Esthdik seit Kant, i. 308
Hartmann, F. Paracelsus 140
Hegel, G. W. F. Introduction to Philosophy of Fine Art (tr. B.
Bosanquet) .......... 134
Bricfe von und an (ed. K. Hegel) . . . 474
Herzen, A. Les Conditions physiques de la Conscience . . . ' 145
Hintoii, C. H. Scientific Romances, v. . . . . . .139
Hodgson, S. H. The Re-organisation of Philosophy .... 138
Hoffding, H. Psychologic in Umrissen (tr. F. Bendixen) . . . 476
Janet, P. Victor Cousin et son (Euvre 141
,, Histoire de la Science Politique (3me e'd.) .... 142
Jerusalem, W. Zur Reform des Unterrichtes in der phil. Propadeutik 151
Jordan, F. Anatomy and Physiology in Character .... 298
Kant, I. The Philosophy of Law (tr! W. Hastie) . . . .301
Keibel, M. Werth und Ur sprung der philosophischen Transcendent, . 149
Keynes, J. N. Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic (2nd ed.) . 614
Knight, W.Hume . . .135
Koeber, R 1st E. Haeckel Materialist ? 479
Kostlin, K.Geschichte der Ethik, i., 1 . . . . . .632
Krause, K. C. F.Grundriss der Gesch. der Phil. (ed. P. Hohlfeld, A.
Wunsche) 309
Kroner, ~E,.Das korperliche Gefiihl 308
L., B. L. Matter and Energy 616
Labriola, A. I Problemi della Filosofia della Storia . . . . 628
Ladd, G. T. Elements of Physiological Psychology .... 465
Lange, L. Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des Beicegungsbegriffes . 151
Lanzky, P.Abendrate . . 630
Letourneau, C. L' Evolution de la Morale 140
Lockhart, W.Life of Antonio Rosmini Serbati . . . 134, 297
Lotze, R.Kleine Schriften, ii 149
Outlines of Psychology cOc. (tr. and ed. G. T. Ladd) . 469
M'Cosh, J. Realistic Philosophy 466
The Motive Powers 612
Mach, F. J. Die Willensfreiheit des Menschen 631
M'Lennan, J. F. Studies in Ancient History (new ed.) . . . 133
M'Taggart, W. ^.Absolute Relativism .' 618
Martin, A. ^Education du Caractere 624
Martineau, J. -Types of Ethical Theory (2nd ed.) . . . .133
Masaryk, T. G. Versuch einer concreten Logik ..... 306
Maude, J. E.The Foundations of Ethics (cd.W. James) . . . 470
Meyer, J. ~B.Probleme der Lebensweisheit (2te Aufl.) . . .634
Minchin, G. M. Naturae Veritas 467
Morison, J. C. The Service of Man 297
Morselli, E. La Filosofia Monistica in Italia 474
Mtiller, F. A. Das Problem der Continuitat &c 307
Miiller, F. M. The Science of Thought^ 299
Neiglick, H. Zur Psychophysik des Lichtsinncs .... 635
Nourrisson Philosophies de la Nature ...... 623
Paulhan, F. Les PIn'innn<'ix:x Affectifs d-c 303
Payne, W. H. Contributions to the Scienc,< of Education . . . 137
Pfleiderer, E. Die Philosophic des Heraklit von Ephesus d-c. . . 305
Pfleiderer, O. Philosophy of Religion, ii. (tr. A. Muuzies) . . 616
Vlll CONTENTS.
PAGE
Rabier, E. Lemons ck Philosophie, ii., Logique 145
Rabus, L. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophic .... 477
Reicliel, E. Wer schrieb das " Novum Organon" ? .... 477
Ricliet, C. Essai de Psychologie generate 619
Riehl, A. Der philosophische Kriticisrtius &c., ii., 2 . . . . 476
Hitter, H., and Preller, L. Historic*, Philosophies Graecae, i. (7th ed.,
ed. Fr. Schultess) 310
Roberty, E. de L'ancienne et la nouvelle Philosophic . . . 620
Saltus, E. Tlie Anatomy of Negation 139
Sarlo, F. de Studi sul Darwinismo and / Sogni . . . .627
Schubert-Soldern, R. v. Grundlagen au einer Ethik . . . 305
Reproduction, Gefuhl und Wille . . 631
Schwegler, A. Gesch. der Phil, im Umriss (14te Aufl., ed. R. Koeber) 476
Sigwart, C.Vorfragen der Ethik 477
Spencer, H. The Factors of Organic Evolution . . . 293
Spir, A. Esguisses de Philosophie critique (tr.) 471
Stapley, A. M. The Mechanism of Nature ..... 139
Stein, K. H. v. Die Entstehung der neueren ^sthetik . . . 152
Stewart, A. Our Temperaments 131
Strieker, S . Ueber die wahren Ursachen ...... 633
Teichmliller, G.Religionsphilosophie 306
Thompson, D. G. The Problem of Evil 465
Velzeii, H. T. van Ueber die Geistesfreiheit vulgo Willensfreiheit . 152
Vogt, J. G. Die GeistestJiatigkeit des Menschen &c 634
Voltz, R.Die Ethik als Wissenschaft 149
Wallis, H. W. The Cosmology of the Rigveda 615
Wasserschleben, F. V. v. Die drei metaphysischen Fragen &c. . . 629
Weckesser, A. Zur Lehre vom Wesen des Geivissens . . . .150
Weir, A. The Historical Basis of Modern Europe .... 301
Werner, J. Hegel's 0/enbarungsbegriff 634
Werner, K. Die italienische Philosophie des XlXten Jahrhunderts v. 307
Wundt, W. Ethik 148
Zur Moral der literarischen Kritik .... 478
Zeller, E. Friedrich der Grosse als Philosoph 150
Ziegler, T. Geschichte der Ethik der Griechen u. Romer . . .146
Geschichte der christlichen Ethik 146
A Dictionary of Philosophy in the Words of Philosophers (ed. J. R.
Thomson) 610
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Part xi. . . . 618
Scottish Metaphysics Reconstructed 298
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
BAIN, A. On Mr. Ward's " Psychological Principles (iii.)" .311
BRADLEY, F. H. On a feature of Active Attention . . .314
EDGEWORTH, F. Y. The Method of Measuring Probability and
Utility 484
EDITOR The Quarterly Review on Hobbes 480
A remarkable case of Amnesia 636
HODGSON, S. H." Illusory Psychology." A Rejoinder . . .314
MONCK, W. H. S. Mill's doctrine of Natural Kinds . . .637
MYERS, F. W. H. On a case of alleged Hypnotic Hyperacuity of
Vision . . . . . . . . . . 154
STEWART, J. A. Richard Shute 157
MISCELLANEOUS . . . 158, 318, 485, 639
No. 45.] [JANUARY, 1887.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
I. THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (I.)
By Professor WILLIAM JAMES.
1. The Extensive Quality.
IN the sensations of hearing, touch, sight and pain we are
accustomed to distinguish from among the other elements the
element of voluminousness. We call the reverberations of a
thunderstorm more voluminous than the squeaking of a slate
pencil ; the entrance into a warm bath gives our skin a
more massive feeling than the prick of a pin ; a little neural-
gic pain, fine as a cobweb, in the face, seems less extensive
than the heavy soreness of a boil or the vast discomfort of a
colic or a lumbago ; and a solitary star smaller than the
noonday sky. In the sensation of vertigo, dizziness or sub-
jective motion, which recent investigation has proved to be
connected with stimulation of the semi-circular canals of the
ear, the spatial character is very prominent. Whether the
" muscular sense " directly yields us knowledge of space is
still a matter of litigation among psychologists. Whilst
some go so far as to ascribe our entire cognition of extension
to its exclusive aid, others deny to it all extended quality
whatever. Under these circumstances we shall better adjourn
its consideration ; admitting however that it seems at first
sight as if w T e felt something decidedly more voluminous
1
& PEOF. W. JAMES :
when we contract our thigh muscles than when we twitch
an eyelid or some small muscle in the face. It seems more-
over as if this difference were not wholly explained by trac-
tion on different amounts of skin and joint.
In the sensations of smell and taste this element of varying
vastness seems less prominent but not altogether absent.
Some tastes and smells appear less extensive than complex
flavours, like that of roast meat or plum pudding on the one
hand, or heavy odours like musk or tuberose on the other.
The epithet sharp given to the acid class would seem to show
that to the popular mind there is something narrow and,
as it were, streaky, in the impression they make, other
flavours and odours being bigger and rounder.
The sensations derived from the inward organs are also
distinctly more or less voluminous. Repletion and empti-
ness, suffocation, palpitation, headache, are examples of this,
and certainly not less spatial is the consciousness we have of
our general bodily condition in nausea, fever, heavy drowsi-
ness and fatigue. Our entire cubic content seems then
sensibly manifest to us as such, and feels much larger than
any local pulsation, pressure or discomfort. Skin and retina
are, however, the organs in which the space-element plays
the most active part. Not only does the maximal vastness
yielded by the retina surpass that yielded by any other organ,
but the intricacy with which our attention can subdivide
this vastness and perceive it to be composed of lesser portions
simultaneously coexisting alongside of each other, is without
a parallel elsewhere. The ear gives a greater vastness than
the skin, but is considerably less able to subdivide it.
Now my first thesis is, that this element, discernible in
each and every sensation, though more developed in some
than in others, is the original sensation of space, out of which
all the exact knowledge about space that we afterwards come
to have is woven by processes of discrimination, association
and selection. Extensiveness, on this view, becomes an
element in each sensation just as intensity is. The latter
everyone will admit to be a distinguishable though not
separable ingredient of the sensible quality. In like manner
extensiveness, being an entirely peculiar kind of feeling in-
describable except in terms of itself, and inseparable in actual
experience from some sensational quality which it must
accompany, can itself receive no other name than that of
-sensational element,
It must now be noted that the vastness hitherto spoken
of is as great in one direction as in another. Its dimensions
are so vague that in it there is no question as yet of surface
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 3
as opposed to depth ; * volume ' being the best short name
for the sensation in question. Sensations of different orders
are roughly comparable, inter se, with Respect to their volumes.
This shows that the spatial quality in each is identical
wherever found, for different qualitative elements, e.g., warmth
and odour, are incommensurate. Persons born blind are
reported surprised at the largeness with which objects appear
to them when their sight is restored. Franz says of his
patient cured of cataract : " He saw everything much larger
than he had supposed from the idea obtained by his sense of
touch. Moving, and especially living, objects appeared very
large." Loud sounds have a certain enormousness of feel-
ing. It is impossible to conceive of the explosion of a cannon
as filling a small space. In general, sounds seem to occupy
all the room between us and their source ;. and in the case
of certain ones, the cricket's song, the whistling of the wind,
the roaring of the surf, or a distant railway train, to have no
definite starting point.
In the sphere of vision we have facts of the same order.
" Glowing" bodies, as Hering says, give us a perception
" which seems roomy (raumhuft) in comparison with that of
strictly surface colour. A glowing iron looks luminous
through and through, and so does a flame." l A luminous
fog, a band of sunshine, affect us in the same way. As
Hering urges :
" We must distinguish, roomy from superficial, as well as distinctly from
indistinctly bounded, sensations. The dark which with closed eyes. one
sees before one is for example a roomy sensation. We do not see a black
surface like a wall in front of us, but a space filled with darkness, and even
when we succeed in seeing this darkness as terminated by. a black wall
there still remains in front of this wall the dark space. The same thing
happens when we find ourselves with open eyes in an absolutely dark room.
This sensation of darkness is also vaguely bounded. An example of a
distinctly bounded roomy sensation is that of a clear and coloured fluid
seen in a glass ; the yellow of the wine is seen not only on the bounding
surface of the glass ; the yellow sensation fills the whole interior of the
glass. By day the so-called empty space between us and objects seen
appears very different from what it is by night. The increasing darkness
settles not only upon the things but also between us and the things, so as at
last to cover them completely and fill the space alone. If I look into a
dark box I find it filled with darkness, and this is seen not merely as the
dark-coloured sides or walls of the box. A shady corner in an otherwise
well-lighted room is full of a darkness which is not only on the walls and
floor but between them in the space they include. Every sensation is there
where I experience it, and if 1 have it at once at every point of a certain
roomy space, it is then a voluminous sensation. A cube of transparent
green glass gives us a spatial sensation ; an opaque cube painted green, on
the contrary, only sensations of surface." a
1 Hermann's Handb. d. Physiol, Bd. iii. 1, s. 575. 2 Ibid., s. 572.
4 PEOF. W. JAMES :
There are certain quasi-motor sensations in the head when
we change the direction of the attention, which equally seem
to involve three dimensions. If with closed eyes we think
of the top of the house and then of the cellar, of the distance
in front of us and then of that behind us, of space far to the
right and then far to the left, we have something far stronger
than an idea, an actual feeling, namely, as if something in
the head moved into another direction. Fechner was, I
believe, the first to publish any remarks on these feelings.
He writes as follows :
" When we transfer the attention from objects of one sense to those of
another we have an indescribable feeling (though at the same time one
perfectly determinate and reproducible at pleasure) of altered direction,
or differently localised tension (Spannung). We feel a strain forward in
the eyes, one directed sideways in the ears, increasing with the degree of
our attention, and changing according as we look at an object carefully, or
listen to something attentively ; wherefore we speak of straining the atten-
tion. The difference is most plainly felt when the attention vibrates
rapidly between eye and ear. This feeling localises itself with most
decided difference in regard to the various sense-organs according as we
wish to discriminate a thing delicately by touch, taste or smell.
" But now I have, when I try to vividly recall a picture of memory or
fancy, a feeling perfectly analogous to that which I experience when I
seek to grasp a thing keenly by eye or ear ; and this analogous feeling is
very differently localised. While in sharpest possible attention to real
objects (as well as to after-images) the strain is plainly forwards, and, when
the attention changes from one sense to another, only alters its direction
between the sense-organs, leaving the rest of the head free from strain, the
case is different in memory or fancy ; for here the feeling withdraws entirely
from the external sense-organs, and seems rather to take refuge in that part
of the head which the brain fills. If I wish, for example, to recall a place
or person it will arise before me with vividness, not according as I strain
my attention forwards, but rather in proportion as I, so to speak, retract it
backwards." 1
It appears probable that the feelings Fechner describes
are in great part constituted by imaginary semi-circular
canal sensations. 2 These undoubtedly convey the most
delicate perception of change in direction ; and when, as
here, the changes are not perceived as taking place in the
external world, they occupy a vague internal space located
within the head. 3
1 Elemente der Psychophysik, ii. 475-6.
2 See Foster's Text-book of Physiology, bk. iii., c. 6, 2.
3 Fechner, who was ignorant of the but lately discovered function of the
semi-circular canals, gives a different explanation of the organic seat of
these feelings. They are probably highly composite. With me, actual
movements in the eyes play a considerable part in them, though I am
wholly unconscious of the peculiar feelings in the scalp which Fechner goes
on to describe thus : " The feeling of strained attention in the different
sense-organs seems to be only a muscular one produced in using these
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 5
In the skin itself there is a vague form of projection into
the third dimension to which Hering has called attention. 1
" Heat is not felt only against the cutaneous surface, but when com-
municated through the air may appear extending more or less out from
the surface into the third dimension of surroundiog space. . . . We can de-
termine in the dark the place of a radiant body by moving the hand to
and fro, and attending to the fluctuation of our feeling of warmth. The
feeling itself, however, is not projected fully into the spot at which we
localise the hot body, but always remains in the neighbourhood of the
hand."
The interior of one's mouth-cavity feels larger when ex-
plored by the tongue than when looked at. The crater of a
newly-extracted tooth, and the movements of a loose tooth
in its socket, feel quite monstrous. A midge buzzing against
the drum of the ear will often seem as big as a butterfly.
The spatial sensibility of the tympanic membrane has
hitherto been very little studied, though the subject will
well repay much trouble. If we approach it by introducing
into the outer ear some small object like the tip of a rolled-
up tissue paper lamplighter, or the end of a wooden tooth-
pick made soft between the teeth, we are surprised at the
large radiating sensation which its presence gives us, and at
the sense of clearness and openness which comes when it is
removed. It is immaterial to inquire whether the far-
reaching sensation here be due to actual irradiation upon
distant nerves or not. We are considering now, not the
objective causes of the spatial feeling, but its subjective
varieties, and the experiment shows that the same object
gives more of it to the inner than to the outer cuticle of the
ear. The tympanic membrane is furthermore able to render
sensible differences in the pressure of the external atmo-
sphere, too slight to be felt as noise. If the reader will sit
with closed eyes and let a friend approximate some solid
various organs by setting in motion, by a sort of reflex action, the set of
muscles which belong to them. One can ask, then, with what particular
muscular contraction the sense of strained attention in the effort to recall
something is associated ? On this question my own feeling gives me a
decided answer ; it comes to me distinctly not as a sensation of tension in
the inside of the head, but as a feeling of strain arid contraction in the
scalp, with a pressure from outwards in over the whole cranium, un-
doubtedly caused by a contraction of the muscles of the scalp. This
harmonises very well with the expressions, sich den Kopf zerbrechen, den
Kopf zusammennehmen. In a former illness when I could not endure the
slightest effort after continuous thought, and had no theoretical bias on
this question, the muscles of the scalp, especially those of the back-head,
assumed a fairly morbid degree of sensibility whenever I tried to think."
(Elem. der Psychophysik, ii. 490-91.)
1 Hermann's Handb. der Physiologic, iii. 2, p. 436.
6. PKOF. W. JAMES I
object like a large book, noiselessly to his face, he will im-
mediately become aware of the object '-s presence and position
likewise of its departure. A friend of the writer, making
the experiment for the first time, discriminated unhesitat-
ingly between the three degrees of solidity of a board, a
lattice-frame and ,a~ sieve, held close to his ear. Now as
this sensation is never used by ordinary persons as a means
of perceptioja, we may fairly assume that its felt quality, in
those whose attention is called to it ,for the first time,
belongs to it qud sensation, and owes nothing to educational
suggestions. But this felt quality is most distinctly and
unmistakably one of vague spatial vastness in three dimen-
sions quite. as much so as is the felt quality of the retinal
sensation, when we lie on our back and fill the entire field of
vision with the empty blue sky. When an object is brought
near the ear we immediately feel shut in, contracted ; when
the object is removed, we suddenly feel as if a transparency,
clearness, openness, had. been made outside of us. And the
feeling will, -by anyone who will take the, pains to observe
it, be acknowledged to involve the third dimension in a
vague, unmeasured state. 1
The reader will have noticed, in this enumeration of facts,
that the voluminousness of the feeling seems to bear very
little relation to the size of the organ that yields it. The
ear and eye are comparatively minute organs, yet give us
feelings of great volume. The same lack of exact proportion
between size of feeling and size of organ affected obtains
within the limits of particular sensory organs. An object
appears smaller on the lateral portions of the retina than it
does on the fovea, as may be easily verified by holding the
two forefingers parallel and a couple of inches apart, and
transferring the gaze of one eye from one to the other.
Then the finger not directly looked at will appear to shrink,
and this whatever be the direction of the fingers. On the
tongue a crumb, or the calibre of a small tube, appears
larger than between the fingers. If two points kept equi-
distant (blunted compass- or scissors-points, for example) be
drawn across the skin so as really to describe a pair of
parallel lines, the lines, will appear farther apart in some
spots than in others. If, for .example, we draw them hori-
zontally across the face, so that the mouth falls between
1 That the sensation in question is one of tactile rather than of acoustic
sensibility would seem proved by the fact that a medical friend of the
writer, both of whose mevibrance tympani are quite normal, but one of
whose ears is almost totally deaf, feels the presence and withdrawal of
objects as well at one ear as "at the other.
THE PERCEPTION. OE SPACE. (l.) 7
them, the person experimented upon will feel as if they
began to diverge near the mouth and to include it in a well-
marked ellipse. In like manner, if we keep the compass-
points one or two centimetres apart, and draw them down
the fore-arm over the wrist and palm, finally drawing one
along one finger, the other along its neighbour, the appear-
ance will be that of a single line, soon breaking into two,
which become more widely separated about the wrist, to
contract again in the palm, and finally diverge rapidly again
towards the finger-tips.
..The same length of skin moreover will convey a more
extensive sensation according to the manner of stimulation.
If the edge of a card be pressed against the skin, the distance
between its extremities will seem shorter than that between
two compass-tips touching the same terminal points.
The skin seems to obey a different law from the eye here.
If a given retinal tract be excited, first by a series of points,
and next by the two extreme, points, with the interval be-
tween them unexc.ited, this interval will seem considerably
less in the second case than it seemed in the first. In the
skin the unexcited interval feels the larger. The reader may
easily verify the facts in this case by taking a visiting card,
cutting one edge of it into a saw tooth pattern, and from the
opposite edge cutting out all but the two corners, and then
comparing the feelings aroused by the two edges when held
against the skin.
In the eye, intensity of nerve-stimulation seems to increase
the volume of the feeling as well as its brilliancy. If we raise
and lower the gas alternately, the whole room and all .the
objects in it seem alternately to enlarge and contract. If we
cover half a page of small print with a grey glass, the print
seen through the glass appears decidedly smaller than that
seen outside of, it, and the darker the glass the greater the
difference. When a circumscribed opacity in front of the
retina keeps off part of the light from the portion which it
covers, objects projected on that portion may seem but half
as large as when their image falls outside of it. 1 The inverse
effect seems produced by certain drugs and anaesthetics.
Morphine, atropine, daturine and cold blunt the sensibility
of the skin, so that distances upon it seem less. Haschish
produces strange perversions of the general sensibility.
Under its influence one's body may seem either enormously
enlarged or strangely contracted. Sometimes a single mem-
1 Classen, Physiologie des Gesichtssinnes, p. 114 ; see also Riehl, Dar
Philosophische Kriticismus, ii., p. 149.
8 PEOF. W. JAMES :
ber will alter its proportion to the rest ; or one's back, for
instance, will appear entirely absent, as if one were hollow
behind. Objects comparatively near will recede to a vast
distance, a short street assume to the eye an immeasurable
perspective. Ether and chloroform occasionally produce not
wholly dissimilar results. Panum, the German physiologist,
relates that, when as a boy he was etherised for neuralgia, the
objects in the room grew extremely small and distant, before
his field of vision darkened over and the roaring in his ears
began. He also mentions that a friend of his in church,
struggling in vain to keep awake, saw the preacher grow
smaller and smaller and more and more distant. I myself
on one occasion observed the same recession of objects during
the begining of chloroformisation. In various cerebral di-
seases we find analogous disturbances.
In the facts we have thus passed in review hardly anything
has been said about position, direction, or anything that
could fall under the concept of localisation. We have spoken
of the mere bigness considered as a unit of each of the
several feelings. What the reasons for the particular amount
of this extensive muchness may be in each particular case is
an interesting and important problem. One factor un-
doubtedly is the number of nerve-terminations simultane-.
ously excited by the outward agent that awakens the sensa-
tion. When many skin-nerves are warmed, or much retinal
surface illuminated, our feeling is larger than when a lesser
nervous surface is excited. The single sensation yielded by
two compass-points, although it seems simple, is yet felt to
be much bigger and blunter than that yielded by one. The
touch of a single point may always be recognised by its
quality of sharpness. This page looks much smaller to the
reader if he closes one eye than if both eyes are open. So
does the moon, which latter fact shows that the phenomenon
has nothing to do with parallax. The celebrated boy
couched for the cataract by Cheselden thought, after his
first eye was operated, " all things he saw extremely large,"
but being couched of his second eye, said " that objects at
first appeared large to this eye, but not so large as they did
at first to the other ; and looking upon the same object with
both eyes, he thought it looked about twice as large as with
the first couched eye only, but not double, that we can
anyways discover ".
The greater extensiveness that the feeling of certain parts
of the same surface has over other parts, and that one order
of surface has over another (retina over skin, for example),
THE PEBCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 9
may also to a certain extent be explained by the operation
of the same factor. It is an anatomical fact that the most
spatially sensitive surfaces (retina, tongue, finger-tips, &c.)
are supplied by nerve-trunks of unusual thickness, which
must supply to every unit of surface area an unusually large
number of terminal fibres. But the variations of felt ex-
tension obey probably only a very rough law of numerical
proportion to the number of fibres. A sound is not twice as
voluminous to two ears as to one ; and the above-cited varia-
tions of feeling, when the same surface is excited under dif-
ferent conditions, show that the feeling is a resultant of
several factors of which the anatomical one is only the prin-
cipal. Many ingenious hypotheses have been brought for-
ward to assign the co-operating factors where different con-
ditions give conflicting amounts of felt space. Later we
shall analyse some of these cases in detail, but it must be
confessed here in advance that many of them resist analysis
altogether. 1
1 It is worth while at this point to call attention with some emphasis to
the fact that, though the anatomical condition of the feeling resembles the
feeling itself, such resemblance cannot be taken by our understanding to
explain why the feeling should be just what it is. We hear it untiringly
reiterated by materialists and spiritualists alike that we can see no possible
inward reason why a certain brain-process should produce the feeling of
redness and another of anger : the one process is no more red than the
other is angry, and the coupling of process and feeling is, as far as our
understanding goes, a juxtaposition pure and simple. But in the matter of
-spatial feeling, where the retinal patch that produces a triangle in the mind
is itself a triangle, &c., it looks at first sight as if the sensation might be a
direct cognition of its own neural condition. Were this true, however, our
sensation should be one of multitude rather than of continuous extent ; for
the condition is number of optical nerve-termini, and even this is only a
remote condition and not an immediate condition. The immediate condi-
tion of the feeling is not the process in the retina, but the process in the
brain ; and the process in the brain may, for aught we know, be as unlike
a triangle, nay, it probably is so, as it is unlike redness or rage. It is
simply a coincidence that in the case of space one of the organic conditions,
viz., the triangle impressed on the skin or the retina, should lead to a re-
presentation in the mind of the subject observed similar to that which it
produces in the psychological observer. In no other kind of case is the
coincidence found. Even should we admit that we cognise triangles in
.space because of our immediate cognition of the triangular shape of our
excited group of nerve-tips, the matter would hardly be more transparent,
for the mystery would still remain, why are we so much better cognisant
of triangles on our finger-tips than on the nerve-tips of our back, on our
eye than on our ear, and on any of these parts than in our brain?
Thos. Brown very rightly rejects the notion of explaining the shape of
the space perceived by the shape of the "nervous expansion affected".
" If this alone were necessary, we should have square inches .and half
inches, and various other forms, rectilinear and curvilinear, of fragrance
and sound." (Lectures, xxii.)
10 PEOF. W. JAMES :
So far, all we have established or sought to establish is
the existence of the vague form or quale of spatiality as an
inseparable element bound up with the other qualitative
peculiarities of each and every one of our sensations. The
numerous examples we have adduced of the variations of
this extensive element have only been meant to make clear
its strictly sensational character. In very few of them will
the reader have been able to explain the variation by an
added intellectual element, such as the suggestion of a.
recollected experience. In almost all it seemed the im-
mediate psychic effect of a peculiar character of nerve-process
excited ; and all the nerve-processes in question agree in
yielding what space they do yield to the mind in the shape
of a simple total vastness, in which, primitively at least, no
order of parts or subdivisions reigns.
Let no one be surprised at this notion of a space without
C 6rder. There maybe a space without order just as there
may be an order without space. 1 And the primitive percep-
tions of space are certainly of an unordered kind. The
order which the spaces first perceived potentially include
'must, before being realised by the mind, be woven into those
spaces by a rather complicated set of intellectual acts
first the whole, then the parts. The primordial sensations
.'of largeness which the spaces yield must be measured and
-subdivided by consciousness, and the various original totals
"of extension added together, so as to form by their synthesis
what we know as the real Space of the objective world. In
ithese operations, imagination, association, attention and
-selection play a decisive . part ; and although they nowhere
add any new material to the space-data of sense, they so
shuffle and manipulate these data and hide present ones
1 behind imagined ones that it -is no wonder if some authors
Jihave gone so far as to think that the -sense-data have no
' spatial worth at all, and that the intellect, since it makes the
.', subdivisions, also gives the spatial quality to them out of
resources of its own.
t, To make clear what the problem of finding order, the
problem of subdivision and synthesis, is, let us begin by
.supposing a, .creature with several sense-organs, each of
'\which yields its own vaguely extensive feeling. (This
: '
ov * Musical tones, e.g., have an order of quality independent either of
their space- or time-order. Music comes from the. time-order of. the nates
upsetting their quality-order. In general, if ab c d ef g h ij k, <c., stand
for an arrangement of feelings in the order of their quality, they may as-
sume any space-order or time-order, as d ef a h gr, cfrc., and still the order
of quality will remain fixed and unchanged.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 11
would probably represent an advanced stage of evolution,
for it is likely that in the very earliest dawn of sensibility
every impression made awakened the same vague but exten-
sive feeling.) Now, in the creature we have assumed, so
long as things do not evolve still farther, there is no reason
to suppose that the several sense-spaces of which it may
become conscious, each filled with its own peculiar content
of feeling, should enter into any definite spatial intercourse
with each other, or lie in any particular order of positions.
Even in ourselves we can recognise this. Different feelings
may coexist in us without assuming any particular spatial
order. The sound of the brook near which I write, the
odour of the cedars, the comfort with which my breakfast
has filled me, and my interest in this paragraph, all lie
distinct in my consciousness, but in no sense out-, or along-
side, of each other. Their spaces are interfused and at most
fill the same vaguely objective world. Even where the
qualities are far less disparate, we may have something
similar. If we take our subjective and corporeal sensations
alone, there are moments when, as we lie or sit motionless,
we find it very difficult to feel distinctly the length of our
back or the direction of our feet from our shoulders. By a
strong effort we can succeed in dispersing our attention im-
partially over our whole person, and then we feel the real
shape of our body in .a sort of unitary way. But in general
a few parts are strongly emphasised to consciousness and
the rest sink out of notice ; and it is then remarkable how
vague and ambiguous our perception of their relative order of
location is. Obviously, for the orderly arrangement of the
several sense-spaces in consciousness, something more than
their mere separate existence is required. What is this
further condition ?
. If spatial feelings are to l)e perceived alongside of each other and
in definite order they must appear as parts in a vaster spatial
freling ivhicli can enter the mind simply and all at once. I think
it will be seen that, the difficulty of estimating correctly the
form of one's body by pure feeling arises from the fact that
it is very hard to feel its totality as a unit at all. The
trouble is similar to that of thinking forwards and backwards
simultaneously. When conscious of our head we tend to
grow unconscious of our feet, and there enters thus an
element of time-succession into our perception of ourselves
which transforms the latter from an act of intuition to one
of construction. This element of constructiveness is present
in a still higher degree, and carries with it the same conse-
quences, when we deal with objective spaces too great to be
12 PEOF. W. JAMES :
grasped by a single look. The relative positions of the
shops in a town, separated by many tortuous streets, have to
be thus constructed from data apprehended in succession,
and the result is a greater or less degree of vagueness.
That a sensation be discriminated as a part from out
larger enveloping space is then the conditio sine qua non of its
being apprehended in a definite spatial order. The problem
of ordering our feelings in space is then, in the first instance,
a problem of discrimination, but not of discrimination pure
and simple ; for then not only coexistent sights but coex-
istent sounds would necessarily assume such order, which they
notoriously do not. Whatever is discriminated will appear
as a small space within a larger space, it is true, but this is
but the very rudiment of order. For the location of it
within that space to become precise, other conditions still
must supervene ; and the best way to study what they are
will be to pause for a little and analyse what the expression
" spatial order " means.
2. Space-relations.
Spatial order is an abstract term. The concrete percep-
tions which it covers are figures, directions, positions, mag-
nitudes and distances. To single out any one of these
things from a total vastness is partially to introduce order
into the vastness. To subdivide the vastness into a multi-
tude of these things is to apprehend it in a completely
orderly way. Now what are these things severally ? To
begin with, no one can for an instant hesitate to say that
some of them are qualities of sensation, just as the total
vastness is in which they lie. Take figure : a square, a
circle and a triangle appear in the first instance to the eye
simply as three different kinds of impressions, each so pecu-
liar that we should recognise it if it were to return. When
Nunnely's patient had his cataracts removed, and a cube and
a sphere were presented to his notice, he could at once
perceive a difference in their shapes ; and though he could
not say which was the cube and which the sphere, he saw
they were not of the same figure. So of lines : if we can
notice lines at all in our field of vision, it is inconceivable
that a vertical one should not affect us differently from an
horizontal one, and should not be recognised as affecting us
similarly when presented again, although we might not yet
know the name * vertical,' or any of its connotations, beyond
this peculiar affection of our sensibility. So of angles : an
obtuse one affects our feeling immediately in a different way
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 13
from an acute one. Distance-apart, too, is a simple sensa-
tion the sensation of a line joining the two distant points :
lengthen the line, you alter the feeling and with it the
distance felt.
But with distance and direction we pass to the category of
sp&ce-relations, and are immediately confronted by an opinion
which makes of all relations something toto ccelo different
from all facts of feeling or imagination whatsoever. A rela-
tion, for the Platonising school in psychology, is an energy
of pure thought, and as such quite incommensurable with
the data of sensibility between which it may be perceived to
obtain.
We may consequently imagine a disciple of this school to
say to us at this point : " Suppose you have made a separate
specific sensation of each line and each angle, what boots it?
You have still the order of directions and of distances to
account for ; you have still the relative magnitudes of all
these felt figures to state ; you have their respective positions
to define before you can be said to have brought order into
your space. And not one of these determinations can be
effected except through an act of relating thought, so that
your attempt to give an account of space in terms of pure
sensibility breaks down almost at the very outset. Position,
for example, can never be a sensation, for it has nothing
intrinsic about it ; it can only obtain between a spot, line or
other figure and extraneous co-ordinates, and can never be
an element of the feeling of the sensible datum, the line or
the spot, in itself. Let us then confess that thought alone
can unlock the riddle of space, and that Thought is an ador-
able but unfathomable mystery."
Such a method of dealing with the problem has the merit
of shortness. But let us be in no such hurry, but see whether
we cannot get a little deeper, by patiently considering what
these space-relations are.
' Kelation ' is a very slippery word. It has so many
different concrete meanings that the use of it as an abstract
universal may easily introduce bewilderment into our
thought. We must therefore be careful to avoid ambiguity
by making sure, wherever we have to employ it, what its
precise meaning is in that particular sphere of application.
At present we have to do with space-relations, and no others.
Most ' relations ' are feelings of an entirely different order
from the terms they relate. The relation of similarity, e.g.,
may equally obtain between jasmine and tuberose, or between
Mr. Browning's verses and Mr. Story's ; it is itself neither
odorous nor poetical, and those may well be pardoned who have
14 PKOF. W. JAMES :
denied to it all sensational content whatever. But just as,
in the field of quantity, the relation between two numbers is
another number, so in the field of space the relations are facts
of the same' order with the facts they relate. If these latter be
patches in the circle of vision, the former are certain other
patches between them. When, we speak of the relation of
direction of two points towards each other, we mean simply
the sensation of the line that joins the two points together.
The line is the relation ; feel it and you feel the relation, see
it and you see the relation ; nor can you in any conceivable
way think the latter except by imagining the former (however
vaguely), or describe or indicate the one except by pointing
to the other. And the moment you have imagined or pointed
out the line, the relation stands before you, or your interlo-
cutor, in all its completeness, with nothing further to be
done. Just so the relation of direction between two lines is
identical with the peculiar sensation of shape of the space
enclosed between them. This is commonly called an angular
relation.
If these relations are sensations, no less so are the rela-
tions of position. The relation of position between the
top and bottom points of a vertical line is that line, and
nothing else. The relations of position between a point
and a horizontal line below it are potentially numerous.
There is one more important than the rest, called its dis-
tance. This is the sensation, ideal or actual, of a perpen-
dicular drawn from the point to the line. 1 Two lines, one
from each extremity of the horizontal to the point, give us
a peculiar sensation of triangularity. This feeling may be
said to constitute the locus of all the relations of position of
the elements in question. Rightness and leftness, upness
and downness, are again pure sensations differing specifically
from each other, and generically from everything else. If
we take a cube and label one side top, another bottom, a third
front, and a fourth hack, there remains no form of words by
which we can describe to another person which of the remain-
ing sides is right and which left. We can only point and
say here is right and there is left, just as we should say this is
red and that blue, without being able to give an idea of them
in words. Of two points seen beside each other at all, one is
always affected by one of these feelings, and the other by the
opposite ; the same is true of the extremities of any line. 2
1 The whole science of geometry may be said to owe its being to the
exorbitant interest the human mind takes in lines. We cut space up in
every direction in order to manufacture them.
2 Kant was, I believe, the first to call attention to this order of facts.
Cp. Prolegomena, 12.
THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 15
Thus it appears indubitable that all space-relations except
those of magnitude are nothing more or less than pur^
sensational elements. But 'magnitude appears to outstep
this narrow sphere. We have relations of muchness and
littleness between times, numbers, intensities >and qualities*
as well as spaces. It is impossible then that sucK relation^
should form a particular kind of simply spatial feeljng. This l
we must admit : the relation of quantity is generic and occurs
in many categories of consciousness, whilst the other rela-
tions we have considered are specific and occur in space
alone. When our attention passes from a shorter line to r a
longer, from a smaller spot to a larger, from a feebler light to
a stronger, from a paler blue to a richer, from a march tune
to a galop, the transition is accompanied in the synthetic
field of consciousness by a peculiar feeling of difference which
is what we call the sensation of more, more length, more
expanse, more light, more blue, more motion. This transi-
tional sensation of more must be identical with itself under
all these different accompaniments, or we should not give it
the same name in every case. We get it when we pass from
a short vertical line to a long horizontal one, from a small
square to a large circle, as well as when we pass between
those figures whose shapes are congruous. But when the
shapes are congruous our consciousness of the relation is a good
deal more distinct, and it is most distinct of all when, in the
exercise of our analytic attention, we notice, first, & part, and
then the irhok, of a single line or shape. Then the more
of the whole actually sticks out, as a separate piece of space,
and is so envisaged. The same exact sensation of it is given
when we are able to superpose one line or figure on another.
This condition sine qnd non of exact measurement of the
more has led some to think that the feeling itself arose
in every case from original experiences of superposition.
This is probably not an absolutely true opinion, but for our
present purpose that is immaterial. So far as the subdivi-
sions of a sense-space are to be measured exactly against each
other, objective forms occupying one subdivision must
directly or indirectly be superposed upon the other, and the
mind must get the immediate feeling of an outstanding plus.
And even where we only feel one subdivision to be vaguely
larger or less, the mind must pass rapidly between it and the
other subdivision and receive the immediate sensible shock
of the more.
We seem thus to have accounted for all space-relations,
and made them clear to our understanding. They are
nothing but sensations of particular lines, particular angles,
16 PEOF. W. JAMES :
particular forms of transition, dr, in the case of a distinct
more, of particular outstanding portions of space after
two figures have been superposed. These relation-sensations
may actually be produced as such, as when a geometer draws
new lines across a figure with his pencil to demonstrate the
relations of its parts, or they may be ideal representations of
lines &c. not really drawn. But in either case their
entrance into the mind is equivalent to a more detailed
subdivision, cognisance and measurement of the space con-
sidered. The bringing of subdivisions to consciousness constitutes
then the entire process by which we pass from our first
vague feeling of a total vastness to a cognition of the vast-
ness in detail. The more numerous the subdivisions are,
the more elaborate and perfect the cognition becomes. But
inasmuch as all the subdivisions are themselves sensations,
and even the feeling of "more" or "less" is, where not
itself a figure, at least a sensation of transition between two
sensations of figure, it follows, for aught we can as yet see to
the contrary, that all spatial knowledge is sensational at
bottom, and that, as the sensations lie together in the unity
of consciousness, no new material element whatever comes
to them from a supra-sensible source. 1
The bringing of subdivisions to consciousness ! This then is
our next topic. They may be brought to consciousness
under three aspects, in respect of their locality, in respect of
their size, in respect of their shape.
In the eyes of many it will have seemed strange to call a relation a
mere line, and a line a mere sensation. We may easily learn a great deal
about any relation, say that between two points : we may divide the line
which joins these, and distinguish it, and classify it, and find out its rela-
tions by drawing or representing new lines, and so on. But all this
further industry has naught to do with our acquaintance with the relation
itself, in its first intention. So cognised, the relation is the line and nothing
more. It would indeed be fair to call it something less ; and in fact it is
easy to understand how most of us come to feel as if the line were a much
grosser thing than the relation. The line is broad or narrow, blue or red,
made by this object or by that alternately, in the course of our experience ;
it is independent of any of these accidents ; and so, from viewing it as 110
one of such sensible qualities, we may end by thinking of it as something
which cannot be denned, except as the negation of all sensible quality
whatever, and which needs to be put into the sensations by a mysterious
act of ' relating thought '.
Another reason why we get to feel as if a space-relation must be some-
thing other than the mere feeling of a line or angle, is that between two
positions we can potentially make any number of lines and angles, or find,
to suit our purposes, endlessly numerous relations. The sense of this indefi-
nite potentiality cleaves to our words when we speak in a general way of
' relations of place,' and misleads us into supposing that not even any single
one of them can be exhaustively equated by a single angle or a single line.
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 17
Let us take the problem of Locality first, and begin with
the simple case of a sensitive surface, only two points of
which happen to be recipients of stimulation from without.
How, first, are these two points felt as alongside of each
other with an interval of space between them ? We must
be conscious of two things for this : of the duality of the
excited points, and of the extensiveness of the unexcited
interval. The duality alone, although a necessary, is not a
sufficient condition of the spatial separation. We may, for
instance, discern two sounds in the same place, sweet and
sour in the same lemonade, warm and cold, round and
pointed contact in the same place on the skin, &C. 1 In all
discrimination the recognition of the duality of two feelings
by the mind is the easier the more strongly the feelings are
contrasted in quality. If our two excited points awaken
identical qualities of sensation, they must, perforce, appear
to the mind as one; and, not distinguished at all, they are, a
fortiori, not localised apart. Spots four centimetres distant
on the back have no qualitative contrast at all, and fuse into
a single sensation. Points less than three-thousandths of a
millimetre apart awaken on the retina sensations so con-
trasted that we apprehend them immediately as two. Now
these unlikenesses which arise so slowly when we pass from
one point to another in the back, so much faster on the
tongue and finger-tips, but with such inconceivable rapidity
on the retina, what are they? Can we discover anything
about their intrinsic nature ?
The most natural and immediate answer to make is that
they are unlikeness of place pure and simple. In the words
of a German physiologist, 2 to whom psychophysics owes
much : " The sensations are from the outset (vonvornhereiri)
localised. . . . Every sensation as such is from the
very beginning affected with the spatial quality, so that this
quality is nothing like an external attribute coming to the
sensation from a higher faculty, but must be regarded as
something immanently residing in the sensation itself."
And yet the moment we reflect on this answer an insuper-
able logical difficulty seems to present itself. No single
quale of sensation can, by itself, amount to a consciousness
of position. Suppose no feeling but that of a single one of
the points ever to be awakened. Could that possibly be the
1 This often happens when the warm and cold points, or the round and
pointed ones, are applied to the skin within the limits of a single " Emp-
findungskreis ".
2 Vierordt, Grundriss der Physioloyie, 5te Auflage, 1877, pp. 326, 436.
2
18 PEOF. W. JAMES I
feeling of any special ivhere-ness or thereness? Certainly not.
Only when a second sentient point arises can the first
acquire a determination of up, down, right or left, and these
determinations are with respect to that second point. Each
point, so far as it is a placed^ is then only by virtue of what
it is not, namely, another point. This is as much as to say
that position has nothing intrinsic about it ; and that,
although a feeling of bigness may, a feeling of place cannot,
possibly form an immanent element in any single separate
sensation. The very writer we have quoted has given heed to
this objection, for he continues (p. 335) by saying that the
sensations thus originally localised, "are only so in themselves,
but not in the representation of consciousness, which is not
yet present. . . . They are, in the first instance, devoid
of all mutual relations with each other." But such a localisa-
tion of the sensation "in itself" would seem to mean
nothing more than the susceptibility or potentiality of being
distinctly localised when the time came and other conditions
became fulfilled. Can we now discover anything about such
susceptibility in itself before it has borne its ulterior fruits in
the developed consciousness ?
To begin with, every sensation of the skin and every
visceral sensation seems to derive from its topographic seat
a peculiar shade of feeling, which it would not have in
another place. And this feeling per se seems quite another
thing from the perception of the place. Says Wundt 1 :
" If with the finger we touch first the cheek and then the palm, exert-
ing each time precisely the same pressure, the sensation shows notwith-
standing a distinctly marked difference in the two cases. Similarly, when
we compare the palm with the back of the hand, the nape of the neck with
its anterior surface, the breast with the back ; in short, any two distant
parts of the skin with each other. And moreover, we easily remark, by
attentively observing, that spots even tolerably close together differ in
respect of the quality of their feeling. If we pass from one point of our
cutaneous surface to another, we find a perfectly gradual and continuous
alteration in our feeling, notwithstanding the objective nature of the
contact has remained the same. Even the sensations of corresponding
points on opposite sides of the body, though similar, are not identical.
If, for instance, we touch first the back of one hand, and then of the other,
we remark a qualitative unlikeness of sensation. It must not be thought
that such differences are mere matters of imagination, and that we take
the sensations to be different because we represent each of them to
ourselves as occupying a different place. With sufficient sharpening of
the attention, we may, confining ourselves to the quality of the feelings
alone, entirely abstract from their locality, and yet notice the differences
quite as markedly."
Whether these local contrasts shade into each other with absolutely
continuous gradations, we cannot say. But we know (continues Wundt)
1 Vorles. ii. Menschen- u. Thierseele, Leip., 1863, i. 214.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 19
that " they change, when we pass from one point of the skin to its neigh-
bour, with very different degrees of rapidity. On delicately feeling parts,
used principally for touching, such as the finger-tips, the difference of
sensation between two closely approximate points is already strongly
pronounced ; whilst in parts of lesser delicacy, as the arm, the back, the
legs, the disparities of sensation are observable'only between distant spots."
The internal organs, too, have their specific qualia of sen-
sation. An inflammation of the kidney is different from one
of the liver ; pains in joints and muscular insertions are
distinguished. Pain in the dental nerves is wholly unlike
the pain of a burn. But very important and curious simi-
larities prevail throughout these differences. Internal pains,
whose seat we cannot see, and have no means of knowing
unless the character of the pain itself reveal it, are felt by us
where they belong. Diseases of the stomach, kidney, liver,
rectum, prostate, &c., of the bones, of the brain and its
membranes, are referred to their proper position. Nerve
pains describe the length of the nerve. Such localisations
as those of vertical, frontal or occipital headache of intra-
cranial origin, force us to conclude that parts which are
neighbours, whether inner or outer, may possess by mere
virtue of that fact a common peculiarity of feeling, a respect
in which their sensations agree, and which serves as a token
of their proximity. These local colourings are, moreover, so
strong that we cognise them as the same, throughout all
contrasts of sensible quality in the accompanying perception.
Cold and heat are wide as the poles asunder ; yet if both
fall on the cheek, there mixes with them something that
makes them in that respect identical, just as, contrariwise,
despite the identity of cold with itself wherever found, when
we get it first on the palm and then on the cheek, some
difference comes, which keeps the two experiences for ever
asunder. 1
1 Of the anatomical and physiological conditions of these facts we know
as yet but little, and that little need not here be discussed. Some differ-
ences there must be, either in the composition of the nerve-tissue or in the
manner in which, in different places, it is affected by the tissues in contact
with it when they themselves are touched. These latter mechanical con-
ditions cannot however obtain in the case of the retina, the different
points of which exhibit nevertheless a wonderfully delicately graded system
of sensations dependent on locality alone. Two principal hypotheses have
been invoked in the case of the retina. Wundt (Mensclun- u. Thierseelc, i.
214) called attention to the changes of colour-sensibility which the retina
displays as the image of the coloured object passes from the fovea to the
periphery. The colour alters and becomes darker, and the change, is more
rapid in certain directions than in others. This alteration in general, how-
ever, is one of which, as such, we are wholly unconscious. We see the sky
as bright blue all over, the modifications of the blue sensation being inter-
20 PKOF. W. JAMES :
And now let us revert to the query propounded a moment
since : Can these differences of mere quality in feeling, vary-
ing according to locality yet having each sensibly and in-
trinsically and by itself nothing to do with position, con-
stitute the ' susceptibilities ' we mentioned, the conditions of
being perceived in position, of the localities to which they
belong ? The numbers on a row of houses, the initial letters
of a set of words, have no intrinsic kinship with points of
space, and yet they are the conditions of our knowledge
where any house is in the row, or any word in the dictionary.
Can the modifications of feeling in question be tags or labels
of this kind which in no wise originally reveal the position
of the spot to which they are attached, but guide us to it by
what Berkeley would call a "customary tie"? Many
authors have unhesitatingly replied in the affirmative.
Lotze, who in his Medizinische Psychologic, 1 first described the
sensations in this way, designated them, thus conceived, as
local-signs. This term has obtained wide currency in Ger-
many, and in speaking of the ' Local-sign theory ' hereafter,
I shall always mean the theory which denies that there can
be in a sensation any element of actual locality, of inherent
spatial order, any tone as it were which cries to us imme-
diately and without further ado, ' I am here,' or ' I am
there ' .
If, as may well be the case, we by this time find ourselves
tempted to accept the Local-sign theory in a general way, we
have to clear up several farther matters. If a sign is to lead
us to the thing it means, we must have some other source of
knowledge of that thing. Either the thing has been given
in a previous experience of which the sign also formed part
they are associated; or it is what Keid calls a 'natural'
preted by us, not as differences in the objective colour, but as distinctions
in its locality. Lotze (Medizinische Psychologie, 333, 355), on the other
hand, has pointed out the peculiar tendency which each particular point
of the retina has to call forth that movement of the eye-ball which will
carry the image of the exciting object from the point in question to the
fovea. With each separate tendency to movement (as with each actual
movement) we may suppose a peculiar modification of sensibility to be
conjoined. This modification would constitute the peculiar local tinging
of the image by each point. See also Sully 's Psychology, pp. 118-121.
Prof. B. Erdman has quite lately (Vierteljahrsschrift f. wiss. Phil., x.
324-9) denied the existence of all evidence for such immanent gualia
of feeling characterising each locality. Acute as his remarks are, they quite
fail to convince me. On the skin the qualia are evident, I should say.
Where, as on the retina, they are less so (Kries and Auerbach), this may
well be a mere difficulty of discrimination not yet educated to the
analysis.
1 1852, p. 331.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 21
sign, that is, a feeling which, the first time it enters the
mind, evokes from the native powers thereof a cognition of
the thing that hitherto had lain dormant. In both cases,
however, the sign is one thing, and the thing another. In
the instance that now concerns us, the sign is a quality of
feeling and the thing is a position. Now we have seen that
the position of a point is not only revealed, but created, by
the presence of other external points to which it stands in
determinate relations. If the sign can by any machinery
which it sets in motion evoke a consciousness either of
the other points, or of the relations, or of both, it would
seem to fulfil its function, and reveal to us the position we
seek.
But such a machinery is already familiar to us. It is
neither more nor less than the law of habit in the nervous
system. When any point of the sensitive surface has been
frequently excited simultaneously with, or immediately
before or after other points, and afterwards comes to be
excited alone, there will be a tendency for its perceptive
nerve-centre to irradiate into the nerve-centres of the other
points. Subjectively considered, this is the same as if we
said that the local-sign, the peculiar feeling, of the first point,
when aroused, will suggest the feeling of the entire region
with whose stimulation its own excitement has heen habi-
tually associated.
Take the case of the stomach. When the epigastrium is
heavily pressed, when certain muscles contract, &c., the
stomach is squeezed, and its peculiar local-sign awakes in
consciousness simultaneously with the local-signs of the
other squeezed parts. There is also a sensation of total
vastness aroused by the combined irritation, and somewhers
in this the stomach-feeling seems to lie. Suppose that
later a pain arises in the stomach from some non-mechanical
cause. It will be tinged by the gastric local-sign, and the
nerve-centre supporting this latter feeling will excite the
centre supporting the dermal and muscular feelings habitually
associated with it when the excitement was mechanical.
From the combination the same peculiar vastness will again
arise. In a word, ' something ' in the stomach-sensation
will ' remind ' us of a total space of which the diaphragmatic
and epigastric sensations also form a part, or, to express it
more briefly still, will suggest the neighbourhood of these
latter organs. 1
1 Maybe the localisation of intracranial pain is itself clue to such asso-
ciation as this of local-signs with each other, rather than to their quali-
tative similarity in neighbouring parts (supra, p. 19) ; though it is con-
22 PROF. W. JAMES :
Eevert to the case of two excited points on a surface with
an unexcited space between them. The general result of
previous experience has been that when either point was
impressed by an outward object, the same object also touched
the immediately neighbouring parts. Each point has thus
its own local-sign associated with those of a circle of sur-
rounding points, the association fading in strength as the
circle grows larger. Each will revive its own circle ; but
when both are excited together, the strongest revival will be
that due to the combined irradiation. Now the tract joining
the two excited points is the only part common to the two
circles. And the feelings of this whole tract will therefore
awaken with considerable vividness in the imagination when
its extremities are touched by an outward irritant. The
mind receives the impression of two distinct points, joined
by an ideal line. The twoness of the points comes from the
contrast of their local-signs : the line from the associations
into which experience has wrought these latter. If no ideal
line arises we have duality without sense of interval ; if the
line be excited actually rather than ideally, we have the in-
terval given with its ends, in the form of a single extended
feeling. E. H. Weber, in the famous article in which he
laid the foundations of all our accurate knowledge of these
subjects, laid it down as the logical requisite for the percep-
tion of two separated points, that the mind should, along
with its consciousness of them, become aware of an unexcited
interval as such. I have only tried to show how the known
laws of experience may cause this requisite to be fulfilled.
Of course, if the local signs of the entire region offer but little
qualitative contrast inter se, the line suggested will be but
dimly defined or discriminated in length or direction from
other possible lines in its neighbourhood. This is what
happens in the back, where consciousness can sunder two
spots, whilst only vaguely apprehending their distance and
direction apart.
The relation of position of the two points is the suggested
line. Turn now to the simplest case, that of a single
ceivable that association and similarity itself should here have one and the
same neural basis. If we suppose the sensory nerves from those parts of
the body beneath any patch of skin to terminate in the same sensorial brain-
tract as those from the skin itself, and if the excitement of any one fibre
tends to irradiate through the whole of that tract, the feelings of all fibres
going to that tract would presumably both have a similar intrinsic quality,
and at the same time tend each to arouse the other. Since the same nerve-
trunk in most cases supplies the skin and the parts beneath, the anatomical
hypothesis presents nothing improbable.
THE PEBCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 23
excited spot. How can it suggest its position ? Not by
recalling any particular line unless experience have constantly
been in the habit of marking or tracing some one line from
it towards some one neighbouring point. Now on the back,
belly, viscera, &c., no such tracing habitually occurs. The
consequence is that the only suggestion is that of the whole
neighbouring circle, i.e., the spot simply recalls the general
region in which it happens to lie. By a process of successive
construction, it is quite true that we can also get the feeling
of distance between the spot and some other particular spot.
Attention, by reinforcing the local-sign of one part of the
circle, can awaken a new circle round this part, and so de
proche en proche we may slide our feeling down from our
cheek say to our foot. But when we first touched our cheek
we had no consciousness of the foot at all. 1 In the extremi-
ties, the lips, the tongue and other mobile parts, the case is
different. We there have an instinctive tendency, when a
part of lesser discriminative sensibility is touched, to move
the member so that the touching object glides along it to the
place where sensibility is greatest. If a body touches our
hand we move the hand over it till the finger-tips are able to
explore it. If the sole of our foot touches anything we bring
it towards the toes, and so forth. There thus arise lines of
habitual passage from all points of a member to its sensitive
tip. These are the lines most readily recalled when any
point is touched, and their recall is identical with the
consciousness of the distance of the touched point from the
'tip'. I think anyone must be aware when he touches a
point of his hand or wrist that it is the relation to the
finger-tips of which he is usually most conscious. Points on
the fore-arm suggest either the finger-tips or the elbow (the
latter being a spot of greater sensibility). 2 In the foot it is
the toes, and so on. A point can only be cognised in its
relations to the entire body at once by awakening a visual
1 Unless, indeed, the foot happen to be spontaneously tingling or some-
thing of the sort at the moment. The whole surface of the body is always
in a state of semi-conscious irritation which needs only the emphasis of
attention, or of some accidental inward irritation, to become strong at any
point.
2 It is true that the inside of the fore-arm, though its discriminative
sensibility is often less than that of the outside, usually rises very promi-
nently into consciousness when the latter is touched. Its (esthetic sensi-
bility to contact is a good deal finer. We enjoy stroking it from the
extensor to the flexor surface around the ulnar side more than in the
reverse direction. Pronating movements give rise to contacts in this
order, and are frequently indulged in when the back of the fore-arm feels
an object against it.
24 PEOF. W. JAMES :
image of the whole body. Such awakening is even more
obviously than the previously considered cases a matter of
pure association.
This leads us to the eye. On the retina the fovea and the
yellow spot about it form a focus of exquisite sensibility,
towards which every impression falling on an outlying por-
tion of the field is moved by an instinctive action of the
muscles of the eyeball. Few persons, until their atten-
tion is called to the fact, are aware how almost impos-
sible it is to keep a conspicuous visible object in the
margin of the field of view. The moment volition is
relaxed we find that without our knowing it our eyes
have turned so as to bring it to the centre. This is why
most persons are unable to keep the eyes steadily converged
upon a point in space with nothing in it. The objects
against the walls of the room invincibly attract the fovese to
themselves. If we contemplate a blank wall or sheet of
paper, we always observe in a moment that we are directly
looking at some speck upon it which, unnoticed at first, ended
by ' catching our eye ' . Thus whenever an image falling on
the point P of the retina excites attention, it more habitually
moves from that point towards the fovea than in any one
other direction. The line traced by this motion is not always
a straight line. When the direction of the point from the
fovea is neither vertical nor horizontal but oblique, the line
traced is often a curve, with its concavity directed upwards
if the direction is upwards, downwards if the direction is
downwards. This may be verified by anyone who will take
the trouble to make a simple experiment with a luminous
body like a candle-flame in a dark enclosure, or a star.
Gazing first at some point remote from the source of light,
let the eye be suddenly turned full upon the latter. The
luminous image will necessarily fall in succession upon a con-
tinuous series of points, reaching from the one first affected
to the fovea. But by virtue of the slowness with which
retinal excitements die away, the entire series of points will
for an instant be visible as an after-image, displaying the
above peculiarity of form according to its situation. 1 These
radiating lines are neither regular nor invariable in the same
person, nor, probably, equally curved in different individuals.
We are incessantly drawing them between the fovea and
every point of the field of view. Objects remain in their
peripheral indistinctness only so long as they are unnoticed.
3 These facts were first noticed by Wundt ; see his Beitrage, p. 140, 202.
See also Lamansky, Pflwjer's Archir, xi. 418.
THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 25
The moment we attend to them they grow distinct through
one of these motions which leads to the idea prevalent
among uninstructed persons that we see distinctly all parts
of the field of view at once. The result of this incessant
tracing of radii is that whenever a local-sign P is awakened
by a spot of light falling upon it, it recalls forthwith, even
though the eyeball be unmoved, the local-signs of all the other
points which lie between P and the fovea. It recalls them
in imaginary form, just as the normal reflex movement would
recall them in vivid form ; and with their recall is given a
consciousness more or less faint of the whole line on which
they lie. In other words, no ray of light can fall on any
retinal spot without the local-sign of that spot revealing to
us, by recalling the line of its most habitual associates, its
direction and distance from the centre of the field. The
fovea acts thus as the origin of a system of polar co-ordinates,
in relation to which each and every retinal point has through
an incessantly repeated process of association its distance
and direction determined. Were P alone illumined and all
the rest of the field dark we should still, even with motion-
less eyes, know whether P lay high or low, right or left,
through the ideal streak, different from all other streaks,
which P alone has the power of awakening. 1
So far all has been plain sailing, but now our course begins
to be tortuous. When P recalls an ideal line leading to the
fovea the line is felt in its entirety and but vaguely ; whilst
P, which we supposed to be a single star of actual light,
stands out in strong distinction from it. The ground of the
distinction between P and the ideal line which it terminates
is manifest P being vivid while the line is faint ; but why
should P hold the particular position it does, at the end of
the line, rather than anywhere else for example, in its
middle ? That seems something not at all manifest.
1 Notice that all these tracing motions, as we describe them, are
supposed to awaken sensibility by the lines they draw on the sensitive
surfaces, by moving these over objective points, lines which for an instant
are felt through their whole extent. They are not supposed to be per-
ceived by the muscular organs, as so much space moved through, along
which the surface-sensations are distributed like beads upon a string. We
shall later see reason to think that all the muscular sensations have a
certain largeness ; they never can give rise in the mind to anything as
distinct as the feeling' of a line, with its direction and length. Only a
sensitive surface is competent to that. Most English psychologists, how-
ever, assume that when muscles contract their sensation is that of the line
traversed by the extremity which they move. Undoubtedly muscular
contractions do break space up for us into lines ; they dissect it in a way
impossible without their aid, but only because they draw lines for us
upon our sensitive surfaces.
26 PEOF. W. JAMES I
To clear up our thoughts about this latter mystery, let us
take the case of an actual line of light, none of whose parts
are ideal. The feeling of the line is produced, as we know,
when a multitude of retinal points are excited together, each
of which when excited separately would give rise to one of the
feelings called local-signs. Each of these signs is the feeling
of a small space. From their simultaneous arousal we
might well suppose a feeling of larger space to result. But
why should it be necessary that in this larger spaciousness
each local-sign (or whatever other feeling now in the aggre-
gate excitement corresponds to the local-sign) should appear
out- and along-side of its neighbour in a strictly determinate
position which it never abandons ? Why should the sign a
be always at one end of the line, z at the other, and m in the
middle ? For though the line be a unitary streak of light,
its several constituent points can nevertheless break out
from it, and become alive, each for itself, under the selective
eye of attention.
The uncritical reader, giving his first careless glance at the
subject, will say that there is no mystery in this, and that
" of course " local-signs must appear alongside of each
other, each in its own place ; there is no other way possible.
But the more philosophic student, whose business it is to
discover difficulties quite as much as to get rid of them,
will reflect that it is conceivable that the partial factors
might fuse into a larger space, within whose bulk each
should be discriminated just as we discriminate a single
voice in a chorus, not by its position but rather by its
quality. 1 He will wonder why, after combining into the
line, the points can become severally alive again : the
separate puffs of a siren no longer strike the ear after they
have fused into a certain pitch of sound. He will recall the
fact that when, after looking at things with one eye closed,
we double the number of retinal points affected by opening
the other eye, the new retinal sensations do not as a rule
appear alongside of the old ones and additional to them, but
merely make the old ones seem larger and nearer. Why
should the affection of new points on the same retina have so
different a result ? In fact he will see no sort of logical
connexion between (1) the original separate local-signs,
(2) the line as a unit, (3) the line with the points dis-
criminated in it, and (4) the various nerve-processes which
subserve all these different things. He will suspect our
1 Remember the definition of local-sign (p. 21) as a mere "intensive'
quality of feeling, which, only in combination with other feelings, produces a
feeling of space-relation.
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 27
local-sign of being a very slippery and ambiguous sort of
creature. Positionless at first, it no sooner appears in the
midst of a gang of companions than it is found maintaining
the strictest position of its own, and assigning place to each
of its associates. How is this possible ? Must we accept
what we rejected a while ago as absurd, and admit the points
each to have position in se ? l Or must we suspect that our
whole construction has been fallacious, and that we have
tried to conjure up out of association qualities which the
associates never contained ?
There is no doubt a real difficulty here ; and the shortest
way of dealing with it would be to confess it insoluble and
ultimate. Even if position be not an intrinsic character of
any one of those sensations we have called local-signs, we
must still admit that there is something about everyone of
them that stands for the potentiality of position, and is the
ground why the local-sign, when it gets placed at all, gets
placed here rather than there. If this ' something ' be inter-
preted as a physiological something, . as the nerve-process
that underlies the production of the feeling, it is easy to say
1 How strong the temptation to admit this may become is well seen in
the following quotation from Stumpfs Psychologischer Ur sprung der Raum-
vorstellung (p. 121), a work which seems to me to give on the whole the
most philosophical account of the subject yet published. Stumpf says :
" We hold a sheet of paper before us and ask : Can different positions be
distinguished, in and of themselves, when of precisely the same colour ?
They can, without doubt, and indeed in the same way and in the same
sense in which two colours can be distinguished one from the other. It
makes a difference in our experience, we notice, whether red is presented
in this place or the other, just as it makes a difference whether green or
red is offered. We recognise in both cases by simply looking at them that
we have before us different species of the same genus. Red and green are
both colours, but different colours as our sight assures us. Here and There
in the field of vision are both positions, but different positions, as again our
sight proves to us. Here, There, In that place, are specified differences of
place, as green, red, blue, are of colour. So then separate positions are
plainly distinguished as such in representation. Indeed they are so very
distinct that identity never occurs between them (we cannot imagine two
positions the same), and the same colours can be recognised as two only
through the difference of their positions. To depict this difference I am
naturally unable, for it is no qualitative difference ; but notwithstanding
that it is a real difference and can be felt. I can moreover as little define
it as I can that of the two colours (as sensations namely, not ethereal
vibrations). But I can point it out, and upon him who does not know it,
or denies it, force conviction. In short, then, what is the meaning of 'Two
things are different in representation,' other than 'They can as such be
distinguished, belong to a particular class of distinguishable contents ' ?
I know not in what other sense we can talk of the difference of colours.
This criterion however is just as applicable to positions ; nor do I know
how difference of colours is distinguished from difference of positions."
See also pp. 143-153.
28 PKOF. W. JAMES I
in a blank way that, when it is excited alone, it is an ' ulti-
mate fact ' (1) that the separate feeling of positionless spot
will result ; that when it is excited together with other
similar processes, but without the process of discriminative
attention, it is another ' ultimate fact ' (2) that the feeling of
unitary line will come ; and that the final ' ultimate fact ' (3)
is that, when the nerve-process is excited in combination with
that other process which subserves the feeling of attention,
what results will be the line with the local-sign inside of it
determined to a particular place. Thus we should escape
the responsibility of explaining, by falling back on the con-
fessed inscrutability of the psycho-neural nexus in all cases.
The moment we call the ground of localisation physiological,
we need only point out how, in those cases in which localisa-
tion occurs, the physiological process differs from those in
which it does not, to have done all we can possibly do in the
matter. This would be unexceptionable logic, and with it
we might let the matter drop, satisfied that there was no
self-contradiction in it, but only the universal psychological
puzzle of how a new mode of consciousness emerges when-
ever a fundamentally new mode of nervous action occurs. 1
But, blameless as such tactics would logically be on our
part, let us see whether we cannot push our theoretic insight
a little farther. It seems to me we can. We cannot, it is
true, give a reason why the line we feel when process (2)
awakens should have its own peculiar shape ; nor can we
explain the essence of the process of discriminative attention.
But we can see why, if the brute facts be admitted that a
line may have one of its parts singled out by attention at all,
and that that part may appear in relation to other parts at
all, the relation must be in the line itself, for the line and
the parts are the only things supposed to be in consciousness.
And we can furthermore suggest a reason why parts appear-
ing thus in relation to each other in a line should fall into
an immutable order, and each within that order keep its
characteristic place.
If a lot of such local-signs all have any quality which
evenly augments as we pass from one to the other, we can
arrange them in an ideal serial order, in which any one local-
sign must lie below those with more, above those with less,
1 The reader will please remember that when we began to give our
account of the matter, we said nothing of association, which is a psychic
law, but spoke only of the " law of habit in the nervous system ". This
might easily bring it about, that a point, positionless through nerve-process
(1), should appear embedded in a line through nerve-process (2), and finally
should start out from a particular part of that line through nerve-process (3).
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.) 29
of the quality in question. It must divide the series into
two parts, unless indeed it have a maximum or minimum
of the quality, when it either begins or ends it.
Such an ideal series of local-signs in the mind is, however,
not yet identical with the feeling of a line in space. Touch
a dozen points on the skin successively, and there seems no
necessary reason why the notion of a definite line should
emerge, even though we be strongly aware of a gradation of
quality among the touches. We may of course symbolically
arrange them in a line in our thought, but we can always
distinguish between a line symbolically thought and a line
directly felt.
But note now the peculiarity of the nerve-processes of all
these local-signs : though they may give no line when
excited successively, when excited together they do give the
actual sensation of a line in space. The sum of them is the
neural process of that line ; the sum of their feelings is the
feeling of that line ; and if we begin to single out particular
feelings from the mass, and notice them by their rank in the
scale, it is impossible to see how this rank can appear except
as an actual fixed space-position sensibly felt as a bit of the
total line. The scale itself appearing as a line, rank in it
must appear as a definite part of the line. If the seven notes
of an octave, when heard together, appeared to the sense of
hearing as an outspread line of sound which it is needless
to say they do not why then no one note could be discri-
minated without being localised, according to its pitch, in the
line, either as one of its extremities or as some part between. 1
1 But not alone the gradation of their quality arranges the local-sign
feelings in a scale. Our movements arrange them also in a tfime-scale.
Whenever a stimulus passes from point a of the skin or retina to point
/, it awakens the local-sign feelings in the perfectly definite time-order
abcdef. It cannot excite / until ode have been successively aroused.
The feeling c sometimes is preceded by ab, sometimes followed by ba,
according to the movement's direction ; the result of it all being that we
never feel either a, c or /, without there clinging to it faint reverberations
of the various time-orders of transition in which, throughout past experi-
ence, it has been aroused. To the local-sign a there clings the tinge or
tone, the penumbra or fringe, of the transition bed. To /, to c, there
cling quite different tones. Once admit the principle that a feeling may be
tinged by the reproductive consciousness of an habitual transition, even
when the transition is not made, and it seems entirely natural to admit
that, if the transition be habitually in the order abcdef, and if a, c and
/be felt separately at all, a will be felt with an essential earliness, f with
an essential lateness, and that c will fall between. Thus those psycholo-
gists who set little store by local-signs and great store by movements in
explaining space-perception, would have a perfectly definite time-order out
of which to account for the definite order of positions that appears when
sensitive spots are excited all at once. Without, however, the preliminary
30 PROF. W. JAMES I THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (l.)
And with this we can close the first great division of our
subject. We have shown that, within the range of every
sense, experience takes ab initio the spatial form. We have
also shown that in the cases of the retina and skin every
sensible total may be subdivided by discriminative attention
into sensible parts, which are also spaces, and into relations
between the parts, these being sensible spaces too. Further-
more, we have seen that different parts, once discriminated,
necessarily fall into a determinate order, both by reason of
definite gradations in their quality, and (in a footnote) by
reason of the fixed order of time-succession which voluntary
attention must follow in its movements when it passes from
one to another of them. But in all this nothing has been said
of the comparative measurement of one sensible space-total
against another, or of the way in which, by summing our
divers simple sensible space-experiences together, we end by
constructing what we regard as the unitary, continuous and
infinite objective Space of the real world. To this more
difficult inquiry we next pass.
(To ~be continued.)
admission of the ' ultimate fact ' that this collective excitement shall feel
like a line and nothing else, it can never be explained why the new order
should needs be an order of positions, and not of an altogether different
sort. We shall hereafter have any amount of opportunity to observe how
thoroughgoing is the participation of motion in all our spatial measure-
ments. Whether the local-signs have their respective qualities evenly
graduated or not, the feelings of transition must be set down as among
the vercK causce in localisation. But the gradation of the local-signs is
hardly to be doubted ; so we may believe ourselves really to possess two
sets of reasons for localising any point we may happen to distinguish
from out the midst of any line or any larger space.
II." IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS."
By Professor HENEY SIDGWICK.
IN MIND No. 39 I reviewed Dr Martineau's Types of Ethical
Theory. A reply from Dr. Martirieau, somewhat longer than
my review, appeared in the next number. On reading this
reply; it seemed to me desirable to deal in different ways with
the historical and the theoretical portions of it. Dr. Mar-
tineau's answers to my criticisms on his historical work
convinced me that there was nothing to be gained by a
prolonged and enlarged controversy on this part of the
subject : a brief and immediate rejoinder, which I gave in
the following number, was all that seemed desirable. The
case was otherwise with the further explanations which Dr.
Martineau had been led to give of his own views : since, on
the one hand, these threw new lights on certain parts of Dr.
Martineau's doctrine, which rendered necessary a partial
modification of my objections to it ; while, on the other
hand, they suggested to me that possibly a fuller statement
of these objections might render them more intelligible to
Dr. Martineau, and to any others who may share his ethical
views.
The appearance of a second edition of Dr. Martineau's
book seems to afford a favourable opportunity for this fuller
statement ; and, for the convenience of the reader, I shall
take up the question de novo, and shall not refer except in
one note to my original article ; while, at the same time,
I shall try to avoid any mere repetition of arguments there
urged.
I will begin by criticising an unwarranted assumption as
it appears to me which underlies Dr. Martineau's whole
procedure. He characterises his ethical system as " idiopsy-
chological " : that is, he professes to give the "story" that
the " moral consciousness tells of itself," or " what the moral
sentiment has to say of its own experience". And he appears
generally to entertain no doubt that there is one and the
same " story " to be told in all cases ; that if the same ques-
tion be definitely put to the moral consciousness of any
number of different individuals, they will return definitely the
same answer as his own. He holds, at any rate, 1 that all
1 ii. 16, 17. The references are throughout to the second edition
(vol. ii).
32 PROF. H. SIDGWICK :
men in their particular moral judgments judge primarily and
essentially of the moral preferability of particular impulses or
incentives to action, and that so far as the impulses presented
are similar men's judgments of their moral value will also
be similar. " However limited the range of our moral con-
sciousness, it would lead us all to the same verdicts, had we
all the same segment of the series [of impulses] under our
cognisance" (p. 61) . . . "the instant that any contend-
ing principles press their invitations on [a man] , there too is
the consciousness of their respective rights . . . his duty
consists in acting from the right affection, about which he
is never left in doubt " (p. 72) unless, that is, he wilfully
neglects to use the faculty of moral insight with which he is
endowed, for " the inner eye is ever open, unless it droops in
wilful sleep".
Now I do not find that Dr. Martineau has adduced any suffi-
cient reasons for making this fundamental assumption. He
can hardly rest it on the agreement of the accounts given of
the moral consciousness by the persons who have most sys-
tematically reflected on it ; since this class includes, as I shall
presently show, moralists who disagree fundamentally with
Dr. Martineau. And I see no sign that his assumption is
based 011 a careful induction from the accounts actually given
by plain men of their moral experience. Indeed in other
passages Dr. Martineau seems to admit that the moral judg-
ments of mature men do not actually manifest an undeviating
harmony with his own scale of preferability. ;"jTo find the
true instinct of conscience," he says, " we may more often
go with hope to the child than to the grandparents. . . .
of most men the earlier years are nobler and purer . . .
unfaithfulness inevitably impairs and corrupts the native
insight." That there is an element of truth in this I would
not deny : it does not, however, appear that Dr. Martineau
has made any such careful and extensive observation of the
moral judgments of children as would justify him in affirm-
ing broadly that they are more in harmony with his own
scale than those of mature men ; and, in any case, the
assumption that the divergences of the latter are due to
" unfaithfulness " is one that seems to me to require a kind
of justification that he has not attempted.
I have been led both from observation of my con-
temporaries and from examination of the morality of
other ages and countries to take an essentially differ-
ent view of the variation and conflict in men's moral
judgments and sentiments which their discourse appears
to reveal. I agree, indeed, with Dr. Martineau that
" IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 33
such variations are to a considerable extent due to differ-
ences in the objects contemplated ; but I hold that they
cannot entirely or even mainly be referred to this cause :
that when we have made full allowance for this, an im-
portant element of difference still remains which it appears
to me unwarrantable to attribute to " unfaithfulness," or
" wilful drooping of the inward eye " in one or other of the
differing individuals. Among reflective persons, who belong
to the same age of history and are members of the same
civilised society, the amount of difference that is disclosed by
a comparison of moral opinions bears usually a small propor-
tion to the amount of agreement ; but it is probably rare
that some material difference is not discernible, whenever
two such persons compare frankly and fully the results of
the spontaneous, unreflective play of their moral sentiments.
And if we survey the views of the whole aggregate of persons
who devote serious thought to moral questions at any given
time, we cannot but see that systematic ethical reflection,
while it tends to group individuals together into so-called
schools, and so to intensify the consciousness of a common
morality among members of the same group, has so far
tended to develop profounder differences between one group
and another.
As an illustration of the irreducible differences of which
I am speaking, I may note a point of some importance on
which I find myself in disagreement with Dr. Martineau. In
stating wfr ' he calls the " fundamental ethical fact of which
we have to find the interpretation " (p. 18), he affirms that
" wherever disapprobation falls, we are impelled to award
disgrace and such external ill as may mark our antipathy, with
the consciousness that we are not only entitled but con-
strained to this infliction". Now I find that the sense of being
" constrained to award external ill " to a fellow-man of whose
conduct I disapprove, not in order to prevent worse mischief
to him or to others, but merely to " mark my antipathy," is
entirely absent from my moral consciousness ; and, what is
more, I feel an instinctive moral aversion to the impulse thus
characterised which goes decidedly beyond my reflective and
deliberate disapprobation of it. But I do not therefore affirm
that Dr. Martineau has wrongly analysed his own moral
consciousness ; still less do I suggest that it has been cor-
rupted through unfaithfulness. I should rather say that his
sentiment appears to me to belong to that earlier stage in
the development of morality in which legal punishment is
regarded as essentially retributive, instead of preventive. Nor
do I affirm that the common sense even of civilised mankind
3
34 PEOF. H. SIDGWICK :
has as yet passed out of this stage ; but I think that it is
beginning to pass out of it, and that a continually increasing
number of reflective persons are conscious of no moral impulse
to " award external ill " to their fellow-creatures, except as
a means to some ulterior good.
I have made these preliminary remarks, because, while
the main object of this paper is to show the erroneousness of
Dr. Martineau's account of the moral judgments which we,
here and now, habitually pass, it is important to make clear
at the outset that the question discussed does not seem to
me to admit of being answered so decisively as Dr. Mar-
tineau assumes. I think that the assumption of a common
moral consciousness which we all share, and which each of
us can find in himself by introspection, is to a great extent
true ; that to a great extent we educated members of
the same society tend, in our ordinary thought and dis-
course, to pass similar judgments of approbation and dis-
approbation, feel similar sentiments of liking or aversion for
the conduct so judged, and similar promptings to encourage
or repress it. But, after carefully reflecting on my own moral
sentiments and comparing them with those of others to
whom I have no reason to attribute a less careful reflection
I do not find in the result anything like the extent of
agreement which Dr. Martineau assumes. This is the expla-
nation of the "hesitation" that Dr. Martineau finds in my
attempt to formulate the morality of common sense : on any
point on which opposing opinions appear to me tolerably
balanced, so that neither can fairly be described as eccentric,
I represent common sense as hesitating : to decide any such
point either way would be an improper substitution of
my own judgment for that common judgment of educated
and thoughtful persons which I am trying to ascertain and
formulate. Nor do I consider the verdict of common sense,
so far as it is clearly pronounced, as final on the question of
ethical truth or falsehood ; since a study of the history of
human opinion leads me to regard the current civilised
morality of the present age as merely a stage in a long pro-
cess of development, in which the human mind has I hope
been gradually moving towards a truer apprehension of
what ought to be. As reflection shows us in the morality of
earlier stages an element of what we now agree to regard as
confusion and error, it seems reasonable to suppose that
similar defects are lurking in our own current and accepted
morality ; and, in fact, observation and analysis of this
morality, so far as I have been able to ascertain what it is,
has led me to see such defects in it. How to eliminate, if
" IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 35
possible, these elements of error, confusion and uncertainty
is, in my view, the fundamental question of ethics, which
can only be answered by the construction of an ethical
system. With this task I am not at present concerned
further than to explain that I do not expect to find this true
moral system where Dr. Martineau looks for it ; that is, by
introspection directed to the moral sentiments and apparently
immediate moral judgments caused in my mind by the con-
templation of particular acts, apart from systematic conside-
ration of these acts and their consequences in relation to
what I adopt as the ultimate end of action. That I should
have such sentiments, and, where prompt action is needed,
should act on such judgments, is at once natural and, in my
opinion, conducive to the ultimate end ; but I continually
find that these immediate pronouncements have to be cor-
rected and restrained by a careful consideration of con-
sequences.
To sum up : there are, in my view, three fundamentally
distinct questions, which ought to be investigated by
essentially different methods : (1) what the received morality
was in other ages and countries, which is to be answered by
impartial historical study; (2) what the received morality is
here and now, which is to be ascertained by an unpre-
judiced comparison of one's own moral judgments with
those of others ; (3) what morality ought to be a problem
which can only be solved by the construction of an ethical
system. It is the answer which Dr. Martineau has given
to the second of these questions and this alone which I
propose now to consider.
According to Dr. Martineau, the " broad fact " of the
moral consciousness is that " we have an irresistible tendency
to pass judgments of right and wrong " (p. 17) : when I pass
such judgments "as an agent " on my own conduct " I
speak of my duty" a word which "expresses the sense we
have of a debt which we are bound," or " obliged," to pay.
This sense of obligation implies, of course, a conflict between
the moral judgment and some impulse prompting us to con-
duct disapproved by our moral judgment. But in Dr. Mar-
tineau's view it necessarily implies more than this ; it neces-
sarily implies the recognition of "another person," who
has authority over us : the dictates of conscience, he holds,
are unmeaning unless we give them a Theistic interpre-
tation.
Now I quite admit that a Christian Theist must necessarily
conceive of the dictates of conscience as Divine commands ;
but I think it rash and unwarrantable in him to affirm that
36 PEOF. H. SIDGWICK I
they cannot be regarded as authoritative unless they are so
conceived. To me, indeed, it is inconceivable that the
authoritativeness or bindingness of moral rules should depend
essentially on the fact that they emanate from " another
Person". Dr. Martineau himself admits or I should rather
say emphatically declares that it is not a Person regarded
apart from moral attributes that can be conceived as the
source of the authority of which we are speaking ; it is, he
says, " an inward rule of Eight which gives law to the action
of God's power . . . which first elevates into authority
what else would only operate as a necessity or a bribe " (p.
113). If, then, moral rules, when conceived as Divine com-
mands, are thought to have authority not because they
emanate from an Omnipotent Person, but because they
emanate from a person who wills in accordance with a rule
of Right, I cannot conceive how they should lose this
authority even if the " other person " is eliminated altogether,
provided that the " rule of right " is left.
I may perhaps make this clearer by referring to an analogy
which Dr. Martineau elsewhere draws between mathematical
and moral truth. " There is," he says, " as much ground, or
as little, for trusting to the report of our moral faculty as for
believing our intellect respecting the relations of number and
dimensions. Whatever be the ' authority ' of Reason respect-
ing the true, the same is the ' authority' of Conscience
respecting the right and the good ' 51 (p. 114).
Now I presume that Dr. Martineau does not maintain
that the " authority of Reason respecting the relations of
number and dimension in regard to time" cannot " really
1 In dealing with this point in my former article I quoted passages in
which, as it appeared to me, Dr. Martineau committed himself to a " defi-
nitely and confidently anthropomorphic conception of the Divine mind".
In his reply, Dr. Martineau affirmed that in the passages quoted he intended
to " explain an anthropomorphic habit " of which he had " exposed the
error," not to adopt it as his own. I accept, of course, Dr. Martineau's
account of his intentions ; but, having carefully re-read the passages from
which I quoted especially p. 86 (1st ed.) with its context, which remains
unaltered (as p. 92) in the present edition I feel bound to say that they
are not calculated to convey to the mind of an ordinary reader what he
now declares to be his meaning. Dr. Martineau writes throughout from
an avowedly Christian point of view : hence, when he describes
"Christianity" and "Christian feeling" as taking "naturally" a certain
view of the Divine Nature, without which " the negative element requisite
for every ethical conception, the antagonism to something resisted and
rejected, would be wanting ; and the evangelical and the heathen Theism
would be without further essential distinction" I do not think any
ordinary reader will suppose that Dr. Martineau is intending to " expose
the error " of the view in question.
" IDIQPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 37
exist " for an atheistic mathematician one who has, in
Laplace's phrase, had no " besoin de 1'hypothese de Dieu "
in his system of the physical universe. But if he does not
maintain this, I think he is bound in consistency to admit
that the " authority of Conscience respecting the right "may
similarly exist for the atheistic moralist.
I have accepted, for the sake of argument, Dr. Martineau's
distinction between ' Reason ' and ' Conscience '. But, to
prevent misunderstanding, I ought to explain that, in my
view, the "authority of Conscience" is the authority of
Reason in its application to practice : " authority" or " obli-
gation," in my view, expresses the relation that we recognise
on reflection between a judgment as to what ought to be
willed by us and a non-rational impulse prompting in a
direction opposed to this judgment.
Let us now consider more closely the general nature of the
judgment to which this authority however understood is
recognised as belonging. I find that in discussing this ques-
tion Dr. Martineau, on the one hand, labours needlessly a
point not likely to be disputed ; and, on the other hand,
confuses or slurs over the distinction which I regard as fun-
damentally important. We shall all, I conceive, agree that
moral approbation, strictly taken, 1 relates to what Dr. Mar-
tineau loosely calls the " inner spring or inner principle " of
an action i.e., that it relates to the mental or psychical
element of the complex fact which we call action ; as distinct
from the muscular movement that follows the psychical
volition, or any external consequences of this movement
considered as external and not as foreseen by the agent.
Further, I agree with Dr. Martineau in defining the object of
the common moral judgment as volition or choice of some
kind. Our difference begins when we ask what the object is
which is willed or chosen. In Dr. Martineau's view the
choice is always between particular impulses to action
whether " propensions," " passions," " affections " or " sen-
timents " ; in my view it is, in the largest and most impor-
tant class of cases, among different sets of foreseen external
effects, all of which are conceived to be within the power of
the agent. That Dr. Martineau has not clearly seen the
point at issue may, I think, be inferred from the language
(cp. pp. 129-30) in which he criticises my own procedure. He
1 I say * strictly taken,' because in a wider sense of the terms we approve
or disapprove of a human being and his actions without distinguishing
between their voluntary and involuntary elements ; just as in Dr. Mar-
tineau's words we " approve a house" or " condemn a ship," from a con-
sideration of its fitness or unfitness for some accepted end.
38 PKOF. H. SIDGWICK :
says that I, among others, " by no means call in question
the general principle that moral worth or defect is to be esti-
mated by the inward affection or intention whence actions
flow "; and implies that I have thereby " admitted the neces-
sity " of " enumerating " and " classifying " motives or im-
pulses to action, though I afterwards "run away from the
work as unmanageable and superfluous". But it is plain
that if I am right in regarding the choice of right outward
effect as being, in the most important cases, the primary
object of ordinary moral judgment, my primary business is
to enumerate and classify, not the propensions or passions
that prompt to choice, but the outward effects that ought to be
chosen and intended. It is always the choice or intention,
and not its actual result, that is approved or disapproved ;
but the differences of choice or intention, on which the moral
judgment turns, can only be conceived as differences in the
objects chosen ; and can therefore, on my view, only be
sought in that " field of external effects of action " which Dr.
Martineau would relegate to a separate and subsequent
investigation.
Nor is the case practically altered by that condition of our
approval of right choice to which I have (in my Methods of
Ethics, bk. iii., ch. i., p. 3) called attention under the term
" subjective rightness " ; viz., that the outward effects which
we judge to be the right objects of choice must not be thought
by the agent to be wrong. The condition is, in my view, an
essential one ; if, in any case owing to what we regard as
a mistake of conscience the agent makes what we hold to
be the right choice of foreseen outward effects, himself con-
ceiving it to be wrong, we certainly withhold our moral
approbation. If we are asked whether in this unhappy
situation a man ought to do what he mistakenly believes to
be his duty, or what really is his duty if he could only think
so, the question is found rather perplexing by common sense ;
and so far as it can ever be a practical question it would,
I think, be answered differently in different cases, according
to the magnitude and importance of the error of conscience.
But the difficulties of this question need not now be consi-
dered ; for, obviously, they arise equally whether the mistake
of conscience relates to choice of motives or to choice of out-
ward effects ; and, however essential it may be that a moral
agent should do what he believes to be right, this condition
of the object of moral approbation does not require or admit
of any systematic development. Thus the details with which
ethics is concerned still remain to be sought elsewhere ; and,
on my view, they are found by common sense primarily in
" IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 39
the region of external effects, and not among the different
propensions, passions, affections or sentiments impelling the
agent.
It may be said, perhaps, that the issue as I have stated it
cannot be fundamental, because the effects as foreseen must
operate as motives as causing desires or aversions other-
wise action would not result. 1 But my point is that the
effects which, in our judgment, make an action bad may not
have been desired at all, but only accepted as inevitable
accompaniments of what was desired, and that the effects
which make it good may have only been desired as a means
to some further end ; and that it is not to the desired effects
of volition, qua desired, but to the effects foreseen as certain
or highly probable and so chosen instead of other possible
consequences that our judgments of approbation and dis-
approbation are commonly directed under the heads of
justice, temperance, good faith, veracity and other leading
branches of duty. I contend that the approbation im-
plied by the designation of agents or acts as truthful, just,
temperate and the disapprobation implied by the opposite
terms are commonly given independently of any considera-
tion of motive, as distinct from intention or choice to produce
certain external effects (using ' external ' to include effects
on the agent's physical system). I do not say, as Dr. Mar-
tineau has understood me to say, that we regard the motives
of such acts as ethically unimportant : I recognise that com-
mon sense distinguishes motives as higher and lower, and
even positively as good and bad ; and if we definitely con-
ceive of (say) truth-speaking as prompted by a motive recog-
nised as bad, we do not approve of the agent's state of mind,
1 Dr. Martineau would not exactly urge this ; because he considers it
fundamentally important to lay stress on the absence of any conscious fore-
sight of effects in the case of what he distinguishes as " primary springs of
action," which urge us, " in the way of unreflecting instinct," to seek
blindly ends not preconceived. I agree that such blind impulses have a
considerable place among the normal causes of our voluntary action, though
I think he has exaggerated their place ; according to my experience, they
cannot be at all powerful or prolonged without arousing some representation
of the effects to which they prompt. But, in any case, I cannot understand
how they can be morally judged as blind; I conceive that the effects of
the action to which such unreflecting impulses prompt, however absent or
faintly represented when the impulse operates, are necessarily represented
when it becomes the object of a moral judgment. This will appear, I
think, if we reflect on any example included in Dr. Martineau's exposition
of the " scale of springs of action" e.g., in comparing the appetite for food
with the desire of the pleasure of eating, he says, " it is surely meaner to
eat for the pleasure's sake than to appease the simple hunger " : well, it
seems to me clear that, so far as I pass this judgment, it is not on hunger,
qua blind impulse, but on hunger conceived as an impulse directed towards
the removal of an organic want.
40 PEOF. H. SIDGWICK :
though I should say that we still approve of the act. We
think that the veracious agent has willed what he ought to
have willed, though he ought to have willed something else
too, viz., the suppression of the bad motive so far, at least,
as it was within his power to suppress it while doing the
act. I introduce this last qualification,, because I think
that it is not always within the power of the will and
therefore not always strictly a duty to get rid of an objec-
tionable motive.
Take the case of the motive which Dr. Martineau places
last, Vindictiveness, or the desire of malevolent pleasure.
Bentham and Sir James Stephen l regard it as an important
part of the benefits of criminal law that it provides the
" pleasure of revenge," or, as Sir J. Stephen says, a "legi-
timate satisfaction for the passion of revenge ". These
phrases, I think, give some offence to our common moral
consciousness ; and, in my Methods of Ethics, I have suggested
that " perhaps we may distinguish between the impulse to
inflict pain and the desire of the antipathetic pleasure which
the agent will reap from this infliction, and approve the for-
mer in certain circumstances, but condemn the latter abso-
lutely ". I suggest this, however, with some hesitation, on
account of the great difficulty of separating the two impulses.
A man under the influence of a strong passion of resentment
can hardly exclude from his mind altogether an anticipation
of the pleasure that he will feel when the passion is gratified ;
and, if so, he can hardly exclude altogether the desire of this
gratification. It is, I think, clear to common sense that a
man ought not to cherish this desire, to gloat over the antici-
pated gratification ; but it is, perhaps, too severe to say that
the desire of malevolent pleasure should be excluded alto-
gether. If, as Sir James Stephen says, the " deliberate
satisfaction which criminal law affords to the desire of ven-
geance " excited by gross crimes is an indispensable means
of preventing such crimes human nature being what it is ;
if it is important for the well-being of society that men
should derive " hearty satisfaction " from the hanging of a
cold-blooded murderer, or the infliction of penal servitude on
an unscrupulous swindler ; then it is, perhaps, going too far
to condemn absolutely the desire of this satisfaction. In
any case, it seems to me contrary to common sense to say
that the prosecution of such a murderer or swindler becomes
a bad act if the prosecutor is conscious of desiring the male-
volent pleasure that he will receive from the criminal's
punishment : we commonly judge such an act to be right,.
1 Cp. General View of the Criminal Law of England, cL. iv.
" IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 41
even though partly done from a motive which we think
ought to be excluded as far as possible. It is sometimes
said that, though a man cannot help having the inferior
motive, he can and ought to avoid yielding to it, or ' identi-
fying himself ' with it ; but here there seems to me some
psychological confusion or error. I cannot understand how
a man can avoid ' yielding to ' a desire, if he cannot exclude
it from his mind while doing precisely the act to which it
prompts. 1 Even if the motive of an externally right act
were entirely bad e.g., if a man were strictly veracious
with a view to gain and ultimately misuse the confidence
of his hearers common sense, I conceive, would still decide
that his veracious volition was right qua veracious; only that
it coexisted with a wrong intention as to future conduct, and
did not indicate any moral worth i.e., any general tendency
to right actions in the agent.
It is still more clear to common sense that bad acts may
be done from the best conceivable motives ; indeed we are
all familiar with historical examples of men prompted by reli-
gion, patriotism or philanthropy to acts that have excited
most general and intense moral disapprobation. When we
contemplate Torquemada torturing a heretic for the eternal
good of souls, Kavaillac assassinating a monarch in the cause
of God and his church, a Nihilist murdering a number of
innocent persons in order to benefit his country by the
destruction of an emperor, a pastor poisoning his congre-
gation in the sacramental wine in the hope of securing their
eternal happiness we recognise that such acts are (so far as
we know) not only subjectively right, but done from the very
highest motives ; still common sense does not therefore
hesitate to pronounce them profoundly bad.
It may be said, however, that my argument admits that
the distinction of ' good ' and ' bad,' or ' higher ' and
' lower,' motives is recognised by common sense as impor-
tant ; it must, therefore, be the duty of the moralist to make
this distinction as precise as possible, in its application to
different classes of motives ; and in doing this he will be led
to frame such a scale as Dr. Martineau's. But a careful
reflection upon our common judgments or motives will lead
us, I think, to interpret and systematise them in a manner
fundamentally different from Dr. Martineau's. According to
him, the springs of human action may be arranged in an
1 Very often the course of action prompted by a bad motive would differ
palpably in details from that prompted by a pure regard for duty ; and
such differences would afford occasions for " not yielding " to the bad
motive. But I know no reason for assuming that palpable differences of
this kind would be found in all cases.
42 PEOF. H. SIDGWICK :
ethical scale, so constituted that if any of its " propensions," 1
" passions," " affections " and " sentiments " thus classified
ever conies into conflict with one higher in the scale, right
volition consists in choosing the "higher" in preference to
the "lower". The view of common sense appears tome
rather that, in all or most cases, a natural impulse has its
proper sphere, within which it should be normally operative,
and that the question whether a higher motive should yield
to a lower is one that cannot be answered decisively in the
general way in which Dr. Martineau answers it : the answer
must depend on the particular conditions and circumstances
of the conflict. For a higher motive may intrude unseason-
ably into the proper sphere of the lower, just as the lower is
liable to encroach on the higher ; only since there is very
much less danger of the former intrusion, it naturally falls
into the background in ethical discussions and exhortations
that have a practical aim. The matter is complicated by this
further consideration : we recognise that as the character
of a moral agent becomes better, the motives that we rank
as " higher " tend to be developed, so that their normal
sphere of operation continually enlarges at the expense of
the lower. Hence there are two distinct aims in moral
regulation and culture, so far as they relate to motives : (1) to
keep the "lower" motive within the limits within which
its operation is considered to be legitimate and good on
the whole, so long as we cannot substitute for it the
equally effective operation of a higher motive ; and at the
same time (2) to effect this substitution of " higher " for
"lower" gradually, so far as can be done without danger,
up to a limit which we cannot definitely fix, but which we
1 For the reader's convenience, I give the table of the springs of action
in which Dr. Martineau has collected the results of his survey :
LOWEST.
1. Secondary Passions Censoriousness, Vindictiveness, Suspiciousness.
2. Secondary Organic Propensions Love of Ease and Sensual Pleasure.
3. Primary Organic Propensions Appetites.
4. Primary Animal Propension Spontaneous Activity (unselective).
5. Love of Gain (reflective derivation from Appetite).
6. Secondary Affections (sentimental indulgence of sympathetic feelings).
7. Primary Passions Antipathy, Fear, Resentment.
8. Causal Energy Love of Power, or Ambition ; Love of Liberty.
9. {secondary Sentiments Love of Culture.
10. Primary Sentiments of Wonder and Admiration.
11. Primary Affections, Parental and Social with (approximately) Gene-
rosity and Gratitude.
12. Primary Affection of Compassion.
13. Primary Sentiment of Reverence.
HIGHEST.
" IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS." 43
certainly conceive, for the most part, as falling short of com-
plete exclusion of the lower motive.
I may illustrate by reference to the passion of resentment
of which I before spoke. The view of reflective common
sense is, I think, that the malevolent impulse so designated,
as long as it is strictly limited to resentment against wrong
and operates in aid of justice, has a legitimate sphere of
action in the social life of human beings as actually consti-
tuted : that, indeed, its suppression would be gravely mis-
chievous, unless we could at the same time so intensify the
ordinary man's regard for justice or for social well-being that
the total strength of motives prompting to the punishment
of crime should not be diminished. But, however much it
were " to be wished," as Butler says, that men would
repress wrong from these higher motives rather than from
passionate resentment, we cannot hope to effect this change
in human beings generally except by a slow and gradual
process of elevation of character : therefore to come to
the point on which Dr. Martineau appears to me to be at
issue with common sense supposing a conflict between
" Compassion," which is highest but one in Dr. Martineau's
scale, and " Kesentment," which he places about the middle,
it is by no means to be laid down as a general rule that com-
passion ought to prevail. We ought rather with Butler
to regard resentment as a salutary " balance to the weakness
of pity," which would be liable to prevent the execution of
justice if resentment were excluded.
Or we might similarly take the impulse which comes
lowest (among those not condemned altogether) in Dr.
Martineau's scale the "Love of Ease and Sensual Pleasure".
No doubt this impulse, or group of impulses, is continually
leading men to shirk or scamp their strict duty, or to fall in
some less definite way below their own ideal of conduct ;
hence the attitude habitually maintained towards it by
preachers and practical moralists is that of repression. Still,
common sense surely recognises that there are cases in
which even this impulse ought to prevail over impulses
ranked much above it in Dr. Martineau's scale ; we often
find men prompted say by " love of gain " or " love of cul-
ture " to shorten unduly their hours of recreation ; and in
the case of a conflict of motives under such circumstances
we should judge it best that victory should remain on the
side of the "love of ease and pleasure," and that the un-
seasonable intrusion of the higher motive should be repelled.
Perhaps it may be said that in neither of these instances
would the conflict of motives remain such as I have
described : that though the struggle might begin, so to say,
44 PEOF. H. SID G WICK : " IDIOPSYCHOLOGICAL ETHICS."
as a duel between resentment and compassion, or between
love of ease and love of gain, it would not be 'fought out in
the lists so marked out ; since still higher motives would
come in in each case, regard for justice and social well-being
on the side of resentment, regard for health and ultimate
efficiency for work on the side of love of ease ; and that it
would be the intervention of these higher motives that
would decide the struggle so far as it was decided rightly
and as we should approve. This certainly is what would
happen in my own case, if the supposed conflict were at all
serious and its decision deliberate ; and it is for this reason
that such a scale as Dr. Martineau has drawn up, of motives,
arranged according to their moral rank, can never, in my
view, have more than a very subordinate ethical importance.
It may serve to indicate in a rough and general way the
kinds of desires which it is ordinarily best to encourage and
indulge, in comparison with other kinds which are liable to
compete and collide with them ; arid we might perhaps settle,
by means of it, some of the comparatively trifling conflicts of
motive which the varying and complex play of needs,
habits, interests, and their accompanying emotions continu-
ally brings forth in our daily life. But if a serious question
of conduct is raised, I cannot conceive myself deciding it
morally by any comparison of motives below the highest :
the case must, as I have elsewhere said, 1 be "carried up"
for decision " into the court " of the motive which I regard
as supreme i.e., the desire to promote universal good,
understood as happiness of sentient beings generally.
Thus the comparison ultimately decisive on the particular
question raised would inevitably be not a comparison between
the motives primarily conflicting, but between the effects of
the different lines of conduct to which they respectively
prompt, considered in relation to whatever we regard as the
ultimate end of reasonable action. And this, I conceive, is
the course which moral reflection will naturally take in the
case not only of utilitarians, but of all who follow Butler in
regarding our passions and propensions as forming naturally
a " system or constitution," in which the ends of lower im-
pulses are subordinate as means to the ends of certain
governing motives, or are comprehended as parts in these
larger ends. So far as any view of this kind is taken, any
tabulation of the moral rank of motives other than the
governing ones can, at best, have only a quite subordinate
interest : it cannot possibly furnish a method of dealing
with the fundamental problems of ethical construction.
1 Methods of Ethics, bk. iii., cli. xii., p. 3.
Hi. PSYCHOLOGICAL PBINCIPLES. (III.)
By JAMES WABD.
Attention and the Field of Consciousness.
IN resuming, after a long interval, 1 this attempt to define
and explicate the principles of general psychology, the writer
feels bound first of all to consider certain objections urged by
Prof. Bain in the last number of MIND to some of the posi-
tions already taken up. Though Prof. Bain's very generous
criticisms refer directly to an article that has appeared else-
where, yet in one chief point at least his strictures apply
equally to what has been said here. The point in question
is everywhere the peculiar stress "laid on Attention" and "the
immense compass assigned to the word ". It is then first a
question of fact and next a question of terms.
Prof. Bain also cites Mr. Bradley's discussion in an earlier
Number (43) of the question : " Is there any special Activity
of Attention ? " as containing "conclusions on the whole re-
markably just," and which therefore, it may be supposed, he
regards as a further refutation of the doctrine of the present
writer with which he had just been dealing. The " very
great acumen " of this discussion of Mr. Bradley's is un-
mistakable, and he would be a foolishly confident man who
had no misgivings on finding a thinker of such subtlety and
independence dissenting from him. But against whom is
this discussion directed? Certainly it has but little relevance
as against the position to be here expounded and defended,
though it may serve incidentally to make that position
clearer ; for such purpose perhaps the reader will be kind
enough to look back to it occasionally.
One or two preliminary considerations may serve to clear
the way and, by showing the steps through which the writer
came to lay this peculiar stress on Attention, enable the
reader the better to judge whether the leading was that of
truth or error. Everyone the least familiar with the history
of modern knowledge must have remarked the influence of
the more exact sciences upon the science of mind and upon
philosophy generally. For Descartes and Spinoza mathe-
matics was the model ; for Leibniz, and still more for Kant,
1 See MIND viii. 153, 465.
46 J. WAED :
the model was physics. Since Kant's day the science of
physics has made great strides ; and a new science, biology,
has come into being : from both at least in respect of
method the psychologist has much to learn. To be more
specific we have first the modern doctrine of energy with
the theory of dimensions, and we have next that hypothesis
which has entirely transformed our conceptions concerning
organised life, the hypothesis of evolution. Also we may
say generally that the problem of psychology is twofold :
(1) to analyse the facts of mental life, and (2) to ascertain the
course and conditions of mental development.
It is especially in dealing with the second problem that the
biologist inspires us to attempt a wider range and to take a
larger view. We see him refer all the varied types of life to
a few simple forms ; the differentiation of organs, in the
highest and lowest alike, to changes in two or three primi-
tive germinal layers ; while their several physiological
functions are traced back to the fundamental properties of
protoplasm, such as contractility, irritability, &c. Now
what seems desirable in psychology is an equally general-
ised analysis of the broad facts we include under the term
a mind 'a mind/ and not the stuff or substance which
dualistic philosophers oppose to that other stuff they call
matter. But in trying to take a hint from the biologist we
come at once upon a difficulty. He can see his simplest
creature, the amoeba, manifest the several vital functions ;
he can see the impregnated ovum segment, differentiate its
primitive layers and develop stage by stage ; he can range
the leading types of the animal or vegetable kingdom in
their appropriate order before his eyes. The psychologist
can do nothing at all of this kind directly, and only very
little indirectly. He cannot analyse the simplest forms or
stages of consciousness and note the progressive advance
from these to higher. He is sure beyond all serious doubt
that mind and nervous organisation are concomitant, much,
for example, as colour and wave-length are. But still a given
nervous development is scarcely more a clue to the mind
that corresponds than the wave-length of violet, as compared
with that of red, is a clue to the difference of sensation that
accompanies retinal excitation by these waves. As far as
direct acquaintance goes the psychologist is confined to the
most complex form of mind, and that in its maturity. His
observation of himself, supplemented by like observations
on the part of others, have made possible a certain
objective knowledge of the human mind, which, broadly
speaking, is as plain and as verifiable as other depart-
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, (ill.) 47
merits of empirical knowledge. 1 But where intercommuni-
cation is out of the question, and where the physical life
and conditions are widely different from our own, we are
left to more or less probable conjecture. Till we have
correlated the form of mind we do know to its nervous
organisation, it seems hopeless to attempt inferences con-
cerning the minds of the lower animals on the basis merely
of what we know of their comparative anatomy. The
psychologist who essays to treat mind evolutionally has to
begin at the top of the chain and work downwards ; he can-
not, like the biologist, begin at the bottom and work upwards.
The problem for him is in large measure an inverse pro-
blem and beset with many of the characteristic difficulties of
such a method. His one chance of anything like scientific
exactness lies in securing first of all an accurate and complete
general analysis which shall tally, as far as the nature of the
case admits, with what has been independently ascertained
of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. And
it is in this part of his work that he has much to learn from
the modern physicist.
It is a mistake to suppose that all the exactness of modern,
physics is due to measurement, and to suppose accordingly that
psychology can never be rendered exact till it becomes psycho-
metry. In one important respect physics is exact even where
concrete quantitative determinations may be impracticable;
that is to say, the dimensions of a quantity may be known even
when its numerical magnitude is not. All physical quantities
that are not simply lengths, times or masses are expressible
in terms of these fundamental units, and every equation that
claims to have a physical meaning must involve only like
dimensions of these units as far as it involves them at all.
We cannot, e.g., equate so much momentum with so much
energy any more than we can so much length with so much
area. Any equality that is true of two physical quantities
must obviously remain true whatever be the unit of measure-
ment employed ; but then the dimensions must be the same,
else a change of unit will unequally affect the numerical
value of the two quantities. But further prolixity would be
unpardonable in what is only meant to serve as an illustra-
tion : it is time to turn to the point to be illustrated. A
physicist never confounds velocity and acceleration, since
they have different dimensions in time ; or energy and work,
1 It is a stupid confusion to represent this knowledge as ' subjective ' in
the sense of being true only of a sui generis M or N ; as if there were no
human kind.
48 j. WAED :
since they have different dimensions in length. But psycho-
logists seem to be aware of no confusion when they talk in-
differently of states of mind, contents of mind, acts of mind ;
treat the same fact now as a process, now as a product ; and
range on one level feelings which presuppose presentations
and acts which presuppose feelings. Some of the most
striking instances of what might be called by analogy this
arbitrary change of systematic units are to be found in Sir W.
Hamilton's writings. 1 But probably all psychological writ-
ing, even the clearest, is marked by this varying use of terms
involving incompatible complications and by surreptitious
changes of standpoint ; as if, for example, one should attempt
to compare a quantity of electricity measured by one system
of units with a quantity of heat measured by another, or try
to find the locus of a curve the ordinates of which have no
common origin. If then we take an example from Prof.
Bain himself it will be because it is one which also seems to
further the main purpose of this paper. With this view let
us examine his general analysis of mind : 2
" The only account of mind strictly admissible in scientific psychology
consists in specifying three properties or functions Feeling, Will or Voli-
tion, and Thought or Intellect. . . . FEELING includes all our pleasures
and pains, and certain modes of excitement or consciousness simply that are
neutral. . . . The two leading divisions of the feelings are commonly given
as Sensations and Emotions (p. 2). ... A Sensation is defined as the
mental impression, feeling or conscious state resulting from the action of ex-
ternal things on some part of the body, called on that account sensitive (p.
27). . . The emotions, as compared with the sensations, are secondary, derived
or compound feelings (p. 226). WILL or VOLITION comprises all the actions
of human beings in so far as impelled or guided by Feelings. . . . THOUGHT,
INTELLECT, Intelligence or Cognition includes the powers known as Per-
ception, Memory, Conception, Abstraction, Eeason, Judgment and Imagina-
tion. It is analysed, as will be seen, into three functions, called Discrimi-
nation or Consciousness of Difference ; Similarity, or Consciousness of
Agreement ; and Retentiveness, or Memory " (p. 2).
Now this is substantially an unimpeachable account of the
broad facts of mind, and yet the moment we scrutinise the
logical implications of the terms here singled out by italics,
their want of precision becomes unmistakable. At the
outset we are told of three properties or functions of Mind,
as if there were no difference between predicating property
and function ; whereas, as soon as we raise the question, we
become aware that while everything has properties, functions
unless metaphorically employed pertain only to agents.
1 Cp. instances previously given in MIND viii. 476, note.
2 The references, unless otherwise stated, are to Prof. Bain's Mental and
.Moral Science.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PBINCTPLES. (ill.) 49
If Mind is to be viewed as having functions it must be
viewed as an agent. When we look for a description of the
three functions, we find in each case that an enumeration is
given us instead, and that the facts enumerated are ranged
under three different categories. Feeling 1 includes certain
impressions, states or modes of excitement ; Will comprises
certain actions, and Intellect includes certain powers. Now
states, actions and powers are certainly not congruent con-
ceptions : a state or an impression is not a function, though
to receive an impression or to change a state may be ; a
function again is not an action, but the performance of an
action, and even powers are not functions though necessarily
presupposed in them. Let us descend to further detail.
There is an immense advance on his Scottish predecessors
in Prof. Bain's analysis of Intellect into the three functions
of Discrimination, Similiarity and Eetentiveness, instead of
the old medley of "powers known as Perception, Memory,
Conception," &c., &c. But it must strike anybody who has any
sense of the import of suffixes, that discrimina^Vw, similarity
and Tetentiveness have, so to say, very different logical ' di-
mensions '. Hamilton, though he could not get on with
less than six intellectual faculties, did at least contrive to
make them all -ives. Prof. Bain could, of course, easily have
used the terms Discrimination, Assimilation, Conservation,
or the like, if he had chosen ; and these terms are all of the
general form SPO. 2 But there is a reason why this even
and explicit indication of transitive activity is avoided or
missed : it is not from any sentimental antipathy to specula-
tion or any anti-theological bias these are matters that do
not trouble a psychologist who ' keeps his eyes in the boat'.
The reason lies rather in the ambiguity of the term con-
sciousness, which occurs once and again in the exposition.
As Prof. Bain has himself pointed out, the proper meaning
of conscious state or state of consciousness is "mental life
as opposed to torpor or insensibility ; the loss of conscious-
ness is mental extinction for the time being " (Appendix, p.
93). But if this be the proper meaning of consciousness, it
seems obvious that one is guilty of a sort of fallacy of division
in calling a sensation, e.g., a conscious state. We might as
well resolve a man physically into an aggregate of smaller
men (like Hobbes's Leviathan), as call each and all of the
1 It is one of the many grievous defects of our English nomenclature
that we have no word which, like the German Das Gemiith, runs naturally
on all-fours beside Will and Intellect.
2 See former paper, MIND, viii. 468, note.
4
50 j. WAED :
objects or contents of his consciousness conscious states or
states of consciousness. Further, although at the outset
Prof. Bain has distinguished Feelings as made up of states
from Intellect which consists of poivers, yet he passes by an
easy transition from discrimination to a " consciousness of
difference," and then to a "feeling of difference"; by similar
stages his second intellectual function becomes "the con-
scious state arising from agreement in the midst of differ-
ence " (pp. 82, 83). Nobody confounds painting with
pictures or singing with songs, yet here we have just such
a confusion of the activity implied in consciousness with the
objects or products of that activity. Nay, in some sort the
case is even worse. When we are told that as intellectual
the mind discriminates, we expect to find that, apart from
this activity, the "states" of which it is conscious are not
discriminated. But presently we see the tables turned : the
function seems now to belong to the " states," and not to
whatever is conscious of the states : the singing arises from the
song, and not" the song from the singing. True, intellect is
not creative, but only, as the word implies, selective : it can
only differentiate where there is difference and assimilate
where there is similarity. Every process presupposes appro-
priate material ; but the process is more than the material
for all that. Here we have process, material and product
continually confused, because all alike are styled states of
consciousness. Nothing hides so effectually as familiarity :
once committed to this one term, therefore, it is small
wonder if the constant element, the activity implied in
' conscious,' the * I think ' which, as Kant said, must be
conceived as accompanying all- my presentations, should
drop out of sight, and the relations established among pre-
sentations should come to be regarded as the direct outcome
of their interaction. We are then at the other pole. In
place of a subject conserving or retaining its presentations,
we have these, under certain circumstances, " tending to
grow together or cohere" (p. 85); and instead of this subject
comparing its presentations and connecting them, we have
these, whenever they recur, " tending to revive their like
among previously occurring states " (p. 127).
In his doctrine of the Will Prof. Bain advances if any-
thing still more upon his predecessors : e.g., in singling out
movements as a characteristic class of presentations, in
emphasising the connexion of movement with feeling, and
tracing the growth of voluntary power step by step as idea-
tion advances. For all that, there seems here also the same
inevitable confusion due to an inexact terminology and an
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, (ill.) 51
imperfect analysis of the leading term consciousness. An
action, according to Prof. Bain, is a muscular movement,
actual or ideal (p. 342), by which, of course, we are to under-
stand not a muscular movement as outwardly observed
whether by the agent or by others, but "muscular conscious-
ness, a series of modes of expended energy which the
memory can retain, and which we can associate with other
mental states" (p. 25). A movement then, psychologically
regarded, is, Prof. Bain allows, a presentation or mental
state admitting of conservation and association like any
other. Again, voluntary actions, as we have seen, are all
the actions of human beings in so far as impelled or guided
by feelings, and feelings also are presentations or " mental
states " admitting of conservation and association. Now
what is "the link between feeling and action"? Apparently
the feeling (p) impels or guides the human being (M or
N), whereupon the human being is conscious either of (K)
expending energy, or of (K) energy expended, in (k) mus-
cular movement. It is to be noted that certain entirely new
elements enter here. The feeling (p) as such is a " mental
state"; but, to say nothing of the change of category which
the attribution of the power to impel and even guide implies,
the impulsion or guidance of the human being is a fact
extraneous and additional to the mere presentation (p).
Similarly, though less clearly, in the case of the resulting
action. To admit of conservation and association a presenta-
tion must have a certain individuality, such as pertains, e.g.,
to a movement of hand or eye or tongue : this has been
denoted above by k. But no such individuality pertains to
the expenditure of energy in producing Jc. 1 What then are
we to say of this common fact of expenditure of energy pre-
sent in all the several modes of our varying muscular con-
sciousness? It is scarcely enough to say there is consciousness
of energy expended (#'), implying thereby that such con-
sciousness is a receptive state. So regarded K would go for
nothing : there would be the presentation of k and no
1 There is sufficient analogy between the psychical and the physical to
make it worth while to cite by way of illustration the following passage
from Clerk Maxwell's admirable little tract, Matter and Motion : " We
cannot identify a particular portion of energy or trace it through its trans-
formations. It has no individual existence,' such as that which we attri-
bute to particular portions of matter. The transactions of the material
universe appear to be conducted, as it were, on a system of credit. Each
transaction consists of the transfer of so much credit or energy from one
body to another. . . . The energy so transferred does not retain any
character by which it can be identified when it passes from one form to
another" (Art. cix. " Energy not capable of Identification ").
52 j. WAED :
more. We seem then shut up to K, if " muscular conscious-
ness " is to have any special characteristic, that is to say, the
human being (M or N) is not only conscious of k but con-
scious of producing it. This twofold relation of the human
being to the two states, viz., the feeling that impels and the
movement that results, is one we must keep in sight, while
we turn to Prof. Bain's own account of "the link between
feeling and action ".
" At the outset," he says, " there happens a coincidence
purely accidental between a pleasure and a movement
(of Spontaneity) that maintains and increases it, or between
a pain and a movement that alleviates or removes it ; by the
link of Self-conservation, the movement bringing pleasure or
removing pain, is sustained and augmented. Should this
happen repeatedly, an adhesive growth takes place, through
which the feeling can afterwards command the movement "
(p. 325). In other words : At the outset a pleasure (say p)
and a movement (say &) are presented together by chance
and " after a few returns of the favourable accident the two
are connected by an associating link " (p. 81). Now w T hat is
the difference in Prof. Bain's view between the feeling
"commanding" the movement and the feeling "being
associated with " the movement ? The implications of the
two phrases are widely different ; and yet it looks as if we
were to understand that, when an " adhesive growth " has
taken place between a feeling^, and a movement k l} between
a feeling p 2 and a movement 4, and so on, we have then
and there a " matured will ". Still it must not be forgotten
that " the distinctive aptitude of the mature will is to select
at once the movements necessary to attain a pleasure," &c.
(p. 325). Let us turn to some passage in which Prof. Bain
formulates "the law of Self-conservation"; for there, if
anywhere, we ought to find this link outside and above
mere associating links which is " requisite " to connect
feeling and action as distinct from particular sensations and
movements. The following is as explicit as any : " A state
of pleasure, by its connexion with increased vitality in
general, involves increased muscular activity in particular.
A shock of pain, in lowering the collective forces of the
system, saps the individual force of muscular movement "
(p. 322). Here in addition to particular ps and k& we have
41 vitality in general" or "the collective forces of the system"
as a new factor intervening between them ; and this is our
" human being " : not a self in any psychological sense, but
only an organism. If we are to avoid this confusion between
the individual organism and the conscious subject who is
PSYCHOLOGICAL PEINCIPLES. (ill.) 53
impelled or guided, who selects and controls, we must insist
on being told the psychological equivalent of " vitality in
general " or " the collective forces of the system ".
But it will be best to scrutinise a little further the terms
which Prof. Bain uses in speaking of feelings and move-
ments ; to do this will be tantamount to examining the ter-
minology he uses of his first class of mental facts. The
same confusing change of ' dimensions ' and standpoints
meets us here again. First of all we are told that Feelings
(Fj) divide into primary or Sensations (with muscular feel-
ings) and secondary or Emotions, in which sensations have
coalesced with one another and with ideas. But again we are
told that " Feeling (F 2 ) comprehends pleasures and pains and
states of excitement that are neither " (p. 215). Now what
connexion is there between these quite distinct classifications?
Pleasures, pains and states of neutral excitement cannot be
sensations, for then they would have to be referred to a
definite sense-organ, according to the definition we have
had of sensation ; and they would not then cover emotions,
for in these " the simple elements cease to be apparent ".
Moreover it seems possible to talk of " the pleasures and
pains of sensations" and of "the feelings connected with
emotions," and generally of " the emotional character of
feeling ". Thus a feeling being a conscious state, a feeling
of a feeling must be a conscious state of a conscious state.
It is a familiar law in symbolic logic that x n =x, square
square is square, the red of red is red, &c. ; but this law of
simplicity will not hold of relations generally. A reader
entirely ignorant of the subject-matter might then reason-
ably suspect that F! and F 2 refer to different things, and are
not merely a different statement of the same. This differ-
ence would clearly appear on a careful comparison of (1)
passages in which Prof. Bain speaks of Pleasure, Pain or
Indifference or the state of pleasure, the state of pain, &c.,
with (2) passages in which he speaks of a pleasure, a pain
or of pleasurable and painful sensations and emotions, &c.
But we have no space for so much detail. What it comes
to is simply this : FI answers to presentations which a
subject may be conscious of or attend to, while F 2 is the
state or mode of excitement of this subject that results :
FI is what the subject cognises, F 2 is how he feels. It is
only with reference to FI that Prof. Bain can talk of " the
intellectual character of feeling," and only with reference to
F 2 that he can talk of " the volitional character of feeling ".
This brings us to the other class of presentations, " mus-
cular feelings," as to which, under cover of the unanalysed
54 j. WAED :
term " muscular consciousness," we have found a similar
distinction between the particular ks, which are presentations,
and " the consciousness of energy put forth " in actualising
these. Now, when explaining the volitional character of
feeling, Prof. Bain no longer speaks of associative links between
a feeling p, (i.e., an instance of Fj) and a movement k, nor
even of this feeling commanding the movement. But he
tells us "The Will is moved by the feelings ; pleasure
causing pursuit and pain avoidance " feelings being here
plainly JBV It is also plain that Will does not in this
passage mean a sum of movements, but rather the subject
that is conscious of making these movements, or of acting
voluntarily, i.e., under the influence of feeling consequent on,
but distinct from, the mere presentations that make him
feel.
To sum up : the contention is that Prof. Bain's exposition
of the general features of mind involves substantially the
same analysis as that made by the present writer, 1 but that
the wavering and uncertain connotations of such terms as
consciousness, feeling, will, volition, state, act, activity and
the like have rendered any clear issue impossible. If we
had any satisfactory system of expressing the varying im-
plications of these abstract conceptions, much as physicists,
e.g., can express in terms of three fundamental units the
dimensions of the quantities with which they deal, psycho-
logy would become comparatively plain sailing, though still
beset with more difficulties than biology has to face.
Now let the reader imagine himself trying to deal more
pliysico with the broad facts of mind as manifested through-
out the entire range of animal life, not as Prof. Bain
does, only with " human knowledge, experience or con-
sciousness," and it will not be long before the contrast of
subject and object presents itself as fundamental. We can
often form a distinct conception of the relation between two
terms when we have no such distinct conception of the
terms themselves. So here : without waiting to examine
ontological theories we can ask how subject and object are
related. We say of man, mouse or monkey that it feels,
remembers, perceives, infers, desires, strives and so forth.
Leaving aside the first term, which is ambiguous, it is
obvious that all the rest imply activity and an object. The
question then arises as to the possibility of resolving these
instances and others like them into a form in which the
diversity of the act appears as a diversity of the object. It
1 See MIND, viii. 484.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PEINCIPLES. (ill.) 55
is certain that the objects are different : thus in perception,
e.g., we deal with impressions, and in memory and imagina-
tion with ideas. It will therefore be a simplification if in
place of a distinction of faculties as well as a difference of
object we find a difference of object alone sufficient. The
still wider difference between cognitive and conative acts
i.e., between the intellectual and active powers of the older
psychologists seems to admit of similar reduction, when,
taking the simplest cases of each, we remark that the
objects of the one are sensations and those of the other move-
ments. Supposing, then, there should prove to be an under-
lying sameness in all the variety of psychical acts, what is
it ? Starting from common language, there seem but two
terms that could possibly denote this common element
Consciousness and Attention. The former is soon disposed
of : in spite of its properly active signification, we have seen
that it is frequently used in a passive sense, and when
actively used its meaning is as often too wide as too narrow,
ranging between the whole extent of the facts to be analysed
and one of the most specialised of these, what we otherwise
call internal perception, reflection, and less accurately self-
consciousness.
Attention, on the other hand, has invariably an active
sense, and there is an appropriate verb, to attend. Moreover,
the figure involved, that of stretching or bending in some
direction, while happy as a figure, does not, like ' con-
scious,' surreptitiously introduce what has to be analysed
as itself an ultimate term of the analysis. 1 The objection to
Attention is that it is too narrow : many things are presented,
but few are attended to. If attention is to be made co-exten-
sive with consciousness, the vital distinction between attention
and inattention is lost, and it is but an ill way to advance
knowledge to rob " the central word of discipline " of its
essential meaning. But on the other side it may be urged
that even in common parlance this is not the only use of the
word ; there is a generic sense of attention recognised as
well. "'Attention 5 in the school and the army" is also
known as a concentration of attention, and its absence as
relaxing or remitting attention. As ordinarily used, then,
attention implies a covert comparison; in other words, implies
several degrees of attention in the wider sense. The pro-
1 Any one curious to see some of the confusions resulting from _ this
A
ss
933.
_
Adyos- cannot do better than glance at the note " On Conscious-
ness : its Conditions and Limitations " in Hamilton's edition of Reid, p.
56 J. WARD :
posal to use it absolutely or in this wider sense is very much
like the proposal to use ' magnitude ' or ' heat ' (i.e., tempera-
ture) in such fashion. Many an unsophisticated old lady
would demur to one who described the minuteness of a snow
crystal in terms of magnitude or its temperature as so many
degrees of ' heat ' (reckoning from absolute zero). What
has been found necessary in these physical matters seems
necessary here, and it will be as easy to get accustomed to
the absolute sense in the one case as in the other. Fortu-
nately Prof. Bain goes a long way towards admitting the
want. " I make the fullest allowance," he says, " for the
need of a general word to express the reaction of the Subject
upon presentations," &c. ; and he suggests " a still more
general designation such as * mental tension ' or l conscious
intensity '." In both the root of attention is there; but if the
remarks already made on what might be called the relation-
ality of terms have any force, it is obvious that mental
tension and conscious intensity cannot be equated to each
other, and can neither of them express the reaction of the
subject upon presentations.
But though Prof. Bain has nothing better to suggest, he
animadverts none the less severely on the rashness and the
presumption of the change proposed. " Before we bring
forward a change in scientific nomenclature," he says, " we
ought first to show that it is wanted, and next take the
measure of our own influence or persuasive power for getting
it adopted." As to the last, the writer is perfectly well aware
that his personal influence is nil. So far as the advancement
of knowledge goes, he is not, and never wishes to be, a per-
son at all ; but that the change in question is wanted he
thinks he has done something to show. And after all it is
not nearly so violent a change as Prof. Bain imagines. The
recognition of all degrees of attention in everyday life has
been referred to already. The following from Locke is also
very much to the point :
" The various attention of the mind in thinking. . . . That there are ideas,
some or other, always present in the mind of a waking man, everyone's
experience convinces him ; though the mind employs itself about" them
with several degrees of attention. Sometimes the mind fixes itself with
such intention * . . . . that it shuts out all other thoughts and takes no
notice of the ordinary impressions made on the senses ; .... at other
1 In an earlier paragraph Locke distinguishes " intention or study "
from mere attention : in the former the mind resists the solici-
tation of other ideas, in the latter such ideas as offer themselves are
taken notice of as they pass ; in fact, it is attention as it is in the school
and the army, that Locke here calls intention.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PKINCIPLES. (ill.) 57
times, it barely observes the train of ideas that succeed in the under-
standing without directing and pursuing any of them ; and at other times,
it lets them pass almost quite unregarded, as faint shadows that make
no impression." Essay concerning Human Understanding, ii. 19, sec. 3.
The last sentences of the next paragraph (sec. 4) are also
interesting :
" Since the mind can sensibly put on, at several times, several degrees of
thinking [obviously here equivalent to attention in the section above], and
be sometimes, even in a waking man, so remiss as to have thoughts dim
and obscure to that degree that they are very little removed from none at
all, and at last, in the dark retirement of sound sleep, loses the sight per-
fectly of all ideas whatsoever ... I ask, whether it be not probable that
thinking is the action, and not the essence of the soul ? Since the opera-
tion of agents will easily admit of intention and remission ; but the
essences of things are not conceived capable of any such variation."
Locke then came very near indeed to a full and explicit
recognition of attention in the sense which Prof. Bain
scouts as an unwarranted change of nomenclature. But
Hamilton comes nearer still ; and could he but have freed
himself from the trammels of the old Scottish psychology
the change of nomenclature which is here defended might
have been made under better auspices and long ago. The
following passages from his Lectures on Metaphysics may be put
in as evidence :
" But to view attention as a special act of intelligence, and to distinguish
it from consciousness, is utterly inept ... we might, with equal justice,
distinguish in the eye the adjustment of the pupil from the general organ
of vision, as, in the mind, distinguish attention from consciousness as
separate faculties. Attention is consciousness and something more ... it
is consciousness concentrated (i. p. 237). ... It therefore appears to me
the more correct doctrine to hold that there is no consciousness without
attention without concentration but that attention is of three degrees or
kinds. The first, a mere vital and irresistible act ; the second, an act de-
termined by desire, which, though involuntary, may be resisted by our
will ; the third, an act determined by a deliberate volition. An act of
attention . . . seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness . . .
[but] the mere vital or automatic act of attention has been refused the name ;
and attention, in contradistinction to this mere automatic contraction, given
to the two other degrees, of which however Reid only recognises the third.
. . . The faculty of attention is not, therefore, a special faculty, but merely
consciousness acting under the law of limitation to which it is subjected "
(i. 248).
That a writer for whom attention is only consciousness
contracted or limited, and consciousness without such con-
traction or limitation is consciousness no longer, should find
it needful to talk both of acts of attention and exertions of
consciousness, is but one more proof of the perturbing
influence of a bad terminology. Locke, who wrote before
consciousness had been allowed to run wild over the whole
58 J. WAED :
field of psychology, found the one action of attending or
thinking sufficient. Between attentive consciousness and
inattentive consciousness or consciousness simply there is,
it is maintained, only a difference of degree. If we say that
consciousness is an act and must have some intensity, that
the more it is concentrated on some objects the more it is
withdrawn from others, then this difference of degree is
traced to a difference of distribution : the more we intensify
our hold on A, the more we must relax our hold on B ; but
between the intension and the remission there is perfect con-
tinuity, and not a difference of kind. The act is one, and
it is only in its relation to its effects on A and B that we are
tempted to resolve it.
But it is not enough to contend that if there is one
common factor in all psychical activity this factor is atten-
tion ; to make out a case it is necessary to show directly
that all the various faculties with which a mind can be
endowed are resolvable into powers of attention and various
classes or relations or states of presentations. In particular
it is desirable to show that volition as well as intellection,
about which there will be less question, is such a case.
This has been attempted already in the second of the two
former articles, but perhaps a brief re-statement in a some-
what different form may conduce to clearness. In as far as
volition implies not merely action overt or intended but de-
termination, whether by motives or in spite of them, in so
far also it contains an element not resolvable into attention
to motor presentations. This farther element, in fact, is
that which Prof. Bain describes as " the volitional character
of feeling " : having once noted its presence, we may now
leave it aside. Apart from the direct spring of action, then,
the question is whether action in process is anything more
than attention to a special class of objects. To depart as
little as may be from current usage and to avoid Prof. Bain's
charge of presumptuous meddling with the sacred ark of
words, the question may be put in this fashion : Are
apperception and innervation reducible to one (attention) ?
First of all, it is noteworthy that they have the same charac-
teristics. Thus what Hamilton has called the law of limita-
tion holds of each alike and of either with respect to the
other ; and it holds too not only of the number of presenta-
tions but also of the intensity. We can be absorbed in
action just as much as in intuition or thought ; also move-
ments, unless mechanical, inhibit ideas, and vice versa ideas
other than associated trains arrest movements. It is as
impossible to lift a heavy weight and go on thinking as it is to
PSYCHOLOGICAL PKINCIPLES. (ill.) 59
scrutinise the dot on an i and go on thinking. Intoxication,
hypnotism or insanity, rest or exhaustion, tells on apper-
ception as well as on innervation. The control of thoughts
equally with the control of movements requires "effort"; and,
as there is a strain peculiar to intently listening or gazing,
which is known to have a muscular concomitant, so too there
is a strain equally characteristic of recollection and visualisa-
tion, which may quite well turn out to be muscular too.
"When movements have to be associated the same continuous
attention is called for as is found requisite to associate sen-
sory impressions : when such associations have become very
intimate dissociation is about equally difficult in both cases.
The process of control is also, so far as we yet know, much the
same : it is a process of direct repression or of alternative
intensification, or a combination of both. One real difference
there is, no doubt : movements ensue either through the
withdrawal of inhibition or through a concentration of atten-
tion on the idea of the movement. The like, it need hardly
be said, does not hold of sensations ; though in abnormal
cases there is an indefinitely close approach to it. "If ifs
and ans were pots and pans there'd be no trade for tinkers "
nay, more, there'd be no trade for movements of any sort,
except so far as these were pleasurable in themselves. It is
just this difference in the objects that makes all the differ-
ence in our attitude, but it is not a difference in the psychical
activity concerned with them.
There is further a supposed difference between apper-
ception and innervation, or rather between what are
assumed to be their physiological concomitants, which
has stood in the way of their identification. Appercep-
tion is assumed to be related to afferent nerve-currents ;
and innervation, on the contrary, to efferent currents. Prof.
Bain complains that in the article he criticises no notice is
taken of this position. It is true no notice was taken, and for
what seemed to be good reasons. In the first place, it is not a
matter that concerns psychology proper at all. When psycho-
logists as such are sure of their facts and neurologists in like
manner sure of theirs, we may expect a great advance of know-
ledge from careful endeavours to correlate the two. A hopeful
beginning has indeed already been made; but meanwhile the
most disastrous confusion has befallen the more difficult
inquiry through plausible but hasty interpretations of un-
verified physiological hypotheses. Psychologically we know
nothing of nerve-currents, whether afferent or efferent. But
in the next place, it is, to say the least, extremely question-
able whether muscular efforts are the concomitant of what
60 j. WARD :
Prof. Bain calls motor currents, and not rather of certain
afferent excitations. 1 In any case it is not with these pre-
sentations, which accompany thinking and acting alike, but
with effort in a still narrower sense that we are here con-
cerned. It often requires more effort to make a slight exer-
tion than a great one, much as it may require more effort to
hear a faint sound than to hear a loud one. In this sense of
mental effort or concentration, if one might venture a physio-
logical guess on the strength of psychological data, it may
turn out that both in apperception and in innervation the
nerve-currents are what Prof. Bain calls motor, whether
their function be comparable to that of accelerator, or to that
of inhibitory, nerves, or to those of both.
There is one striking fact that brings to light the essential
sameness of apperception and innervation which is cited by
Wundt 2 for this very purpose. In reaction-time experi-
ments it is found that if a signal precedes the impression to
be registered by a suitable interval the reaction registering
the impression is often instantaneous; the reaction-time, in
other words, is nil. In such a case the subject is aware not
of three separate acts, (1) apperceiving the impression, (2)
reacting to it, (3) apperceiving the effect of the reaction, but
is distinctly conscious of one act and one only. The antici-
patory idea of the impression to be perceived and the
idea of the movement to be executed are so adjusted that,
when the preliminary signal is given, the impression is rea-
lised and the movement actualised at once and together.
Wundt call this relation of the two ideas a " simultaneous
association": the expression is scarcely a happy one, but
at least the adjustment brought about is like an association,
in so far as the two ideas are attended to as one complex.
It is a matter of quite secondary importance what name
we give to this common element of activity present wherever
we find consciousness or sentience. Provided the fact be re-
cognised we shall not be long without an appropriate name
for it. Meanwhile to call it ' attention ' seems to do least
violence to existing usage, and to have most precedents in its
favour. The really important question is whether the con-
trast of Subject and Object is of such a fundamental character
as to justify the resolution of psychological facts into two
1 See on this the classic paper of Prof. W. James in Anniversary Memoirs-
of the Boston Society of Natural History, of which a brief summary will be
found, MIND, v. 582 ; also Terrier, Functions of the Brain, 2nd ed., pp.
382, ff.
2 Physiologische Psychologic, ii. 239, 391,
PSYCHOLOGICAL PEINCIPLES. (ill.) 61
entirely distinct categories the one subjective faculty or
function of Action-under-Eeeling or Consciousness on the
one side, and a Field of Consciousness, consisting of
Objects, Ideas or Presentations, on the other. The older
psychologies, with their legion of faculties, were no doubt un-
scientific, just as were the older physics with their legion of
forces. But modern physicists have not abandoned the old
conception of force altogether : they have only transformed
it into the exacter conception of Energy. There is, however,
a difference between psychology and physics that deserves
notice, and to this we must turn for a moment.
The most important generalisations in psychology as pro-
bably everybody will allow are those included together as
the Laws of Association. But these admit of a still more
general treatment as the Laws or Theory of Presentations,
under which head might be brought together the important
results obtained by our own Associationist school and the
equally important contribution of the Herbartian psycholo-
gists which are largely the complementary of ours. Now it
was the Associationist psychology which in England gave
the death-blow to the Scottish school with its interminable
faculties; and a like fate befel the " alte VermogentJieorie" at
the hands of the Herbartians in Germany. In this now
dominant psychology of presentations "Psychology ohne
Seek," as Lange calls it we are led to recognise only inter-
action of presentations inter se : ideas tend to attract or
repel each other; they associate and they conflict : in short,
as Herbart roundly put it, we have in them a psychical
statics and dynamics, and these, as he thought, admit of a
mathematical treatment. The activity underlying the old
terms 'faculty,' 'power,' &c., which was formerly referred
to the subject, here reappears on the side of the object.
Hence then the attempt to explain everything in terms of
the interaction of presentations. We have this pushed to the
utmost in Herbart 's own psychology with that speculative
thoroughness so characteristic of the master minds among
our Teutonic brethren. It would not be difficult to show
that the metaphysical theory of " self-preservation " which
Herbart developed makes no material difference to the general
character of his psychology as here described. In Prof. Bain
and in J. S. Mill the same tendency is apparent, but in them
systematic thoroughness is sacrificed to regard for facts, which
is said for better, for worse to be the peculiarly British trait.
Now comes the question : Can we, provided we credit pre-
sentations or perhaps it will be fairer to say ' ideas,' since
presentation in this connexion may be thought to have a
treacherous ring can we, if ideas are credited with certain
62 j. WARD :
mutual attractions, repulsions, associations, complications,
&c., &c. dispense with the postulation of a subject alto-
gether, at least any subject but that very complex idea
which is "generated" under appropriate circumstances when
ideas are grouped with sufficient distinctness ? What-
ever our sentimental preferences may be, it is hard to see
any scientific objection to such an attempt if only it could
succeed. The one question to be asked then is : Can it ?
Perhaps we shall find an answer to this question in the
course of examining the line of argument developed by Mr.
Bradley in the article to which Prof. Bain has referred.
As already said, it is difficult to seize the precise point of
Mr. Bradley's contention : though avowedly polemical, his
article is for the most part in agreement with what are
styled the latest results of modern psychology ; it is, in fact,
very largely but an able restatement of an able note by J. S.
Mill (James Mill's Analysis, ii. 372-377). Taking attention
to mean "predominance in consciousness," whatever it may
be besides, Mr. Bradley inquires "how we are able to produce
this condition or what is the machinery which effects the
production ". Now at the outset at all events, that is to
say, in the statement of his question, Mr. Bradley tacitly
admits the distinction between the conscious subject on the
one hand, the " we who are able to produce," and the field
of consciousness on the other, in which this or that object
may become predominant. Further, a machine, whether
simple or complex, is not itself a motive power, but only a
means of directing or modifying or economically expending
such power. Nobody now-a-days supposes that in producing'
the predominance at any given moment of any given presen-
tation any special instrumentality is employed distinct from
" the working of the ordinary laws of redintegration, blend-
ing," &c., or however else it may seem fit to denote the
various interactions of objects. Neither, it may be safely
said, is any student moderately versed in modern psychology
likely to urge the objection that an idea of an idea is not
admissible, or to find any difficulty in comprehending that
" the idea of myself somehow engaged" will, provided it is
interesting of which more anon produce its effect in the
ordinary way. Where " the mass of psychologists " who
ignore all this, or fail to comprehend it, are to be found, is
best known to Mr. Bradley.
But now, granting that wherever there is predominance in
the field of consciousness there is attention, and conversely ;
granting too that even the resolve to attend " produces in
the common psychological way the means to its realisation,"
viz., through the idea of self-attending; and granting a
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, (ill.) 63
fortiori that the like holds of simpler cases ; we have to ask
what are the characteristics of an idea that " predominates
in consciousness" or " engrosses the mind". A glance at
Mr. Bradley 's article, or at the pages of J. S. Mill which he
cites, will show that the dominating idea, to use Mill's terms,
is (1) " highly pleasurable or painful," and (2) " tends, more
or less strongly, to exclude from consciousness all other
sensations less pleasurable or painful than itself and to
prevent the rising up of any ideas but those which itself
recalls by its associations ". Perhaps for brevity and dis-
tinctness' sake we may call the first its apolaustic and the
second its dynamic character. The two are doubtless most
intimately connected ; the question is Can they be resolved
into one ? or, rather, Can the first be reduced to the second ?
Referring again to our authors, we shall find that, though
these two characteristics are frequently confounded, there is
always in the first a more or less explicit recognition of the
distinction of subject and object. The dominating presen-
tation affects other presentations by its intensity, its alliances,
and so forth ; it affects the subject by the pleasure or pain it
affords. When, e.g., Mr. Bradley speaks of attention as
predominance in consciousness, he has the first effect in
view ; when he speaks of attention as consisting in interest,
he has the second ; for " what interests," he tells us, " does
so by means of pleasure and pain ".
There is no meaning in saying that one presentation
pleases or pains another presentation, or that the idea of
winning the prize interests the idea of running the race. It
is however perfectly intelligible to say, as J. S.- Mill does,
that " becoming a nearly exclusive object of consciousness,
it (viz., a pleasurable or painful idea)is both felt with greater
intensity and acquires greater power of calling up by asso-
ciation other ideas. There is an increase both in the mul-
titude, the intensity and the distinctness of the ideas it
suggests, as is always the case where the suggesting sensation
or idea is increased in intensity."
But now how does the pleasurable or painful idea come by
this intensity, if we, as for simplicity's sake we may, take its
intensity as its dynamic index ? This, it must be frankly
owned, looks a difficult question. It is matter of common
observation that the apolaustic quality of a presentation is
largely determined by its intensity ; to say, then, that its
intensity is due to its apolaustic quality seems like arguing
in a circle, or, if not that, is tantamount to identifying the two,
as in fact our authors come very near to doing. Before look-
ing for a way out of this difficulty it may be well to remark
that there is one obvious consideration that forbids their
64 J. WAED :
identification, viz., the existence of a singular point, or a point
d'arret, in what we may call the feeling-curve, where intense
pleasure passes more or less abruptly into intense pain, while
the intensity of the presentation continues to increase. 1 The
real solution of the difficulty is more probably to be found
in the distinction of the receptive and reactive phases of
conscious activity, 2 or non-voluntary and voluntary atten-
tion, including in this last, spite of the paradox, involuntary
attention as well. There is unfortunately much uncertainty
in the use of this term ' voluntary '. It is here used in the
sense in which Prof. Bain uses it, viz., for all cases of
interest, immediate and mediate as well. " The first," as he
says, " is the voluntary impulse in its purest, most primitive
and perennial aspect ; to hug a pleasant idea is as purely
instinctive and untaught as anything can be ; the higher
apparatus of the will as expressed by resolution, deliberation,
purpose has no part in it " (MiND, xi. 477) . J. S. Mill, on the
other hand, as the following sentence will show, confines the
term voluntary to cases of mediate interest : " Ideas which
are not of themselves so painful or pleasurable as to fix the
attention may have it fixed on them by a voluntary act "
(I. c. p. 373). In so doing he is at one with most earlier
writers, and apparently with Mr. Bradley.
It is important to examine carefully the "primitive aspect"
of the voluntary impulse, inasmuch as the essential character
of volition is more likely to be apparent in it than in " the
higher apparatus of the will," where it is overlaid by
complications. If this be sound in point of method, it is
then w^orth notice that the primitive outcome of feeling is
muscular movement, and we are therefore prompted to
inquire whether all volition, that is to say, all voluntary
attention, is not of the nature of movement. Prof. Bain
comes very near to such a generalisation, which indeed to
the present writer seems a sound one, though this is not the
place for a detailed array of proofs. But if all voluntary
attention is of the nature of movement it will not do to call
such movement muscular. It is unfortunate that the term
''muscular" has got such a hold on us: psychologically,
muscles are as great an impertinence as nerves ; we know
nothing of either. The common fact in all voluntary action
alike seems to be a change in the distribution of attention
under the influence of feeling : in the earliest forms of it
1 Cp. Wundt, PhysiologiscJie Psychologic, i. 468.
2 Against this distinction Mr. Bradley is moved to protest, on the ground
that " it breaks up the life of the soul and divides it into active and passive
factors ". Such a travesty of the facts is indeed a short and ready way of
disposing of one of the oldest and most obvious distinctions in all psychology.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES, (ill.) 65
this change brings about bodily movements, whereby, sooner
or later and more or less indirectly, pleasurable sensations
are reinforced or prolonged ; at a later stage such change
seems to lead directly to an increase in the intensity and
fixation of some selected portion of the ideational train.
As to the bodily movements, these, wherever observation is
possible, seem to result from a concentration of attention
upon the idea of the movement, or generally upon what the
writer has ventured to speak of as the motor continuum.
As to the intellectual movements, these seem with equal
certainty to result from a concentration of attention upon
the second variety of what Mr. Bradley calls the idea of an
idea viz., that "the reality of which is my psychical state
as I have this idea" (MiND, xi. 313). But such an idea it is
contended is also, psychologically, a motor idea, though its
physiological counterpart is almost certainly not in any sense
a muscular movement.
But changes in the distribution of attention, it may be
objected, are just what we have in non-voluntary attention :
these are just the changes that the ordinary psychological
law will explain. Precisely ; but the distinctive peculiarity
of voluntary attention is a change in the distribution of
attention as regards motor presentations, the effect of which
change is a change in the intensity of what were the objects
of non- voluntary attention. Unless then it can be said that
pleasure and pain are a species of idea, and unless, further,
it can be shown that the sequence of movement on feeling is
like the sequence of (say) thunder and lightning, a merely
physical fact, we must look beyond the psycho-dynamical
laws of association, fusion, &c., for an explanation of what
the writer has called subjective selection or interest. And
if this be so, it is not enough for psychology to recognise no
kind of " activity at all beyond the common processes of
redintegration and, blending " (MiND, xi. 316). L How the
intensity that presentations have apart from volition is-
related to that which they have by means of it how the
objective component is related to the subjective, is a hard
problem ; still there is no gain in a spurious simplicity that
ignores the difference.
But there is still one point raised by Mr. Bradley's very
acute criticisms which ought not to be left unnoticed. He
seems to allow the possibility that a psychical event which
1 Of course it must not be forgotten that the state of integration and
coalition, in which given presentations may exist at a certain stage, is-
largely the result of previous acts of voluntary attention, though afterwards-
independent of such acts.
5
66 J. WARD :
we cannot analyse may be a necessary link in the process of
attending, but maintains that we have still no warrant for
such a supposition ; because at the stage where activity " is
recognised and is felt as such we can see at once its com-
posite character ". Thereupon he proceeds to ascertain the
conditions under which this recognition of activity arises.
On all this there is only space for three brief remarks.
First, it is misleading to apply the phrase " psychical event "
to attention if attention is an unanalysable element in every
psychical event. It is obviously impossible that what is a
constituent in every psychical event can be explicable in
terms of psychical events, and the demand for such an
explanation amounts logically to a tacit denial of any hetero-
geneity in mind at all. Matter may be infinitely divisible,
but it does not therefore follow that a watch is made of
watches. Secondly, Mr. Bradley is doubtless well aware of
the difference between the simplicity of an idea and the idea
of simplicity, between the complexity necessarily involved
in the idea of the simplest relation, and the simplicity of the
relation as an actual fact. Yet all that he does is to show
that our conception of activity is complex, not that action
itself is so ; nor does he succeed in resolving activity itself
into a mere interaction of presentations inter se. This brings
us, thirdly, to his account of the origin of what he calls the
feeling of activity one might say, to his attempt to explain
it away. In this he makes certain assumptions which
seem to surrender the entire position contended for. The
account is substantially a resume of what Herbartian psycho-
logists, such as Nahlowsky and Waitz, offer as an analysis
of the so-called "formal feelings," and except for the pre-
liminary assumptions has little relevance to our question at
all. Here they are :
" I have to assume the doctrine that of our psychical contents a certain
group is closely united, and is connected in a very special manner with
flea sure and pain, and that this group is the first appearance of our self,
have to assume again that this psychical mass, with its connexions, is
perpetually growing larger and smaller as against other contents. And I
must assume once more that the expansion gives in general a feeling of
pleasure, while contraction brings pain, and that we may call these the
two chief modes of self-feeling " (MiND xi. 319).
Now it is easy to see that the " first appearance of our self"
means not the first beginning of the conscious subject but
that stage "in the growth of the soul " at which the con-
scious subject acquires the idea of self, becomes, as we say,
self-conscious. It is also clear that pleasure and pain are
not actual constituents of this " first appearance of self,"
but, as we are told, are connected with it, inasmuch as
certain changes in this group bring or give (to the conscious
PSYCHOLOGICAL PEINCIPLES. (ill.) 67
subject) a feeling, which is pleasure or pain according to
circumstances. The subject of this feeling is in general
pleased when the psychical mass that constitutes the first
appearance of self expands, and pained in general when this
psychical mass contracts ; and the expansion or contraction of
" the group of the self" is to be understood as relative to a
concomitant contraction or expansion of the rest of our
psychical contents, i.e., the not-self. But why should the
expansion of the one portion give or bring pleasure rather
than the expansion of the other ? Both are so far nothing
but groups of ideas. The author tells us two things about
the pleasurable expansion: (1) it "is not the consciousness
of activity " this is only its delusive interpretation ; but (2) it
merely is and is felt in a certain way. Here again, as in the
case of the conscious subject and " the first appearance of
self," we have the old distinction of subjective fact and
objective reflexion ; only that in this case we are expressly
warned that the mirror is false. But is it ? What then are
we to make of the following sentence ? " We are active,
when the not-self . . . changes in the presence of an
idea, and (I will add) [a most important addition] a desire of
that change within the self" (p. 320). The change in the not-
self we may fairly take to be a contraction : as to the desire,
Mr. Bradley has not analysed this for us ; but it seems plain
that he regards it also as pertaining to the subject that feels,
and not to that group of our psychical contents that forms
the appearance of self. Thus we have the conscious subject
and f psychical contents of which it is conscious " con-
nect first by pleasure and pain, and secondly by
desire, i.e., first by feeling and secondly by action. Add to
this that the contraction is spoken of as implying resistance,
and that " in getting the idea of self-expansion the muscular
element is most important ". Yet for all this the conception
of activity is only an intellectual construction: "in fact, of
course, being nothing at all". How does Mr. Bradley
propose to convince us of this not very evident conclu-
sion ? By a judicious use of the words facts and events :
" In all this, he says, there is a happening a happening of
events ; there is nothing beside facts coexistent and succes-
sive with the result of other facts. And I think in this way
we could give throughout psychology a definite meaning to
action and passivity." With some reserve on the point of
definiteness, no doubt, we shall all agree. Not only psycho-
logy but most other things can be explained after this
fashion, but what is a fact ? And how is the reality of
activity affected by an empty generalisation of everything
into happenings and facts ?
IV. EESEAECH.
EXPERIMENTS ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
By JAMES McKEEN CATTELL, Ph.D.
The Association of Ideas has been a favourite subject with
psychologists from Aristotle on, yet the results have not been
very definite from the scientific point of view. An important
paper by Mr. Galton 1 first applied experimental methods to the
subject, and put it in a way where scientific advance was possible.
Professor Wundt at once saw the importance of this work, and
took it up in his laboratory with improved apparatus and methods. 2
Nothing further has, however, been published on the subject,
which is a pity, as experimental psychology seems to have its
most hopeful outlook in this direction.
Experiments I described in a paper contributed to MIND, Nos.
42-4, on " The Time taken up by Cerebral Operations," showed
that about f sec. was needed to see and name a word. When
the physiological factors and the time taken up in seeing the
word were eliminated, it was found that about -f^ sec. was spent
in finding the name belonging to the printed symbol. The time
was longer for letters, which we do not read as often as words,
and still longer (about sec.) for colours and pictures. I called
the time passing, while the motor expression was being found, a
' Will-time '. The process is, however, largely automatic, and
consists in carrying out an association previously formed between
the concept and the expression. There is no break between such
a process and the other processes I ana about to describe.
I.
If an object is named in a foreign instead of in one's native
language, the association between concept and expression is less
intimate and takes up more time. It is an open question as to
how far concepts are formed without the aid of words, and it is
not evident what mental process takes place when an object is
named in. a foreign language, it depending, of course, on the
familiarity of the language. It need scarcely be said that we
know almost nothing as to the physical basis of memory and
thought ; we may hope that psychometric experiments, such as I
am about to describe, will contribute something toward the
study of this subject. In the paper above mentioned I showed
how we can determine the time it takes to see and name the
picture of an object ; in like manner the time we need to name
1 Brain, 1879 ; cp. MIND, iv. 551.
2 Physiologische Psychologie, c. xvi. ; Philosophische Studien, i. 1.
EXPERIMENTS ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 69
the picture in a foreign language can be measured. I must refer
the reader to that paper for a detailed account of apparatus
and methods. '001 sec. is taken as the unit of time, a being
used as its symbol. B (Dr. G. O. Berger) and C (the writer)
are the two subjects; after these designations there is given
the average time taken in all the experiments made, and the
mean variation of these measurements from the average ; after
this is given a second average and mean variation, found by
dropping the most irregular times in accordance with the method
I have described. 1 The number of experiments made 011 each
subject is given in parenthesis. The experiments were made at
Leipsic during the first half of the year 1885.
I give first the time it took the subjects to recognise the
pictures of twenty-six familiar objects, and name them in a
foreign language B in English, C in German.
Pictures named in Foreign Language (78).
B 649 104 632 49 C 694 87 682 43
It has been shown - that B took 477, C 545<r to see and name
these same pictures in their native languages. B consequently
needed 172, C 1490- in addition to find the name in a foreign
language. C talks German readily, B English less so. These
should be compared with other experiments I have made showing
that the rate at which a person can read a foreign language is
proportional to his familiarity with the language. 3
We go a step further when a word must be translated from one
language into another. The mental operation is again obscure,
the processes of translating and naming not being sharply
defined; but if we subtract the time it takes to see and name
a word from the time it takes to see a word, to translate it into a
foreign language and name it, we get approximately the time of
translation. This time I give for translating from a foreign into
the native language, and in the reverse direction. I have sub-
tracted the time it takes the subjects to see and name words (B
390, C 428<r), and the mean variation (B 28, C 20 ; in the cor-
rected series, B 19, C 13j).
English-German: Short (Common) Words (78).
B 240 77 199 36 C 258 59 237 29
1 MIND, xi. 229. It will be noticed that the corrected averages are
usually smaller than the averages from all the determinations ; this is
because the subject found difficulty in a few cases. The unconnected value
gives the average time taken up by associations ; the corrected average
more nearly the time usually taken up by associations.
2 MIND, xi. 533.
3 Phil. Studien, ii. 635 ; Abstract in MIND, xi . 63. I hope shortly to print
an account of experiments showing the increasing rapidity with which the
classes of a German gymnasium can read Latin.
70 J. M. CATTELL :
English-German : Long (Less Familiar} Words (78).
331 96 309 67 388 101 367 62
German-English : Short Words (78).
303 148 237 53 152 17 153 13
German-English: Long Words (78).
593 281 573 116 411 85 389 55
These numbers show that foreign languages take up much time
even after they have been learned, and may lead us once more to
weigh the gain and loss of a polyglot mental life.
ii.
A great part of our time is spent in calling to mind things we
already know. Memory is no transcendental process outside of
space and time ; this paper shows just how much time it takes
to remember, and we have every reason to believe that the time
passes while certain changes in the brain call forth other changes.
I give below the time it took B and C to remember certain facts,
examples of the necessary associations with which the mind is con-
tinually busy. A well-known city was given, and the subject
named the country in which it is situated ; a month was given,
and the season to which it belongs was named, and in like
manner the preceding or following month; an eminent author
was given, and the subject named the language in which he
wrote ; a distinguished man, and his calling was named. In the
last two cases below, the subject respectively added and multi-
plied numbers of one place. At first sight this mental operation
may seern to consist of a mathematical calculation, and to be
altogether different from the others ; it is however not unlike
them, being essentially an act of memory.
City-Country (52).
B 348 53 333 35 C 462 120 413 65
Month- Season (26).
415 55 410 31 310 63 306 16
Month- Following Month (26).
345 45 327 25 389 172 384 61
Month- Preceding Month (26).
763 245 619 129 832 233 815 160
Author-Language (78).
417 80 402 53 350 57 337 32
Man- Calling (78).
465 89 440 62 368 95 326 53
Addition (52).
221 46 223 23 336 77 299 36
Multiplication (52).
389 71 369 , 38 544 225 507 158
EXPEEIMENTS ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 71
The mental processes considered above are by no means in-
vented for the sake of experiment, but are such as make up a
considerable part of life. We see that it took the subjects f to f
sec. to call to mind facts with which they were familiar. The
times needed in the different cases are of interest. The time of
addition was the shortest of all ; B needed 168, C 208<r longer
to multiply than to add ; it took twice as long to call to mind the
foregoing as the following month. It will be noticed that the
times of the two subjects correspond closely (the average time in
the eight examples given is 420<r for B, 436 for C); the differences
of time in the several cases are explained by the character and
pursuits of the subjects, and in turn throw light back upon these.
For example, B is a teacher of mathematics, C has busied him-
self more with literature ; C knows quite as well as B that
5 + 7 = 12, yet he needs -^ sec. longer to call it to mind; B
knows quite as well as G that Dante was a poet, but needs ^ sec.
longer to think of it. Such experiments lay bare the mental life
in a way that is startling and not always gratifying.
The numbers given are the averages from many measurements ;
the mean variation shows how greatly the separate determina-
tions vary from the average. This variation is partly owing to
changing conditions of the brain, so that the same process never
takes exactly the same time ; it is, however, largely due to the
fact that the mental operations under bhe same class are not
equally simple, and consequently require different times. Just as
it takes less time to add 2 to 3 than to multiply 2 by 3, so it takes
less time to add 2 to 3 than to add 6 to 7. Owing to the normal
variation in the time of the same mental process, we should not
place too much reliance on a small number of measurements ; it
will, however, be worth our while to notice a few examples. In
giving the country in which the city is situated, as average of three
trials, both B and C took the shortest time for Paris (212, 278^),
and the longest time for Geneva (403, 485<r). In giving the
language in which an author wrote, as average of the three trials,
B took the shortest time for Luther (227) and Goethe (265),
and the longest for Aristotle (591) and Bacon (565) ; C took
the shortest time for Plato (224) and Shakespeare (258),
the longest for Chaucer (503) and Plautus (478). In the
case of Luther B took 244, in the case of Goethe 102<r less time
than C ; in the case of Shakespeare C took I860- less time than
B. It should be borne in mind that B is a German, C an American.
In giving the calling of eminent men the order was as follows,
tne shortest times being placed first : B Poet (355), War-
rior, Historian, Philosopher, Artist, Eeformer, Man of Science
(657) ; C Poet (291), Artist, Historian, Warrior, Philosopher,
Eeformer, Man of Science (421). With both subjects Poet comes
first and Man of Science last. It is easier to think of Homer as
a poet than of Darwin as a man of science.
72 J. M. CATTELL :
III.
In the experiments so far considered a question was asked
which admitted but one answer : the association was necessary,
and the interval passing while it was being formed might be
called a ' Eecollection-time '. A question can, however, be so
arranged that beside the act of recollection a certain choice as to
the answer must be made, and in this case a little more time is
needed. Below is given the inverse of several of the cases we
have considered ; a country being given, some city situated in it
had to be named, &c. The last line gives the time needed to
think of -a work by a given author.
Country-City (26).
B 400 72 357 45 ' C 346 75 340 48
Season-Month (26).
561 92 548 36 435 99 399 54
Language- Author (78).
663 200 702 110 519 137 523 83
Author-Work (26).
1076 397 1095 287 763 308 596 127
It will be seen that it took no longer to name a city when the
country was given than the reverse ; in this case there was
but little choice, as there is in each country one particular
city which was named almost as a matter of course. It took,
however, considerably longer to name a month when the season
was given and an author when a language was given than the
reverse. A choice had in the former case to be made, and
further, as Steinthal has before remarked, 1 the mind moves more
readily from the part to the whole than from the whole to the
part. It will be noticed that the naming a work by a given
author is one of the most difficult associations considered in this
paper. As to the time taken up by the separate associations, I
must again call attention to the fact that it is largely determined
by accidental variation. This variation could only be eliminated
by making a large number of experiments, and in this case we
should no longer have the time taken up by associations in our
daily life, but the minimum recollection-time, which would tend
to become the same for different classes of associations as they
became equally familiar. In naming a city, C needed the longest
time for Brussels (1042) and Pekin (1001): the shortest time
for Athens (214) and Philadelphia (222), his home. In
naming an author, less time was needed for English, German and
Italian, where Shakespeare, Goethe and Dante at once occurred,
than in the three other languages used, French, Latin and
Greek. In naming a work by a given author C needed the
1 Einleitung in die Psychologic und Sprachwissenschaft, p. 161.
EXPEKIMENTS ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 73
longest time for Chaucer (Canterbury Tales 1898), Aristotle
(Logic [sic] 1522), and Bacon (Novum Organum 1388) ; the
shortest time for Milton (Paradise Lost 328), Dante (Inferno
373), and Goethe (Faust 393).
IV,
We now come to consider certain classes of associations in which
the mind is allowed a larger degree of liberty. The times required
in eight such cases are given. A noun representing a class of
objects was given and a particular example was named (river-
Ehine) ; a picture of an object was shown, and instead of naming
the entire picture the subject was required to select some part of
the object and name it (picture of a ship-sail) ; a concrete noun
was in the same way given and a part of the object was
named : both the pictures and names of objects were shown, and
the subject said what the thing is used for or what it does
(horse-ride or trot) ; a substantive had to be found for an adjective
(blue-sky), a subject for an intransitive (swim-fish) and an
object for a transitive verb (write-letter).
Thing-Example (52).
B 727 216 663 102 C 537 179 457 95
Picture-Part of Object (52).
399 96 368 40 447 162 415 69
Substantive- Part of Object (26).
578 128 568 85 439 135 404 82
Picture-Property (52).
358 105 325 49 372 121 370 78
Su bstantire- Property (26).
436 157 390 109 '337 100 291 69
Adjective-Substantive (26).
879 278 823 186 351 86 307 41
Verb-Subject (26).
765 366 584 166 527 171 497 107
Verb- Object (26).
654 242 561 139 379 122 317 86
The times given need no long comment. The most difficult
associations seem to be the finding of a special example when the
class is given, and the subject for a verb ; in both of these cases
the times needed were irregular, as is shown by the large mean
variation. B took 111, C 146o- longer to find a subject than to find
an object for a verb, the mind moving logically in the latter direc-
tion. In identifying a particular object the mind was inclined to
choose either one immediately at hand or to go back to the home
of childhood. Thus out of the 52 cases B thought of an object
74 J. M. CATTELL : ON THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.
in the room 8, C 20 times ; 1 of objects identified with the early
home B 22, C 19 times. In the other cases this was mostly im-
possible, but also here either a very recent or an early association
was formed in all except 6 out of the 104 cases.
v.
We have lastly to consider the time it takes to form a judg-
ment or opinion. I choose three cases in which the results could
conveniently be averaged. In the first case the subject estimated
the length of a line drawn horizontally on a card 10 cm. long, 50
lines being used varying in length from 1 to 50 mm. In the
second case the subject estimated the number of short perpendi-
cular lines on a card, 2 the number varying between 4 and 15. In
the third case the names of two eminent men were shown, and the
subject decided which of them he thought to be the greater.
Length of Line (150).
B 1124 242 1127 154 C 664 124 664 88
Number of Lines (26).
183 57 180 35 319 74 313 45
Eminent Men (104).
667 143 604 80 558 171 522 112
I made rather a large number of determinations with the lines,
as I wished to find the ratio between the length of the line and
the average error (psychophysical law), and between the error
and the time taken up in coming to a decision. I think it how-
ever desirable to still further increase the number of experiments
before publishing the results. In judging as to the relative great-
ness of eminent men, as might be foreseen, the times were
shortest where the judgment was easiest, more especially if the
subject had already compared the men together (Homer, Virgil).
The nature of the judgments is not without interest, but can
better be considered when I come to print similar experiments
which I have made on a larger number of subjects.
The associations we have been considering in this paper are in
their nature fixed or limited, and we have concerned ourselves
chiefly with the time taken up. The conditions of the experi-
ment can however be so arranged that one idea is allowed to
suggest another somewhat as in our ordinary thinking. I shall
shortly have ready experiments in this direction in which both
the time and the nature of the association will be considered.
1 The experiments were made in C's room.
2 For experiments 011 the Limits of Consciousness see Cattell, Phil.
Studien, iii. 94.
EXPERIMENTS ON "PREHENSION".
By JOSEPH JACOBS. 1
It is obvious that there is a limit to the power of reproducing
sounds accurately. Anyone can say Bo after once hearing it :
few could catch the name of the Greek statesman M. Papa-
michalopoulos without the need of a repetition. It is here
attempted to ascertain the normal limits of such reproduc-
tion in various circumstances and under varying conditions. At
first experiments were made with nonsense-syllables like cral-
forg-mul-tal-nop, as suggested by Ebbinghaus's experiments. It
was found, however, that the syllables used varied greatly in
relative difficulty of pronunciation and in relative facility of
rhythm. After a few trials they were abandoned for letters
(omitting "double u") and numerals (omitting "seven" as dis-
syllabic). It was found on the whole that the facility of repro-
ducing the different kinds of sounds, after once hearing them, went
together in a tolerably constant ratio. Thus a number of school-
girls who could repeat on an average 6*1 nonsense-syllables could
repeat 7-3 letters and 9'3 numerals. The explanation for this
order of difficulty is not far to seek. The syllables, as contrasted
with numerals and letters, are new to the hearer, have to be
learnt, and absorb more energy ; then, again, their grotesqueness
would distract the attention more. The comparative diffi-
culty of reproducing letters as compared with numerals is not so
obvious. Reading accustoms us to take letters in groups having
a phonetic value, and collocations of consonants like bsvlrtm
strike us in a minor degree with the same sense of incongruity
which prevents our minds from easily assimilating a conjunction
like dak-mil-tak-Un-roz. Numerals, on the other hand, have few, if
any, associations of contiguity, and we are accustomed to find them
in haphazard order. Finally, our expectant attention has only to
search among nine numerals, whereas it has to be ready to select
from twenty-five letters. School-habits, however, might modify
these conditions, and the cases were not infrequent in which the
limit for letters was higher than for numerals : thus in one set of
schoolboys no less than 14 boys out of 88 could repeat more
letters than they could numerals, while 33 of the remainder had
the same limit for both.
1 The following investigation was made with the co-operation and advice
of a circle of inquirers interested in psychological science, among whom
should be mentioned, in the present connexion, Mr. J. Sully and Mr.
Carveth Read but especially Mrs. S. Bryant, D.Sc., who obtained the
results from the North London Collegiate School and made many valuable
suggestions both in the part of the investigation now presented and that
still in hand.
76
j. JACOBS :
Numerals have the further advantage that school-children are
accustomed to take them down from dictation, and this leads us to
deal with the modus operandi adopted in obtaining our results. It
was necessary, in the first place, to adopt some uniform rate at
which the dictation should be given, as the power of apprehension
varied with the rate of utterance. A sound every half-second was
found to be a convenient rate, and a little practice with a metro-
nome beating twice a second gives the experimenter a sense of
the proper interval. The repetition was in the first experiments
oral, but afterwards was taken in written form. If possible, two
sets of the series of sounds should be given, and the highest num-
ber correctly reproduced is to be regarded as the limit which we
wish to find, and which we term here the span. The reading
should be in a monotonous tone, so as not to give any perceptible
accent or rhythm, either of which, it appeared, assists the
power of repetition in a considerable degree. The papers,
when handed in, were marked with the names of the " subjects,"
to which it was found useful to add their ages and, if possible,
their places in form.
Early in the inquiry it became evident that the power of repro-
ducing a number of sounds increased steadily with age. Our
materials enable us to draw up the following Table, which clearly
shows the increasing power of school-girls in mastering nonsense-
syllables as they grow older :
Age, .... 11 12 13 14 17 18 19 20
Number of " Subjec ts . 3 711 912 13 6 2
Average of Syllables, . 5'3 5'3 57 5'2 57 6'1 7'2 7'0
Here there is a distinct rise from 11 to 13, and from 17 to 19,
and a marked progress in the whole series from 5-3 at 11 to 7*0
at 20. The same gradual increase of span is also shown in the
following results for boys and girls of various ages in reproducing
numerals and letters :
BOYS. GIRLS.
Age, 11 12 13 13 17 18 19 20
"Subjects," . 70 57 47 60 32 28 4 3
Av. of Numerals, 6'5 6'8 8-8 8'3 91 9'9 9'4 9'0
Av. of Letters, 5-5 57 6'9 7*3 87 8*8 8-1 S'O 1
1 These are summaries of results by different observers and under vary-
ing conditions. Later on a more extended and trustworthy set of observa-
tions were made on the girls of the North London Collegiate School, with
the following results :
Age, . . .8 9 10 11 12 13 14
"'Subjects,''' . 8 13 19 36 41 42 42
Av. of Numerals, 6-6 67 6'8 7'2 7'4 7'3 7'3
Av. of Letters, .6 7 6'6 4'6 6'5 67 67
The answers were here written down, not taken orally as in the cases
tabulated above. The uniform reduction of span at the corresponding ages
15 16 17 18 19
72 66 50 30 14
77 8 8 8-6 8'6
7'4 7'9 7'3 8'2 7'9
EXPEEIMENTS ON " PEEHENSION ". 77
Steady advance is shown on the average throughout this Table
except in the highest ages of the girls, where, however, the num-
bers are too small to allow us to draw any definite conclusions.
The progress must, however, stop at some time, and the familiar
fact of minds getting ' stale ' after a certain age suggests the pos-
sibility that the increase in the span ceases with the increase in
the bodily growth. The most noteworthy result of the table is ths
sudden leap of two syllables in the cyphering powers of the
boys between the ages of 12 and 13. This may be due to greater
practice in arithmetic. At any rate it raises them above the
average for the girls of the same age, though they hold the
reverse position as regards letters. No conclusions can be drawn
as to the relative spans of the two sexes at the age of 13, as the
subjects were drawn from two entirely different grades of society,
and in the case of the boys (who were of the Jews Free School,
Bell Lane, ) x racial influences may have been at work in producing
earlier maturity.
If, then, the span increases normally with age up to a certain
point, it follow? that in any class of the population, and in the
population generally, below that age there will be a fixed number
of syllables, letters and numbers which can on the average be
seized after once hearing by persons of each age. This number
can be determined by the means referred to above, and might
easily form an addition to the usual items of anthropometric
inquiries. If this were done we should obtain a standard span
for the various ages and conditions just as we do for height,
weight, &c., a standard relative and not absolute, but still enabling
us to ascertain whether a boy or girl were above or below the
average, and even the rate of growth in this particular. Another
fact came out with equal clearness as our materials accumulated.
This was that, as a rule, high span went with high place in form.
Thus, selecting 30 boys of 12 years old out of a class and taking
the average of their span as regards numerals, this was found to
be 9'1 for the first ten, 8'3 for the next ten, and 7*9 in the
remainder. In another class, also of 30 boys of the same age,
the averages of the three sets of ten were in order 7 '6, 7'1 and
6 - 3 respectively. Eight girls of the same age, taken in their order
in class, gave for the first four an average of 8-2 for numerals
against 8*0 for the last four, while the span for letters remained
constant. With 12 girls of 13 years of age the first six had an
average span of 8*3 against 7*8 for the last six in the case of
numerals, while for letters the two sets were again equal. But
the generality of the relation comes out clearly in the following
(of the girls) may perhaps be taken as a mark or even as a measure of
the cerebral process involved in translating sounds into their visual
symbols.
1 The experiments were made by Mr. Louis Cohen, one of the masters
of the school.
78 J. JACOBS : EXPERIMENTS ON
Table, giving the averages for the first and second halves of the
various classes at the North London Collegiate School for
Girls :,
Numerals. Letters.
Form. 1st half. 2nd half. 1st half. 2nd half.
VI 10-5 9'1 9 8-1
Up. V 9-8 9-1 8-8 8-2
V 7-9 8-6 8-1 7-8
L.V.K 8-2 8-1 8 8-1
LowV 8-5 9 8-2 8
Up. IV. K 8-4 8 8-4 7'5
Up. IV 8-4 7-8 7-4 6'5
IV. R 8-6 7-6 7-2 6'9
IV 8 6-6 7 6-5
L. IV. E 8 6-7 7-1 7-5
L. IV 7-5 7-5 7 6-3
Up. Ill 7-4 6'4 6-4 5-4
III 7-8 8-5 6-7 6-4
II 6-8 4-9 6-5 6
1 7-4 7-1 6-8 7
Here the general superiority of the averages for the first half of the
class comes out distinctly, though with exceptions which in many
cases allow of special explanation. The only difficulty is the
very small extent of variability : in order to get a wider range,
and also to test the obvious deduction to be made from these
figures, it was suggested by Mr. Francis Galton that experiments
should be tried on idiots, and he kindly undertook the inquiry in
conjunction with Prof, Bain and Mr. Sully. The detailed results
are given below. At Earls wood the average span was as low as
4, and much the same at Darenth. ' Idiots ' differ so much as to
make it, indeed, hardly possible to speak of average results ; but
it appears that few, if any, attain to the normal span, and that a
good number of those who can ' speak ' at all are unable to repro-
duce more than 2 numerals.
This notable concomitance of high span and high place in form,
though at first sight surprising, is perhaps nothing more than a
corollary of the one previously shown. If the span rises with
age, and is thus seemingly a measure of a pupil's relation to the
standard of his or her age, it should not be surprising that a pupil
with a span higher than the normal should take rank above those
of the same age. At any rate, whatever be the cause, the above
facts are too consistent and widespread to leave much doubt as to
there being a definite connexion between high span and high
place in form. And, so far as high place in form can be said
to measure ability, the span may serve as some indication of
ability.
This at once raises the question as to what is the exact power
of the mind which is involved in reproducing these sounds. In
our experiments we have simply tested the power of temporarily
retaining sounds long enough to reproduce them correctly. We
NOTES ON "PREHENSION" IN IDIOTS. 79
propose to call this power Prehension from the analogy of Appre-
hension and Comprehension, to both of which it is clearly related
as a simpler process. It may be described as the mind's power
of tdkimi on certain material ; in this case auditory sensations.
Now, of course, this power of taking on need not necessarily
go with that of taking in, but, on the other hand, we clearly
cannot take in without first taking on, and the mental operation
we have been testing thus seems a necessary preliminary to all
obtaining of mental material, i.e., through auditory presentations.
Under these circumstances w r e might expect that " span of pre-
hension '' should be an important factor in determining mental
grasp, and its determination one of the tests of mental capacity.
The results given above, as far as they go, seem to confirm in no
slight degree the theoretical probability.
Supplementary Notes on " Prehension " in Idiots.
By FRANCIS GALTON, F.K.S.
Prof. Bain and myself paid a visit of 4J hours' duration to
the Earls wood Asylum for Idiots, on June 18, 1886, where we
were received by Dr. Cobbold, who gave us every assistance.
There were 566 idiots in the asylum, and he picked out those
who were the most suitable for our inquiries.
He told us, and we had abundant evidence of the truth of the
statement, that, as a general rule, idiots are incapable of the
simplest arithmetic. Usually they cannot even add two figures
together, though they may know the multiplication table by rote.
On the other hand, a very few cases are to be met with in
which idiots have a tenacious memory for dates. We determined
to apply the test of the number of figures that can be orally
repeated after having heard them read out once distinctly, to (1)
the better class of idiots generally ; (2) those who had the special
power of recollecting dates, and to test the latter in other ways
as well.
I. Nine of the best girls were selected by Dr. Cobbold out of
the class-room. They could all read and write a little, and were
intelligent enough to do some house work. They were aged
apparently from 16 or 17 to 25. They all failed in adding two
figures together, such as 3 to 5, 4 to 7, &c. Their performances
in the numeral-test are given below at A.
Six other girls were then taken by Dr. Cobbold from the same
class not quite indiscriminately, as our wish at that moment was
to find girls who were intelligent enough to answer quickly, and
who were nevertheless unable to repeat many figures. The
result was, however, that given at B.
F. GALTON :
Number of
cases.
Greatest number of Figures that
could be recollected.
Number of
Figures
at which
the memory
first wholly
broke down.
Perfectly.
Imperfectly.
A
1
1
1
2
4
2
3
4
4
5
5
3
4
5
6
6
B
1
2
1
1
1
2
3
4
5
6
3
4
5
6
7
Having thus obtained two girls, one from each batch, who could
not repeat more than two figures without mistake, 23 trials were
made with them with three figures in each, and their errors were
classified. In 17 cases the last figure was rightly repeated ;
in 10, the second ; and in 7, the first. The last uttered figure is
therefore most easily repeated.
There was no obvious tendency to transposition. One of the
girls had a peculiar trick of duplicating a numeral and giving an
answer of 4 instead of 3 figures, thus 1216 for 216, 0808 for 408.
II. Three men idiots were brought to us who were remarkable
for their memory of dates ; their initials were J. M., W. C. and
G. M.
The speciality of J. M. was his acquaintance with MagnalPs
History. I had seen him some years ago when I visited the
Asylum in company with Mr. Eomanes, previous to Dr. Cobbold's
appointment. He had then a well-thumbed volume, printed to
the best of my recollection in small type ; he now has a new
volume of 419 pages,, small 8vo, and in large type, but does not
profess to know the whole of it by heart. He was tested at the
lives of Copernicus, Columbus and elsewhere, and repeated with
considerable exactitude. Where he substituted words they made
good sense, and where he omitted words or passages the omissions
did not spoil the sense. He repeated much that we did not find
in the book, but which I ascribed to his recollection of the more
diffuse edition of the work. He was asked about astronomical
measures and gave abundance of correct numerical data, and
when questioned as to their signification answered sensibly
enough. His memory cannot be visual, as he does not know in
what part of the page the recollected passages lie. Of the ser-
mons he had heard, he could remember the texts of many and
the dates when they were preached, but not the sermons them-
selves. His power of learning new sentences seemed small ; he
NOTES ON " PREHENSION " IN IDIOTS. 81
was tried with one of three lines out of a local guide-book that lay
on the table, which was written in much the same magniloquent
language as Magnall's History, but after five readings he failed to
recall more than a few words.
On trying the numeral-test, he was right four times out of six
with three figures, but wholly broke down at four.
W. C. has a minute recollection of dates of deaths, visits, holi-
days and other events in the asylum. He was tried in many
cases familiar to Dr. Cobbold and in others verified by his journal,
and his answers were pronounced to be exact. He also had a
considerable knowledge of the day of the week on which any day
of a month would fall in the present or in recent years, and was
particular about leap years. I tried him from my pocket almanac.
He correctly gave Monday as the day on which May 10 fell this
year. The 13th of April puzzled him a little ; he recollected that
the 12th was a Wednesday, but calculated at first wrongly from
that premiss ; however he at last got the answer out correctly.
When I pronounced the names of a month, day and year to him,
as " October the twelfth, 1883," he could not recollect it, appa-
rently from want of interest in abstract figures.
The numeral-test was a complete failure with him. We could
not get him to repeat even three figures by rote. He seemed
unable to understand what was wanted, and gave some fancy
results.
G. M. had a memory for dates resembling that of W. C., but
less good. They often conferred together about them. He was
quite unable to add, saying that 2 and 3 made 4, 3 and 2 made 6,
&c.
The numeral-test was a complete failure ; he did not seem to
understand what was wanted.
The impression left by these three men, based on what they
said, and otherwise confirmed, was that their memory was chiefly
due to their habit of mentally reiterating certain events and
phrases that happened to interest them, so that their memory was
peculiar in its limitations rather than strong. It would follow
that if they happened to take a fancy to the numeral-tests, future
results might not be so complete a failure as these were,
Prof. Bain has read the rough draft of this, and approves.
On June 30, 1886, Mr. Sully and I spent four hours at the
Asylum for Idiots at Darenth, near Dartford. Dr. Fletcher Beach
had kindly made preliminary experiments there for us, and when
we arrived he gave us every assistance.
Most of the Darenth inmates are merely imbecile. Those
reckoned as "first-class " struck me as far superior in intellect to
any I had seen at Earlswood, and those of the second-class as
distinctly superior to the first-class at Earlswood. They were
6
82
F. GALTON I NOTES ON " PKEHENSION IN IDIOTS.
taught some simple arithmetic. In the lower classes it seemed
that the children were better able to seize what was wanted when
tested with the names of letters than with those of numerals, so
in the later experiments letters were employed ; otherwise the
mode of testing was exactly the same as that used at Earlswood.
The names of the numerals (or letters) were distinctly uttered at
estimated intervals of half a second, and after I had quite done
the child began to repeat them.
Below, the figures on lines are intermediate estimates ; thus
in the case of one idiot who was not successful with 3 figures,
we had reason to think the mistake possibly due to other
causes than incapacity, so the entry was made on the line
dividing 2 from 3.
Span of Prehension.
2
3
4
5
6|7
8 | 9 | 10
1
2
1
:
1]
1!
11
1
4
2.
5i
!
2
1
Class 1. The four sharpest children ; ages
9, 12, 13 and 15. The quickest
of these, who repeated 9 figures,
was only " morally imbecile ".
Class II. Ages, 9-16
Claas III. Three of those whose span was
only 2 had been removed from
school for nearly 12 months.
Their ages are 18, 18, and 19.
The others range from 11 to 15.
Class IV. Ages 11-15
It was very noticeable that the last uttered word was the
best repeated, and after this the first. Also that there was
much tendency to the transposition of adjacent words. The
children were usually slow of utterance and apparently of thought.
They tired very quickly ; sometimes after only three or four
attempts. In other cases there was an improvement within
brief limits, due apparently to their better understanding what
was required. They did not show signs of inattention (by looking
away, &c.), but upon this Dr. Fletcher Beach remarks that the
faculty of attention is one of the first to be trained. If the chil-
dren should be made familiar with these experiments, and be tested
when quite fresh, at and a little beyond the limits of their previ-
ously ascertained span, it is probable that better results could be
obtained. They seemed to take pleasure in the tests and to show
emulation.
I submitted a rough draft of the foregoing to Mr. Sully, and
afterwards to Dr. Fletcher Beach, whose remarks are now
incorporated in it.
V. DISCUSSION.
"ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGY."
By Professor JOHN DEWEY.
The fact that so acute and experienced a philosophical thinker
as Mr. Shadworth Hodgson has misapprehended the bearing of
the articles by me in MIND Nos. 43 , 42, must be my excuse for again
troubling the readers with reference to the matters discussed
there. Mr. Hodgson seems to think that it was the object of one
to explain the nature of the individual and the universal con-
sciousness, and of the other to give some definite directions
regarding the application of method to philosophy and psychology.
Thus apprehending them, he quite naturally complains of the
" blanks " in the argument ; and, if I may judge from the tone of
his remarks, thinks, indeed, that there is not so much an argument
as an assumption, while my lack of logic is to him lamentable.
May I be allowed to state that I had no such ends in view, and
that what seems to Mr. Hodgson a lack of logic on my part
seems to me a misunderstanding of logical bearing on his part ?
The logical purpose of the first article was as follows : Granted
the general truth of that way of looking at philosophical questions
which is specifically English (and which, following the usual cus-
tom, I called psychological), (1) to determine whether some im-
portant factor has not been overlooked ; (2) to show that it is
involved in this standpoint that all questions must be decided
from their place in conscious experience ; (3) to show that this
general statement applies to particular questions, like the nature
of subject and object, universal and individual ; and (4) to show
that this in turn implies that the psychological standpoint is one
which transcends and underlies the distinction of subject and
object, &c. Now it was open to Mr. Hodgson, or anyone else, to
reply that I misinterpreted the standpoint of British philosophy ;
or that, while its standpoint was correctly stated, it involved no
such implications as I thought it did ; or that while it did involve
such implications, this fact is, at bottom, only a reductio ad absurdum
of the standpoint. But objections like those of Mr. Hodgson, with
all due deference, seem to me a huge ignoratio elenclii.
And his misunderstanding of the logical bearing of the whole
has influenced his treatment of details. Mr. Hodgson's aver-
sion to some expressions is so acute that he seems hardly to have
asked himself in what connexion these phrases are used. If he
will re-read certain pages of the article referred to, I think he
will see that the terms ' postulate ' and ' presupposition,' whose
use seems to him to involve a contradiction on my part, are used
84 J. DEWEY I
not generally, nor with reference to my own standpoint, but in
connexion with this examination of British philosophy, and that
the contention of the article is, rather, that what has been an un-
conscious presupposition ought to be given a psychological exami-
nation and position.
So the logical bearing of the second article was not to give
recommendations regarding specific methods, but to suggest to
those whom Mr. Hodgson calls iny " Germanising friends " that
their results will never have a firm basis until they are reached by
a psychological method. The article was entitled "Psychology as
Philosophic Method," just as Mr. Hodgson might call a portion
of his article " Metaphysic as Philosophic Method ".
It thus appears to me that the mass of Mr. Hodgson's direct
specific criticism is so beside the mark that it is needless to under-
take a detailed review of it. But one may always learn much from
Mr. Hodgson when he is positively propounding his own views; and
certain discussions, as, e,g., regarding the nature of the universal
and the individual, and the mutual connexions of science, philo-
sophy and psychology, are never beside the mark. I should like
briefly to discuss the attempts which Mr. Hodgson kindly makes
to fill the "blanks " in my argument.
i.
First, then, as to the relation of the individual and the universal
consciousness, or, more properly speaking, of the individual and the
universal in consciousness. The position of Mr. Hodgson, as I
understand it, is that I have not duly distinguished between
perceptual processes, which give us the individual, and concep-
tual processes, which generalise it and give us a result more or
less abstract, and that consequently I have erected a generalised
notion of my individual consciousness, a logical abstraction into
an actual ens, which I call universal consciousness (pp. 480 and
484). The real state of the case, we are to believe, is as follows :
There is a " stream of states and changes " which comes to every
individual ; this is an individualised stream, and occurs in percep-
tual order. Out of it the world of ordinary experience is built.
But the individual can think as well as perceive, and he comes
gradually to generalise. This process of generalisation he extends
even to his own consciousness ; he generalises conscious experi-
ence itself. But the generalisation does not give, either in know-
ledge or belief, a universal consciousness different in any way
from his own. It is merely the logical or conceptual way of
representing individuality of what in actual experience is per-
ceptual (pp. 480 and 483). A universal self can only be represented
in thought as an individual self indefinitely or infinitely magnified
(p. 486). The result is that, while we may speak of universal
knowledge, the content of consciousness, it is fallacious and self-
contradictory to speak of a universal knower, the agent or bearer
of consciousness (pp. 484 and 485). The gist of the whole
85
controversy is, that while we may and must assume individuality
as given to us (pp. 480, 483), universality is the result of a logical
process. As to this I have to say :
1. Mr Hodgson is misled by an ambiguity in the use of the
term ' individual '. In one sense (in which it cannot be the subject-
matter of any science) it is given to us ; in another (in the sense
in which it is an object of scientific knowledge) it is not given to
us, but is a product of psychological experience. Every experi-
ence is given to us as a unique experience, a fact of absolute and
immediate interest. Individuality in this sense is indeed an
assumption which we need not care to avoid. But this assump-
tion is only the assumption that a fact exists ; it tells us nothing
of the meaning of the fact. And it is the assumption that we
know at the outset, what individuality means, and that the imme-
diate fact of experience is the same as an interpretation of the
fact, which plays such havoc with Mr. Hodgson's ideas. It is
this assumption which enables him to slide unconsciously from
the immediate unique interest which accompanies every experi-
ence, and which makes it mine or thine, to the fact of individuality,
as one being among others, limited in space and time, and whose
ideas occur as a " stream ". Individuality in this sense is not
" given," is not "immediate." and is an assumption which we
must avoid making until we see what it means until, in short, it
is not an assumption. Individuality in this sense may be provi-
sionally opposed to universality, but this sense is not an original
or immediate dictum. It is a product which has corne about
through experience, through psychological experience. The pro-
cess of its coming about, the way in which this gets to be a fact
of our conscious experience, is something to be examined by psy-
chology. The psychological standpoint is prior, so to speak, to
this result. It is confusion enough to substitute this psychologi-
cal product for the immediate individuality which is a matter of
feeling, but to substitute a philosophical interpretation of the fact
is to carry the confusion a step further. And this Mr. Hodgson
does in giving individuality a meaning that is, an interpretation
which opposes it absolutely to universality. One thing which
Mr. Hodgson would have learned by going to psychology rather
than to metaphysics would be to avoid this threefold confusion
of the individuality of immediate feeling, of constructed fact of
experience and of philosophical interpretation of the fact.
2. The substitution appears, however, in a still worse plight
when we consider that this view of individuality which opposes it
absolutely to universality is an incorrect interpretation. I speak,
not as a Germanising transcendentalist, but according to my
humble lights as a psychologist, when I say that I know nothing
of a perceptual order apart from a conceptual, and nothing of an
agent or bearer apart from the content which it bears. As a
psychologist, I see the possibility of abstractly analysing each
from the other, and, if I were as fond of erecting the results of an
86 J. DEWEY :
analysis into real entities as Mr. Hodgson believes me to be, I
should suppose that they were actually distinct as concrete exist-
ences. But, sticking fast to what Psychology teaches me, I must
hold that they are aspects, analytically arrived at, of the one
existing reality conscious experience. Mr. Hodgson finds no
difficulty in making the separation. He assumes and speaking
from the metaphysical standpoint would naturally assume that
there is " a stream of changes and states " which " come to an
individual," and " out of this as data is built up ordinary experi-
ence ". So he regards this " stream " as in some way individual,
while the world built up out of it the content may be distin-
guished from it. To me it seems that this " stream " is built up
along with, and mostly out of, the experiences of the everyday
world. Stream and world are equally psychological constructions,
built up by psychological processes. It must be from Metaphysic
(it cannot be from Psychology) that Mr. Hodgson gets a " stream"
which is given ready made. Psychology would tell us that the
" stream " is essentially due to projections out from the present
by a psychological mechanism in the form of memory and expec-
tation. Consciousness is not a moving body, which, flying through
time, leaves a trail behind it, as does a rocket in space. When
the idea of an absent person is suggested to an infant, the child
does not conceive this as an idea, but looks about him to localise
the person. His life is a present one, and it is only through a
psychological development that he comes to have experiences
placed as past and anticipated as future. The experiences of
time and of " streams '' are due to psychological dynamics. The
process by which the individual comes to connect certain experi-
ences with himself as a being continuous in time, and to separate
them from others which he refers to existences in space, is one
of the problems of psychology. What is the bearing of all this ?
Simply, that we have no ready-made distinction between the indi-
vidual agent and the world of experience over against him, but
that each is built up out of a common material by contemporane-
ous processes. A correct psychology would teach Mr. Hodgson,
it seems to me, not only that the ordo ad individuum and the ordo
ad universum are built out of a common stock, but that the process
is a reciprocal one, so that our ideas of ourselves as individuals,
nay ourselves as individuals, are made up out of our experiences
of the world, and vice- versa. The agent is not the agent which
it is without the content, not only in the sense that it bears
that content and no other, but in the sense that this content reacts
upon it and is organised into it to make it what it specifically is.
If Mr. Hodgson will make an absolute separation between the
individual as agent and the content of consciousness as general,
he will find that all that is left to the agent is : x is experienced
. and is interesting, where it is impossible to give x any definite
values. Its analogies we may hypothetically find in the conscious-
.ness of an oyster.
" ILLUSOEY PSYCHOLOGY." 87
3. And finally upon this point, I know of no perception which
is not made what it is by conceptual elements within it. Mr.
Hodgson well says that " every act of attention to a percept is the
commencement of a generalisation " (p. 481). But it cannot be
possible that Mr. Hodgson supposes that perceptions are given to
us prior to attention, and that this is an activity which super-
venes, the perception once formed. Correct psychology seems to
teach that the attention the active connexion between the mind
and a given psychical complex is necessary to interpret, to make it
a percept. And unless there are two utterly different kinds of atten-
tion, generalisation must be thus introduced, and a universal ele-
ment be present in the percept. I cannot believe accordingly
that Mr. Hodgson's attempt to set up individuality of conscious-
ness as opposed to universality is successful, whether it proceeds
by distinguishing the perceptual order from the conceptual, or by
distinguishing the stream of consciousness as given from the con-
tent of that consciousness as interpreted. At all events, I hope
it is clear that this conception of universality of consciousness is
not that of an individual indefinitely magnified. I should still be
compellad to ask, What is this individual which is magnified ? and
if I deal with facts and not with analytic abstractions, I find it to
be bound up through and through with universal factors, nay con-
stituted by its relation to the universal factor. One word more,
and I have done with this point. The universality of conscious-
ness stands just where its individuality does. An individuality is
" given " in the sense that every consciousness has a unique in-
terest ; so universality is "given" in the sense that every conscious-
ness has a meaning. But the experience of the world as a fact,
like the experience of the individual stream as a fact, is a con-
structed product. And the philosophical interpretation of the fact
that there is a world of experience is still more remote from being
immediate or given. In each of these three stages it stands just
where individuality does.
n.
I can treat but briefly of the other point : the relation between
Psychology and what Mr. Hodgson calls Metaphysic and what I
called Logic. Mr. Hodgson seems to think that upon my theory
no place can be left for physiological psychology, for race-psycho-
logy, &c., &c. They would, however, be left just where they are
now as special methods for determining the conditions and
genesis of various factors in conscious experience.
When Mr. Hodgson says that Metaphysic abstracts from the
fact that consciousness is individually conditioned (pp. 490 and
493) he simply suggests the point which was uppermost in my
mind when I wrote the article on " Psychology as Philosophic
Method ". Metaphysic or Logic does abstract from the indivi-
dual, which conditions the content. As thus abstract, it cannot
furnish the final method of philosophy, for as abstract it makes an
88 C. L. MOEGAN :
assumption and is incomplete. It is incomplete ; for is this unique
and yet absolutely universal fact that the content of consciousness
is known only in and to an individual is this fact to be left out of
account ? The play of ' ' Hamlet " with Hamlet left out seems to
me nothing in comparison. It makes an assumption, for to make
assumptions is simply to see how facts look when some integral
factor is omitted.
English thought, according to Mr. Hodgson, has commonly
ignored the universal or all-embracing character of the conscious-
ness, and has identified it with individual being. So it seems to
me, and the article in MIND No. 41 was written to show that
psychology could not be even psychology, much less philosophy,
until the universal factor in consciousness was attended to. Tran-
scendentalism, he says, inclines to identify consciousness with
universal being, and if this be interpreted to mean that it inclines
to neglect the individual agent, without which the universality of
the content is naught, I heartily agree with him. The article in
MIND No. 42 was written to show that transcendentalism was
incomplete till it recognised that the universal content can be
realised only in an individual bearer. And I make bold to add
that Mr. Hodgson thinks the tw^o sides may be split, one surren-
dered to Psychology, the other reserved for Metaphysic ; while to
me it seems that we shall never get the surest footing and the
completest results until we recognise that such halves the indi-
vidual without the universal content, and the universal content
without the individual bearer are disjecta membra. The science
which unites them, and considers the content as realised in and
by an individual, and the individual as realised through and by
the content, seems to me to be Psychology. A psychology which
should attempt to occupy the position Mr. Hodgson gives to it
would have nothing to say except Here is a consciousness which
interests me, but about which I can say nothing.
THE GENERALISATIONS OF SCIENCE.
By Professor C. LLOYD MORGAN.
An important question is suggested by Mr. N. Pearson's interest-
ing discussion of 'The Definition of Natural Law' in MIND No. 44.
That question concerns the relation that Natural Law bears to the
generalisations of science. Are the two fields coextensive ? or is
Natural Law a vast region of which the generalisations of science
constitute only the known and accurately surveyed areas ? Mr.
Pearson holds the latter view. He objects to Lewes's description
of a law as a notation of observed facts, and to the current defini-
tions of natural laws as generalisations from experience, on the
THE GENERALISATIONS OF SCIENCE. 89
score of their containing what he terms an "ascertainment-
clause ".
" It is perfectly accurate," lie says, " to describe all known natural laws
as observed uniformities of process : but surely the essence of the law is its
uniformity, and not the accidental fact that it has been observed. Science is
perpetually adding to the number of discovered laws ; but these laws
existed from the time when the operations of nature began, and the mere
fact of their discovery does not add a tittle to their validity. In short,
ascertainment is necessary to our knowledge of natural laws, but it is not the
least necessary to their existence " (p. 564).
And, after elaborating his view, he says in conclusion :
" If this be so, the case against the ascertainment-clause is made out.
If we believe Natural Law to prevail universally, it is incorrect to define it
as an order which is limited limited, that is, by the condition of previous
observation. If, on the other hand, we desire to restrict its meaning to
observed uniformities of process, it is inaccurate to call it Natural Law ;
seeing that, ex hypothesi, it does not extend to the whole of nature, but only
to that small part of it which has fallen under human observation" (p. 569).
Now there is much in Mr. Pearson's paper with which I am
glad to find myself in agreement ; but there is perhaps more in
which I cannot concur. I am in agreement with him in believ-
ing that there is in a so-called Law of Nature something beyond
a mere generalisation from experience. But I differ from him as
to what that something is ; and I wholly part company with him
when he draws a distinction between our knowledge of Natural
Laws and their existence.
Every Natural Law comprises, besides the generalisation from
experience on which it is based, the hypothesis or assumption
that it holds good not only in those cases which have been
actually observed, but in all cases of like nature under like condi-
tions. Laws of Nature are, as I have elsewhere expressed it,
41 well-proven and oft-verified inferences from known facts, and
also, as we believe, generalised statements of all the facts of like
nature, whether we have observed them and verified the law in
their case or not " (Springs of Conduct, p. 70). I therefore fully
agree with Mr. Pearson that to restrict the meaning of Natural
Law to observed uniformities of process, and to limit it by the
condition of previous observation, would be in the highest degree
unsatisfactory and unwise. It would totally change the meaning
which we attach to the oft-misunderstood term Natural Law.
But I do not think that this would justify us in abandoning the
" ascertainment-clause": nay, it would rather justify us in adding
thereto an 'inference-clause,' at present implied but not expressed.
Mr. Pearson would, however, draw a far more fundamental dis-
tinction between Natural Law and notation of observed facts than
that which I have briefly sketched. He holds that Natural Laws
are not merely human products, the result of scientific generalisa-
tion and inference, but that they have an independent existence,
separate from and holding jurisdiction over the facts, and only
90 C. L. MORGAN :
await human discovery. This view is perhaps the prevalent view,
And yet I venture to think that it is an erroneous view a
remnant of what a Comtist would term the metaphysical stage of
knowledge and one that is strangely out of place in these more
positive times.
First, I would ask in what sense it can be true that these laws
have existed from the time when the operations of nature began?
Take for example the law of gravitation. Can we say that this
law has been in existence since the operations of nature began ?
I think not. The law is a generalisation, and generalisation
implies a generaliser. So, far from having been in existence since
the operations of nature began, it had, I contend, no existence
before it was formulated by man. The phenomena from which
such a law might be educed have been in existence for ages,
uncounted ; but until man, the educer, appeared, the educed law
could have no existence. The laws of nature, or, as I should
prefer to call them, the laws of science, are human products, the^
result of observation and of inference based thereon.
In opposition to this view it may perhaps be urged that (to take
a wider generalisation than even the law of gravitation) the opera-
tions of nature were uniform before man discovered their uni-
formity. Undoubtedly this is so. But the uniformity of pheno-
mena and the law which summarises the fact are not one and the
same thing. On this head, indeed, it would seem that both
schools are agreed. But whereas the one school maintains that
the natural law was there from the beginning, exercising what
Mr. Pearson terms "absolute jurisdiction" over the facts, the
other school believes with Lewes, that " what we call laws of
nature are not objective existences, but subjective abstractions
formulae in which the multitudinous phenomena are stripped of
their variety and reduced to unity ".
Again it may be urged that the law was implicit in the pheno-
mena before man came to formulate it as such. Well, I am
not quite sure that I know what implicit in the phenomena,
means. Does it mean that the law was actually existent
as such? or does it mean that the facts were such that this
generalisation could be extracted from them ? In the former casa
I beg to be informed Iww actually existent. Mr. Pearson is care-
ful to remind us that " Natural Law in the scientific sense involves
no notion of an over-ruling ordinance ". I would fain know the
mode of existence of an unknown natural law and the manner
in which it exercises its ''absolute jurisdiction ". But if the law
was only implicit in the phenomena in the sense that when man
appeared on the earth this generalisation could be extracted from
them, then, as it seems to me, the law is only implicit in pheno-
mena in the same sense and . to the same degree that a half
sovereign is implicit in the gold-bearing quartz-reef. The raw
material was undoubtedly there. But on the strength of this to
proclaim that the half sovereign was in existence countless ages:
THE GENERALISATIONS OF SCIENCE. 91
before the advent of man is, to say the least of it, somewhat con-
fusing to plain scientific folk.
In further illustration of the positive or scientific position we
may take that law of biogenesis which Mr. Pearson also adduces
in illustration of his position. This doctrine, as he says, is pro-
bably accepted by ninety per cent, at least of scientific authorities ;
and it admirably exemplifies the nature of a law of science. It is
essentially a generalisation from experience. Beyond experience
and legitimate inference founded thereupon it does not pretend to
go. No scientific man who thoroughly knew what he was talk-
ing about would, on the strength of this generalisation, dare to
dogmatise from negative premisses and proclaim that nowhen and
nowhere in the present or the past have living forms sprung into
existence from not living antecedents. This would be a wholly
illegitimate inference. Such a dogmatic assertion would probably
come from one of strong theological bias, who had raised a plain
scientific generalisation into a metaphysical law of nature, exer-
cising in some mysterious way a mystic sway over facts. It is.
not by restricting Natural Law to an observed uniformity that,
we are most liable to fall into error ; but rather by illegitimately
converting observed uniformity, true within the limits of observa-
tion, true for finite time and space, and believed to be universally
true under like conditions of experiment and observation, into a.
metaphysical Natural Law, supposed to be true absolutely and
without possible limitation.
Now according to Mr. Pearson the law of biogenesis was in
existence -at a time when most of the best authorities believed
firmly in spontaneous generation, the existence of the law and our
knowledge of it being, in his philosophy, totally different things.
But when, I would ask, did the law begin to exist ? Did it exist
before there were any phenomena over which it could exercise juris-
diction? Or did it spring into existence with the advent of life.
Let us, however, turn to other laws to press home these ques-
tions. I presume that the inductions of Sociology may take rank
as natural laws. I presume that, though we may not yet ade-
quately know them, there are natural laws exercising jurisdiction
over the phenomena special to social aggregates. But since when
existent ? Have the laws been in some way evolved, pari passu,.
with the phenomena? Were they pre-existent ? Or did they
come into existence at some point of time during the continuous
evolution of the phenomena ? These are matters on which I
would gladly be informed.
From the standpoint of positive science, however, this antithesis,
between our knowledge of natural laws and their existence
involves a serious misconception of the nature of scientific laws..
Such laws are essentially bits of knowledge, and except as known
have no existence. In Berkeleyan phrase their esse is cognosd.
An unknown scientific law is a contradiction in terms : it is a,
generalisation that has never been reached.
92 C. L. MORGAN : THE GENERALISATIONS OF SCIENCE.
It may however be said by one who holds to this distinction
between known and existent that such a geometrical law as that
the three angles of a plane triangle are equal to two right angles,
is a truth that exists whether we know it or not. It is, we are
told, a fact for all time eternal and immutable, and would be
just as true had no mathematician ever discovered it. I venture
to doubt the truth of this venerable assertion. Of all branches of
science none better than geometry illustrates what Lewes meant
when he spoke of the ideal construction of science. The whole
fabric is a human product. Its generalisations are absolutely
true. Yes ! So long as you grant the absolute truth of its axioms
and postulates. The science from beginning to end is redolent of
human genius; and without that genius had never existed. Given
three stars and a human mind and the laws of the triangle emerge.
But take away the percipient mind ; and what remains but your
three stars ? Certain relations are implicit in the triangle which
may be formed, if, between each pair of the stars, there be drawn
the shortest possible line. True ; but you need the geometer to
perceive them. The half sovereign is implicit in the quartz-reef.
True ; but it has no existence as such till it be minted.
My position, which I believe to be the positive position, is now,
I trust, sufficiently clear. I have no right to occupy space in its
further elaboration. But I believe it to be essential that scientific
laws should be purged of the metaphysical glamour of necessity,
absoluteness, eternity, immutability and the like, which is too apt
to surround them. And with this end in view I am not prepared
to counsel the abandonment of the " ascertainment-clause " so
long as this helps us to grasp the fact, that the laws of science
which we call Natural Laws are neither more nor less than well-
founded generalisations rooted in the solid ground of experience
and spreading forth in the atmosphere of inference that rests
thereon.
VI. CKITICAL NOTICES.
Works of THOMAS HILL GREEN, late Fellow of Balliol College, and
Why te's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University* of
Oxford. Edited by E. L. NETTLESHIP, Fellow of Balliol
College, Oxford. Vol. II. Philosophical Works. London :
Longmans, Green & Co., 1886. Pp. xliv. 552.
This second volume of Green's works is of much greater inte-
rest than the one which preceded it, from the fact that it consists
entirely of matter not hitherto published. It is made up of selec-
tions from Green's drafts of his tutorial and professorial lectures
in Oxford subsequent to 1874 (the date of the Introductions to
Hume). The contents of the volume fall into three main divi-
sions, the first consisting of "Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant"
(both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Moral Theory), the
second of " Lectures on I/ogic." or rather perhaps on the philo-
sophy of logic, and the third, which is also the longest, of
" Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation". The second
part is mainly taken up with criticism of Mill and dovetails at
many points into the lectures on Kant. Sections D, F, G, H, for
example, on verbal and real propositions, space and geometrical
truth, time, demonstration and necessary truth, ought to be read
in connexion with the Kantian discussions on analytical and
synthetical judgments, the forms of perception, the distinction
between ' outer ' and ' inner ' sense, and the ' empirical reality *
of time. The third division treats, as its title indicates, of " the
moral grounds on which the State is based, and upon which
obedience to the law of the state is justified". Partly historico-
critical, these lectures are in the main constructive, and contain,
in effect, a theory cf the State. The concrete and practical inte-
rest of the subject was specially calculated to stimulate Green's
powers, and this third division of the volume will probably be
found the freshest and most valuable, not to say the most in-
teresting, part of the book. But we are no further concerned
with it in the present notice.
The papers here printed do not pretend to offer a continuous ex-
position of Kant's theoretical philosophy; they are valuable rather
for the criticism which they contain of some of Kant's prominent
but often misleading distinctions. That between outer and inner
sense, for example, is carefully dealt with in several places. In
another case the division of truths into necessary and contingent
Green points out that, while it is of course true that sense as
sense can yield no necessity, there exists, on a true view of nature
as constituted by thought relations, no such absolute distinction
as Kant makes out between the truths of geometry and other
scientific truths. This is instructively worked out in Sections F
"94 CEITICAL NOTICES :
and H of the second part of the book : "The true distinction is
between what is fully true and what is partially true~ \Yhat is
fully true once is fully true always, of anatural phenomenon no
less than of a geometrical figure ; but any proposition about a
natural phenomenon is true of it only under conditions of which
we do not know all, while a proposition about a geometrical figure,
if true at all, is true of it under conditions which we completely
know" (p. 250; cp. also pp. 264 ft). It will be evident from
such instances that the lectures are quite as much devoted to
evolving a coherent philosophy out of Kant as to expounding the
undiluted Kantian doctrine. As an interpreter of Kant, indeed,
Green follows substantially the method already familiar to us in Pro-
fessor Caird's Philosophy of Kantv?h&t I should call the method
of sympathetic development. But he is perhaps more careful in
distinguishing between the positions thus developed and the less
coherent utterances of the original Kant. The Hegelianising of
Kant may be best illustrated from the section on the ' Deduction
of the Categories/ as the most centrally important part of Kant's
work. Here it is noteworthy that Green follows the first edition
in preference to the second. The former undoubtedly contains
statements which seem to make powerfully for the Hegelian view
of the unity of apperception and its relation to reality. Kant
there speaks, for example, of the transcendental object as a mere
-x, and defines it as " that which prevents our cognitions from
being determined at random or as we choose, and determines
them a priori in a certain fashion ". It may well be argued that
the predicates which he applies to the object here are no more
than would be equally applicable to the transcendental Ego.
Hence Green concludes : " With Kant, the transcendental object
and transcendental subject are the same. The presence of an
eternal and unchangeable self to all phenomena at once makes
them an order of nature and makes our experience of them one
connected system. ' Order of nature ' and ' unity of experience '
are only two aspects of one and the same function of the eternal
Self, which we call object or subject, according as we look on one
or the other of these 'aspects " (p. 28). The main objection to
such a statement, in my view, is the " With Kant " with which it
opens. It is true that Kant, in the last paragraph of the passsge
referred to, does speak in terms which bear a certain resemblance
to this position of Green's. That is, having for the time being
our rational experience alone in view (and seeing, in his own
words, that, so long as we so restrict ourselves, " the x which corre-
sponds to our ideas (i.e., the object), inasmuch as it must be some-
thing distinct from them all, is nothing for us"), Kant in this one
passage identifies the objective reference which, within experience,
we give to our ideas with the constitutive action of the appercep-
tive unity. But this is still far from attributing to the transcen-
dental Ego the metaphysical place here assigned to it by Green.
In reality, Green immediately finds it necessary to correct the too
T. H. GEEEN, PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, II. 95
sweeping implication of his words, for he goes on to say in his
next paragraph :" We have consciousness, then, of such object
or subject. ... Is it, then, the ' thing-in-itself ' ? Yes, accord-
ing to Kant, it is that ' thing-in-itself ' which renders possible
* nature in the formal sense'. It seems as if, when he wrote the
first edition of the Critique, he was coming to regard this as the
sole ' thing-in-itself,' but the final view, into which he had settled
down when he wrote the Prolegomena, was that there was another
1 thing-in-itself,' which renders nature possible in the material
sense, the cause of our sensations." This is an admission
eminently satisfactory to the historical student, because it dis-
poses incidentally of the view by which the ascription of Hegelian
positions to Kant is sometimes justified, viz., that, beginning with
certain untenable presuppositions, Kant gradually wrote himself
clear and left them behind, though they remain stranded here and
there upon his pages like glacial relics of a prehistoric time. But
this is so far from being the case that Kant, as he proceeded,
settled more and more into a view which dogmatically asserted
the most obnoxious of these presuppositions. In fact, the view
which ' sympathetic development ' ascribes to Kant is one which
we may base upon a few passages of his writings, but which I
gravely doubt whether Kant ever so much as thought of, even in
writing these very passages. This is evident enough (as virtually
admitted by Green) in the case of the transcendental object, but
{though it may appear more shocking to say so) there seems
equally little reason to doubt that the doctrine of Kant's English
followers on the subject of the transcendental Ego departs equally
widely from anything that ever entered into the mind of Kant
himself. Green, for example, expressly identifies the unchanging
subject of thought the " eternal self " which makes one " cosmos
of experience " with God, the absolute or divine self-conscious-
ness. Now I am not here discussing whether such an identifica-
tion is or is not necessary in the interests of consistent thinking,
but surely, in view of other integral parts of his system, we cannot
imagine such an idea to have been present to Kant himself. God
was conceived by Kant in the deistic fashion of last century as a
completely transcendent Being, whose main function, according
to the Kantian ethics, is to superintend the ultimate adjustment
of happiness to virtue. We search Kant in vain for any rap-
prochement of the human consciousness and the divine. He even
makes light of the unity of apperception, calling it ' a merely logi-
cal unity,' and ' the poorest idea of all'. For, even in the case of the
human subject, this unity does not represent for Kant the noumenal
existence of the man. Just as he retained a thoroughly mechanical
conception of God, so he seems to have believed, somewhat as
Locke did, in a quasi-substantial existence of numerically separate
persons, as things-in-themselves, whose function, as it were, the
unity of apperception may be conceived in each case to be. It
will be understood that I do not for a moment put forward this
96 CEITICAL .NOTICES :
view against the other in respect of its philosophical tenability ;
but when Agnostics and Idealists are alike found identifying their
position with Kant's, I think it might be in the interest of clear
thinking to disengage our arguments and results from anything
more than a historical dependence .on the inextricably tangled
(though, of course, infinitely valuable) system of Kant.
These remarks do not at all afl'ect the value of Green's work,
which, by the freedom of its criticism, does to a large extent so
disengage itself. Some of his criticisms will be very helpful to
the student struggling among Kant's multitudinous distinctions
and divisions. Take, for example, his remark that " the ' Trans-
scendental Analytic ' would have been much simpler if the
account of the categories prior to the ' Deduction ' had been
omitted". " What is fancifully called the ' Deduction of the Cate-
gories ' " deduces in reality only the unity of apperception, and
the real deduction of the categories is given, so far as it is given
at all, in the 'System of Principles'. The account of ( Schematism '
would then disappear, the imaginary necessity for such a contriv-
ance arising solely from the fact that the categories are supposed
to be first of all independently, or, in Kant's language, ' metaphy-
sically,' reached as pure logical conceptions, and only afterwards
adjusted to the sensuous matter of experience. The Section on
" The Empirical Eeality of Time " (pp. 72-81) is particularly inte-
resting from the independent development of the discussion.
Green here touches a question which arises out of the Kantio-
Hegelian as it did out of the Berkeleyan idealism. " Admitting
an eternal thinking subject as the corr datum of nature, without
which nature could not be, what is nature for such a subject ? "
" The answer is," Green proceeds, " it is just what it is for our
reason, which is this eternal thinking subject." This is a position
akin to that of Berkeley in Siris, when he says that " there is no-
sense nor sensory, nor anything like a sense or sensory, in God".
But Green goes on to admit that "when we come to say what it
[nature] is for our reason, we cannot get beyond the mere formal
conditions of there being a nature at all," these formal conditions
being embodied in the following "formal definition of nature":
" For reason . . . nature is a system of becoming which rests on
unchangeable conditions ". Does not this seem to eviscerate the
universal consciousness of what might be termed broadly the
content of reality ? Moreover, in spite of the elimination of sen-
sibility, it appears in the sequel of Green's discussion that actual
' changes ' or ' events ' have meaning only for a sensitive con-
sciousness. " Sensibility is the condition of existence in time, of
there being events related to each other as past, present and
future" (p. 79). Consequently, as the condition of "changes-
prior to the existence of feeling on earth or anywhere else," Green
seemingly postulates what he calls " an eternal sensibility " " a
sensibility which never was not ". The precise meaning of these
expressions, however, is not quite clear, and no further de-
T. H. GREEN, PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. (ll.) 97
velopment is given to this attempt to bring eternity and time
together.
The lectures on Kant's Ethics (pp. 83-155), with which must be
taken the later-placed discussion "On the different senses of Free-
dom as applied to Will and to the Moral Progress of Man " (pp.
308-333), are connected in the closest way with the discussions of
the Prolegomena to Ethics. So far as they simply reinforce
Green's own ethical doctrines, they call for no further criticism
in these pages. But the comments upon Kant's positions will be
very useful to the sympathetic student who, in spite of the best
' wish to believe,' feels himself pulled up from time to time by
some of Kant's characteristic doctrines. Thus, for example, the
notion that the moral will must be determined by the mere idea
of conformity to law, from which all relation to a ' matter ' or
object is excluded, is admitted to be an impossible demand.
" When Kant excludes all reference to an object, of which the
reality is desired, from the law of which the mere idea determines
the good will, he means all reference to an object other than that
of which the presentation ipso facto constitutes the moral law '' (p.
131). In fact, Kant himself in the Metaphysic of Ethics implicitly
founds the possibility of absolute law upon the existence of an
object of absolute worth. Again, Green modifies the rigour of
the Kantian antithesis between " the desire for pleasure on the
one side (in which case the will is ' heteronomous ') and desire
for fulfilment of the moral law on the other (in which case alone,
according to him, it is * autonomous ')." Moral action involves
" the presentation by the agent of himself as an absolute end,"
but the self thus presented is not " an empty and abstract self "
a mere " subject of law " ; it is " a determinate self " a self
determined according to the man's dominant interests. " The
conceived object, to which in willing he seeks to give reality,
may be a state of himself as enjoying certain animal pleasures, or
a state of himself as fulfilling some vocation dimly conceived as
belonging to him in a divine plan of the world. . . . Or it may
be (and more probably is, most men being neither sots nor heroic
philosophers) some state of himself as filling a certain position in
relation to his family or neighbours or fellow-citizens, and finding
happiness therein. Or it may be an object which could not
naturally be described as a state of himself at all, but which is
still determined by the relation in which he places it to himself,
the ruin of an enemy, the happiness of a beloved person, the suc-
cess of a political movement, the painting of a picture, the writing
of a book, the improvement of his neighbours, the conversion of
the heathen." In point of fact, the idea of an absolute and uni-
versal moral law arises only at an advanced stage and as the
result of reflection upon moral experience. Among other points to
which attention may be drawn is the discussion of the different
senses of the term Freedom in Kant, and in connexion with that
the criticism of Kant's distinction between the empirical and the
98 CRITICAL NOTICES :
intelligible character. Kant tends, according to Green, to identify
freedom, with determination by reason, though he " scarcely seems
fully to realise his own identification " (p. 119). Green also
points out a variation on Kant's part in the use of the term Will.
Using it at first in the generic sense, which includes the good and
the bad, the heteronomous as well as the autonomous, will, he
came in his later moral writings to use it in the specific sense of
the rational will, opposing it in this sense to ' Willkuhr '. On pp.
147 onwards, we have an interesting discussion as to the sense in
which it is true to say of the law that it is self-imposed, and as to
how far the recognition of it as self-imposed is present, or indeed
desirable, in the unsophisticated man. The first part of the dis-
cussion again raises the question of the relation of the human to
the divine consciousness.
The logical division of the volume is in some respects less valu-
able than it might otherwise have been, from Green's inveterate
habit of going back to fundamentals. Thus in the first section
on " The Logic of the Formal Logicians," i.e., Hamilton, Mansel,
&c., we are soon led away from the immediate subject and find
ourselves in the midst of the proof, so familiar to us in Green, of
the thought-constituted nature of reality. In another respect,
however, this section is specially interesting from the embarrass-
ment which facts of feeling as such evidently cause to Green's
theory. " Undoubtedly," he says, " there is something other than
thought. Feeling is so " (p. 181). " The world before there was
sentient life was not what it is to us as sentient ; the world of
conditions of feeling is not to intelligence (even our intelligence)
what it is to us as feeling " (p. 180). " We have admitted that
the sensitive act is other than any such relation as thought con-
stitutes, and that it is necessary to the reality of the natural
thing. It is an event in time, and, as such, the absolute e-repov to
self-contained thought " (p. 187). Then arises- the same difficulty
which we had before in reference to the pure thought of the uni-
versal consciousness. " Can relation to sense, as a fact or reality/'
he asks in a note, " exist for a consciousness not sensitive ? If
not, how do facts of nature exist for God? " " Is not the notion,"
he answers in the text, " that an event in the way of sensation is
something over and above its conditions, a mistake of ours, arising
from the fact that we feel before we know what the reality of the
feeling is, and hence continue to fancy that the feeling really is
something apart from its conditions ? . . . For the only sort of
consciousness for which there is reality the conceived conditions
are the reality " (pp. 190-1). But if so, what becomes of the reality
and otherness formerly admitted to belong to feeling qua feeling
as a fact in rerum naturd ? From the half-problematic form of
this answer, Green would seem to be but indifferently satisfied
with his own solution.
/ In criticising Mill's Logic, Green takes up first the question of
V the Import of Propositions, concluding that Mill is right in hold-
T. H. GKEEN, PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, II. 99
ing that such judgments as * gold is yellow ' are not merely an
analysis of a nominal essence, but express belief in regard to an
outward thing. The doctrine, though substantially correct, is
however inconsistent w r ith Mill's Lockian metaphysic of the rela-
k tion of the mind to reality. In Section B (of Names) it is main-
tained that Mill's distinction between singular and general names
is more properly a distinction between singular and general pro-
positions. Proper names, according to this view, are in themselves
mere sounds representing no mental act at all, but "to the
person who uses them they are on every occasion on which he
uses them specially connotative". Section C attacks Mill's sub-
stitution of a classification of existences_Jor_a theory o|. the cate-
jgorie.s. a^nd easily shows that the Kantian categories are implicitly
assumed in Mill's account. Sections D, F, G, H, are mainly occu-
pied, as already mentioned, with Kantian discussions, and with
the author's constructive theory. The criticisms passed upon
Mill may be easily deduced therefrom, and are of minor interest.
In Section I (Syllogism) he comes to closer quarters, with fatal \
results to Mill's general theory of inference, and his theory of the V^
syllogism in particular. " Is the 'particular' of which an attribute is 7^
asserted in the conclusion one of the particulars which have been '
already observed to have this attribute, or is it not? If it is,
then there is no inference to it. ... If it is not, how is the J
inference justified? How is the inference valid unless the
is /a TrdvTwv ? and if it is * -av-nav^ how is it inference
at all ? " (p. 274.) In point of fact, inference has " nothing
to do with how often an event happens, but only with the ques-
tion what it really is that happens in each event. . . . Once
know what death really is in the case of a single man, i.e., the
conditions on which it depends, then I learn no more by seeing
any number of men die. . . .No doubt, in the process of ascer-
taining what these conditions are, a great number of cases may
have to be observed in order to the exclusion of unessential cir-
cumstances ; but the observation of such cases in order to ascer-
tain what really happens, what are the conditions of the given
phenomena in each, is absolutely different from the observation
which from the constant occurrence of an event leads to the
expectation of its continuance " (p. 275). " Inference lies, not (as
Mill says) in the generalisation from observed instances to all, but I
(a) in the discovery of the real conditions of the observed instances; \
(6) in the discovery whether other apparently like instances are J
really like. Given the real similarity of the other instances, there
is no inference to them " (p. 277). In the following section, K, the
same line of thought is applied to Mill's account of Induction.
" The whole business of science," it is well said, " is to substitute
real identity (identity of conditions) for mere similarity between
phenomena." Mill's confusion in regard to the axiom of the
uniformity of nature (better named, according to Green, " the
unity of the world ") is successfully exposed. In the old contro-
100 CEITICAL NOTICES I
versy between Mill and Whewell, as to whether conceptions are
abstracted from facts or superinduced upon them, the dispute, it
is pointed out, turns on a false view of the relation of the mind to
facts. " When a conception is said by Mill to be ' abstracted
from facts ' or ' from phenomena/ this can only mean that it is
abstracted from our observations of facts, from the facts as they
are for the consciousness of the person who is supposed to make
the abstraction " (p. 291). Such a statement, then, " puts the cart
before the horse ; till the phenomena have been connected by
such a conception, they have not the character from which it can
be abstracted " (p. 292). The gist of the last section, L, on Causa-
tion is a refutation of the Humian account of causation, simply by
the denial that any idea or object can be "considered in itself".
" The * minimum intelligibile ' in the way of feeling (the only expe-
rience which amounts to a knowable fact) is a feeling related to
another as a changed appearance or affection of something of
which the other was an appearance or affection. . . . The con-
ception of this something develops, as everything is found to be
relative to another, and to derive all that it is or has from that
relation, till the ' something' becomes ' nature' (of which Lewes
has at last discovered that to say it is uniform is an identical pro-
position), which remains the same in all its changes" (pp. 301-2).
ANDKEW SETH.
Esquisse d'une Classification syst&matique des Doctrines Philoso-
phiques. Par CH. EENOUVIEB. 2 Tomes. Paris: Au Bureau
de la Critique Philosophique, 1885, 1886. Pp. 490, 420.
The historical view of systems that makes up the larger part of
these volumes, itself the outcome of some of M. Eenouvier's most
original ideas, has enabled him, in his return from history to
criticism and construction, to express these ideas with renewed
force. Both as a history of philosophy from a clearly denned
point of view, and as the latest statement of M. Eenouvier's own
philosophical position, the whole work is of the highest import-
ance and interest.
The history of thought is viewed not as a series of approxima-
tions to a final doctrine which includes all truth in itself, but as
a process in which antagonisms become more and more definite ;
till at length the theses and antitheses of the chief antinomies of
philosophy are marked out into two coherent systems, opposed to
one another in detail and as wholes. From the beginning of his
philosophical studies, M. Eenouvier tells us, he was struck with
the inward presence of antinomies in the greater philosophical
systems. He found that in a small number of systems, as in
those of Nicholas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno and Hegel, the attempt
was openly made to solve all antinomies by a denial of the appli-
cability of the law of contradiction to real being ; and for some
C. RENOUVIER, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 101
time he was under the fascination of this idea, and himself tried
to construct a philosophy that should reconcile all doctrines by
combining their contradictory positions. With this view he was
never able quite to satisfy himself ; and at last he decisively re-
jected it. The result of this decision was the conviction that
from the beginning of philosophic thought truth has been on
one side of each of the great philosophic controversies and error on
the other, and that the chief philosophical directions remain
always the same. There has been progress in accuracy of view
of details, in understanding of opposing positions, and in the
statement of these positions and their logical grouping ; but none
of the chief directions has ever succeeded, during a period of
philosophical freedom, in excluding the others ; and since differ-
ences of personality become accentuated instead of disappearing,
it is not likely that by free consent at least any of them will ever
finally gain the mastery. For it is personality that determines
the character of every philosopher's view of the world as a whole.
Each view, the true view as much as the false, is a belief , determined
partly by the "passive factors'' of circumstances and temperament,
but ultimately by an act of choice. The great opposing systems
which combine in logical order the theses and antitheses of the
historical antinomies, and are now in process of being definitely
formed, are, on the one side, a Pantheism based on the larger
hypotheses of science carried beyond scientific limits, and laying
claim to the certainty of "evidence "; on the other side a Theism
based on Kant's postulates of the practical reason, and pro-
fessing "belief" not "evidence" as its ultimate ground of
certainty. To the latter system the author proclaims his own
adhesion.
By thus making plain to the reader which side he takes, M.
Eanouvier has hoped to gain in impartiality, and he has suc-
ceeded. A writer who is attracted by strong and decided affirma-
tions and negations, and who sees in the history of philosophy
the tendency of systems to become more individualised rather
than the tendency to compromise and conciliation, is, besides,
under no temptation to tone down his opponents' views, and can
do justice to them without finding in them resemblances to his
own. M. Eenouvier's treatment of views opposed to his own is
frequently even more than impartial. The intellectual sympathy
which he displays with the pantheistic ideas of the early philo-
sophers of Greece does not disappear when he comes to deal with
modern philosophers ; but what has struck him especially is the
far-reaching character of the ideas thrown out at the opening of
each period of speculation, and in times of revolutionary
change. We are wrong, he remarks, in thinking the height of
abstraction reserved for an advanced and complex state of intel-
lectual culture. Except in morals, the true initiators, and often
the most profound, in that their views were more exclusive and
more absolute, were the philosophers of the first period of Greek
102 CKITICAL NOTICES I
thought. And in this period, as M. Eenouvier fully admits, the pre-
dominating speculative tendency was pantheistic.
The pantheistic doctrine which was predominant in the earliest
Greek speculations, which has found its most rigorous expression
in Spinoza, and which is equally the doctrine of Hegel and of the
contemporary philosophy that claims to be based on physical
science, is, when quite consistently developed, a doctrine of the
Thing or permanent substance of which all personality is a pass-
ing mode, as opposed to the Idea or phenomenon which has no
reality except as part of a consciousness ; of the Infinite as
opposed to the Finite ; of Evolution as opposed to Creation ;
of Necessity as opposed to Liberty ; of Happiness as opposed to
Duty ; and of Evidence as opposed to Belief. This sixth anti-
nomy was the last to receive clear expression. Till Kant, with
hardly any exception, the only positions as to the criterion of cer-
titude were those of "evidence" and "scepticism". This last
doctrine left the practical choice to be determined, not, as it must
be according to the true doctrine of belief, by reasons which
although not purely intellectual are valid for all men, but by cus-
tom and authority. According to the temperament of the sceptic
the attitude finally assumed may be to take typical examples
either that of Montaigne or of Pascal. Once the doctrine of a
belief determined by active as well as passive factors of the per-
sonality and finally not on intellectual but on moral grounds, in
its distinction equally from sceptical suspension of judgment and
from a supposed "evidence'' or "vision" that gives assent in
spite of the will, has been clearly disengaged, all the other theses
and antitheses are seen to depend on the position taken up with
regard to this antinomy. Hitherto they have always, even in the
most rigorous systems, been combined with more or less incon-
sequence. Till quite recent times Idealism, for example, had not
received accurate expression ; there always remained a mixture
of realism, of the doctrine of the Thing or " subject " as it is in
itself apart from consciousness. And the progress to true idealism
has been accomplished chiefly by means of the works of the
modern empirical school, more favourable to the intellectualist
doctrine than to the doctrine of belief, and by mediaeval Nominal-
ism, the scholastic form of empiricism. Again, the doctrine of
" the realised infinite " has always formed part of Christian theo-
logy, having got there by a confusion of the idea of infinity in
the sense of moral perfection with the infinite of quantity in space
and time. Yet logically this leads to the pantheistic doctrine
of the infinite and eternal substance, and to the denial of an abso-
lute beginning of action, that is, of real creation and of free-will.
By another inconsequence, the ethical doctrine of the Stoics and
of Spinoza was a doctrine of Duty, an " ethics of Eeason," essen-
tially identical with the Kantian ethics, and not a doctrine of
happiness such as ought to have followed from their system of
pantheistic evolution. The definite statement of the antinomy
C. EENOUVIEE, .DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 103
of {< intellectualism " and of the " practical reason " removes
these and other inconsequences, and makes the constituent pro-
positions of the two systems arrange themselves at last in per-
fectly logical order.
Eegarded metaphysically, M. Kenouvier's doctrine is a pheno-
menism like that of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson. The difference
between the two doctrines consists chiefly in this, that Mr. Hodg-
son follows more the tradition of the English experiential school,
M. Eenouvier that of the school of Continental rationalism. At
the same time Hume, as represented by the 'Treatise, has had an
influence on M. Eenouvier comparable to the influence of Kant
on Mr. Hodgson. In their practical outcome the two doctrines are
not unlike, both philosophers having accepted from Kant the
distinction of the "practical" and the "speculative" reason.
Neglecting minor differences, then, let us ask : What is pheno-
menism as distinguished from other doctrines that also claim to
be idealistic ?
According to M. Eenouvier, the ancient idealistic doctrines,
such as that of Pythagoras, which tried to account for experience
by the limiting mind, as opposed to unlimited matter, which was
in various forms the principle of the lonians, failed for this reason,
that they took one particular formal element in mind and "hypo-
stasised "it. " Number," the principle of the Pythagoreans,
although a formal mental principle, became, when viewed in isola-
tion, a " thing," just as much as the atom of Democritus, the most
purely material of all the "physical" principles. On the other hand,
the atom, although regarded from the first as an element in things,
was not a datum of sense, but the result of an abstraction, and
thus had a sort of mental character of its own. The two concep-
tions, therefore, opposite as they seem, differed little in effect.
And instead of giving their ultimate explanation of things in terms
of personality, the Pythagoreans, and the idealist schools of anti-
quity generally, fell back into a system of pantheism. With the
Pythagoreans, for example, all phenomena became parts of a
"mathematical evolution of the multiple and the one". In
modern times the doctrine of Hegel described by M. Eenouvier
as " a Platonism with Eleatic basis, joined to an attempt to trace
the history of the Idea confounded with the history of the world
of phenomena '' illustrates the same tendency. The " thought''
of Hegel is an element in mind hypostasised ; and, when the bias
of the more orthodox disciples of Hegel is got rid of, thought
becomes a " thing " figured as evolving itself necessarily and as
having personality for a mere temporary phase. Hegelianism
thus comes not to differ intrinsically from a materialistic doctrine
of evolution.
From these criticisms of other forms of idealism, it appears that
what distinguishes the phenomenist doctrine is the refusal to re-
gard any one element in mind, however capable of distinction by
analysis, as having a real existence by itself apart from the rest.
104 CEITICAL NOTICES :
That is, the distinguishing feature of phenomenism is its principle
of " the relativity of representations " to one another. It pushes
this principle to the extent of affirming that, since actually every
phenomenon appears under the form of personality, there can be
no ultimate philosophical explanation of things otherwise than in
terms of personality. A doctrine such as that of Lotze and his
disciples, which makes personality ultimate in its explanation of
things, and is idealistic as regards the external world, would
nevertheless be rejected by a phenomenist because it retains " the
substance of mind " ; its monads being miniatures of the indivi-
dual mind hypostasised. The doctrine that speaks of " elemen-
tary feelings " as things-in-themselves does not, like monadism,
assume a substance of mind under the name of " the soul " ; but
from the phenomenist point of view it is realistic as the Hegelian
doctrine of "thought" is realistic, because it hypostasises the
material element in mind as Hegelianism hypostasises the formal
element ; and of course it does not place personality at the be-
ginning of things.
Except on one point, M. Eenouvier concedes that the panthe-
istic system, although incapable of demonstration, is theoretically
impregnable. The one point where it can be assailed on grounds
of pure logic is its assertion of a real infinite of quantity, which
follows from " the doctrine of the thing " as opposed to " the
doctrine of consciousness". " The actual infinite number" required
by the existence of an infinity of distinguishable phenomena in
space or time is self-contradictory. The law of contradiction,
however, in its application to realities, has been denied by con-
sistent partisans of the infinite ; and to assert it as universally
true is, like any other proposition of the kind, an act of belief.
Even in this case, therefore, it is in the end moral considerations
that must determine the choice of the thesis or the antithesis.
Erom the point of view of the doctrine of consciousness there can be
no question of any actual existence that is other than finite. This
truth was expressed by the Pythagoreans in their theory of the
limit ; but they in part destroyed its effect by retaining " the un-
limited " as a kind of matter upon which form is imposed. The
doctrine of the infinite and absolute, as it has asserted itself in
Christian theology, is, however, a falling-off from what we may
regard as the typical Greek conception of reality as belonging to
a limited, ordered universe, and of the unlimited as essentially
unreal. The "realised infinite," M. Eenouvier shows, has no
place in mathematics. And it is there, if anywhere, that we
should expect to find it ; since mathematicians use a terminology
that seems to imply infinites of all orders. The notion of a real
infinity, however, is not only not employed by mathematicians ;
it is no more required for the philosophical explanation of any
mathematical or other scientific conception. Everything that
can be expressed in terms of consciousness, that is, everything
that can be thought as real, is finite. Consciousness itself, per-
C. RENOUVIEB, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 105
sonality, is essentially finite. The " doctrine of consciousness "
requires that phenomena should have a beginning, but not neces-
sarily that they should have an end ; for the absence of a begin-
ning implies a past eternity filled with events, that is, a " com-
pleted infinite " ; but future eternity is supposed never to be
completed ; the series of phenomena, even if it should never have
an end, will always be capable of expression by a finite number.
Phenomena have had their beginning in a personality, which, like
other personalities, is necessarily finite. The universality of law
the resemblance of the order of phenomena in different persons
requires that there should be one supreme Deity : M. Eenouvier
now regards this argument as conclusive against the possibility
he had formerly left open for polytheism. The Deity must be
held to be limited in knowledge by " the real contingency of
futures". For, corresponding to creation in the universe as a
whole, there is a real beginning of a new series of phenomena, a
cause that is not also an effect, in certain decisions of the human
will. Thus the doctrines of the finite, of creation and of indeter-
ininism form a connected group opposed to the doctrines of the
infinite, of evolution and of the absolute determination of all
phenomena as parts of an eternal series ; and these groups of
doctrines attach themselves on the one side to " the doctrine of
consciousness," on the other side to " the doctrine of the thing ".
By " evolution " M. Eenouvier understands here " philosophi-
cal " as distinguished from " scientific " evolution. The special
evolution-theories of the sciences, like other special scientific
theories, cannot logically, he holds, be extended under the name
of " science '' to the whole order of the world. " Science," when
it is anything more than a collective name for " the sciences,"
means one of the two opposing philosophies ; and this philosophy
has no right to claim for itself, as it does by assuming the
name of " science,'' the certainty that each of the special sciences
has within its own limits. Of the philosophical doctrine of evo-
lution there are two forms the "statical" and the "dynami-
cal ". Spinoza's doctrine of modes is a real evolution-theory of
the first kind, although it makes no attempt to express in a single
formula the law of the series, which it assumes, of absolutely
determined and eternally changing phenomena. Theories that
are evolutionist in the more special " dynamical" sense, such as
that of Leibniz which was the first to combine the ideas of
physical evolution and of human progress introduce the concep-
tion of an end towards which the evolution of the world is the
necessary movement. They are less consequent than Spinozism ;
since they have to borrow the idea of end from the doctrine of
consciousness.
Immediately connected with the antinomy of necessity and
liberty is that of happiness and duty. No doctrine of necessity,
M. Eenouvier contends, is consistent with a morality that makes
the correlative conceptions of " duty" and " right " fundamental.
106 CRITICAL NOTICES :
For there can be no "obligation " to do that which, by the mere
fact of its not being done, is shown, according to the doctrine of
necessity, to have been impossible. Determinism reduces all
moral questions to questions of selecting the right means for
attaining ends fixed by personal taste. The end is not necessarily
egoistic ; but if happiness is the only conceivable end, man has,
so to speak, " the right to egoism ". The sentiment of altruism
can only be appealed to so far as it exists ; and it can never
acquire the character of an imperative. Eudsemonists, therefore,
for the most part, aim at producing by education artificial asso-
ciations of ideas of the good of society with ideas of personal
good. This supposes control of public opinion and of the
machinery of education by those in whom the idea of good hap-
pens to have taken the altruistic form ; and this control must be
exercised with a view to forming all minds according to a single
type. The eudaemonist morality of " benevolence " or " senti-
ment " thus lends itself naturally to theories of political and social
despotism. And that the putting of some "good," however
elevated, in place of the conceptions of duty and right, has
actually had such theories for its consequence, is seen in the
history of speculations that make the idea of good supreme, from
Plato's Eepublic to the political system of Comte. J. S. Mill per-
ceived this tendency of ''benevolent utilitarianism" and tried to
avoid it, but without success, so far as he argues from his own
theoretical point of view. He perceived also the unsatisfactoriness
of a morality that depends on artificial associations dissoluble
by analysis. In Mr. Spencer's ethical doctrine there is a falling
back on the idea of an inevitable progress of the human race, as
the means of bringing about a spontaneity of benevolent senti-
ment ; but in the meantime there is no foundation for really
ethical " injunction ". As in other utilitarian systems, when there
is no question of enforced obedience to external standards all
depends ultimately on personal taste. It is the same with the
morality of pessimism. Schopenhauer, for example, who makes
"pity" take the place of the "sympathy" of optimistic utilitari-
anism, entirely rejects the idea of duty. Essentially, contempo-
rary optimism and pessimism are at one as to the ethical stan-
dard. The opposite ethical doctrine is to be found in the Stoics
and Spinoza ; but it received for the first time perfectly accurate
expression in Kant's Practical Reason. The idea of duty is im-
plicit in Stoicism as " conformity to the order of the universe " ;
that of liberty as "independence of external things". On the
one side, however, there is as yet no true idea of obligation, and
on the other side there is theoretical determinism. So far as
Kant retains the idea of absolute determinism in the phenomenal
world there is an inconsequence in his system also ; but in his
ethical formula, the categorical imperative, he has corrected both
the principal defects of Stoicism. Kant's great achievement was
to make ethics independent of every system of metaphysics. In
C. BENOUVIER, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 107
consequence of this he was able to found his metaphysical doc-
trine on his ethics, substituting practical " postulates " for theo-
retical " dogmas ". The relative positions of practice and specu-
lation are thus reversed. There is no longer any apparent
dependence of morality on cosmical physics and the law of evolu-
tion of the world ; " conformity to nature " has become explicitly
what it always really meant, conformity to the nature of reason.
Duty has been rigorously denned, and the doctrine of happiness
placed in its true dependence on the morality of duty.
For a doctrine of happiness is after all necessary. The ques-
tion of optimism and pessimism is not indifferent to philosophy,
but is a question which, once it has been raised, requires a deci-
sive answer. Now the Kantian doctrine enables us to view hap-
piness as dependent on our own attitude towards the world, not
on a previous determination of the nature of the world. There
are two beliefs that it is theoretically possible to hold : the belief
that duty and happiness are in the end brought into harmony ;
and the belief that the idea of justice has no application in the
universe as a whole. We are under the moral obligation to choose
that belief which will enable us to act best. This position is
fundamentally that of Pascal's " argument of the wager". The
necessity of acting renders it impossible to refrain from choosing ;
and we must choose the alternative on the side of which our
highest interests are placed. There is this defect in Pascal's argu-
ment that one particular doctrine, the doctrine of the Catholic
Church, is arbitrarily taken as the subject of the wager. An
opponent can object against Pascal the merely local and tempo-
rary character of this doctrine ; and then there is the scientific
test of historical evidence. The argument of Pascal, however,
can be thrown into a universally valid form. It has been " re-
duced to good sense " by Locke, and cleared of even the appear-
ance of making an appeal to " the lower interests " by Eousseau.
The principle of its reduction to a valid form is that we must seek
" the maximum of security in the minimum of determination of
doctrine " (ii. 334). Kant's postulates of the practical reason
God, Freedom and Immortality are found to be at once neces-
sary and sufficient. Freedom is required in order to make moral
obligation possible ; immortality or at least continuation of life
after death to make possible the realisation of the ideal of jus-
tice in the universe ; theism, inferred, as we have already seen,
from the necessity of a creative act and the universality of law,
is required as a security for the final ordering of the universe in
accordance with the principle of justice. A necessary part of the
system of the postulates is that physical evil should be traced to
moral evil. This is made conceivable by the doctrine of free-will
as " a gift " which could not be conferred without the power being
left to the creature to choose wrong as well as right. By the
existence of a real free-will the sense of sin and its reality are
also explained.
108 CRITICAL NOTICES :
We come at last to the antinomy of evidence and belief, on
which, according to M. Eenouvier, everything else depends. Eeal
indetermination of actions, he maintains, requires real inde-
termination of judgments. This doctrine of the indetermina-
tion of judgments is traced to Eousseau. Eousseau's ethical
doctrine, although superficially it looks like a " doctrine of senti-
ment,'' is really, M. Eenouvier contends, a '* doctrine of the prac-
tical reason". The admiration of Kant for Eousseau is well
known ; and M. Eenouvier traces Kant's optimism in viewing
the history of the world as determined in accordance with the
postulates to Eousseau, as he finds in Voltaire the literary in-
spiration of Schopenhauer's pessimism. That belief the free
choice of a judgment as to the ultimate nature of things is some-
thing more profound than " evidence," must be the view of those
who hold to the doctrine of consciousness. To affirm the exist-
ence of other personalities and of the uniformity of nature is to
go beyond what is given in the actual phenomena. We are not,
indeed, without motives for believing ; there is evidence that sug-
gests belief ; but there is also an active factor. The mind in part
creates the truth to which it gives its assent, as it is creative in
volition. Those, on the other hand, who decide for the panthe-
istic system of the eternal evolution of an infinite substance,
always hold in some way, even when, like Mr. Spencer, they
speak of ultimate " beliefs," that they are asserting a truth forced
on the mind from without, or given in a sort of intellectual
"vision," a truth of which denial is impossible. But to anyone
who speaks of universal beliefs, of propositions the negation of
which is inconceivable, the history of philosophy is a sufficient
reply. There is no proposition, not even the law of contradiction,
of which the application to real being has not been denied by
some philosopher. The appeal to " evidence " is therefore only
a statement of the belief of a particular person that he possesses
a certain kind of insight which, it must be supposed, he has by
necessity, while others are necessarily in error.
Since M. Eenouvier makes everything depend on his doctrine
of belief, we must examine this doctrine closely before pro-
ceeding to criticise any other part of his system. The choice
of an ultimate belief, in M. Eenouvier's view, is an act of free-
will ; but he does not represent the doctrine of belief as abso-
lutely bound up with indeterminism. Indeed he shows, in more
than one passage, how a determinist may recognise the active
factor in judging. Indeterminism being excluded, there seems
to be no reason why an opponent on ultimate philosophical
questions should not admit the essential part of M. Eenouvier's
contention, viz., that there is a personal element in all systems of
metaphysics ; that in this element there are active as well as pas-
sive factors of belief; and that whenever we go beyond the mere
present phenomenon there is a " wish to believe " one proposition
rather than another, determined either by intellectual or practical
C. BENOUVIEK, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 109
interests. All beliefs are of course subject to the tests of verifi-
cation and of consistency. Beliefs that cannot bear these tests
must disappear sooner or later, whether we wish it or not. M.
Benouvier does not deny this ; but to anyone who should insis f
that for these reasons "evidence" is more profound than "belief,"
he would reply that there is more in the great philosophical
systems than can be completely submitted to either test. The
pantheistic doctrine which is the final outcome of the set of posi-
tions opposed to his own is, he admits, as consistent with itself
as the doctrine of the practical reason. To the positivist or
agnostic objection that there is no need to choose between oppos-
ing systems of metaphysics at all, he replies that not to choose
would be to take custom instead of reason for the guide of life ;
but that those who use this argument have really made their
choice, and that they imagine themselves to have " evidence "
sufficient for the refutation of the view they practically reject. .,
To the belief at which M. Eenouvier arrives on the ground of
the Kantian postulates, it may be objected, from the practical
point of view, that the construction is too " problematical " to
have any real influence 011 conduct. The objection he himself
makes to Pascal's argument might also be brought against it.
This type of theism, it might be said, is after all only the ghost
of a particular historical religion, not really, as is contended,
" quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ". Its special affi-
nities are seen by M. Eenouvier's regarding as possible an alliance
between " the Criticist philosophy of consciousness " and a Chris-
tianity cleared of the dogmas of "absolutist" and " infinitist "
theologians. A religious creed going beyond the " necessary and
sufficient " postulates of the practical reason, he allows to be
legitimate in its own sphere. Although it may not be confounded
with philosophy, it may be held as a kind of " philosophic faith ".
But, not to pursue these considerations of detail, there is a
fundamental objection to the whole method of " the practical
reason ".
M. Eenouvier, it must be remembered, contends for an element
of active desire in the affirmations of both the great philosophic
parties. In the case of the party opposed to his own, he often
speaks of this desire as having its motive in intellectual as distin-
guished from practical interests. Yet, rather strangely, he never
definitely asks whether the desire that expresses itself here may
not be that by which exclusively we ought to be influenced in the
decision of the last questions of metaphysics as of the first ques-
tions suggested by scientific curiosity. He never seems to con-
ceive it to be possible that anyone who has seen that there is
active choice of belief should still maintain the primacy in meta-
physics of the theoretical reason ; should regard the introduction
of ethical considerations at the point where the highest speculative
questions are reached as being just as irrelevant as it would be in
physical science. The exact omission that is made is seen most
110 CRITICAL NOTICES I
clearly in M. Eenouvier's view of Spinoza. An " inconse-
quence " is detected in Spinoza's passage from his pantheistic
metaphysics to an ethical doctrine of an elevated kind. The
moral emotion that finds expression in the ethics, it is implied,
ought not to have been excluded from the determination of the
metaphysical doctrine ; since it has been excluded, however, its
coming in afterwards is unjustifiable. But, according to M.
Renouvier's view, Spinoza's theoretical doctrine must have been
in part emotionally and actively determined; for no doctrine
escapes this necessity. If it was not determined by an ethical
emotion, by what kind of emotion, then, was it determined?
Clearly an incomplete enumeration has been made of the elements
of Spinoza's philosophy. Account has been taken of the high
moral emotion as well as of the passionless analysis ; what has
been omitted is the " amor intellectualis," the desire for perfect
completeness of explanation by purely theoretical and " imma-
nent " principles. But is not this the properly philosophical
emotion ? And does not its dominance in what M. Eenouvier
calls the " intellectualist " systems furnish a presumption that
these, and not the "practical" systems, have given the right
answers to the perennial questions of philosophy '? The emotion
directed to practice has its scope in the discrimination of right
and wrong actions or dispositions. The philosophical emotion is
an impulse towards what M. Renouvier himself calls " the ideal
of science ". Can any reason be given why, when we are
approaching this ideal, we should be turned back from it by views
of practical utility? It is not as if there were no positive im-
pulse conflicting with affirmations made in the name of the prac-
tical reason. If this were so, we should have remained for ever
absolutely under the dominion of practical considerations ; the
idea of a disinterested view of the universe would never have
occurred to us. But, when this idea has once presented itself,
has not " the practical reason " the appearance of being in intel-
lectual things something of an interloper ?
Of course philosophy, if it is to be worthy of the name, must
somewhere make a return on practice, so as not to abandon life
to the guidance of custom and unreasoned opinion. But M.
Renouvier shows that it was exactly in antiquity, when the
primacy of the theoretical reason was unquestioned, that philo-
sophy applied itself most to practice and had most practical
influence. After remarking on the comparative weakness of
modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes, on the practical
side the Ethics of Spinoza being mentioned as an exception (ii.
123-4) he explains the " intellectualism " (in this sense) of
modern philosophy by the circumstance that the practical field
was preoccupied, and that for a long time philosophers were
warned off from it. The doctrine of " the practical reason," how-
ever, seems to be anything rather than the correction of this kind
of intellectualism in modern philosophy. If philosophy, instead
C. BENOUVIEK, DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. Ill
of moving away from practice and viewing life impartially in
order to return afterwards more effectively to its practical regula-
tion, is to keep practical considerations in view in its metaphysical
constructions, of two indemonstrable assumptions to take not the
one that fits in best with the ideal already suggested by science,
but the one that seems most likely to encourage action, this
means that action., just as with the Pyrrhonists, will fall under
the dominion of custom. For practical considerations introduced
not merely as a stimulus but as a guide, prior to the final theore-
tical construction, can only be considerations depending on those
unanalysed aims of which it is a function of philosophy to ascer-
tain the comparative value ; considerations, therefore, which from
the first invalidate the critical function of philosophy with regard
to practice.
This is the effect that a doctrine of the practical reason would
seem likely to produce. Yet it must be acknowledged that there
is no trace of this kind of effect on M. Eenouvier's own practical
philosophy. He applies an equally severe analysis to all the
phrases that have been proposed as solutions of the problems of
the ethical end and of the worth of life ; keeping always in view
the essential question of the aim of the individual. In the case
of so consistent a thinker as M. Eenouvier, it would be absurd to
say that this is in spite of his theory, not because of it. We
must try to find an element of truth in. the doctrine of the practi-
cal reason that may be recognised by those who cannot in any
sense accept that doctrine as a whole.
M. Eenouvier, as has been seen, claims for Kant the merit of
having been the first to make explicit the independence of the
ethical end on particular systems of metaphysics. This truth is
already present, he admits, so far as its effective application to
conduct is concerned, in the " independence " of the Stoics, and
in Spinoza's doctrine of freedom as action from within ; but this
" independence " or " freedom " is represented at the same time
as a harmony with external nature, or even sometimes as " obedi-
ence '' to nature, and is not defined strictly in terms of person-
ality. M. Eenouvier's analysis certainly enables us to understand
better the fascination which Kant's formula has exercised. The
truth of " the autonomy of ethics,'' we may be disposed to think,
is expressed most clearly by M. Eenouvier when he states it
without reference to "the practical reason"; but that it should
appear as if bound up with the Kantian doctrine is explicable.
As soon as it is seen that ethics, although dependent for its
working out on theoretical knowledge, is independent of any
theory of the universe so far as the determination of its essential
end is concerned, the preconceived idea of a subordination instead
of a co-ordination between metaphysics and ethics takes effect in a
simple reversal of their previous order. The doctrine of the prac-
tical reason, therefore, may be regarded as an exaggeration of the
truth of " the independence of ethics "
112 CRITICAL NOTICES :
The process that has just been described is aided by a certain
incompatibility, not intellectual but emotional, of the theoretical
and the ethical view of things. The ethical view of external
nature must always be somewhat Manichaean. M. Eenouvier
has illustrated this by quotation of the celebrated passages
from Mill's Essay on Nature. Those, on the other hand,
who take by preference the pantheistic or intellectualist
view, tend to pass from admiring contemplation of the order
of the universe to assertion of its ethical perfection. This
tendency is found, often unaccompanied by pantheism, in men
of science. M. Eenouvier contrasts, for example, Darwin's
admiration of the law of survival of the fittest, regarded hypothe-
cally as imposed by a creator, with Mill's reprobation of laws of
conflict and mutual destruction among living beings. And more
than once he shows the ethical superiority of Spinoza's system
attained, as he thinks, by the inconsequence of practically de-
taching ethics from metaphysics, when, according to Spinoza's
principles, ethics should be subordinate over the optimistic doc-
trines of Leibniz and Hegel. This last comparison may furnish
a suggestion for solving the difficulty. Is not the remedy to dis-
tinguish clearly the ethical from the theoretical point of view,
neither subordinating nor suppressing either ; to avoid, on the one
hand, affirming an ethical end of the universe, and on the other
hand to refrain from all attempts to find a moral justification of
anything in the mere fact of its necessary determination according
to universal laws ? The refusal to compromise between points of
view, each maintained as separately valid, is not really an incon-
sequence.
A distinction of points of view may help to clear up the anti-
nomy of happiness and duty. We may admit that the conceptions
of obligation, of duty and of right are not ultimate in ethics, with-
out denying them all relative validity ; without declaring them to
be mere illusions, and proposing to substitute direct seeking of
the good of others under the impulse of sympathy or pity for the
idea of justice as the foundation of the social order. There is no
doubt that the systematic working out of some doctrines of
"happiness," or of a "good" as the ethical end, has led to the
theoretical suppression of personal freedom. This, however, is
due to the special character of the good that is aimed at ; in these
cases some social good is regarded as superior to the good of all
individuals. Those who recognise, with M. Eenouvier, that the
highest good, while attained socially, must be a good for the indi-
vidual, and that personal freedom is a condition of its attainment,
are entirely at one with him practically, although they may make
rights and duties deductions from the conception of good, not
ultimate conceptions. To the making of obligation ultimate it
may be objected that the word " obligation " implies command
from some source ; and that a command, as M. Eenouvier fully
recognises, cannot be the ultimate reason in ethics. The empiri-
C. RENOUVIER, DES DOCTRINES FHILOSOPHIQUES. 113
cal doctrines that trace ethical precepts to commands, of which he
acknowledges the merit as attempts to account for obligation on
egoistic grounds, justify the commands finally as means to a good
that can only be attained by social action according to definite
rules. But to these doctrines, and equally to those that make
more use of sympathy, it is objected that everything depends on
the individual taste and disposition. Suppose that anyone is not
sufficiently sympathetic ; or that, having recognised that the
existence of the social order and (as part of it) his own action in
accordance with justice, is on the whole to his personal advantage,
he should nevertheless decide to evade the requirements of justice
and gain a greater advantage, whenever he can escape detection :
how is the moralist to convince him bhat he ought to act rightly?
To this it can only be replied that voluntary acceptance of an
ethical code does after all depend on the empirical fact of the
social nature of man ; and the degree in which men act according
to the principles they accept, on the degree in which certain dis-
positions are present. The admission of this, with all its conse-
quences, no doubt supposes a different conception of personal
merit from that of Kant. On the whole, however, M. Eenouvier's
ethical antinomy, although some irreducible differences are left,
does not seem to be quite so absolute as he contends.
Of the remaining antinomies there is at least one that of
finite and infinite where those who are in general agreement
with M. Eenouvier would select the antithesis. The opposition
of evolution and creation, which, when they are considered as
philosophical doctrines, seems at first irreducible, can be solved
by an evolutionist without absolute denial of creation. For
creation, in the sense in which M. Eenouvier attributes it to the
human mind (with exclusion of indeterminism) may be perfectly
well regarded as the outcome of a universal process of evolution.
This explanation goes naturally with the admission in a certain
sense of M. Eenouvier's doctrine of belief. He himself is the first
to admit that as regards the antinomy of " Thing " and " Idea "
that heads the series, all schools of philosophy are now in a sense
idealist, as at the beginning all were in a sense realist. To the
contemporary " school of the ideal/ 5 represented in different ways
by M, Vacherot and M. Fouillee, he takes up an attitude of oppo-
sition, on the ground that it .denies in effect the existence of the
ideal outside the human mind ; yet he has affinities with that
school. There is much resemblance, for example, between his
view of the infinite and M. Vacherot's, although their affirmations
about the reality of the infinite are quite opposed. Both philo-
sophers bring out with great distinctness the opposition of the
idea of perfection, which, as they see, must be that of the
highest degree of definite order and clear consciousness, and
therefore essentially finite, to the idea of unlimited extension or
force, the uTreipov of Greek philosophy, chaos as opposed to cos-
mos. Again, M. Eenouvier's re-statement of Pascal's " argument
8
114 CEITICAL NOTICES :
of the wager " has something in common with M. Fouillee's doc-
trine of " risk " in action and speculation. It is true he does not
end with doubt but with belief ; yet belief, in distinction from
knowledge, implies at least the possibility of doubt.
But although two types of thought may not be quite so clearly
marked out as they ought to be according to the theory embodied
in M. Eenouvier's classification, it is only with the aid of a classi-
fication such as this that an adequate account can be given of
the whole movement of philosophy. The idea of a perennial
opposition of philosophic doctrines, and of increasing distinctions
among them, is not that which historians of philosophy like best to
dwell on ; but now that it has been not merely stated and defended
but made the central idea of a systematic classification, it ought to
be recognised as at least as important an aspect of the truth as the
more common idea of philosophic progress. And M. Eenouvier
does not, by a movement of reaction, deny the portion of truth
that is in the conception of progress as continuous and in the same
direction. He recognises the limitations it imposes on his own
view, as well as those that are due to what he considers illo-
gical mixtures of doctrines. One ground that a critic might take
here is to contend that these mixtures are not all illogical, and that
the divergence is really towards several types instead of only two.
This would be a criticism in the sense of M. Eenouvier's own
doctrine. But whatever may be the view taken of the outcome
of the classification, there cannot be any difference of opinion as
to the value of M. Eenouvier's work in detail. Every page of it is
full of instruction. To its merits as history this is to be added,
that it will compel readers who may have arrived at any frag-
mentary philosophic view of their own to consider carefully the
bearings of this view with regard to the whole, and the direction
in which it ought to be developed if they wish to be consistent.
It will be remembered that M. Eenouvier finds one logical
defect in the system of pantheism to which, as he holds, modern
" scientific philosophy " is tending. From the contradiction that
is said to be implied in the assertion of infinity, Mr. Shadworth
Hodgson, in the first of his two articles on M, Eenouvier's philo-
sophy in MIND, Vol. vi., has pointed out a way of escape. " The
realised infinite," Mr. Hodgson admits, is a contradiction ; but the
contradiction comes from taking " representation " as coextensive
with phenomena, and assuming categories that are " forms of
thought, not perception ". "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, whenever you have
a perception, this is the infinity of time and space " (MiND, vi.
56). It is remarkable that this restoration of an " unexplored
remainder/' as the necessary background of all knowledge, is
made from the point of view of what we may call the experi
J. DELBCEUF, LE SOMMEIL ET LES REVES. 115
ential as opposed to the rationalistic phenomenism. Although
not made in the interests of a pantheistic view, it serves to rescue
pantheism, as formulated by M. Eenouvier, from the contradiction
he finds in it. M. Eenouvier, however, according to Mr. Hodgson,
is right in everything but neglecting the background of knowledge,
of which the necessary existence is revealed only in perception.
The infinite, in Mr. Hodgson's sense, has no place in mathemati-
cal or any other science, but forms the inevitable background of
all definite knowledge ; practically, the infinite, when dealt with
by thought, becomes what M. Eenouvier wishes to substitute for
it in all cases a " possible indefinite ". The section in which
M. Eenouvier discusses the antinomy of infinite and finite is, it
may be added, one of the most valuable parts of his book. The
real matter in dispute is disentangled from the complications of
scientific hypotheses, and is shown to be a rational question,
which, if it is to be solved at all, will not be solved by the mere
" progress of science " independently of philosophic reflection.
It is above all in making clear the true character of questions of
philosophic criticism such as this, their fundamental position
with regard to the sciences, their persistence throughout all stages
of scientific development, and their insolubility except by criti-
cism applied directly to consciousness, that the merit and distinc-
tion of M. Eenouvier's method consist. Whether we are able to
accept his solution of any particular philosophic problem or not,
his statement of it may always be taken to be, as far as it goes,
perfectly logical, and an indispensable basis for further study.
THOMAS WHITTAKEK.
Le Sommeil et les Reves, consideres prindpalement dans leur rapports
avec les Theories de la Certitude et de la Memoir e. Par J. DEL-
BCEUF, Professeur a 1'Universite de Liege. " Le Principe de la
Fixation de la Force." Paris : F. Alcan, 1885. Pp. vii., 262.
The name of Delbceuf is less widely known in this country
than it deserves to be. His works in logic and psychology mark
him out as a writer of sound knowledge and of remarkable pene-
tration. The present volume, briefly noticed on its appearance in
MIND, x. 472, is, by reason both of its topic and its mode of
handling this, very well fitted to give an impression of the writer's
qualities as an observer, a thinker and an expositor.
No class of psychical phenomena has received less illumination
from science than dreams. Some psychologists pass them by
altogether, while others are apt to deal with them in a very
hasty and superficial manner. The reason of this neglect is not
far to seek. In the nature of the case the facts are exceedingly
difficult to reach. Even if it is true that sleep is a continuous
state of dreaming, it is no less true that comparatively few dreams
persist after waking with a distinctness fitting them to be the
116 CRITICAL NOTICES :
subject of careful scientific study. And in order to gain any
knowledge of the phenomena exceptional pains have to be taken,
which may well deter most men from making the attempt. Nor
is this the only difficulty. As has been observed by ancient and
.modern writers, dreams are not common phenomena but confined
to the individual, and this circumstance makes it extremely diffi-
cult to compare observations so as to arrive at one generally
acceptable theory of their nature and causes. Of late, however,
the subject has been taken up with real scientific seriousness, and
we may perhaps look forward to a not distant time when, as the
result of a more systematic study of accessible facts, the chaos of
dreamland will be reduced to psychological order. Prof. Delbceuf s
volume may safely be included among the valuable works of
research which have recently helped to clear up the obscurities of
the subject.
The volume opens with a critical sketch of some of the
works on dreams those of Spitta, Eadestock, Strieker, Maudsley
and others which have appeared during the last few years . While
recognising in these real contributions to our knowledge of the
subject, the author finds that they do not offer an adequate theory
of the phenomena. Thus, to take one of the most elaborate
treatises, that of Eadestock, he finds fault with its very definition
of the dream, viz., the continuation of the activity of the mind
during sleep, and proposes as " infinitely preferable " that given
by Aristotle, "the image produced by sense-impressions when
one is in a state of sleep and in so far as one sleeps". To hear
faintly the barking of a dog in sleep is not, says our author, to
dream. He objects to all theories that would explain dreaming
by a complete suppression of certain faculties or modes of mental
activity, as self-consciousness, volition, the moral sense, &c. The
writer's remarks on the doubling and even the trebling of person-
ality in dreams, apropos of Eadestock's theory of a suppression of
self-consciousness, are peculiarly striking and suggestive. He
finds in these phenomena merely a further development of the
tendency of the waking mind to dramatise and give independent
embodiment to the processes of thought.
After this critical review Prof. Delbceuf has a first section on
the relation of the dream to the theory of certitude. He begins with
a distinction between perception and what he calls "conception".
The former is accompanied by a belief in an external reality,
which, like all belief, is the result of habit. How 7 the mind comes
by such a habit of projecting sense-impressions Prof. Delbceuf
does not explain beyond saying that the individual derives it from
his ancestors. One is a little surprised to hear the author remark-
ing that in its essential psychological characters the conception
does not differ from the perception. lt The distinction between
the two rests upon an extrinsic circumstance, the presence or the
absence of the object as far as perceived." Eut he cannot of
course help seeing that, if there is no psychological difference
J. DELBCEUF, LE SOMMEIL ET LES REVES. 117
between the percept and the image, we could never have learnt to
distinguish the two under ordinary conditions, and so he has to
fall back on the crude distinction drawn by Hume and others,
viz., the superior vivacity of the percept. Assuming this to be an
all-present and sufficient mark of the percept, he follows M.
Taine, to whom however he does not refer, in regarding the illu-
sion of the dream as due to the suppression of the more vivid
mental states excited by external objects. We believe in the
reality of our dream-images, not because they differ in absolute
degree of vivacity from ordinary images, but because, owing to the
exclusion of external impressions,, they have gained enormously
in relative force. I am not quite sure that I fully understand
Prof. Delbceuf here. He can hardly mean, I fancy, that in the
state of sleep images do not persist and master the attention with
a force incomparably greater than that of waking images, even
when, as in shutting the eyes in a quiet room, the effect of exter-
nal impressions is very greatly reduced. The vividness and dis-
tinctness of detail with which one is often able to recall a dream
immediately after waking, and when the fresh impression of the
external world is particularly powerful, points, I think, unmis-
takably to the absolute vivacity of the dream-image. To say
that the image can only attain to this degree of vivacity on the
condition that external impressions are withdrawn is one thing ;
to say that it has only gained in relative vivacity is another.
Prof. Delboeuf, in discussing the criterion of true perception,
appears to make far too little of the coherent testimony of the
different senses. Also, he writes hastily when he says that he only
knows of one sense that is capable of correcting the others, viz,,
touch for it is a familiar fact that we rid ourselves of the
momentary illusion due to a subjective skin- sensation by a glance
of the eye. No doubt, as he says, the most important criterion
is the consensus between the impressions of the individual and
the testimony of others ; but even this, as he virtually admits,
is not uniformly conclusive, for, given a multitude of men sub-
jected to the same disturbing conditions of panic, a common illu-
sion becomes not only possible but probable. The result of this
inquiry into the grounds of certitude is that there is no absolute
criterion of truth. At the same time we are able to reach a
reasonable degree of certainty, which speculative doubt, essentially
insincere, is wholly unable to disturb, and of which indeed this
so-called doubt is a sufficient distinctive sign.
After dealing with the logical side of the dream, Prof. Delboeuf
discusses its psychological origin, and more particularly its rela-
tion to memory. He here sets out with a full account of a curi-
ous dream of his own in which, among other products of past
experience, habits of life, &c., there occurred a botanical name
which upon waking appeared to be quite unfamiliar to him. It
was many years after that the puzzle was explained by his find-
ing the word in a herbarium that some friends of his had brought
118 CEITICAL NOTICES !
from Switzerland two years before the dream. Just as the con-
sideration of the illusory character of the dream led our author to
the wide philosophical question of the criterion of knowledge, so
the psychological analysis of his dream conducts him to the gene-
ral problem of memory. The reproduction with perfect clearness
of a name, the origin of which was wholly forgotten, suggests
that no impression is entirely lost. The fact of a uniform conser-
vation of psychical impressions naturally connects itself with the
law of conservation of energy, and the author does not shrink
from discussing the nature and grounds of this far-reaching prin-
ciple. He thinks that the doctrine of the transformation of
energy is commonly taken to mean that the actual order of cosmic
events is capable of being repeated, and he takes some pains to
disprove this supposition. The whole progress of things is towards
an equilibrium in which no further change is possible. Every
transformation of a force leads to a partial fixation of what was
once free. The transformable gives place to the intransformable.
The conservation by memory of the traces of past impressions is
a special illustration of these vast all-embracing laws. The
assimilation by the brain of external impressions may be regarded
as a fixation of external forces. Just as the crust of the earth
indicates by the succession of its strata all the changes in the
history of our planet, so, according to Prof. Delboeuf, the organism
is constituted by layers which represent the past actions of itself
and its ancestors. He resolves these into a central nucleus
consisting of the ensemble of hereditary elements, instincts, dispo-
sitions, &c., and a region or " depot of formation," the result of its
assimilative faculty, and consisting of an uninterrupted series of
layers representing its daily acquisitions. This idea of a central
nucleus and enveloping layers is, the author tells us, merely a
metaphor for helping us to conceive the fact that the individual
is composed of what he receives from his ancestors and of what
he himself acquires. He pursues his biological speculations at
some length, discussing the " mysterious and fundamental general
functions " of nutrition and of generation and of their relations one
to another. There is much here that is suggestive, but much
also that seems too figurative to be of any considerable scien-
tific value. It must be confessed further that in some cases, as,
for example, when he seeks to give a new definition to 'centre' and
'periphery,' his meaning is not as clear as it might be ; the reader
feels that the author, in his bold and brilliant career over the
theory of the origin and end of all things, fails to do justice to many
of the topics which he touches. He does, no doubt, apologise for
his digressions by telling us he is writing not a treatise but an
essay ; but even an essay ought perhaps to have the unity which
only a well-defined subject can impart, and what one rather misses
in Prof. Delboeufs volume is an attempt to define the limits
of his subject. When at last he does recur, at the close of this
second section of his work, to the proper psychological problem of
M. GTJXAU, DE VEST RET IQTJE CONTEMPORAINE. 119
memory, much that he says on the nature of recognition and the
laws of association, though not altogether new, is characterised
by freshness and force of expression. Among other interesting
points worthy of notice is the sharp distinction he draws between
the association of simultaneous and of successive impressions, a
distinction which he seems to base on his peculiar theory of the
way in which the nervous organism functions. Some of his
statements however seem open to criticism. For example, he
contends that in recognising an object, say a portrait, " you do
not recall in any manner the traits or the circumstances identi-
cally similar," and he goes on to ask, " How could you do so
since you have them before your eyes ? " To this it seems
enough to say that unless the mind distinguishes a past like im-
pression from the present, identification and therefore recognition .
becomes impossible.
Returning finally, in one more section, to the state of dreaming,
the author urges afresh that, saving perception, all the
faculties of the mind remain " intact in their essence "
though employed about objects which are imaginary and
mobile. In illustration of this he gives us a number of interest-
ing facts drawn from his own dreams and from those of others.
Yet he hardly succeeds in establishing the proposition he lays
down. That in sleep the will is enfeebled with respect both
to muscular action and to the free direction of attention is, one
would say, a familiar fact to every dreamer. At the same time
one may cordially approve of the endeavour to trace the effects of
fixed habits of mind in sleep, and to claim for the dreaming intel-
ligence a higher degree of rationality than is commonly accorded
to it. 'In carrying out this endeavour our author proves himself
a painstaking collector of facts and a skilful psychological analyst.
In following him here in a domain which he has made thoroughly
his own, the reader may be tempted to regret that he did not
confine himself to a discussion of dreams themselves, some aspects
of which are touched all too lightly, while others, and these by
no means unimportant ones, are not handled at all.
JAMES SULLY.
Les ProUemes de VEsthetique Contemporaine. Par M. GUYAU.
Paris : F. Alcan. 1884. Pp. 257.
It is always pleasant to find oneself substantially in accord
with what professes to regard itself as hostile criticism. M.
Guyau's work is directed for the most part against the aesthetic
views of the modern English school of physiological psycholo-
gists, represented in the concrete by the constantly recurring trio
of names, " MM. Spencer, Grant Allen et James Sully ". Speak-
ing for the middle term at least of this unequally- yoked assem-
blage of evolutionary writers, I may candidly admit that M.
120 CEITICAL NOTICES :
Guyau has very little indeed to say that does not meet more or
less with his antagonist's cordial assent and acquiescence. His
book consists in the main of criticisms directed against the view,
originally propounded in the germ by Schiller, and put into more
definite form by Mr. Herbert Spencer, which identifies the assthetic
sentiment with the exercise of the play-instinct on its passive
side, in matters not immediately connected with life- serving func-
tion. In opposition to this idea, M. Guyau contends that the
beautiful does not conflict with utility, desire, and the needs of
the system. It has its roots, on the contrary, deep down in the
very vitals of human life ; it springs from the real, the essential,
the normal, the necessary. There is, says our critic, a certain
aesthetic value in large respiration, in free action, in flowing
motion, in food, in perfume, in the reproductive instinct, in all
that constitutes the core and essence of organic life itself. More
than that : art bases its existence ultimately on these deepest and
truest foundations of our nature ; and because it does so, in spite
of pessimistic ideas to the contrary, it will not decay before the
face of modern science and the modern Americanised utilitarian
sentiment. All this and much more like it is pleasantly urged in
very clear and limpid French, with marked grace of expression
and play of fancy, and with all its author's well-known charm of
style and manner. But many parts of his book have literary
rather than scientific or philosophical merit, and the writer often
substitutes vague declamation or artistic prettinesses for the
rigorous conciseness of psychological thought.
When M. Guyau goes deep enough to be scientific, it is not
hard to see wherein lies the difference between himself and his
English compeers. Our evolutionary and physiologically-minded
thinkers, having to probe for the first time to the very base of the
matter, have been busying themselves for the most part, and of
necessity, with the beggarly elements of aesthetic feeling : they
have had to deal rather with its simplest and earliest raw mani-
festations its prime factors than with the complex emotions
roused in cultivated minds by highly-evolved works of art. Their
French critic does but once more constructively fling in their faces
the taunt long ago flung at Locke, of forgetting everything but
children and savages. Only, he objects it with the utmost polite-
ness and suavity of manner, rather by implication than by direct
reference. On the whole, I am not inclined to quarrel with his
contention that we have all left out of consideration many aspects
of aesthetic sentiment. The truth is, all early work at any line
of investigation must necessarily be very crude, vague and im-
perfect ; it must require endless modification and guarding of
statements ; it must undergo perpetual revision, both to bring it
into nearer harmony with ascertained fact, and to close the door
against possible misapprehensions or distortions of meaning. Now
for Mr. Spencer I cannot speak, further than to 'say that the
treatment of ^Esthetics in the Principles of Psychology is confined
M. GTJYAU, DE L'ESTHETIQUE CONTEMPOEAINE. 121
to a single short, though highly suggestive, chapter, and that the
incidental hints in the Essays, though more fully elaborated,
belong to an early stage of Mr. Spencer's thinking, and deal with
a few special points alone. Mr. Sully, too, I shall leave to defend
or modify his aesthetic theories, as he likes, in person. But for
my own early work Physiological ^Esthetics which M. Guyau
honours too greatly with much serious and generous criticism, I
can frankly admit that it looks far too exclusively at the simpler
sensuous elements of beauty only, lays too much stress on sight
and hearing alone, and jumps too rapidly from these prime factors
to the higher developments, without allowing nearly enough for
the intermediate stages and the infinite interosculation of emo-
tional, intellectual and associational disturbances. It is too
rigid,, too schematic and too youthful. Nobody can feel more
intensely than I now do the immense complexity of the sense of
beauty, and its profound dependence upon innumerable chords in
all parts of our nutritive and sensitive nature. " Selon M. Spen-
cer et son ecole," says M. Guyau, " 1'idee du beau exclut : (1) ce
qui est necessaire a la vie ; (2) ce qui est utile a la vie ; (3) elle
exclut meme en general tout objet reel de desir et de possession
pour se reduire au simple exercice, au simple jeu de notre activite."
This, I think, hardly summarises aright the view in question.
The necessary and the useful, we evolutionists believe, may all
have their aesthetic side do all possess an aesthetic side, in fact ;
but only in immediate contemplation of certain of their attributes
other than their mere bare utility. When cognised as beautiful,
they are not cognised as useful in the naked sense. M. Guyau
himself admits that the poetry of a railway lies not so much in
the permanent way, the rails and the sleepers, as in "the palpi-
tating engines, snorting steam athwart the acres " ; and I fancy
at bottom the differences between himself and his English con-
temporaries are not quite as irreconcilable as he now imagines.
Certainly w T hen he says, " Considerer le sentiment esthetique in-
dependamment de 1'instinct sexuel et de son evolution nous
semble aussi superficiel que de considerer le sentiment moral a
part des instincts sympathiques," he is uttering a truth with
which, I believe, the English psychologists themselves are deeply
penetrated. English aestheticians cannot be accused of neglecting
the importance of sexual selection, nor of overlooking the role
played by love in all poetry, and by ideal female beauty in all
plastic and pictorial art. Only, the untrammelled treatment of
that side of the subject is rendered far more difficult by circum-
stances in England than it is in France.
In short, the recognition of an intimate fundamental connexion
between functional life at large and the idea of the beautiful,
which M. Guyau believes to be his own special discovery, seems
to me, on the contrary, an essential principle of the entire Eng-
lish evolutionary school.
The latter portion of M. Guyau's volume deals rather, in his
122 CEITICAL NOTICES :
accustomed manner, with the practical outcome of recent aesthetic
theories. In France, where the sterner and less poetical side of
so-called " Materialism " and evolutionism has been too effusively
and somewhat brutally dwelt upon, there seems to be a disposi-
tion on both sides to take it for granted that beauty and art have
now played out their part in the world, and that utility and
science naked utility and harsh science are to have things all
their own way in the kingdoms of the future. Against this cruel
and monstrous idea M. Guyau emphatically protests. Herein all
English thinkers will probably agree with him. Fortunately for
us, we see over here no necessary antagonism between science
and poetry, between truth and beauty. On the contrary, some of
us see even a close and necessary natural alliance. The sublimity
of our modern cosmic conceptions must sooner or later affect our
poetry and our art : imagination is none the less imagination
because it is true rather than distorted. The last topic of M.
Guyau's volume, " L'Avenir et les Lois du Vers," occupies a
somewhat disproportionate space in his disquisition, as might
naturally be expected from the author of Vers d'un Philosophe ; it
teems with apt illustrations and just criticism, but offers compara
tively little of interest to a philosophical English reader. The
pages swarm w r ith the mysteries of French prosody ; and though
to those who (like the present critic) have been brought up in
France, Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire are full of subtle
music, yet to most Englishmen French poetry still clearly presents
itself as a mere trackless jumble of utterly lawless and unrhyth-
mical syllables.
GBANT ALLEN.
Erfdhrung und Denken : Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntniss-
theorie. Yon JOHANNES VOLKELT, Professor der Philosophic
an der Universitat zu Basel. Hamburg u. Leipzig : Voss,
1886. Pp. xvi., 556.
Prof. Volkelt's new work is at once a supplement to his previous
treatment of the theory of knowledge, in reference to the Kantian
philosophy (Kant's Erkenntnisstheorie, 1879, noticed in MIND, v. 145),
and an important contribution to the study of problems funda-
mental in Logic and in Metaphysics. Erkenntnisstheorie, or theory
of knowledge, is a term so much in vogue, and the distinctions
supposed to be implied in it have been made to wear an aspect of
so much significance, that an attempt at exhaustive treatment,
even of its more general features, deserves cordial recognition and
welcome. Any apology, such as Prof. Volkelt alludes to in
his prefatory note, for over-elaborateness in statement, seems
needless. The difficulties experienced are very largely dependent
on the excessive ambiguity of the technical terms that must be
employed, and a writer can hardly confer a greater benefit than
by subjecting these to detailed analysis and making clear the
J. VOLKELT, ERFAHRUNG- UND DENKEN. 123
sense in which they are used by him. In laying the foundations
of a theory of knowledge everything depends on the power of de-
nning terms so as take account of the innumerable side-issues as
well as main problems that have come to be connected with them.
Here, as elsewhere in philosophy, the settlement of the signifi-
cance of a term is the final result of prolonged analysis.
In the course of Prof. VolkehVs work, many questions of logical
theory or of the philosophy of logic are opened up, and on
all of them what the author has to say deserves and will repay
study. But the work has a specific aim and one very definite
problem, the various sides of which are in gradual succession
opened up. It will probably convey the best idea of the question
and of the solution the author has to offer, if in this notice as
full an exposition as is possible in the limits be offered, following
the order adopted in the book itself, but omitting what may be
judged or what is allowed by the author to be of secondary im-
portance.
The book falls into eight sections. The first, entitled " The
Scientific Need for a Theory of Knowledge, "formulates the question
and gives certain historical notices that render its import more de-
finite. The second, 3ntitled, " Pure Experience as a Principle of
Knowledge," and the third, "General Significance of Logical Neces-
sity as a Principle of Knowledge " (or, as it might have been called,
" Thought as Principle of Knowledge "), are relatively the most
important, and contain in brief what is special to Prof. Volkelt's
view of the whole question. Section iv., " On Knowledge as the
Co-operation of Experience and Thought," states from another side
what has been reached in the preceding sections. Sections v. and
vi., "The Subjective Factors of Knowledge" and "The Notion
(Begriff) in its Significance for Knowledge," are excellent contri-
butions to general logic, if that term be allowed in its largest
sense. Section vii., " Kinds and Sources of Uncertainty in
Knowledge," is likewise logical in character, forming the needful
introduction to methodology. The concluding section discusses
the solution given in the light of various problems more or less
connected with it.
The stress of the whole book lies evidently in the formulation
of the problem, and accordingly it is to the first section that
one turns with greatest interest. The distinction between
the several sciences, special knowledges as one might call
them, which for their part assume without further question
that objective knowledge is somehow possible, and a theory
of knowledge which can evidently start with no such assump-
tion, is the introduction whereby Prof. Volkelt advances to
the discussion of Erkenntnisstlieorie as a science without
previous assumptions. The need of such a science he regards
as sufficiently made out by reason of the well-grounded doubt
that may be entertained regarding the very possibility of know-
ledge. Such doubt arises from the incontestable consideration
124 CEITICAL NOTICES :
" that all the acts claiming to constitute objective knowledge
are inseparably united to the individual consciousness of the
knower, that they have real existence primarily and immediately
nowhere save in the consciousness of the individual, and that they
are perfectly incapable of extending beyond the consciousness of
the individual and of grasping or entering into the field of the real
that lies beyond". The meaning of this passage is perhaps suffi-
ciently clear, despite its strongly metaphorical expression, though
one may be allowed to entertain a doubt as to the possibility of
altogether freeing oneself from the direct suggestions of the meta-
phors themselves. Knowing, says Prof. Volkelt in effect, is a
process forming part of my individual mental life. It is there-
fore subjective, and by itself alone cannot substantiate any claim
to yield objectively valid results. Whatsoever be the result of a
critical investigation into knowledge, that investigation must start
from the acknowledgment of the subjective and therefore inhe-
rently dubious character of every act of knowing. The cognitive
individual may represent to himself an objective real as known,
may represent to himself comparisons of his thought with the
real as a test of their truth, may represent to himself other cogni-
tive consciousnesses thinking or knowing the same as he does,
but in every case he must acknowledge that his representing is a
process in his own mind, and contains not in itself, in its own
nature as fact, the warrant of its objective validity. It is legiti-
mate to maintain, as a self-evident, ultimate principle, the propo-
sition that knowing as an act is a process of mind ; I am directly
aware of the existence of such a process, and the assertion of its
existence has the strength of self -evidence. But I am entitled to
no more than the assertion of such existence as a fact. Even if
these subjective processes be more than facts in the mental life,
even if they indicate necessities that go beyond the sphere of
individual consciousness, such surplusage of significance is pri-
marily for us something subjective ; it is certainty on our parts,
and we have to ask how comes it that subjective certainty is taken
as indicating objectivity of knowledge '?
It is natural that, having so formulated the initial difficulty,
Prof. Volkelt should find in Locke rather than in Kant the his-
torical originator of Erkenntnisstheorie, and in fact, the state-
ment of the question carries one inevitably to the precritical
philosophies, to Cartesianism, e.g., to which Prof. Volkelt's method
of starting the inquiry has many interesting points of resem-
blance. Perhaps one might go so far as to maintain, though
the extreme generality of these questions allows wide scope for
varied interpretations, that the question as formulated by Prof.
Volkelt is not a problem of the Kantian philosophy at all.
Since objectivity implies on the one hand reference to existence
lying beyond the limits of individual consciousness, and on the
other hand validity for all consciousness, it is evident that nothing
within the scope of consciousness can constitute objective know-
J. VOLKELT, ERFAHRUNG UND DENKEN. 125
ledge. Every fact there is subjective in nature and individual.
Absolute scepticism would thus be the necessary conclusion if
there were not somehow given a kind of knowledge which, mak-
ing no pretension to be objective, has the more valuable mark of
absolute self -evidence. If there be such a knowledge, then on the
basis of it something may be done for the theory of objective cog-
nition.
As was remarked, there is much resemblance in all this to the
familiar Cartesian procedure ; and the answer offered strikes one
immediately as little more than a modern setting of the cogito ergo
sum, a setting which may be thought to bring to the front and
exaggerate all that is unsatisfactory and dubious in the famous
maxim.
There is, Prof. Volkelt thinks, one knowledge possessed by
us, in regard to which we enjoy absolute certainty, and are not
exposed to the troublesome doubts roused by the notion of objec-
tive cognition. " The slightest introspection shows me that I
possess a knowledge (ein Wisseii) of the processes of my own con-
sciousness." This knowledge is absolutely self-evident and indubi-
table ; nay more, it carries with it the very principle of certainty.
The fact of knowing my own mental states is in itself the evidence
for the knowledge ; no further evidence is needed or is possible.
It is to the credit of the book that, just at this point, which
looks exquisitely simple and is really very complex, an attempt is
made to explain in detail what is signified by the " knowledge "
of one's own mental states. " In the first place there must be
some processes in my consciousness ; secondly, my attention
must have been directed upon them ; and thirdly, I must have
been able to discriminate, fix and observe the processes which fall
within the range of attention. Merely to have conscious pro-
cesses is not identical with knowledge of them. . . . Nay, even
the attentive treatment of contents of consciousness is not neces-
sarily an absolutely certain knowledge ; it is further needful that
I should be able to note their differences and limits " ; in brief, to
observe them. Apparently too, we cannot allow ourselves to feel
sure that we do know any mental state, until we are able to
reproduce it with consciousness of its identity. Finally, Prof.
Volkelt extends the range of subjective self-evidence, and includes
within it not only the immediately observed facts of consciousness,
but all the contents of memory.
I must admit that, so far as I can understand the drift of this
portion of the work, I entirely differ from the view apparently
involved. It appears to me doubtful, even after Prof. Volkelt's
careful statements, what exactly is meant by this knowledge and
its certainty, and still more doubtful its connexion with the gene-
ral problem of the work. Knowledge of inward states is here a
process with its own contents ; the mental states as occurring
hold to these contents the relation which the Cartesians described
by the terms ease formaliter. I do not gather that Prof. Volkelt
126 CEITICAL NOTICES :
identifies the " formal " and " objective " being of mental pro-
cesses ; rather he appears to say that the difference is without
any consequences as regards the principle of subjective certainty.
To me the difference appears full of significance. So far as
" knowing" is concerned, that and not the difference designated
by Prof. Volkelt as "trans-subjective" and "intra-subjective "
seems the most important. In observation of the inner life,
the contents of the thoughts whereby we determine the nature
of the observed are neither in fact nor in meaning necessarily iden-
tical vith the observed. Nothing is gained, as regards accuracy
of knowledge, by the intra-subjective character of both observed
and observation. I should regret to misrepresent Prof. Volkelt's
meaning, but unless I have altogether misunderstood what is
so patiently worked out on pp. 56-58, I can only conclude that
he is identifying consciousness in its vaguest sense with scientific
knowledge of the facts of consciousness. If to know the processes
of consciousness mean to be able to determine accurately their
characteristics and differences, I should be inclined to say that we
can hardly claim any such knowledge. What we do possess is
painfully and laboriously attained, and wants every mark of imme-
diacy.
I am in the same position of doubt as to understanding the
certainty, the self -evidence, which is the special attribute of this
kind of knowledge. Prof. Volkelt's words are : "I possess an
absolutely self-evidencing knowledge of my own conscious pro-
cesses". "This proposition is not certain for me as a conclusion
drawn from a number of experiences, but it is a fact, certain for
me in exactly the same self-evidencing fashion as the assertion I
now feel hungry or warm. With any content of consciousness I
am likewise aware of this (werde Ich dessen inne) that there is
given an absolutely self-evidencing knowledge of what is taking
place in my consciousness ". Apparently then this proposition of
which we are immediately certain accompanies consciousness,
and is therefore distinguishable from it. If so, then, if the con-
tent of the proposition be the fact that there is absolutely self-
evidencing knowledge of inner states, as I altogether doubt the
fact, I must doubt the proposition also. I should willingly go
further and maintain that nothing is gained so far as knowledge
and its certainty are concerned by the distinction between trans-
and intra-subjective. I can be, in and through the process of
knowing, no more certain of what is in my consciousness, if we
allow for the moment that any accurate meaning can be put on
so metaphorical an expression, than of what is beyond my con-
sciousness. That knowing is a process of mind, and that the
known is in the one case likewise a fact of mind, seems to me to
give no additional certainty to the resulting cognition. I should
have thought that some reference to the difficulty here arising
would have been noted when past facts of consciousness were
included among the self-evidencing and certain.
J. VOLKELT, ERFAHRUNG UND DENKEN. 127
Prof. Yolkelt proceeds rapidly from this point to a conside-
ration of pure Experience as principle of cognition. Pure, mere
experience is simply such knowledge as the subject directly has
of his own subjective processes. Anything else shows itself on
the slightest analysis to contain trans-subjective reference or
trans-subjective elements. States of mind known by the subject
as his make up pure experience ; pure experience consists wholly
in the successive and co-existent particulars of the individual's
consciousness. There fall within it no propositions of universal
validity; it manifests to us a discontinuous and disconnected
multiplicity, with no common feature other than the more or less
vague feeling that each state belongs to my consciousness, and so
to one and the same consciousness (p. 87). Not that an Ego is
given as a fact of experience ; neither Ego nor Non-ego is a state
of consciousness. Hume's excellent account of experience repre-
sents as a whole most accurately the point of view of mere, pure
experience.
Prof. Volkelt has some interesting remarks, in this connexion,
on Positivism and subjective Idealism as partial exponents of
the point of view discussed. He rightly insists that in both
cases elements are introduced which are not legitimate implica-
tions of the principle itself.
The principle of pure experience, then, warrants no objective
knowledge, and the survey of it convinces us that, if there be
objective knowledge at all, that, so far as its certainty is concerned,
must be for us in the form of beliefs. There cannot be in its
regard the absolute self-evidencing character, for, ex hypothesi,
that which it evidences is not itself, but something trans-subjec-
tive. The knowledge remains within consciousness, and as claim-
ing to disclose the trans-subjective has a certain mystical charac-
ter (p. 136-7). We cannot a priori determine whether there are
principles of objective knowledge in our consciousness. Their
existence is only disclosed in a survey of what is given in con-
sciousness. Here again I call attention, in passing, to the
interesting analogy with the Cartesian procedure.
Such survey discloses readily to us, as possessing marked pecu-
liarities, these conjunctions of presentations and representations
which are accompanied by the thought of Necessity. In them we
appear to be contemplating the nature of the facts indicated, not the
subjective mode of existence of the presentations themselves. In
so far as the necessity of conjunction is rested on the nature of
the facts and does not flow from any other motive, moral, aesthe-
tic, or the like, it may be called logical. It is the necessity of
thought, exhibited only where thought is operative, that is, in
conjunctions, not in the isolated elements conjoined. Necessity
of conjunction, however much more it may involve as consequence
of the character assigned to the conjoined, yields readily on
analysis the two all-important characteristics of objectivity uni-
versality and reference to existence beyond the individual act of
128 CEITICAL NOTICES I
conjoining. The trans- subjective is therefore involved in every
judgment, for judgment is the comprehensive title for all such
con joinings : directly, in so far as the reference to existence is
concerned ; indirectly, in so far as the universality implies a mul-
tiplicity of consciousnesses with common laws of conjoining. The
principle of logical necessity, or of the necessity of thought dis-
closed by survey of the facts of consciousness, is then the general
expression for what is implied in trans-subjective knowledge.
The sections (pp. 39-181) in which the general characteristics
of Thought are discussed are to be cordially recommended ; they
form an excellent contribution to the logic of the judgment, and
contain much that would repay minuter discussion. Omitting
them, I proceed to note how Prof. Volkelt deals with the
principle of logical necessity from the point of view previously
stated as regards the sphere of absolutely certain knowledge. So
far as I understand his view, it may be expressed briefly thus :
Whatever be the nature of the trans-subjective reference involved
in thought, whatever explanation we may find or offer regarding
its probability, the certainty which accompanies it has only sub-
jective ground, rests only on the invincible belief that accompanies
the activity of thinking. " Thought rests finally on an inner expe-
rience of an intuitive kind " (p. 183), and this "is experience with
the essential addition that the experience at the same time makes
me aware of its validity for what is not experienced " (p. 189), i.e.,
for the trans-subjective. Thinking then does not so much imme-
diately warrant the trans-subjective validity of its contents as
insist that, if they have been correctly attained, they must have
such validity. We proceed in thought, so to speak, with an ideal in
view, the essential nature of which is presented by thought itself,
but the rounded completeness of attainment is not necessarily in-
volved. Moreover, thought is purely formal : it can neither
create the trans-subjective to which it points, nor fashion for
itself its own subjective ideal content. That an activity so condi-
tioned should yet claim to disclose the trans-subjective is intelli-
gible only if we assume, not empty identity between thought and
the trans-subjective world, but a community in root and laws
(201, cp. 502). Prof. Volkelt expressly declines, as not form-
ing part of the epistemological problem, the inquiries into the
metaphysical nature of this relation, or into the psychological
fashion in which thought conies about in the inner life.
Logical necessity, then, is the truly fruitful principle of objective
cognition, and Prof. Volkelt proceeds to discuss how experi-
ence, in the sense previously defined, and thought co-operate
together in fashioning the contents of the objective knowledge we
deem ourselves to possess. His answer, briefly put, is in sub-
stance a modification of the Kantian view, but expressed with
more specific reference to difficulties that have been raised since
Kant's time. Thought gives to the contents of experience their
objective reference, adds to them factors not supplied by experi-
J. VOLKELT, ERF.AHRUNG UND DENKEN. -129
ence itself, but it has neither originating force nor corrective skill.
Experience is needed in order to set going the activity of thought,
to supply materials for its operations, and to furnish means of
testing and examining the results of the exercise of thought. Yet
.it is to be noted, as an essential correction to the Kantian view,
that thought has not as its result the mere fashioning of experi-
.ence into order and form it does not itself possess, but points con-
stantly to what is never matter of experience. For in thought we
.may well distinguish from one another the functions which ex-
press its formal nature and the categories or conceptions of trans-
subjective content which its exercise involves. The latter are
often, perhaps for the most part, unconscious elements in our
thinking.
It is evident that, apart from details as to the processes involved
in thinking, the general position of thought in reference to the
trans-subjective implied in it, may be characterised by the term
-subjective, and Prof. Volkelt, adopting on the whole the view
excellently stated by Lotze (Logic, 536), gives a striking exposition
of the Notion as the mode in which there is summed up the results
of thought respecting the nature of its object.
.It only remains to note, in this brief and imperfect account of
a work unusually full of matters open to discussion, that Prof.
Volkelt finds no other source of objective knowledge deserving to
be placed alongside of the principle of logical necessity. Moral
necessity, which in Kant's system played so great a part, is indeed
allowed by him to have a quasi-objective reference, but " in
essence it remains subjective ". It does not give us, like logical
necessity, the knowledge of causal order and regular subordination
to law ; it extends in no way our conception of the real order of the
trans-subjective world. In a similar fashion are rejected the prin-
ciples, often appealed to in the history of thought, of intuitive
perception and intuitive self-apprehension.
It has been possible to comment only on that portion of Prof.
Volkelt's work in which the central difficulty of theory of know-
ledge as conceived by him is explicitly stated, and what has been
suggested by no means fulfils the requirements of adequate criti-
cism on what one would describe as the Cartesian position. The
essential characteristic of that position is the abstract considera-
tion of consciousness as having within its own narrow limits the
only certain knowledge attainable, and the natural consequence
of the position is exactly that "flight" to belief in the trans-sub-
jective validity of knowledge of which Prof. Volkelt's work is for
the most part an elaborate defence. I believe it to be a real error
in philosophical method to make the initial steps in a theory of
knowledge from the Cartesian position, and am of opinion that
the whole advance achieved by Kant is lost if we return, in deal-
ing with the epistemological problem, to the identification of
knowing as a fact in the inner life of a subject with knowledge as
the representation of a content known. It is only when we make
9
130 CRITICAL NOTICES I J. VOLKELT, ETC.
such an identification that we find ourselves driven to such crude
imaginations of the process of knowing as seem to have weighed
upon Prof. Volkelt. If knowing be conceived only as a fact or series
of facts occurring, then truly we may puzzle ourselves by trying to
depict it as involving " ein Hinausgreifen iiber das Bewusstsein,
eine Beriihrung mit dem Trans-sub jektiven," and, after deciding
that its contact with the trans-subjective cannot be mechanical (!),
venture to say that it must be "so to speak, dynamical," and
finally wind up by declaring it altogether mystical (see pp. 136-7).
In all this there seems to me deep-rooted confusion. I do not
say that the difficulties alluded to are all of them unreal, but only
that their character is altogether rendered inconceivable by the
point of view from which they are described. I am unable to see
the connexion, which to Prof. Volkelt appears evident, between the
two main ideas of his work, the principle of experience as he calls
it, and the principle of necessity of thought ; or, at least, I fail to
see how the two as here stated form parts of one consistent doc-
trine. But the whole question of the Cartesian method in the
explanation of knowledge deserves and will repay a more ela-
borate discussion, to which I hope to return.
EOBEET ADAMSON.
VII. NEW BOOKS.
[ These Notes (by various hands) do not exclude Critical Notices later on. ]
Our Temperaments : Their Study and their Teaching. A Popular Outline.
By ALEXANDER STEWART, F.R.C.S. Edin. With Illustrations.
London : Crosby, Lock wood & Co., 1887. Pp. xxvi., 392.
The objects set before himself by the author of this work are first to
bring into clear light the traditional medical doctrine of the four tempera-
ments, and in the next place to make it more precise than it had become
either in the hands of the Greek physicians or of those moderns (the
Frenchman Richerand and the Spaniard Cortes) from whom other authors
have chiefly drawn, when they have not drawn directly from the Greeks ;
the result of the whole being that it is possible to infer at once a large
number of associated mental and physical qualities from mere observation
of certain definite characters of colour and form. In both aims no small
success has been attained. Whatever may be the positive value of the
author's results and he does not make any exaggerated claims for them
his researches and observations will henceforth hold an important place
among contributions towards the scientific classification of human types.
He himself points out the limitations of the doctrine. It applies only to
civilised men ; for no differences depending on the predominance of dif-
ferent systems of organs seem to be met with among savages. The distinc-
tions that were drawn in ancient times, from Hippocrates onwards, cannot
be accepted as true in detail except of the Greeks. Those of Bicherand,
the principal authority within the last half century, besides being often
vague, are applicable only to French types. Again, the author's own dis-
tinctions " are taken from the people of our own country, and therefore
may not apply to those of other countries, the physical characteristics and
the influences that modify the mental ones being more or less different ".
The great defect of the ancient classification was, of course, the omission of
the nervous temperament. In compensation, the bilious temperament was
duplicated into the "choleric" and the "melancholic"; the last partly
supplying the place of the " nervous temperament " of the moderns. The
most important addition made by the author to the general description of
the temperaments is the assignment to them of definite form-character-
istics ; but the advance he has made in precision cannot be measured by
single additions, as will be seen when the tables giving his definitive results
(pp. 77-80) are compared with the descriptions he quotes from the older
authors. One column of each of these tables gives the " physical," another
the "mental" characteristics of the four "pure temperaments". The last, in
the author's view, do not form part of their determining characteristics; the
temperament itself being a matter of direct physical observation, and thus
known independently of all associated mental qualities. For this reason,
indeed, he would restrict the word " temperament," in literature and con-
versation, to physical distinctions. Only the four physical temperaments
and their compounds are known by definite marks ; and these are recog-
nisable, by the marks assigned, without risk of mistake. In the tables
referred to, each temperament is distinguished by three characteristics of
colour (as to 'hair,' 'eyes' and 'complexion') and four of form (as to
' face,' ' nose,' ' neck ' and ' build '). The nervous temperament differs
from the rest in all characteristics, both of colour and form ; while the
132 NEW BOOKS.
sanguine, bilious and lymphatic, alike in all characteristics of form, differ
from each other as well as from the nervous temperament in all character-
istics of colour. The description of the " pure temperaments " is followed
by descriptions of selected " compound," " balanced " and " semi-balanced "
temperaments. Some suggestions are added, in the later chapters of part
i., on modification of the temperaments by manner of- life, and on their
relations to climate and food, to disease and its inheritance, &c. In part
ii. (" The Teaching of the Temperaments," pp. 267-392), hints are given
for applying the knowledge of them to education, to choice of a profession,
and to the promotion of health. The loose use of the word " temperament"
is criticised i-n an acute and interesting way ; and the biographical value of
real " temperament portraiture " is illustrated both negatively and posi-
tively. As an aid to the classification of faces, a selection is given from
Lodyrfs Historical Portraits ; the selected faces being arranged according to
type. Lastly, the results are tabulated of " observation of the forms of a
hundred faces ".
The Functions of the Brain. By DAVID FERRIER, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., &c.
Second Edition, rewritten and enlarged. With numerous Illustra-
tions. London : Smith, Elder & Co., 1886. Pp. xxiii., 498.
Dr. Terrier's well-known work, reviewed in MIND (ii. 92) at some length
.on its first appearance in 1876, now re-appears after ten years in greatly
altered and extended form. Plan and principles of treatment remain in
general what they were, but, while the primaiy object still is to give a
detailed account of the author's own celebrated investigations, the book
can now much more than previously claim to present " a systematic ex-
position of the functions of the brain and central nervous system in
accordance with . . . the best established facts of recent physiological
and pathological research ". Enlarged by more than half its former size,
it has also in the parts reproduced been so carefully revised as to be
practically a new book ; the doubt only being suggested, by some of the
patches \vorked-in from the first edition, whether the author would not
have done better it could not have given him more trouble to " rewrite"
absolutely de novo. The structural revolution is nowhere more marked
than in c. i., where the cerebro-spinal system is now very exhaustively
described in 50 pp., taking the place of 15 pp. of mere "sketch " before';
c. ii. also now gives adequate account of the spinal cord, in its double
function of conductor and centre, at a length of 40 pp., where 7 pp. on the
single reflex function were formerly thought sufficient. Several of the
following chapters, dealing with the main divisions of the system upwards,
are recast and all are revised ; but the next radical change is in (or from)
the old c. ix., "The Hemispheres physiologically considered " ; its two
.sections of " Sensory Centres " and " Motor Centres " being now set out as
two chapters (ix., x.), at twice the previous length. More new work has,
in the last ten years, been done upon the " sensory centres " than in any
other department of cerebral research, and the result is particularly
apparent in the elaborate account (35 instead of 7 pp.) that has now to be
given of the " visual centre " so much more complex in its connexions as
well as wide-spreading in superficial area than was at first supposed. As
to the "motor centres," while here and also in other parts of the new
edition the author is more than ever forward to argue against the view of
"muscular sense" that connects it (physiologically) with the outgoing
current, he still does not appear sufficiently to consider what support (as
hinted before in MIND and as has also been urged by Dr. Bastian) that
view gets from his own conception of such centres support that is not
nullified by withdrawal of particular expressions or sentences from the
NEW BOOKS. 133
later chapter (now xii.) where he sets out his general psychological interpre-
tation of cerebral processes. The chapter just mentioned gives some
little expansion to his earlier suggestion connecting Attention with
the frontal lobes, but does not otherwise advance towards determining
the physiological conditions of the higher mental functions, and in general
is not much altered from its previous form. On the other hand, the
foregoing chapter (now xi.) on the "Basal Ganglia" is wholly recast ; with
which fact may be noted the suppression of the old chapter xii. that gave,
with formidable nomenclature, a " diagrammatic summary " of his whole
view of the relations, internal and external, of the different grades
of centres. In that summary, with the diagram drawn to illustrate it, the
most questionable feature was the unhesitating assumption of a direct con-
nexion between the optic thalami and the corpora striatn, as if these
constituted between them one relatively distinct sensori-motor mechanism.
No sufficient anatomical or physiological ground was adduced for the
connexion in the first edition, and still less is any now supplied in the new
chapter, which shows with great care and candour how little is yet really
made out concerning these great ganglionic masses. It might be supposed
then that the author has withdrawn his old summary chapter, if for no other
reason, in order not to prejudge the question of their relations ; but he sur-
prises us by, after all, at the end of c. xi. (p. 422), putting it forward as
at least " probable " that " they constitute together a sensori - motor
mechanism, subservient to the manifestation of all those forms of
activity which do not imply conscious discrimination or true volition ".
Here it would seem the doctrine of the first edition might with advan-
tage have been left wholly aside. The remarks now made are intended
merely to give the barest notion of the changes in a book of established
importance. There will be opportunity later on to examine with the neces-
sary care some of Dr. Ferrier's positions, which he has now spared no pains
to render as strong as, upon new investigation and farther reflexion, he can
make them. Nobody that set store by the first edition can afford hence-
forth not to have the second rather at hand for study and reference.
Types of Ethical Theory. By JAMES MARTINEAU, D.D., LL.D,, late Prin-
cipal of Manchester New College, London. Second Edition, revised.
2 Vols. ("Clarendon Press Series.") Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1886.
Pp. xxxii., 512 ; viii., 596.
Dr. Martineau's work, of which the main thesis is subjected in the
present number to a more special handling than it formerly received, here
already re-appears, in two volumes of a reduced and very handy size. In the
way of revision, " a few passages are modified or annotated in order to guard
against misconceptions occasioned by their inexact form ". Otherwise, the
author contents himself, in a second preface (pp. xix.-xxx.), with defending
his designation of Plato's theory as " unpsychological," and now extending
it more expressly than he had done before to Aristotle's theory also, which
has no place in the scheme of the work ; with a short justification of his
antithesis of " idio- " and " hetero-psychological " ; with a promise that
the question of free-will is to be discussed in the complementary work to
follow on Religion ; and with some farther remarks on the necessary
implication of "personal relation" in the notion of "moral authority".
In an Appendix (ii. 569-75) are given four letters that passed between the
author and Mr. H. Spencer on the interpretation put, in the first edition,
on the latter's conception of evolution.
Studies in Ancient History, comprising a Reprint of Primitive Marriage, <c.
By the late JOHN FERGUSON MCLENNAN. A New Edition. London :
Macmillan & Co., 1886. Pp. xxxi., 387.
134 NEW BOOKS.
Though these Studies, made up of the famous Primitive Marriage and
iive shorter essays on kindred topics, lie outside the strict province of
MIND, they touch it very nearly and may be mentioned again as they were
when first collected in 1876 (Vol. ii. 132). They now appear with a
number of additional notes, supplied by the lamented author's brother, Mr.
D. McLennan, at first hand or (in the case of the now considerably
increased Appendix, pp. 165-91, to Primitive Marriage} on the basis of
collections of supporting evidence made b} r the author himself. A second
volume is promised " containing other writings of the author writings for
the most part hitherto unpublished, and prepared for a work which was
left unfinished from which it will be possible to gather, in a considerable
measure at least, how far the author's views had grown or been developed,
how far they had changed or been added to subsequently to the appearance
of Primitive Marriage " (first in 1865).
The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art. Translated from the
German, with Notes and Prefatory Essay. By BERNARD BOSANQUET,
M.A., late Fellow and Tutor of University College, Oxford. London :
Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886. Pp. xxxiii., 175.
This is a complete translation of the Introduction to Hegel's ^sthetiL
Mr. Hastie's rendering, noticed in MIND, xi. 437, is, it seems, in the
latter part, an analysis. The translator has " hoped that the present
volume may be of interest to many who, without being students of philo-
sophy, are intelligent lovers of art," and has therefore done his best ''to
interpret philosophical expressions, instead of merely furnishing their tech-
nical equivalents". The prefatory essay (pp. xiii.-xxxiii.) "On the True
Conception of Another World " shows how " the ' things not seen ' of Plato
or of Hegel are not a double or a projection of the existing world " ; the
distinction of the ideal from the real world in the Hegelian philosophy at
least being always a distinction " within the world which we know, and
not between the world we know and another which we do not know". To
illustrate this, M. Bosanquet explains the Hegelian notions of Infinity, of
Freedom and of an immanent Deity.
The Life of Words as the Symbols of Ideas. By ARSENE DARMESTETER,
Professor of the History of the French Language and of Old French
Literature, at the Sorbbnne. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.,
1886. Pp. 173.
These interesting Lectures which were delivered in London to a
limited audience and appear in translation before being published
in French although, influenced throughout by the author's psycho-
logical aim, are for the most part concerned with (French) philo-
logy rather than with psychology directly. There is one chapter
(pt. i., ch. 3, pp. 83-105) where "the author deals suggestively with
linguistic study as an instrument of psychological research, summing up
his conclusion in the following sentence : " Of the different natural
manifestations wherein the character of a people reflects itself, their
religion, literature, art and institutions, language is the most direct and
most immediate, because it does not in the same degree as the others
submit to the powerful and personal action of individual men of genius,
and because, on the other hand, it is the very expression of the people's
turn of mind, it is the very mould of their thought " (p. 105).
Life of Antonio Bosmini Serbati, Founder of the Institute of Charity. Edited
by WILLIAM LOCKHART, Graduate of Oxford, Exeter Coll., Procurator
of the Order in Rome, Rector of St. Ethelreda's, London. 2 Vols.
London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886. Pp. xxxiii., 360 ; xi., 352.
NEW BOOKS. 135
The first volume of this work appears to have been published by itself
some time ago and, a second edition being called for, is now issued in
smaller form along with the second volume. " The compiler of the first
volume " (here unnamed, but originally, we believe, given as G. Stuart
Mac- Walter) having meanwhile died, Father Lockhart assumes editorial
responsibility for the whole work as now completed. It has come to hand
too late to be more than simply noted here with the single remark added
that, while the 'Life,' drawn, from the best sources, is evidently full of
interest, it is followed in vol. ii., among other chapters of general characteri-
sation, by five (pp. 216-303) giving account and estimate of Rosmini's
philosophy.
Phantasms of the Living. By EDMUND GURNEY, M.A., late Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, FREDERIC W. H. MYERS, late Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge, and FRANK PODMORE, M.A. 2 Vols.
London : Rooms of the Society for Psychical Research, also Triibner &
Co., 1886. Pp. Ixxxiii., 573 ; xxvii., 733.
This long-expected work, the massive result of an inquiry conducted
with astonishing vigour and pertinacity, has already become so well known
in its main features through the daily and weekly press, that, for the pre-
sent, it may suffice here to simply note its appearance. For all but an
" Introduction " of xxxv. pp. and in vol. ii. a " Note on a suggested mode
of Psychical Interaction " (40 pp.), due to Mr. Myers, Mr. Gurney is solely
responsible, though he has been helped throughout in " the collection, ex-
amination and appraisal of evidence " by both of his associates, and has
also obligations to acknowledge to a number of other persons. The volumes
are mainly taken up with the record and discussion of " cases," but, besides
the " Introduction," several chapters, especially c. iv. " General Criticism
of the Evidence for Spontaneous Telepathy" (i, 114-85), are occupied with
questions of general principle. These, it need hardly be said, are marked
by no ordinary ability, while they display the fullest sense of the serious
scientific issues involved in the inquiry.
Hume. By WILLIAM KNIGHT, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy,
University of St. Andrews. (" Philosophical Classics for English
Readers.") Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons,
1886. Pp. x., 239.
The editor of the " Philosophical Classics" here makes his own contri-
bution to the series, of which, as planned, only two volumes Bacon and
Spinoza are still outstanding. He has given a much larger proportion of
his volume (100 pp.) to the Life than Prof. Huxley did in like case, yet
has managed, without going much beyond his predecessor's limits, to give
fuller account also of the Philosophy, in respect of its origin, import and
consequences. In the Life, which is very interestingly written, the author
has been able to add several points of importance, from new sources, to the
story as previously made out by the careful research of Hill Burton. The
account of the Philosophy is rightly based on the Treatise of Human
Nature, rather than the later works. The volume would have appeared
earlier but that the author has been engaged in collecting materials for a
larger work on the philosophy of Hume, to follow the present more popular
sketch.
Leading and Important English Words: Explained and Exemplified. An
Aid to Teaching. By 'WILLIAM L. DAVIDSON, M.A., Author of the
Logic of Definition. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1886. Pp.
vi., 214.
136 NEW BOOKS,
This little work, intended for schools and sure to find an entrance
where the master is intelligent enough, is a most useful yet simple piece of
applied logic, in the way of "synonymous discrimination". About a
hundred and fifty important words are taken (in alphabetical order) and,
in the light of certain clear principles of logical definition set out in a short
Introduction (18 pp.), all the words of more or less closely related import
are marked off in short and pithy phrase, followed by a copious collection
of illustrative examples, chosen or made. The author in no way exaggerates
the importance of such discipline for the youthful intellect.
S. Austin and his place in the History of Christian Thought. (The Hulsean
Lectures, 1885.) By W. CUNNINGHAM, B.D., Chaplain and Birkbeck
Lecturer, Trinity College, Cambridge. London : C. J. Clay & Sons,
1886. Pp. xiii., 283.
In these " Hulsean Lectures," partly theological and partly philosophi-
cal, the author aims above all at bringing out S. Augustine's essential
difference from Calvin, his theological and philosophical moderation gene-
rally, and his special influence at all periods on the English Church. It
is for this reason that he has used the older English form of the name ;
finding in it a difference of "theological associations". After an Introduc-
tion (pp. 1-18), the Lectures are divided as follows : (i.) " Truth and the
Possibility of attaining it " ; (ii.) " The Origin of Evil and the Punishment
of Sin" (The Manicha3ari Controversy); (iii.) "Human Freedom and the
Divine Will " (The Pelagian Controversy) ; (iv.) " The Kingdom of God
and the Means of Grace'" (Philosophy of History; the Donatist Contro-
versy). There is an Appendix (pp. 137-278) containing "brief discussions
of several important points which could not be conveniently treated within
the limits of the lectures". After " Excursus G" of the Appendix comes a
reprint of a tract on " The Doctrine of S. Austin concerning the Christian
Sacrifice," by " a divine of the University of Cambridge, who is identified
by Lethbury with a non-juring clergyman named George Smith" (pp. 199-
276). The Lectures are throughout copiously illustrated with passages
from the father's works printed at length in the footnotes. In dealing
with S. Augustine as a philosopher, the author first contends that he
" states with extraordinary clearness the same proof of the possibility of
indubitable certainty, which Descartes was to bring forth once again, when
more than a thousand years had passed away " (p. 25), while his manner
of applying it is superior even to Descartes' (pp. u9-41). He also " seems-
to have anticipated Kant in proclaiming the true Freedom of the Will" (p.
105). Again, as regards Philosophy of History " we may turn from the
grandest modern account of the evolution of human progress turn from
Hegel himself to S. Austin and feel that the historical system of the
ancient father is more perfect and complete " (p. 115). The author further
contends, in passages of the Lectures and also in " Excursus A," that S.
Augustine (besides being a psychological observer) devoted much attention
to the observation of nature. Towards the non-experimental physical
science of his day " his whole attitude is not unlike that in which a modern
might speak of the methods of fourth century physicists " (p. 138). Of the
rest of the Appendix, "Excursus B " ("S. Austin's Influence in the Middle
Ages ") and " Excursus F " (" The Freedom of the Will ") are the most ex-
pressly philosophical.
The Development of Taste and other Studies in ^Esthetics. By W. PROUD-
FOOT BEGG. Glasgow : James Maclehose & Sons, 1887. Pp. . xx.,
392.
The author's purpose in this book is not to deal with " the progress of
NEW BOOKS. 137.
taste, in the widest sense of it, from the beginning of life on our globe to
the present moment," but mainly " to note the wiclenening and growing
intensity of a love for the beauty and grandeur of the outward material
world as distinguished from man and his works " ; and having done this,
to consider " various other questions with relation to beauty which should
be of interest to all, but especially to inquirers in philosophy and theology".
In chapters i.-vi. he traces the development of the sense of beauty in exter-
nal nature from its earliest manifestations ; pointing out the evidences,
that the Greeks and Romans were not so much inferior to the moderns in
love of nature and sense of the picturesque as is often supposed, but at the
same time contending that the love of nature has been greatly developed
through the influence of Christianity, and that the feeling of security given
by modern civilisation has developed the sense of the picturesque. In cc.
vii.-xiv. " the standard of taste," the association-theories of Alison and
Jeffrey and of more modern writers, the " reality," the distinctive characters
and the " universality " of beauty are discussed. Of the " association-
theory " the writer says " It has done well in arguing for a mental origin
for beauty, and in insisting, by implication at least, that there is nothing
beautiful apart from mind or spirit. For in that it is at one with all high
idealistic speculations from Plato onwards, and with the old belief in which .
we have all been brought up that the universe is the work and creation of
God " (p. 193-4). But beauty " is not a creature simply of association ".
"It is objective as well as subjective ; real as well as ideal ; a quality of
things material as well as of things mental " (p. 248). Chapter xiv. is in-
tended to lead to the conclusion that " all is supremely beautiful". There
is an " apparent contradiction between such a conclusion and the view that
many things are ugly" ; bat the contradiction is "only apparent". The
ugly is " necessary in reality as in thought for the perception of the beau-
tiful ". This theory is " essentially optimistic " ; postulating that, as Hegel
says, "the real is * the rational". " The Hegelian philosophy," however,
" is wide enough to embrace the truth in any rational pessimistic theory
that may be formed. In fact, it has embraced it from the first ; for it is an
' optimism on the basis of pessimism,' and the two terms, like all other
opposites, are held by it in reconciliation " (p. 355). In the last chapter
(xv.) the author discusses the theory of colour, arriving at the conclusion
that colour, like beauty, is not merely subjective, but is a real "quality in
things around us ".
Contributions to the Science of Education. By WILLIAM H. PAYNE, A.M.,
Professor of the Science and Art of Teaching in the University of
Michigan, &c. London : Blackie & Son. Pp. 358.
The note of these Contributions to the Science of Education is insistence
on the scientific character of the "art of teaching" that already exists, and
on the importance of the history of educational theory for guidance in the
present. The author holds with Prof. Bain, that if there is a science of
mind there must be an "applied science of teaching" dependent on it as
medicine is dependent on the sciences of life ; and he contends that actually
" there is a larger body of valid scientific truth within the reach of the
teacher than within the reach of the physician ". Teachers, then, ought to-
receive instruction in this body of knowledge : and instruction ought to be
given first of all in the University ; for the character of the higher educa-
tion determines the character of all the rest. As with the teacher, so with
the learner, knowing should precede doing. The attempt to make the edu-
cation of the individual child a repetition of the education of the race is a
mistaken one. Each generation has the accumulated experience of its pre-
decessors ; and it does best in giving the new generation the advantage of
138 NEW BOOKS.
traditional knowledge, without any attempt to make it acquire knowledge
by a process of rediscovery, by " the method of Nature," as recommended
by Mr. Spencer and by Rousseau. To "the creed of the 'New Education,'"
We learn to do by doing, the author opposes "the apophthegm of Bias," Know
-and then do. " First the head and then the hand ; finally the hand inspired
-and guided by the head : " this is the principle of all professional and
technical education, of "all rational practice". Again, the educational pro-
cedure indicated by psychology is not synthesis throughout but decomposi-
tion of aggregates into elements first, and then afterwards, in dependence
on this, synthesis of elements. The teaching of geography, accordingly,
should begin with the globe, and not with the topography of the district in
which the child lives. The most important problem for the teacher is to
determine what Prof. Bain calls "education values". Knowledge may be
valuable (1) for its practical use, which may be either "direct" or "indi-
rect " ; (2) for the mental power it gives, for its disciplinary effect, which
maybe either "specific" ("intensive") on a part of the mind, as with
mathematics, or " tonic " (" extensive ") on the whole mind, as with history
and literature ; (3) as " culture," that is, " for the mental satisfaction com-
ing from the conscious possession of it". The book is especially worthy of
attention for its acute criticisms of Mr. Spencer, and of those who take the
more distinctively " modern " views of education. The author often re-
turns, for example, to the question as to the relative value of " first hand "
and " second hand " knowledge, " knowledge of things " and " knowledge
of books" ; and finds that in many cases, even when the former is avail-
able, the latter is of more value. Classical education, he believes, can be
maintained, if it is no longer made to exclude other studies, and if litera-
ture is regarded as the end, grammar chiefly as the means.
The Re-organisation of Philosophy. An Address delivered before the Aris-
totelian Society, Nov. 8, 1886 (being the annual Presidential Address
for the eighth Session of the Society). By SHADWORTH H. HODGSON,
Hon. LL.D. Edin., Hon. Fellow of C. C. C. Oxford, President. Lon-
don : Williams & Norgate, 1886. Pp. 60.
In the present Aristotelian Address the most prominent topics are the
relation of Erkenntnisstluorie and of psychology to the four rubrics of
philosophy distinguished in the last Address (see MIND, xi. 123). The
conclusions arrived at depend on the relation that is found to exist between
"" agency " in science, physical and psychological, which belongs to the
rubric of " Eeal Conditioning," and " the moment of reflective perception,"
which is the basis of the properly philosophical rubrics of " Distinction
of Aspects " and " Analysis of Elements ". The error in the Erkenntniss-
tluorie of the Germans has been to assume Subject and Object as known
previous to philosophical reflection, and then to identify the Subject,
assumed to be a real agency like those of science and ordinary life, with
" the one moment of reflective perception " or of properly philosophical
experience. This moment is " one moment " not because it is numerically
one, but because there is "identity in kind of the moments of distinct con-
sciousness " ; and there is no reason to suppose an "identical Self" corre-
sponding to it as its "real condition". From this it follows that for the
psychologist as for the philosopher there can be no "Self other than the
real organism which is the complex of real conditions of the conscious-
ness 1 ' ; Matter being the only "real agency" that science can recognise. What
positions it is possible to take up as to the ultimate nature of matter and
its origin, and as to the origin of consciousness, the author briefly indicates';
reserving his own solution, so far as he conceives a solution to be possible,
for another occasion, when the fourth rubric or Constructive Branch of
NEW BOOKS. 139
Philosophy shall be expressly treated of. A Note is added (pp. 55-60)
recalling the distinction between " the two senses of Reality" explained in
the Address for 1883 : the first philosophical, in which "Esse is Percipi" ;
the second scientific, in which " Existence is the Order of Eeal Condition-
ing ; '.
The Anatomy of Negation. By EDGAK SALTUS. London : Williams &
Norgate, 1886. Pp. 226.
The author gives a sketch in which, as he points out, " no attempt has
been made to prove anything " of " anti-theisin from Kapila to Leconte
-de Lisle ". " The anti-theistic tendencies of England and America have
been treated by other writers ; in the present volume, therefore, that
branch of the subject is not discussed." The chapters of the book are (1)
-"The Revolt of 'the Orient"; (2) "The Negations of Antiquity"; (3)
" The Convulsions of the Church " ; (4) " The Dissent of the Seers "
("Spinoza The Seven Sages of Potsdam Hoi bach and his Guests");
(5)*" The Protests of Yesterday " ; (6) " A Poet's Verdict,,". The last is an
essay on Leconte de Lisle as a representative of " theoretic pessimism ".
.Scientific Romances. No. V. " Casting Out the Self." By C. H. HINTON,
B.A. London : Swan, Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1886. Pp.
205-29.
With this part (following on the others previously noted in MIND) the
author completes his series of speculations on the knowledge of space,
being here not less concerned with that subject in its purely theoretic
aspect because he chooses a title of apparently ethical import. The title
has a reason in the author's own psychological experience, as he seeks to
.show by way of conclusion to the whole inquiry.
The Mechanism of Nature. An Essay on the Fundamental Principles of
Natural Philosophy. By ALFRED M. STAPLEY, late Berkeley Fellow
of the Owens College, Manchester. Manchester : J. S. Cornish, 1886.
Pp. 71.
Mr Stapley's tract deserves recognition as an earnest attempt to give
explicit statement to the fundamental metaphysical conceptions involved
in the scientific study of nature. It has, at the same time, the more
ambitious aims of restating these conceptions in what seems to the author
their true philosophical character, of snowing the dependence on them of
the general laws of nature as established by science, and indirectly of
simplifying and exhibiting the close inter-relation of the most general
physical axioms accepted in science. The work shows considerable
acquaintance with philosophical and scientific speculation, and proves the
author's genuine interest and no small ability in the abstract problems of
thought. But its form renders it hard to appraise its value, and will in
all probability cause it to receive less attention than may be its due.
Science does not readily tolerate large and far-reaching metaphysical con-
ceptions, the scope and grounds of which are equally ambiguous. It is
almost impossible to say what is the extent and what the justification of
the very general considerations with which the Essay starts. The positions
are laid down in over-dogmatic fashion, and the language, though appa-
rently precise, leaves the largest possibilities of misinterpretation open.
At the critical points, moreover, it appears as though Mr Stapley rather
darkened counsel. The topic of the essential tri-dimensionality of space
( 31-33), on which the writer has seemingly been much influenced by
Lotze, is not handled in a way to overcome that writer's well-weighed
scruples, and while we willingly leave to the judgment of scientific
14Q NEW BOOKS.
experts the estimate of the objective worth to be assigned to the effort at
deduction of the universal law of physical action, we must express the
opinion, from the metaphysical side, that the reasoning seems to involve,
as so many similar reasonings have done, the vice of subreption. It would
be unjust, however, not to add that the treatment of the fundamental
mechanical and thermo-dynamical laws has the merit of bringing into-
relief the close connexion of the radical ideas involved.
The Life of Philippus Theophrastus, Bombast of Hohenheim, known by the
name of Paracelsus, and the Substance of his Teachings concerning Cos-
mology, Anthropology, Pneumatology, Magic and Sorcery, Medicine^.
Alchemy and Astrology, Philosophy and Theosophy, extracted and trans-
lated from his rare and extensive Works and from some unpublished
Manuscripts. By FRANZ HARTMANN, M.D., Author of Magic, &c.
London : George Eedway, 1887. Pp. xiii., 220.
The author is an enthusiastic devotee of "the teachings of Eastern,
Adepts," and writes the present work because many things about which
these "have to this day kept a well-grounded silence were revealed by"
Paracelsus three hundred years ago". It is evidently based upon an
intimate knowledge of the great magician's writings, and casts useful light
upon some movements in these days. Chap. i. contains a short life of
Paracelsus (pp. 1-21), with a list of his works (pp. 22-6) as collected by
" John Huser, doctor of medicine at Gronglogan, on the request of the.
Archbishop Prince Ernst of Cologne," and published at Cologne in 1589-90.
Chap. ii. consists of Explanations of Terms used by Paracelsus, Including
some other Terms frequently used by Writers on Occultism" (pp. 27-40).
The remaining chapters set forth the teaching of Paracelsus under the
heads enumerated in the title. An Appendix (pp. 199-213) consists of
articles on various subjects from "Adepts" to "Zenexton," including one
on " the Elixir of Life ". Perhaps the chapters on " Magic and Sorcery '"
and on " Alchemy and Astrology " will best repay the curious reader. In
the latter he will find directions for preparing "the Electrum Magicuin 7 *
(p. 171), "homunculi" (p. 174), and "artificial gold" (p. 177). One of the
notes (pp. 174-7) contains an account of the actual preparation "by a Joh.
Ferd. Count of Kueffstein, in Tyrol, in the year 1775," with the assistance
of "an Italian Mystic and Rosicrucian, Abbe Geloni," of "ten homunculi
or, as he calls them, 'prophesying spirits' (consisting of a king, a
queen, a knight, a monk, a nun, an architect, a miner, a seraph, and.
finally of a blue and a red spirit) preserved in strong bottles, such as
are used to preserve fruit, and which were filled with. water". Of this
account the author remarks " There can hardly be any doubt as to its
veracity, because some historically well-known persons, such as Count Max
Lamberg, Count Franz Josef v. Thun, and others, saw them, and they
possessed undoubtedly visible and tangible bodies ; and it seems that they
were either elemental spirits, or, what appears to be more probable,,
homunculi" (p. 177).
L'tfvolution de la Morale. Lecons professees pendant 1'Hiver de 1885-6.
Par CH. LETOURNEAU, President de la Societd d'Anthropologie, Profes-
seur a 1'^cole d'Anthropologie. Paris : Adrien Delahaye et Lmile
Lecrosnier, 1887. Pp. xx., 478.
The author, who writes from a point of view which may best be com-
pared with that of Dr. Maudsley in England, aims at preparing the way, by
a study of the actual evolution of morality, for the construction of a scien-
tific ethics free from all " metaphysics," 'and founded consciously, as the-
first morality Was unconsciously, on social self-preservation and utility..
NEW BOOKS. 141
Tn the course of his exposition he gives a clear and interesting account of
the principal results of modern researches, historical and anthropological,
on the origins of civilisation. Morality and religion, he finds, were at first
independent, and in classical antiquity with its " laic morality " they
always remained so to a great extent. The supernatural sanction, having
become powerful, has often helped to enforce the precepts of a sound
morality ; but " from the moment when the conduct of men is regulated
by the caprice of the gods, everything becomes possible " ; and it is now of
importance for social progress " to remind them that their kingdom is not
of this world ". " Metaphysical morality," of which in ancient times that
of Plato and in modern times that of Kant may be taken as types, is merely
<( the shadow of religious morality ". The definitive utilitarian morality
sketched out by Epicurus and carried further by Bentham has been pro-
vided with its scientific basis by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Existing " moral
instincts " are to be explained as the result of a process resembling the
training of domestic animals by man : nothing being taken for granted
except experiences of social good and evil, the power of "the nerve-cell"
to retain impressions, and the fact of heredity. It is on the educating
agencies, social and governmental, by which moral discipline is imposed,
rather than on the fact of heredity, that the author lays stress in his actual
exposition. There may be a struggle, he remarks, between "ancestral
influence " and the action of " the social medium," but in the end the latter
is all-powerful. " Education, the manner of life, fabricates morality." He
liolds it as proved " that there is a law of social evolution superior to the
influences of race and environment, and that, to advance, human groups
must pass through a successive series of social forms, analogous in all coun-
tries". This results from "the fundamental identity of physical and men-
tal organisation in all the human race ". The stages of moral evolution
are, up to the present, (1) the " bestial " stage of the primitive man and of
the lowest modern savages inferior to the moral level of some of the higher
animals in which cannibalism is an ordinary fact ; (2) the " savage " stage
when cannibalism has been transmuted normally into slavery, although it
may still survive as " religious" or "juridical" cannibalism ; (3) the "bar-
barous " stage, marked by the formation of a more or less complete code of
laws out of the old customary morality, society being still based on
slavery ; (4) the " mercantile " stage reached only in quite modern times
when for slavery the payment of wages has been substituted. To the
anticipated objection that this classification takes no account of the higher
moral types, the author replies that moral elevation is in all ages very rare,
though "never entirely absent ; it is the lower social facts that are character-
istic. Yet progress, although slow, is real, and there is no reason to fear
that the mercantile stage of morality will be the final stage. The origin of
justice is found by the author in the primitive "reflex movement of defence,"
which first takes social form in the lex talionis. ^Retaliation, having been
commuted into various compensations, is at length taken out of the hands
of private individuals altogether, and the chiefs of tribes become the justi-
ciaries. It is then that the disinterested notion of " ideal justice" begins to
be formed. All societies have passed through a communistic stage, such as
that which fixed itself in the ancient Peruvian monarchy. It was probably
in this stage that the " altruistic instincts " were formed which have con-
tinued to resist " the egoistic influences of private property," manifest above
-all in mercantile societies.
Victor Cousin et son (Euvre. Par PAUL JANET de 1'Institut. Paris: Cal-
mann-L6vy, 1885. Pp. vii., 485.
The time having at length arrived when it appeared possible to set forth
142 NEW BOOKS.
with impartiality the whole of the work accomplished by Victor Cousin,
the author has supplied what remained wanting for the full recognition of
its importance, viz., " a complete and detailed monograph founded on dates
and texts". While admitting that Cousin's action in stimulating others-
was more important than any contributions of his own to philosophy, M.
Janet still contends that, besides being a diffuser of foreign ideas in France,
he was a real philosopher himself, though not pre-eminently a philosopher.
That his originality has of late not found recognition, or has even been
altogether denied, is, he admits, in great part Cousin's own fault. He was
constantly modifying his works in a literary spirit, and destroying their
characteristic features, and in his later years he was under the influence of
a religious reaction. This explains the concessions with which he is
reproached to common sense on the one hand and on the other to religious
orthodoxy. What struck his original hearers, however, was his speculative
audacity and his selection of the most abstruse problems in preference to
those with more practical bearings. This impression is confirmed by the
study the author has made of the earlier editions of his works and of the
original records of his courses of lectures. Cousin's later error, M. Janet
points out, has not only injured his own reputation but also that of his
school ; and to restore to spiritualism its place as a philosophy among other
philosophies, to remove from it the accusation of being a mere ancilla,
theologice, has been the ungrateful task to which his disciples were long
condemned (pp. 396-7). Another reproach against Cousin is the reactionary
and stereotyped character of the scheme of philosophical education founded
by him. This, the author contends, rests on a complete misapprehension.
Cousin's reactionary period conies after the close of his official life ; and
his "official" scheme was neither reactionary nor a stereotyped expression
of his own philosophical doctrines. He really did for philosophical
instruction in France what Descartes did for philosophy itself, separated
and enfranchised it from theology and substituted a modern philosophy for
scholasticism. The misapprehension of the real character of his adminis-
trative activity comes from failure to appreciate the historical circumstances.
On many points the opposing parties the advocates of laic and of theo-
logical education have changed sides since Cousin's day. The historical
view enables us to see also the importance of Cousin in philosophy itself.
Ideas that have since become common property were then new. To
Cousin's generally recognised merits as "the creator and organiser in
France of history of philosophy " must be added the conception and
putting into circulation of far-reaching ideas, such as that of treating the
ontological problems of German schools of philosophy by the psychological
method. After describing all the various sides of Cousin's activity, the
author is able to give a most effective summary both of his contributions
to thought and of the results of his literary and philosophical influence in
France (pp. 451-4) ; and this while recognising as clearly as anyone the
" grave defects " of his best thinking, its " want of coherence and want of
precision," and above all the predominance in him of the oratorical over
the philosophical spirit. In an appendix (pp. 455-485) an article is re-
produced that appeared in the Uevue des Deux Mondes on the 1st of
February, 1867, a few days after the death of Cousin, containing some
personal details that did no"t admit of incorporation in the systematic study.
Histoire de la Science Politique dans ses Rapports avec laM orale. Par PAUL
JANET, Membre de 1'Institut, Professeur a la Faculte des Lettres de
Paris. 3me Edition, revue, remaniee et considerablement augmentee.
2 Tomes. Paris : F. Alcan, 1887. Pp. ci., 608 ; 779.
This work still stands so much alone as a serious attempt to cover the
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whole historical field of political science (in relation with morals) that,,
upon issue of this present revised and greatly enlarged edition long after
the second has been exhausted, some note may be taken of the progressive
transformations it has undergone from the beginning. Commenced in 1848
and " crowned" in 1853 as an essay upon a subject set by the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences" to compare the moral and political philo-
sophy of Plato and Aristotle with that of the most distinguished modern
publicists," it was, before publication in 1859 (when it was again " crowned"
this time by the French Academy), re-cast into the form of a History of
Moral and Political Philosophy. In this form it had such acceptance that
a second edition became necessary; but now the author saw the hopelessness
of giving an adequate account of the historical development of ethics and
of politics concurrently, and, concentrating himself upon the history of
politics, held by his earlier idea only so far as never to leave out of view
the question of relation to ethics when this was prominent with any
political theorist. The book thus obtained its final title, and under the
new guise appeared in 1872. The present edition differs from the previous
one only by revision and enlargement, but the revision has been careful
and minute, especially in the matter of bibliography, and the enlargement
is very considerable. On the point of bibliography always understood
within the period, down to 1789, that he professes to cover the author
believes " that there does not remain a political name or writing of any
importance not mentioned either in text or notes," and certainly the
Bibliographical Index (ii. 745-63), bringing together all the references
scattered throughout the volumes and adding others, gives evidence of the
most wide-reaching labour, and should prove proportionately useful for
purposes of reference. (M. L. Picavet has helped the author towards this
comprehensive Index.) The enlargement is chiefly by the addition of
chapters on the Encyclopaedists, on moral and political philosophy in
Italy and Scotland, on the American publicists, making the History more
adequate and complete down to its appointed term (the French Revolution) ;
but there is also now given, in a concluding chapter (pp. 727-43), a sketch
of the later political theorising in France, with some notes on English and
German publicists of the present century, besides a very interesting Intro-
duction (pp. v.-lxxi.), in which M. Janet discusses the relations of Droit
and Politics, as in an Introduction to the second edition he discussed the
relation of Morals and Politics. The new Introduction carefully investi-
gates the import of the American and French declarations of " Rights of
Man," and seeks, from the philosophical and even the historical point of
view, to j ustify such formulation against the attacks of contemporary French
thinkers of the positive and historical school (like MM. Taine and
Boutmy). The Conclusion is intended only as a first and most general
sketch, which the author hopes he may, still at his age, eventually develop
into a third volume of the work. If he does so, he should add at least the
names of Austin and Sir Henry Maine to those that he now notes as of
importance on this side the Channel.
L'lrreligion de VAvenir. ^tude de Sociologie. Par M. GUYAU.
Paris: F. Alcan, 1887. Pp. xxviii., 479.
Instead of " the religion of the future " M. Guyau prefers to speak of
"the irreligion of the future," because, although he might justifiably have
used the first expression, he wishes to avoid all that kind of " symbolism "
by which, as he thinks, an appearance is sometimes given of preserving
what is in reality overturned. Another reason for the choice is that the
"higher stage of religion," which in the future is to supersede religious
dogmas and rites, is conceived as continuous not with present religion
144 NEW BOOKS.
.but with present science and philosophy and independent" morality. The
sub-title indicates that the author regards religion as in its origin a " socio-
logical " theory of the universe, arid expects " the irreligion of the future "
to assume finally just such a " sociological " form. In part i. (" Genesis of
Religions in Primitive Societies," pp. 1-102) he contends, against Prof. Max
Miiller, that " the sense of the infinite " and other emotions of the kind,
instead of explaining the origin of religions, are signs of their decomposi-
tion ; and, against Mr. Spencer, that men did not at first distinguish
between things animate and inanimate, but before any idea of spirit had
been formed were able to " anthropomorphise " nature. For primitive
peoples "nature is a society". Everything in which an interest is felt
that is, everything that can be useful or dangerous is thought of as having
a will. After the stage of " concrete naturism " in which the universe is
'" a society of living bodies," comes " dualist animism " ; last of all comes
the doctrine of a "metaphysical unity". The subject of part ii. ("Dissolu-
tion of Religions in actual Societies," pp. 103-298) offers .occasion for com-
parison of the practical influence of Catholicism, Protestantism and Free
Thought. Especially in this part there is much incidental discussion of
social questions of the day. Part iii. (" The Irreligion of the Future," pp.
299-479) contains first a sketch of an ideal society in which " free associa-
tion of intelligences, wills and sensibilities " has taken the place of religious
rites, while " individual metaphysical hypotheses," perhaps approaching
one another closely in essence, yet each having its own personal shade, have
superseded the dogmas of Churches. In the later chapters the author goes
through the series of possible metaphysical hypotheses detached from reli-
gion ; discussing in succession "Theism," "Optimistic and Pessimistic
Pantheism," and " Idealistic, Materialistic and Monistic Naturalism ". His
personal preference is for a form of Monism in which " life is the synthesis
of matter and spirit " a synthesis which, he thinks, is made by science
itself. " Life is fecundity," at first unconscious, afterwards consciously
manifesting itself in " intellectual and moral fecundity ". This theory,
applied to ethics in the author's last work, here forms the basis of specula-
tions on a possible " definitive result of evolution ". By a more and more
complete " social interpenetration," an " intercosmical consciousness " may
at length be attained. Beings in whom the law of the universe has become
perfectly conscious of itself will be able henceforth to hold in check the
process of dissolution. "Immortality would be a final acquisition made by
the species for the benefit of all its members."
Le Magnetisme Animale. Par ALFRED BINET et CH. FERE", Medecin-
ad joint. a la Salpetriere. Avec Figures dans le Texte. Paris: F.
Alcan, 1887. Pp. 284.
This book (say the authors) " has been written in the atmosphere of the
Salpetriere," and it is well fitted to give readers the exact knowledge that
is wanted of the remarkable experiments on human beings that have now
for so long been conducted at that hospital under the auspices of M.
Charcot. Hypnotism (for which the authors in their title somehow prefer
to retain the older question-begging name) is truly the subject of the hour
with psychological inquirers, and will soon be brought forward again at
length in these pages, in respect of some of its latest and strangest develop-
ments. (Note also, already in this No., the observations at p. 154 below.)
Before giving, from p. 62 of the present work, their clear and straightfor-
ward account of the phenomena they have witnessed in "subjects" of the
three hypnotic states distinguished by M. Charcot as " Lethargy," " Cata-
lepsy," " Somnambulism," and putting such psychological interpretation
upon the phenomena as with trained ability they can, the authors give a
NEW BOOKS. 145
history of " Animal Magnetism," which may be taken as pretty complete
for France, while it takes account also of the work at least of Braid in
England. For the French Academy of Medicine, in particular, the sub-
ject, alternately spurned and recognised over and over again, has been a
sore trial. To all appearance, it has at last been recognised on the footing
of one with which science must henceforth steadily and progressively
reckon.
Les Conditions physiques de la Conscience. Par ALBXANDRE HERZEN, Pro-
fesseur a I'Acaclemie de Lausanne. Geneve : H. Stapelmohr, 1886.
Pp. 55.
This is a new statement by Prof. Herzen of the grounds and results of
his formulation of the law of the physical conditions of consciousness,
briefly described in MIND, iv. 268-70. An Appendix (pp. 39-55) is
added in which the author seeks to determine the elements of the feeling
of personality. Especially worthy of notice as a piece of original psycho-
logical observation is his description of the phenomena of recovery from
syncope (pp. 20-24), by which he obtains support for his theory of the
degrees and kinds of consciousness in the spinal cord, the sensori-motor
centres and the cortical centres of the cerebral hemispheres respectively.
The use he makes of his observations may be compared with Mr. Spencer's
use of similar observations on consciousness under chloroform (see Psycho-
logy i. and MIND, iii. 555). The consciousness that accompanies the func-
tioning of the spinal cord and of the lower centres is, he concludes, at its
maximum in the lower vertebrates, at its minimum in man ; being more
and more suppressed by the development of the higher centres. The
" physical law of consciousness " itself, however (for which see MIND, iv.
269), is the same for all parts of the nervous system. In the higher centres
also consciousness is perpetually shifting its ground as organisms evolve.
What was at first a conscious process becomes with repetition, as so many
writers have shown, " automatic ". This does not mean, however, that the
total amount of consciousness becomes less. So long as the plasticity of a
race or an individual remains, the more perfect organisation of any set of
processes serves as the basis for a more and more complex consciousness of
higher processes. The whole study deserves attention as certainly one of the
best attempts yet made at a synthesis of results in the special subject-
matter.
Lepons de Philosophic. Par ELIE RABIER,- Professeur de Philosophic an
Lyc6e Charlemagne, Membre du Conseil Superieur de 1'Instruction
Piiblique. II. Logique. Paris : Hachette et Cie., 1886. Pp. 384.
M. Rabier's Logique presents the same characteristics as lent a special
interest to his Psychologie, noticed in MIND, x. 305. The Psychologie was
not only a remarkably well arranged and clearly expounded treatise on its
subject, but showed the traditional spiritualism of the French school ready
and eager to take advantage of all the newer lights in particular anxious
to appreciate and as far as possible incorporate the results of recent English
investigation. How strongly moulded the Logique also has been by the
like influences appears in nothing more clearly than in the prominence
given to "Applied" over "Formal" Logic, after the distinction is made
in terms that would seem perfectly familiar to any English student.
" Applied Logic " (or, as in opposition to " Formal " it might better have
been designated, " Material ") occupies almost three-fourths of the whole
work, and does not omit any of the more important usual topics, while also
including others, not less important, that have not yet received sufficient
attention in the English books. Chap, xvi., " General Method : Analysis
10
146 NEW BOOKS.
and Synthesis in the different kinds of science " (pp. 293-316), especially
deserves mention from this point of view ; but the whole second division
of the work (pp. 93-382) could not be read by any student without great
profit. The " Formal Logic," carried out on conceptualistic lines, has its
own merits, but on the whole comes considerably short of what in England
would now be regarded as an adequate treatment of the subject. The dis-
cussion of Mill's theory of Syllogism is, however, noteworthy. It is now
indicated that the remaining topics included by the author under " Philo-
sophy " (see former notice in MIND) will be treated in one volume still to
come of Morals and Metaphysic.
Notizia degli Scritti e del Pensiere filosofico di PIETRO CERETTI accompagnata
da un Cenno autobiografico del medesimo intitolato La Mia Celebritd.
Per PASQUALE D' ERCOLE, Prof. ord. di Filosolia nell' Universita di
Torino. Torino : Unione Tipografico-editrice, 1886. Pp. ccccx., 189.
Two volumes of the posthumous works of Ceretti were noticed in MIND,
Vol. x. 620. In the present volume an autobiographical piece (pp. 1-119),
together with some fragments in prose and verse, is edited, with notes, by
Prof. Pasquale d'Ercole, who has also provided it with an extensive intro-
duction (pp. xv. -ccccx.). Having carefully studied his writings (published
and unpublished), Prof. d'Ercole, in this introduction, besides giving some
biographical details, expounds systematically Ceretti's philosophical and
other ideas. Copious extracts are given both in the text and in foot-
notes, from an early Hegelian work in Latin, entitled Pasaelogices
Specimen^ one of the few writings of Ceretti that were published in
his lifetime. Prof. d'Ercole distinguishes two phases of Ceretti's
thought ; the first purely Hegelian, the second marked by a departure
from pure Hegelianism. Of the first, the distinctive formula is that "the
Absolute is Spirit," of the second that " the Absolute is Consciousness ".
Geschichte der Ethik. Erste Abtheilung : Die Ethik der Griechen und Romer.
Von THEOBALD ZIEGLER, Professor am Gymnasium in Baden-Baden.
Bonn : Emil Strauss, 1882. Pp. xiii., 342.
Geschichte der christlichen Ethik. Von Dr. THEOBALD ZIEGLER, ord. Pro-
fessor der Philosophic in Strassburg. Strassburg : Karl J. Triibner,
1886. Pp. xvi., 593.
These two volumes, of which the second has just appeared, are noticed
together, not because they form parts of a single book. for the change of
publisher goes along with a difference both of external form and mode of
treatment, and, as the author tells us, the two volumes do not necessarily
appeal to the same readers, but because they are parts of the working out
of a single plan laid down five years since in the preface to the first volume.
The author's ultimate purpose is to construct an ethical system adequate
to modern needs ; but first, in view of the dependence of all possible
systems on the past, he has set himself to make a complete survey of the
forms of ethical thought that have succeeded one another in the philoso-
phical development of Europe. Direct consideration of Oriental philo-
sophies is thus excluded, their influence being only incidental ; and the
whole history of ethics falls into three periods the Graeco-Koman period,
the (exclusively) Christian period, and the modern period since the rise of
Humanism, The distribution of the subject-matter of the new volume, on
Christian ethics, will be best understood from the titles of the chapters,
which are as follows : (1) Judaism; (2) The Ethics of the New Testament ;
(3) The Ethics of the old Catholic Church ; (4) Monachism : Augustine
and Pelagianism ; (5) The Ethical Doctrine of Scholasticism ; (6) The
Germans and the Church ; (7) Mediaeval Mysticism ; (8) Humanism and
NEW BOOKS. 147
the Reformation ; (9) The Ethics of the Reformers ; (10) The Ethics of the
Protestant Church ; (11) From the Anabaptists to Pietism ; (12) Jesuitism.
The author expresses the hope that the greater attention given to applied
ethics and to the reciprocal influence of ethical philosophy and actual
morality may make the volume a supplement to Jodl's exposition, confined
more to principles, in the Geschichte der Ethik in der neuern Philosophic.
His general view, only briefly indicated, for the purpose of this volume, as
of the first, is not criticism but history, is that recent historians have
done something more than justice to the Middle Ages and something less
than justice to Humanism. The second volume, as has been said, is not
uniform with the first on the ethics of the Greeks and Romans, which has,
for example, very copious and detailed notes and references (pp. 249-342),
while in the new volume the notes are comparatively few ; but the differ-
ence of treatment was from the outset part of the author's plan. The view
of the history of ethics in the light of general history is a feature of both
volumes ; but the first is much more exclusively concerned with philo-
sophical ethics than the second. The author is here, as he acknowledges,
in closer contact with the sources. One of the merits of his work is the
combination of full and accurate detail with great clearness of outline and
directness of movement. The exposition of general philosophical tenets is
brief but sufficient for the understanding of the ethical systems. The
author follows Zeller (to whom the book is dedicated), but with indepen-
dence of judgment. Points on which he especially insists are (1) that the
ancient ethical systems are all " realistic," in the sense that they were all
founded on some natural impulse of man, arid never, even when most
apparently ascetic, became like Christian ethics the assertion of an external
rule in contradiction to human nature as a whole ; and (2) that " measure
and harmony," being characteristic of the Greek national conception of
virtue, find expression in every Greek ethical system. With " realism " or
"naturalism" goes " intellectualism," the placing of insight first among
the virtues. From the typical Greek conception of Ka\oK.aya6ia it resulted
that " the aesthetic moment" was an element in all the ancient ethical
systems, so far as they were not modified on Roman soil, including even
Neo-Platonism. That the modern world has lost this conception is partly
due to an advance in insight, and marks the gain of a new distinction ;
partly it is a realloss the loss of the whole "aesthetic moment" from ethics.
Again, so long as Greek freedom remained, there was an intimate union of
ethics with politics ; and (as is indicated in the Second volume) what the
moderns have to learn more and more from the history of Greek ethics is
the necessity of " the political moment " the reference to the State in
any complete morality.
Entivicklung und Gliickseligkeit. Ethische Essays von B. CARNERI. Stutt-
gart : E. Schweizerbart (E. Koch), 1886. Pp. 469.
Although these essays and reviews are not exclusively ethical in subject,
the title is justified not only by the large space devoted to the discussion of
questions of ethical philosophy, but also by the relation in which the dis-
cussion of theoretical questions stands to the author's ethical doctrine. The
term " ethics " itself he uses in an extended meaning, comprising under it
not only " morals in the narrower sense " but every application that can be
made of " the philosophical sciences " to the guidance and perfecting of
human life. He finds himself in general agreement with Mr. Leslie
Stephen, whose Science of Ethics, as well as English Thought in the 18th
Century, he enthusiastically reviews (xxiii., xxiv.). His own doctrine,
however, is not without distinctive features ; the most important divergence
from Mr. Stephen being in the view taken of the respective functions of
148 NEW BOOKS.
" society " and " the state " in the origin of morality. In an essay on
"The State and Morality" (xv.), and elsewhere, the author contends that
morality was formed under the direct action of the state rather than of
" society ". It is the state, he holds, that makes society possible, not
society the state (p. 232). This essay, it may be mentioned in passing, is
one of the best and most characteristic in the volume, the author's view
of " the free state " having special interest. " Morality in the wider sense "
(Sittlichkeit), as distinguished from " morals " (Moral), or obedience to
traditional moral precepts, is made to include that care for personal well-
being on which Mr. Stephen lays stress while excluding it from morality
properly so called (xxiii.). ^Esthetics also, though outside morality in the
narrower sense, is to be included under " ethics," or the science of
"Sittlichkeit" (xxi, " Zum Problem des Schonen"). The good and the
beautiful both depend on the true. In the order of development, accord-
ingly, intelligence precedes art and morals, the growth of intelligence
being itself made possible by the protection of the state. The ideal of
" Sittlichkeit " is thus not merely the moral but the complete man. The
"ethical" aim is happiness, which coincides with "development," indivi-
dual and social. The " moral " aim is social " health " or " well-being ".
This distinction the author finds to be recognised by Mr. Stephen, and
only not made perfectly explicit because of the want of an English word
for "morality in the wider sense". Of the essays not directly occupied
with ethics or aesthetics (i.-xiii., besides two or three of the later ones)
the most are devoted to the exposition of the " real-idealistic monism "
which the author makes the basis of his practical philosophy. This
monism he attaches to the doctrine of the Eleatics, " the ancient represen-
tatives of idealism " (vi.), as well as to the " Materialism and Sensualism of
the 18th century" (iv., v.). While admitting the imperfections of these
latter doctrines from the point of view of the theory of knowledge, he at
the same time claims for them that they only need correction in the light
of ideas that have since been better understood to give a true view of the
origin and nature of human consciousness. As the moral sense did not
exist in the beginning but is the final flower of the civilised state, so life
and consciousness do not belong to " elements" but arise out of their com-
bination, a combination of which the organism is the material expression.
Ethik. Eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen u. Gesetze des sittlichen
Lebens. Von WILHELM WUNDT. Stuttgart : F. Enke, 1886. Pp.
xi., 577.
In like form with his Logik, Prof. Wundt here presents a systematic
treatise on Ethics. Though he has won his chief fame upon a field from
which Ethics seems somewhat remote, those who remember his early work
Vorlesungen uber die Menschen- u. Thierseele will know that his interest on
the subject now treated reaches back to quite the beginning of his philo-
sophical career. For the present, till Critical Notice follows, it may suffice
to mention that, while recognising the indefeasible relation of Ethics to
pure Psychology, he relies upon Folk-psychology or Anthropology as
affording the effective basis of ethical inquiry this, as against the notion
that the true basis is to be found in Metaphysics, which must rather itself
be founded upon ethical considerations ; on the other hand, when he comes
to the philosophical determination of the principles of Morality, he
finds himself in what some may think but which, he contends, is not
really surprising agreement with certain main positions of the Kantian
school of speculative idealism. After a short Introduction, the work falls into
four parts : (1) The Facts of the Moral Life, (2) Systems of Moral Philoso-
phy, (3) The Principles of Morality, (4) The Departments of Moral Life.
NEW BOOKS. 149
Die Ethik als Wissenschaft, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der neueren
englischen Ethik. Eine philosophische Abhandlung von Dr. HANS
VOLTZ. Strassburg : Karl J. Triibner, 1886. Pp. 55.
The author aims at developing an ethics of " pure Positivism ". His
discussion of the ethical question proceeds on the basis furnished by " the
German Positivism " (as represented by E. Laas and Prof. v. Gizycki) on
the one side, and Utilitarianism (as represented by Prof. Sidgwick) on
the other ; the ethics of Evolution (as represented by Mr. Spencer, Mr.
Stephen and W. H. Kolph) being taken up incidentally. To his dis-
cussion of the question, " What may we expect from the scientific treat-
ment of ethics ? " (" Ethischer Theil," pp. 19-55), he prefixes a consideration
of the preliminary question, " What may we expect generally from the
scientific treatment of any object-matter ? " (" Erkenntnisstheoretischer
Theil," pp. 3-19). The answer to this question is that science can do
nothing more than systematise facts and express them by the simplest
formulae. The answer to the ethical question is that science determines
the means to morality, which is itself a means to happiness not necessarily
the consciously sought happiness of the individual, but happiness as an
"actual result" somewhere. Choice of the end rests finally with the
individual, and theoretically there is no way of convincing anyone that
his choice is wrong. . Practically, however, 'the possible ends have been
reduced to very few. The author decides personally for the formula,
" Greatest possible domestic happiness of the greatest possible number the
only end, everything else (science included) a means to this". When
they have taken the first step the recognition of science as only a means
others, he believes, will find no difficulty in selecting the same end.
Kkine Schriften. Von HERMANN LOTZE. Bd. II. Leipzig : S. Hirzel,
1886. Pp. xviii., 530.
Dr. David Peipers here continues the important service of collecting
and editing with utmost care the minor writings of a thinker who has
been singularly fortunate in inspiring followers with devotion to the
memory of his work. Vol. i., noticed in MIND, No. 41, swept the field of
Lotze's varied activity as a writer till 1846, except that it left over his chief
production of that year. This was the article " Seele u. Seelenleben,"
placed at the beginning of the present volume (pp. 1-204), and much the
longest of his three remarkable contributions to Wagner's Handworterbuch
der Physiologic. The nineteen other pieces here given are mostly reviews
or notices of books written for the Gott. gel. Anzeigen, but some of them
have a special interest in view of Lotze's own original work on the
subjects ; particularly the elaborate reviews of Waitz's Grundlegung der
Psychologic in 1847 (pp. 284-302) and Lehrbuch der Psychologie in 1850 (pp.
471-505). There are notices " Selbstanzeigen " of his own books on
General Pathology and Therapeutics and on General Physiology : also
should be mentioned the long essay (pp. 205-72) " Ueber Bedingungen der
Kunstschonheit " a favourite subject which, after appearing in 1847 in
the Gott. Studien, was separately issued in the following year. The volume
reaches to 1851. There remains a long term of years to be comprised in
the third and concluding volume to follow, but these were the years of
writings other than minor.
Werth und Ursprung der philosophischen Transcendenz. Eine Studie zur
Einleitung in die Erkenntnisstheorie. Von MARTIN KEIBEL. Berlin :
W. Weber, 1886. Pp. x., 75.
After examining the various arguments on behalf of " the transcendent
object," the author concludes that there is no logical proof of it, neither is
150 NEW BOOKS.
it, like the law of causation, an assumption without which all consistent
action becomes impossible. Psychologically, the belief in " transcendence "
is to be explained as Berkeley explains it : " The mind taking no notice of
itself is deluded to think it can and does conceive bodies existing unthought
of or without the mind, though at the same time they are apprehended by
and exist in itself" (p. 53). From what has been concluded, Solipsism is
a necessary deduction. To affirm the independent existence of " the foreign
Ego " is as much an assumption as to affirm the existence of bodies outside
the mind. We may be justified in making this assumption by the demands
of the social feelings, as the religious feelings justify us in affirming " the
transcendence of God ". But how can we determine the degree of validity of
any particular assumption? Only by the degree of generality of the need to
which it responds. The assumptions referred to would seem, then, to have
less justification than the principle of causality ; for this last assumption
answers to the need that is most widely felt of all, viz., the need of self-
preservation. If then we would raise "the transcendence of belief " to
universal validity, we must base it on normative as distinguished from
actual grounds ; on the emotional needs that ought to exist instead of on
those that do exist. Logically this cannot be attained. It remains for the
ethical and the aesthetic philosopher to try if they will be more successful.
Wie ist Verantwortuny und Zurechnung ohne Annahme der Willensfreiheit
moglich? Eine Untersuchung von Dr. H. DRUSKOWITZ. Heidelberg:
G. Weiss, 1887. Pp. 40.
The author contends, in opposition to Dr. Paul Re"e (see MIND, xi.
137), that man is still " morally responsible," although, as Dr. Ree main-
tains, the will is neither empirically nor transcendentally free. For the
individual man is not merely a link in a natural process, but is also a
" rounded-off whole," having a certain "independence" and a conscious-
ness of himself as acting well or ill. Self-consciousness and the power of
distinguishing between right and wrong carry with them responsibility to
society.
Zur Lehre vom Wesen des Gewissens. Von Dr. A. WECKESSER. Bonn :
Emil Strauss, 1886. Pp. vi., 98.
The results of this historical and critical study are (1) that the developed
conscience has a material principle in the common life of men and a formal
or a priori element in the feeling of unconditional validity and universality
which accompanies the " idea of good " that is its content ; (2) that it has
three stages of development, viz., the " statutory-authoritative " and the
" individual " conscience which are " preliminary steps before it becomes
ethical," and, finally, "the ethical-religious conscience". The "ideal
type " of the first of these stages is the Mosaic law, " and in the wider sense
also social-political morality in the Grseco-Roman period ". Of the second
the type is the affirmation of tire individual conscience against society by
the Sophists. Christian ethics is the synthesis of both.
Friedrich der Grosse als Philosoph. Von EDUARD ZELLER. Berlin :
Weidmann, 1886. Pp. vi., 298.
The only attempt previous to the present to estimate Frederick the Great
as a philosopher was Rigollot's Frederic II. Philosophe (Paris, 1875). Prof.
Zeller speaks of his predecessor's work with warm appreciation, the chief
defect he finds in it being the want of exact reference to the sources. This
he supplies in the notes (pp. 183-296) full of interesting citations from
Frederick's works and correspondence which he has appended to his own
systematic exposition. The exposition itself is of the quality that might be
NEW BOOKS. 151
expected from the author. Nothing is left out that can contribute to a
knowledge of Frederick's views, of the changes they underwent, and of the
influences by which they were formed. After an introduction (pp. 1-4)
there follow five chapters on Frederick's metaphysical, ethical and politi-
cal ideas, two on his attitude to religion and his views on education, and
lastly a brief retrospect (pp. 177-82). The effect of the whole is to convey
a vivid impression of the great king's unceasing interest in philosophy, and
of the way in which he formed his practical aims in the light of general ideas.
The independence of his attitude towards his philosophic friends, especially
on questions relating to human nature and human lire, is well brought out.
Notwithstanding his admiration of the method of Bayle and his general
adhesion to the doctrines of Locke, he is found to have always remained to
some extent under the influence of the Leibnizo-Wolffian philosophy ; and a
certain difference of his attitude to religion from that of Voltaire a diffe-
rence which exists also between the German and the French "Enlighten-
ment" generally is traced to his Protestant as distinguished from Voltaire's
Catholic education. The author shows what an important influence ancient
philosophy known to Frederick through translations and especially
Stoicism, had on his mind ; and sees in his strenuous ideal, and in his
"severe feeling of duty," a realisation of Kant's categorical imperative.
Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des Bewegungsbegriffes und ihr voraussichtliches
Endergebniss. Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kritik der mechanischen
Principien. Von Dr. LUDWIG LANGE. Leipzig : W. Engelmann,
1886. Pp. x., 141.
The historical part of this book, although very full, is not offered as a
complete account of the development of the conception of motion ; the
author's aim being to arrive at the true conception by the help of the his-
tory, rather than to give the history for its own sake. After dealing briefly
with the conception of motion in antiquity and in the Middle Ages (c. i.,
pp. 8-16), he divides the rest of his history into three chapters treating re-
spectively of the periods "from Copernicus to Newton" (c. ii., pp. 16-83),
" from Newton to the Present "(c. iii.. pp. 84-108), and " in the Present
and Future" (c. iv., pp. 108-125). There follow two appendices containing
applications to special problems. The definition of motion given as the
outcome of the whole historical development is change of position of a
body relatively to an object of reference. Obvious as it seems, this defini-
tion, the author finds, is not even yet applicable without self- contradiction
to the actual treatment of motion 'by science ; the older conceptions of an
" inherent motion " of bodies and of their " absolute motion " with reference
to "absolute space" having left abiding traces in scientific terminology.
The contradictions revealed, however, are only apparent, and may be got
rid of by a new statement of mechanical and in particular of astronomical
doctrines in accordance with the true conception of " the relativity of
motion". This the author attempts by means of the subsidiary conceptions
which he puts forward of " the inertial system, the inertial scale, inertial
rotation, and inertial rest" (p. 118).
Zur Reform des Unterrichtes in der Philosophischen Prop'ddeutik. Von Dr.
W. JERUSALEM, k.k. Gymnasial-Professor in Nikolsburg. Wien u.
Leipzig : A. Pichler's Wittwe und Sohn. Pp. 32.
This contribution to the discussion of " philosophical propaedeutic "
in the Austrian Gymnasia may be compared with Dr. Meinong's, noticed
in MIND, x. 624. Like Dr. Meinong, the authoi regards psychology
as the basis of all philosophical study, and complains that it does not get
adequate recognition in the present official scheme. He supports the regu-
152 NEW BOOKS.
lations, however, against Dr. Meinong, in so far as they make the whole of
the psychological course, and not merely the elementary part of it, come
before logic. In two divisions of his pamphlet he sketches out a course
of psychology and logic ; suggesting in psychology improvements on the
traditional Herbartian treatment.
Ueber die Geistesfreiheit vulgo Willensfreiheit. Psychologischer Nachweis
von H. THODEN VAN VELZEN, Dr. theol. zu Jena. Leipzig : Fues (E.
Keisland), 1886. Pp. vi., 78.
The author's contention is that freedom ought to be ascribed to the Ego,
not to " the will ". The conception of " freedom," like that of " will "itself,
denotes a certain activity of the mind; hence both conceptions alike should
be attached directly to the mind ; to attach one of them to the other is as
if we were to speak of " the activity of an activity " or " the power of a
power ". The activity of the Ego is " a willing or a not willing," a choos-
ing among representations. Only of the Ego, as of the active being in us,
can it be said that it begins anything of itself ; but this expression also
ought to be avoided, for without the phenomena of the external world
and memories in the mind the Ego would have nothing to choose from.
It therefore does not absolutely begin anything, but is only " relatively
free".
Die Entstehung der neueren AZsihetik. Von Dr. K. HEINRICH VON STEIN,
Privatdozent an der Universitat, Berlin. Stuttgart : J. G. Cotta,
1886. Pp. vi., 422.
The author, while recognising that the real origin of reflective thought
on art must be sought further back, regards its continuous development in
modern times as beginning with the French Classicism of the 17th century.
What the different European nations have contributed to aesthetics will
best be made clear, he thinks, in following the course of the French influ-
ence, which at first was the determining influence everywhere. Accord-
ingly, his history of the origin of modern aesthetics begins with Boileau ;
reference being made in the systematic exposition to the earlier sources of
modern aesthetic theory. The divisions of the book are as follows :
Section I., "French Classicism," c. i. "Boileau and his Predecessors," c. ii.
" The Connexion with Descartes," c. iii. " The Classical Spirit " ; Section
IT. "The Direction towards the Natural," c. i. "The .Esthetic Formulae of
the Period," c. ii. "Shaftesbury and English Classicism," c. iii. "The
Descriptive ./Esthetics of the British," c. iv. " Dubos, Diderot, The Epoch
of Rousseau"; Section III. "Comprehension of ^Esthetic Problems by
Swiss, Italians, Germans," c. i. " The Swiss," c. ii. " Italian ^Estheticians,
Theories of Music," c. iii. " The ./Esthetics of Baurngarten and his School,"
c. iv. " Winckelmann ". The division into sections indicates the author's
view of the development of aesthetic theory, in which he finds three, chief
phases. The aesthetic doctrine that first took shape is summed up in
Boileau's hemistich, " Eien n'est beau que le vrai ". This doctrine the
author finds to be dependent, through Port Royal, on Descartes ; citing
from a work of Nicole, published in 1659, expressions e.g., "pulchritu-
dinis fontem in veritate esse" by which he thinks Boileau may have
been influenced. The second phase of aesthetic theory is " naturalism,"
the theory cf "imitation of nature". The naturalistic doctrine is
best represented by Diderot who made beauty consist in abundance
of the "relations" contained in a work of art, in fulness of content
as distinguished from simple expression of some one clear idea. The
next transformation was partly accomplished by Rousseau, whose real
originality was not in his appeal to the taste for landscape, which was
NEW BOOKS. 153
already characteristic of the " naturalism " of his age, but in his dis-
closure of the ideal of internal " feeling ". What remained still to
be seen was the significance of artistic " form " ; and this was disclosed
by Winckelmann. Notwithstanding the condemnation Rousseau pro-
nounces on art as such, there is much resemblance between his doctrine
and that of Winckelmann, as was seen by Diderot (p. 268). Winckel-
mann's ideal, like Rousseau's, consists in a certain mode of internal
feeling, not in a harmony with external nature. The difference is that
while Winckelmann finds his ideal realised in the works of antique art,
Rousseau seeks it in a return to what he calls, following the mariner of
speech of his age, the " natural " life. It was Winckelmann's ideal that
gave the direction afterwards to German Classicism, especially to its
poetical work, Winckelmann's doctrine being, indeed, specially appli-
cable to poetry as Diderot's is to painting ; but the positive influence of
Winckelmann had to be preceded in the minds of Goethe and Schiller, by
the negative influence of Rousseau, the " conscious contradiction of the
forms of the ruling civilisation". The author gives very full accounts not
only of these chief phases of aesthetic theory but of the doctrines he regards
as transitions among them. He notices too in the representatives of each
doctrine the elements of other doctrines derived from, predecessors.
Diderot, he points out, insists on the intellectual element in art "1'esprit,"
and is so far in agreement with the canons of French Classicism.
Rousseau is strongly opposed to the intellectual tendency, it being incon-
sistent with his ideal of feeling ; but on the other hand he had enough in
common with the " naturalism " of his period to find recognition at its
hands, and even to be taken for its typical representative.
RECEIVED also :
Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Pt. x., London, Triibner,
pp. 208.
Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, i. 2, Boston,
Cupples, Upham & Co., pp. 55-131.
J. O'Toole, Ausa Dynamica, Improved and Enlarged Edition, Dublin
Hodges, Figgis & Co., pp. vi., 73.
T. M. Madden, On Child-Culture, 3rd ed., Dublin, Fannin, pp. 24.
W. J. Gill, Philosophical Realism, Boston, Index Assoc., pp. 292.
E. Burnouf. La Vie et la Pense'e, Paris, C. Reinwald, pp. viii., 452.
J. Delbceuf, Une Visite a la Salpetri&re, Bruxelles, C. Muquardt, pp. 49.
F. A. Muller, Das Problem der Continuitat in Mathematik u. Mechanik,
Marburg, Elwert, pp. iv., 123.
E. Reichel, Wer schrieb das "Novum Organon" ? Stuttgart, A. Bonz, pp. 32.
G. Teichmuller, Religionsphilosophie, Breslau, W. Koebner, xlvi., 559.
A. Bastian, In Sachen des Spiritismus, Berlin, R. Strieker, xx., 2i6.
E. v. Hartmann, Die deutsche Alsthetik seit Kant, 1-3 Lieferungen, Berlin,
C. Duiicker, pp. xii., 352.
K. Werner, Die italienische Philosophic des 19ten Jahrhunderts, Bd. v., Wien,
G. P. Faesy, pp. xii., 428.
E. Pfleiderer, Die Philosophic des Heraklit v. Ephesus im Lichte der
Mysterienidee, Berlin, G. Reimer, pp. ix., 384.
W. Gass, Geschichte der christlichen Ethik, ii. 1, Berlin, G. Reimer, pp. xvi.,372.
R. v. Schubert-Soldern, Grundlagen zu einer Ethik, Leipzig, Fues (R.
Reisland), pp. 168.
H. Ritter et L. Preller, Historia Philosophiae Graecae, Pars prima septimum
edita (F. Schultess), Gotha, F. A. Perthes, pp. vii., 180.
NOTICE will follow.
TUXNOTES.
ON A CASE OF ALLEGED HYPNOTIC HYPERACUITY OF VISION.
In an interesting paper which appears in the Revue Philosophique for
November last, M. Bergson of Clermont-Ferrand gives an account of a
case of supposed thought-transference or clairvoyance which turns out to
be much more probably explicable by hypnotic hyperacuity of vision. The
large majority of my readers no doubt conceive thought-transference to be
a mere delusion, but they may feel some interest in tracing the abnormal
physiological conditions which in this curious instance led at first to the belief
that a transmission of ideas or images was taking place by other than the
recognised channels of sense. And to the few who have satisfied themselves
that such transmission does sometimes occur it is specially important to
sift away all the spurious cases which, while apparently supporting, must
in the end discredit the novel theory.
Briefly, then, MM. Bergson and Robinet found that a boy, who was sup-
posed to be a clairvoyant, or a telepathic percipient, could read figures and
words under the following conditions. One of the observers hypnotised
the boy, stood with his back nearly against the light, opened a book at
random, held it nearly vertically facing himself, at about four inches from
his own eyes, but below him, and looked sometimes at the page and some-
times into the boy's eyes. The book had often to be slightly shifted ; but
ultimately the boy could generally read the number of the page. Asked
where he saw it, he pointed to the back of the book, just opposite the
number's true position. Asked where the binding of the book was, he put
his hand underneath the book, and indicated the place where the binding
would have been, had the book faced him.
It occurred to M. Bergson and he deserves full credit for being the first
to insist on this precaution that, small though the figures were, the boy
might really be reading them as reflected on the cornea of the hypnotiser.
Experiments with slightly altered position showed that in fact the boy
could not read the letters unless adjustment and illumination were carefully
made as favourable as possible. The letters were 3 mm. in height, noth-
ing is said of their thickness, and their corneal image would be about O'l
mm. in height, as M. Bergson computes, under the conditions employed.
This seems a very small image to see distinctly ; but Mr. J. N. Langley and
Mr. H. E. Wingfield, who have kindly tried some careful experiments to test
this point, inform me that they can read in each other's cornea the reflexion
of printed letters of about 10 nun. in height. We know from Binet and
Fere's experiments, &c., how greatly the hypnotic state does sometimes
increase acuity of vision ; and we may, I think, conclude that the boy pro-
bably did read the letters on his hypnotiser's cornea.
What, then, are we to make of the boy's statement that he saw the words
as though in a book facing him ? M. Bergson feels sure that this was the
boy's real belief. There w r as no suspicion of charlatanism, and in fact the
boy disliked the experiments, and now, as M. Bergson writes to me, refuses
to renew them. M. Bergson supposes, and I think justly, that this was a
case of simulation inconsciente ; the hypnotised subject genuinely referring
his sensations to the source to which his first hypnotiser (a believer in
thought-transference) had suggested to him that they were due.
And, in fact, this unconscious simulation which leads the subject to refer
his unusual sensations to the special cause which his hypnotiser, or some
NOTES. 155
caprice of his own mind, suggests, is a not uncommon and a very interesting
phenomenon. It was observed, for instance, by Elliotson, who pointed out
a good many hypnotic peculiarities which his successors are now gradually
rediscovering. It is a hypnotic exaggeration of a familiar phenomenon, namely,
of the large infusion of erroneous inference which we most of us import into
the account which we render to ourselves of our ordinary sensations.
A particularly curious case is briefly described in the Journal of the Society
for Psychical Research, June, 1884. A man was brought to us who, when
hypnotised, could often name cards held in front of him, although his eyes
had been plastered up and bandaged in a most elaborate way. The man's
friends took this for clairvoyance, and the man assented, being sure that
he could not see the cards in the usual way. They ' flashed upon him,' as
he said. Now after a good deal of puzzling over the case, Mr. R. Hodgson
found that he also could sometimes manage to see over similar bandages,
through small chinks between the skin and the paper gummed over the
eyes. *" But he, too, found that he saw fitfully, the power of vision seeming
to come and go, and he actually could not tell with which eye he was
seeing, except by covering each eye in turn with his hand. The distorted
position of the eyeball, and the minute and oddly-placed channels of vision,
produced so much confusion that there seemed no reason to suppose that
the hypnotised subject's belief that he was seeing 'clairvoyantly' was other
than genuine.
The case of M. Bergson's boy seems to have been a similar one. And his
idea that he was reading from the book seems to have been a sort of com-
promise between the feeling that he was reading somewhere and the hypno-
tiser's suggestion that the words were being transferred supernormally from
mind to mind.
Thus far, then, M. Bergson's narration and explanation seem credible
enough, and his argument as against thought-transference in this boy's
case seems well made out. But he proceeded to further experiments which,
as recounted, seem incredible, and which may lead some readers to distrust
the accuracy of the whole series.
To explain the difficulty, I must first point out that the word hyperses-
thesia is loosely used for three different classes of phenomena. It is used
(1) for an exaggeration of the familiar action of specialised organs, as when
the eye is sensible to very small amounts of light. It is used (2) for
alleged perceptions, which would imply a specialisation of what I may
term our undifferentiated fund of nervous sensibility in novel directions.
Sensibility to the action of magnets, of metals in contact, of medicaments
at a distance, may or may not exist, but should scarcely be called by the
same name as (say) the eye's extra sensitiveness to light. And again, the
word is used (3) for cases where our non-specialised organs are credited
with performing functions which, so far as we can see, demand a definite
sense-specialisation, or our specialised organs are credited with functions
which, on measurable anatomical grounds, appear to overpass the limits of
their specialisation. This last class of cases must be received with extreme
caution.
Well, M. Bergson says that he showed the boy a microscopic photograph
of twelve men, its longest diameter 2 mm., and that the boy saw and imi-
tated the attitude of each man. Also that he showed the boy a microscopic
preparation, involving cells not greater than '06 mm. in diameter, and that
the boy saw and drew these cells.
Now I might, in the first place, object that thought-transference was not
formally excluded, since M. Bergson himself knew the photograph and the
look of the cells. I do not press this, for the other experiments seem to
me to negative thought-transference in this case ; I merely point out that
156 NOTES.
if we wish to prove that a subject does not receive an image from our
minds we should present to him an object with which we are ourselves
unacquainted.
But the real difficulty is as regards the minimum visibile. It is usually
supposed that in order to produce a definite image more than one retinal
cone must be stimulated ; and that consequently no object can be separately
discernible which does not subtend (say) an angle of sixty seconds, or
whose retinal image is less than (say) '004 mm. in diameter. Floating
particles, none of them exceeding '0029 mm. in diameter, have, I believe,
been seen as a cloud in a ray of electric light sent through a tube of filtered
air, but have never been seen separately by the naked eye.
Now the retinal image of an object itself only '06 min. in diameter, and
placed within the range of distinct vision, will be much less than '004 mm.
in diameter. To bring it up to this minimum the retinal image must
be T V of the size of the object itself ; and this implies a nearness to the eye
involving mere darkness and blur. The microscopic slide was presumably
transparent ; but nothing was said as to the transparency of the photograph,
and yet the points distinctly visible on the photograph must have been
even smaller than the cells on the slide.
A letter with which M. Bergson has favoured me has done much to re-
move these difficulties. It seems that the photograph was transparent,
and that the boy held it close to his eye. Moreover, after seeing the photo-
graph the boy could not read ordinary print. " C'est trop grand," he said;
and it was some time before the eye (which M. Bergson believes to have
been always myopic query hypermetropic ?) resumed its normal state. It
seems, then, conceivable that hypnotic suggestion had induced (by spasm
of the ciliary muscle 1) some change in the shape of the crystalline lens,
which made the eye a microscope for the time being. Mr. George Wherry
has kindly communicated to me two somewhat analogous cases, where
ciliary spasm (itself induced by microscopic or telescopic work) led to
uniocular diplopia, in one case even triplopia. In these cases -irregular
ciliary spasm turned the lens into a kind of multiplying glass : is it possible
that M. Bergson induced a regular progressive ciliary spasm, which turned
the lens into a powerful magnifier ?
Turning back to the question with which we started, the possibility of a
hypcrsesthetic explanation of cases of supposed telepathy, I must add that I
earnestly hope that the experiments recorded in Phantasms of the Living may
receive careful criticism from this point of view. Few, if any of them, will,
I think, be found explicable by the cornea-reading discussed above, but there
may be other sources of error which have escaped our care. Yet in the
hands of some critics hypersesthesia itself assumes attributes almost magi-
cal. In the Revue Philosophiquc for December Dr. Ruault maintains that
he and others have frequently sent subjects to sleep " by an effort of will "
in an adjoining room ; but that the real cause of the sleep was the sugges-
tion given by the changed sound accompanying the hypnotiser's quickened
circulation, which the subject hears through the wall. This is meant, it
seems, to apply to the Havre case, now well known, of sommeil a distance,
where Dr. Gibert or M. Pierre Janet can throw Mme. B into the hypnotic
trance, " by an effort of will," from their houses to hers. 1 Yet I confess
that, whatever may be the true meaning of this curious history, I find it
hard to believe that a peasant woman is sent to sleep by " the sound of a
going " in the arteries of an elderly physician, at a distance of half a mile.
FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.
3 An account of this case will be found in the Proceedings of the Society
for Psychical Research, Part x., Art. " Telepathic Hypnotism ".
NOTES. 157
RICHARD SHUTE.
The death of Richard Shute, of Christ Church, which took place on
Sept. 22, is a serious loss to philosophical studies at Oxford.
In 1877, when quite a young man, Shute published his Discourse on
Truth (reviewed by the Editor in MIND, ii. 392) a remarkably ingenious
work, indicating a reaction from the teaching of Mill along lines which
were perhaps insufficiently denned, but abounding in bright suggestions by
the way which give it a value quite independent of the tenability of the
positions which it seeks to maintain. This work attracted attention in
Germany, acd was made the basis by Uphues of his treatise, Grundlehren
der Logik nach Richard Shute's Discourse on Truth bearbeitet (Breslau, 1883).
In later years Shute gave much time to Aristotelian studies, especially to
the text of the Physics. Some of the results of these studies have already
appeared (Anecdota Oxoniensia, Classical Series, vol. i. part 3, Aristotle's
Physics, book vii., collated by Richard Shute, M.A. Clarendon Press,
1882) ; and papers which he has left behind contain additional matter
which, it is to be hoped, may yet be published.
It is not, however, of the books which he might have written, had he
lived, that those who knew him best are now thinking most, but of the
loss sustained by a system of education which owes much of what is best
in it to influence conveyed in private conversations. The forces by which
the young students of Liter ce Humaniores at Oxford are affected may be
distinguished broadly as 'rhetorical' and 'dialectical'. Of these the
* rhetorical ' are naturally the more powerful in most cases. The air is
full of views on all subjects of speculative and practical interest abstract
and one-sided because received passively from lectures and epitomes and
magazine-articles, not actively apprehended in the original research of the
student himself. These abstractions are the natural product of a place in
which many young men beginning to think are thrown together, and they
would not do much harm if they were not useful. But they are eminently
useful. The Oxford Examination-system, as such, in spite of many honest
efforts on the part of those who work the machine, gives a decided advan-
tage to the man who can make a clever ' rhetorical ' use of ' probable
opinions ' ; arid the rhetorical habit encouraged by this system bears fruit
afterwards in influence exerted through various popular channels, of which
journalism is perhaps the most important. It may be admitted that wide
practical influence in a country like England could not be obtained without
the 'rhetorical habit' no 'movements' could be started, and the life of
the nation would perhaps stagnate ; but in the spheres of speculation,
science and literature, within which the activities of a university are pro-
perly confined, it is a mischievous habit. Happily however this uncritical
' rhetorical habit,' fostered by the Examination-system, is somewhat chas-
tened by a spirit of ' dialectic ' which the system has not succeeded in
entirely banishing from Oxford teaching. Much time is still given (and
this is one advantage at any rate of the College-system) to private conver-
sations between teacher and single pupil. These conversations are the
hardest pieces of work which the teacher has to do, if he does them pro-
perly ; and the most useful instruction received by the pupil is often
derived from them, if he prepares himself for them by critical study of the
subjects discussed.
It was in such conversations that Shute excelled. " He riddled through
one's seeming knowledge," as one who was once his pupil has expressed it.
This was the first effect of his conversations. Beginners were often dis-
couraged, and thought that there was no truth to be obtained on the sub-
jects discussed. But when they came to know Shute better they began to
158 NOTES.
suspect that he was even enthusiastic about the truth. His enthusiasm
was perhaps all the more catching that it was, at first, only suspected ; at
any rate, his pupils followed his singularly lucid expositions addressed
studiously to the logical understanding, with the growing feeling that it is
a solemn duty which man owes to himself, as a rational being, to try to be
clear-headed. Intellectual clearness, as such, seemed to be presented as a
duty. But his more intimate pupils and friends came to see that he valued
intellectual clearness not merely for its own sake, but as indicating that ideas
incapable of logical handling were being kept out of discussion and left to
reign in their own proper sphere. These pupils and friends observed that in
his philosophical conversations (as in his ordinary talk) he held much in
reserve. He was reticent almost ironically so about those ideas which
may be summarily described as ' moral and religious,' when others were
tempted to discuss them and hope by discussion to make them clearer.
This, those who knew him well had learned to understand, was not because
these ideas did not interest him, but because he felt that they were not
objects of speculation but practical principles of life. And he showed how
deeply they interested him by his own life. The acute dialectician never
asked himself 'the reason why' he should spend his failing strength in
doing his best for the mental improvement of his pupils. He simply
assumed that it was worth doing ; and that was his ' metaphysic of ethics'.
In the foregoing account of Shute's Oxford work, stress has been laid on
his personal influence, because it is the influence of persons the significant
silence, or the timely word, with effects reaching through a whole lifetime
not the influence of books produced which is the really important philo-
sophical influence of Oxford. Green's influence, for example, was of this
kind. It is difficult, indeed impossible, to convey to others an adequate
impression of the philosophical influence of a person. But Shute's friends
and pupils who may read this notice will understand why prominence
has been given to his personal influence ; and others, who have been for-
tunate in their philosophical teachers, will understand that a philosophical
reputation which, like his, rests on a personal influence powerful to shape
lives, is placed on a very solid foundation.
At the end of this necessarily inadequate estimate of Shute's philosophi-
cal life and influence, a few lines respecting the facts of his external life
will not be out of place. He was born in 1849. He belonged to an
old family which was already settled at Monkton Combe in the time of
Elizabeth. His school was Eton. From Eton he went to Cambridge,
where he resided for a year, and then migrated to Oxford. In 1873 he
took a First Class in Lit. Hum., and was elected to a Senior Studentship at
Christ Church. In 1875 he went to Bombay as Professor of Logic and
Moral Philosophy, but his health obliged him to return o England within
a year. Coming back to Christ Church in 1876, he soon became Tutor,
and performed the duties of his Tutorship up to the day of the sudden
beginning of his last illness. He examined several times in Lit. Hum.;
he took an active part in college business ; and held the office of Proctor
when his last illness came upon him. He died in London on Sept. 22,
1886, and was buried at Woking.
J. A. STEWART.
Mr. Patrick .Proctor Alexander, M.A., the very clever author of Mill and
Carlyle and (following on Mill's replies in the third edition of the Exami-
nation of Hamilton} of Moral Causation, or Notes upon Mr MiWs Notes
(1868), also of Spiritualism: a Narrative with a Discussion (1871) and other
writings, died at Edinburgh on Nov. 14th last, at the age of 63.
NOTES. 159
THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY FOR THE SYSTEMATIC STDDY OF PHILOSOPHY.
The eighth session commenced with the addition of ten new members to
the ranks of the Society. Mr H. W. Carr, a Vice-President, was elected to
fill the office of Hon. Secretary, vacated by Mr. Rhodes in consequence of
illness ; and Mr S. Alexander, of Lincoln College, Oxford, was elected a
new Vice- President. At the first meeting, Monday, Nov. 8, the usual
address was delivered by the President, the subject this year being "The
Reorganisation of Philosophy". At the following meeting, on Monday,
Nov. 22, Mr. D. G. Ritchie read a paper on "T. H. Green's Political Philo-
sophy," which was followed by a discussion.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. The present session was opened on Tues-
day, 26th Oct. The subject for the ensuing year is Lotze's System of
Philosophy. Information is obtainable from the Secretary, J. M. Rigg,
Esq., 9 New Square, Lincoln's Inn.
Dr J. M. Cat tell has been appointed Assistant- Professor in the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), and will devote himself to the instruc-
tion of advanced students in psychophysical work.
THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. Vol. xx. No. 2. S. S.
Heberd The Nature of Thought. K. Fischer A Critique of Kantian
Philosophy (trans.). E. M. Mitchell The Philosophy of Pessimism. J.
Jastrow On the Symbolic System of Lambert. Hegel On Giordano
Bruno (trans.). Notes and Discussion, &c.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. An. xi., No. 10. G. Se"ailles L'origine et les
destinees de 1'art. G. Sorel Sur les applications de la psychophysique.
L. Carrau La philosophic religieuse de Berkeley. G. Tarde Avenir de
la moralite. Rev. Gen. (A. Penjon Travaux recents sur la psychologie
d'Aristote). Analyses et Comptes-rendus. Rev. des Period. No. 11
P. Souriau La conscience de soi. F. Paulhan Le devoir et la science
morale (i.). C. Dunan Le concept de cause. H. Bergson De la simula-
tion inconsciente dans 1'etat d'hypnotisme. Notes, &c, (A. Binet, et J.
Delboeuf Les diverses ecoles hypnotiques). Analyses, &c. Rev. des
Period. Societe" de Psychologie physiologique (F. Paulhan Note sur la
combinaison des images consecutives). No. 12. Pierre Janet Les actes
inconscients et le dedoublement de la personnalite pendant le somnarn-
bulisme provoque'. G. Le Bon Application de la psychologie a la classi-
fication des races. L. Arreat Sexualitd et altruisme. F. Paulhan Le
devoir, &c. (fin.). Analyses, &c. Rev. des Period. Soc. de Psych, phys.
(A. Ruault Le mecanisme de la suggestion mentale. J. Babinski Trans-
fert d'un sujet a un autre sous I'influence de 1'aimant).
LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE (Nouv. Ser.). An. ii., No. 9. F. Pillon
J. Milsand. L. Dauriac Parole et musique. C. Renouvier Des
problemes de 1'esthetique contemporaine : La theorie du vers francais. L.
Dauriac Un livre nouveau sur Pascal. Notices bibliog., &c. No. 10.
C. Renouvier Examen des Premiers Principes de H. Spencer (suite). F.
Pillon La psychologie animale d'apres un disciple de Darwin L. Dauriac
M. F. Brunetiere estheticien et critique. F. Pillon Un ouvrage recent
sur 1'alchimie. L. Dauriac Homere e'ducateur. No. 11. C. Renouvier
Examen des Premiers Principes, &c. (fin). L. Dauriac L'ame du
nouveau-ne. E. Blum Hypnotisme et pedagogic . . . F. Pillon
Paul Bert.
RIVISTA ITALIANA DI FILOSOFIA. Vol. ii., Disp. 2. P. L. Cecchi II
Cristianesimo primitive secondo B. Labanca. N. Fornelli Esposizione
160 NOTES.
generale delle teorie pedagogiche di Herbart, &c. C. G. Mor Proposta
pedagogica di un positi vista. Bibliog, &c. Disp. 3. F. Bertinaria Idee
introduttive alia storia della filosofia. R. Benzoni La Simpatia nella
morale dell' evoliizionismo e nel sistema Rosminiano. F. Buttrini Del
Prograrama e delle Istruzione 23 ottobre 1884 per 1' insegnamento della
filosofia elementare. Bibliog., &c.
EIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA SCIENTIFIC^. Vol. v., No. 7. G. Cesca II con-
cetto di sostanza. G. Cantoni Considerazioni su alcuni fenomeni vitali
dei corpi inorganici. Riv. Sink Riv. Anal. Riv. Bib. (W. W. Ireland,
The Blot upon the Brain, &c.), &c. No. 8. E. Morselli Fisiopsicologia
dell' ipnotismo. V. Grossi II fascino e la jettatura nell' antico oriente (i.).
E. Carnevale Della pena nella scuola classica, &c. Riv. Anal., &c. No. 9.
B. Labanca Concetto della filosofia cristiana. G. Tarantino Studi nella
psicologia inglese : Giovanni Locke. V. Grossi II fascino, &c. (ii.). Note
Critiche. Riv. Bib., &c. No. 10. G. Cesca La relativita della cono-
scenza (i.). A. Vaccaro Sulla vita dei popoli in relazione alia lotta per
esistenza. Note Critiche. Riv. Anal., &c.
ZEITSCHEIFT FDR PHILOSOPHIE, &c. Bd. Ixxxix., Heft 2. P. Markus
Die Yoga- Philosophic nach dem Rajamartanda dargestellt. F. Sattig
Der protagoreische Sensualismus, &c. (Schluss). W. Ribbeck Zwei
Werke liber Kant's Erkenntriisstheorie. Recensionen. Bibliographie, &c.
Beigabeheft. M. Schaster Ueber eiiiige Principienfehler der modernen
^Esthetik. K. C. Planck Die Grundbegriffe des Rechtes. M. Diez Die
realistische Philosophic K. C. Plancks. IE. v. Hartmann Ueber die Lust
als hochsten. Wertinassstab. Recensionen.
PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Bd. xxiii., Heft 1, 2. W. Ribbeck
Ueber Plato's Parmenides. F. Grung Der Begriff der Gewissheit in der
Kantischen Philosophie. Recensionen u. Besprechungen. Litteratur-
bericht. Bibliographie, &c.
VlERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FUR WISS. PHILOSOPHIE. Bd. X., Heft 4. G.
Heymons Analytisch, synthetisch. B. Erdmann Zur Theorie der
Apperception (ii.). B. Kerry Ueber Anschauu.ng u. psychische Verar-
beitung. R. v. Schubert-Soldern Der Kampf um die Transcendenz.
Anzeige. Selbstanzeigen, &c.
PHILOSOPHISCHE STUDIEN. Bd. iii., Heft 4. A. Lehmann Ueber die
Anwendung der Methode der mittleren Abstufungen auf den Lichtsinn.
H. K. Wolfe Untersuchungen liber das Tongedachtniss. A. Kohler
Ueber die hauptsachlichsten Versuche einer mathematischen Formulirung
des psychophysischen Gesetzes von Weber. L. Lange Die geschichtliche
Entwickelung des Bewegungsbegriffes u. ihr voraussichtliches Endergebniss
(Schluss).
ERRATUM. In Mr. S. Alexander's article on "Hegel's Conception of
Nature''' in MIND No. 44, p. 501, line 16, for unity read variety.
No. 46.] [APRIL, 1887.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
I. ON 'ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVERSIES.
By Professor A. BAIN.
THE historjr of the psychological doctrine, named familiarly
the Association of Ideas, has now been fully given by
various writers, the latest and completest summary being
the article by Prof. Groom Robertson in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, vol. ii.
Like all the higher generalities of mind, these laws need
not only to be verified by facts, but to be guarded by proper
language, a matter of no small difficulty considering that we
have to rely upon terms of common life wholly unsuited to
such lofty applications.
By Association has always been understood in a general
way, that the recall, resuscitation or reproduction of ideas
already formed takes place according to fixed laws, and not
at random. The assigning of these laws was the first
contribution to a science of the human intelligence ; while
the ultimate shape given to them, whatever that may be,
will mark the maturity of at least one portion of that
science.
The name further implies that the mental reproduction is
ruled by certain assignable principles of connexion or
relationship between our mental elements, such that the
11
162 A. BAIN :
one now present restores another not present, yet related
according to one or other of the supposed relationships.
Thus a word recalls the thing named, by a law of associa-
tion founded on the frequent concurrence or proximity of the
two in the consciousness.
The classifications of these supposed bonds of relationship
among ideas are various, and need not be repeated further
than to say that two relationships have survived in nearly
every classification : I mean Association by Contiguity, and
the law of Similars or Similarity. These have a com-
manding importance in all the schools of Associationists.
Contrast is also admitted as a reproductive force, but,
however viewed, is unable to take the same rank as these
others. I shall advert to it presently.
After a survey of the leading controversies that have
clustered round these laws, I mean to devote a considerable
space to the problem now uppermost among psychologists,
as connected with the terms Attention and Apperception ;
taking for the text "Wundt's recent handling in his work on
Logic. The settlement of this problem unavoidably re-acts
upon all the other controversies.
I. The Terminology of Association.
This subject is included in Hamilton's elaborate Note, in
his Reid, on the history of ' Association '. His objections to
the main word itself are (1) that it implies Co-existence, or
a connexion between co-existences already known, and (2)
that it supposes a bilateral and equal correlation. Also the
words, Chain, Concatenation, Series, Train, Movement, are
each more or less unsuitable as the leading term for the
various operations to be comprised under it. On the whole,
Hamilton thinks that "as among the earliest, so perhaps the
lest terms for the process of reproduction are to be found in
Suggest, Suggestion, Suggestive, Co-suggestive, with their
conjugates". The metaphor originally perceptible in these
words has now disappeared.
Undoubtedly any appropriateness in the term Association
is confined to the law of Contiguity, under which the com-
panionship of the related ideas is at its maximum of fulness ;
seeing that the occasion of their coming together by a
process of resuscitation is their being more or less frequently
together previously. In Similarity, the resuscitation is
not preceded by any previous companionship : the two
members that have come together, as a consequence of their
resemblance, may have been at the greatest distance from
each other in our former experience. Hence, for Similarity,
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVEESIES. 163
the word Attraction would be the most apposite, while
unsuited to Contiguity.
II. Whether, or how far, the prevailing enumeration of
the laws of Association exhausts the powers of Intellect ?
This is to be the final question of the paper ; and it is
adduced here with a view to a partial clearance of the way.
I say, then, that no enumeration of these laws expresses
everything that is properly included under Intellect. For,
in the first place, it is conceded on all hands, with mere
variety in the statement, that Discrimination is a funda-
mental property of our intelligence, quite as much as any
process that can be referred to laws of Association ; it comes
with the earliest germs of mental life, and accompanies it
unceasingly to the last. It plays a part in the formation of
the ideas, images or elements that are pre-supposed in
Association. (See Hamilton's Reid, p. 243, n.) Unless it
be Contrast, none of the commonly assigned associating
principles expressly recognises it ; while any of the received
definitions of Contrast must be greatly widened to embrace
the operation in all its breadth.
I hold, then, that, in any complete view of Intellect,
Discrimination must be ranked as a primary attribute ;
while it is the business of Psychology to trace its conse-
quences to the uttermost.
In the next place, the law of Contiguity, if defined as a
power of associating into one mental group two or more dis-
crete members, is not wide enough. The intellectual property
that it expresses is equally operative in the formation and
the persistence of the ideas themselves. In all probability,
the simplest idea is already a complication ; and its parts
are bound into a mental unity, or whole, by the force under-,
lying contiguous adhesion. But even If this be not so,
repp.tition, continuance, attention the circumstances that
operate in maturing our strictly contiguous growths are
needed to make the simplest idea self-subsisting, as the idea
of a sweet or bitter taste, a smell, a soft touch, a melodious
sound, a colour. It is common for writers on Psychology to
treat of the formation of the idea before entering upon the
associating principles ; this is simply an expository con-
venience. The state of the fact is admitted by Mr. Sully,
when he assigns the very same conditions of reproduction
to single images and to the linking of these in composite
groups by contiguous adhesion. There is. in truth,J)ut_c)ne__
law_at^the foundation of this_ reproductive_process ; Jmtjis
the term Association is inapt to express the self-subsistence
164 A. BAIN :
and reproduction of images, another term is desirable. In
other words, the process" of converting the Sensation, or
primary Impression, into the Idea, supposes the very same
psychical force as that expressed by the law of Contiguity.
III. Is Contrast to be regarded as a distinct and indepen-
dent law of Association ?
Contrast is a comparatively rare and exceptional bond of re-
production. We cannot make six transitions of thought with-
out involving the other two laws Contiguity and Similarity,
but we maybe hours and days without acting upon Contrast.
Hamilton and others, including Lotze, regard the relation
of contrariety or contrast as equivalent to correlative parts
of the same whole. A much bolder use of this explanation
is made in dealing with the question next to be considered,
and I do not discuss it here. I merely remark that while
co-relatives, as light and dark, up and down, virtue and vice,
readily suggest each other, I feel no difficulty in referring the
process to the other laws of the mind. Lazarus suggests
conjointly Dives, Abraham's bosom, and the place of in-
sufferable heat ; and though one of the three links is of the
nature of a contrast, yet in that too probably Contiguity is
the operative resuscitating bond.
IV. Whether Contiguity and Similarity may be reduced
to one statement ?
This is a far more serious consideration. Various
attempts have been made to merge the two in a single
principle. Hamilton, in the Reid, refutes some of these
attempts, and affirms as ultimate the two principles-
Repetition, under which he places Similarity, and Redintegra-
tion. In the Metaphysics (Lect. xxxi.) he holds that the two
laws of Simultaneity and Affinity are carried up into unity,
in the higher law of Redintegration or Totality.
According to Lotze, Similarity and Contrast are associa-
tions of impressions that are either parts of a simultaneous
whole or parts of a successive whole. So that with him, as
with Hamilton (in the Metaphysics), the concurrence of parts
of the same whole is the ruling principle of reproduction,
explaining alike Contiguity, Similarity and Contrast.
I must, therefore, make some remarks upon the method
of regarding the entire compass of Association as the revival
of a whole or totality on the presentation of some part of
that whole. Such cases no doubt exist. After we have
been familiarised with any complicated object, made up of
definite parts, as an animal body, or a machine, when we
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 165
see one of the parts or members we are reminded of the
entire body or machine. It is thus that Owen reconstructed
extinct animals from a few bones. Nay, further, any loose
collection or aggregate, if it is persistent and familiar, will
be brought to view on our seeing one of the individual
objects : as pictures in a gallery, or books in a library, or
members of a household. All such would be ordinary ex-
amples of the law of Contiguity. But that law is not
dependent for its operation on the objects being either
united in an organised body, or made up into a grand whole.
I imagine that the essence of the law is to couple each thing
with the one standing next, and therefore succeeding to it
in the view, and to have no regard to the multiplicity
needed to make up a collection. The process is not in a
state of suspension till we can bring up a sufficient number
of things to make a recognised bundle or whole. To say
that when I have learned to connect the English word 'king'
with the Latin ' rex,' I am proceeding from a part to a
whole is to stretch the meaning of part and whole beyond
all usage ; to introduce into the conditions of Association an
alien circumstance, something never taken into account as
a condition of memory. We explain a failure in effective
association, by want of frequency, want of attention, or want
of plasticity at the time ; not by want of some grand total
or collection to place the thing in. The most vagabond or
isolated fact can be associated if there be any one obtainable
handle. Association needs two things, and needs no more ;
yet every assignable couple is not necessarily a whole. I
could learn half a sentence without going further. If I were
to complete it, the sense would undoubtedly be a help to the
memory, but would not vitiate the association of the incom-
plete half.
More abstruse is the question whether Similarity can fall
under Contiguity in any mode of stating it. Of the various
attempts to make this resolution, I will advert to the two
most recent, the one by Mr. .SVar.d, and the other by Mr.
Bxajiley. For my own part, I still adhere to the essential
separateness of the two principles ; for although they concur)
more or less in actual working, they are the starting-points V
of widely different mental movements : the one class going ^f
out in the direction of routine or use and wont, the other / >
leading to new assemblages of ideas in such forms as classes, /
generalities, imaginative comparisons, strokes of practical O
invention, and so on. Prof. Groom Kobertson and Mr. Sully
concur in the recognition of their distinctness.
The position of Mr. Ward, as well as of Mr. Bradley,
166 A. BAIN :
involves the absolute denial of such a state of mind as the
consciousness of agreement. Now in cases of extreme re-
moteness of the objects brought together, there is a burst of
excitement, which I have often called the flash of similarity,
and which Mr. Ward treats as a pure fiction. The great
classical instances of discoveries of generalisation, such as
the Newtonian fetch involved in rising to universal gravity,
cannot, I consider, be received by any mind in the same
terms, and with the same emotion as an ordinary routine
train of contiguous association ; for example, the phases of
the moon as they have always impressed mankind. In like
manner, the great strokes of identity in the poetical com-
parisons of all ages give us an agreeable surprise, part of
which is due to bringing together for the first time things
never supposed to be like but, when once brought together,
found capable of illustrating one another.
The flash of a great discovery of identification is one ex-
treme of the workings of Similarity. The other extreme is
equally important in its bearings on the present question ;
I mean the consciousness of identity without the power of
resuscitation, a fact as energetically denied by Mr. Bradley
as the other by Mr. Ward. My contention is, that times
without number we are in this position, namely, that of
something seen, or heard, or mentioned, we remark, ' I have
seen or heard that before, but I cannot tell where or when '.
This is a fact ; and is surely different from the state implied
when I say ' That's new to me,' ' I never saw or heard that
before '. Eecognition or sense of identity, without the
power of recall, is the extreme instance of Similarity bereft
of the aid of Contiguity. The previous impression, whose
likeness to the present gives us the sense of recognition or
repetition, is too feebly associated within itself to start into
life again. That, to my mind, is the obvious rendering of
the fact. A little more familiarity, in the first instance,
would have strengthened the contiguous association between
the parts of the resembling object and between it and col-
lateral circumstances of time and place, and the result would
have been, not a bare sense of identity with something un-
known, but an actual resuscitation of the whole fact in its
fulness and in its connexions with other things.
The feeling of recognition or identity has a still wider
sweep in assuring us that a train that we recall is accurately
recalled. Often we have some misgiving lest we may not
have recovered the precise series of particulars that we for-
merly knew ; such misgiving is generally right, and leads us
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 167
to try again till we have corrected the mistake, and feel
satisfied that we are at length correct.
Let me next advert to Mr. Bradley's view of the con-
sciousness of identity without recovery of the identified
image. He says : "If anything is brought up which suggests
agreement, then this must involve what is called contiguity.
For apart from such contiguity there would be nothing to
recognise." But I humbly think this is to mis-state the
order of occurrence. We do not first bring a thing up, not
knowing whether it is like or not like, and then examine it
to see if there be any likeness. Of course, this would involve
Contiguity, and an occult principle besides, namely, a power
of bringing up on suspicion, without anything to go upon
at all ; a mere tentative restoration, to be verified after it is
brought into full view. There is no such power as this, so
far as my knowledge goes. If something present to the view
recalls a past thing like it, it is because of the felt resem-
blance. However we may express it, this is the order of
proceeding. We have laid up in our previous experience
some fact, appearance, notion, image ; we, at the present
moment, have in view some fact that was never in conti-
guity with the former but possesses a certain amount of
resemblance to that : the immediate consequence is that
the previous fact is recalled ; the stroke of recall being, as it
seems to me, simple and ultimate, and not resolvable into
any roundabout process or succession of mental movements.
Mr. Ward's explanation of similarity in diversity is the
easiest to state. His opinion is that when abx recalls dby,
there is no more similarity than when dbc recalls def. Now
whether there be more or less similarity is scarcely the point;
there is similarity in both to the extent of the common ele-
ment db. But there is certainly a difference in the two
situations, a parting of the ways, with the most widely
different results. And even in the immediate act there is
an assignable difference. The combination ale recalls the
former residua of dbc that were in contiguity with def:
there is no halt or hesitation in the matter. But when it
is a question of abx bringing up dby, aggregates that were
never in contiguity before, there is a new condition present.
For, just as the ab in the one group tends to strike into the
previous trace of db in the other, the x in the first works by
similarity on its own account, and tends to strike into a
previous residuum containing x ; and it is an open question
which one of three courses will be taken, the recall, namely,
of dby, or of a group nox, or of nothing at all. The mind
has a new mode of consciousness under this situation ; we
168 A, BAIN :
never confound it with the recall of abcdef at the instance of
abc. It is a matter of psychological interest to ascertain the
circumstances favouring the operation of similarity under
diversity in cases involving important results; seeing that
there is a cause of obstruction in the fact of diversity an
obstruction often so serious as to render the recall a matter
of doubt and uncertainty. In all this I am fully borne out
by Mr. Sully. (See Outlines of Psychology, p. 268.)
V. Whether Association can stand as one member in an
enumeration of Faculties, such as those of Locke, Reid,
Stewart, Hamilton ?
It is not difficult to show that the Association of Con-
tiguity is the greatest part of what is usually called Memory;
while Similarity is a further aid. Moreover, that Similarity,
assisted by Contiguity, explains the ordinary reasoning pro-
cesses, as designated under Deduction and Induction, seems
to me to admit of very little doubt, but I defer the considera-
tion of it to the handling of the final topic of this paper.
The placing of Association in the list of Intellectual Powers
by Stewart has been abundantly shown to be tautological.
VI. How should Association stand in reference to the
great problems of Philosophy : the theories of Space, Time,
Causality, Substance and the like ?
On referring to the recent work of Professor Ferri upon
Association (see MIND viii. 294, x. 124) I find that with him
Association-theories are tested mainly by their bearing on
his conclusions regarding these problems. His induction of
the laws from the facts of our intelligence, apart from such
questions, is, I think, extremely perfunctory.
We are, at this moment, in the midst of a conflict of
views as to the priority of Metaphysics and Psychology. If,
indeed, the two are so closely identified as some suppose,
there is no conflict ; there is, in fact, but one study. If, on
the other hand, there are two subjects, each ought to be
carried on apart for a certain length, before they can either
confirm or weaken each other. I believe that, in strictness,
a disinterested Psychology should come first in order, and
that, after going on a little way in amassing facts, it should
revise its fundamental assumptions, and improve its language
and definitions : and, when so revised, should resume con-
sideration of the wide field of mental facts of the neutral or
disinterested kind those that deal with practical applications
rather than with the metaphysical groundwork. After a
few further strides, we might comeback again to the founda-
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 169
tions, and so on, alternating between the two lines of re-
search, yet insisting on their being conducted independently.
This is necessary in order that we may not fall into a circle.
It is said, for example, that if we embark on the promiscuous
field of mental facts, with a bad Metaphysics, that is, with
wrong notions as to External Reality, Cause, Substance,
and so on, all our results will be vitiated and worthless ;
nevertheless, I do not see any mode of attaining a correct
Metaphysics until Psychology has at least made some way
upon a provisional Metaphysics, which it returns after a
time to rectify and improve. (On the relations of Psy-
chology to Metaphysics, see in MIND, Vol. viii., the Editor's
opening article and Mr. James Ward's first article entitled
" Psychological Principles ".)
Psychology imperatively demands a well-defined vocabu-
lary. The ultimate notions of the science must be free from
ambiguity ; but to express ultimate facts with precision, and
to decide what things are ultimate, constitute a laborious
part of any science, most of all of mind. The process of
see-saw is eminently called for here. We go on a certain
way upon given definitions ; we find them open to excep-
tion ; we go back and correct them, and proceed again, until
some new flaws are discovered. But to stay debating
ultimate questions, before making any forward movement
at all, is a device that may be handed over to the Committee
for arranging the debates in Pandemonium.
As regards Association in particular, nothing can be more
vital than a correct mode of stating and understanding the
mental elements or units that enter into the associating
operations. The Impression, Sensation, Presentation, Per-
ception, Idea, Image, Trace, Kesiduum, Eepresentation,
Memory, Recollection, must all be properly reduced to dis-
tinct expression, and rendered free of ambiguity, before we
know what we mean by Associative Reproduction, or Sug-
gestion.
The starting-point of the clearing operation evidently is to
distinguish the Sensation from the Idea the state of mind
under full actuality from the trace, residuum, survival and
reproduction of that when the actuality has ceased : What
is my precise mode of mind in surveying a fine prospect, and
what is that other mode when I am remembering it ? Nor
is this by any means a very simple determination. For
what we choose to call sensation, presentation or actuality,
is already a mixed mode, a product of associating forces.
What I now see, I may have seen before, and that previous
seeing combines its results with the present view. Even
170 A. BAIN :
if the scene is quite new, its elementary parts are not new ;
and old impressions of hills and woods and streams have an
influence on my present impression ; so that even the sensa-
tion is not a pure or unmixed element to begin with. Then
comes the definition of the Idea, or whatever name we
choose to give to the persistence and reproduction of the
scene as an effect of memory. How far does this mental
reproduction correspond to the original, and what are its
essential differences, drawbacks or points of inferiority ?
When we speak of recalling a prospect to the mind, we
must speak with due allowance for the difference. For
some purposes the image is as good as the original ; hence
we get into a way of speaking of the two in the same terms,
or as if there were no difference at all. For other purposes,
the difference needs to be accentuated, instead of being
slurred over. No theory of Association can be sound that
mistakes the character of the mental reproduction, to which
Sensation and Association jointly contribute.
Mr. Bradley's criticism of Association fastens on this part
of the case. Freely allowing that there are facts corre-
sponding to the two chief laws, he objects to the ways of
stating these as absurd and self-contradictory. For example,
as regards Contiguity, he says, " What was contiguous is
now non-existent, and what is re-instated has never been
contiguous". This comes of his putting an interpretation
upon the meaning of re-instatement that nobody ever held,
but which no doubt should be barred out by rigorous pre-
cision of language. So severe, indeed, is Mr. Bradley's view
of re-instatement, that he will not allow a second view of
the actual thing to be called re-instatement. If I look up
to-night at a starry constellation, I might be weak enough
to say that I was repeating an old impression to the letter.
Mr. Bradley says No. I cannot repeat a yesterday's pro-
spect ; yesterday has passed, and cannot be lived over again.
To-day's experiences are to-day's, and these only.
I am not aware that any psychologist has guarded the
statement of Association to this degree of nicety. I quite
admit that there are circumstances that make it occasionally
proper and desirable. Let me, therefore, learri from Mr.
Bradley how to surmount the difficulty and fence the contra-
diction. He states the law of Contiguity thus : " When
elements have co-existed, they tend to be connected ". And
again "Mental units which have co-existed cohere". Now
this may be all very safe, but it has the defect of vagueness.
To make it really useful there would be needed, first, some
specification of the very general words ' element ' and 'unit' ;
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 171
and, next, a more particular unfolding of the consequences
of being 'connected' or 'cohering'. It is as if a chemist
should say of combustion, that a red hot coal tends to
become connected with the oxygen of the atmosphere.
Mr. Bradley 's view of what rises up to the mind under
Association is the embodiment of his Philosophy of the Keal.
It is, that particulars can never be associated, and that what
is reproduced is universal. Now with his view of particula-
rity (which is not shared in by anybody else that I know),
this must be the case. A particular experience is the expe-
rience of one moment of time, and cannot be repeated in
fact ; for the 6th day of the month can never be the 5th. I
quite agree with him that, in his sense, a single instance as
such cannot be retained by the human intelligence. I further
agree with him that seldom at any stage can a fact be retained
without something that we may call mutilation, but the
precise mutilation is a matter for inquiry. It may be a
mutilation that gives generality or, if you prefer it, univer-
sality, but it may not operate in that way.
In common parlance, we should say that our knowledge
of a concrete thing is improved by repetition, and attains its
very best when we have viewed it times without number, so
as to detach the picture from special dates and circumstances.
This is the particularity of all our familiar surroundings ; it
does not make the objects general in any received sense of
the word ; they are still looked upon by us as particulars,
and when we conceive them in idea, we do so with all the
more vividness from the iteration and the absence of refer-
ence to special moments of observation.
Thus we seem to sacrifice an important distinction through
Mr. Bradley's use of the words ' particular' and 'universal'.
My memory or idea of a particular event contains the refer-
ence to the date or moment of occurrence, and to all the sur-
roundings of the actual experience. The idea must still be
shorn and mutilated ; it cannot bring me back to the
reality, and it must incur all the loss of imperfect mental
cohesion. But it, nevertheless, presents itself as the image
or residuum of a real event marked off by date and circum-
stances from every other event, and thus rendered individual.
To call such a resuscitation ' universal ' is a new employ-
ment of the word, and would lead to very inconvenient re-
sults. I take two examples to show how the term is com-
monly understood in science. One is ' universal gravitation,'
where the meaning is the highest attainable generalisation of
a natural power, the last of a succession of gradually ascend-
ing generalities. When we have generalised one step after
172 A. BAIN :
another, we call the final generality ' universal '. The second
example is the controversy of Nominalism and Eealism :
called in the schools the theory of Universals. Here the
universal is opposed at once to the concrete and particular,
and gradation is not implied. But neither of those senses,
at bottom the same, coincides with Mr. Bradley's 'universal'.
The contrast of the Sensation and the Idea, the original
concrete experience and the product formed by recalling that
experience through association, is one of the most important
contrasts in Psychology. For one reason already given, the
particular and the universal does not express it ; while the
attempt to employ these terms for the purpose would destroy
their fitness for their more usual meanings, and especially for
the meaning of singular and general. If I call my actual
observation of the Dungeon Ghyll ' particular,' and my recol-
lection of it ' universal,' I have no terms to express a water-
fall in general, still less for terrestrial gravitation, least of all
for universal gravitation.
Our difficulty then lies in this. An idea may be the idea
of an absolute individual in all its clothing of individuality ;
even when existing out of its time, and present only as a re-
collection, it retains its reference to the moment of its occur-
7 rence, and, so far as that goes, it is no less particular than
the actual sensation was. Of the various attempts to express
the real contrast, perhaps the most suitable are the meta-
phors ' original ' and ' copy,' ' sound ' and ' echo '. There is a
propriety also in the word ' faded,' as opposed to fresh and
first-hand. Something may be said for Mr. Bradley's
' mutilated ' reproduction, implying, as it does, a failure in
the pristine accuracy of the lineaments. The defect of the
term lies in suggesting distortion and loss of identity ; a pre-
ferable metaphor would be ' impoverished,' as showing, not
distortion, but simply the inferiority in fulness of the picture
to the original.
All this, however, implies that our examples are taken
from the presentations of the higher series, as embracing
the complexity of the outer world. No imagination can re-
produce a visible scene in all the fulness of its lineaments,
and in all the brightness of its illumination. But in the
wide range of our acquisitions are to be found instances
where we reproduce an original exactly, as in mechanical
processes. I can learn the words of a language precisely
as they are presented by my teacher ; I can copy him to the
life : there is no loss whatever. Again, we often begin upon
ideas, and couple these from the first. In point of fact, we
must accommodate the description of the Idea to the cases.
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVERSIES. 173
Indeed without a detailed psychology of Association, I do not
see how we can arrive at just definitions of the fundamental
terms Impression, Sensation, Actuality, Reality, Presenta-
tion, Perception, Idea, Representation, Thought.
VII. What circumstances are proper to be included with
Association as essential accompaniments of its work ?
We cannot fully state the laws of Association without
certain conditions of their operation, or certain co-operating
influences of a non-intellectual kind. Both the Feelings and
the Will play a part in the associating processes at every
stage.
Thus, as to Contiguity. The rate of coherence of two
impressions is known to depend partly on the intensity of
the consciousness on the occasions when the two are in com-
pany, and partly on the endurance and repetition of the
concurrence. Hamilton's law of Preference is simply the
fact of conscious intensity due to special interest.
There are, as it were, two distinct moments to be studied
in giving an account of the associating process. The first
is the original placing of the elements together, and the
supplying of the conditions requisite to their adhesion. The
second is the consequent resuscitation, which, too, has its
conditions, over and above the foregoing. An association
between two elements may be to all intents and purposes
sufficient for obtaining the revival of the second on the pre-
sentation of the first, yet the revival may not occur. The
state of mind at the time may be either favourable or un-
favourable to the recall of a past impression or idea ; and
the determining influence at work may be due to the feelings
or to the will. Hence the theory of Association is not com-
plete without specifying the accompanying conditions, both
for the moment of primary adhesion and for the moment of
associative recall.
The circumstances that give conscious intensity are not
difficult to assign. The word ' Attention ' in its commoner
meaning, as a voluntary prompting to concentration of
mind, expresses a great deal, but not everything. There is
concentration from mere excitement, painful and pleasurable,
as distinguished from the attention under the will, although
the two shade into one another.
All I am contending for just now is that, with the associa-
ting forces, we should include the emotional and volitional
influences that are inseparable from their working and that
must be taken account of according to their degree in each
case. These forces do not of themselves make the Associa-
174 A. BAIN :
tion, any more than heat and light enable a plant to propa-
gate its kind ; they are but the essential accompaniments :
without being the fact, they are conditions of its full
realisation.
The concluding head will involve a more specific con-
sideration of the present topic.
VIII. The final question of this paper relates to the
insufficiency or shortcoming of the principles of Association,
as now qualified, to explain the rise and succession of our
thoughts, in other words, the various operations of the
Intellect.
This leads me to examine the new position occupied by
Prof. Wundt, who regards these principles as insufficient
to account for the higher intellectual processes. Even if
Prof. Wundt's name were not enough to secure a respectful
consideration of his views, we have an additional motive,
in the declaration of M. Lachelier, his expounder in the
Revue Philosopliique, that in France, at the present time,
neither English empiricism nor pure Kantianism can give
satisfaction, and that a reconciliation of the two is earnestly
called for.
I leave it to the Kantians, old or new, to say how far
Prof. Wundt's assumptions coincide with Kant's. I must
endeavour to state what they are, and to criticise them,
regarded as supplementary to the laws of association.
Wundt recognises in the mind two entirely distinct sets
of laws lower and higher. The lower are laws of the
senses and the brain, and embrace sensations and intellectual
groupings under ordinary association. They make up the
department covered by the psychophysical researches of the
German experimental psychologists.
The laws of Association, as prevailing in this lower region,
are given by Wundt without any essential variation from the
more usual renderings. His scheme is
(1) Simultaneous Association.
(a) Associative Synthesis.
(h) Assimilation.
(<?) Complication.
(2) Successive Association.
While thus taking as his main distinction the Simul-
taneous and the Successive, Wundt admits as valid the
reduction of the laws of Association (as by Herbart) to the
two Similarity and Contiguity ; Contrast being a case of
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTEOVEESIES. 175
association by Similarity under the influence of fluctuations
of feeling.
As the course of associative reproduction is hindered by
active attention and logical thinking, we must give our-
selves up passively to the play of representations, if we wish
to get persistent and coherent association. The flow of
representations in dreaming and madness offers the best
field of observation for the study of associations as such.
In the ascending flood of ideas of the insane, we can some-
times follow step by step the process whereby logical
thinking gradually undergoes dissolution by the increasing
dominance of association. Hence the attempt to derive
logical thinking from association is open to suspicion.
In Wundt's conception these laws are afflicted with the
incurable disqualification of passivity, which restricts their
unassisted workings to the lower forms of sensation and
memory. Instead of pushing them to the explanation of
the higher faculties of reasoning and imagination, as the
English associationists profess to do, he considers it neces-
sary to take an entirely new departure, to lay down a
principle of Intellectual Activity, with laws of its own and
a foundation of its own ; locating it in a purely spiritual
region of the mind, which has nothing in common with the
physical constitution of the senses and the brain. This prin-
ciple of activity he names Apperception, and thus expounds.
In vision we are aware of the wide distinction between
the central point of the retina and the surrounding portions
stretching away to the circumference. It is in the centre
that our visible discrimination reaches the utmost pitch of
minuteness ; hence to observe a given object thoroughly we
turn upon it this visual centre. Such, says Wundt, is the
difference between apperception and passive or listless con-
sciousness. Apperception is thus nothing more than atten-
tion at the highest pitch of concentration ; it is a thing of
all degrees from bare consciousness up to the full strain of
stimulated activity. Now as such activity is most usually
an effort or effect of will, Apperception is another name for
will applied to the operations of thought.
In mere association, apperception is not absent, but it is
of a more primitive kind than in what is called distinctively
the " apperceptive " combination of representations. The
activity of apperception, in the lower association, is directly
determined by the " psychical stimulus " of a representation,
the frequency of its repetition, &c. ; while, in the higher
kind of apperceptive activity, there is an act of choice.
Hence apperception is in the full sense volitional, and not
176 A. BAIN :
merely a kind of germ of volition. In apperceptive com-
bination, however, association is still at work. The apper-
ceptive activity makes use of the material furnished to it by
association ; but the laws of Association indicate only the
possible combinations that are at the disposal of conscious-
ness ; what combination is actually earned out is decided by
the act of apperception.
As direct sense-excitation furnishes consciousness with
all its materials, so association preserves sense-impressions
to be acted on by apperception. We may thus distinguish
" passive apperception " (determined by stimuli, &c.)
from " active apperception" (determined by an act of choice).
It is this last alone that properly deserves the name. The
laws of Association are most easily observed when apper-
ception is passive ; the laws of the apperceptive activity
itself, when it is active. The distinction applies to succes-
sive as well as to simultaneous groupings of representa-
tions. Memory provides consciousness with materials by
holding representations in an associative bond ; recollection is
the act of apperception that decides which of the associative
representations shall actually come into the view-point of
consciousness.
In following out the detailed illustration of the foregoing
positions, Wundt presents us with a two-fold classification
of thought-combinations the simultaneous and the successive.
Under the first falls the formation of concepts, which will
suffice as an example of his proceeding. A concept, he says,
is a single representation that stands in the place of a num-
ber of other representations of its kind ; in other words, that
is " apperceived " as standing for a whole class of represen-
tations. The formation of concepts is specially related to
"assimilative" associations. Concepts do not result (as
associationists have tried to show) from the dropping of all
but the common elements in a number of representations,
but from the voluntary selection of some specially striking
element, which may not be common, or may not be charac-
teristic. Thus the concept may be defined " according to its
psychological origin," as " the completed fusion, through
active apperception, of a ruling individual representation
with a series of representations that belong together ".
Afterwards there occur the following additional changes
(1) obscuration of the representations bound up with the
dominant element ; (2) obscuration of the dominant element
itself, and substitution of the spoken, together with the
written, word.
It is under " successive thought-combinations " that pro-
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTKOVEESIES. 177
positions or judgments are included ; the apperceptive move-
ment being adapted to the difference of the case.
For the higher functions of intellect, then, the trains of
association must come under the pressure of the will, as
attention. The will can quicken up the associations into
living power. By fastening the attention upon an object of
thought, the assimilative force is quickened and resemblances
more abundantly evoked ; the poet obtains his metaphors by
severe concentration of mind upon the matter that he wishes
to illustrate. So, imperfectly-formed bonds of contiguity
may be rendered suggestive by means of intense application
of thought to the present member of the couple ; as when
we have forgotten someone's name, and keep cogitating on
the image of the person till we recall it.
Besides thus intensifying the forces of association, beyond
their natural power in the passive mood, the apperceptive
concentration can modify and work up the trains of
thought ; it can combine them for some purposes, and divide
or analyse them for others. The processes of logic or reason-
ing, of imagination or art, of moral guidance, of working for
ends, involve the double power of association proper and
the control due to apperception. All these processes are
copiously exemplified by Wundt in accordance with his
main thesis.
And now, as apperception is another name for will work-
ing in the sphere of the intellectual trains, and as will sup-
poses motives, the sources of apperception lie in the region
of motives. But with Wundt, the motives of all our higher
thinking transcend the sphere of the senses and the brain,
the material organism and its functions. No doubt a certain
class of motives is allied with this lower part of our being ;
there are, of course, pleasures and pains of sense and appetite,
and these pleasures and pains must be often operative as
stimulants of attention, and must even intensify and control
the trains of association. Nevertheless, all such motives are
limited to the inferior and merely animal objects of thought
and pursuit. They exemplify a sort of mechanical or physi-
cal correspondence between the intensity of the feeling and
the intensity of the action, just as the pace or work of a
steam-engine is related to the consumption of coal.
Apperception, on the other hand, does not follow the
animal inclinations : it works under a class of altogether
distinct and superior motives, regulated by laws peculiar to
itself. These motives are the produce of heredity. They
fall under three different classes the logical, the aesthetic,
the moral. They have their foundations in our imma-
12
178 A. BAIN :
terial soul, they possess nothing in common with the senses
and laws of passive association, although the associating
forces are their essential tool or instrument. The logical
stimuli direct the forces to the production of reasoned truths,
the aesthetic to art, and the ethical to right conduct. It is
in this region alone that free-will possesses any meaning,
There is a determinism in the lower region which is as
mechanical as you please : the determinism of the higher
or apperceptive region is a psychical determinism ; in it there
is no constant relation between energy of motive and energy
of action. The laws of apperception are thus very peculiar,
and the mode of discovering them is peculiar. Ordinary
introspection is unequal to the research. Without excluding
this means of knowledge, we must devote ourselves to a
study of man's history and institutions, which are the fruit
of his highest elaborations, and the measure and test of his
superior motives. Anthropology at large, comprising social
progress, literature, language, mythology, religion, will fur-
nish the laws of our highest motives, being the resultant of
their operation during the ages that have passed.
Of the questions raised by the foregoing speculation, there
are two that I must pass without discussion. The one is the
immateriality of the mind in certain of its functions, a position
maintained in all its nakedness, and without any attempt to
get it out of the difficulties that were felt no less by Aristotle
than by ourselves. How an immaterial mind can be allied
with a material organism, which is the essential instrument
of certain very important mental functions ; how the parti-
tion of functions is made ; how it is that there can be so
much difference of opinion as to what is grounded in the
material organs, and what subsists in the immaterial sphere,
all this is left without any palliation and need not be coun-
terargued until something is done to surmount such obvious
and weighty objections.
The other point is Free-will, which is presented in a some-
what novel shape. It has its exclusive habitat in the upper
sphere, where the principle of proportionality of cause and
effect is suspended, the smallest causes producing, if need
be, the largest effects. Here too there are difficulties to be
explained away. It would be requisite to adduce some
unequivocal examples of this inversion of mechanical
uniformity, as well as to show that in the great institutions
of mankind, as society, language, religion, such inequality
of cause and effect is unequivocally present. We are well
acquainted, even in the mechanical sphere, with the occur-
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVERSIES. 179
rence of effects out of proportion to the reputed causes, as in
exploding gunpowder, but we know that these are only
apparent causes, and that when we get hold of the real
causes, proportionality is rigorously maintained.
Passing those two questions, I propose to remark upon
the bearing of Wundt's speculation upon the laws of Asso-
ciation properly so called. Notwithstanding the stress put
upon the action of the will, he still allows that will is not
everything : he does not shunt the associating links, and lay
the whole stress of the exposition on the apperceptive voli-
tion. What he says as to the essential concurrence of
emotion and will with the workings of association we fully
admit. No associating link can be forged, in the first
instance, except in the fire of consciousness ; and the
rapidity of the operation depends on the intensity of the
glow. In like manner, the links thus forged are dormant
and inactive, until some stimulus of consciousness is present,
whether feeling or will. A man of scholarly attainments,
with his hundred thousand linkings of contiguous bonds,
will sit in his chair for hours, and bring up nothing : he need
not be asleep the while ; mere languor is enough to account
for his intellectual quiescence.
It is with the original forming of the associating links,
that education is most concerned ; and the theory of educa-
tion must enumerate all the circumstances that aid the
process. These are partly physical, partly intellectual,
partly emotional and volitional. To confine the statement
to the factor of will alone, as attention, would be insufficient.
The subsequent rise or resuscitation of ideas consequent
on association, is a fresh field of study. All the above-named
influences are still at work, although in a somewhat different
way. The practical applications are here wider. Besides
the bearing on education, we have the wider consideration
of the conduct and economy of the thinking powers. Over
and above the original adhesion, there are circumstances
that assist in the reproduction, and make it a success or a
failure. Chief among these is the power of the will, but not
to the exclusion of other influences. Even the addition of
emotional excitement, which of itself accounts for a great
deal, that is, apart from moving the will, is not all. The
purely intellectual conditions, under which I include the
number and nature of the associating connexions at work
in a given case, bear a large part in the process of resuscita-
tion.
More particularly, as to the influence of the will in apper-
180 A. BAIN :
ception, everything that Wundt advances is supported by
our experience. The will may make up, in some small
degree, for the feebleness of a contiguous linking, partly by
a more strenuous attention, but far more by the search for
collateral links in aid. It may likewise favour the recall of
a resembling image. But neither of those two cases represents
its habitual and all-powerful efficacy ; in both, the limits of
its reproductive force are still narrow. The operation that
represents Wundt's Apperception in its full sweep is that
crowning example of voluntary power the command of
the thoughts, by detaining some and dismissing others, as
they arise, and are found suitable, or the contrary. Too
much cannot be said as to the importance of voluntary atten-
tion in this lofty sphere. All thinking for an end, whether
it be practical or speculative, scientific or aesthetic, consists
in availing ourselves of the materials afforded by association,
and choosing or rejecting according to the perceived fitness
or unfitness for that end.
When, therefore, Wundt says that association alone does
not explain the higher intellectual functions, he only says
what we all admit, namely, that Association needs the
control of will and feelings, in order to bring forth our more
important thinking products. In the absence of some de-
gree of conscious intensity, association can no more unite
ideas, or restore the past by virtue of such unions, than a
complete set of water-pipes can distribute water without a
full reservoir to draw from. The scheme of Wundt does not
lead to the slighting of Association as a great intellectual
factor. His Apperception would be nothing without it.
The point where my disagreement with the whole specu-
lation now adduced begins, is the drawing of a hard and fast
line between the lower and the higher workings of Associa-
tion. To me the word Apperception, as employed by Wundt,
is unnecessary and unmeaning. All that it is intended to
convey is much better expressed by our old phraseology. If
it is another name for the voluntary control of the thoughts
it is superfluous and therefore mischievous. It leads us to
suppose that there must be some distinct meaning to corre-
spond, arid we find there is no such meaning. There is an
important line between the random course of the thoughts,
in reverie, in dreaming, in insanity, and even in the sane
when they give way to casual associating that has no end
and the regulated thinking of a well-trained mind ; but this
line can be drawn much better by our old familiar phraseology
than by the new coinage, as proposed by Professor Wundt.
A far more serious ground of difference of opinion is the
ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVERSIES. 181
treatment of Association, as almost exclusively an affair of
motives. This point of view is not special to Wundt. It is
set forth with great clearness in the following passage in
Professor Adamson's review of Mr. Sully's Psychology, in
MiNDix. 438.
" Each separate fact of conscious experience stands out
momentarily from the vast complex of the individual mind,
and, as one says, receives so much attention, but it is always
accompanied by this complex, and the question, what deter-
mines the train of thought, what causes us, as we say, to
think of something else, is really the question what causes
attention to include this or that at the moment. The
motives are infinitely numerous, and vary indefinitely in
character in successive stages of individual development ; for
the most part, indeed, they are distinctly what would be
described as logical ; but the essential fact is the movement
of attention as expressed in the view taken of the part more
immediately under consideration."
That the motives to attention are an important part of the
course of thought, I freely admit. But to call these motives
infinitely numerous seems to me an exaggeration that
passes the limits of a figure. If the human mind possessed
any constituent fairly describable as infinitely numerous, it
would, as a study, be entirely beyond our limited capacity.
But our motives, for all purposes whatever, are anything but
infinite in number ; while those that operate in directing the
current of thought are only a fraction of the whole. Nay
more. "Whatever be the total of such motives, their mode
of operating reduces itself to a few understood particulars,
which have been already adverted to in the course of this
discussion.
If there be any part of the mind open to the description of
being "infinitely numerous" in details, it is Association in its
characteristic feature of linking mental elements together.
We can count, in a rough way, the names of a language ;
and using the estimate as a datum, we can prove beyond dis-
pute that the distinguishable links of associated particulars
in the mind of an educated man must greatly exceed one
hundred thousand. I doubt if the most liberal calculation
of motives would furnish one-hundredth of this number.
Let us consider the actual case of the acquisition of a lan-
guage, with its thousands of couplings of words and phrases,
and consider how much motives have to do with it. In the
first place, what number of motives are at work first and last ?
I imagine they could be easily counted up, whatever way we
may look at them. The wish to open up a new avenue to
182 A. BAIN: ON ' ASSOCIATION '-CONTROVERSIES.
information and interest is of itself comprehensive enough :
we could not multiply motives without putting down, as
distinct items, every occasion when we desired to learn some-
thing or to talk with somebody. But Psychology would
never condescend to such particulars as this : it would serve
no end. During the whole dreary process of mastering a
foreign tongue, we are aware of only one or two recurring
motives ; while we are painfully conversant with the steps of
the associating process, by which we add one group after
another, to our adhesions of name with name. Our interest
lies in quickening this process by every known means
motives included. The motives make one and only one con-
dition : they are the same throughout. The common devices
for promoting the requisite adhesions are not stated in terms
of the motives, but in terms of the laws of association. A
certain force of attention is required, and this comes under
motive ; but there is a further regulation of the manner of
presenting the names and objects to be united. The pro-
fessors of artificial memory work not by motives, but by
a skilful manipulation of the matters to be recollected. The
topical memory of the ancients did not depend on motives.
What I apprehend is meant by the infinity of our motives,
is the sum-total of all the applications that we make of our
resources as made up by association. These applications are
of course very numerous,- but they admit of classification
under a limited number of heads as simple memory, percep-
tion, reasoning (in all its various phases), imagination and,
Wundt would add, conduct. I do not doubt that association
might be described under these various kinds of intellectual
working; but I think a great deal would be lost, and nothing
gained, by regarding simply the outcome of the associating
processes, and saying nothing of the immense fabric that has
to be reared before there can be any outcome. We should
trace out, in detail, both supply and demand in our intel-
lectual work. I have not yet discovered any better method
of expounding the laws of Association than by combining
two arrangements : first, the systematic view of mental
elements, as they become associated together ; and second,
the applications of these products to our various utilities.
II. THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (II.) 1
By Professor WILLIAM JAMES.
3. The Synthesis of the original sensible Bignesses.
IN previous sections I sought to show that the primitive
experience, which lies at the bottom of our knowledge of
space, is the quality of bigness or extensiveness which all
of our sensations possess. 2 I showed, moreover, that if an
original sensation of extent were subdivided into parts by
discriminative attention, these parts must come to be per-
ceived, through processes of association, in definite relations
of mutual position and order. I said nothing, however, of
the combination of one sensible space-total with another,
the inquiry to which we must now turn.
It breaks into two subordinate problems : (1) How is the
subdivision and measurement of the several sensorial spaces com-
pletely effected! and (2) How do their mutual addition and fusion
and reduction to the same scale, in a word, how does their
synthesis, occur? I think that, as in the investigation just
finished, we found ourselves able to get along without in-
voking any data but those that pure sensibility on the one
hand, and the ordinary intellectual powers of discrimination
and recollection on the other, were able to yield; so
here we shall emerge from our more complicated quest
with the conviction that all the facts can be accounted for
on the supposition that no other mental forces have been at
work save those we find everywhere else in psychology ;
sensibility, namely, for the data, and discrimination, asso-
ciation, memory and choice, for the rearrangements and
combinations they undergo.
1 Continued from MIND No. 45.
2 Consensus is such a precious thing in the present state of psychology,
that I cannot refrain from reminding the reader that in this, the funda-
mental and indispensable, part of my thesis, I have an ally in Mr. James
Ward, whose article " Psychology " in the edition still publishing of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, seems to me, on the whole, the deepest and
subtlest collective view of the subject which has appeared in any language.
Extensity is Mr. Ward's name (see pp. 46, 53, of the article) for this primi-
tive quality of sensation, out of which our several perceptions of extension
grow.
184 w. JAMES :
(a) Their Subdivision.
Let us take subdivision first. How are spatial subdivisions
brought to consciousness ? in other words, How does spatial
discrimination occur ? I must reserve a general treatment
of the subject of discrimination for another place. Here
we need only inquire what are the conditions that make
spatial discrimination so much finer in sight than in touch,
and in touch than in hearing, smell or taste.
The first great condition is, that different points of the
surface shall differ in the quality of their immanent sensi-
bility, that is, that each shall carry its special local-sign. If
the skin felt everywhere exactly alike, a foot-bath could be
distinguished from a total immersion, as being smaller, but
never distinguished from a wet face. The local-signs are
indispensable ; two points which have the same local-sign
will always be felt as the same point. 1 We do not judge
them two unless we have discerned their sensations to be
different. Granted none but homogeneous irritants, that
organ would then distinguish the greatest multiplicity of
irritants would count most stars or compass-points, or
best compare the size of two wet surfaces whose local
sensibility was the least even. A skin whose sensibility
shaded rapidly off from a focus, like the apex of a boil,
would be better than a homogeneous integument for spatial
perception. The retina, with its exquisitely sensitive fovea,
has this peculiarity, and undoubtedly owes to it a great part
of the minuteness with which we are able to subdivide the
total bigness of the sensation it yields. On its periphery
the local differences do not shade off very rapidly, and we
can count their fewer subdivisions.
But these local differences of feeling, so long as the surface
is unexcited from without, are almost null. I cannot feel them
by a pure mental act of attention unless they belong to quite
distinct parts of the body, as the nose and the lip, the finger-
tip and the ear ; their contrast needs the reinforcement of
outward excitement to be felt. In the spatial muchness of
a colic or, to call it by the more spacious-sounding verna-
cular, of a ' bellyache ' I can with difficulty distinguish
the north-east from the south-west corner, but can do so
much more easily if, by pressing my finger against the
1 A. Binet (Revue Philosophise, Sept., 1880, page 291) says we judge
them locally different as soon as their sensations differ enough for us to
distinguish them as qualitatively different when successively excited.
This is not strictly true. Skin-sensations, different enough to be discrimi-
nated when successive, may still fuse locally if excited both at once.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 185
former region, I am able to make the pain there more
intense.
The local differences require then an adventitious sensa-
tion, superinduced upon them, to awaken the attention.
After the attention has once been awakened in this way,
it may continue to be conscious of the unaided difference ;
just as a sail on the horizon may be too faint for us to notice
until someone's finger, placed against the spot, has pointed
it out to us, but may then remain visible after the finger has
been withdrawn. But all this is true only on condition that
separate points of the surface may be exclusively stimulated.
If the whole surface at once be excited from without, and
homogeneously, as, for example, by immersing the body in
salt water, local discrimination is not furthered. The local-
signs, it is true, all awaken at once ; but in such multitude
that no one of them, with its specific quality, stands out in
contrast with the rest. If, however, a single extremity be
immersed, the contrast between the wet and dry parts is
strong, and, at the surface of the water especially, the local-
signs attract the attention, giving the feeling of a ring sur-
rounding the member. Similarly, two or three wet spots
separated by dry spots, or two or three hard points against
the skin, will help to break up our consciousness of the
latter 's bigness. In cases of this sort, where points re-
ceiving an identical kind of excitement are, nevertheless,
felt to be locally distinct, and the objective irritants are also
judged multiple, e.g., compass-points on skin or stars on
retina, the ordinary explanation is no doubt just, and we
judge the outward causes to be multiple because we have
discerned the local feelings of their sensations to be dif-
ferent.
Capacity for partial stimulation is, then, the second condition
favouring discrimination. A sensitive surface which has to
be excited in all its parts at once by every kind of stimulus
that can be applied to it can yield nothing but a sense of
undivided largeness. This appears to be the case with the
olfactory, and to all intents and purposes with the gustatory,
surfaces. Of many tastes and flavours, even simultaneously
presented, each affects the totality of its respective organ,
each appears with the whole vastness given by that organ,
and appears interpenetrated by the rest. 1
1 It may, however, be said that even in the tongue there is a determina-
tion of bitter flavours to the back, and of acids to the front, edge of the
organ. Spices likewise affect its sides and front, and a taste like that of
alum localises itself, by its styptic effect on the portion of mucous mem-
brane, which it immediately touches, more sharply than roast pork, for
186 w. JAMES :
I should have been willing some years ago to name with-
out hesitation a third condition of discrimination saying it
would be most developed in that organ which is susceptible
of the most various qualities of feeling. The retina is un-
questionably such an organ. The colours and shades it
perceives are infinitely more numerous than the diversities
of skin-sensation. And it can feel at once white and black,
whilst the ear can in nowise so feel sound and silence. But
the late researches of Donaldson and Hall, 1 Blix and Gold-
scheider, on specific points for heat, cold, pressure and pain
in the skin ; the older ones of Czermak (repeated later in
"Wundt's laboratory), showing that a hot and a cold compass-
point are no more easily discriminated as two than two
of equal temperature ; and some unpublished experiments of
my own all disincline me to make much of this condition
example, which stimulates all parts alike. The pork, therefore, tastes
more spacious than the alum or the pepper. In the nose, too, certain
smells, of which vinegar may be taken as the type, seem less spatially
extended than heavy, suffocating odours, like musk. The reason of this
appears to be that the former inhibit inspiration by their sharpness,
whilst the latter are drawn into the lungs, arid thus excite an objectively
larger surface. The ascription of height and depth to certain notes seems
due, not to any localisation of the sounds, but to the fact that a feeling of
vibration in the chest and tension in the gullet accompanies the singing of
a bass note, whilst, when we sing high, the palatine mucous membrane is
drawn upon by the muscles which move the larynx, and awakens a feeling
in the roof of the mouth.
The only real objection to the law of partial stimulation laid down in
the text is one that might be drawn from the organ of hearing ; for,
according to modern theories, the cochlea may have its separate nerve-
termini exclusively excited by sounds of differing pitch, and yet the
sounds seem all to fill a common space, and not necessarily to be arranged
alongside of each other. At most the high note is felt as a thinner,
brighter streak against a darker background. In an article on Space,
published in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy for January, 1879, I
ventured to suggest that possibly the auditory nerve- termini might be
" excited all at once by sounds of any pitch, as the whole retina would be
by eyery luminous point if there were no dioptric apparatus affixed".
And I added : " Notwithstanding the brilliant conjectures of the last few
years which assign different acoustic end-organs to different rates of air-
wave, we are still greatly in the dark about the subject ; and I, for my
part, would much more confidently reject a theory of hearing which
violated the principles advanced in this article than give up those prin-
ciples for the sake of any hypothesis hitherto published about either organs
of Corti or basilar membrane". Professor Rutherford's theory of hearing,
advanced at the last meeting of the British Association, already furnishes
an alternative view which would make hearing present no exception to
the space-theory I defend, and which, whether destined to be proved true
or false, ought, at any rate, to make us feel that the Helmholtzian theory
is probably not the last word in the physiology of hearing.
1 See MIND x. 399 and 5V7.
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 187
now. 1 There is, however, one quality of sensation which is
particularly exciting, and that is the feeling of motion over any
of our surfaces. The erection of this into a separate ele-
mentary quality of sensibility is one of the most recent of
psychological achievements, and is worthy of detaining us a
while at this point.
Psychologists generally have assumed the perception of
motion to be impossible until the positions of terminus a
quo and terminus ad quern are severally cognised, and their
successive occupancies by the moving body are perceived to
be separated by a distinct interval of time. 2 As a matter of
fact, however, we cognise only the very slowest motions in
this way. Seeing the hand of a clock at XII. and afterwards
at VI., we judge that it has moved through the interval.
Seeing the sun now in the east and again in the west, I infer
it to have passed over my head. But we can only infer that
which we already generically know in some more direct
fashion, and it is experimentally certain that we have the
feeling of motion given us as a direct and simple sensation .
Czermak long ago pointed out the difference between seeing
the motion of the second-hand of a watch, when we look
directly at it, and noticing the fact of its having altered its
position when we fix our gaze upon some other point of the
dial-plate. In the first case we have a specific quality of
sensation which is absent in the second. If the reader will
find a portion of his skin the arm, for example where a
pair of compass-points an inch apart are felt as one impres-
sion, and if he will then trace lines a tenth of an inch long
1 1 tried on nine or ten people, making numerous observations on each,
what difference it made in the discrimination of two points to have them
alike or unlike. The points chosen were (1) two large needle-heads, (2)
two screw-heads, and (3) a needle-head and a screw-head. The distance
of the screw-heads was measured from their centres. I found that when
the points gave diverse qualities of feeling (as in 3), this facilitated the
discrimination, but much less strongly than I expected. The difference,
in fact, would often riot be perceptible twenty times running. When,
however, one of the points was endowed with a rotary movement, the
other remaining still, the doubleness of the points was much more evident.
To observe this I took an ordinary compass with one point blunt, and the
movable leg replaced by a metallic rod which could, at any moment, be
made to rotate in situ "by a dentist's drilling machine, to which it was
attached. The compass had then its points applied to the skin at such a
distance apart as to be felt as one impression. Suddenly rotating the
drill-apparatus then almost always made them seem as two.
2 This is only one example of what I have called ' the psychologist's
fallacy 'thinking that the mind he is studying must necessarily be con-
scious of the object after the fashion in which the psychologist himself is
conscious of it.
188 w. JAMES :
on that spot with a pencil point, he will be distinctly aware
of the point's motion and vaguely aware of the direction of
the motion. The perception of the motion here is certainly
not derived from a pre-existing knowledge that its starting
and ending points are separate positions in space, because
positions in space ten times wider apart fail to be discrimi-
nated as such when excited by the dividers. It is the same
with the retina. One's fingers when cast upon its peripheral
portions cannot be counted that is to say, the five retinal
tracts which they occupy are not distinctly apprehended by
the mind as five separate positions in space and yet the
slightest movement of the fingers is most vividly perceived
as movement and nothing else. It is thus certain that our
sense of movement, being so much more delicate than our
sense of position, cannot possibly be derived from it. A
curious observation by Exner 1 completes the proof that
movement is a primitive form of sensibility, by showing it
to be much more delicate than our sense of succession in
time. This very able physiologist caused two electric
sparks to appear in rapid succession, one beside the other.
The observer had to state whether the right-hand one or the
left-hand one appeared first. When the interval was reduced
to as short a time as O044" the discrimination of temporal
order in the sparks became impossible. But Exner found
that if the sparks were brought so close together in space
that their irradiation-circles overlapped, the eye then felt
their flashing as if it were the motion of a single spark from
the point occupied by the first to the point occupied by the
second, and the time-interval might then be made as small
as 0'015" before the mind began to be in doubt as to whether
the apparent motion started from the right or left. On the
skin similar experiments gave similar results.
Vierordt, at almost the same time, 2 called attention to
certain persistent illusions which seemed to him survivals
from a stage of development when motion was felt as such,
but not yet discriminated as belonging to subject or object.
Such feeling, he concluded, must be the primitive and undif-
ferentiated form of all spatial perception. The illusions in
question are, among others, these : If another person gently
trace a line across our wrist or finger, the latter being sta-
tionary, it will feel to us as if the member were moving in the
opposite direction to the tracing point. If, on the contrary,
we move our limb across a fixed point, it will be seen as if
1 Sitzb. der. Jc. Akad. zu Wien, Bd. Ixxii., Abth. 3 (1875).
2 Zeitechrift fur Biologie, xii. 226 (1876).
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (II.) 189
the point were moving as well. If the reader will touch his
forehead with his forefinger kept motionless, and then rotate
the head so that the skin of the forehead passes beneath the
finger's tip, he will have an irresistible sensation of the latter
being itself in motion in the opposite direction to the head.
So in abducting the fingers from each other ; some may
move and the rest be still, but the still ones will feel as if
they were actively separating from the rest. Vierordt's
inferences may be rash, but his experiments certainly show
to one who will repeat them how much more like an inde-
composable sensation our perception of motion is, than like a
constructive act of the mind.
But the most valuable contribution to the subject is the
paper of G. H. Schneider, 1 who takes up the matter zoologi-
cally, and shows by examples from every branch of the
animal kingdom that movement is the quality by which
animals most easily attract each other's attention. The
instinct of ' shamming death ' is no shamming of death at
all, but rather a paralysis through fear, which saves the
insect, crustacean or other creature from being noticed at all
by his enemy. It is paralleled in the human race by the
breath-holding stillness of the boy playing ' I spy,' to whom
the seeker is near ; and its obverse side is shown in our in-
voluntary waving of arms, jumping up and down, and so
forth, when we wish to attract someone's attention at a dis-
tance. Creatures ' stalking ' their prey and creatures hid-
ing from their pursuers alike show how immobility diminishes
conspicuity. In the woods, if we are quiet, the squirrels and
birds will actually touch us. Flies will light on stuffed
birds and stationary frogs. 2 On the other hand, the tre-
mendous shock of feeling the thing we are sitting on begin
to move, the exaggerated start it gives us to have an insect
unexpectedly pass over our skin or a cat noiselessly come
and snuffle about our hand, the excessive reflex effects of
tickling, &c., show how exciting the sensation of motion is
per se. A kitten cannot help pursuing a moving ball. Impres-
sions too faint to be cognised at all are immediately felt if
they move. A fly sitting is unnoticed, we feel it the
moment it crawls. A shadow may be too faint to be per-
ceived. As soon as it moves, however, we see it. Schneider
found that a shadow, with distinct outline, and directly fixated,
could still be perceived when moving, although its objective
1 Vierteljahrssch. fiir wiss. Philos., ii. 377.
2 Exiier tries to show that the structure of the faceted eye of articulates
adapts it for perceiving motions almost exclusively.
190 w. JAMES :
strength might be but half as great as that of a stationary
shadow so faint as just to disappear. With a blurred shadow
in indirect vision the difference in favour of motion was much
greater namely, 13'3 : 40' 7. If we hold a finger between
our closed eyelid and the sunshine we shall not notice its
presence. The moment we move it to and fro, however, we
discern it. Such visual perception as this reproduces the
conditions of sight among the radiates.
Enough has now been said to show that in the education
of spatial discrimination the motions of impressions across
sensory surfaces must have been the principal agent in
breaking up our consciousness of the surfaces into a con-
sciousness of their parts. Even to-day the principal function
of the peripheral regions of our retina is that of sentinels,
which, when beams of light move over them, cry ' Who goes
there ? ' and call the fovea to the spot. Most parts of the
skin do but perform the same office for the finger-tips. Of
course finger-tips and fovea leave some power of direct per-
ception to marginal retina and skin respectively. But it is
worthy of note that such perception is best developed on the
skin of the most movable parts (the labours of Vierordt and
his pupils have well shown this) ; and that in the blind,
whose skin is exceptionally discriminative, it seems to have
become so through the inveterate habit they possess of
twitching and moving it under whatever object may touch
them, so as to become better acquainted with the conformity
of the latter. Czermak was the first to notice this. It may
be easily verified. Of course movement of surface under
object is, for purposes of stimulation, equivalent to move-
ment of object over surface. And the exquisite mobility of
the eyeball is thus shown, apart from those measuring uses
we have noticed already and shall notice again, to be of
immense service in promoting discrimination pure and
simple.
(&) Their Comparison and Measurement.
What precedes is all we can say in answer to the problem
of discrimination. Turn now to that of measurement of the
several spaces against each other, that being the first step in our
constructing out of our diverse space-experiences the one
space we believe in as that of the real world.
If we were immovable and could only passively receive the
pressure and motion of objects on our skin, without ever
feeling one part of our skin with another, it is certain that
we should have far vaguer perceptions of their extension and
of our own form than we now possess. The differences of
THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 191
vastness in the feelings of different parts would have uncor-
rected play. Objects gliding from one part of our surface to
another would appear to change their size, as in the obser-
vations mentioned at the beginning of the paper ; and we
should have no certainty as to how much lip was equivalent
to so much forehead, how much finger to so much back.
But with the power of exploring one part of the surface by
another we get a direct perception of cutaneous equivalen-
cies. The primitive differences of vastness are overpowered
when we feel by an immediate sensation that a certain
length of thigh-surface is in contact with the entire palm
and fingers. And when a certain motion of the opposite
finger-tips draws a line first along this same length of thigh
and then along the whole of the hand in question, we get a
new manner of measurement, less direct but confirming the
equivalencies established by the first. In these ways, by
superpositions of parts and by tracing lines on different parts
by identical movements, a person deprived of sight can soon
learn to reduce all the dimensions of his body to a homoge-
neous scale. By applying the same methods to objects of his
own size or smaller, he can with equal ease make himself
acquainted with their extension stated in terms derived from
his own bulk, palms, feet, cubits, spans, paces, fathoms (arm-
spreads), &c. In these reductions it is to be noticed that
when the resident sensations of largeness of two opposed surfaces
conflict, one of the sensations is chosen as the true standard and the
other treated as illusory. Thus an empty tooth-socket is be-
lieved to le really smaller than the finger-tip which it will not
admit, although it may feel larger; and in general it may be
said that the hand, as the almost exclusive organ of palpa-
tion, gives its own magnitude to the other parts, instead of
having its size determined by them.
The readjustment of the various retinal space-feelings to
a common scale is more complex still. So constantly is the
same qualitative impression of colour and form changing its
magnitude upon the retina (whilst from incessant reversals
of the change and tactile verifications we believe the real
size of the object to be unaltered), that we end by ascribing
no absolute import whatever to the retinal space-feeling
which at any moment we may receive. So complete does
this overlooking of retinal magnitude become, that it is next
to impossible to compare the visual magnitude subtended by
different objects at different distances, without making the
experiment of superposition. We cannot say beforehand
how much of a distant house or tree our finger will cover.
The various answers to the familiar question, How large is
192 w. JAMES :
the moon ? answers which vary from a cartwheel to a
wafer illustrate this most strikingly. The hardest part of
the training of a young draughtsman is his learning to feel
directly the relative angular or retinal magnitudes which
different parts of the field of view subtend. To do this he
must recover what Buskin calls the " innocence of the eye"
that is, a sort of childish perception of flat stains of colour
merely as such, without consciousness of what they signify.
With the rest of us this innocence is lost. Out of all the
visual magnitudes of each known object we have selected
one as the real one to think of, and degraded all the others
to serve as its signs. This ' real ' magnitude is determined
by aesthetic and practical interests. It is that which we get
when the object is at the distance most propitious for exact
visual discrimination of its details. This is the distance at
which we hold anything we are examining. Farther than
this we see it too small, nearer too large. And the larger
and the smaller feeling vanish in the act of suggesting this
one, their more important meaning. As I look along the
dining-table I overlook the fact that the farther plates and
glasses feel so much smaller than my own, for I know that
they are all equal in size, and the feeling, which is a present
sensation, is eclipsed in the glare of the knowledge, which is
a merely imagined one.
If the inconsistencies of sight-spaces inter se can thus be
reduced, of course there can be no difficulty in equating sight-
spaces with spaces given to touch. In this equation, it is
the touch-feeling which prevails as real and the sight which
serves as sign a relation made necessary not only by the
far greater constancy of felt over seen magnitudes, but by
the greater practical interest which the sense of touch pos-
sesses for our lives. As a rule, things only benefit or
harm us by coming into direct contact with our skin : sight
is, in Mr. Spencer's phrase, only a sort of anticipatory touch,
the latter is the " mother-tongue of thought," and the hand-
maid's idiom must be translated into the language of the
mistress before it can speak to the mind.
Later on we shall see that the feelings excited in the joints
when a limb moves, are used as signs of the path traversed
by the extremity. We seem to have in these joint-feelings
instances of space-feelings, small in se, but geometrically
similar to larger ones, preserving their form but suggesting
the magnified scale of other sensations with which they are
identified. But of this more anon. As for the equating of
sound-, smell- and taste-volumes with those yielded by the
more discriminative senses, they are too vague to need any
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 193
remark. It may be observed of pain, however, that its size
has to be reduced to that of the normal tactile size of the
organ which is its seat. A finger with a felon on it, and the
pulses of the arteries therein, both ' feel ' larger than we
believe they really ' are '.
It will have been noticed in the account given that when
two sensorial space-impressions, believed to come from the
same object, differ, then the one most interesting, practically or
aesthetically, is judged to be the trice one. This law of interest
holds throughout though a permanent interest, like that of
touch, may resist a strong but fleeting one like that of pain,
as in the case just given of the felon.
(c) Their Identification and Summation.
Now for the next step in our construction of real space :
How are the various sense-spaces added together into a consolidated
and unitary continuum ? For they are, in man at all events,
incoherent at the start.
When a dentist is excavating a small cavity in one of our
teeth we feel the hard point of his instrument scraping, in
various distinctly differing directions, a surface which seems
to our sensibility immensely larger than the subsequent use
of the mirror tells us it really is. And though the directions
of the scraping differ so completely inter se, not one of them
can be identified with the particular direction in the outer
world to which it corresponds. The space of the tooth-
sensibility forms thus a little world by itself, which can only
become congruent with the real space-world by further ex-
periences which shall alter its bulk, identify its directions,
fuse its margins, and finally imbed it as a definite part within
a definite whole. Even though every joint's rotations should
be felt to vary inter se as so many differences of direction in a
common room ; even though the same were true of diverse
tracings on the skin, and of diverse tracings on the retina
respectively, it would still not follow that feelings of direc-
tion, on these different surfaces, are intuitively comparable
among each other, or with the other directions yielded by the
feelings of the semi-circular canals. It would not follow that
we should immediately judge them all to subdivide a common
and single objective space- world.
If with the arms in an unnatural attitude we ' feel ' things,
we are perplexed about their shape, size and position. Let
the reader lie on his back with his arms stretched/ above
his head, and it will astonish him to find how ill able he is
to recognise the geometrical relations of objects placed within
13
194 w. JAMES :
reach of his hands. But the geometrical relations here
spoken of are nothing but identities recognised between the
directions and sizes perceived in this way and those of our
ordinary space-world. The two worlds do not fit each other
intuitively.
How lax the connexion between the system of visual and
the system of tactile directions is in man, appears from the
facility with which microscopists learn to reverse the move-
ments of their hand in manipulating things on the stage of
the instrument. To move the slide to the seen left they
must draw it to the felt right. But in a very few days the
habit becomes a second nature. So in tying our cravat,
shaving before a mirror, &c., the right and left sides are
inverted and the directions of our hand movements are the
opposite of what they seem. Yet this never annoys us.
Only when by accident we try to tie the cravat of another
person do we learn that there are two ways of combining
sight and touch perceptions. Let any one try for the first
time to write or draw while looking at the image of his hand
and paper in a mirror, and he will be utterly bewildered.
But a very short training will teach him to undo in this re-
spect the associations of his previous lifetime.
Prisms show this in an even more striking way. If the
eyes be armed with spectacles containing slightly prismatic
glasses with their bases turned, for example, towards the
right, every object looked at will be apparently translocated
to the left ; and the hand put forth to grasp any such object
will make the mistake of passing beyond it on the left side.
But less than an hour of practice in wearing such spectacles
rectifies the judgment so that no more mistakes are made.
In fact the new-formed associations are already so strong
that when the prisms are first laid aside again the opposite
error is committed, the habits of a lifetime violated, and the
hand now passed to the right of every object it seeks to
touch. 1
1 It might, indeed, seem incredible that life-long association should be
so rapidly undone. Were there any truth at all in the prevalent modern
doctrine that ancestral habits engender fixed instincts in the progeny, one
would say that the connexion with each other of the space-directions given
by different senses ought to be congenital, inseparable and unconquerable.
The facts cited might be taken to show that this modern doctrine, how-
ever it may be verified for lower forms, fails in its application to man. It
must be remembered, however, that the association of particular body-
movement directions with particular visual directions is not so constant as
the objection assumes, even in creatures ignorant of mirrors, prisms and
lenses. Every time we move one end of a lever towards the right we see
the other end move towards the left. Every time we pull down a rope or
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 195
The incoherence of the different primordial sense-spaces
inter se is often made a pretext for denying to the primitive
bodily feelings any spatial quality at all. Nothing is com-
moner than to hear it said : " Babies have originally no
spatial perception ; for when a baby's toe aches it does not
place the pain in the toe ". But this is all wrong. The ache
is a space ; and it will be located within whatever movement-
space may call it forth, or whatever pressure-space, heat-
space or what not, may envelop it. What happens is, that
the baby does not place his toe in the pain ; for he knows nothing
of his toe as yet. He has not attended to it as a visual
object ; he has not handled it with his fingers ; nor have its
normal organic sensations or contacts yet become interesting
enough to be discriminated from the whole massive feeling
of the foot, or even of the leg to which it belongs. In short,
the toe is neither a member of the babe's optical space, of
his hand-movement space, nor of his leg-and-foot space. It
has actually no mental existence but as this little pain-space.
What wonder then if the pain seem a little space-world all
by itself? 1
But let the pain once associate itself with these other
space-worlds, and its space will become part of their space.
Let the baby feel the nurse stroking the limb and awaken-
ing the pain every time her finger passes towards the toe ;
let him look on and see her finger on the toe every time the
pain shoots up ; let him handle his foot himself and get the
pain whenever the toe comes into his grasp ; let heating the
whole foot or moving the leg exacerbate the pain ; and all is
changed. The space of the pain becomes identified with
that part of each of the other spaces which is being felt when
it awakens ; and by their identity with it these parts are
identified with each other, and their totals grow systemati-
cally connected.
The general principles of the baby's action in all this
have now to be examined. As we found a little while ago
that the different seen magnitudes are reduced to repre-
vine hanging over a tree branch, the other end of it is seen to rise. And
thus even in infra-human creatures a certain indeterminateness of con-
nexion between visual and tactile directions of movement may be kept up.
The topic is one which might repay evolutionist philosophers for more
minute study.
1 Surgical operations on babies sometimes reveal an almost incredible
incoherence among their earliest bodily feelings. There is lacking in them
that system of pre-organised reflex " movements of defence " which in lower
creatures carry the mouth or the foot straight to the Dart attacked. A baby
may be vaccinated without being held.
196 w. JAMES :
sentatives of one real one, through the intermediation of an
object judged to be the same in all, so we shall now find that
the continuity and identity of the different sense-spaces rest
on the same objective judgment. This is what gives order to
the chaos.
Any group of different feelings always experienced (or at
will to be experienced) together, are simplified by the mind's
holding them for so many attributes or aspects of the same
outer reality which reality is always held to be represented
by one of them more truly and essentially than by the rest.
Space-feelings follow this law. If two or more sensible spaces
always do or alv:ays may occur at the same time or vary concomi-
tantly, we take them for two modes of appearance of the same real
space. That one whose content is most interesting is judged to be
the truest representative of this, the others become its mere asso-
ciates, properties or signs. 1
Thus, when a baby looks at its own moving hand, its
retina gets a certain movement-feeling whilst its hand and
arm become the seat of another movement-feeling. The
baby holds the two movements to occupy the same space.
The result is that the arm-space, more interesting than the
retinal space by reason of the important skin-sensations to
which it may lead, and therefore judged more real, is
equated with a certain part of the retinal space, which, in
becoming its sign, fixes to a certain extent the absolute
space-values of the rest of the retinal field.
Suppose the baby learning to locate the pain of a blister in
his toe by exploring his leg with his finger-tip and feeling the
pain shoot up sharply the instant the blister is touched.
The experiment gives him four different kinds of sensation
two of them protracted, two sudden. The first pair are the
movement-feeling in the joints of the upper limb, and the
movement-feeling on the skin of the leg and foot. These, as
concomitantly experienced, are identified in their totalities
as appearances of one objective space the hand is judged to
move through the same space in which the leg lies. The
second pair are the pain in the blister, and the peculiar feel-
ing the blister gives to the finger. Both these can be -repro-
duced at will by repeating the movement their spaces also
fuse ; and as each marks the end of a peculiar movement-
series (arm moved, leg stroked), the movement-spaces are
emphatically identified with each other at that end. Were
there other small blisters distributed down the leg, there
would be a number of these emphatic points ; the movement-
1 Cp. Lipps on " Complication," Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens, p. 579.
THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 197
spaces would be identified, not only as totals, but point for
point. And the emphatic sensations that may momentarily
occur imbedded in larger space-feelings not only play a part
in conferring the maximum of reality upon those spaces that
contain them, but they are the means of adding together
spaces which can only be experienced in succession.
If, wandering through the woods to-day by a new path, I
find myself suddenly in a glade which affects my senses
exactly as did another I reached last week at the end of a
different walk, I believe the two identical affections to pre-
sent the same persisting glade, and infer that I have attained
it by two differing roads. The spaces walked over grow
congruent by their extremities ; though apart from the one
sensation those extremities give me, I should be under no
necessity of connecting one walk with another at all. Now.
the case in no whit differs when shorter movements are con-
cerned. If, moving first one arm and then another, a blind
child gets the same kind of sensation upon the hand, and
gets it again as often as he repeats either process, he judges
that he has touched the same object by both motions, and
concludes that the motions terminate in a common place.
From place to place marked in this way he moves, and
adding the places moved through, one to another, he builds
up his notion of the extent of the outer world. The seeing
man's process is identical ; only his units, which may be suc-
cessive bird's-eye views, are much larger.
But the emphatic sensations that may interrupt a feeling
of movement perform another function still. They lend
their own scale of absolute magnitude to the movement.
That part of the movement-feeling with which they coincide
is equated in extent with them, they being more interesting
than it. But as the magnitude of this part of the movement-
feeling is immediately comparable in a more or less exact way
with that of its remaining parts, the whole of the movement-
space becomes measured in terms of the adventitious feeling
in question.
(d) Muscle-feelings versus Joint-feelings.
The applications of this last principle are best seen in the
Feelings of Movement which arise in joints. These feelings
have been too much neglected hitherto, and in entering now
somewhat minutely into their study I shall probably at the
same time freshen the interest of the reader, which under
the rather dry abstractions of the previous pages may pre-
sumably have flagged.
198 w. JAMES :
When, by simply flexing my right forefinger on its meta-
carpal joint, I trace with its tip an inch on the palm of my
left hand, is my feeling of the size of the inch purely and
simply a feeling in the skin of the palm, or have the muscu-
lar contractions of the right hand and forearm anything to
do with it ? In the preceding pages I have constantly
assumed spatial sensibility to be an affair of surfaces. At
first starting, the consideration of the " muscular sense "
as a space-measurer was postponed to a later stage. Many
writers, of whom the foremost was Thomas Brown, in his
Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, and of whom the
latest is no less a psychologist than Prof. Delboeuf of Liege,
hold that the consciousness of active muscular motion, aware
of its own amount, is the fons et origo of all spatial measure-
ment. It would seem to follow, if this theory were true,
that two skin-feelings, one of a large patch, one of a small
one, possess their difference of spatiality, not as an immediate
element, but solely by virtue of the fact that the large one, to
get its points successively excited, demands more muscular
contraction than the small one does. Fixed associations
with the several amounts of muscular contraction required
in this particular experience, would thus explain the apparent
sizes of the skin-patches, which sizes would consequently
not be primitive data but derivative results.
It seems to me that no evidence of the muscular measure-
ments in question exists ; but that all the facts may be
explained by surf ace- sensibility, provided we take that of the
joint-surfaces also into account.
The most striking argument, and the most obvious one,
which an upholder of the muscular theory is likely to pro-
duce, is undoubtedly this fact : if, with closed eyes, we trace
figures in the air with the extended forefinger (the motions
may occur from the metacarpal-, the wrist-, the elbow- or the
shoulder-joint indifferently), what we are conscious of in each
case, and indeed most acutely conscious of, is the geometric
path described by the finger-%>. Its angles, its subdivisions,
are all as distinctly felt as if seen by the eye ; and yet the
surface of the finger-tip receives no sensation at all. 1 But
with each variation of the figure, the muscular contractions
vary, and so do the feelings these yield. Are not these latter
the sensible data that make us aware of the lengths and
directions we discern in the traced line ?
1 Even if the figure be drawn on a board instead of in the air, the varia-
tions of contact on the finger's surface will be much simpler than the
peculiarities of the traced figure itself.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 199
Should we be tempted to object to this supposition
of the advocate of perception by muscular feelings, that
we have learned the spatial significance of these feelings
by reiterated experiences of seeing what figure is drawn
when each special muscular grouping is felt, so that
in the last resort the muscular space-feelings would be de-
rived from retinal-surface feelings ; our opponent might imme-
diately hush us by pointing to the fact that in persons born
blind the phenomenon in question is even more perfect than
in ourselves.
If we suggest that the blind may have originally traced
the figures on the cutaneous surface of cheek, thigh or
palm, and may now remember the specific figure which
each present movement formerly caused the skin-surface to
perceive, he may reply that the delicacy of the motor per-
ception far exceeds that of most of the cutaneous surfaces
that in fact we can feel a figure traced only in its differentials,
so to speak, a figure which we merely start to trace by our
finger-tip, a figure which traced in the same way on our
finger-tip by the hand of another is almost if not wholly un-
recognisable.
The champion of the muscular sense seems likely to be
triumphant until we invoke the articular cartilages, as
internal surfaces whose sensibility is called in play by every
movement we make, however delicate the latter may be.
To establish the part they play in our geometrising, it is
necessary to review a few facts. It has long been known by
medical practitioners that, in patients with cutaneous anaes-
thesia of a limb, whose muscles also are insensible to the
thrill of the faradic current, a very accurate sense of the
position into which the limb may be flexed or extended by the
hand of another may be preserved. 1 On the other hand, we
may have the sense of attitude impaired when the tactile
sensibility is intact. That the pretended feeling of outgoing
innervation can play in these cases no part, is obvious from
the fact that the movements by which the limb changes its
position are passive ones, imprinted on it by the experiment-
ing physician. The writers who have sought a rationale of
the matter have been driven by way of exclusion to assume
the articular surfaces to be the seat of the perception in ques-
tion. 2
That the joint-surfaces are sensitive appears evident from
1 See for example Duchenne, Electrisation localisee, pp. 727, 770,
Ley den ; Vir chow's Archiv, Bd. xlvii. (1869).
2 E.g., Enlenburg, Lehrb. d. NervenJcrankheiten, Berlin, 1878, i. 3.
200 w. JAMES :
the fact that in inflammation they become the seat of excru-
ciating pains, and from the perception by everyone who lifts
weights or presses against resistance, that every increase of
the force opposing him betrays itself to his consciousness
principally by the starting-out of new feelings or the increase
of old ones, in or about the joints. If the structure and mode
of mutual application of two articular surfaces be taken into
account, it will appear that, granting the surfaces to be
sensitive, no more favourable mechanical conditions could
be possible for the delicate calling of the sensibility into
play than are realised in the minutely graduated rotations
and firmly resisted variations of pressure involved in every
act of extension or flexion. Nevertheless it is a great pity
that we have as yet no direct testimony, no expressions from
patients with healthy joints accidentally laid open, of the
impressions they experience when the cartilage is pressed or
rubbed.
The nearest approach to direct evidence, so far as I know,
is contained in the paper of Lewinski, 1 published in 1879.
This observer had a patient the inner half of whose leg was
anaesthetic. When this patient stood up, he had a curious
illusion about the position of his limb, which disappeared the
moment he lay down again : he thought himself knock-kneed.
If, as Lewinski says, we assume the inner half of the joint
to share the insensibility of the corresponding part of the
skin, then he ought to feel, when the joint-surfaces pressed
against each other in the act of standing, the outer half of
the joint most strongly. But this is the feeling he would
also get whenever it was by any chance sought to force his
leg into a knock-kneed attitude. Lewinski was led by this
case to examine the feet of certain ataxic patients with im-
perfect sense of position. He found in every instance that
when the toes were flexed and drawn upon at the same time
(the joint-surfaces drawn asunder) all sense of the amount
of flexion disappeared. On the contrary, when he pressed a
toe in, whilst flexing it, the patient's appreciation of the
amount of flexion was much improved, evidently because
the artificial increase of articular pressure made up for the
pathological insensibility of the parts.
Applying these results (which, though supported by cir-
cumstantial evidence only, seem nevertheless invulnerable)
to the case of the tracing finger-tip, we see that the latter
gives no countenance to the theory of localisation by
muscular sense. The tip is indubitably localised at the
1 " Ueber den Kraftsinn," Virchow's Archiv, Bd. Ixxvii. 134.
THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 201
successive points of its path by incoming sensations pro-
duced by the slipping over each other of the cartilages on
which it turns ; and the whole phenomenon, instead of re-
futing, most brilliantly corroborates the view that localisa-
tion is exclusively a surface-affair. Muscular contraction is
only indirectly instrumental in giving us space -feelings, ~by
its objective effects on surfaces. In the case of skin and
retina, it produces a motion of the stimulus upon the sur-
face; in the case of joints it produces a motion of the surfaces
upon each other such motion being by far the most deli-
cate manner of sensibly exciting the surfaces in question.
One is tempted to doubt whether the muscular sensibility as
such plays even a subordinate part as sign, of these more
immediately geometrical perceptions which are so uniformly
associated with it as effects of a common cause the contrac-
tion objectively considered. 1
1 The admirably judicious A. W. Volkmann says ( Untersuchungen im
Gebiete der Optik, Leipzig, 1863, p. 188): "Muscular feeling gives tolerably
fine evidence as to the existence of movement, but hardly any direct infor-
mation about its extent or direction. We are not aware that the contrac-
tions of a supinator longus have a wider range than those of a supinator
brevis ; and that the fibres of a bipenniform muscle contract in opposite
directions is a fact of which the muscular feeling itself gives not the
slightest intimation. Muscle-feeling belongs to that class of general sensa-
tions which tell us of our inner states, but not of outer relations; it does
not belong among the space-perceiving senses." See also Ibid., p. 189,
and Hering, Beitrcige, pp. 31, 240. Weber (Article "Tastsinn") also
calls attention to the fact that muscular movements as large and strong as
those of the diaphragnl go on continually without our perceiving them as
motion. See also Lewes, Problems, vol. ii., p. 478. But the final crushing
defeat of the muscular-sense as the chief agent in space-perception is given
by Prof. Lipps in a few pages (6 to 27 of his Psychologische Studien, 1885),
which I advise all students to read.
Nevertheless certain facts may still be brought up against our surface-
theory. When we move the wings of the nostrils, the external ear and, to
a certain degree, the tongue, the feeling we get is distinctly one of move-
ment, but it involves anatomically no such passage of anything over a
surface as, according to our text, it should. The explanation is that we
have learned the movement-significance of these movement-feelings and
skin-stretchings, by producing them "passively," by manipulating the parts
on former occasions with our fingers. A personal experience, made since
the text was written, seems to me strongly to corroborate this view. For
years I have been familiar, during the act of gaping, with a large, round,
smooth sensation in the region of the throat, a sensation characteristic of
gaping and nothing else, but which, although I had often wondered about
it, never suggested to my mind the motion of anything. The reader pro-
bably knows from his own experience exactly what feeling I mean.
It was not till one of my students told me, that I learned its objective
cause. If we look into the mirror while gaping, we see that at the moment
we have this feeling, the uvula or hanging palate rises by the contraction
of its intrinsic muscles. The contraction of these muscles and the com-
202 w. JAMES :
But if this is all so, it may well be asked : " Why do we
feel the figure to be traced, not within the joint itself, but
in such an altogether different place ? And why do we feel it
so much larger than it really is ? "
I will answer these questions by asking another : Why do
we move our joints at all ? Surely to gain something more
valuable than the insipid joint-feelings themselves. And
these more interesting feelings (if we abstract from eye and
ear) are in the main produced upon the skin of the moving
part, or of some other part over which it passes. With
movements of the fingers we explore the configuration of all
real objects with which we have to deal, our own body as
well as foreign things. Nothing that interests us is located
in the joint ; everything that interests us either is, or
coincides in place with, some part of our skin. The skin-
spaces come thus to figure as the important ones for us to
concern ourselves with. Every time the joint moves, even
though no skin-sensation occurs, the reminiscence of skin-
sensations which formerly coincided with that extent of
movement, ideally awaken as the movement's import, and
the mind drops the present sign to attend to the import
alone. The joint-sensation itself, and as such, does not dis-
appear in the process. A little attention easily detects it,
with all its fine peculiarities, hidden beneath its vaster
suggestions ; so that really the mind has two space-
perceptions before it, congruent in form but different in
scale and place, either of which exclusively it may notice, or
both at once, the joint-space it feels and the real space it
means.
The joint-spaces serve so admirably as signs because of
their capacity for parallel variation to all the peculiarities of
external motion. There is not a direction in the real world
nor a ratio of distance, which cannot be matched by some
direction or extent of joint-rotation. Joint-feelings, like all
feelings, are roomy. Specific ones are contrasted inter se as
pression of the palatine mucous membrane are what occasion the feeling ;
and I was at first astonished that, coming from so small an organ, it could
appear so voluminous. Now the curious point is this that no sooner had
I learnt by the eye its objective space-significance, than I found myself
enabled mentally to feel it as a movement upwards of a body in the situa-
tion of the uvula. When I now have it, my fancy injects it, so to speak,
with the image of the rising uvula ; and it absorbs the image easily and
naturally. In a word, a muscular contraction gave me a sensation whereof
I was unable during forty years to interpret a motor meaning, of which
two glances of the eye made me permanently the master. To my mind no
further proof is needed of the fact that muscular contraction, merely as
such, need not be perceived directly as so much motion through space.
THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 203
different directions are contrasted within the same extent.
If I extend my arm straight out at the shoulder the rotation
of the shoulder-joint will give me one feeling of movement ;
if then I sweep the arm forward, the same joint will give
me another feeling of movement. Both these movements are
felt to happen in space, and differ in specific quality. Why
shall not the specificness of the quality just consist in the
feeling of a peculiar direction? Why may not the several
joint-feelings le so many perceptions of movement in so
many different directions ? That we cannot explain why
they should is no presumption that they do not, for we never
can explain why any sense-organ should awaken the
sensation it does.
But if the joint-feelings are directions and extents,
standing in relation to each other, the task of association in
interpreting their import in eye- or skin-terms is a good deal
simplified. Let the movement &c, of a certain joint, derive its
absolute space-value from the cutaneous feeling it is always
capable of engendering ; then the longer movement abed of
the same joint will be judged to have a greater space-value,
even though it may never have wholly merged with a
skin-experience. So of differences of direction : so much
joint-difference = so much skin-difference ; therefore more
joint-difference = more skin-difference. In fact, the joint-
feeling can excellently serve as a map on a reduced scale, of
a reality which the imagination may project at its pleasure
into this or that part of objective space.
When the joint-feeling in itself acquires an emotional
interest, which happens whenever the joint is inflamed and
painful, the secondary suggestions fail to arise and the
movement is felt where it is, and in its proper scale of
magnitude.
I have said hardly anything about associations with visual
space in the foregoing account, because I wished to represent
a process which the blind man and the seeing might equally
share. It is to be noticed that the space suggested to the
imagination and projected to the distance of the finger-tip is
not represented as any such specific skin-tract as that of
cheek or palm, by means of which the ' meaning ' of the
joint-rotation may originally have been learned. What the
mind imagines is rather a generic image, an abstraction from
many skin-spaces whose local-signs have neutralised each
other by blending, and left nothing but their common vast-
ness behind. We shall see as we go on that this generic
abstraction of space - magnitude from the various local
peculiarities of feeling which accompanied it when it was
204 w. JAMES :
for the first time felt, occurs on a considerable scale in the
acquired perceptions of blind as well as of seeing men.
(e) Extradition.
It is now necessary to carry our study of the imaginary
projection of feelings still further, and to follow out those
cases where we seem to perceive directly by the sense of
touch what happens at distances far removed from any
sensory surface of the body. Take first a few more facts.
If one of the hairs of our head be pulled, we are pretty
accurately sensible of the direction of the pulling by the
movements imparted to the head. 1 But the feeling of the
pull is localised, not in that part of the hair's length which
the fingers hold, but in the scalp itself. This seems con-
nected with the fact that our hair hardly serves at all as a
tactile organ. In creatures with vibrissce, however, and in those
quadrupeds whose whiskers are tactile organs, it can hardly
be doubted that the feeling is projected out of the root into
the shaft of the hair itself. We ourselves have an approach
to this when the beard as a whole, or the hair as a whole, is
touched. We perceive the contact at some distance from
the skin.
When fixed and hard appendages of the body, like the
teeth and nails, are touched, we feel the contact where it
objectively is, and not deeper in, where the nerve-termina-
tions lie. If, however, the tooth is loose, we feel two
contacts, spatially separated, one at its root, one at its
top.
From this case to that of a hard body not organically con-
nected with the surface, but only accidentally in contact
with it, the transition is immediate. With the point of a
cane we can trace letters in the air or on a wall just as with
the finger-tip ; and in so doing feel the size and shape of the
cane's path just as immediately as formerly we seemed to
feel the path described by the finger. Similarly the draughts-
man's immediate perception seems to be of the point of his
pencil, the surgeon's of the end of his knife, the duellist's of
the tip of his rapier as it plunges through his enemy's skin.
When on the middle of a vibrating ladder, we feel not only
our feet on the round, but the ladder's feet against the
ground far below. If we shake a locked iron gate we feel
the middle, on which our hands rest, move, but we equally
1 This is proved by Weber's device of causing the head to be firmly
pressed against a support by another person, whereupon the direction of
traction ceases to be perceived.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 205
feel the stability of the ends where the hinges and the lock
are, and we seem to feel all three at once. 1
Such examples open up the whole subject of Extradi-
tion, one of the most difficult problems which can occupy
the space-philosopher. We shall see later in the special
section on vision that the third dimension, or depth, has
always been the stumbling-block of theorists. Here, how-
ever, it behoves us to note that the seeming migration we
have just studied, of a feeling from a joint to a finger-tip,
with concomitant enlargement of size, seems to differ in no
essential respect from those migrations beyond the skin with
greater enlargement still. Closer examination will corrobo-
rate this essential identity of the two cases, and the exami-
nation will be much facilitated by recalling a few general
principles at the start. We saw that all sensations are
voluminous or contain the third dimension in a vague way.
Projection, which is localisation of an impression at a deter-
minate distance in this dimension, involves three factors :
(1) feeling the extent of the dimension as a whole ; ' (2) dis-
criminating a partial sensation within it ; (3) measuring the
distance of that sensation from one of the extremes.
It would appear therefore that, in the first instance at any
rate, a sensation can be projected or extradited, only if it
form part of a space--volume felt all at once, or in continuous
succession. The mind in projecting would seem to identify
its own position with that of one part of this volume, as a
here, and detach from itself the other part, as a there. Now
the centre the mind has thus chosen for its own felt habita-
tion is undeniably sometimes within the head, sometimes
within the throat or breast not a rigorously fixed spot there,
but a region within which it seems to itself to move, 2 and
from any portion of which it may send forth its various acts
of attention. Extradition from either of these regions is the
common law under which we perceive the whereabouts of the
north star, of our own voice, of the contact of our teeth with
each other, of the tip of our finger, the point of our cane on
the ground, or a pain in our elbow-joint. The appearance
of a feeling in the joint is as much a projection or a migra-
tion as its appearance in the north star would be. Ampu-
tations show how, owing to central excitement, limbs no
longer existing are felt in their old site, or somewhat re-
tracted. But the fact of extradition is the same when the
1 Cp. Lotze, Med. Psych., 428-433 ; Lipps, Grundtatsachen des Seelenlebens,
582.
2 The reader is reminded of the facts mentioned in sec. 1.
206 w. JAMES :
limb is there l as when it is not. Extradition obtains, then,
even of such sensations as we locate on the exact sensory
surfaces where the nerves terminate. Could we feel our
retinal pictures where they are, this would involve a dealing
with the third dimension quite as thorough as does our feel-
ing them across the room. The distinction so often made
between our primitive spatial perception as that of a surface,
and our perception of the third dimension as subsequent and
acquired, is utterly baseless. For to feel any surface, as
such, involves all three dimensions.
The only difference between primitive and acquired in
this department of consciousness is the difference between
vague and unbroken on the one hand, and subdivided and
measured on the other. It is conceivable that the subdivi-
sion of either dimension might be earlier and more accurate
than that of the two others, but it is inconceivable that either
dimension should appear out of relation to the others, incon-
ceivable that the very earliest apprehension of space should
not be that of space cubic, as it really exists. Those philo-
sophers therefore who hold that the prim of all external per-
ception is the vague consciousness of the body as cubically
extended must be held to be essentially in the right. 2
To return now, after this theoretic digression, to our spe-
cial facts. For a joint to be felt in situ, the entire intervening
mass of tissue between it and the brain must be susceptible of becom-
ing one continuous object of perception. The existence of thi&
intervening space-object is the conditio sine qua non of the
joint's ' projection ' to the farther end of it. To say
nothing of other ways in which this space may be felt (as by
the eye or the exploring hand), it is felt by means of its own
nerves, whose local-signs pass gradually into those in and
about the joint, and give us, whenever they awaken together,
a unitary massive space. For the finger-tip to be felt where
1 In a purely subjective account, its ' being ; there means, i
only the presence of other feelings than the one in question,
'there 3 iust as it is.
of course,
projected
: there 5 just
2 Of late years the doctrine has been revived by I. H. Fichte and Ulrici
that the soul itself is a cubically extended substance pervading the body,
and that the latter becomes the " immediate object " in perception through
the fact that the perceiving subject is coextensive with it. And this view
has been defended in a recent American work of unusual critical ability -
The Perception of Space and Matter, by J. E. Walter, Boston, 1880. (Cp.
Noah Porter's Human Intellect, p. 130.) But it is not necessary that we
should commit ourselves either to the theory of an extended soul-substance
or to that of the body as "immediate object". I only cite these theories
to illustrate the need which coerces men to postulate something tridimen-
sional as the first thing in external perception.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 207
it is, a still longer intervening continuum must be sensible,
with the feeling lodged at its end.
But how, when the space between the brain and the point
of projection has no nerves (which is the case with spaces
beyond the body's limits), is it to be felt as an intervening
continuum at all ? Simply by forming with the mass of
sensitive tissue and surface beyond which it extends a new
object for some other sense.
Suppose the cane held in my right hand and its point
pressed against the wall. I can, by paying attention, feel
the whole solidity of my arm, the sensations in its joints as
they move, and the pressure of the fingers upon the cane.
But I also feel the wall where the cane touches it a yard
away from my hand. Now this yard forms with the arm a
common object, either for the exploring motion of my left
hand (which may pass first down the right arm, and then
down the cane it holds, by a combination of continuous
movements) ; or for the skin of the body and leg, against the
length of which both arm and cane may be applied. 1 This
common objectivity of arm and cane gives the space of the
projection as a whole, the first of those three factors which
we saw extradition to involve.
The next factor is the particular kind of sensation to be
extradited. This can be nothing else than the feeling of
the hardness or softness of the wall as it would affect our
exploring hand. The similarity of the cane's actual pressure
to this ideal pressure makes it seem as if the actual feeling
of the hand had migrated into a new place. Most probing
and palpating instruments are rigid, and communicate
without alteration the feeling the hand itself would receive
if it took the place of their farther extremity. Finally, the
last factor is the precise distance within the total depth at
which the sensation shall be lodged. In the case of the
rigid stick this offers no difficulty. Easy experiences teach
us that the cane's tip is the point from which diverge all the
pressures it exerts upon our hand. Thither accordingly we
send our image of the resisting thing we feel. When the
cane is flexible, its own changes of shape become important,
and we lodge the feeling of resistance partly in its tip, partly
along its whole length. If we move the cane's tip through
the air, instead of letting it touch the wall, all we need do
is to multiply our hand-movement sensations by a certain
factor corresponding to the cane's length. This gives us the
distinct image of a large path traversed by the tip. This
1 Again I omit all mention of the eye, so as to account for the blind man.
208 w. JAMES :
ideal and uniform enlargement of a system of sensations is
nothing exceptional. Vision is full of it ; and in the manual
arts, where a workman gets a tool larger than the one he is
accustomed to and has suddenly to adapt all his movements
to its scale, or where he has to execute a familiar set of
movements in an unnatural position of body; where a piaiio-
player meets an instrument with unusually broad or narrow
keys ; where a man has to alter the size of his handwriting,
we see how promptly the mind multiplies once for all, as it
were, the whole series of its operations in advance by a
constant factor, and has not to trouble itself after that with
further adjustment of the details.
We have now to pass to the great subject of Visual Space,
and in view of what is to follow may best at this stage
append (in a Supplementary Note) some remarks on the
peculiarities of the blind man's perception. But before
closing the present section, let us look back for a moment
upon the results of the last pages, and ask ourselves
again whether the building up of the more systematic and
orderly space-perceptions out of the more chaotic primitive
ones requires any other mental powers than those displayed
in ordinary intellectual operations. I think it is obvious
granting the spatial quale to exist in the primitive sensa-
tions, that discrimination, association, addition, multiplica-
tion and division, blending into generic images, substitution
of similars, selective emphasis, and abstraction from un-
interesting details, are quite capable of giving us all the
space-perceptions we have so far studied, without the aid of
any mysterious "mental chemistry" or power of "synthesis"
to create elements absent from the original data of feeling.
It cannot be too strongly urged in the face of mystical
attempts, however learned, that there is not a landmark, not
a length, not a point of the compass in real space which is
not some one of our feelings, either experienced directly as a
presentation or ideally suggested 1 by another feeling which
has come to serve as its sign. In degrading some sensations
to the rank of signs and exalting others to that of realities
signified, we smooth out the wrinkles of our first chaotic
impressions and make a continuous order of what was a
rather incoherent multiplicity. But the content of the order
remains identical with that of the multiplicity sensational
both, through and through.
1 A generic image of several space-feelings of the same sphere of
sensibility may take the place of an individual image in the case of ideal
-suggestion, where the latter is not of a definitely measured extension.
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 209
NOTE. The Space of the Blind.
The blind man's construction of real space differs from that of the
seeing man most obviously in the larger part which synthesis plays in it,
and the relative subordination of analysis. The seeing baby's eyes take in
the whole room at once, and discriminative attention must arise in him
before single objects are visually discerned. The blind child, on the con-
trary, must form his mental image of the room by the addition, piece to
piece, of parts which he learns to know successively. With our eyes we
may apprehend instantly an enormous bird's-eye-view of a landscape which
the blind man is condemned to build up bit by bit after weeks perhaps of
exploration. We are exactly in his predicament, however, for spaces which
exceed our visual range. We think the ocean as a whole by multiplying
mentally the impression we get at any moment when at sea. The distance
between New York and San Francisco is computed in day's journeys ; that
from earth to sun is so many times the earth's diameter, &c. ; and of longer
distances still we may be said to have no adequate mental image whatever,
but only numerical verbal symbols.
But the symbol will often give us the emotional effect of the perception.
Such expressions as the abysmal vault of heaven, the endless expanse of
ocean, &c., summarise many computations to the imagination, and give the
sense of an enormous horizon. So it seems with the blind. They multiply
mentally the amount of a distinctly felt freedom to move, and gain the
immediate sense of a vaster freedom still. Thus it is that blind men are
never without the consciousness of their horizon. They all enjoy travel-
ling, especially with a companion who can describe to them the objects
they pass. On the prairies they feel the great openness ; in valleys they
feel closed in ; and one has told me that he thought few seeing people
could enjoy the view from a mountain top more than he. A blind person
on entering a house or room immediately receives, from the reverberations
of his voice and steps, an impression of its dimensions, and to a certain
extent of its arrangement. The tympanic sense noticed on pp. 5, 6 comes in
to help here, and possibly other forms of tactile sensibility not yet under-
stood. Mr. W. Hanks Levy, the blind author of Blindness and the Blind
(London), gives the following account of his own powers of perception :
" Whether within a house or in the open air, whether walking or standing
still, I can tell, although quite blind, when I am opposite an object, and
can perceive whether it be tall or short, slender or bulky. I can also detect
whether it be a solitary object or a continuous fence ; whether it be a close
fence or composed of open rails ; and often whether it be a wooden fence,
a brick or stone wall, or a quick-set hedge. I cannot usually perceive
objects if much lower than my shoulder, but sometimes very low objects
can be detected. This may depend on the nature of the objects, or on some
abnormal state of the atmosphere. The currents of air can have nothing
to do with this power, as the state of the wind does not directly affect it ;
the sense of hearing has nothing to do with it, as when snow lies thickly
on the ground objects are more distinct, although the footfall cannot be
heard. I seem to perceive objects through the skin of my face, and to have
the impressions immediately transmitted to the brain. The only part of
my body possessing this power is my face ; this I have ascertained by suit-
able experiments. Stopping my ears does not interfere with it, but cover-
ing my face with, a thick veil destroys it altogether. None of the five
senses have anything to do with the existence of this power, and the
circumstances above named induce me to call this unrecognised sense by
the name of 'facial perception'. . . . When passing along a street I
can distinguish shops from private houses, and even point out the doors
and windows, &c., and this whether the doors be shut or open. When a
window consists of one entire sheet of glass, it is more difficult to discover
14
210 w. JAMES :
than one composed of a number of small panes. From this it would
appear that glass is a bad conductor of sensation, or at any rate of the
sensation specially connected with this sense. When objects below the
face are perceived, the sensation seems to come in an oblique line from the
object to the upper part of the face. While walking with a friend in
Forest Lane, Stratford, I said, pointing to a fence which separated the road
from a field, ' Those rails are not quite as high as my shoulder '. He looked
at them, and said they were higher. We, however, measured, and found
them about three inches lower than my shoulder. At the time of making
this observation I was about four feet from the rails. Certainly in this
instance facial perception was more accurate than sight. When the lower
part of a fence is brick- work, and the upper part rails, the fact can be
detected, and the line where the two meet easily perceived. Irregularities-
in height, and projections and indentations in walls, can also be dis-
covered." According to Mr. Levy, this power of seeing with the face is
diminished by a fog, but not by ordinary darkness. At one time he could
tell when a cloud obscured the horizon, but he has now lost that power,,
which he has known several persons to possess who are totally blind.
These effects of aqueous vapour suggest immediately that fluctuations in
the heat radiated by the objects may be the source of the perception. One
blind gentleman, Mr. Kilbume, an instructor in the Perkins Institution in
South Boston, who has the power spoken of in an unusual degree, proved,
however, to have no more delicate a sense of temperature in his face than
ordinary persons. He himself supposed that his ears had nothing to do
with the faculty until a complete stoppage of them, not only with cotton
but with putty on top of it, by abolishing the perception entirely, proved
his first impression to be erroneous. Many blind men say immediately
that their ears are concerned in the matter.
Sounds certainly play a far more prominent part in the mental life of
the blind than in our own. In taking a walk through the country, the
mutations of sound, far and near, constitute their chief delight. And to a
great extent their imagination of distance and of objects moving from one
distant spot to another seems to consist in thinking how a certain sonority
would be modified by the change of place. It is unquestionable that the
semi-circular canal feelings play a great part in defining the points of the
compass and the direction of distant spots, in the blind as in us. We start
towards them by feelings of this sort ; and so many directions, so many
different-feeling ' starts '.
The only point that offers any theoretic difficulty is the prolongation
into space of the direction, after the start. We saw on p. 206 that for-
extradition to occur beyond the skin, the portion of skin in question and
the space beyond must form a common object for some, other sensory
surface. The eyes are for most of us this sensory surface ; for the blind it
can only be other parts of the skin, coupled or not with motion. But the
mere gropings of the hands in every direction must end by surrounding
the whole body with a sphere of felt space. And this sphere must become
enlarged with every movement of locomotion, these movements gaining
their space-values from the semi-circular-canal-feelings which accompany
them, and from the farther and farther parts of large fixed objects (such as
the bed, the wainscotting or a fence) which they bring within the grasp.
It might be supposed that a knowledge of space acquired by so many
successive discrete acts would always retain a somewhat jointed and so to
speak granulated character. When we who are gifted with sight think of
a space too large to come into a single field of view, we are apt to imagine
it as composite, and filled with more or less jerky stoppings and startings
(think, for instance, of the space from here to San Francisco), or else we
reduce the scale to an intuitively manageable one, and imagine how much
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE. (ll.) 211
larger on a map the distance would look than others with whose totality
we are familiar.
I am disposed to believe, after interrogating many blind persons, that
the use of imaginary maps on a reduced scale is not as frequent with them
as with the rest of us. Possibly the extraordinary changeableness of the
visual magnitudes of things makes this habit natural to us, while the fixity
of tactile magnitudes keeps them from falling into it. (When the blind
young man operated on by Dr. Franz was shown a portrait in a locket, he
was vastly surprised that the face could be put into so small a compass : it
would have seemed to him, he said, as impossible as to put a bushel into
a pint.) Be this as it may, however, the space which each blind man feels
to extend beyond his body is felt by him as one smooth continuum all
trace of those muscular startings and stoppings and reversals which pre-
sided over its formation having been eliminated from the memory. It
seems, in other words, a generic image of the space-element common to all
these experiences, with the unessential particularities of each left out. In
truth, where in this space a start or a stop may have occurred, was quite
accidental. It may never occur just there again, and so the attention lets
it drop altogether. Even as long a space as that traversed in a several-
mile walk will not necessarily appear to a blind man's thought in the guise
of a series of locomotor acts. Only where there is some distinct locomotor
difficulty, such as a step to ascend, a difficult crossing, or a disappearance of
the path, will distinct locomotor images constitute the idea. Elsewhere the
space seems continuous, and its parts may even all seem co-existent ; though,
as a very intelligent blind friend once remarked to me, " To think of such
distances involves probably more mental wear and tear and brain-waste in
the blind than in the seeing". This seems to jxrint to a greater element
of successive addition and construction in the blind man's idea.
Our own visual explorations go on by means of innumerable stoppings
and startings of the eyeballs. Yet these are all effaced from the final space-
sphere of our visual imagination. They have neutralised each other. We
can even distribute our attention to the right and left sides simultaneously,
and think of those two quarters of space as co-existent. Does the smooth-
ing out of the locomotor interruptions from the blind man's tactile space-
sphere offer any greater paradox ? Surely not. And it is curious to note
that both in him and in us there is one particular locomotor feeling that is
apt to assert itself obstinately to the last. We and he alike spontaneously
imagine space as lying in front of us, for reasons too obvious to enumerate.
If we think of the space behind us we, as a rule, have to turn round mentally,
and in doing so the front space vanishes. But in this, as in the other things
of which we have been talking, individuals differ widely. Some, in ima-
gining a room, can think of all its six surfaces at once like Mr. Galton's
correspondents quoted in MIND v. 315. Others mentally turn round, or, at
least, imagine the room in several successive and mutually exclusive acts.
Sir Wm. Hamilton (Lects. on Metaphysics, ii. 174) has, by resuscitating it,
given to the foolish opinion of a German philosopher of the last century,
Platner, greater currency among us than it deserves. Platner says : " The
attentive observation of a person born blind . . . has convinced me
that the sense of touch by itself is altogether incompetent to afford us the
representation of extension and space. ... In fact, to those born blind,
time serves instead of space. Vicinity and distance mean in their mouths
nothing more than the shorter or longer time . . . necessary to attain from
some one feeling to some other." It is needless to remark on the utterly
arbitrary and fanciful character of such an interpretation. No opinion is so
silly but it will find some " learned Theban " to defend it. Platner's doc-
trine may well pair off with that of Brown, the Mills and other English
psychologists, who hold colours to be primitively seen without extension.
III. FUKTHEE PKOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (I.) 1
By EDMUND GUENEY.
IT is difficult to get a satisfactory definition of what consti-
tutes 'hypnotic trance '. If we begin at the bottom of the
scale with animals that have been subjected to certain
processes of fixation and manipulation the only phenomena
open to observation are immobility and anaesthesia ; animals
present nothing corresponding to what I have called the
" alert stage " (see MIND No. 33) less accurately, I think,
described as the somnamlulic stage of hypnotism. It
would be pedantic, perhaps, to refuse to call their state one
of hypnotisation, when it has been produced by means similar
to those employed to hypnotise human beings, and when
their condition appears analogous to the deeper or comatose
stage of human trance ; still it would obviously be impossible
to accept immobility and anaesthesia as affording a sufficient
definition of a hypnotic condition, for at that rate a deeply
chloroformed patient would be 'hypnotised'. And when
we turn to human beings, there seem to be strong reasons
against taking the ground of definition from any physical
symptoms. Analgesia, diminished sensibility of the con-
junctiva, &c., are not distinctive, and are not constant.
Increased muscular irritability and catalepsy are frequently
absent in ' subjects ' who manifest the most interesting
psychical phenomena ; moreover, these muscular peculiarities
are common to certain affections generally called hypnotic
and to certain affections generally called hysterical, and for
no purpose is a definition of hypnotism more needed than to
distinguish it from morbid affections to preserve a state
whose most interesting features may be observed at a
minute's notice in strong and healthy young men, from any
necessary association with the idea of lesion or chronic
instability. ' Inhibition of inhibitory functions ' is the
sufficient, though clumsy, description of the immediate
ground of many hypnotic phenomena, including mechanical
imitations of gesture, mechanical continuance of particular
muscular movements and diminished reaction-time ; but
this ground is clearly too general to found a definition
upon the same sort of inhibition being involved in a
1 See MIND ix. 110, 477 (Nos. 33, 36).
FUETHEE PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 213
minor degree in all manner of circumstances of absorbed
attention or sudden shock. It appears to me that the
only serviceable definition must depend on the idea of
what I have ventured in a former paper (MiND No. 36)
to call " psychical reflex action". That is to say, I should
confine the term ' hypnotic trance ' to a state in which (or
in some stage of which) inhibition reaches the higher inhibi-
tory and co-ordinating faculties ; and particular ideas, or
groups of ideas, readily dissociating themselves from their
normal relation to other groups and to general controlling
conceptions, and throwing off the restraint proper to elements
in a sane scheme, respond with abnormal vigour and certainty
to any excitations that may be addressed to them. Such
response may be shown (1) in the inhibition, by command,
of ordinary muscular movements or control of movements ;
(2) in the ease with which the ' subject's ' mind can be
steered, so to speak, in the course of conversation or narra-
tion ; but chiefly (3) in the ready imposition, by external
suggestion, of sensory hallucinations, or (4) of abnormal
lines of conduct. This psychical characteristic (educible, if
not actually educed, in the ' subject ' see MIND No. 33) has
belonged to nearly all the cases which have been described
as hypnotic, and, in a marked degree, scarcely to any others ;
for only by the rarest exception does it occur spontaneously
in morbid cases. As thus defined, moreover, hypnotism is
conveniently marked off from the natural condition som-
nambulism to which it is most akin. And the definition
has the further advantage of emphasising what are not only
the most constant but also decidedly the most important and
instructive of the hypnotic phenomena. 1 For in every
branch of mental and moral science psychology, ethics,
jurisprudence and, we may add, the extraordinary thera-
peutical applications of ' suggestion ' the interest of Hyp-
notism, of which every year witnesses a marked advance, has
centred in the various forms of mono-ideism embraced under
the conception of " psychical reflex action ".
Now all this interest has to do, of course, with the state
itself, not with its genesis. The facts studied are peculiari-
ties of mental condition which appear after the induction, by
whatever means, of a certain stage of hypnotic trance.
Questions connected with the means by which the trance
may be induced have held for the psychologist a subordinate
1 Such a definition of the trance proper need not, of course, prevent us
from applying hypnotic terms to local affections such as the rigidity or
anaesthesia of a single limb which are brought about by means similar to
those used in the production of trance
214 E. GUENEY :
position : he has at most attempted to supplement the
ordinary physiological doctrines as to the effect of ' fixation '
and ' monotonous stimulation ' by the conception of ' at-
tention ' an attempt which has been misleading, in so far
as it has implied that attention on the part of the ' subject '
(who may be an infant or a cray-fish) is a general condition of
hypnotisation. Certain recent events, however, have given
special importance to this topic of trance-induction or
' hypnogeny,' 1 and have raised in a startling form the
question of the efficacy of psychical influence as a hypno-
genetic agent. And this question naturally connects itself
with a more general inquiry respecting ' specific influence '
and ' mesmeric rapport ' topics which, in my last paper,
I noticed only to avoid, as not at that time coming within
the most extended limits of scientific recognition, but which
analysis may perhaps rob of some of their mystery, and which
I am now at least justified in having described as lying " in
the direct path of orthodox hypnotic experiment ".
In the paper just referred to (MiND No. 36) I dwelt on the
fact that the various processes by which hypnotic trance
may be induced whether regarded in their physical aspects,
as fixation of the eyes or gentle peripheral stimulation, or
in their psychical aspects, as expectation or attention do
little or nothing to explain the condition which ensues, inas-
much as nothing that we know, outside hypnotism, would
have led us to predict that the results would follow the pro-
cesses ; so that the " profound nervous change," which Braid
proclaimed as the immediate cause of the results, has still
to be accepted as an ultimate fact. And I further drew
attention to the peculiarity that the production of this pro-
found nervous change seems, in the first instance, always to
require some distinct physical stimulation ; 2 though, after it
has once been induced, the mere idea of it, associated with
that of the original hypnotiser e.g., if he gives the command
1 Dormez!' may be enough to cause its recurrence. So
far as I am aware, no distinctly hypnotic condition has ever
been originally induced by a mere idea or a merely emotional
1 This term is not a happy one, as it contains no indication of the funda-
mental difference between hypnotic trance and ordinary sleep ; but it is
difficult to think of a tolerable substitute.
2 An example recorded by Esdaile, who professes to have hypnotised a
blind man for the first time by steadily gazing at him from a distance of
20 yards, would appear to be an exception. I admit the force of Esdaile's
testimony ; but the account was not written till after he had frequently
hypnotised the man, and it seems possible that his memory betrayed him
as to the circumstances of the first experiment.
FUETHEB PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 215
stimulus. No doubt a favourable attitude of mind on the
part of an exceptionally sensitive ' subject ' may so prepare
the organism, and the physical stimulus that supervenes
may be of so simple and ordinary a kind, that its essential
part in the result is liable to be overlooked. Thus it is said
of certain French ' subjects ' that a moment's fixation of
attention, followed by a command to sleep, has proved effec-
tive even on a first occasion ; and it may then seem reason-
able to refer the change of state to the mere idea of sleep, or
to the expectancy of a sudden change as soon as the com-
mand was given. But the idea of sleep had been present for
some time, without the effect being produced ; I, at any rate,
know of no instance where precautions were taken to keep
the ' subject ' entirely ignorant of the intended trial up to
the moment that it was made. And if it were enough to be
expectant of a sudden change when the command came, the
change ought equally to supervene if the operator gave his
command silently, e.g., by means of the ' dumb alphabet '.
Till some such case is recorded, we seem justified in attribu-
ting this sudden change to the suddenly presented new element
i.e., the arresting sound of the operator's voice. When the
* subject ' is of a specially unstable constitution, the condi-
tion of expectancy may be wholly dispensed with, and a
rather stronger stimulus a distinct shock will then be
necessary ; but always of a physical sort. The mental shock
of surprise or terror may, as we all know, produce temporary
paralysis of motor power and other physical effects ; but the
only shocks which have been followed by the characteristic
phenomena of hypnotic trance have been those due to a
sudden loud sound or sudden bright light. It is worth re-
marking, by the way, that the state produced in this way is
always that of catalepsy, not that of lethargy, which is the
more common first stage of hypnotism. The difference
between these two states has, I believe, been considerably
exaggerated by the school of the Salpetriere ; but so far as
they really differ, it is of interest that the direct production
of either should equally lead on to that unbalanced but
potentially active mental condition in which the character-
istic somnambulic phenomena present themselves. For this
suggests that the unbalancing depends not so much on the
special nature as on the suddenness of the change ; and that
the somnambulic phenomena may be liable to appear after
any very rapid shifting of the level of consciousness, which
does not, like ordinary sleep, sink the reason below the point
where attention can be attracted to imposed hallucinations
and commands, and which is not, like the passage into
216 E. GUENEY I
ordinary sleep, checked and transformed at once to normal
wakefulness by external solicitations. It would at any rate
be worth inquiry whether there is any stage in the path to
unconsciousness, as produced by ordinary anaesthetic agents,
during which the well-known phenomena of hypnotic sug-
gestion could be in some degree reproduced.
But however that may be, the hypnotism which we know
where the change is independent of toxic substances
and is comparatively stable when once induced will always
retain its peculiar character. And the tendency of recent
inquiry has been, on the whole, to give further emphasis
and precision to the view which would confine original
hypnogenetic efficacy to special peripheral excitations, either
of the organs of special sense or applied in the way of
pressure to special points or tracts on the body. The reason
of the specific cerebral change, the course of the nervous
discharges which issue in the inhibition of central control
or in the various muscular peculiarities which hypnotised
persons present, these are as unknown as ever ; but the
known points of attack by which the central citadel can be
reached have multiplied ; and where sensitiveness reaches a
certain point, the operator can bring about a series of well-
marked modifications of the trance-condition by physical
manipulation, with almost as much certainty as the organist
can manipulate his stops. 1 The very latest advance, how-
ever, would seem, at first sight, to have been in exactly the
opposite direction, and to suggest a mode of affection in
which no part is played either by peripheral stimulus, or by
suggestion and expectancy tending, through association, to
re-induce a state induced in the first instance by peripheral
stimulus. I refer to the recently recorded French successes
in the production of sommeil a distance hypnotic trance due
to the concentration of the hypnotiser's will without the
' subject's ' knowledge, and altogether beyond the range of
the ' subject's ' senses. Not that this form of experiment
is by any means new : the history of hypnotism or mes-
merism, as in this connexion it has been more often called
has presented a good many sporadic instances of such
distant effects. 2 But even had the earlier reports been given
with complete detail and with ample corroboration (which
1 See especially Dr. A. Pitre's Des Zones hysterogenes et r hypnogenes
(Bordeaux, 1885)."
2 Phantasms of the Living, vol. i., p. 88 ; vol. ii., pp. xxvi. and 679-87.
For another discussion of the subject see Mr. F. W. H. Myers's paper on
" Telepathic Hypnotism," in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research, pt. x.
FUETHER PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 217
has rarely been the case), it is inevitable that facts so
startling, and so alien to scientific preconceptions, should
depend for their acceptance almost entirely on contemporary
evidence ; and this being so, the recent well-attested cases
are of extreme importance. They have indeed an importance
over and above that which attaches to them in their hyp-
notic character. For they form a species in a general class
of affections extending far beyond the limits of hypnotism,
and embracing every sort of impression made by one person
on another otherwise than through the recognised channels
of sense. To such impressions the convenient term tele-
pathy has been appropriated. And inasmuch as hypno-
tism, being a physiological and in some respects a medical
curiosity, has a specially good chance of attracting the
notice of trained observers to its various phases, it would
not be surprising if the phenomena of distant trance-induc-
tion were the first branch of telepathy to win the confident
and general adhesion of scientific men ; as indeed they
might have done many years ago, but for their association
with the wild theories and grotesque pretensions of ' mes-
merists '. It is probable also that France will continue to
be the principal scene of these interesting observations ;
partly owing to a spirit of disengagedness and openness to
new ideas, which seems specially to characterise the medical
faculty of that country, but chiefly because the French
temperament appears to be on the whole decidedly more
susceptible than the English to hypnotic affections, just as
Esdaile found the Hindoo to be ; and there being a larger
percentage of good ' subjects ' to work with, it may
naturally be expected that among them will be found the
rarce aves on whom the demonstration of the more delicate
hypnotic phenomena must depend.
I can only describe the cases here in brief outline ; they
are naturally far more impressive in their original form
(Revue Philosophigue, for February and April, 1886).
(1) The first case is from Prof. Pierre Janet, of Havre, who observed it
in conjunction with Dr. Gibert, the leading physician of that town. The
'subject,' Mine. B., was an honest and simple peasant-woman, enjoying
good health, though liable, from childhood, to fits of somnambulism. Dur-
ing a stay at Havre, in the autumn of 1885, she proved easy to hypnotise,
and at once showed in various ways a marked rapport with the person who
had hypnotised her. For instance, while she was in the " deep state," in-
sensible to all ordinary stimuli, the contact or proximity of the hypnotiser's
hand would induce in her partial or general contractures, which a light touch
from him could again remove no one else being able to produce either
effect in the slightest degree. After about ten minutes of deep trance she
would pass into the " alert " or somnambulic state, from which she could
be wakened into the normal state by the operator, and by him alone. It
218 E. GUENEY :
was further noted that the hypnotisation was difficult or impossible unless
the operator concentrated his thoughts on the desired result. Various ex-
periments in thought-transference were completely successful : they took
the form of strongly willing, during Mme. B.'s trance, that she should do
some quite unlikely thing at a particular hour, the mental command being
as punctually obeyed as if it had been expressed in words.
The attempts at producing sommeil a distance were suggested by the
discovery already mentioned of the need that the operator's will should
co-operate in the hypnotic process. It was then found that the will alone
was sufficient. " Pressure of Mme. B.'s hand, without the idea of entranc-
ing her, was ineffectual ; but the idea without the pressure succeeded per-
fectly." The next step was for Dr, Gibert to make the attempt when in
another part of the town, and at a moment selected not by himself but by
M. Janet or another friend. On two of these occasions M. Janet found
Mme. B. in a deep trance, from which only Dr. Gibert could wake her ; on
a third occasion she had felt the strong impulse to sleep, but had opposed
it by putting her hands into cold water.
A series of successes of the same kind were obtained in the spring of
1886 ; three of which, witnessed by Mr. F. W. H. Myers and Dr. A. T.
Myers in the spring of 1886, are described in the paper of the former
referred to in last footnote. On one of these occasions Dr. Gibert,
on the other two M. Janet, was the hypnotiser ; and on each of the three
the 'subject' seemed clearly to recognise to which influence she had been
exposed . Of this second series M. Janet writes that, putting aside mental
suggestions of trance made in the presence of the 'subject ' or in an adjoin-
ing room, " the trials made at a distance of at least 500 metres from Mme.
B.'s abode amount to 21. I do not count a trial made in the middle of the
night, under unfortunate conditions ; and I count as failures all experi-
ments where the ' subject ' was not found entranced on our entering her
abode, or where the trance did not follow the mental suggestion within a
quarter of an hour. These failures (each of which may admit of a complete
explanation) were six in number. There remain, then, 15 precise and
complete successes extraordinary coincidences, whatever interpretation of
them we choose to adopt." During this period, Mme. B. did not fall into
a trance on any other occasion than those mentioned.
(2) The next account is from Dr. J. Hericourt, one of M. Bichet's ablest
assistants in the editing of the Revue Scientifique. The observations were made
and recorded in 1878, though not published till last year, pour des raisons
faciles a comprendre. The ' subject ' Mine. D. was a young widow, in
whom no trace of hysteria could be discovered. M. Hericourt found her
exceedingly easy to hypnotise, and after about a fortnight could entrance
her by his will alone, exercised without any word or gesture, and sometimes
while Mme. D. was in the midst of an animated conversation with other
persons. On the other hand, he found that all the ordinary physical
processes remained completely ineffectual if his will was not that the trance
should ensue. He soon began to extend the distance between himself and
his 'subject,' and instead of producing the effect from one corner of a
room to another, he could produce it from one house or one street to
another. The first trial from a distant street was specially interesting.
While concentrating his thoughts on the desired effect, at 3 P.M., Dr. Heri-
court was summoned to see some patients, and for a time forgot all about
Mme. D. He then remembered that he was engaged to meet her on the
promenade at 4*30, but not finding her, he bethought him that possibly his
experiment had succeeded, and towards 5 o'clock he vigorously willed that
she should wake. In the evening Mme. D., spontaneously, and without
FURTHER PROBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 219
liis having made the slightest allusion to her absence from the promenade,
informed him that about 3 o'clock she had been suddenly seized by an
irresistible inclination to go to sleep, though she never slept in the day-
time. It was all she could do to walk into another room, where she fell on
a sofa, and was afterwards found by a servant, cold and motionless, comme
tnorte. The servant shook Mme. D. vigorously, but could not make her do
more than open her eyes. All that Mme. D. remembered experiencing at
this time was a violent headache, which disappeared towards 5 o'clock, the
hour when M. Hericourt willed the undoing of his work.
This experiment was the first of a series, during which a number of per-
sons had the opportunity of arranging the conditions and testing the re-
sults. The hypothesis of expectant attention was doubly excluded ; for if
M. Hericourt gave Mine. D. notice of his intention to entrance her, but
actually willed that she should remain awake, she retained her normal
condition, and imagined that he had failed.
(3) The next case, contributed by Dr. E. Gley, of 37 Hue Claude Bernard,
Paris, is a record of some observations of his friend, Dr. Dusart, published
in the Tribune Mtfdicale, in May, 1875. The * subject ' was a hysterical
girl of 14, whom Dr. Dusart found very susceptible to hypnotism. He
early remarked that his passes were ineffective if his attention was not
.strongly directed to the desired result ; and this suggested to him to try the
effect of purely mental suggestion. One day, before the usual hour for wak-
ing the patient had arrived, he gave her the mental command to awake.
The effect was instantaneous : the patient woke, and again, in accordance
with his will, began her hysterical screaming. He took a seat with his
l^ack to her, and conversed with other persons, without appearing to pay
any attention to her ; but on his silently giving her the mental suggestion
to fall again into the trance, his will was again obeyed. More than 100
-experiments of the sort were made under various conditions, and with
uniform success. On one occasion Dr. Dusart left without giving his usual
order to the patient to sleep till a particular hour next morning. Remem-
bering the omission, he gave the order mentally, when at a distance of 700
metres from the house. On arriving next morning at 7'30, he found the
patient asleep, and asked her the reason. She replied that she was obey-
ing his order. He said : " You are wrong ; 1 left without giving' you any
order ". " True," she said, " but five minutes afterwards I clearly heard
you tell me to sleep till eight o'clock." Dr. Dusart then told the patient
to sleep till she received the command to wake, and directed her parents
to mark the exact hour of her waking. At 2 P.M. he gave the order men-
tally, at a distance of 7 kilometres, and found that it had been punctually
obeyed. This experiment was successfully repeated several times, at diffe-
rent hours.
After a time Dr. Dusart discontinued his visits, and the girl's father-
used to hypnotise her instead. Nearly a fortnight after this change, it
occurred to Dr. Dusart, when at a distance of 10 kilometres, to try whether
he still retained his power, and he willed that the patient should not allow
herself to be entranced ; then after half-an-hour, thinking that the effect
might be bad for her, he removed the prohibition. Early next morning he
was surprised to receive a letter from the father, stating that on the previous
day he had only succeeded in hypnotising his daughter after a prolonged
and painful struggle ; and that, when entranced, she had declared that her
resistance had been due to Dr. Dusart's command, and that she had only
succumbed when he permitted her.
(4) M. Ch. Eichet has quite recently communicated to me privately a
220 E. GUENEY :
record of some recent experiments of the same sort which he has made
with M. Janet's * subject,' Mme. B. On one occasion, early in the morn-
ing, he fixed the hour for his trial, 9 o'clock, by drawing a card at random ;
and found in the afternoon that Mme. B. had been seized with intolerable
fatigue and somnolence while dressing, at 9'5. On another occasion he
took a quite sudden resolution, and made the attempt from 6'25 to 6'45
P.M.; Mme. B. was entranced at 6'40, after a fruitless effort to ward off the
condition by putting her hands in cold water. The full account will
shortly be published.
In regarding such distant effects as these, it was of course
inevitable, from the first, that an effort should be made to
connect them with the similar effects produced by the
hypnotiser in the presence of his ' subject ' ; and in the
pre-scientific days of hypnotism this was easy enough.
The prevalent view of hypnotic effects, among those who
believed them to be genuine, was that they were produced
by a specific ' magnetic ' or ' mesmeric ' force or effluence
which radiated from the person of the operator in obedience
to his will ; and as it is easy to credit unknown agencies
with incomprehensible attributes, the idea of this one as
able to act at a distance without any loss of intensity was
accepted as needing no particular justification. If such a
Eeculiarity prevented the mesmeric force from being corre-
ited in any way with the forces known to physicists, that
w r ould appear to its champions as so much to its credit.
Not that I regard the idea of a specific hypnogenetic
influence of a physical sort as absurd I shall recur later to
the question of such an influence acting within narrow
limits of space ; and even as regards its operation at any
distance and across any obstacles, something might be said
for a hypothesis which at least had the merit of recognising
the telepathic facts, as long as no alternative was possible.
This, however, is no longer the case. A conception which,
in its simple and comprehensive form, is of very recent date,
and which could never have been educed, free of all confusing
elements, from the facts of hypnotism alone the conception
of thought -transference has opened the way for another
theory. Not one, indeed I should most fully admit for
which any certainty or finality can be claimed ; it requires
assumptions, and depends largely on analogies ; but one
which, as an attempt at generalisation, reaches, I think, a,
considerable degree of probability in a region of facts so new
and baffling that no generalisation can as yet well aspire to
more.
To state my view in the shortest way, I believe that
hypnotisation at a distance is truly analogous to hypnotisa-
tion in the presence of the ' subject,' but to one particular
FUKTHEB PBOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 221
form only of such hypnotisation to wit, that exercised on
a ' subject ' who has been entranced on previous occasions,
by the suggestion (either verbal or conveyed by the mere
physical proximity of the operator) of the idea of trance.
On this view, what happens is that the idea of the intended
effect is transferred from the operator to the ' subject,' just
as any other idea is transferred when the mind of A affects
the mind of B otherwise than through the recognised
sensory channels ; and that it then works on the ' subject/
whom previous enhancements have rendered hyper-suscep-
tible to its influence, precisely in the same way as the word
Dormez works on him when addressed by the operator
to his ears. That is to say, the trance supervenes owing to
the peculiar liability of the ' subject ' to react on a parti-
cular idea, in whatever way that idea may have gained an
entrance to his mind, and not owing to any particular
magnetic force or compulsion exercised by the operator. I
hold, therefore, that the French experimenters have hit on
the right word, suggestion, to describe the mode of influence
suggestion mentale in contrast to suggestion verbale ; the two
sorts of suggestion being in their hypnogenetic power
identical, but differing radically in the earlier stage in the
mode in which the suggestion obtains access to the ' sub-
ject '. The difference is not then (as formerly conceived)
between two modes of propagating ' mesmeric ' force, by
passes near at hand or ' will ' at a distance. It lies quite
outside hypnotism and the particular effect of hypnotic
trance. It is a difference more radical than those who
have believed in mesmeric action at a distance have hitherto
imagined, but also less mysterious ; inasmuch as this distant
influence can now be referred to a large general class of
phenomena, fundamentally alike through all varieties of
circumstance, and in this way confirmatory of one another. 1
In a word, the difference between verbal suggestion and
mental suggestion in hypnotic cases is simply the difference
1 There is at present this difficulty in discussing any special topic where
the ideas of telepathy and thought-transference have to be introduced that
to many readers the terms may convey no meaning, or may appear simply
as symbols of what is ridiculous and impossible ; while yet it would be
hopeless to attempt to demonstrate the realities which they represent in
the course of a paper like the present. The largest collection of evidence
on the subject which has so far been published will be found in Phantasms
of the Living (Tiiibiier & Co.), and I am here treating the central positions
of that book as if they were solidly established. Feeling, as I do, such con-
fidence to be justifiable, I refrain from encumbering these pages with
apologies for it ; but I am very far indeed from assuming that every candid
mind is bound to share it.
222 E. GUENEY :
between the two broad classes of communication which
exhaust all possibilities of thought-conveyance between man
and man, and which may be conveniently distinguished as-
the physical and the psychical.
I hasten to explain what I mean by this distinction, which
is very liable to be misunderstood, though it would be difficult
to express it shortly in any other terms. It is by no means
to be taken to imply the absence of a physical basis for the
' psychical ' transferences. The word ' psychical ' does not in-
volve any hypothesis as to the manner of transference, whe-
ther as connected or as unconnected with physical events ;
it implies simply the fact that particular ideas in two minds
have corresponded in such a manner as to lead to the con-
clusion that they were connected as cause and effect, though
the recognised channels of sense have not been employed,
and there has been no peripheral stimulation passing from
one organism to the other. Now the condition from which
we should most readily conclude that there was such a causal
connexion between the two ideas is clearly that they should
resemble one another. When one organism acts peripherally
on another when A hits B, for instance we connect A's
anger with B's pain without requiring to perceive any resem-
blance between the two affections ; but apart from ascertain-
able physical communication, it would not occur to us to
regard a particular idea of B's as due to a particular idea of
A's, unless they presented at least some point of identity.
And the facts in Phantasms of the Living afford, I think, strong
grounds for supposing such resemblance to be the general
law of telepathic action. In cases of experimental thought-
transference the resemblance is obvious and often complete ;
and the same is true of those ' transitional ' cases where the
agent sets himself to impress some idea or percept on some
one at a distance ; while in the ' spontaneous ' cases it is
rarely that there is a difficulty in tracing the effect on the
percipient's senses or emotions to an idea reproduced (though
it may be below the level of consciousness) from the
agent's mind. This at once suggests the particular cha-
racter which, supposing the psychical transference to be
dependent on a physical effect of one organism on the other,
that physical effect would naturally be held to possess ; it
must apparently be of the nature of vibratory energy trans-
mitted through a medium that being the only means by
which changes in one piece of matter are found to reproduce
themselves in a distant piece of matter ; and its place of
origination in one organism and place of operation in the
other must be the brain. Whether such a mode of physical
FUETHEE PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 223
affection exists or not is an open question. The negative
answer involves the difficulty that, whenever the psychical
transferences occur, a certain nervous process, correlated
with the impressed idea in the brain of the recipient, presents
a close similarity to a certain nervous process correlated with
the impressing idea in the brain of the transmitter, and
would not have presented that similarity but for the trans-
mission, while yet the twin processes are united by no phy-
sical nexus. The affirmative answer involves the difficulty
that distance is not known to have any effect on the transmis-
sion, which is contrary to what obtains in all known exhibi-
tions of vibratory energy. (Both horns of the dilemma can
of course be avoided on the supposition that the accepted
view as to the necessary correlation of psychical with nervous
events is only a rough approximation to a more complete
truth, which the limitations of our view of matter and phy-
sical forces keep out of our sight.) But if it exists, this
mode of physical affection is at any rate something per-
se ; it is remote from any of the recognised modes, to
which eyes and ears and nerve-endings are indispensable
instruments, and in which the effect on the impressed
organism (to wit, certain chemical explosions of nerve-
and brain-matter) bears no resemblance whatever, but
only a correspondence, to the physical facts visible or aud-
ible, or tactile or olfactory in the impressing organism.
And this difference is so radical that, for purposes of termi-
nology, the neglect of the hypothetical physical basis, and the
appropriation of the word ' psychical ' to transferences
where the psychical facts are patent, while no physical fact
of any sort is cognisable by our senses or our instruments,
seems as defensible as it is convenient.
The above theory has been stated in general outline only,
and needs guarding and amplifying in several ways. But I
must first pause to consider an objection that may be made
to it in limine. It may be said that, in opposing the concep-
tion of thought-transference, pure and simple, to that of a.
physical effluence or current of force, operating across
indefinite spaces, and neither nullified nor confused by
other physical effluences or currents proceeding from other
human beings on its route, I have simplified the issue over-
much, and that there is a third possible hypothesis : namely,
that a force is set in operation which is truly psychical, in
the sense that it originates in the operator's mind, while its
medium of transmission, if it has one, remains unknown and
unguessed, but which is different from and independent
of any known psychical or physical agency; the ultimate
224 E. GUENEY :
facts being simply that the distant operator wills that the
' subject ' shall be entranced, and that in consequence he
is entranced, without any middle term of mental sugges-
tion or anything else. This hypothesis underlies much that
has been written about the relation of will-power to
mesmerism ; and has been strongly suggested in our own
day in much of the language used about "psychic force".
It is what Schopenhauer advocated in his description of
" the magnetic or generally magical influence proceeding
from .intentional willing " ; l for he speaks of this will-
influence as " toto genere different from every other"; and
this although he seems to have encountered and fully
admitted certain facts of mental suggestion proper, having
in the preceding sentence spoken of communicated (tele-
pathic) dreams, and of community of thought between
mesmeriser and ' subject '. The view clearly involves
nothing less than a complete breach in the physical
order. The psychical cause and the physical effect
on the organism of another person are as completely dispa-
rate as my resolve to kick a chair over and the fallen chair,
while no physical nexus, parallel to the kick, exists between
them. Or rather, since the changes in B's organism, being
matters of intimate physiology, are changes which A, who
is supposed to cause them, knows and thinks nothing
about, what he is supposed to do is precisely analogous
to building a stone wall at a distance from where one is
standing by an exercise of the will which involves no idea
of moving the stones. Schopenhauer, indeed, might be
able to conceive this as "an actio in distans which the will,
certainly proceeding from the individual, yet performs in
its metaphysical quality as the omnipresent substratum of
the whole of nature ". But we are not all Schopenhauers ;
and those who are unable to reach the substratum of nature
with his clue, and to whom even his " will of the world "
appears something of a will-o'-the-wisp, may feel the difficulty
here propounded in relation to the individual will to be a
serious one.
I do not pretend, however, that the theory of "psychic
force," as opposed to that of mental suggestion, need be held
in this extreme metaphysical form. The distant effect
might be referred to A's volition in virtue, not of its " magi-
cal influence," but of the cerebration which accompanies it ;
and either (1) the cerebral events involved in B's trance
1 The World as Will and Idea (Halclane and Kemp's translation),
vol. iii., p. 76.
FUETHER PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 225
might be held to be directly due, though dissimilar, to the
cerebral events in A, or (2) some prior and equally dissimilar
cerebral event in B, accompanied by some unknown
psychosis dissimilar to A's (e.g., some mood or mode of
feeling presenting nothing of the nature of idea), might be
assumed as an intervening link. 1 As regards this notion of
an unknown psychosis, if a priori likelihoods had any
application to modes of psychical interaction, one might at
any rate feel it unlikely that terminal events so closely
related as B's trance and A's desire for B's trance should be
causally connected by an unknown psychical state resembling
neither ; but I should be content to urge that the hypothesis
is gratuitous, when we remember that there is one known
psychical state which is known also to lead on naturally to
trance namely, that idea of trance, the unique effect of
which can be so completely tested by verbal suggestion.
But a graver objection and one which applies to both the
above hypotheses alike lies in the nature of the physical
assumption. No doubt, it may be said that anyone who can
entertain for a moment the idea of brain acting on brain at
a distance has no business with speculative scruples that,
finding himself upon such unknown ground, he need not
hesitate to go further, and imagine a complete difference
between the physical cause and the physical effect. But
even if a needless step were justified merely by being taken
in the dark, we should at least observe that this particular
step breaks away, not only from the analogy of verbal
suggestion, but from the only conception of a physical
nexus which has in any degree commended the hypothesis
of physical communication between brain and brain to
scientific minds the conception suggested by the analogies
of tuning-forks, communicated light-vibrations, induced
magnetism and induced electric currents. 2 If that con-
1 A third alternative is possible that some cerebral condition in A
(e.g. t a certain initiatory tendency towards trance in himself) is reproduced
in B, without psychosis. This would still leave clear my fundamental
distinction (depending on similarity of primary effect in recipient to cause
in agent) between telepathic communications and all others. But the
reasons for regarding psychosis in B as probable are given a little later.
2 There are, of course, cases where vibratory energy does not reproduce,
at the place where it takes effect, the exact form of its source : as where
light produces chemical changes. But when it is remembered that the
place of origin and place of action of the nervous force now in question
are similar pieces of matter the same in their composition, in their form,
and in the energies normally connected with them the other analogies
seem paramount ; especially when we remember the electrical character
now generally attributed to nerve- currents.
15
226 E. GUENEY :
ception have any validity, to conceive that the brain-
changes correlated with the desire of A, who remains
normally awake, to entrance B at a distance, could directly
cause the quite different changes which B's brain undergoes
during entrancement, would be like conceiving a struck
tuning-fork as able to set into vibration a fork of a dif-
ferent pitch, or the proximity of magnetised iron as able
to convert a piece of wood into a magnet. And indeed it is
hard to conceive how, if sympathetic action be excluded,
one brain should ever get touch or prise of the other : it is
just the sympathetic response which is the condition of
response at all. Why, again, should A's cerebration have
more virtue than anyone else's, no idea of him ex liypotliesi
being conveyed ? His peculiar influence has been established
entirely by a particular association of ideas in the ' subject's '
mind ; that is the only part of the hypnogenetic process with
which his personality is identified ; and if such a thing
existed as a specific physical power which would enable that
part of the process to be skipped, and the ' subject's ' brain
to be attacked in a new way at some new or lower point,
no ground appears why A and A alone should possess it.
It must be clear, I think, how different in kind these ob-
jections are from those which were admitted as applying, on
the physical side, to the conception of mental suggestion
or thought-transference. For there, even if we rejected (on
account of the distance between the two brains) the notion
of a direct physical nexus even if we felt driven to regard
the changes in B's brain as immediately conditioned, not by
the changes in A's brain, but by the psychical appearance
of the idea transferred to B's mind such conditioning in
B would involve only the world-old correlation of psychical
with nervous changes in the individual ; a correlation which,
however variously interpreted, is recognised as universal, or
at any rate as the rough expression of some deeper reality
which is universal.
So far, then, there appears no very plausible alternative to
the view which finds the key of telepathic hypnotism in
actual suggestion, conveyed as a transferred idea from A's
mind to B's. But this view can be reinforced by a further
consideration. As a matter of fact, there is no instance on
record (except Esdaile's mentioned before) of a person's being
hypnotised from a distance whom the operator has not pre-
viously hypnotised by some ordinary process. On the theory
of mental suggestion, this is of course just what we might ex-
pect. Since a person new to hypnotism has never been hyp-
notised for the first time by the mere idea of the trance ver-
FUETHEE PEOBLEMS OF .HYPNOTISM. (l.) 227
bally suggested or read of in a book, it would be remarkable if
the idea when telepathically suggested were able to take effect
on him. But on any theory which excludes mental sugges-
tion, it is difficult to see how the fact of the ' subject's *
previous hypnotisation could make a difference ; for apart
from mental suggestion, he would not be attacked at any
special vulnerable point. Such a point consists simply in
the idea of entrancement by A (localised in particular brain-
changes), which has been specialised and sensitised by
association with the actual fact of such entrancement on
previous occasions ; and in the supposed case, ex liypothesi, no
idea of entrancement makes its appearance. Now, except
when attacked at the vulnerable point, there is no reason
why previously-hypnotised persons should be more liable to
be entranced than anyone else the existence of the vulner-
able point being simply an explanation of the fact that they
are so liable. Thus, to take another case, if a strong man
has felt giddy and has tottered when standing over the brink
of precipices, the idea of standing over a precipice may after-
wards make him feel giddy and totter ; but he is not more
given than other people to tottering when walking across
the room, and would oppose as much resistance as other
people to an external push. Just so, apparently, should
previously-hypnotised persons oppose as much resistance as
their neighbours to the supposed push or compulsion of an
external will, or to other telepathic influences which differed
in character from any to which they had previously yielded ;
so that the confinement of the hypnotising effect of such
influences to that particular class of persons would need
fresh assumptions to explain it.
We may now proceed to examine the hypothesis of mental
suggestion at a distance a little more in detail. First, what
are we to suppose the contents of the transferred idea to be?
The answer will naturally be found by examining the con-
tents of the idea which is found to be hypnogenetically
effective when suggested through the recognised channels
of sense, in the presence of the 'subject'. And it at once
becomes evident that something more than the mere idea of
trance is included. That idea might be suggested by reading
a description of a hypnotic experiment in a book ; it has
often been suggested when hypnotic phenomena have been
described and discussed by persons in the same room with
the ' subject ' ; but in such circumstances it has not been
found to produce any effect. Is the additional condition,
then, that the idea shall be suggested with some show of
authority or insistance, as in the tone of the word Dor-
228 E. GUENEY I
mez ? But let someone who has not prievously hypnotised
the subject pronounce such a command as authoritatively
as he likes, and no hypnotic result will follow. I would not
indeed venture to assert that it is impossible that trance
should be thus induced in an extremely sensitive ' subject ' ;
but I cannot discover that it ever has been so induced. The
necessary condition then seems to be that the suggestion or
command shall come from the original operator ; that is to
say, rapport is involved at any rate to the extent of memory
of a past relation between the two parties. But here there
seems, at first sight, a certain difficulty in connecting the
near (or physical) with the distant (or psychical) suggestion.
In the former case the idea of the operator in the 'subject's'
mind, and a sense of the past relation with him, is practi-
cally ensured by his actual presence and voice; the 'subject'
cannot help associating the command, when it comes, with
the person who gives it. But when the two parties are
separated, and the command is telepathically conveyed,
there is nothing to connect it in the ' subject's ' mind with
the person who transmits it, unless an idea suggestive of
that person is simultaneously transmitted. Now among
the recorded examples of hypnotisation at a distance we do
undoubtedly find a certain number where such an idea
seems clearly to have been transmitted, since it unmis-
takably appears in the ' subject's ' consciousness. This
was the case with Mme. B., who was able to distinguish
whether it was Dr. Gibert or Prof. Janet who was affecting
her ; and the occasion when Dr. Dusart's ' subject ' was
conscious of his inhibitory influence may fairly be referred
to the same class. But in other cases the trance-con-
dition, supervenes without any conscious occupation of the
' subject's ' mind with the person who is influencing him.
We might even go further and say that it supervenes
without even the idea of itself being presented as an ob-
viously separate and prior condition. We cannot, as in
cases of verbal suggestion, point to the moment when the
idea obtains lodgment in the mind, and trace its effects
from that moment. The consciousness of the idea, so far
as it exists, is indistinguishable from the general mental
condition of on-coming trance.
Now as regards the mere fact that the mental suggestion
is truly transferred, even in the cases where the recipient is
not conscious of it, a proof of the strongest kind is afforded
by the cases where he is conscious of it. It seems almost
inconceivable that experiments in telepathic hypnotisation
which agree in every point except this of the ' subject's '
FUETHEE PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 229
consciousness should involve radically different processes.
But if we look a little deeper, this special point the effec-
tiveness of an idea which does not make any separate and
distinct impression in consciousness will probably not be
felt as an objection to the theory of telepathic suggestion by
anyone familiar with the phenomena of telepathy in branches
unconnected with hypnotism ; I might almost say, to any-
one familiar with the phenomena of mere automatism since
the production by automatic writing of words and intelligent
sentences, which the writer himself has afterwards to read
in order to learn what they are, is a sufficiently well-recog-
nised phenomenon. But in sach cases it can scarcely ever
be proved that what is written is originated, at the moment,
by any specially directed mental activity ; the ideas belong,
perhaps, to the vast crowd which have had a previous exist-
ence in the mind, and have left their impression on the
brain, and it is merely owing to some accident of cerebral
circulation or chemistry that the impressions belonging to
the particular ideas which appear in the writing were re-
vivified at that particular minute ; a minute later, and it
might be the turn of others to be similarly revivified. We
must have recourse, therefore, to telepathic experiments
where the idea is then and there transferred from another
mind for the requisite proof that a new idea, conditioned
by something other than the spontaneous workings of the
brain, may produce marked effects without making any
appearance in its receiver's consciousness. Experiments
yielding this proof have not, so far, been numerous it must
be remembered that deliberate telepathic experimentation is
in its veriest infancy ; but I am content to rely on those
recorded in Phantasms of the Living ; l and especially on the
remarkable series carried out by the Hev. P. H. Newnham
and his wife, where a very large number of questions men-
tally put by him were relevantly answered in writing, pro-
duced by a planchette on which Mrs. Newnham's hand was
laid, without her having an idea, in any case, what the ques-
tion or the answer was. The production of hypnotic trance
by an unconscious idea 2 can scarcely be held to be a more
extreme instance of "underground" mental activity than
this.
1 See vol. i., pp. 63-79, 84, and vol. ii., pp. 670-1.
2 It is difficult to avoid this expression, but I of course do not mean
l>y it mere ' unconscious cerebration '. My whole view of telepathic trans-
ference is that it is a psychical event with a physical side possibly, but
psychical certainly ; consequently the idea transferred, in this as in every
other case, must have complete psychical reality. In calling it unconscious,
230 E. GUKNEY:
This argument naturally applies equally to both the ideas
which we have supposed to obtain a lodgment in the ' sub-
ject's ' mind the idea of trance, and the idea of the distant
hypnotiser. But as regards this latter idea, there is a further
difficulty. For it may be said, and probably with justice in
most cases, that the mind of the hypnotiser himself is not con-
sciously occupied with the idea of himself ; he is concentrat-
ing his thoughts on the ' subject ' and on the effect which
he desires to produce, not on his own personality, or his own
unique relation to the ' subject ' as the source of the effect.
And we cannot at once answer this objection by the assump-
tion that ideas may be telepathically propagated from an
unconscious part of the transmitter's mind, just as they may
take effect in an unconscious part of the recipient's mind.
For supposing the transmitter's mind to include an ' uncon-
scious part ' which is more than a mere general name for
the legion of past ideas that are now all alike latent and
revivable an ' unconscious part ' where positive activities
are possible, and one idea can take precedence of others, just
as in the conscious part, we still need some reason for
the activity and prominence assumed, seemingly, by this
particular idea of himself, just at the moment when it suits
our theory that it should come to the front. Headers of
Phantasms of the Living may recall that the same problem
presented itself in respect of a large number of the cases of
' spontaneous telepathy ' there recorded, where an idea of
the ' agent ' was most vividly presented to the ' percipient '
(often even externalising itself as a hallucination of the
senses), while yet the 'agent's' mind at the time was pre-
sumably not dwelling on himself or his appearance, and
indeed was sometimes not ostensibly dwelling on anything
at all, being in a state of lethargy or coma. This fact may
seem clearly to separate such spontaneous cases from the
other class, including the majority of cases of experimental
thought-transference, where the definite idea on which one
mind is concentrated is reproduced in the other ; and in a
criticism of the telepathic theory which appeared in MIND
ix. 607, it was not unreasonably suggested that the differ-
therefore, I am, for coiiveniehce, confining the meaning of 'conscious' to
the mode or plane of ordinary human experience in which we may sur-
mise the true consciousness of the individual to be only partially manifested.
The facts of telepathy drive us, I think, to conceive a segregation of conscious
states more pronounced than that which examples of double or alternating
1 consciousness ' had previously suggested ; and before long philosophy may
probably find one of its chief battle-grounds in questions as to the existence
and nature of their underlying unity.
FUETHEB PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM. (l.) 231
ence was so radical as to make the inclusion of the two sets
of facts under a common conception decidedly difficult. I
fully admit this, if the conception is to be a physical one : I
admit, that is, the difficulty (which better knowledge might
overcome) of formulating a theory of ' brain-waves ' which
should make it seem as natural that B should receive a
telepathic impression of A, who is thinking of other things
or not thinking at all, as that B should receive a telepathic
impression of a card on which A is painfully concentrating
his attention, or of a scene which engages A's eyes at the
moment when he is passing through a crisis of emotional
excitement. But until physics and physiology can offer
some explanation of the former fact on its own account, I
do not think that their failure to supply an obvious ground
of connexion between the former fact and the latter is a
reason for doubting the reality of a connexion which on
psychical grounds is strongly suggested. And keeping to
the psychical aspect, we may say that the idea of self is an
altogether exceptional one, occupying, even when it is not
prominent, a permanent place in the background or middle
distance of consciousness ; and that the idea of its corporal
embodiment i.e., of that expression of it which is almost
inevitably represented in other people's ideas of it is asso-
ciated more or less closely with a vast number of the items
of thought and feeling which make up everyone's daily
experience. Nor does the hypothesis of a wider self, em-
bracing planes or stages of consciousness beyond the con-
sciousness of normal experience, involve anything which
would affect this exceptional position of the idea of self; for
the segregation of conscious states which that hypothesis
supposes, in no way involves a disruption of individuality ;
and the pervading sense of association with an objective
organism may perfectly well be common to all the states.
It cannot then, I think, seem very surprising if those special
mental activities which at special seasons condition a tele-
pathic transfer whether at the approach of death, or in the
shock of sudden danger or excitement, or in the concentra-
tion of attention and will necessary for an experiment in
distant hypnotising are accompanied by a special self-
realisation, a true quickening of the idea of self, even though
that idea does not detach itself on the plane of consciousness
which limits our ordinary conception of personality.
I am aware of the risk of paying one's self with words in
such speculations; and I specially recognise the danger of
physical analogies, such as I have just used in the word plane.
Modes of expression derived from a known order of facts
232 E. GUENEY: FUETHEE PEOBLEMS OF HYPNOTISM, (i.)
can never really seem explanatory of a novel order till their
connotation has grown that is, till the novel order has
ceased to be novel ; and meanwhile pseudo-explanation is
only too easy. But the phenomena of telepathy are there,
and, however much hidden from our sight, the process of
causation must be there also ; and some indulgence may be
claimed for a hypothetical picture of that process which is
confessedly crude, as long as its crudeness is the result of an
attempt to make its elements distinct. Now, the notion of
segregated departments of mental life, of which a more com-
plete intelligence can perceive the unity, is not an indistinct
notion, though probably it very imperfectly represents the
facts ; and if it has any truth at all, then ' plane of conscious-
ness ' has a true psychical meaning, and is more than a
slippery metaphorical phrase. And if the plea of necessity
will excuse the use of physical terms, so, I think, will it
excuse the use of metaphysical, in spite of a certain awkward-
ness in the actuality suddenly given to somewhat recondite
notions. For in truth the problems which telepathy pre-
sents lie on the borderland of psychology and metaphysics ;
and in attacking them psychology has to trespass, or rather
to make distinct claims, on the metaphysical territory.
It finds itself driven, by the facts under observation, to tie
down to actual individual cases ideas like those of uncon-
scious mind and of a transcendental self which have dwelt
so continuously in the misty heights of purely abstract
reasonings, that they present an odd, incongruous appear-
ance when brought to earth. The "philosophy of the
unconscious" is shy of adapting itself to the unconscious
part of Mr. A.: it seems hardly worth while for the 'self*
to be transcendent, if all that it is to transcend is the
ordinary phenomenal consciousness of Madame B. Yet,
Mr. A. and Madame B. are types of humanity ; and in
examining the bond which unites them, we are really on the
traces of an idealism which is metaphysical enough in all
conscience, as pointing to a potential unity of all similarly
constructed minds, but which is nothing if not concrete,
and a key to nothing except immediate facts of individual
experience.
(To be continued.)
IV. THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION.
By Kev. W. L. DAVIDSON.
CLASSIFICATION is nearly allied to Definition, and, in practical
application, the two processes are apt to run into each other.
Thus, in changing the meaning of a well-understood word,
a reference to a wider range of objects than were formerly
denoted may be the distinctive feature, as much as a fresh
analysis of the particular notion. Take as an example the
word ' concrete,' and compare its Hegelian signification
with the commonly-accepted English use, or compare the
evolutionist's ' good ' with that of the intuitional moralist,
and it will be found that denotation is a potent factor in the
explanation of the difference. Denotation, on the other
hand, is not the sole principle that determines Classification.
On the contrary, wherever you have a hierarchy of classes,
or any approach to it, you have a distinct reference to conno-
tation, and the graded system has no meaning except when
interpreted as expressive of the inverse ratio of comprehen-
sion and extension.
This the formal logicians, to the extent that they recognise
the two processes at all, have unquestionably seen, although
they do not explicitly state it. Hence their treatment of
Definition and Division in immediate connexion with the
Five Predicables ; and hence such a fact as this that a
tractate like Boethius's De Definitione is in great measure
one also De Divisione, while his tractate on Division is in
reality one on Definition. Hence, further, the fact of the
impossibility of keeping Fallacies of Classification such of
them at any rate as are concerned with the grouping together
of things that have only unimportant points of similarity in
entire separation from Fallacies of Definition, so far as
concerned with the ambiguities of language. It is notorious
that we may equally well explain an equivocal term as one
that is ill-defined or as one that represents a badly-formed
class : denotation or connotation equally gives us the charac-
teristic.
By Classification are understood two things (1) ihs forma-
tion, (2) the location, of classes. The second process implies
the first, but the first may stand alone without articulate
reference to the second. Both, however, proceed upon the
same principle of marking agreements and differences, of
234 W. L. DAVIDSON I
like with like and keeping separate things that are
dissimilar ; but it is in the second only that the idea of
gradation comes in, and so the conception of higher and
lower in generality. Thus, the letters of the alphabet, as
they stand in the order familiar to us all, are unclassified.
There is no reason why A should precede B, or B should be
followed by C : we might equally well begin with B as with
A, with M or with P, as with either ; and but for the matter
of habit, a " beta-alph " would be as appropriate as an
" alpha-bet ". We proceed to classify only when we group
distinct letters together, on the score of their possessing
some striking peculiarity in common ; as when we pick out
the vowels from the consonants, or when we form classes of
labials, dentals, liquids and so forth. Not yet, however,
have we reached the full sense of classification. This would
be attained only if we could arrange the groups of letters on
some distinct plan, so that each group should be seen to
occupy its own proper place, and to have definite relations to
all others around it. Speaking strictly, we form a class when
we bring together a collection of individuals held in union by
the bond of one or more points of community, and when we
take care that nothing that is destitute of the point or points
of community is admitted into the class : we classify when
we arrange classes thus constructed on the principle of
higher and lower, wider and narrower. Hence, Classifica-
tion naturally assumes the form of a series of grades. We
ascend from the lower to the higher, or descend from the
higher to the lower, in a continuous order ; and the relations
that obtain between groups are those of subordination,
superordination and co-ordination. One group is subor-
dinate to another when it is contained under that other as a
part of a compound whole, whose mark it possesses but
which has in addition distinguishing characteristics of its
own. One group is superordinate to another when it is
regarded as the higher under which the other takes its place
as lower. Two or more groups are co-ordinate when they
stand upon the same level or occupy positions of equal
authority such as Orders of different Classes, in botany, or
Genera of different Orders. And if we ask what is the full
signification of this classifying process, we find it is simply
this that the different groups have different degrees of
generality, and that the greater the generality the less the
meaning conveyed, while the less the generality the richer
the meaning. Thus, we take the grade ' Class ' in the
botanical grouping. This is a division very high in the
scale, and includes an enormous number of sub-divisions
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 235
"under it sub-class, cohort, order, &c. : and from the very
circumstance that it stands thus high in other words, from
the fact of its great generality it can only give us a very
few attributes (five at most) characteristic of the whole mass
of included particulars, and this not without striking ex-
ceptions. But let us go a step or two lower down, let us
take the ' Order' ; and what do we find ? We find that, by
descending, we have reached a narrower grade ; and by this
very fact of narrowing the grade in other words, of reducing
the number of included members, we find we have increased
the number of things we can predicate concerning these
members, so that the characteristics that go to form the
Order-mark are far more numerous than those that go to
form the Class-mark. And so with the other grades as we
descend : until at last we reach the Species (the unit of
Classification, as the Individual is of Definition), where we
have the minimum of extension with the maximum of mean-
ing ; for the species, besides exhibiting the characteristics of
the various grades above it, has numerous features peculiar
to itself. In this way, we see at once the principle of the
whole process. It is : The wider the group, the greater
the number of included members, but the less the meaning
conveyed respecting each member; and conversely. And
the utility of the process consists in this : (1) that it throws
intelligibility into a mass of materials that might otherwise
remain unmanageable and incomprehensible, and is thereby
an aid to knowledge ; (2) that it helps the memory, more
especially in cases of enormous complication (such as we
have in zoology and botany), where nothing would answer
but a regular graded system of great perfection, group rising
above group like the rounds of a stupendous ladder ; (3) that
it facilitates the discovery and display of laws of coexistence.
And this holds of all classification that is worthy of the
name. We usually confine it to the Natural History group-
ings : but it is equally true (though less conspicuously) of
every grouping, of whatever materials, that is done upon a
scientific basis from the classifications of things in ordinary
life with a view to action, to the high abstract classifications
of the sciences, where theory in great measure supersedes
practice.
This being so, it may not be amiss to inquire into the
principles that govern scientific classification, and how far,
under the most favourable circumstances, they can carry us.
I.
The first may be formulated thus : That our plan of
236 W. L. DAVIDSON :
grouping proceed upon a rational principle ; by which is
meant a principle the opposite of frivolous, the test being
that it yields us luminous results.
It is possible, no doubt, to bring together things or to
arrange objects in a vast variety of ways ; but when the
arrangement is based upon mere fancy or simply follows our
caprice, when it is absurd, ridiculous or grotesque, it is
not, in any proper sense of the word, a scientific operation,
and cannot claim consideration at our hands. Before it is
anything beyond a mere exercise of perverted ingenuity, it
must disclose a guiding and illuminating plan one that
throws real light into the particular collocation.
We may take as an illustration the astronomer's arrange-
ment of the stars into constellations. Nothing may, at first
sight, appear more arbitrary or more superficial. It requires
a considerable stretch of the imagination to discern Orion or
Auriga or Bootes in the groups that bear these names, while
even Perseus and the Greater Bear are by no means self-
evident impersonations. Yet these various clusters, although
the naming of them and the conceptions attached to them
may be entirely fanciful, serve a very high purpose in throw-
ing method into the seemingly chaotic, and in disclosing
numerous valuable correlated facts. Take, for instance, the
bright star in Orion called ' a Orionis '. The very fact that
this heavenly body is designated a ' star ' gives us, of course,
a certain amount of information : it is thereby shown to be
differentiated from planets, comets, &c., and justifies us in
predicating of it two things scintillation and apparent
immovability with respect to other stars. The further fact
that it occurs in Orion adds still more to the signification ;
for Orion is the most striking constellation in the heavens,
and occupies a certain definite relation to the Hyades, the
Pleiades and other surrounding bodies. When further we
know that it shines on Orion's right shoulder, we have inti-
mation of its exact sidereal position ; while, being a star of
the first magnitude in that position, it is known to form with
Procyon and Sirius an equilateral triangle of remarkable
brilliancy and beauty. More would be connoted by it still,
if we allowed ourselves to leave the purely astronomical
ground and to take account of human superstitions and
traditions. The very name Orion would carry us back to
the days of ancient Greece, and might suggest to us much as
to Greek mythology and the connexion of the early Greeks
with astronomical studies ; or we might take the Semitic
name Chesil (fool), and then we should be reminded of the
fate and story of Nimrod "the mighty hunter". But,
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 237
nomenclature apart, the grouping itself is astronomically
useful ; and, as it accomplishes the threefold object of aiding
the understanding, of displaying coexistences and of helping
the memory, it must be pronounced satisfactory and scien-
tifically unimpeachable.
Again, take an easy instance from Botany. The full
classifying scheme of the Natural History sciences will be
considered later on ; but, meanwhile, let us illustrate the one
point of a luminous principle from the well-known Knot-
grasses. Besides other modes of arrangement, a group of
these might be formed so as to disclose a serial development
in one particular part the flower. At one end would stand
Common Knotgrass, with abundant sessile flowers, clustered
in the axils of nearly all the leaves on the stem ; at the
opposite extreme would stand Persicaria, with its short
dense terminal racemes. Between the two would come
Climbing Knotgrass and Copse Knotgrass, each possessing
the axile floral cluster of Common Knotgrass and the ter-
minal raceme of Persicaria : each, too, with the flower
coloured like that of Common Knotgrass (viz., green, with a
white margin), but with the lustrous seed-vessel of Persicaria.
Here we have an obvious evolution of parts which the
mere placing of the groups in this relation serves exactly to
bring out.
So, too, with the three popular species of Primroses
Common Primrose, Oxlip and Cowslip, which, when
arranged in this order, show a marked gradation in two
separate points, the leaf and the flower. The leaves,
although all agreeing in being wrinkled and toothed, are
easily distinguished by their difference in shape. The
flowers are even more sharply differentiated. Those of the
Common Primrose are solitary, borne upon longish slender
pedicels, which rise apparently direct from the root-stock,
having the corolla of a pale yellow colour, with broad flat
limb and contracted throat with thickened folds. Those of
the Oxlip rise from the root-stock in clusters upon a short
stem or peduncle, with corolla of a pale yellow colour, but
limb concave, throat open and destitute of folds. Those of
the Cowslip are also clustered, but upon longer peduncles ;
have corolla small, funnel-shaped and of a buff-yellow colour ;
limb cup-shaped ; throat open, with folds obscure. The
grouping is obviously instructive, and possesses systematic
and scientific value.
Once more, let us take the books in a library. These,
clearly, might be arranged in several useful ways. They
might be grouped according to the subjects of which they
238 W. L. DAVIDSON :
treat, or they might be grouped according to the language in
which they are written, or they might be grouped according
to the names of the authors alphabetically arranged. Each
of these systems might plead a certain value, for even the last
of them might conceivably bring out curious and practical
statistical results. But we should hardly regard as legitimate
any arrangement that proceeded on the mere colour of the
bindings, or the number of letters in the authors' names, or
the year in which the treatises were published, or the number
of pages or of sheets that they contain. The very idea of a.
Library (as distinct from a mere place for storing books)
excludes such arrangements and brands them as ridiculous
or capricious.
In like manner, we may arrange the higher animals
according to their nervous system or according to their
intelligence ; but if we selected such an attribute as hairiness
as the basis of our classification, we should lay ourselves
open to the charge of arbitrariness or frivolity.
From this it will be seen what an arbitrary or frivolous
classification really means. The arbitrary and the frivolous,
include not merely the fanciful and capricious, but also the
accidental in all its forms, more particularly as the incon-
stant. It is accidental to a book what the colour of its bind-
ing or the number of its pages is ; and hairiness is a variable
attribute among animals, differing even among individuals
of the same species to almost any extent. No merely indi-
vidual trait, no variable feature, no simple accident, can
afford a rational basis of classification ; and all groupings
that proceed upon one or other of these must be pronounced
trifling and unscientific.
Now, it is exactly from being based upon a trivial principle
that many classifications, which from a purely formal point
of view would be otherwise unimpeachable, are unsparingly
condemned by the scientific classifier. It must be carefully
noted that pure logical Division and Classification are not, in
their whole length and breadth, coextensive. On the con-
trary, it is sufficient for a logical Division, (1) that it be
exhaustive, (2) that the parts be severally less than the thing
divided, and (3) that the principle of Division be such as to
secure that the parts be mutually exclusive. But what the
character of the principle of Division itself is, beyond this
fact of mutual exclusion, does not come within the ken of
the formal logician. So that, when the formal logician adds
to the three foregoing rules this fourth, viz., (4) that the prin-
ciple of Division be important and essential, he does so by
a sound enough instinct, but quite inconsistently with his
own conception of the nature and scope of Logic.
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 239
The point, then, to be insisted on at this stage is, that,
in order to a proper grouping, there must be a rational or
light-giving principle ; and that wherever you have this, you
have to that extent a satisfactory classification, and wherever
this is wanting, you have no classification of any scientific
value.
II.
Classification would be a comparatively easy affair, if it
demanded nothing more than regard to this simple rule of
seeing to it that the grouping is of a light-giving character.
Unfortunately, classification is frequently a much more diffi-
cult operation than could be satisfied by this simple canon.
Not seldom there are competing principles even within the
limits of the light-giving ; and these competing principles
clash. Where this is so, the rule to be followed is :
Arrange the groups so as to bring out the greatest amount of
information, having regard to the materials manipulated and
the end in view ; in other words, classify upon the greatest
number of correlated properties.
We may begin with the simple case of the archaeologist
and his Relics. Simple as this case is, it shows several com-
plications. For, in arranging the relics found in a primitive
habitation say a lake-dwelling or a cave the archaeologist
has more plans than one open to him ; though, when you
consider the nature of his science and his leading -object,
there is one that is pre-eminently suitable. He might, for
instance, accept the commonly-recognised division of Nature
into the three kingdoms of mineral, plant and animal, and
arrange his " finds " according as they fall under one group
or another. As, however, one of his chief ends is to deter-
mine traces of man in the non-historic times, and to ascertain
his habits and intelligence, the range of his acquisitions and
the stages of his advance in civilisation, he finds that this
ground of classification does not throw the full light upon
his subject that he would desire, or give him the revelations
that it is possible to obtain ; and so, if he be wise, he dis-
cards it as a main basis of grouping and has recourse to
another which pays regard to the utilities of the objects under
consideration. Accordingly, he arranges his relics in two
leading divisions viz., (1) relics that have been things of use
to man, (2) relics that are simply remains; employing the
material of which these relics consist only in his minor sub-
divisions. In this way, bones, for instance, whether human
or animal, come under the second division, if they are
simply remains ; but under the first, if they bear evidence of
240 W. L. DAVIDSON :
having been used for domestic or other purposes, if, i.e.,
they have been obviously made into implements. Under the
first head, too, would come all inorganic objects that bear
the marks of human workmanship upon them. Then, after
utilities, would come the material out of which the useful
articles were formed stone, bone, horn, wood, &c. ; but
only in a subordinate position. Thus does the archaeologist
make the most of his subject ; for thus is indicated to us in
any given case, not only that we have here an object that
Taas come down to us from the past, and that may be iden-
tified by us the horn of a deer, the trunk of a tree, the tusk
of a boar, &c. but, further, that in this object we have
something told us about man's past ways and habits : the
tree is formed into a canoe, the deer's horn into a pick or
club, the stone into an axe or hammer. And there is also
indicated, through the subdivisions, the particular number
of kinds of article that each material was used for : bones
being formed into needles, pins, knobs, combs, &c. ; stones
into hammers, axes, clubs ; clay into pottery of various
sorts ; and so forth. So that, even in classifying Relics,
there is a better and a worse method ; and that method is
best which sheds the greatest light upon the collection,
which displays best the correlated properties among the
objects, and which thereby furthers best the end or object
that the science of archaeology sets before it.
The same rule is applicable to the grouping of the various
Meanings of a word, where these meanings are numerous
and of real significance. Let us take the philosophical term
Dialectic, and see how the principle works. The significa-
tions here might be arranged in various ways, and each way
has its own recommendations. We may follow the chronolo-
gical order i.e., we may take up the great names in philo-
sophy and set down the sense in which each used the term
from early times down to the present day ; or we may throw
the meanings into logical groups apart from the chronologi-
cal sequence. The chronological order would be the best if
it were also the order of evolution, i.e., if each successive
meaning were a distinct development of that which preceded
it, and if there were no overlapping in the significations.'
But, unfortunately, neither condition is complied with.
There is no steady advance as the ages pass, but the usage of
a later age, as one comes down the stream, frequently reverts
to that of an age long prior, and more than one signification
is current at a particular time. Thus, if we place the
authorities in chronological sequence Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, the Stoics, &c. ; Cicero, Cassiodorus, Boethius ;
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 241
Isidorus, Alcuin, John Scotus Erigena, Petrus Hispanus,
&c. ; Hegel and certain moderns what do we find ?
We find Aristotle assimilating himself to Socrates, and Hegel
to Plato, and the Latins reproducing Aristotle or else running
several significations alongside each other. We are, there-
fore, thrown upon the logical arrangement. This would
probably gather up the meanings into three groups as fol-
lows : (1) Those that express a mode or method of attain-
ing truth, together with a mental discipline ; (2) those that
set forth the nature, the movement or the progress of truth
itself ; (3) those that designate a branch of science. Under
the first head would come (a) Socrates's cross-examination,
or the clearing of people's notions by putting them through
a series of interrogations, which, by first opening their eyes
to their own ignorance, prepared the way for the discovery
and reception of the truth (really, therefore, a species
of Inductive Defining) ; (&) Aristotle's " dialectic," as de-
scribed in the Topica, confined to the sphere of Opinion or
the probable, in contradistinction to Demonstration ; (c) the
" disputation " of the Schoolmen, by means of question and
reply, interrogation and response, examination of proof and
counter-proof. To the second head would be assigned (a)
Plato's theory of Ideas, and (6) Hegel's movement of the
Idea in the course of its expansion and development, in the
threefold form of " affirmation, negation and the union of
the two," " thesis, antithesis and synthesis," " identity,
difference and combination ". Under the third head would be
placed (a) the early Latin and Scholastic conception of Dia-
lectic, which identified it with what we should now-a-days
call Logic (although that term was formerly applied to Rhetoric
as well, and was sometimes extended also to Grammar),
and (5) that other Scholastic usage, which made Dialectic
synonymous with "the pursuit of all the liberal arts".
Turn, next, to the Classification of the Sciences. If we go
back to early times, we find the division current into Theo-
retical and Practical. This classification had certain obvious
uses, and the convenience of it is attested by the fact that it
is still in force, for general purposes, at the present day.
But, obviously, it cannot plead the merit of being a strictly
logical division ; for many sciences are both theoretical and
practical, and it would be equally legitimate to place them in
the one division as in the other. Faulty, however, though it
be in this respect, it is perfection itself as compared with the
next great historical classification that of the Stoics. The
Stoics were above all things moralists, and everything they
viewed from the ethical standpoint. They grouped the
16
242 W. L. DAVIDSON :
Sciences, therefore, according to dignity QIC worth, ; and, placing
Ethics at the top, they descended from it, through Physics, to
Logic. It is difficult to say whether the principle adopted
or the limited number of the sciences recognised is the more
naive feature here ; neither, does much credit to the remark-
able sect that gained its philosophical reputation in the fields
of Ethics and Logic, and neither had any general influence
in the history of philosophy. The first notable attempt at
a classification is in connexion with the Seven Liberal
Arts. This, probably, dates far back ; but it comes into pro-
minence for us with the Latins of the fifth and sixth centuries
of our era, more especially with the Roman philosopher
and patrician Boethius. Boethius not only exhausts the
circle of the sciences (in so far as recognised in his day), but
consciously classes them upon the principle, Begin with
the primary and fundamental, and go on from that to the
dependent and derived. We have not indeed from him a
detailed handling of the whole of the sciences, trivium 1 and
quadrivium both ; but, in sketching the latter, he does so in
the determinate order Arithmetic, Geometry, Music and
Astronomy, and supplies us with his reasons. Some of his
reasons are curious enough, and smack of Plato and Pytha-
goras ; but others of them are far more than mere historical
curiosities. Thus, he says that, of the four mathematical
sciences, Arithmetic comes first, because the destruction of
what is prior in nature means the destruction of what is
posterior, whereas the posterior may perish without the prior
being affected. " Take away numbers, and whence do you
get the triangle and the square and the other figures of
geometry seeing they are all denominative of numbers ?
But take away the triangle and the square, and indeed the
whole of geometry, and three and four and the names of the
other numbers will not disappear. ... In like manner,
musical modulation is denoted by names of numbers." So
too with Astronomy : geometry, music and arithmetic are
all presupposed here. Moreover, " Motion is subsequent to
rest, and rest is the prior in nature. But astronomy is the
science of the movable and geometry of the immovable, and
the very motion of the stars obeys the laws of harmony."
Now, vast as has been the extension of the circle of the
sciences in modern times, and great though the difficulty be
in establishing the precise character and place of each, it is
something noteworthy that the main principle on which the
1 This word is not Boethius's, but appears to be a barbarous coinage of
the seventh century.
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 243
leading classifications of the present day are founded is pre-
cisely that which guided the veteran statesman and philo-
sopher in the days of Theodoric the Goth. They amply
recognise the necessity of commencing with the fundamental
and the simple, and of leading onwards, by successive steps,
to the dependent and the derived. In carrying out this
notion, they present us first of all with the abstract and
next with the concrete sciences ; and, in enumerating the
branches of each great division, they endeavour to pay due
regard to the mutual dependence of the included members.
That which is self-sustained or independent comes first ;
next comes that which presupposes the principles of this
non-dependent science ; then that which requires for its
elucidation the principles of both these ; then that which
implicates a knowledge of all the three ; and so on. So
that, among Abstract sciences, Mathematics is the primary,
relying upon none more fundamental than itself, but
giving support, to a greater or less extent, to all the others ;
then comes Physics, then Chemistry, &c. ; while, among the
Concrete sciences, Mineralogy as implying mathematics,
physics and chemistry precedes ; Botany and Zoology
follow implicating vital and physiological facts ; and so
forth. It is all a matter of reasonable sequence : and by
thus pursuing the order of dependence and of complexity the
most luminous arrangement is obtained, arid the grouping
itself becomes highly philosophical.
But the great sphere for competing principles is the field
of the Classificatory sciences. Both in Zoology and in
Botany, where the details are something enormous, it would
be strange indeed if only one system were light-giving.
Several systems can claim consideration : and the great
point is to ascertain which can best bring out the affinities
and resemblances ; and this is determined when we have
found which classifies according to the greatest number of
important characters.
This introduces us to the distinction between the Natural
and the Artificial systems of classification, a distinction,
however, that is not peculiar to the Natural History
sciences. It is in reality that which we have already drawn
between a rational and an arbitrary or frivolous grouping.
The peculiarity of the case lies here that, from the
character of the facts manipulated, that system which is
known as Artificial is not in any strict sense of the word
altogether arbitrary, but must be to a considerable extent
also " natural " ; while the system denominated Natural is
also to a considerable extent " artificial ".
244 W. L. DAVIDSON :
I do not indeed say that a system could not be formed, or
has not been formed, to which the word arbitrary might not
be strictly applied. On the contrary, when Theophrastus
divided plants into trees and herbs, " referring the larger
shrubs to the former, and undershrubs to the latter," he
used a principle of division (namely, size) which cannot be
designated as other than frivolous notwithstanding that it
long kept its ground, being accepted so late as the beginning
of last century by Bay in our own country and Tournefort in
France. And much the same may be said of Pliny the
Elder's grouping of animals according to the element they
lived in : those that fly in the air (wlatilia), those that live
on the land (terrestria), and those that swim in the water
(aquatilia}. But the Linnaean system (which is that com-
monly known as Artificial) differs from the Natural mainly
in degree ; and the accurate plan would be to drop the desig-
nations " natural " and " artificial," and to replace them by
the terms " more natural " and " less natural ".
What, then, is the distinction between the Natural and
the Artificial so-called ; and how can the former legitimately
claim the pre-eminence ? This question will be answered
by referring to the objects that biological classing has in
view. In the first place, it has all the objects of classifica-
tion in general viz., helping the memory, aiding the under-
standing and displaying coexistences. But, in the next
place, it has the peculiarity of dealing with living beings and
of aiming at presenting these in the mutual relations that
they actually bear in Nature. Now, in order to do this, it
is not sufficient to rest content with mere superficial resem-
blances, but we must go deep down and fix upon those that
are significant and important : and the test of importance and
significance is, that they are constant and prolific of corre-
lated properties. It is the main objection to the Artificial
system that it fails in this respect, or fails to a far greater
extent than the Natural system does. It is too ready to
proceed upon the more obvious and easily ascertainable
points of animals and plants, and it does not make the fact
of correlated properties a prime consideration. Notwith-
standing its one great recommendation viz., that it facili-
tates identification it is deficient in the very points that
are most imperative ; and its leading principle of arrange-
ment e.g., in Botany, the number of stamens and pistils
lands us in natural groups only, as it were, by accident and
very occasionally.
Let us take as an example the classifying of Animals. In
the Linnsean. system, the classifying organ that determined
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 245
the highest divisions was the heart. Linnaeus, accordingly,
grouped thus :
Heart, 2 ventricles, 2 auricles ; J" Living young, I. Mammalia.
blood warm, red. \ Eggs, II. Aves (Birds).
Heart, 1 vent., 1 aur. ; f With lungs, III. Amphibia.
blood warm, red. \ Eggs, II. Aves (Birds),
"eart, 1 vent., 1 aur. ; ( With lungs, III. Am
blood cold, red. \ With gills, IV. Pisces (Fishes).
Heart, 1 vent., aur. ; ( With antenna, V. Irisecta.
blood cold, white. ( With tentacles, VI. Vermes (Worms).
Now, as is well known, the heart is a very variable organ,
and so is not well suited to give the great differentiating
mark in the animal kingdom. It does not make the most of
correlated properties, and it necessitates a great overlapping
of classes. Later naturalists have, therefore, discarded it,
and have given the place of honour to the nervous system. In
this way they have been able to mark affinities and to dis-
play gradations to a far greater extent than ever Linnaeus
could, and to bring their classification nearer to what they
conceive to be the ideal natural system, although there is
yet much to be done before perfection is attained. By fixing
on the nervous system as their chief classifying organ, they
have fixed upon something that is of the highest scientific
value. For what determines the value of an organ for
classifying purposes ? The number of properties that it
carries along with it. Presence of a nervous system, there-
fore, means many things. It means, in the vertebrates, pos-
session of a brain and spinal cord, shut out in a special cavity
from the general visceral tube of the body, and situated
opposite the side on which the limbs are placed. It means
possession of an internal skeleton, as opposed to the exo-
skeleton of such invertebrates as the lobster and the crab.
It means possession of limbs jointed to the body, and always
turned away from the nervous masses ; and these limbs
never more than two pairs. It means possession of a heart
(except in the case of the lancelet), as well as of a blood-
vascular system, and blood (with one exception) of a red
colour ; together with the peculiarity that the masticatory
organs are " modifications of parts of the walls of the head,
and are never modified limbs or hard structures developed in
the mucous membrane of the digestive tube as they are in
the invertebrates". It means, lastly, increase in intelligence,
advance in mental endowment, the degree of advance
depending on the size and weight of the brain, but still more
on the brain's texture and convolutions. So that the
Natural system has this great advantage over the Artificial
that it is truer to the principles of natural science and of
scientific classification in general ; it is more fortunate in
246 W. L. DAVIDSON :
facilitating the grouping of members according to their
greatest number of real affinities and of fixed resemblances.
in.
But now a difficulty arises with respect to Biological
grouping, yet not by any means confined to it, a difficulty
real and very perplexing wherever we have a complicated
classification to deal with, and whatever be the materials in
hand or the sphere of operation. No member of a complex
system can have all its relations expressed by being placed
in any one position in a linear scheme, however carefully
located. While you may succeed in showing its connexion
with those immediately above it and those immediately
below it and (where you have a graded system involving co-
ordinations) with those immediately around it, you cannot
exhibit its many resemblances to distant and seemingly
unconnected groups, or exhaust its points of affinity or
dependence. Hence the necessity of frequent re-grouping of
a subordinate kind, with a special view to helping out the
general classification and remedying its defects. ^
Let us revert for illustration to the classification of the
Sciences, and let us pick out one science for the special pur-
pose of exhibiting its various kinds of relationship. Ethics
will suit our purpose admirably, its bearings and con-
nexions being manifold and the instance typical.
As Ethics is the science of human Character in reference
to an ideal standard, it is properly enough regarded as a
branch of the Mental sciences. But the mental sciences are
numerous psychology, sociology, metaphysics, &c. ; and
they stand to Ethics in all sorts of relations causation,
dependence, implication, &c. These relations must be
clearly understood and schematically expressed.
Take, first, Ethics and Psychology. Now, as Ethics has
to do in great part with character, and as character is a com-
bination of certain volitional, emotive and intellectual
elements, Ethics, in this point of view, must be regarded as
a branch of psychology. The methods of the one science are
the methods of the other also they are introspection and
objective observation ; and Morality is a department of
man's nature needing to be inductively studied, like all
similar departments. But, further still, psychological doc-
trines find, many of them, their application in Ethics, and
their meaning is only made all the clearer by their being
presented in an ethical setting. Thus, the leading laios of
psychology those that give to it its distinctive feature and
constitute indeed its scientific value are those relating to
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 247
the Association of Ideas : Similarity and Contiguity play the
most conspicuous part in the explanation of intellectual and
emotive phenomena. But these are the laws also that
dominate moral phenomena and afford us the explanation of
Character. They here go under the name of Habit ; and
this change of name sometimes imposes upon us, and makes
us believe that in changing the name we have effected a
change in the guiding principles. But change of principles
there is none ; and Habit just means the operation of psy-
chological laws directed on ethical or moral data. There is
a change of matter or content indeed ; but similarity and con-
tiguity hold their sway here as elsewhere, and moral habits
are built up after the same manner as we make our intellec-
tual and other acquisitions. So, too, the ethical laws of
Transference, of Distance in time, and of Sympathy are really
applications of the psychological. By the law of Transfer-
ence is meant the tendency to associate pleasures and pains
with their adjuncts or their causes, as when the miser hugs
his money-bags, or the rescued sailor cherishes the log that
saved his life, or when the invalid contracts a dislike to the
physician that cured him by some drastic process. The law
of Distance is, that the nearer a pleasure or pain, the
greater its influence over us ; the further removed, the less
its motive power. We all know that " hope deferred maketh
the heart sick," and an impending evil is prone to paralyse
us. By the law of Sympathy is signified the tendency to
realise the feelings and conditions of others, and to make
them our own. This includes fellow-feeling with the
pleasures as well as with the pains of others (the latter being
Pity or Compassion), and extends to the lower animals as
well as to our fellow-men. We have here an obvious con-
nexion with the Fixed Idea.
So with many other ethical facts that might be instanced
for example, Conscience. But enough has now been adduced
to show that Ethics presupposes psychology, is dependent
on psychological laws and psychological methods.
There is also a dependence of Ethics on Sociology.
This, of course, arises from the circumstance that man is
essentially a social being, and that his moral nature would
have no meaning apart from his relations to his fellow-men.
Indeed, we might go even the length of saying that, apart
from social intercourse, Conscience could not be. For, were
man a solitary individual, with no knowledge of and no con-
nexion with others, it is not conceivable how duty, right and
wrong, and other ethical notions could emerge. But place
him in the midst of other sentient beings, more especially
248 W. L. DAVIDSON :
place him in the midst of other men, and these conceptions
immediately emerge : and not only do they emerge, but they
are strengthened and developed. A man acts on his social
surroundings and his social surroundings act upon him, and
through this mutual action and reaction of subject and
environment the moral nature has come to be what it is. It
was the fault of the older moralists that they viewed man
too much as an isolated individual, and it is perhaps the
fault of the moderns that they are disposed to ignore his
individuality ; but self and sociality must both be taken into
account, and you cannot, without disastrous ethical conse-
quences, separate the man from his environment.
Next come Ethics and Jurisprudence. The relation here
is obviously very close ; for Jurisprudence has to deal with
rights and positive law law as embodied in national
arrangements or as relating to general society. It, there-
fore, meets ethics on its social side ; and many juridical con-
ceptions are transported into ethical science, such as Law,
Sanction, &c. Ethics, however, reacts on Jurisprudence,
and elevates its conception of Justice as it is by keeping
before the minds of jurists the conception of Justice as it
ought to be. Legal right and ethical right are not always
identical ; but the tendency, as civilisation advances, is to
make them so.
Take, next. Ethics and Ontology : regarding which, it may
at once be said that the connexion here is not quite of the
same kind as we have seen it to be in the other cases. There
it was a relation of dependence, the methods, laws and prin-
ciples of Psychology, for instance, were seen as carried over
into Ethics. Not so here. The metaphysical or ontological
data of Ethics, if they are recognised at all, must be recog-
nised as implications ; something that is found, upon analysis
of ethical phenomena, to be presupposed, fundamental, not
as being first in the order of time, but as being involved in
the revelations of the moral consciousness. These meta-
physical data are usually put down (after Kant) as three in
number : (1) The Freedom of the Will, (2) the Immortality
of the Soul, (3) the Existence of God. Concerning which, all
that need here be said is that the second occupies an entirely
different position from the other two. For, if the first be
implied in the notion of Obligation (" ought implies can ")
and the third be involved in the Authority or Supremacy of
Conscience, the other is a datum only at the second remove.
All that Conscience at the most testifies is, that virtue ought
to be rewarded and vice punished. We have to look to our
experience of the world around us and see that virtue is fre-
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 249
quently not rewarded and vice is frequently unpunished here,
before we can reach the conclusion that there is a hereafter for
us, when wrongs shall be righted and justice shall be done.
What now of Ethics and Beligion? Obviously, if the
metaphysical implications above enumerated be accepted,
Ethics must be regarded as the foundation of Eeligion, rather
than Keligion as the foundation of Ethics. Moral concep-
tions are prior, in order of thought, to religious conceptions ;
and without the first the second could not be understood.
"We may quite well draw out an ethical system without any
reference to religion ; but we cannot draw out a religious
system without distinct reference to, without presupposing
or embodying, ethical notions. Not only are men's ideas of
the Deity and of His righteousness relative to the moral
consciousness (hence the diversity in theistic beliefs among
people of different ages and of different countries), but the
very possibility of the Deity's holding intercourse with man
at all is the moral consciousness. For, suppose a Divine
revelation made : how is it to be known by us ? how can
its truth be tested ? Clearly, by its moral bearings, or
else not at all. To urge its acceptance, in the first instance,
on the plea that it comes from the Deity, is a manifest
hysteron proteron. We must reverse the method and judge
whether it is likely to have come from the Deity by the kind
of revelation that it is.
Again, both Political Economy -and Education have a
relation to Ethics.
The leading principle of Political Economy is indeed the
dominance in man of self-interest. It supposes that the
unit of society is always a person disposed to buy in the
cheapest market and to sell in the dearest. But although
this is its leading principle, and that on which the science is
founded, it cannot altogether ignore the fact that man has
generous, self-sacrificing and benevolent impulses in him :
and, in whatever extent it recognises this, to that extent it
accepts the ethical position.
But the case is stronger for Education. There are con-
siderable moral bearings here. It is the object of the teacher
to form the pupil's character as well as to train his mind ;
and, for this purpose, he needs himself to know the power
of the various moral motives, and needs to exercise great
care in the application of them. Ethical considerations
must also weigh with the writers and compilers of school-
books. Lessons bearing on truthfulness, industry, manli-
ness of character, chivalry, independence, and so forth, must
be chosen ; such as would encourage the corresponding vices,
250 W. L. DAVIDSON :
or would tend in any way to lower the pupil's tone or debase
his nature, must be rejected.
Lastly, Ethics has a certain relation to ^Esthetics : by
which I mean that there is such a thing as moral "beauty. It
would be quite wrong indeed to confound the Beautiful with
the Good ; but there is, undoubtedly, a well-marked aesthetic
aspect of morals, and this needs to be taken account of.
Now, if all these connexions between Ethics and the allied
sciences exist, it is obvious that a bare seized classification
cannot adequately represent them. By enumerating the
kindred sciences in successive order thus psychology,
sociology, jurisprudence, Ethics, metaphysics, religion,
political economy, education, aesthetics you do not bring
out the fact that Ethics is not dependent upon metaphysics
(which comes immediately behind it in the enumeration) in
at all the same way as it is on psychology, sociology and
jurisprudence ; nor that the dependence of religion on ethics
is of quite another stamp from that of political economy and
education on ethics ; nor that the relation of ethics and
aesthetics is quite different from both. Your single line is
altogether inadequate and misleading. Clearly, a second
line is needed intersecting the other, before we have clear-
ness given to the expression ; and even this must be supple-
mented by other lines inserted at an angle. Thus, let the
horizontal line in the accompanying diagram represent the
Metaphysics or
Ontology.
Psych., Soc., Jurisp., ETHICS, Eeligion.
Political Economy.
Education.
order of dependence proper, the vertical line that of implication,
and the inclined line that of indirect contribution. Then, the
sciences on the left side of ETHICS in the horizontal line
(psychology, sociology, &c.) would be those that lead up to
Ethics and on which Ethics is dependent ; that on the right
side (religion) would be the science dependent upon Ethics :
the upper part of the vertical line (where ontology is) would
denote sciences whose truths are implicated in ethics ; the
under part those (education, &c.) into which ethics enters :
and the line or lines striking at an angle would serve to show
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 251
less significant relations joining on Ethics to more inde-
pendent sciences, aesthetics, for example. This, or some
similar plan, is obviously required, if classification is to be
that help to the understanding which it is capable of
becoming.
But if this be so with respect to such a subject as the
grouping of the sciences, much more is it so with Biological
classification. The resemblances between groups both of
animals and of plants are almost infinite, and no pains
should be spared to bring out as many of them as is possible.
The foundation of a natural group indeed is number and
persistence of characters, and how can this be secured ex-
cept by copious regrouping? How else can the mind be
adequately helped in its effort to grasp the phenomena ?
Moreover, these regroupings, in order to be duly effective,
must be accompanied by schematic devices, chief of which
is the Table. It is only by such means that the mind can
be fully impressed with the unity that exists in the midst of
variety throughout the world of animate beings ; and only by
such means can our view both of the whole and of the parts
become clear and definite.
As, however, this is a subject that I have already handled
in an article on " Botanical Classification " in MIND 20, I
shall not here dwell upon it. Sufficient to have noted it,
and to have called attention afresh to its character and
importance.
IV.
A question, however, now presents itself. If it is the fact
that complicated classifications need a system of grouping
and regrouping, does not this tell against the logical charac-
ter of the process altogether ? No doubt, to some extent it
does. For, it is an admission that the groups are not at all
points and in every way mutually exclusive, that, in a
greater or a less degree, there is overlapping. But it is
important to observe of what kind the overlapping is. Take
the classification of the sciences, and it is seen that the
process begins at its widest sweep with a pure dichotomous
division : it is the contrast of the Abstract and the Concrete.
Similarly, the kingdom of animals at its highest grade is
divided into Vertebrates and Invertebrates ; and the kingdom
of plants into Flowering and Flowerless. So, the systematic
arrangement of duties, in Ethics, proceeds upon the opposi-
tion of Egoistic and Altruistic ; and any proper treatment
of the Emotions must pay due regard to the dominant con-
trast of Disinterestedness and Malevolence. It is in filling
252 W. L. DAVIDSON I
up the interval that the mutually-exclusive type cannot be
consistently carried out. In so far as there is mutual impli-
cation among different groups, there cannot, to that extent,
be mutual exclusion (the one idea cancels the other) ; and
where, as in the case of living beings, of plants and animals,
you have the phenomena of development and growth, of
group shading into group by insensible degrees, rather
than demarcated by a rigorous boundary, cross-division is
unavoidable. Hence the necessity of denning a rational
principle of classification in the way that we have already
done, i.e., as luminous, in opposition to the arbitrary and
frivolous, rather than as mutually-exclusive ; and hence the
meaning of the words " having regard to the materials
manipulated and the end in view " appended to the Rule in
Section II. above. In dealing with living beings, any prin-
ciple that may be chosen always requires you to admit of
exceptions ; and the correlated properties that a fundamental
character carries along with it are only true on the whole.
Though the typical Vertebrate has all the points enumerated
in last Section, there comes such an exception as the lance-
let (Ampliioxus lanceolatus] , which has the unique peculiari-
ties of anomalous breathing organs, and anomalous organs
of digestion and of circulation ; which, moreover, is destitute
of a heart, and which has no true brain and no true skeleton,
no skull, no true back-bone or vertebral column : and its
position is secured to it among vertebrates only because,
taking everything into consideration, it shows more affinity
to these than to the invertebrates. On the other hand,
several of the invertebrates show a clear approach to the
vertebrate type. In the so-called cuttlefish, for example,
there is a distinct brain enclosed in a kind of skull a gristly,
not a bony, case. Still, because the affinities are towards
the invertebrates, it is classed accordingly.
Mutual exclusion, then, is not an imperative requirement
in graded classifications. Are these, therefore, to be con-
sidered illogical ? If their object were a purely ideal one,
this conclusion would indeed be inevitable. But as their
object is not a purely ideal one, but aims first and chiefly at
laying hold of things as they are in fact, this conclusion is
illegitimate. In classifying the emotions, we must pay
regard to their subtle interdependencies as well as to their
diversities and contrasts ; otherwise, it is not the emotions
we classify, but something else. In schematising the
sciences, we must never lose sight of the fact that these
sciences have a kind of organic connexion, and that their
union is of as much importance as their separation. In
THE LOGIC OF CLASSIFICATION. 253
arranging plants and animals in the vast graded system of
the Natural History sciences, we aim as far as may be at
reproducing Nature, and our divisions can hardly be more
sharply cut than obtains in reality.
Nevertheless, it must never be forgotten that, in each and
all of these cases, there is a plan ; and the very fact of a plan
implies a logical procedure. And, as the ruling trait is fixity
and number of correlated properties, rigorous adherence to
this principle will keep us as near to the requirements of
logic as the materials admit of.
v.
A word, finally, may be due on the bearing of Evolution on
Natural History Classification.
Many evolutionists affect to despise Classification, and, as
far as one can judge, seem to regard it as inconsistent with,
or actually opposed to, their pregnant theory. Nothing,
surely, is more unwarranted. It may safely enough be
asserted that, had it not been for the existence of a highly
developed scheme of biological classing, Evolution would still
have been a thing to search for. And with equal confidence
may it be asserted that, the more thoroughly Evolution is
worked and the further it progresses, the greater is the help
it will render towards the perfecting, not the destruction, of
the Natural system. What Evolution does is to throw new
light upon biological facts ; and, in throwing new light upon
them, it is better fitted than anything else to bring out
affinities and resemblances among living beings. Now, as it
is on affinities and fixed resemblances that Natural classifica-
tion reposes, much may be hoped, and nothing need be feared,
from the advance of this great fruit-bearing conception.
V.- PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS.
By FEANCIS WINTEETON.
IN the plan of the Order founded by Don Inigo de Loyola,
philosophical instruction occupies only a secondary place ;
still it underwent developments and took directions, in the
course of the Society's career, that are worth a close study.
I will at present try only to sketch out rapidly the main
stages of the history, from the constitution of the Order
about 1540 till its dissolution in 1773.
What is the fundamental idea that underlies the whole of
Jesuit philosophy ? To answer this question, we must first
of all ask the previous one : What is a Jesuit ? A Jesuit
may be denned as ' a Eoman Catholic profoundly and
practically convinced that all things in this world (science
and philosophy of course included) are but means for him to
work out the salvation of his soul V A Eoman Catholic
starts from the assumption, regarded by him as indubitably
sure, that his Church is in possession of absolute truth, and
is accordingly the very best means of salvation in the world.
This once admitted, the greater the number of souls saved
by any man, the surer that man is of his own salvation ;
and the more zealously he upholds the Catholic Church, the
greater number of souls he is sure to save. It follows
logically that every effort of the Jesuit ought to tend towards
upholding his Church ; that every possession, every talent,
every affection, even life itself, ought to be consecrated to
that end alone. Every force, every influence, every tendency
in the world antagonistic to the Church, must be unswerv-
ingly resisted : the Church cannot do wrong. Any specula-
tive doctrine, any philosophical system, any scientific
hypothesis hostile to the Church, must be relentlessly
opposed : the Church cannot ~be wrong.
St. Ignatius had nothing whatever of the speculative
philosopher in his nature ; he was, on the contrary, intensely
and overwhelmingly practical. Those who paint him with
the romantic colours of chivalry, and make of the first Jesuit
a sort of Christian Don Quixote, only caricature one side of
his many-sided character. His dreams, visions and ecstasies
never interfered with his knowing what he wanted and
1 See the Exercitia Spiritualia ; Principium et Fundamentum.
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 255
how he was to attain his purpose in the outside world. If
anyone takes the trouble to read his Exercitia Spiritualia
through, he will not be repaid by five lines of pure specula-
tion, except perhaps in the Contemplatio ad Amorem, in the
last ' Week ' ; and even that contemplation, as may easily
be seen, works towards an end towards the one end of the
whole book. This allusion to the Exercitia is by no means
irrelevant ; we are at the very springhead of Jesuit philo-
sophy. The book in question contains the whole idea of St.
Ignatius, already worked out and matured in the solitary
grotto of Manreza, at the very beginning of his conversion ;
and the whole subsequent life of this man, together with the
whole history of his Order, is but the systematic evolution
of the principles contained in this book. It is studied in
silence and solitude, during one week every year, by each
member of the Order. It is studied in the same absolute
seclusion during the three probations : a week during the
first, a month during the second, and a month again during
the third. From its contents the subject of the daily hour
of meditation of every Jesuit is selected. It is the theme of
every retreat preached by a member of the Order ; and it
would be hard to find a single book, a single sermon, com-
posed by a Jesuit, in which some idea taken from the Exer-
citia does not occur. Now in this book, after the first
fundamental idea of salvation, from corollaries to corollaries,
the author comes at last to the problem : By what means can
the interests of the Church be best promoted intellectually ?
And the answer is given in the Regulce ad rede sentiendum
cum Ecclesia. Not that, in raising this question, St. Ignatius
means altogether to throw aside the free exercise of his
reason. True, reason is for him a " means unto salvation,"
and nothing more ; but, if not exercised freely, it is no longer
reason. The Church, being true, needs no reasonings for
itself, but only for its children ; and the fewer they need,
the more meritorious their faith is. " Blessed is he that
hath not seen, and yet hath believed." Still, one must be
practical, and it is a fact that the better and stronger the
arguments given in favour of the Church, the more easy a
task it is to believe. Therefore it only remains to look
out the best arguments and the best system of philosophy
whereby to defend the Church.
In the Regulce, Loyola begins thus : "I must be ready to
believe that what I see to be black is white, should the
Church declare it to be so ". This seems a rather astounding
position for a man in his right senses to take up ; and how
any philosophy can be possible in such a state of mind is at
256 F. WINTER-TON :
first sight hard to conceive. It would appear to destroy all
the certitude of science, since we may suppose the Church
stepping in at every moment, and denying the veracity of
scientific experiments : ' This is not an explosion ; that is
not a gas ; your analyses are not well made ; your syntheses
have led you into error '. Reason itself is overthrown by
faith, since faith is in the right when it contradicts reason.
And lastly, even religion, left without the basis of rational
thought, is utterly annihilated, and nothing is left but an
abject superstition, whose formula is : I believe because I
believe. If we look a little closer, however, we shall see that
things are not quite what they seem.
St. Ignatius does not take a contradiction of faith with
reason as his example, but a contradiction of the senses
-versus faith. He does not say, for instance, that supposing
2 + 2 = 5 were to be decided by a Council, he would have
to believe it. Nor is this contradiction of the senses an
absolute one. It would be so, if he said : You must believe
that what is black is white, if the Church tells you it is ; or :
You must believe that what you see to be black you see to ~be
white, if the Church decrees it. He does not affirm
either of these two contradictions, but only says that what
we, see to "be black may "be white ; that is, may not be in itself
what it is subjectively as perceived. It may be objected that
this is to go quite far enough. So it is ; and indeed I do
not see how anyone can go farther without falling into a
palpable absurdity. Let it also be remembered that, in the
time of St. Ignatius, it must have seemed much more
contrary to reason than it really is. We all know now
that such a defect as colour-blindness not only may but
really does exist, and that there are many instances of a
man taking, e.g., red for gray, which means that what he
sees to be gray is red. But in the time of St. Ignatius this
phenomenon was completely unknown, and the fact seems
to render the boldness of his ' rule ' still less excusable.
He ought not, however, to be condemned without our
noticing one plea in favour of his doctrine viz., that it is
thoroughly consistent and logical. No Catholic can, without
contradicting his own principles, say one word against
Loyola's manner of proceeding : he but formulates clearly
and explicitly what every believer in the Eomish Church
implicitly submits to. His rule is to believe against the
evidence of the senses and, whilst admitting their subjective,
to deny their objective infallibility, when their testimony
clashes with faith. All Catholics believe in one omni-
present God, present, not partially but in totality, in every
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 257
part of space ; yet their senses cry aloud that nothing can be
undividedly present in several separate places. They believe
that one unchangeable Person, the Word of God, was born,
suffered and died ; yet their senses affirm that all such
processes imply variation and change. They believe that the
appearances of bread and of wine conceal the body and the
blood of Jesus Christ ; and yet their senses warn them that
what appears to be bread is bread, that what seems wine is
wine in very deed. At every step there is a conflict between
the ideas and judgments which the senses tend to produce, and
the ideas and judgments that are evolved under the influence
of faith. I here purposely abstain from passing judgment
upon the principles from which St. Ignatius started ; I
merely notice that he was consistent with himself and
strictly logical all along.
The standpoint from which he views everything having
thus been indicated, it will hardly appear surprising that he
arrived at the conclusion that Scholastic Philosophy was to
be made much of. 1 It is a well-known fact that no system
of philosophy is so little at variance with the dogmas of the
Church of Rome as the doctrine of Aristotle. Other systems
of doctrine may perhaps be wrested into compliance with
the mysteries of that faith : Peripateticism lent itself to the
transformation. If anyone wishes to study the process,
and observe with what ease this change was brought about,
he has only to read St. Thomas Aquinas's commentaries on
Aristotle ; on the completion of which the Sorbonne raised
the prohibition it had so long laid upon the works of the
Grecian philosopher. It may be that this facility of adapta-
tion was solely due to the assimilative genius of Aquinas ;
still I am much mistaken if the doctrine itself, as Aristotle
gave it to the world, did not count for a great deal in the
success of the operation.
But while St. Ignatius, in the rules he lays down, inclines
visibly to the Scholastic Philosophy, he does not exclude the
different manner of doctrine professed by most Fathers of
the early Church, which he calls Positive Theology. This
is by no means an inconsistency on his part ; still less
is it a departure from his primal idea of upholding the
Church, to which both the ancient Fathers and the School-
men of more recent date are equally necessary. But though
he attributes to the former the important task of strengthen-
ing the heart and determining the will by their eloquence,
he still gives the palm to the latter for whatever concerns
1 See the Exercitia : Regulce ad rectt sentiendum, &c., towards the end.
17
258 F. WINTEETON :
method and argument. They complete each other ; but it
is as literature and the fine arts, in a course of education,
complete and are completed by scientific pursuits.
If we now turn to the Constitutions, drawn up by St.
Ignatius and his first companions, and presented to Paul III.
for approbation, we shall find the same idea more strongly
and distinctly expressed. " As for Logic, Natural Philo-
sophy, Ethics and Metaphysics, the doctrine of Aristotle is
to be followed." " Let the Scholastic doctrine of St. Thomas
be taught. . . . But if, in the course of time, another
author should seem preferable for our students ; for instance,
should a Summa or book of Scholastic theology be published
that should seem more appropriate to the present period,
such a work might be used amongst us." x
This is very decided and unequivocal. Yet it is, on the
whole, a much more judicious and moderate decision than
anyone could expect who puts himself in the place of St.
Ignatius, both as to his internal convictions and as regards
the times in which he lived. Until that period there had
not been a single religious Order that had failed to inscribe
Scholasticism on its banner. Both in Metaphysics and in
Natural Philosophy Aristotle reigned supreme. Most of
the Platonists of St. Ignatius's time were noted heretics,
even infidels ; and Galileo, the Catholic adversary of Aris-
totle's physics, was not yet born. Catholic philosophers
were divided into Thomists and Scotists ; while Protestants
attacked Scholasticism in general, and Thomism in parti-
cular, with incredible vigour and fire. Tolle Thomam,
cried the great voice of Luther, et ego diruam Ecclesiam ;
which reminds us of Archimedes asking for a fulcrum, in
order to move the world. At the Council of Trent the
Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas was placed on the
table by the side of the Holy Script ares. When St.
Thomas's canonisation was proceeding (1323) the Pope, John
XXII., impatient at the formalities which hindered the
Angelic Doctor from taking his place amongst the Saints,
exclaimed: "What need have we of miracles to canonise
him? every sentence he has written is in itself a miracle ".
And if, after this unanimity both of friends and of foes to
the Church, we find the author of the Constitutions only
choosing St. Thomas until some better author and one more
adapted to circumstances should arise, we may well be
astonished at his moderation.
The causes of this extraordinary moderation are easy to
1 Constt. 4a Pars. Cap. xiv. 3 ; Cap. xix. 1, note B.
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 259
guess. The new organisation of which he was the founder
had to struggle between the rival forces of the Thomist
Dominicans and the Scotist children of St. Francis. He
could not possibly keep to his leading idea the best means
of defending the Church and at the same time embrace the
doctrines of Duns Scotus ; whereas, if he showed that the
Society was absolutely and unreservedly Thomist, it would
have set the Franciscans bitterly against him, and hardly
conciliated the Dominicans, unless by a display of obsequious
subserviency fatal to the independence necessary to any
Order. Besides, he had in the example of the two Orders
just mentioned a fatal instance of the results attained by
party spirit in speculative things. I shall touch upon this
again further on, but now merely point out that no enemies
of Scholasticism could have done it more harm than its
adherents did by their wranglings. Again, if we may
attribute any personal feelings to a man so utterly absorbed
in the realisation of his plans, St. Ignatius could not have
easily forgotten that he had everywhere met with opposition
from the Dominicans, who had twice thrust him into prison,
for preaching before he was ordained a priest. Shall we add
to these causes a vague and perhaps unconscious hope that
some day there would arise a member of the nascent
Society, whose writings might be deemed worthy to take
the place of Aquinas, at least in the schools of the future
Order ? It may be ; but that hope, if ever it existed, was
doomed to disappointment. No one author among the
Jesuits has the honour of being openly commented in its
schools as an authority.
We may now pass to consider the first movements of the
Jesuits in the philosophical line, and sum them up as a mere
reaction against Protestantism. At the outset of the Refor-
mation, one great question was raised, which is not yet set
at rest. The problem of free-will finds Protestants far from
unanimous at the present day ; but at the beginning it was
otherwise. Luther and Calvin, the two main pillars of the
Reformation, had written the De Servo Arbitrio, and the
Institutio Christiance Religionis, each embodying their
doctrine on this point. Everywhere Jesuit missionaries
were engaged in fierce conflict with the Reformers, and
everywhere they were met, if not with the absolute negation
of free-will, at least with the negation of that amount of it
which is necessary for the dogmas of their Church. This
fact may perhaps throw additional light on the reserve with
which St. Thomas is spoken of in the Constitutions, and the
innuendo that he is not sufficiently " actual ". The Summa
260 F. WINTEBTON :
contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologica only reflect the
light of past controversies ; and among them that of
Pelagius is one of the most famous. The Church, as every-
one knows, had considered the British monk's idea of free-
will to be exaggerated ; accordingly all works of mediaeval
theology tended to abase nature, and to exalt the work
of grace in man. 1 And when Protestantism carne upon
the field, crying down free-will as much as Pelagius
had cried it up, some propositions of St. Thomas did cer-
tainly seem not adapted to circumstances. For instance, to
quote only from his Summa contra Gentiles, the proposition
" Quod motus voluntatis caiisatur a Deo, et non solum potentia
voluntatis " (lib. iii. cap. Ixxxix.), and the affirmation (lib.
iii. cap. clxiii.) that " necesse est praedictam hominum dis-
tinctionem (the elect and the reprobate) a Deo esse ordinatam "
must have appeared to Jesuits as both ill-timed and ill-
worded without some explanation. Hindered by the
decisions of the Church from going openly so far as
Pelagianism or as Semi-Pelagianism, it was but natural
that they should approach as near to these forms of
thought as possible, in order more surely to avoid and more
powerfully to resist the opposite tendency, which was more
dangerous then. And so long as they confined themselves to
struggling with Calvinists and Lutherans, who were outside
the Church ; so long as they only grappled with Baius
and his followers, who, though in the Church, were the
rebellious expounders of a system it had condemned,
all went well. But when the most celebrated religious
Order in Christendom took up, partially at least, the opinions
of Baius, and the Dominican Bannez brought forward the
doctrine of ' physical premotion ' as part and parcel of the
system of St. Thomas, then the Society of Jesus found
itself in a serious difficulty.
The Dominicans had comparatively little to do with Pro-
testants, and considered all questions from a widely different
point of view. The Jesuits asked, on examining any question
whatever : Which side is it most expedient to defend in
the interests of the Church ? The Dominicans inquired
what answer St. Thomas had given, or would have given;
what opinion is pointed to by the consequences of his
theories, or the language used by him. And so it happened
that both Orders were right, from their own points of view.
1 Not only works of theology, but of piety too. The Imitation of Christ
contains chapters (on the different motions of nature and grace, and on
the corruption of nature and the efficacity of divine grace : iii. 54, 55) that
would hardly have been allowed later on.
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 261
St. Thomas repeatedly employs expressions that can without
difficulty be interpreted in the sense of 'physical promotion' ;
and there is no doubt that the further a Catholic keeps from
any popular heresy, the safer it is for him, so long as he
does not fall into the contrary error. The question remains,
of course, whether the Jesuits really did avoid Pelagianism ;
but they certainly were convinced that they did. A practical
problem had arisen, from the moment when Bannez' theory
saw the light. How could they possibly resist Protestantism
with success, if they admitted as true, or even possible, a
doctrine separated from Lutheranism and Calvinism only
by the finest-drawn distinctions, which many were inclined to
say were no distinctions at all? And when, after the
Jesuit Father Monte-major's attack upon Bannez, they
found the latter expressly approved by the Dominican Order,
they could not help protesting en masse, in order to keep their
hands free.
Two courses now lay open before them. One was to
confine themselves strictly to an onslaught upon ' physical
promotion,' without attempting to bring forward a view
of their own : in a word, to attack what was dangerous
without endeavouring to solve what was insoluble. The
other was to bring forward a rival theory ; and the latter
course, as we know, was taken. This seems to me a slight
deviation from the ruling idea of St. Ignatius. Louis Molina
was a man whose genius at least equalled that of Bannez ;
and his theory ' de scientid media ' is worthy of the best times
of Scholastic theology. The Society, I am afraid, was not
able to resist this splendid opportunity of ' showing off ' ;
and perhaps jealousy of the Dominicans counted for some-
thing too. Still, 'showing off' and the humiliation of a rival
Order have nothing in common with the defence of the
Church. I know very well that they had the right to do as
they did ; what I contest is not the right, but the expediency
of their decision. And what w r ere the results of this one
false move ? Years of interminable discussion ; the reputa-
tion of being Semi-Pelagians ; the danger of a public con-
demnation as heretics ; an incalculable amount of labour
that might have been more fruitfully employed ; the death
even of two of their number, FF. Valentia and Arrubal,
struck down in the ardour of debate ; and, as some say,
the death of Pope Clement VIII., caused by his soli-
citude and fatigues in these disputes. All this to what end,
either as regards the Church or the Jesuits themselves ?
They avoided being branded as heretics, it is true, and that
was a triumph, if we remember the immense influence their
282 F. WINTEETON I
adversaries then enjoyed at the Papal Court ; but the
doctrine which they considered to be so dangerous to the
Church also escaped condemnation, merely because they
gave way for a moment to a very natural desire of glory.
Had they been satisfied with taking the offensive, ' physical
premotion ' might not have been anathematised ; but, given
the position in which the Romish Church then stood, it
would certainly have been forbidden as dangerous. Instead
of which, the Jesuits got nothing but a great deal of trouble.
The trouble brought upon them was in fact so great that
they stood in great jeopardy of losing their reputation of
purity in the faith, which, to an Order that could hardly
count fifty years of existence and had already made almost
as many enemies as there were monks in the whole world,
was of supreme importance. To parry this blow, the fifth
General Congregation published the following decrees, in
1594, a few years before the Order was called to account by
Clement VIII. , and whilst the quarrel was raging the most
fiercely between Thomists and Molinists, each treating the
other party as Calvinists or Pelagians. The italics are of
course wanting in the original.
" The Committee appointed to examine the doctrines and methods of
our schools, having carefully discussed and fully debated the question, and
laid before the Congregation their conclusions as to what concerns the
speculative part and choice of opinions, the Congregation has approved
their sentence. And firstly, it has unanimously declared that the theological
and scholastic doctrine of St. Thomas, being more weighty, safer, more
approved and better agreeing with our constitutions than any other, is to be
followed by our Professors.
" Let our teachers follow St. Thomas, as to Scholastic Theology ; and in
future let those alone be promoted to the chairs of Divinity who are well
affected towards the same. As for such as are unfriendly, or even indifferent
to him, let them not be allowed to teach. But, for the conception of the
B. V. Mary " [about which St. Thomas is known to have held opinions that
are now heterodox], " and as to the question of solemn vows " [which most
especially interested the Society], " let them follow the opinion that is most
comm.only received and followed by theologians at present.
" Should the opinion of St. Thomas be doubtful, or should Catholic
doctors not agree upon questions which St. ThfMUM has not treated, our Pro-
fessors are free to choose whichever side they prefer.
" In matters of any considerable importance, our Professors must not
depart from Aristotle's doctrine, unless when the latter holds an opinion
not generally admitted at present, and still more when he contradicts the
true faith.
" They must never speak of St. Thomas otherwise than with reverence,
following him with ready minds whenever they can, and when they
cannot, separating from him with due respect and as against their will.
" They must introduce no new questions, nor any opinion that is not
held by some author of note, without having consulted their Superiors ;
nor should they defend any proposition repugnant to the axioms of philo-
'sophers and the common sentiment of the Schools. And let them know
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 263
that, should any of them be too much given to novelties or of too independent
a way of thinking, they shall certainly be deprived of their professorial
functions.
" They must not, however, be so much attached to St. Thomas as to set
him aside in no question whatever. Even those who profess to be
thorough Thomists, do not follow his teaching in all things : and it is not
just that the members of our Society should be more tightly bound to St.
Thomas than the Thomists are themselves.
" In questions that are merely philosophical it will be also allowed to
follow other writers, that have treated more specially of those subjects." 1
This decree may well be called a master-stroke of policy.
Clement VIII., though friendly to the Jesuits from other
points of view, and notably as to their return to France,
whence they had been banished under Henry IV, is well
known to have leaned towards the opinions of the Domini-
cans ; and being a pure Thomist on all other points, he
seemed much inclined to put the Jesuits in the wrong in
the question of predetermination. It is easy to guess how
much this decree must have tended to pacify him, and even
to make him doubt who was really in the right, since the
Jesuits professed to be no less attached to St. Thomas than
the Dominicans. At least, if they did not say so, they let it
be supposed, by the stress they laid upon the injustice of
having to be more Thomist than the very Thomists. There
is also a covert allusion to the question in dispute at that
time : the decree mentions the case of St. Thomas's opinions
being doubtful, or his not having treated the matter ; for
the question raised by the early Reformers was such that
the few words written by Aquinas on the subject of pre-
destination, &c., are utterly insufficient, ambiguous by their
very brevity, and of very little use in the controversy that
was then going forward. Nothing is more reasonable than
the decree of the Congregation ; nothing better calculated
to allay the fears of heresy, that had sprung up in many
minds. The Jesuits indeed demanded a certain independ-
ence ; but what independence ? They decide not to follow
Aristotle without reservation. They resolve not to be
more ardent disciples of St. Thomas than his most zealous
followers. They are ready to expel any professor who is too
independent, too fond of novelties, too little penetrated with
respect for the holy Doctor ; and the particle too seems clear
enough to all who use it. If they wish to be allowed to
separate from his guidance on some points, they only specify
two ; and in these they only elect to follow the general
sentiment of the Schools. Pope Clement VIII. must have
1 5 Congr. Gen. Deer. xli. ; Ivi. 2.
264 F. WINTEBTON:
been edified, when he read those decrees, to see what the
real feelings of the Society were. But perhaps he did not
know what the Jesuits were perfectly well aware of : every
rule, every decree, has to be interpreted according to the
meaning of those who draw it up. The following anecdote,
which is perfectly authentic, may give an idea of what inter-
pretations can be given to the strictest rules ; and it is an
axiom in the Society that rules are to be interpreted accord-
ing to custom and precedent, unless a new decree supervenes
to define their signification more exactly.
A novice was in France some years ago, at the time when
the Comte de Chambord and Don Carlos were much talked
about. He had heard the rule, read every month in the
refectory, to the effect that no one was to speak about the
wars and quarrels between Christian kings and princes.
Now all the novices were busied during the time of recrea-
tion with the hopes of Henry V., the white flag, the blockade
of Bilbao, and so forth, talking of all these 'subjects without
the slightest pangs of conscience on account of the rule.
Nay, more, when the Master of the novices came amongst
them, he used to set the example of such discourse, with so
much enthusiasm for the Royal cause, and so much apparent
forgetfulness of the rule, that the young man took the
earliest opportunity of asking for an explanation. It then
appeared that the rule was only intended to suppress opposite
national feelings ; but that when anti-religious Republicans
stood on one side and Christian Monarchists on the other,
politics, forbidden when they have only a strictly temporal
object, become allowed as soon as spiritual interests are
concerned.
I have related this merely as an instance of legitimate
interpretation, which sometimes may lead to unexpected
results ; and indeed it was no difficult task for the Jesuits,
without any far-fetched interpretation, and keeping strictly
to the letter of the decree, to do pretty much as they liked
with St. Thomas. One thing alone was clearly understood :
that they were to respect him very much, and not to set his
opinions aside without reason. But as for adopting his
opinions without reason, that was another extremity from
which they were guaranteed by the very letter of the decree.
Between slavish reverence and disrespectful freedom there
is a great distance, and one may find between the two a very
considerable borderland of independent reverence and freedom
blended with respect. On this borderland the Jesuits very
cleverly pitched their tents, and took up a strong position.
Their position is well illustrated by the works of Suarez, the
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 265
most celebrated of Jesuit metaphysicians, who created, so to
speak, a School in the School. Scholasticism stands midway
between pure Empiricism and absolute Idealism ; it is the
' Empire of the Middle '. But Scholasticism itself being
divided into the antagonistic schools of Aquinas and of Duns
Scotus, Suarez set up a ' half-way house ' between the two.
And if the maxim 'In medio veritas ' be allowed, then Suarez
was the most likely of all to get at truth. It is curious to
see how respectfully independent he is of the ' Angel of the
School,' and how often he follows the leading of the ' Doctor
Subtilis,' whilst apparently treating him as of slight account.
On the minor philosophical questions he is almost always
more or less at variance with St. Thomas. Aquinas, for
instance, affirms that essence and existence are really
different ; Suarez denies it. Aquinas asserts that the soul
gives the human body not only humanity, but corporeity ;
Suarez contradicts him. Aquinas thinks that to a complete
non-universal human being, ' something ' must be added in
order for it to become a person ; Suarez thinks the addition
quite unnecessary. Aquinas is of opinion that perfect
happiness, or beatitude, is an act of the intelligence con-
templation ; Suarez makes it consist in an act of the will
love. All these points, together with many others, too
numerous to be mentioned here, are matter for divergence ;
and as for finding fault with the proofs given by St. Thomas,
Suarez is absolutely relentless. He might almost be called
captious, were it not true that proofs, in order to be proofs,
must resist the sharpest fire of adverse criticism. Still, if
he agrees with Scotus on most of the minor points, he is
with his adversary on most of the major ones ; particularly
in the great problem " whether Ens is a generic term, or a
name given to different objects by analogy only " ; and he
altogether repudiates the celebrated Scotistic "formal dis-
tinction a naturd rei " half real, half logical both arid
neither.
Such was the liberty which distinguished the Order of
Loyola from that of St. Dominic. Here a few words are
needed to mark out more distinctly the different spirits that
pervaded these two famous bodies of men ; and it may not
be amiss to state briefly in what manner the latter society
fixed its opinions at once and for ever. Numerous adver-
saries of St. Thomas had arisen after his death, which took
Slace in 1274. In 1276, the Universities of Paris and of
xford had condemned four of his theses as contrary to
faith ; and many Dominicans, in England especially, had
publicly opposed some of his doctrines. The heads of the
266 F. WINTEKTON I
Order, indignant that such an outrage should have been
inflicted on the memory of the Angelic Doctor, hastened to
take defensive measures. In 1278, a general Chapter,
assembled at Milan, sent to England Kaymund Meuillon
and John Vigorosi, with orders to punish and revoke from
their functions such of the Superiors and Professors as
attempted to dishonour the memory of Brother Thomas.
And in 1286, a second general Chapter commanded every
member of the Order to defend faithfully the teaching of
St. Thomas, under pain of deposition from his charge. The
whole Order obeyed the sentence to the letter ; and from
this time, the doctrine of St. Thomas became to the very
smallest detail, the doctrine of the Order : the Dominicans
became Thomists. The Franciscans were not slow to
imitate their example : Scotus, chosen as their great leader,
contradicted Aquinas on every point on which he possibly
could ; and the Franciscans became Scotists. Both parties
disputed and wrangled together for two hundred years ; and
as they wrangled, philosophy gradually went down ; it was
no longer a search after truth ; it was the eager competition
of two rival establishments. At last Protestantism arose,
and Scholasticism was shattered ; Descartes and Locke
wrote, and Scholasticism was destroyed. One first cause of
the ruin that came upon the most durable edifice of human
thought was this want of respect for individual liberty
shown by the Dominicans in 1286.
The Jesuits proceeded otherwise, and certainly with more
tact and better knowledge of human nature than their adver-
saries. The very fact of their being a body of which each
member was responsible for every other, obliged them to
lay a heavy hand of restraint upon individual thought ; but
this restraint was rendered as light as possible, considering
the necessity of discipline. It was not the ponderous unity
of the Macedonian phalanx ; it rather resembled the agile
strength of the Roman legion. The Jesuits had no special
doctrine of their own. It has been said that Molinism was
the doctrine of the Society. This is very far from exact.
Many Jesuit writers of note differ from Molina in almost
all, save the one essential point of making the human will
" a faculty that, even when all conditions of activity are
present, is free either to act as it chooses or not to act at
all ". But this thesis is nothing more than the mere denial
of ' physical premotion '. So, even on this point, the Society
has no particular doctrine. All it does is to forbid certain
doctrines to be upheld for the time being, not as false, but as
ill-timed and inconvenient. This explains how, for instance,
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 267
there was a time when no Professor who admitted the
existence of atoms would have been permitted to retain his
chair ; and now, without any change in the written laws
of the Society, Professors every day teach that atoms exist,
because the inconvenience that once was felt is felt no
longer, and the prohibitory clauses have little by little been
allowed to fall into desuetude.
That no doctrine was ever specially imposed by the
Society may seem a strange assertion to readers of MIND
who recollect that not long ago (July, 1886) there appeared
in the pages of this Review a notice written by one who
appears to be well informed, about the order of Father
Beckx, inspired by Pope Leo XIII., to teach the real dis-
tinction of matter and force (or form). But this is only an
exception, and the circumstances under which it took place
were exceptional too. As for the liberty left in the Society
to all doctrines by which the Church did not seem en-
dangered, it is sufficient to notice the decree of the thir-
teenth General Congregation, that runs as follows :
" It has been reported to the Congregation that some are persuaded that
the Society has taken on itself expressly to defend the opinion of those
doctors who hold that it is allowable to follow the less probable opinion of
two, which favours liberty of action, and set aside the more probable one,
according to which one is morally obliged to act. The Congregation has
thought fit to declare that the Society has neither forbidden nor forbids
the contrary opinion to be defended by all those who think it more likely
to be true." 1
Here we find the very Society that has so often defended
Probabilism, and had so many awkward thrusts to parry on
its account, so much so, that the Jesuits are perhaps better
known as Probabilists than as followers of Molina, declar-
ing that any of its members are perfectly free to defend the
contrary opinion ! This is, I think, a strong enough proof
of my assertion that the general rule of the Order was only
to exercise a negative and temporary supervision over the
doctrines taught by its Professors. Father Acquaviva
indeed 2 tried to impose on the Society the doctrine of Suarez
in the question of Grace and Free-will, midway between
Molina and the Thomists. But here he did not succeed,
and was not approved by the following General Congrega-
tion. Many details too, of Molina's system, have been
rejected by the majority of Jesuit philosophers. Molina
1 IS Congr. Gen. Deer, xviii., 1687.
2 So I was told by a Jesuit of some note, but I have not been able to
find any trace of the fact in the decrees of the General Congregations.
268 F. WINTEETON I
said, for instance, that God saw the future possible acts of
man through His ' supercomprehension ' of human nature.
Given a being of a certain intelligence, he will be right x
times in his guesses as to what a given man will do in given
circumstances. If his intelligence is twice, thrice, four times
as great, he will be right 2#, 3x, 4x times in his guesses.
And if his intelligence = oo , then x = oo also, which means
that God will be always right. The majority of Jesuits,
however, maintain that God knows the future possible acts
of man 'in themselves and without any medium,' which is
clearly no answer at all to the question. But to return : in
all questions, the Professors of the Society knew the general
direction that was considered safe, and were coerced only
when 'they went too far to the right hand or to the left. If
Molinism, therefore, understood in general as a system of
Indeterminism, became the doctrine of the Society, it was
because the majority declared in its favour, and the Generals,
in consequence of this verdict of public opinion, gradually
eliminated from the professorial sphere those who were
opposed to it.
A remark which is not essential, but which serves to show
what curious inconsistencies we sometimes meet with both
amongst individuals and public bodies, is that, at the very
time when the Jesuits stood up the most strenuously for the
doctrine of Free-will, they were (not without reason as to
some members of the Order) accused of laxity in their system
of Ethics. It would have seemed more natural for them to
have been accused of exaggerated severity, since they main-
tained so completely the responsibility of man. But the
latter accusation was never made against any Jesuit, so far
as I am aware. If a Jansenist or a Thomist fell into sin, he
might have said, with some appearance of a reasonable
excuse: " I have not received efficacious grace"; or " I
have not been physically premotioned to resist sin ". And
whether such excuses have any value or none according to
these systems, is no matter at all ; it would seem that
excessive laxity ought to be found on their side, if found any-
where. And yet they were by far the severest moralists.
Perhaps the Jesuits, too confident in the speculative worth
of their principles, did not think enough of reducing them
to practice ; or it may be that their opponents, instinctively
feeling their weakness on that point, strove to hide it as
much as possible by extreme and inconsistent rigidity in
their ethical theories.
The 17th century dawned in the midst of these contro-
versies, which, ending in nothing, only tended to bring
PHILOSOPHY AMONG T EL ill I ITS.
Scholasticism into greater and greater disrepute. There
was a vague feeling of its inefficiency in men's minds ; and
this feeling did not altogether spring from the fact that the
number of talented expounders of its doctrine was small ;
for, not to speak of any writers but those of the Society of
Jesus, Suarez, Cardinals Bellarmin and Tolet, Sylvester
Maurus and Molina would have done credit to any century
whatever. At about that time Eene Descartes, a pupil of
the Jesuits, set to work to renew the whole philosophical
edifice, and, by the lucidity and interesting simplicity of his
style, the thoroughness of his method and the seemingly
mathematical rigour of his demonstrations, attained the
results known to every philosophical student or amateur.
Locke, coming after Descartes, showed himself as indepen-
dent of Peripateticism as he; but his influence was not power-
ful till later on, and merged into the general current created
by Descartes. Descartes, on account of the predominance
of the French language throughout Europe, of the imagina-
tive power of his own genius, and of the moderation with
which he refrained from attacking any of the dogmas of the
Roman Catholic Church, saw his ideas spread rapidly and
make numerous partisans. He besides maintained a firm
friendship with the teachers of his youth. Many letters
written by him to different members of the Society of Jesus
on philosophical subjects testify how desirous he was to
find auxiliaries in them. He even wished his system,
sprung from the brain of one of their pupils, to be what
Thomism had been to the Dominicans, or Scotism to the
Order of St. Francis, and hoped that Cartesian and Jesuit
might be two words signifying the same thing. During his
life, the Society neither disappointed nor flattered this hope.
Such a change was not possible immediately ; so complete a
rupture with all their old traditions and the universal senti-
ment of all preceding and contemporary Church philosophers,
could not be dreamed of on a sudden, and, if to be thought of
at all, would only be the outcome of a gradual, almost
insensible development of ideas. So long as Descartes lived,
the Society contented itself with taking his system into
serious consideration ; and Descartes, convinced of the
value of his system, was satisfied with this attitude. But,
as far as I can judge, his opinions never really had the
slightest chance of being received as he expected them to
be, and I believe it was a member of the Society who gave
the Scholastic verdict against him: Quae vera dixit, non nova;
qiiae, nova, non vera sunt.
The fact is that the Jesuits had a double question before
270 F. WINTEETON:
them, one very easy, and another much less so. As already
stated, they never for an instant thought of making his
system theirs, either at once or by degrees. But were they
to allow it in the Order as a defensible theory ? or had they
to exclude it from their teaching altogether ? This could
hardly be answered off-hand. There is a decree dated from
about a year before Descartes' death that runs thus :
" Complaints have been brought against Professors of Philosophy that
they lose time over useless questions, that they disturb the order of the
matters which they teach, that they take too much liberty in choosing
their opinions. But the judgment of the Congregation is, that nothing
else is required save the vigilance of Provincials and Eectors." *
In this decree, several things are to be noted. First of
all, the date. Secondly, the complaints (such as had never
been made before) that coincide with that date ; and the
matter of complaint also points to the perturbation produced
by Descartes' system. His methodical doubt, his denial of
the vital principle in animals, his vortex-theory, his inquiry
after the place of the soul, must have appeared to the
Scholastics very " useless questions," to say the least. His
new theory " disturbed the order " of metaphysical disquisi-
tions much more than it altered their results. And if
anything was needed still to point out Descartes, it is the
complaint of the " too great liberty " the Latin has it
licentiam which his adherents were wont to take. Thirdly,
we may note, in conjunction with the date, the refusal of
the Society to put down obnoxious Cartesians that were to
be found amongst its members. And lastly, the somewhat
disdainful tone of the remark that the vigilance of local
Superiors was quite sufficient to obviate any inconvenience
that might otherwise result from this tolerance. But toler-
ance was one thing, acceptance was another. As to the
question whether Cartesians ought to be tolerated, the
Jesuits had to refer to their first principle of conduct, and
inquire whether the doctrine brought forward by Descartes
was, neither in itself nor in its results, contrary to the
Catholic faith. Cartesianism could certainly be understood
in a manner that was not incompatible with the doctrines of
the Church, and Descartes himself was a living proof of
that ; but could it not be understood otherwise ? And
worse still was it not possible that the very principles of
the system led surely, when fully matured, to an irreconcil-
able hostility between Keason and Faith ? This was to be
seen ; and this was what the Society waited for, ready to
1 9 Congr. Gen. Deer, xxiii., 1649.
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 271
point against the new philosophy all the resources of their
formidable arsenal of argument and erudition, as soon as
they saw it turn the wrong way.
At first, all seemed to go well. A moderate Cartesianism,
mixed with many ideas of the School, soon became popular
among the French clergy, and is easily discernible in the
writings of Bossuet and Fenelon ; those of the former,
especially his Elevations sur les Mysteres, contain many pas-
sages equal to the finest of Descartes' Meditations, and
tending in the same direction. Its influence is also clearly
to be seen in the Logique de Port-Royal ; and though the
Jesuits were the deadliest enemies of the Jansenists, by
whom that work was published, they could not deny its
value as a text-book.
But Spinoza came on to the scene, followed by Bayle.
Both of them were partisans of Descartes ; both of them
went much further than he. Pantheism on one hand, in-
difference and scepticism on the other: such were the conse-
quences that flowed from the principles of the great reformer.
It became evident to the Society that Cartesianism, whatever
the intentions of its founder might have been, was radically
bad and dangerous to the interests that it was their duty to
protect. It was thenceforth their business to oppose it by
every means in their power. In 1677 Spinoza died, and
Bayle in 1706. Nineteen years after Spinoza's death, and ten
before that of Bayle, the fourteenth General Congregation
requested Father Thyrsus Gonzalez, the then General, to
draw up an Elenchus, or list of those opinions which
members of the Society were forbidden to teach ; taking
occasion at the same time " to declare how much our
Society has always abhorred and does still abhor all novelty
of opinion in any question, and especially laxity on points of
Morals ". 1 I have not been able to procure the Elenchus
referred to, but am informed by very trustworthy authori-
ties that it has principally to do with Cartesian opinions,
and those maxims of lax morals that gave rise to the biting
sarcasm of Pascal's Provinciales. A great reaction had set
in throughout the Society. All those who had hitherto
thought there was room in the bosom of Catholic unity for
more than one philosophical system were now dismayed at
the consequences of the new doctrines, that appeared more
and more clearly every day ; and set themselves to work to
destroy Cartesianism root and branch, before it was too late.
Of course, in this reaction, as in all reactions, there were
1 14 Congr. Gen. Deer, v., 1696.
272 F. WINTEKTON I
excesses. The too zealous opponents of the fashionable
system then abroad did not always discern what they
ought to assail in preference, and how to assail it ; and they
often battered at the strongest points of the theory as fiercely
as at the weakest. Theses were even published, in which
it was stated that to affirm the existence of atoms was to
commit the crime of heresy ! It was all of no avail.
Cartesianism answered to a want of the human mind the
want of novelty. Men were tired of hearing the same
eternal theses eternally attacked and eternally defended by
the same objections and the same proofs. It was as idle to
attempt a successful stand against a system which rightly
or wrongly professed to supply that want as to stop a
mighty wind in its onward course. Had the Jesuits been
as wise then as it is easy to be now after the event, they
would have endeavoured to meet the public demand by
other and more striking novelties, not inconsistent with
faith. A negative position, a mere denial, is always dis-
advantageous ; and in this case it had the peculiar disad-
vantage of engendering new enmities : the Jesuits had
already enough of old ones.
They had now to do with four sorts of adversaries, if not
more, in the field of speculation alone. From the first,
Protestants were their natural enemies. Their controversies
with the partisans of Baius and of Jansenius had created
others, no less implacable and no less ardent than the
first. The whole Order of St. Dominic was, to a man,
inflamed with burning zeal (none the less earnest for being
kept down by the commands of the Holy See) against that
upstart Society that had shown itself able to hold its own in
presence of their invincible expounders. And Cartesians of
every sort, from the most moderate to the most extreme,
were deeply offended at the sudden change of front which
the Jesuits had just effected. Then Voltaire appeared.
The first thirty years of the 18th century were thus com-
pletely taken up with struggles in the intellectual sphere,
even before the last-named combatant entered the arena ;
afterwards, the conflict became still fiercer and more difficult
to sustain. " Qui trop embrasse, mal etreint," says the
French proverb ; and it would seem that the Jesuits, in their
ambition of universal activity, had not sufficiently reckoned
what amount of intellectual power could be expected of
a small body that never counted more than from ten to
fifteen thousand effective members. Moreover, the 18th
century is notable by a marked absence of philosophical
talent amongst them. The decree of the sixteenth General
PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS. 273
Congregation bears obvious traces of a feeling of weakness.
It affirms that the Scholastic doctrine, " being more con-
venient for Theological purposes, must be maintained " ;
which evidently shows that many were of opinion to set the
system aside, and follow in the wake of Huet, Malebranche,
Leibniz, and all such authors as favoured Christianity in
any way soever. The paragraph that concerns the study
of experimental Physics is curious also ; but the whole
decree is worth studying.
" Several Provinces have requested the Congregation to provide lest, on
one hand, too much liberty of opinion enter into our schools, and lest, on
the other, the minds of students be narrowed by mere speculations and
metaphysical subtleties." Thereupon the Congregation decides as follows :
" 1. That the philosophy of Aristotle is not contradicted but confirmed
by that more agreeable kind of study which, by means of mathematical
principles and the experiments of the erudite, explains and illustrates the
more remarkable phenomena of nature.
" 2. Since the Society has embraced the philosophy of Aristotle as more
useful to Theology, it must absolutely be maintained, according to what is
prescribed in the Constitutions and the Rules that concern our studies.
And that not only in Logic and Metaphysics, but also in Natural Philo-
sophy, where the Peripatetic system concerning the constitution of bodies
is not to be omitted.
" 3. Should the Provincials notice that any Professor is fond of new
things, and sets the aforesaid doctrine aside, either openly or by subter-
fuges, he is to be removed from his charge." 1
The words " metaphysical subtleties " point to a great
change come over the whole Order. A hundred years before,
no one would have dared, would even have thought, to brand
the time-honoured disquisitions of the School with such an
epithet ; and now, with the best of intentions, it slips into
the very declaration made by the heads of the Society in
favour of Scholasticism. Metaphysical subtleties ! All the
17th, all the 18th, century breathes in those words. Again,
notice the second decision. " What's done cannot be
undone." Since the system has been chosen, let us keep to
it. It certainly is more useful for Theology. As for its
other merits, we may have our doubts. The Society chose
it at first for no other motive than the one we allege, and
until that motive is proved to be mistaken, we must stand
by it. Cardinal Ptolemai is a very good representative
Jesuit philosopher of those times. His treatment of the
question of Matter and Form is quite typical. He candidly
states the difficulties against the system, points out the
answers made, and shows how those answers fail to give
satisfaction. Nevertheless, he holds to it because of au-
thority and the wisdom of antiquity, &c.
1 16 Congr. Gen., 1730.
18
274 R WINTEETON : PHILOSOPHY AMONG THE JESUITS.
Scholasticism was plainly doomed, and the decree above
quoted is a proof of what was going on within the Society.
That it was not sufficiently enforced is certain ; for, only
twenty-one years after, in 1751, the seventeenth General Con-
gregation found it necessary to remind members of its provi-
sions. This was again a useless protest. Cartesianism had
succeeded in destroying the confidence they had once felt in
the old doctrine ; and with less confidence came, of course,
less study, which engendered greater distrust ; and so on.
We know what the last Jesuits of the 18th century taught
an amalgam of propositions taken at random from authors of
the most opposite opinions. Read the works of Hauser,
Mayr, Storchenau, Zallinger and the other best-known
Jesuits who at that period wrote upon philosophy. They
did not even understand the difference between the Scholastic
theory of ideas and Lockian or Gassendian empiricism ; in
the problem of the union of mind with matter they main-
tained the theory of Plato, and Descartes' influxus physicus,
taking these for identical with the Aristotelian system ;
they made not the slightest difference between the sensitive
and the spiritual faculties of the soul. These poor represen-
tatives of the School for they believed themselves to be
Scholastics quoted at every page Locke, Leibniz, Des-
cartes, Wolff, Bacon, Gassendi (a singular collection), as
authorities by whom every question was to be decided ; but
as for Aquinas, his works had become almost a terra incognita
for them. True, they were practically faithful to their great
maxim even then. Scholasticism was at that time so
entirely overwhelmed with ridicule, so completely unknown,
that it would have been a task above their forces to set it up
again. They would have undergone no end of criticism,
and times were not such that they could afford to render
themselves laughing-stocks more than was absolutely neces-
sary. They therefore tried, by a practically clever, though
most unphilosophical, mixture of different doctrines that
were not hostile to the Church of Rome, to keep pace with
their century without giving way to it. But enough has
been said to show that when the Society of Jesus was
dissolved towards the end of the century, its philosophical
power and influence had already been wholly lost.
Here the present article may be brought to a close. The
history of philosophy amongst the Jesuits in our century is
closely connected with the contemporary revival of Scholas-
ticism, and may perhaps on some future occasion be treated
in this connexion.
VI. CRITICAL NOTICES.
Phantasms of the Living. By EDMUND GUENEY, MA, (late Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge), FEEDERIC W. H. MYEES,
M.A. (late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge), and FEANK
PODMOEE, M.A. 2 Vols. London : Eooms of the Society for
Psychical Eesearch, also Triibner & Co., 1886. Pp. Ixxxiv.,
573 ; xxvii., 773.
What should be our philosophic attitude towards alleged
facts, apparently well attested, of which we can give no satisfac-
tory physical explanation ? This question will probably suggest
itself to many of the readers of Phantasms of the Living ; and it
will receive many answers, verbally expressed or practically
acted on. Between those who greedily swallow as accredited
ghost-stories the accounts of mysterious appearances here pre-
sented to us and those who reject them with ridicule and scorn,
there will lie a great body of " common sense " folk who are
content to entirely ignore them. But there may also be some to
agree with the present writer who, in already noticing these volumes
in Nature, said : With regard to spontaneous telepathy, notwith-
standing the large amount of evidence so carefully collected and
criticised, I prefer to credit the whole to a suspense account.
And what is Telepathy ? In the words of our authors it is " the,
ability of one mind to impress or be impressed by another mind
otherwise than through the recognised channels of sense. We
call the owner of the impressing mind the agent, and the owner of
the impressed mind the percipient; and we describe the fact of
the impression shortly by the term telepathy. 1 ' So far good ; but
before proceeding further we naturally inquire what, in the
authors' view, is the relation between the mind and its " owner ".
Mr. Gurney, who is responsible for all but some eighty pages (by
Mr. Myers) in these volumes and whose work throughout displays
extraordinary skill and candour, declares at the very beginning that
"Mental facts are indissolubly linked with the very class of material
facts that science can least penetrate with the most complex sort
of changes in the most subtly- woven sort of matter the molecu-
lar activities of brain-tissue ". But elsewhere he tells us that the
difficulty of rounding-off the idea of personality and measuring
human existence by the limits of the phenomenal self suggests
" a deeper solution than the mere connexion of various streams of
psychic life with a single organism"; namely, "that the stray
fragments of ' unconscious intelligence,' and the alternating selves
of ' double consciousness,' belong really to a more fundamental
unity, which finds in what we call life very imperfect conditions
of manifestation". On the whole, I take it, Mr. Gurney would
not be prepared to maintain the indissoluble connexion between
276 CEITICAL NOTICES :
psychoses and neuroses. Assuredly Mr. Myers would not. He
believes that, "besides sub-conscious and unconscious operations,
super-conscious operations also are going on within us, operations,
that is to say, which transcend the limitations of ordinary faculties
of cognition, and which yet remain not below the threshold but
rather above the horizon of consciousness, and illumine our normal
experience only in transient and clouded gleams ". We may
liken the mind to a river with its surface of consciousness and its
undercurrents of unconscious and sub-conscious operations. To
these, if I take him aright, Mr. Myers would add condensations
on the surface from a surrounding atmosphere of the super-con-
scious. In any case, in the Introduction, Mr. Myers emphasises
his antagonism to " the materialistic synthesis of human experi-
ence. The psychical element in man," he insists, '' must hence-
forth almost inevitably be conceived as having relations which
cannot be expressed in terms of matter."
I have thought it well to draw attention to the authors' attitude
towards this vexed question. It is not a question, however, on
which they themselves lay much stress ; nay rather they feel
constrained to leave the physical aspect of the problems with
which they deal on one side ; and in this we will for the rest
follow them. " However things may be," they say, " on the phy-
sical plane, the facts of which we present evidence are purely
psychical facts ; and on the psychical plane, we can give to a
heterogeneous array of them a certain orderly coherence, and
present them as a graduated series of natural phenomena."
Now from the study of any graduated series of natural pheno-
mena the laws of their nature and origin are apt to emerge. Let
us therefore turn to the phenomena and their emergent laws.
The phenomena of telepathy seem to fall under two heads :
first, what may perhaps be termed simple or ideal transference,
where an idea, mental image or motor impulse is transferred as
such from an agent or agents to a percipient ; secondly,
phantasmal or clairvoyant transference, where that which is
transferred is not an affection of the agent but an idea of the
agent as affected. An example of each will serve to bring out the
difference between them : (1) Mrs. Severn, at Brantwood, Conis-
ton, wakes up with a start, feeling that she has had a severe blow
on the mouth. At the same moment her husband, sailing on the
lake, was caught in a squall and was struck in the mouth by the
tiller of his little craft. Here a painful affection of the husband
is transferred as such to his distant wife. (2) Mrs. Bettany, when
a child of about ten years old, was walking in a country lane
reading geometry ; suddenly she saw a vision of a bedroom on the
floor of which lay her mother, to all appearance dead. She
fetched a doctor and led him to the room, where they found her
mother actually lying as in her vision. Here that which was
transferred was not a sensation of swooning but a vision of the
swooning mother. This inverted transference is so noteworthy
E. GUENEY, ETC., PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING. 277
that I will illustrate it by another case. Mrs. C. is at church,
and her children wish to remain for a christening ; ' I cannot,'
she said ; ' somebody seems calling me ; something is the matter'.
She was summoned next day to the deathbed of her husband,
concerning whom she had no more cause to be anxious than that
occasioned by his reporting himself to be a little bilious. Here,
be it noted, it is not the sense of wanting but the sense of being
wanted that is transferred. This change of voice from active to
passive is hard to explain on any telepathic hypothesis.
In both ideal and phantasmal transference we have (1) volun-
tary and (2) involuntary cases. The voluntary transference of
ideas^ tastes, smells, mental pictures, has been the subject of
painstaking investigation on the part of some of the members of
the Society for Psychical Eesearch, and constitutes what the
authors term their " experimental basis ". I must refer the reader
who is unacquainted with the nature of the evidence to the work
under review or the Eeports of the Society. Suffice it to say that
remarkable results have been obtained under conditions which, in
the opinion of the investigators, preclude trickery. Still at present
we seem to know absolutely nothing of the laws of the supposed
transference. Those who have the percipient power are few ;
and it is noteworthy, as Prof. S. Newcomb, in his presidential
address last year to the American Society for Psychical Eesearch,
has pointed out, that these few are strangely grouped three or
four children and a waiting maid in one family, that of the Eev.
A. M. Creery, and two or more in the employment of Mr. Malcolm
Guthrie. It is also to be noted that the percipient power of Mr.
Creery 's children gradually evaporated and eventually entirely
deserted them. " The Creerys had their most startling successes
at first, when the affair was a surprise and an amusement, or
later, at short and seemingly casual trials ; the decline set in with
the sense that the experiments had become matters of weighty
importance to us, and of somewhat prolonged strain and tedious-
ness to them.'' Is it hypercritical to draw attention to these
facts ; and if so, ought we not perhaps to be hypercritical ? The
authors are fully aware of the importance of their experimental
basis. Accepting thought-transference as a working hypothesis,
they must, if they would convince friendly sceptics, formulate its
laws and enunciate its conditions.
Of voluntary phantasmal transference we have some examples.
Two students of naval engineering at Portsmouth were in the
habit of holding mesmeric sittings. One of them before he was
hypnotised resolved to appear phantasmally to a young lady a.t
Wandsworth. He is reported to have done so, having a vision of
her, and appearing to her as a phantasm. In the later copies of
the work an additional case is given. The Eev. C. Godfrey, as
he retired to bed, " set himself to work with all the volitional and
determinative energy he possessed " to stand at the foot of a
friend's bed. He vividly dreamt he met her and asked if she had
278 CEITICAL NOTICES :
seen him. ' Yes.' ' How V ' I was sitting beside you.' The lady
that same night woke and went downstairs for some soda-water,
and as she returned saw Mr. Godfrey standing under the large
window on the staircase. Accepting for the nonce the facts as
stated, how are they explicable by thought-transference ? What
have they in common with the experimental basis ?
The following involuntary case of ideal transference is more on
the lines of the experimental results. Mr. J. G. Keulemans sees in
his mind's eye, while engaged with some very easy work, a basket
containing five eggs, three of which were notable eggs, smudged
or very round or unusually oval. At lunch he sees two of these
eggs on the table. And it turns out that his mother-in-law had
placed five such eggs in such a wicker basket and had thought of
sending them to him.
Lack of space prevents my illustrating here the many and
varied forms of involuntary phantasmal transference. A great
number of them are cases of what we may call direct transference,
that is, transference from a single agent to a single percipient ; a
few are reciprocal, as when two sisters walking in the fields hear
their names, ' Connie and Margaret,' called out, at the same time
that their fever-stricken brother was exclaiming in his delirium,
' Margaret ! Connie ! Margaret ! Connie ! Oh, they are running
by a hedge, and won't listen to me,' Some cases are collective,
where the phantasm is seen by two or more percipients.
Let us now turn to the consideration of the conditions of trans-
ference. They clearly include (1) the state of the agent ; (2) the
state of the percipient ; (3) the nature of the rapport between the
two.
Although there are a few cases in which the agent is not in
any abnormal condition, these would seem to be exceptional. In
the great majority of involuntary phantasmal appearances the
agent is undergoing some crisis, and in the greater number of
these critical cases the crisis is the supreme crisis of death :
" Of the 147 coincident dreams which are included in this
book as at least finding in telepathy, if it exists, their most
natural explanation no less than 78 have represented or sug-
gested death ". " It is in this profoundest shock which human life
encounters that these phenomena seem to be oftenest engendered;
and, where not in death itself, at least in one of those special
moments, whether of strong mental excitement or of bodily col-
lapse, which of all living experiences come nearest to the great
crisis of dissolution. Thus among the 668 cases of spontaneous
telepathy in this book, 399 (or, among 423 examples of the sen-
sory externalised class, 303) are death-cases, in the sense that the
percipient's experience was one of serious illness, which in a few
hours or a few days terminated in death." And of these death-
cases 9 per cent, are where the death was by drowning. Speak-
ing of the time-correspondence in these death-cases, Mr. Gurney
says : " Thus the fact that certain psychical phenomena form a
E. GURNET, ETC., PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING. 279
cluster, comparatively thick at first and gradually becoming more
and more sparse, in the few days that follow deaths, would
strongly indicate some common bond of connexion between the
phenomena and the deaths, even if such a thing as telepathy in
connexion with living persons had never been observed. But as
a matter of fact, we find the cluster of cases as thick just before
life has ceased as just after. Hence the presumption of a single
common cause for the whole group." Yes. Could we but be
sure that the record of the misses had been kept as carefully as
that of the hits !
The state of the percipient does not seem to be in the generality
of cases abnormal apart from the fact of percipiency. There is a
somewhat marked preponderance of female percipients (58 per
cent.). But this preponderance of female informants may, Mr.
Gurney thinks, probably be due to their having, as a rule, more
leisure than men for writing on matters unconnected with busi-
ness. According to the state of the percipient the cases fall into
four classes (1) where the percipient is in the hypnotic condi-
tion ; (2) dream-cases ; (3) borderland cases, which occur on the
dim borderland between sleep and normal wakefulness ; and (4)
where the percipient is normally wide-awake and in full posses-
sion of his or her faculties. Feelings of uneasiness or depression
may precede or accompany percipience ; but these may perhaps
be regarded, on the transference-hypothesis, as telepathic in their
origin.
In passing to the state of rapport between agent and percipient,
we come to a point of central interest and importance. In the
early stages of experimental transference the occurrence of the
phenomena depends on a specific rapport previously induced by
mesmeric or hypnotic operations. To the authors this mesmeric
rapport (in some, at any rate, of its manifestations) seems nothing
more than the faculty of thought-transference confined to a single
agent and percipient, and intensified in degree by the very condi-
tions which limit its scope. In the case of experimental ideal
transference there does not seem to be any very definite bond
between the agent and the percipient. For the rest, in phantas-
mal transference, the rapport has usually, we are told, been that
of kinship or affection. But in the analysis of the table of num-
bered cases, Mr. Gurney says : " It will be seen that only in 47
per cent, of these cases is any blood-relationship known to have
existed between the parties ; and since in many cases the rela-
tives of the percipient will have naturally belonged also to the
circle of his intimate friends, it seems reasonable to conclude that
consanguinity, as such, has little if any predisposing influence in
the transmission of telepathic impressions ". The bond of affec-
tion would thus seem to constitute the closest rapport. But Mr.
Gurney regards collective cases as " strongly indicative of a rap-
port of a different sort consisting not in old-established sympathy,
but in similarity of immediate mental occupation. I suspect,"
280 CEITICAL NOTICES I
he says, " that such a rapport might be induced by a common
environment by partnership in that particular piece of the ' life
of relation ' within which the hallucination happens to fall." In
nine cases there seems to have been a previous compact between
the parties that the one who died first should endeavour to make
the other sensible of his presence ; in one case the percipient had
requested his brother to appear to him ; and in one case, narrated
by Miss Bird, the traveller and authoress, there was a promise on
the part of the person who died. Then there seem some curiously
anomalous cases w^here the phantasm is that of someone the per-
cipient has never seen, but is more or less intimately connected
with someone else present to whom, however, the phantasmal
vision is not manifested. For example, Helen Alexander, maid
to Lady Waldegrave, was lying ill of typhoid fever. Her fellow-
servant had a vision of a person entering the room, whom she
instantly felt to be the mother of the sick woman. She had a
brass candlestick in her hand, a red shawl over her shoulders, and
a flannel petticoat on which had a hole in the front. She subse-
quently learnt that the phantasmal visitant, petticoat and candle-
stick, exactly answered to the real articles. Perhaps, however,
this case may be regarded as that of the direct transference of a
vivid mental picture from the sick girl to her fellow-servant.
Taking all the cases into consideration, it is difficult to formulate
anything like definite laws of the rapport, unless the preponderance
of the death-cases be regarded in that light.
I have drawn attention to the marked difference (especially the
change of 'voice') between the ideal and the phantasmal cases; and
this is a fact to which attention is as clearly drawn in the work
itself. But it naturally suggests the pertinent question, How can
these phantasmal phenomena be brought under the category of
thought-transference ? Mr. Gurney displays not a little ingenuity
in correlating the two ; and that for a good and valid reason.
"Whatever my own surmises as to future discovery may be," he
says, " in the present state of the evidence I feel as much bound
here to prove the theory of thought-transference before admitting
causes of an obscurer kind, as in a former chapter to prove the
theory of unconscious physical indications before admitting the
reality of thought-transference."
Making use, then, of the well-known psychological fact that the
objects that we see are largely ideal constructions that we build
up at the bidding of some suggestion external to ourselves, and
that the details are added by the percipient from the accumulated
stores of his own experience, Mr. Gurney brings it to bear upon
the question of hallucinations, and points out that what is lacking
in them is the suggestion from a real something external to our-
selves. The definition of a sensory hallucination would thus be,
to use his own words, " a percept which lacks, but which can
only by distinct reflection be recognised as lacking, the objective
basis which it suggests". No little stress is laid on the originality
E. GUBNEY, ETC., PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING. 281
of construction involved in every sensory hallucination, and a
stepping-stone is thus laid to enable us to cross from ideal to
phantasmal transference. For the difference, from the results of
experimental thought-transference, which telepathic phantasms
exhibit in representing what is not consciously occupying the
agent's mind to wit, his own form or voice ceases to be a diffi-
culty in proportion as the extent of the impression transferred
from the agent to the percipient can be conceived to be small,
and the percipient's own contribution to the phantasm can be
conceived to be large. The details of the phantasmal appearance
and the whole setting of the phantasmal picture may thus be
drawn from the storehouse of the percipient's own memory, or
may partake of the bizarrerie of what is literally a waking-dream.
Where, however, the phantasm includes details of dress or aspect
which could not be supplied by the percipient's mind, Mr. Gurney
thinks it may be attributed to a conscious or sub-conscious image
of his own appearance, or of some feature of it, in the agent's
mind, which is telepathically conveyed as such to the mind of the
percipient.
Still, granting all that Mr. Gurney would have us grant, there
are great difficulties in applying the thought-transference hypo-
thesis to a great number of the cases. Take, for example, the
case before quoted of Mrs. Bettany's vision of her swooning
mother. It is difficult to see how thought-transference can be
made to explain this case. Or take the case of the lady whose
black nurse saw a phantasm of the lady's brother who was dying
in Tobago. The nurse did not know the brother, and the lady
did not see the phantasm. I think that many students of the
evidence presented in these volumes will find difficulty in apply-
ing in a considerable number of cases the hypothesis of thought-
transference. One is almost surprised to find Mr. Gurney speak-
ing quite so confidently as he does when, after giving a general
criticism of the evidence and pointing out its various liabilities to
error, he says : " What, then, is the likelihood that all these
various causes all these errors of inference, lapses of memory
and exaggerations and perversions of narration will issue in a
consistent body of evidence presenting one well-defined type of
phenomenon, free in every case from excrescences or inconsistent
features, and explicable, and completely explicable, by one equally
well-defined hypothesis ? " Is the body of evidence altogether
consistent ? Does it present one well-defined type of phenomenon ?
Is it completely explicable by one hypothesis ? And is that hypo-
thesis well defined ?
Mr. Myers cannot answer in the affirmative to all these ques-
tions. He is not able to rest content with the hypothesis Of
thought-transference. And in a " Note on a Suggested Mode of
Psychical Interaction " he puts forward independent clairvoyance
as an explanation of some at least of the phenomena. More than
this, " correspondently with clairvoyant perception," he suggests,
282 CEITICAL NOTICES :
" there may be phantasmogeiietic efficacy ". It would seem then
that, in Mr. Myers's view, if I understand him, the percipient
may visit in spirit scenes he has never visited in the flesh, and
that his spirit may be visible as a phantasm to the human occu-
pants of these scenes. Into the dimly-lighted spirit-land to which
he thus beckons us I dare not follow him here.
In conclusion, let me repeat what I said before elsewhere. The
hypothesis of thought-transference, ideal and phantasmal, and the
evidence adduced in its favour, must be submitted to the most
searching scrutiny and criticism, but it should not be met with
easy and ignorant ridicule. Each case reported needs separate
and individual consideration. Hence any sweeping criticism of the
evidence en masse would be beside the mark. Messrs. Gurney
and Podmore, who have interviewed many of the witnesses, are
in a position to appraise the value of their statements to which
no outsider may lay claim. The outsider must content himself
with enunciating the truism that the amount of the evidence
accepted by each reader as valid will largely depend upon his
general opinion of the veracity of his kind. The evidence can
only be rejected as a whole by one who is prepared to repeat
at his leisure what David is reported to have said in his haste.
C. LLOYD MORGAN.
La Psyclwlogie de V Enfant : L' Enfant de trois a sept Ans. Par
BERNARD PEREZ. 'Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. xi., 307.
In this volume M. Perez gives us a second instalment of his
studies on the psychology of childhood. The earlier volume, Les
trois premieres Annees de V Enfant, took a general survey of the mental
phenomena of this period by dealing successively with such heads
as motor activity, sensation, faculty of acquisition, &c. The
present work follows the same method. Only, since at this later
stage the several directions of mental activity are more clearly
marked, the author is able to take up these in something like a
systematic order. Thus the volume proceeds to discuss the
principal stages of intellection, as Memory and Association,
Imagination, Abstraction, &c., and then to deal briefly with the
Feelings and the Will.
As in the earlier volume, there is a judicious mixture of the
analytic and the descriptive method. Thus, for example, in
dealing with the laws of Association, we have first of all an
exposition of the precise nature and function of each, and then
an account of the special part played by the law in the acquisi-
tions of the particular period considered. In the more analytic
portion, M. Perez leans to a considerable extent on the authority
of others, as Dr. Bain, Mr. Spencer and more recent writers.
Yet he is by no means a mere reproducer of other men's ideas
even here. Thus, in expounding the so-called law of Contrast,
he suggests as the natural basis of the associations referred to
B. PEKEZ, LA PSYCHOLOGIE DE L' ENFANT. 283
the impressive contrasts that occur in the everyday successions of
natural events, as day and night, noise and silence, pleasure and
pain, &c. It is not, however, in dealing with the more abstract
principles of psychology that M. Perez shows himself at his best.
He has studied the human mind more in nature than in scientific
treatises, and his wide experiences enable him to reach many
valuable generalisations of a less abstract character. As an
example of this happy treatment of the more concrete problems of
mind, I may refer to the section on the influence of the feelings on
the attention, and more particularly the relation of sympathy to
attention. Other illustrations of the same insight into the complex-
ity of mental life are found in the treatment of the connexions
between reasoning and action and reasoning and feeling.
The new volume, like its predecessor, seeks to support its
generalisations by facts drawn directly from child-life. As might
be expected perhaps, these are on the whole less striking and
piquant than those which made the account of the first three
years so entertaining. Still even the period between three and
seven has its own peculiar charm, and M. Perez has done his
best to make his readers feel it. He has evidently taken pains
to collect a good number of illustrations, and on the whole they
are pertinent and striking, though now and again their connexion
with the particular point to be illustrated might, I think, be made
somewhat clearer. It may be added that the author has supple-
mented the results of his observation of children by some
interesting recollections of his own early experiences, and also by
well-selected quotations from works of biography and fiction.
These last are a feature that deserve special attention, seeing
that psychologists as a rule ignore novels altogether. No doubt
the novelist's creation is not so valuable scientifically as a real
living character ; but it must be remembered that the writer of
fiction is bound to be a close observer of mental traits, and that
it is reasonable to look in his works for illustrations of psycho-
logical truths. The citations from the stories of M. Daudet and
of his wife suggest how much valuable material lies ready to the
psychologist's hand in the higher departments of fiction.
In most cases it is a pleasure to be able to follow M. Perez to
the conclusions he reaches. Yet there are one or two exceptions
to this rule. Thus I find myself unable to accept the extremely
smiling portait of the child which the author offers us under the
title " L'enfant optimiste ". " His imaginary griefs (he writes)
for he has some are as rare or as shallow as his ideal in all
things is limited. All the evils of which we exaggerate the
importance, those improbable events of which we make
certainties, those evils which come from our imprudence, from
our misconduct, or from our laxity, and which compose ninety
per cent, of our troubles, imaginary or real, the child knows not,
dreads not ; " and so forth. Of course there is a certain amount
of truth in all this. But surely there is another side to the
284 CEITICAL NOTICES !
picture. If the child is shielded partly by his ignorance and
partly by our protection from many troubles that harass us, he
is exposed to others from which we are free. Who shall venture
to sum up the misery represented by the terrors of childhood ?
I know a case where a child was haunted by the fear of death so
that he was unable to sleep at night, and this not because of
anybody's painting the terrors of dying to his imagination, but as
the result of his own reflections on the subject. Many children
of a reflective turn have in view of the suffering that prevails
among animals and men become, for the moment at least, pro-
nounced pessimists. The fact is that children's ignorance, if it
saves them from certain evils, exposes them to others, and that
many things that fail to distress the minds of adults, just because
they have grown used to them, are apt to excite poignant sorrow
in the breast of a sensitive and imaginative child.
M. Perez is careful to tell us that he is writing a work on
psychology, and not on pedagogics. At the same time the
discussion of the mental development of children from the age of
three to seven that is to say, during the period of transition from
the home to the school necessarily trenches now and again on
practical educational problems. Thus, for example, in describing
the characteristics of children's memory, the writer deals
separately with the scholar's memory (memoirs scolaire). Under
this head he gives us some valuable observations on the progress
of retentive power in a number of pupils attending a girls' school
with which he is acquainted. He tells us at the outset " that the
pupils who were most prompt to seize the prominent sides of
objects and to indicate that they remarked them were also those
who preserved the recollection of them longest" . The author
explains this by saying that " memory even in early childhood
never functions alone, that it is or appears to be essentially
connected with the vivacity of the perceptions and the exactitude
of the judgments ". This is a noteworthy result, for it is one
thing to say that a child remembers best what he has observed in
the best way ; another thing, that the best and quickest observers
are the most tenacious in their recollection. It is obvious that
this point might very easily be settled if teachers would follow
up the observations of M. Perez. Another point in the theory of
memory, of no less direct bearing on education, is the manner in
which the faculty improves with exercise in the period dealt with.
The children referred to began to learn short lessons from about
six or seven. During the first seven or eight months there was a
distinct improvement in facility of acquisition, a lesson requiring
at first 25 minutes taking at last only 20 or 15. This applies to the
superior children. The first year disclosed clearly enough the
differences among them in acquisitive power, both general and
special. From the 7th to the 8th year the facility increased,
though in a less marked degree, w r hereas the average tenacity
remained stationary, a fact that tended still more to separate the
W. WUNDT, ETHIK. 285
quick from the dull. The progress in facility, says M. Perez, was
clearly due to exercise, for children coming fresh to school at this
age managed in a number of cases to overtake and even to pass
those who had had three or four years of schooling. It might be
said, however, that the facts tell quite as much the other way
that is to say, bring out the limits of improvement due to
exercise ; and this result harmonises in a striking way with the
conclusions respecting the effects of practice in improving sense-
discrimination, active response to stimulus, and other actions
reached by recent psychological experiment, and suggests that in
each case progress may really be due to a more perfect adjust-
ment of the attention. This whole account of the progress of the
learning faculty in a school may be specially recommended to
teachers as much as to psychologists. It is to be wished indeed
that it may stimulate some of the former to attempt a similar
table of pupils' progress for their own and others' use. It would
be a real boon to the psychologist to have carefully prepared
school statistics showing the changes in the acquisitive power at
different ages, and the variations observable in these among
different children.
JAMES SULLY.
Ethik. Eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen und Gesetze des
sittlichen Lebens. Von WILHELM WUNDT. Stuttgart : F.
Enke, 1886. Pp. xi. } 577.
That the paradox of the identity of virtue with knowledge no
longer finds defenders is rightly regarded as an advance in
psychological and ethical theory. There seems to be some
danger, however, that the opposite paradox of the identity of
thought with will may come to take its place. Prof. Wundt's
doctrine of "Apperception/' as set forth in his Logik, is, in truth,
an elaborate statement of this paradox. The passive material of
thought given in association is supposed by him to receive all its
distinctive characters as thought from an act of "apperception"
having the essential nature of an act of will. Under the name of
Attention, this activity of apperception is assuming with some
recent English psychologists the central position that it has in
the psychology of Prof. Wundt. The final judgment on the
apperception-doctrine can, of course, only be passed by psycho-
logists after examination of it on its merits ; but if, as we may
suspect a priori, the modern, like the ancient, paradox is a one-
sided expression of the facts of the mental life, we should expect it
to fail, as that was at length seen to fail, in its application to
practice. Prof. Wundt's ethical treatise furnishes us with the
desired opportunity of testing his psychological doctrine . For there
can be no doubt, from the very beginning of the book, that the
connexion of his ethical with his psychological principles is as
close as he conceives it to be.
286 CRITICAL NOTICES I
In the Introduction (pp. 1-14) ethics is denned as the supreme
" science of norms " ; logic, in the last resort the only other
*' Normwissenschaft," being subordinated as "the ethics of
thinking". The best method of arriving at the principles of
morality is found to consist in a combination of the empirical and
the speculative methods. The author proposes to begin, there-
fore, with an empirical statement of the facts first of the historical
development of morality itself, and then of the philosophical
systems of ethics which have sprung out of actual morality and
reacted on it. After the " inductive preparation " of the first two
sections (i. "The Facts of the Moral Life," pp. 15-233; ii. "Sys-
tems of Moral Philosophy," pp. 234-371) comes the systematic
construction of the remaining two, of which the first is concerned
with principles (iii. "The Principles of Morality," pp. 372-510),
the second with their application (iv. " The Departments of
Moral Life," pp. 511-577).
Section i. is, in effect, a treatise on anthropology in relation to
ethics. The most general results of the author's investigation
are a " law of three stages" of moral development and a " law of
the heterogony of ends ". According to the first of these laws,
religious ideas are in the beginning the presiding influence in the
development of morality ; afterwards, moral ideas detach them-
selves and become independent ; finally, there is a return to the
primitive unity of the spiritual life, "general human aims" are
formed, and the differences among national moral conceptions
tend to disappear. The "bearer" of religious and moral con-
ceptions is "the general consciousness". The primitive social
.group is " the tribe," from which proceeded in diverging develop-
ment the narrower circle of the family and the wider circle of the
state. At first religion was not distinct from morality, or morality
from law and custom, or these from each other. Eeligion, never-
theless, is to be placed first in the order of development, because,
while moral customs for the most part can be traced to acts of
religious ceremonial, the origin of religion, like the origin of
language, escapes us. Those thoughts and feelings are religious
that are directed towards a world in which ideals are realised.
When man has made for himself religious ideals, of which there
are two kinds, those that finally take shape as belief in a perfect
personality, and those that culminate in the thought of a " moral
world-order," these ideals, by the authority they exercise,
modify social customs ; and so, under their influence, morality is
formed. It is not to be supposed that moral rules were made
with any view to their utility either to the individual or to
society. The assumption that morality was thus consciously
developed vitiates all the ordinary theories, which err by ignoring
"the heterogony of ends". Motives now intelligible are un-
questioningly assumed in order to explain the actions of the men
of former times. The origin of the State, for example, is sup-
posed to be explained by the need men had of protection. In
W. WUNDT, ETHIK. 287
reality, protection was first attained as an actual result and
afterwards perceived to be desirable. Practical results go before
theoretical views. The ends are not the causes of development, as
is obvious when it is considered that the later stages of development
are unknown to the earlier (pp. 179-80). Typically, moral customs
are outgrowths from religious ceremonial. That which is rendered
to the gods begins to be rendered to powerful men, then to equals,
and lastly to men in general; the custom itself all the time
undergoing modifications. Afterwards, when customs are re-
flected on, they are seen to serve various useful purposes, and
are supposed to have been invented or evolved for those purposes.
As a matter of fact, the purpose was never thought of until the
retrospective period. Again, the exigencies of practical life bring
about new modifications of custom. New advantages are there-
upon seen to be gained, and the new rules of action are con-
sciously followed for the sake of these advantages ; but the end
that is now consciously sought was not originally the end.
Similarly, a person whose aims are egoistic may find that,
through the social interconnexion of all human action, his efforts
are productive of public good, and may be stimulated to new
exertion by the thought of this good which was not at first
consciously aimed at. In all such cases the result is that
yet other ends are attained which had not been thought of before.
For as soon as the attainment of any class of ends has been
realised and they are consciously sought, new changes in practice
make possible new views of what is attainable, and so on indefi-
nitely. Thus is manifested in social action, along with the law of
"the heterogony of ends," the law of "the unlimited growth of
forces". The individual reacts on society; but to do this effec-
tively it is necessary that he should be the organ of the " general
mind" or "will," which has not yet come to full consciousness
in others. Merely individual modes of action have little influence.
" Individual customs," for example, are either suppressed by the
general will or are accepted as "fashion," the least dignified and
the most temporary of all forms of custom.
A whole series of objections to Prof. Wundt's account of
the origin and development of morality may be summed up in a
sentence. If, as is said, the theories of " the 'Aufklarung' of the
17th and 18th centuries " ascribed too much rationality to man, or
too much influence to reason, does not this modern theory ascribe
too little ? Its merit is in the firm grasp that Prof. Wundt has
of the fact of the slow social evolution of human habits and modes
of thought. At first it seems indeed that he does not see the
necessity of explaining social evolution by its causes and con-
ditions. He rejects all theories which imply that progress is
due to the conscious pursuit of ends ; and of " natural selection "
beyond, perhaps, a casual allusion he says nothing. The
reason of this is that he has a doctrine of his own, which makes
all such explanations superfluous. In his view the evolution of
288 CRITICAL NOTICES :
societies needs no other explanation than the "law of the unlimited
growth of forces," or the " principle of increasing psychical energy".
Too much influence, it may be objected from Prof. Wundt's own
point of view, is ascribed to ideas of the supernatural. For if, as he
insists, illusions may proceed from reality, but out of mere illu-
sions no reality can come (p. 340), how can moral conceptions,
which he does not hold for illusions, be created by the non-
existent gods of man's "personifying apperception" (p. 53)?
The deduction of disinterested from egoistic action, he goes on to
say (p. 340), reminds us in a measure of the 18th century deriva-
tion of religions from the frauds of priests. Does not Prof.
Wundt's own account of the origin of morality in a measure re-
mind us of the same theory ? It may be allowed, however, that
by his contention for a " primitive altruism," in which as well as in
" religious reverence " morality has its origin, he does, in the later
sections, correct the theory of the exclusively religious, or mytho-
logical, origin of morality, which seems to be implied in the first.
From the foregoing summary much has of necessity been
omitted that is of more interest in relation to comparative mytho-
logy and the theory of prehistoric origins generally than to con-
structive ethics ; and where the author's theses themselves have
been indicated, it has been impossible to give any idea of the
labour that has been spent on their development. It will also be
necessary, for the sake of going on rapidly to the constructive
theory, to pass over in silence the greater part^of the next section.
What is of most importance here is to note Prof. Wundt's conclu-
sions as to the latest phase of philosophical ethics. In the ethical
theories of the 17th and 18th centuries, " individualism," he finds,
worked itself out. The Kantian idealism, culminating in Hegel,
brought about the restoration of the Platonic and Aristotelian
doctrine that the State is " more than a sum of individuals," that
it has an end of its own different from all merely individual aims.
The " Historismus," or " Universalismus " of Hegel, however,
tended to deprive the individual of all meaning except that of a
" bearer " of the universal idea manifested in history. It needs
to be qualified by the individualism of the " Aufklarung " ; and it
needs a scientific foundation.
Little objection can be taken to this as a general statement ;
and Prof. Wundt shows, though not adequately, that "objective
evolutionism " the conception, that is, of an evolution of common
knowledge and morality from the basis of language and social
custom, as distinguished from the " subjective evolutionism " that
tries to explain the transmission of ideas by heredity alone has
been arrived at in England independently of the Kantian develop-
ment. Mr. Stephen's Science of Ethics, he finds, is an expression of
" objective," Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics of "subjective" evolu-
tionism. When he comes to details, however, there is much in his
account of English moralists that is open to the charge of injustice
or misapprehension . The perverting influence is to be found partly
W. WUNDT, ETHIK. 289
in theories of what the course of English thought, or the views of
English thinkers, ought to be according to some historical scheme,
partly in the occasional use of terms in senses for which the reader
is not prepared. When, for example, egoism is described as tra-
ditional in English ethics, we may be disposed to protest. The
protest becomes needless when we discover that to seek the
happiness of another person, or of any number of other persons,
is, in Prof. Wundt's opinion, just as " egoistic " as to seek one's
own happiness (p. 428). Utilitarianism is only an " enlarged
egoism ". There is no escape from egoism except in work for
social aims, which are realised in no assignable individual or sum
of individuals. For the rest, the "greatest happiness principle ''
can furnish no motive to action. Self-sacrifice " for another," or
for "ideal ends," such as "Fatherland," is conceivable, but "it
has never come to pass, and will never come to pass, that anyone
gives up anything in order that the sum of happiness that there
is in the world may become greater " (p. 339).
In the concluding chapter of this historical section, ethical
systems are classified " according to motives," and " according to
ends ". The last named classification, which the author regards
as the more important, may be transcribed. The ethical
systems are thus divided : I. The Authoritative Moral Systems ;
these, again, fall into two kinds, viz., political and religious
" heteronomy " ; the ultimate end of these systems may be
identical with the end of one of the " autonomous " systems.
II. The Autonomous Moral Systems : (1) Eudaemonism, (a)
Individual Eudaemonism or Egoism, (6) Universal Eudaamonism
or Utilitarianism ; (2) Evolutionism, (a) Individual Evolutionism
or Perfectionism, (b) Universal Evolutionism or Historicisni
(p. 353). The moral precepts of religion, as well as the political
order, Prof. Wundt remarks in discussing this classification,
although themselves products of moral ideas, are in the earlier
stages of civilisation "indispensable general means of education to
morality," and remain so to a certain extent, perhaps perma-
nently. Yet scientifically it is an inversion of the true order of
causation to place them first in the human consciousness (p. 355).
The first chapter of section iii. (" The Moral Will ") begins
with some theoretical preliminaries on will and consciousness in
general. " Development of consciousness " is declared to be
essentially " development of will" (p. 375). " Feelings and
desires " are movements of will that do not arrive at their full
expression in external activity. Will is incapable of resolution
into anything simpler. Voluntary movements cannot arise out
of reflex and automatic movement ; on the contrary, mechanical
reflex movements arise out of voluntary movements. Accord-
ingly, in the lowest animals there are unmistakable voluntary
actions before there are reflexes of clearly purposive character.
Prof. Wundt calls his own theory of the will " the autogenetic
theory," opposing it to " the ordinary or heterogenetic theory".
19
290 CEITICAL NOTICES I
It differs from " the ordinary theory " (1) by recognising that an
external activity of will must be preceded by an internal
activity, " and that generally every activity (Thatigkeit) of con-
sciousness bound up with the immediate feeling cf activity
(Activitat) bears in itself the essential marks of an activity of the
will (Willensthatigkeit)"; (2) by recognising as the simplest
form of will those actions which are preceded by no conflict of
motives, but follow immediately on a single motive the motive
itself being an act of will in an earlier stage. " We characterise
with Leibniz as apperception every inner activity that has bound
up with it the feeling of spontaneity. Those external voluntary
activities which follow under the immediate operation of a single
and sole motive we name impulsive actions" (p. 380).
The human will or consciousness, so far as it is peculiar to a
single personality, is an " individual will " ; so far as it is common
to all the individuals of a society it belongs to a "general will ".
The inability of the "Aufklarung" to recognise "the general
will " was a consequence of " psychical atomism " or " the sub-
stance-theory of Descartes ". When the notion that consciousness
must inhere in an individual soul or substance is got rid of, and
its reality is seen to consist simply in " actual psychical life
itself," and in nothing else, there is no longer any theoretical
obstacle to the admission that the general will has equal reality
with the individual will, and it becomes possible to escape from
the egoism of the individualistic doctrine, the " ethical atomism ''
bound up with its " psychical atomism ".
For the explanation of psychical development a " principle of
increasing psychical energy " is required " in complete opposition
to the equivalence-principle " of physics. A consequence of this
principle is that past psychical events can be explained by their
causes, while future psychical events cannot be predicted. For
the effects of volitions, according to the principle, are "determined
by" causes, but not already "contained in" those causes. The
author puts forth his theory as at once a "free-will" doctrine
and a doctrine of "psychological determinism". The older
determinism and indeterminism, both alike, erred in that they
attempted to apply the law of physical causality to mind; one
doctrine affirming and the other denying that acts of will are
"caused". The truth is that they are always caused, but not
according to the physical law of " the equivalence of cause and
effect ". Although the effects of a voluntary act can never be
predetermined from its conditions, past results of volition can be
explained from their causes. Indeterminism, in any case, must
be rejected "on moral and religious grounds " (p. 409). Teleology
in the organic world is to be explained by the direct action of the
will on organic forms (p. 408). The author, nevertheless, does not
believe in the Cartesian influxus physicus (p. 402, note). The
whole material world is the creation of the mind ; it forms a
realm within the realm of spirit ; and so physical causation is
subordinate to psychical causation (p. 403).
W. WUNDT, ETHIK. 291
" Man acts freely in the ethical sense when he follows only in-
ternal causality" (p. 410). The peculiarity of the conscience consists
not in superiority to all motives, but in determination by " impe-
rative motives". "Impulsive motives'' are turned into "imperative
motives " by means of (1) external constraint, (2) internal con-
straint, (3) feelings of permanent satisfaction, (4) the representa-
tion of a moral ideal of life. The religious shaping of moral
ideas, it is repeated, goes before every other (p. 423). The
"external constraint" of religious commands precedes political
constraint. Similarly "the imperative of internal constraint
exercises its effects " first " through the relations of the religious
community". "The imperative of enduring satisfaction creates for
itself, by the prospect of eternal rewards and punishments, the
highest motives that in this form can exist." Finally, "the
moral ideal of life " also is capable of assuming a religious form by
its identification with the life of a historical person. Eeligion has
all this influence as "educator to morality,'' because it is itself
" the concrete sensible embodiment of moral ideals" (p. 424).
Ethical writers have been accustomed to treat of " goods,"
" virtues," and "duties". For these terms Prof. Wundt proposes
to substitute Amoral aims," "moral motives," and "moral
norms ". These are respectively the subjects of the remaining
three chapters of his third section. Beginning with the problem
of the ethical end, he decides that " the acting personality as such
is never the true object of moral action" (p. 428). " The foreign
Ego " can no more be the last aim of morality than our own Ego.
Two social aims alone are left as " the true objects of the moral
will," viz., " public welfare " and " general progress ". "Subjective
feelings of happiness " have no " universal value," and so can
have no part in the moral end. The " general human aims " are
" objective psychical values". "Here also the principle of the
heterogony of ends and the law of the unlimited new creation of
psychical products penetrate all occurrence" (p. 432). "Be the
direct aims that the individual pursues never so limited, they
always overpass their immediate end, and lose themselves at last
in the immeasurable stream of development of human mind "
(p. 433). " The last aim of moral effort thus becomes an ideal
aim, never attainable in reality " (p. 434). " The only sufficient,
but also the fully convincing ground of belief in a moral ideal lies
in the impossibility of setting a limit to mental and moral develop-
ment, or, which would come to the same thing, of thinking its
complete annihilation " (p. 446). The objective ground of punish-
ment is that the actions punished oppose moral development and
so tend to annihilate the ideal (p. 436). Motives instead of ends
being in question, " every disposition is immoral which consists
in an uprising of the individual will against the general will" (p.
448). " As crime consists in an uprising of the single will against
the general will, so punishment is the natural reaction of the
latter against this uprising" (p. 458). ''Ethical norms," like
ethical ends, are of three chief kinds " individual/' " social " and
292 CEITICAL NOTICES : W. WUNDT, ETHIK.
"human". The general rule in cases of conflict is that the
narrower must yield to the wider norm (p. 469). In order to
gain a " highest regulative idea " we may think of the ideal as
unchanging ; but mental representations of it are in unceasing
development. " That this development is the last moral aim we
can comprehend, in which all individual aims disappear, remains
the universal postulate that finds in the historical shapings of
ideal problems its particular embodiments " (p. 483).
The basis of Prof. Wundt's ethical system is evidently apart
from his theory of Apperception the doctrine of Evolution, which
has taken form for him especially in the ideas of human progress
and of "the general mind". Unfortunately, these ideas, in Prof.
Wundt's mode of conceiving them, seem to have become inex-
tricably mixed with illusory elements. They are at least expressed
in the form of very disputable "laws ". He also tries to accom-
plish too much with the idea of progress. It is clear that the
moral ideal cannot be defined in terms of " progress"; for in
order to know that progress exists we must both have an ideal
and know that the movement of things is towards it and not
away from it. To make plausible his assertion of a constant and
unbroken advance, Prof. Wundt requires a psychological " law of
non-equivalence " ; and he has to ignore degeneration and dis-
solution. The effective addition made by the doctrine of evolution
to the material of constructive ethics is really much less in the
idea of progress than in the new precision given to the conceptions
of " social organism " and " general mind ". It is a merit of Prof.
Wundt's book to have laid special stress on this last conception.
In the application of it, however, the weakness of the speculative
construction becomes more than ever apparent. This weakness
is due essentially to the transformation of "mind" into "will,"
and so may be traced to the doctrine of Apperception. The ques-
tion is inevitable, Why should one will submit to another, the
"individual will," for example, to the "general will"? From
Prof. Wundt's point of view, this question is unanswerable ; for
he has suppressed all reference to " subjective feeling," and he
has made the appeal to reason useless by an unlimited extension
of his law of " the heterogony of ends ".
The concluding section is divided into four chapters, treating
respectively of "The Single Personality," " Society," "The State,"
" Humanity ". Here, as in the rest of the book, in spite of what
is promised as to concessions to " individualism," Prof. Wundt's
"general will" seems to leave little room for any other will.
"The social order," he says, "is not a creation that is there for
the sake of individuals ; on which account also it needs no justi-
fication from the services it renders to the individual " (p. 540).
This is certainly quite consistent with the principle of "the
general will" as it is here laid down. In the eyes of some
readers such a corollary will be of itself sufficient to condemn that
principle.
THOMAS WHITTAKEK.
VII. NEW BOOKS.
[These Notes (by various hands) do not exclude Critical Notices later on.]
The Factors of Organic Evolution. By HERBERT SPENCER. Reprinted,
with additions, from The Nineteenth Century. London : Williams and
Norgate, 1887. Pp. iv., 76.
" Though the direct bearings of the arguments contained in this Essay,"
Mr. Spencer says, "are biological, the argument contained in its first half
has indirect bearings upon Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology. My belief
in the profound importance of these indirect bearings, was originally a
chief prompter to set forth the argument, and it now prompts me to reissue
it in permanent form." In the first half, after describing his original
acceptance of the Lamarckian doctrine of evolution, and the enlarged view
of the factors of evolution that was the consequence of the publication of
the Origin of Species, he goes on to ask whether the process brought into
view by Darwin, taken alone, accounts for organic evolution, as is now
supposed by many naturalists. The answer is that " utterly inadequate to
explain the major part of the facts as is the hypothesis of the inheritance
of functionally-produced modifications, yet there is a minor part of
the facts, very extensive though less, which must be ascribed to this
cause". Darwin himself came to recognise this more and more, and
there are reasons for thinking that the reaction displayed in his later
writings ought to be carried further. But if, "along with inheritance
of useful variations fortuitously arising, there has been inheritance of
effects produced by use and disuse ; do there remain no classes of organic
phenomena unaccounted for ? " To show that there is still another factor
of organic evolution is the object of the second half of the Essay. This
third factor is that which is so prominent in the Principles of Biology,
viz., the direct action of the inorganic environment. Both inductively and
deductively this direct action is found to be " the primordial factor of
organic evolution ". As a name for that effect of external causes which
depends on a struggle among organisms, Mr. Spencer's own term " survival
of the fittest," as well as "natural selection" "calls up an anthropocentric
idea" (p. 41). For the purpose of ascertaining their causes, organic pheno-
mena should be contemplated simply as "groups of changes". Human
ideas of "fitness" and "unfitness" are then seen to be inapplicable, and it
is recognised that natural selection "could do no more than take advantage
of those structural changes which the medium and its contents initiated ".
What then are the relations of the three factors 1 This is the subject of a
speculation at the end of the Essay (pp. 72-5) by which the view Mr.
Spencer had formerly arrived at, viz., that natural selection is most im-
portant in the earliest stages of evolution, " direct adaptation " in the later
(see, for example, Biology, 170) is made more precise. Three stages are
now recognised, in the first of which the most important factor is that
which has been called primordial, in the second " natural selection," in the
third "functional adaptation". The stage in which functional adaptation,
constantly rising in importance as activity and complexity of life increase,
becomes the chief factor, has been reached by civilised men, among whom
such aid as survival of the fittest gives is " usually limited to the preserva-
tion of those in whom the totality of the faculties has been most favourably
294 NEW BOOKS.
moulded by functional changes". It is from the point of view here attained
that applications to psychology, ethics and sociology, briefly indicated in
the preface, would be made, of which it is impossible to exaggerate the
importance.
The Origin of the Fittest. Essays on Evolution. By E. D. COPE, A.M.,
Ph. D. (Heidelberg), Member of the United States National Academy
of Sciences ; Correspondent of the Royal Bavarian Academy of
Sciences. London and New York : Macrnillan & Co., 1887. Pp.
xix., 467.
This is a book that ought not to be overlooked either by naturalists or
by those who are interested in the philosophical aspects of evolution. A
majority of naturalists will probably think it carries the Lamarckian
reaction against Darwinian explanations too far ; and the author's meta-
physical expressions are sometimes unguarded ; but, both in its general
philosophical views and in its explanations of details of structure, it offers
interesting and valuable suggestions, worked out with adequate knowledge
of the whole subject. Starting from the position that "survival of the
fittest" can only explain why variations persist, not how or why they
originate, the author puts this question : What is the origin of the fittest ?
His most general answer is " addition of parts by increase and location of
growth-force, directed by the influence of various kinds of compulsion in
the lower, and intelligent option among higher animals" (p. 40). The
" influences locating growth-force " are further divided into " physical and
chemical causes," "use" and "effort" (p. 195). Evolution of organisms
takes place according to the laws of " acceleration and retardation," and of
" the unspecialised," the last of which in particular has important bearings
on mental evolution. " The doctrine of the unspecialised teaches that
the perfection produced by each successive age has not been the source or
parent of future perfection. The types which have displayed the most
specialised mechanism have either passed away, or, undergoing 110 change,
have witnessed the progress and ultimate supremacy of those which were
once their inferiors " (pp. 233-4). " The predecessors of all characteristic or
specialised types have been unspecialised or generalised types " (p. 396).
Consciousness is only possible to matter which has not fallen into fixed
and automatic relations of its atoms (pp. 418, 442). Protoplasm, the
author tries to show by chemical considerations, is such an "unspecialised"
form of matter, but not necessarily the only one. " In the highest form of
development, that of brain mechanism, automatism is the enemy, and
consciousness the. condition of progress" (p. 402). Unconscious acts have
been derived from conscious acts by organisation ; and " the vegetative
and other vital functions of animals and plants are a late product of the
retrograde metamorphosis of energy," which, like matter, passes from an
unspecialised to a specialised state. "Automatism then represents a
condition of 'lapsed intelligence' and diminished life." "Free-will,"
admitted as a means of accounting for "the unknown in moral progress,"
is comparable to "the apical bud of a growing tree" (pp. 239-40). Only a
few of the author's more general speculative conclusions have been given
here ; but the whole book deserves study.
Luck) or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification ? An Attempt
, to throw additional Light upon the late Mr. Charles Darwin's Theory
of Natural Selection. By SAMUEL BUTLER, Author of Life and Habit,
etc. Op. 8. London : Trubner & Co., 1887. Pp. ix., 328.
Mr. Butler's Op. 8, while it has all the brilliant literary qualities of his
early work, is at the same time perhaps the most serious of his contribu-
BOOKS. 295
tions to evolutionary speculation. The " two main points " on which he
has been " insisting for some years past " could not be better stated than
they are in the opening sentence, viz., " the substantial identity between
heredity and memory, and the re-introduction of design into organic
development " ; this " design " being the Lamarcldan or " Erasmus Dar-
winian " design, or " cunning," of the organism itself, as opposed at once
to the Paleyan or external design and to the " luck " of " Charles Dar-
winian " spontaneous variation. If Mr. Butler wishes to secure for these
ideas all the recognition they deserve, he should present them thus
separately, as elements in a complete theory of evolution. Instead of this,
although he sees clearly that they are two ideas and not one, he insists on
presenting them fused into the single theory of Life and Habit, which, how-
ever many incidental points he may make against the scientific men, after
all cannot be accepted as an adequate theory. Hering's identification of
heredity with memory is of course just as consistent with Darwinian as
with Lamarckian evolution, both of which equally imply inheritance of
variations, "spontaneous" or "functional" as the case may be ; and the
explanations of Darwin and of Lamarck, as Mr. Spencer is now showing,
are not mutually exclusive. For Mr. Butler to admit this, however,
would spoil the fun. He would not be able, out of Mr. Spencer's opposi-
tion of "inheritance of functionally produced modifications" and "sur-
vival of the fittest" (p. 46) to make the antithesis of "survival of the
fittest " arid " heredity " / The same antithesis, with the assumption that
heredity is the special property of the Lamarckian doctrine, is constantly
appearing in the anti-Darwinian chapters. There are one or two passages
(e.g., pp. 262-3) from which it may be inferred that the perversity of the
chapters just referred to is not altogether unconscious. It is worth while
to point out that the really strong resemblance between Hering's and Mr.
Butler's theory of memory and instinct and certain passages recently
selected by Mr. Spencer from the Principles of Psychology is not, where Mr.
Butler looks for it (and of course does not find it), in the identification of
the subject of " race-experience " and personal experience, but in the
identification of their characters ; both tending to become unconscious as
they are perfected, and by the same psychological law. The superiority of
'" unconscious " mind, which was so prominent in Op. 3, is an idea to
which the author does not now recur. He seeks rather to prove that
there is conscious mind everywhere. Perhaps he thinks he has worked the
former vein sufficiently. In his character of the restorer of mind to the
universe, he is able to write a delightful description of the collapse of
" the protoplasm boom " " in the autumn of 1879 " (pp. 146-7). The most
remarkable feature of his present work, however, is not the criticisms of
men of science, but the Heraclitean theory developed in c. xi. and in single
passages of other chapters, notably pp. 28-31, 43-4, 75-9, 313-17. May his
readers indulge the hope that this theory will not become to him " a white
elephant," as he confesses the theory of Life and Habit has been ?
Social History of the Races of Mankind. Second Division : ' Papuo- and
Malayo-Melanesians '. By A. FEATHERMAN. London : Triibner &
Co., 1887. Pp. xviii., 507.
This second division of the author's herculean enterprise, issued after
the fifth and the first (see MIND vii. 153, x. 300), appears after a shorter
interval than separated the two others, and encourages the hope that
remaining volumes (of which there should be five, according to what was
said in the first) may see the light in progressively shorter times. Yet it is
not surprising that the publication of matter that has to be collected by
such wide and laborious research and reduced to sufficiently uniform
296 NEW BOOKS.
statement for purposes of comparison should be a somewhat slow process.
There is nothing to be added here to what has formerly been said of the
author's extraordinary patience and diligence in the composition of a work
which he now describes (incidentally) as a " history of peoples in their
social capacity, including their manners and customs, their government,
their religion, their superstitions, and their literary, artistic and scientific
advancement," or, more shortly, as " a universal history of civilisation ".
That, as such, it differs from Mr. Spencer's Descriptive Sociology, as he now
claims, and not less from the philosophic Principles, may readily be granted
without prejudice to a remark previously made in these pages, that, when
he formerly called it " a manual of Sociology a science as yet non-
existent," the author did not appear sufficiently to recognise the construc-
tive work already done on that field. Another remark that was then
hazarded, as to the value of his authorities for facts, is, however, to be
unreservedly withdrawn. It was made at the time upon a too cursory
inspection of the volume under notice, and cannot now be in the least
upheld against the evidence afforded, that when he rejects later for earlier
records of travel it is done upon a deliberate and well-grounded opinion of
their relative merit.
Life of Giordano Bruno the Nolan. By I. FRITH. Eevised by Prof. MORIZ
CARRIERE. (" The English and Foreign Philosophical Library," Vol.
XXXI.) London : Triibner & Co., 1887. Pp. xii., 395.
This long-expected book, although containing much reference to Bruno's
works and philosophy, claims attention at present more as a biography
than as a philosophical study. The change of title from that first announced
" The Life and Works of Giordano Bruno" may be taken as an indication
that the original purpose has been only partially carried out ; but we are
told that " it is in contemplation to print a second volume, containing a
summary of the works, with the documents of the trial and other con-
firmatory evidence". The biography is interestingly written and accurate
in its facts ; and if it is sometimes a little filled out by conjecture the reader
is supplied with material for an independent judgment. It relates
practically everything that is known of Bruno's life, including the results
of the latest documents of all, those discovered in the archives of Geneva
by M. Theophile Dufour. These documents (published by M. Dufour in
1884) fix Bruno's residence at Geneva in 1579, and make it five instead of
only two months. For the rest they show that his aversion from Calvinism
took an active form, arid explain sufficiently why he quitted Geneva so
early ; relating some proceedings of the Council against him " for having
caused to be printed certain replies and invectives against M. de la Faye "
(then Professor of Philosophy in the Academy), in which " he had erred in
the doctrine and had called the ministers of the Church of Geneva
pedagogues ". The volume has been revised by Prof. Carriers, and appears
simultaneously with the new edition of his own Philosophische Weltan-
schauung der Reformationszeit, mentioned later on in the present No. The
general view taken in it of Bruno's philosophical position is identical with
Prof. Carriere's, of which something will be said in the promised Critical
Notice of his work. In detail it does not simply follow any previous ex-
position, but is the result of independent study of Bruno himself, of what
has been written on him, and of his period. The critical part contains
many valuable hints towards the understanding of his relations to later
philosophy, and shows real appreciation of his character and writings.
Before saying more, it will probably be best to wait for the appearance of
the second volume, when we may 'expect further development of sugges-
tions such as are made on pp. 45, 158, etc. The author has appended to
NEW BOOKS. 297
the Life (1) a list of " the existing works of Bruno" with enumeration of
editions and short description of the contents (pp. 310-339), (2) a notice of
the Noroff collection of unpublished MSS. (pp. 343-369), (3) a list of " the
lost works of Bruno" (pp. 373-377), (4) an "alphabetical list of authorities"
(compiled by Mr. Wm. Heinemaun), from which hardly any book or article
dealing with Bruno can have been omitted (pp. 379-388), (5) the letter of
Scioppius (pp. 389-395). The volume is inscribed " to the memory of
Nicholas Triibner, the faithful friend and kind adviser who proposed the
subject of this book, whose interest in it continued unfailing to the last
hours of his life, and without whose aid these pages could never have been
written ".
Life of Antonio Rosmini Serbati, Founder of the Institute of Charity.
Edited by WJLLIAM LOCKHART, Procurator of the Order in Eome, &'c.
2 vols. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886. Pp. xxxiii., 360 ;
xi., 352.
It is necessary to return, however briefly, to this book, which was little
more than mentioned in the last No. of TvIiND, p. 135. It gives not only,
in simple and straightforward style, all the information that could be
desired about the life and character of the saintly man, but includes in the
few chapters devoted to the thinker a translation of two pieces from Eos-
mini's own hand (ii. 242-72) that have but recently seen the light in the
Italian original. In these he first sketches the history of modern philo-
sophy from Locke, defining his own position and especially his relation to
Eeid and Kant, and then gives under nine heads a short and precise sum-
mary of his philosophic system. With the succeeding chapter, showing
the harmony between Eosmini and St. Thomas in an essay (pp. 275-303)
borrowed from the late Bishop Ferre of Casale in Piedmont, the reader has
thus a convenient means of judging of the general import of a system of
thought more than ordinarily voluminous in its elaborated form. It may
remain doubtful whether the countrymen of Eeid have much to learn,
except in point of curious erudition, from the volumes which the piety of
Eosmini's English translators has been making accessible to them, but after
this Life there can be no question of the supreme interest attaching to him
as a man of spiritual gifts. Mr. Cotter Morison has been saying that the
saint, like the genius, is born so. Eosmini was a born saint, as every line
of his biography tells. It tells also, what few can have known, how, or at
least how much, the widespread Eoman Catholic missionary movement in
this country during the last half century had its spring in the charitable
faith of the secluded Italian thinker.
The Service of Man. An Essay towards the Eeligion of the Future. By
JAMES COTTER MORISON. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1887.
Pp. xxxi., 318.
The greater part of this most readable book where an historical
estimate (mainly unfavourable) is made of the influence and work of
Christianity in the world lies out of the province of MIND, but incident-
ally, and more especially in a final chapter " On the Cultivation of Human
Nature," there is a strain of philosophical observation claiming recognition.
The moralising effects of Determinism are set forth with peculiar force.
A very gloomy Preface (pp. xxx.), bringing into sharp and exclusive
relief certain elements of imminent danger in the social condition of the
more advanced nations, has much in it that should be laid to heart by all
serious-minded people at the present time, but reads rather curiously by
the side of the generally optimistic pages of the body of the book.
298 NEW BOOKS.
Anatomy and Physiology in Character. An Inquiry into the Anatomical
Conformation and the Physiology of some of its Varieties ; with a
Chapter on Physiology in Human Affairs in Education, Vocation,
Morals and Progress. By FURNEAUX JORDAN, F.K.C.S. London :
Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886. Pp. xi., 185.
The author puts forth as the result of long observation a classification
of men and women into three types the " shrewish," the "non-shrewish,"
and the " intermediate " or mixed. Of these the second is not merely the
negation of the first, but is a distinct type. After a chapter on "Physiology
in Human Affairs" (c. i.), and an account of some characteristics of
" assaulted wives in hospitals," in which the " clue to character " that is
the starting-point of the inquiry was discovered (c. ii.), he goes on to
describe the physiological characters of "the shrewish woman," "the
shrewish man," " the non-shrewish woman," and " the non-shrewish man "
(cc. iii.-vi.), and " the Anatomy of Shrewish and Non-shrewish Persons "
(c. vii.). Then follow some " Observations on the Physiology of
Shrewishness" (c. viii.) and a "Note on Shrewishness and Non-shrewish-
ness in Literature." The words " shrew," " non-shrew," &c., the author
says, " are used in these pages with great reluctance. They would not be
used at all if any other words conveyed the meaning which they are
intended to convey. They are not used as nicknames, not even as words
of disparagement ; they are used in a strictly scientific sense, to denote
special phases of character, and the union of such special phases
with certain anatomical and physiological peculiarities " (p. 63).
As a consequence of the knowledge gained, "human intelligence
and human volition " may " interfere in the evolutionary process " to the
great advantage of the race, if, " by common consent, shrewish men and
women," for reasons explained at length, are " left out in the marriage
arrangement ". Perhaps the author has not considered carefully enough,
for one thing, whether his classification of human types is exhaustive, but
the book is full of varied interest.
Scottish Metaphysics reconstructed in accordance with the Principles of Physical
Science. By the Writer of " Free Notes on Herbert Spencer's First,
Principles ". Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood & Sons, 1887.
Pp. xiv., 244.
This treatise, setting forth the kind of theory described in its title on
the basis of a criticism of Hamilton's Metaphysics, is not a happy perform-
ance in point of style, but yet appeared to call for some amount of detailed
notice. This is only deferred.
English Composition and Rhetoric. Enlarged Edition. Part First. " In-
tellectual Elements of Style." By ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D., Emeritus
Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen. London : Long-
mans, Green & Co., 18/7. Pp. xix., 310.
On Teaching English : With detailed Examples, and an Enquiry into the
Definition of Poetry. Same Author, Publishers, &c. Pp. xiii., 256.
The author's Rhetoric, first published in 1866, is being subjected to a
radical transformation, to be completed by the publication later on of
another volume, as Part Second, dealing exclusively with the "Emotional
Qualities of Style". While the work in its original form bore abundant
traces of the psychologist's hand, these have now become much more deeply
marked both in the general disposition of the two Parts and in the details
of the exposition, yet without prejudice to the book's fitness as a manual
NEW BOOKS. 299
for students who have not received any express psychological training.
"Figures of Speech," which are specially illustrative of psychological
principles, are now treated at more than twice their former length, and
placed in the heart of the work, their former place at the beginning being
now taken by the more fundamental topics, previously scattered about, of
" Order and Number of Words," " Sentence," and " Paragraph ". This is a
distinct improvement. The remainder of pt. 1, from p. 233, is taken up
with a more developed treatment than formerly of the " Intellectual
Qualities of Style," followed from p. 278 by study of a large number of
" Promiscuous Examples ". The Intellectual Qualities are now distin-
guished as "Clearness," "Simplicity," "Impressiveness" and "Picturesque-
ness," the last-named already involving an admixture of the Emotional.
The other notable change thus far is the suppression of " Kinds of Compo-
sition" (Description, &c.) as an express topic ; what was formerly set out
(at considerable length) under this head being now given, or to be given,
otherwise in the course of the re-arranged and developed exposition.
" Poetry." the final topic of the old Rhetoric, is now, as regards its " defini-
tion," made the subject of a special discussion (pp. 207-56) at the end of
the supplementary or " overflow " volume, in which the author sets forth
(controversially) his general views as to the right mode of teaching English
(pp. 1-47), and then works out a series of "Select Lessons on the leading
Qualities of Style ". As a study in the art of Definition, as well as for its
material import, this chapter on Poetry is to be noted.
The Science of Thought. By F. MAX MULLER. London : Longmans, Green
& Co., 1887. Pp. xxiv., 664.
This book has come to hand just not too late for mention in the present
No. Its main contents will be found set out in an advertisement on the
wrapper. The author, in his preface, appears to think that the day is past
for a time at least when such high philosophy as he and, we may
suppose also, his friend Noire' (to whom the book is dedicated) have it still
in them to enlighten the world withal, has a chance of being listened to.
He need be under no such apprehension. The time never was when topics
like those of which he treats would have interested half as many people as
will turn with eagerness now to anything new and important that he has
to say about them ; and he surely underrates his own (better say nothing
of Noire's) power of attractive exposition. The fear indeed should be not
that he will not have plenty of interested and admiring readers, but that
the better-trained sort may not find his piquant observations on philo-
sophical thinkers and philosophical questions quite deep-going and close
enough. However, he has always his treasure-house of linguistic facts out
of which to draw things both new and old that are of the first significance
for a true appreciation of the nature of human reason ; and, making it his
chief business in this work of which the motto is " No Reason without
Language, no Language without Reason " so to draw, he shall obtain in
these pages, as soon as circumstances permit, the patient and open-
minded consideration that is due to this outcome of a life of long and
.strenuous intellectual labour. He says " possibly " its final outcome ; but
we will rather hope that he may still be able to produce not only the other
book supplementary to the present one which he says he has long
, prepared on " Mythology " as work of self-consciousness, but also his
crowning piece in which he would " show that the same road which led
mankind into the wilderness of Mythology, in the widest sense of the word,
may lead us back to a point from which we recognise in all self-conscious
Mona the Great Self, conscious of all Mona ".
300 NEW BOOKS.
Vocabulary of Philosophy, Psychological, Ethical, Metaphysical: With Quota-
tions and References. By WILLIAM FLEMING, D.D., formerly Professor
of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. Fourth Edition.
Revised and largely reconstructed by HENRY C ALDER WOOD, LL.D.,
Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Edinburgh. London :
C. Griffin & Co., 1887. Pp. vii., 439.
Blots that disfigured the earlier editions of this Vocabulary, and that
were left standing even in the third when it had come under the charge of
the present editor, have now been removed, and so many alterations and
additions have been made with the help mainly of Prof. James Seth,
but also of Messrs. J. Weir and W. Mitchell- that the old-fashioned
work may fairly be said to appear in "largely reconstructed" form.
One could wish only that the reconstruction had been still more thorough.
Of Fleming there remains a good deal to be yet thrown away, if also
something to be restored, as, e.g., the old initial topic "Abduction"
(Aristotle's anayoayr], not at all accounted for afterwards by a mere
mention of * Apagogical '), now left out when ' Adscititious ' (Clarke) or
" Autocrasy " (South) might well have been spared instead by the inquiring
student. The use, in fact, now left for Fleming could be little else than to
serve as a reminder of certain words of the more unfamiliar sort, or as a
repository from which some quotations might be handily culled. Even
when he had swept up a number of good quotations, in the case of words
with an important historical development, the Glasgow professor had a
way of disposing them with such perfect inconsequence that his example
was there only to be shunned. It is a pleasure to acknowledge that in the
present edition a manifest effort has been made towards improvement and
reform in this matter of orderly treatment ; still it is only partially
successful by reason of sheer intractability in the matter taken over :
compare, e.g., the article ' Cause '. And if Fleming's original quotations
needed a more careful sifting and ordering, it was surely time that all his
second-hand ones should be dropt : there are some very odd survivals in
this kind. Of the new matter, much is open to criticism. Thus,
4 Averages' is made the occasion for giving some vague references or
citations about probability and chance, hardly at all relevant to the topic ;
where a good distinction of Average and Mean would have been really
useful to the student. Neither there, nor afterwards when 'Chance' is
treated in its place, is any mention made of Mr. Venn's well-known work
a serious omission when elsewhere there is so evident an intention of
referring the student to good and accessible sources of information on the
different topics. Under ' Connotation,' is it right to say that "according
to Mill the only non-connotative terms are proper names," or, later under
' Term,' to lay down without qualification that " abstract terms are
connotative only" ? The same topic suggests also another remark : ' Con-
notation ; might well have given occasion for some historical note of Mill's
diversion of the word from its Scholastic usage ; but indeed it is one of the
most obvious deficiencies of the Vocabulary in any form it has yet received,
that little or no attempt is made to trace the history often so interesting
and important of the various words. When historical indications are
given, they are not always as exact as they should be. Thus it is surely
not " recently " i.e., only by Mr. Sully that " the term connate has been
employed in preference to the older term innate," when Shaftesbury and
others made so great a point of it long ago. But enough of this : the
work might have been much more adequately and circumspectly done,
and yet leave many openings for critical emendation. Even in the
past, the Vocabulary must have been found somehow useful, or at least
attractive, before it could obtain a sale of three editions ; and of the
NEW BOOKS. 301
present one it may be safely said that it is much the best yet issued. Not
less safe is the prophecy that the next will be a good deal better.
The Philosophy of Law. An Exposition of the Fundamental Principles of
Jurisprudence as the Science of Right. By IMMANUEL KANT.
Translated from the German by W. HASTIE, B.D. Edinburgh
T. & T. Clark, 1887. Pp. xxxvi./265.
This translation of Kant's Rechtslehre has been undertaken by Mr.
Hastie in the conviction that, as in philosophy generally, so in the
philosophy of law no advance can be made except as the result of a
previous "return to Kant". The Preface and Introduction, as he
mentions, have already been translated (by J. W. Semple), but they are
now, with the rest of the book which appears in English for the first
time, translated anew.
The Christian Platonists of Alexandria. Eight Lectures preached before
the University of Oxford in the Year 1886 on the Foundation of the
late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury. By CHARLES
BIGG, D.D., Assistant Chaplain of Corpus Christi College, formerly
Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Oxford : Clarendon Press,
1886. Pp. xxvii., 304.
These " Bampton Lectures " are rather a contribution to the history of
philosophical theology than to the history of philosophy directly ; but
incidentally they contain abundance of philosophical interest. They are
founded both on study of the Alexandrians themselves and on full know-
ledge of the work of English and foreign scholars. In his very copious
notes the author shows himself especially anxious to give reasons for his
acceptance or rejection of the opinions of German historians and critics on
disputed points of interpretation of texts and filiation of doctrines. The
treatment is throughout in an impartial spirit. The titles of the Lectures
are (i.) " Introduction. Philo and the Gnostics," (ii., iii.) " Clement,"
(iv.-vi.) " Origen," (vii.) " The Reformed Paganism," (viii.) " Summary ".
The Historical Basis of Modern Europe (1760-1815 j. An Introductory
Study to the General History of Europe in the 19th Century. By
ARCHIBALD WEIR, M.A. London : Swan, Sonnenschein, Lowrey &
Co., 1886. Pp. xx., 616.
One chapter of this work (c. xii. "Critical Philosophy and Sensational
Psychology," pp. 471-505) is expressly devoted to the philosophical
development of modern Europe. Starting with Locke on one side, and
Descartes on the other, the writer gives a sketch of the stages of British
and Continental thought, down to the Kantian philosophy, the Common
Sense School, and " the Metaphysics of Association ". The present sketch
is partly derived from his Introduction to the Critical Philosophy of Kant
(noticed in MIND vi. 596).
Psychology. By JOHN DEWEY, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy in
Michigan University. New York : Harper & Brothers, 1887. Pp
427.
This is a treatise on psychology written for class-room instruction, with
full sense, as might be expected from the author, of the difficulties and
obligations to be faced at the present time by any expositor of the science,
owing to its peculiar relations with philosophy. Difficulties and obliga-
tions alike have from different points of view been so much insisted upon
in the pages of MIND of late years, that some detailed Critical Notice of
302 NEW BOOKS.
the author's effort is due. For the present it is only noted that, after an
Introduction dealing in two chapters with the " Nature and Method of
Psychology " and " Mind and Modes of Activity," the division is into
"Knowledge" (pp. 27-245), "Feeling" (pp. 246-346), "The Will" (pp.
347-416), a fair and equitable disposition of the available space ; and
that Knowledge is treated under the three main rubrics of " Elements "
(giving the exposition of Sensation), " Processes " (including Apperception,
Association, Dissociation, Attention, Retention), "Stages" (Perception,
Memory, Imagination, Thinking, Intuition). Experts may already form
some judgment on the book from so much indication of its scheme.
La, Vie et la Penstfe. Elements reels de la Philosophic. Par EMILE BURNOUP,
Directeur Honoraire de l'!cole d'Athenes. Paris : C. Eeinwald, 1886.
Pp. viii., 452.
The eminent Orientalist has here written a book of rare and curious
philosophical interest, upon which his studies in eastern lore have not been
without influence. It is written in the interest of a revival of metaphysical
philosophy as against mere psychologising, yet of a philosophy that not
only takes account of the results of psychology but starts explicitly from a
basis of natural science. An understanding of Thought, in the author's
view, is not to be obtained apart from an understanding of Life, and if
this already leads beyond physical to properly metaphysical consideration,
the science of inorganic as well as organic nature still supplies the only
real ground of the whole inquiry. Accordingly a great part of the work
is taken up with a somewhat detailed " Picture of Life " upon earth (pp.
69-193), after a first analysis of life has been attained in an introductory
dialogue between the author and a newly-buried friend, who is found
revisiting the glimpses of the sun one day for a few hours just before his
bodily form becomes finally dissolved into its constituent atoms. The
dialogue is fanciful enough in its general conception, and is not always
consistently carried through, yet is managed on the whole with good
dramatic effect, and is made to serve the author's purpose of preliminary
-exposition both strikingly and well. In the " Picture " that follows, the
course of the development of plant and animal life in its varied forms is
traced, on the one hand in relation with general cosmical conditions, and
on the other with a view to the appearance of man as its highest term
(thus far), since it is in connexion with the thinking nature of man that
the questions of philosophy take their rise. These are then treated in a
.second part, " Man, Thought, God," in which passage is made from
consideration of the living human organism as it gradually assumes form,
through a survey of the conditions and products of human feeling and
thought (with death as limit), to a general speculative conclusion on the
subject of God and the world. The author comes here to rest in a sort of
Spinozistic pantheism, after having dealt, in the body of his work, with
the facts of life and thought or at least the facts of life in the spirit
rather of Leibniz's monadology. Not that there he does not pursue a line
of his own, starting from assumptions and passing to conclusions which he
opposes to those of Leibniz ; yet their main conceptions have an un-
questionable affinity, and it is in the author's thorough-going application of
the monadic notion that the chief interest of his work lies. Explaining
life, at whatever stage, by the organising action of a " central atom " in
relation with a group of other atoms of lower degree action which he finds
better expressed by the word "analysis" than evolution, as applicable
equally to all that goes on in the phase of thought (from which indeed it
is borrowed) he concerns himself specially with the facts of generation,
NEW BOOKS. 303
and finds in these the clue to the question of an after-life. The central
atom, when dissolution of an organised body (that is, distribution of its
elements) takes place some time after the change that we denominate
death, is there ready to begin anew the work of self-incarnation ; but, just
as the (already so far incarnated) sperm-animalcule of a dog, though it
found its way to the ovum of a sheep, can work no effect upon it, so the
simple "central atom" of any grade, having acquired a certain modification
of character in the course of its last life-experience, must be placed in new
and suitable circumstances before re-incarnation can go forward. By a
series of cosmic " revolutions," of which the author thinks the geological
record bears evidence, such new conditions have been provided in the
past for the progressive development of living things through all grades up
to man ; and the indestructible " central atom " of a man who has lived,
after having gone through previous lives of lower degree, besides still
earlier development into that condition that first fitted it to become central
in a living organism, has now to wait till a new cosmic " revolution " gives
it the opportunity of entering upon a somehow higher life. It is here that
the influence of eastern ideas is apparent in the author's speculation, but
h e himself notes how his conception, which he seeks to develop in view of
the facts of modern science, varies from the old doctrine of metempsychosis.
There is much in his whole theory that is left vague and undetermined,
riot to say that it involves what seem obvious inconsistencies. Thus, on
the one hand, he speaks of the central atom in man as having reached the
stage of " thinking atom," and goes far at times towards making a really
philosophical analysis of human reason ; yet, on the other hand, he does
not hesitate to explain thought, as well as feeling, in man as the resultant
of atomic grouping and to speak of it thereupon (however its effects may
remain capitalized in the constitution of the central atom) as ending for
the individual with the death of the body ; from which point of view, also, he
proclaims with the utmost emphasis that Thought is a mere accident in
the universe. The inconsistency seems sufficiently marked, and generally,
as before suggested, the final view of " God and the World " appears to
hang little together with the doctrine of the body of the work. Nobody,
however, that takes up the book will easily lay it down before the end is
reached. It is a record of genuine search for light on the highest topics of
human concern, and is written throughout with great spirit and force.
Les Phenomena Affedifs et les Lois de leur Apparition. Essai de Psycho-
logic generale. Par FR. PAULHAN. Paris : F. Alcan, 1887. Pp. 163.
This psychological monograph is a perfectly consistent attempt to apply
to the phenomena of feeling the doctrine that all consciousness is an
unessential accompaniment of certain links in the physiological processes
that constitute the life of the nervous system, all of which processes can be
reduced to the type of reflex action. The author recognises (p. 13, note)
the idealistic objections to this doctrine, but, while reserving the general
philosophical question, declares his opinion that these objections can be
answered, that ultimately every psychological problem is a problem of
physiology, mental states being the signs, physiological processes the thing
signified. Man, in his view, is a combination of systems not completely
harmonised, " a sort of machine, ill finished or a little out of order, which,
receiving impressions from without, dissolves them and synthesises them
by combinations of numerous internal wheels, reacting so as to augment in
a certain measure the systematisation of the external world along with its
own ". Consciousness "is a sign of the imperfect working of the machine,
and "affective phenomena," being less " systematised " than intellectual
phenomena, are signs of a more considerable imperfection or " trouble " in
304 NEW BOOKS.
the working. As indicating " incomplete organisation of a tendency,"
feeling is a defect ; though, it may at the same time be a sign of advance
of organisation in relation to some former state or to some other organism.
The two primary conditions of feeling are (1) " inhibition of a tendency,"
or a check to the completion of some reflex action, (2) multiplicity of
accompanying phenomena. Besides these "necessary but insufficient"
primary conditions there are certain secondary conditions, viz., " force and
persistence of the inhibited impulse, relatively abrupt appearance and
relative inco-ordination of the phenomena, tendency to invade the whole
of consciousness ". These need not all be present at the same time, but if
all are absent there is no feeling. According to the distribution of these
conditions the feelings are divided into three classes : i. Passions, Senti-
ments, Impulsive Affections, Affective Signs, ii. Affective Sensations (or
sensations felt as pleasure or pain, Mr. Spencer's " presentative feelings "),
iii. Emotions. In the third class must be placed " pleasures and pains,"
but in a division by themselves. " Pleasure is the result of an increasing
systematisation, pain is the result of a decreasing systematisation."
" Passions " are the intensest of persistent states of feeling ; " sentiments J>
being merely the same phenomena reduced to a less degree of intensity.
" Emotions " are distinguished by their less persistence and greater abrupt-
ness of appearance (the crises of a "passion," for example, are "emotions"),
by the great multitude of accompanying phenomena, especially physical
phenomena, such as derangement of circulation, &c., and by their " com-
plete absorption of the psychical forces". The "impulsive affections" and
" affective signs " of the first class of feelings are more and more faint
" affective substitutes," continually approximating to those last and faintest
" intellectual substitutes," the psychological characters of which have never
been accurately described. The intenser phenomena of the second and
third classes fade off into similar vague states. From these approximating
vague states, as from a common root, the intellectual and emotional
phenomena arise in their distinctive classes, like animals and plants from
primitive forms that are neither. The book is divided into three chapters
(1) "General Law of Production of Affective Phenomena," (2) "The
Conditions of Production of the different Classes of Affective Phenomena,"
(3) " The Laws of Production of Compound Affective Phenomena". All
these chapters are full of good and ingenious psychological analysis in
detail. %
Une Visite cl la Salpetriere. Par J. DELBOEUF. Extrait de la Revue de
Belgique. Bruxelles : C. Muquardt, 1886. Pp. 49.
This extremely interesting account of observations on hypnotic patients
at the Salpetriere, made by M. Delboeuf, in company with MM. Binet
and Fe"re, supplements the work noticed in the last No. of MIND, p. 144.
The author has contented himself, he remarks, with relating what he saw,
mixing only a few reflections with his narration. All these " reflections "
are very valuable suggestions for further inquiry. In particular, M.
Delboeuf has been able, by an application of his own studies of sleep and
dreams, to get for the first time evidences of memory of experience in the
hypnotic state. The condition is that the last act of the hypnotic
"dream" shall be the first of waking (p. 41). It is impossible, he says
(p. 33), to be too circumspect in judgments on hypnotic phenomena ; some
of the more mysterious of which such as the supposed action of the will
across space without physical conductor he suspects may be explained by
" coincidences, auto-suggestions, complaisances in observation," or " un-
conscious divination of what is expected ".
NEW BOOKS. 305
Discussion! gnoseologiche e Note critiche di FRANCESCO BONATELLT, Socio
corr. del R. Istituto Ven. di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Venezia : G.
Antonelli, 1885. Pp. 197.
This is a series of hostile criticisms of the doctrine of " the relativity of
consciousness" from Protagoras onwards, with special reference to Mr.
Herbert Spencer. In opposition to Mr. Spencer's doctrine of relativity the
author finally quotes the following sentence from First Principles : " An
ever present sense of real existence is the very basis of our intelligence ".
These words, he says, repeat in a somewhat different form the doctrine of
Eosmini that " the idea of being ever present is what constitutes intelli-
gence ". He leaves it to others to determine how this " higher conception
of intelligence " can be reconciled with the doctrine of relativity.
Die Psychologic Mendelssohn's aus den Quellen dargestellt und kritisch be-
leuchtet. Von Dr. LEOPOLD GOLDHAMMER. Wien : Ch. D. Lippe,
1886. Pp. 76.
This is an exposition followed by a criticism of the psychology of
Moses Mendelssohn, whom the author regards as having been, by his
mediation between the Leibnizo-Wolman and the English philosophy, a
predecessor of Kant. He takes occasion to point out the importance of
Mendelssohn as a writer, as a representative of the " Aufklarungsphilo-
sophie," and as an aesthetic critic.
Grundlagen zu einer EthiL Von Dr. RICHARD VON SCHUBERT-SOLDERN,
Privatdocenten der Universitat Leipzig. Leipzig : Fues (R. Reis-
land), 1887. Pp. 168.
After criticising (1) the Kantian ethical principle of " internal autho-
rity," which is found to be unfruitful because merely formal, (2) the
principle of " external authority," which is found not to be an ultimate
principle, (3) the doctrine that " insight " is the characteristic of moral
action, which is found to presuppose an end not given in mere insight by
itself (Introduction, pp. 1-26), the author proceeds to work out some of
the preliminaries to an ethical doctrine of his own (pp. 27-168). The
result of the whole is that there can be no " absolute " but only a " rela-
tive " ethics. Ethical rules bind only those who have an interest in the
end to which they point out the means ; that is, they depend for their
binding force on some pleasure. This pleasure need not be egoistic, but
may be the satisfaction felt in the pleasure or welfare of others. " All
actions that have their spring in the general welfare, in the general love of
humanity, are called, pre-eminently, moral actions." Altruistic pre-
suppose egoistic pleasures. Society rests on a mixture of egoism and
altruism ; and since each factor for itself would demand the same social
order, it is impossible to say how much each has contributed to the actual
result. Altruism will constantly increase, but it is doubtful whether it
will ever entirely conquer egoism.
Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee. Nebst
einem Anhang liber heraklitischeEinniisseimalttestamentlichen Kohelet
und besonders ini Buche der Weisheit, sowie in der ersten christlichen
Literatur. Von Dr. EDMUND PFLEIDERER, Prof, der Philosophie in
Tiibingen. Berlin : G. Reimer, 1886. Pp. ix., 384.
The author's main thesis is that Heraclitus received the philosophic
impulse not from previous philosophy but from religious ideas. In his
general view and method, as he points out, he follows Teichmiiller, but
differs from him in holding that it was principally the native Greek
20
306 NEW BOOKS.
mysteries, not Oriental religious ideas, by which Heraclitus was influenced.
The result is that the system of the Ephesian no longer presents itself as
a "gloomily resigned pessimism," but as an "optimism of reason," and
may almost be regarded as " the first speculative attempt at what has since
been called a theodicy " (p. 31). The exposition of the system in the light
of this vie'w is followed by an appendix (pp. 255-352) in which the author
seeks to demonstrate an influence of Heraclitus on the books of Ecclesiastes
and the Wisdom of Solomon. In a supplementary note (pp. 365-382) he
further contends that this influence is perceptible in the earliest Christian
documents, and especially in the fourth gospel.
Geschichte der Christlichen Eihik. Von Dr. W. GASS. Zweiten Bandes
erste Abtheilung. Sechzehntes und siebzehntes Jahrhundert. Die
vorherrschend kirchliche Ethik. Berlin : G. Eeimer, 1886. Pp.
xvi., 372.
In the absence of the earlier and later parts of this work it is impossible
to say what is its character as a whole. The present volume is concerned
exclusively with the theological as distinguished from the philosophical
ethics of the 16th and 17th centuries. After an introduction on
" Humanism and the Reformation" (pp. 1-45), the ethical doctrines of the
major and minor figures of the Reformation, the Jesuists and Jansenists,
the Mystics and Pietists (Catholic and Protestant), and the smaller religious
communities are successively described. There is a brief appendix (pp.
368-372) on the ethical doctrine of the Greek Church.
Versuch einer concreten Logik. (Classification und Organisation der
Wissenschaften.) Von Dr. THOMAS G. MASARYK, Professor an der
Bohmischen Universitat in Prag. Wien : C. Konegen, 1887. Pp.
xvi,, 318.
This is the second (revised and enlarged) edition of a work which was
published a year ago in Bohemian. By " concrete logic " the author
understands what is ordinarily called " doctrine of method ". After an
introduction (pp. 1-10), the whole work is divided into four books : i.
" Classification of the Sciences" (pp. 11-39) ; ii. " The Organisation of the
Sciences" (pp. 41-68) ; iii. " System of the Special Sciences " (pp. 69-246) ;
iv. "Conception of Philosophy (= Metaphysics)" (pp. 249-304). The
sciences are grouped into "practical" and "theoretical," and these last
again into " abstract " and " concrete ". In this division as in the hierarchy
of the " abstract sciences " (pp. 71-187), the author follows Comte, differing
from him chiefly in claiming for psychology the position of an independent
science. Comte's classification is defended (with some concessions) against
Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Spencer's classification criticised (pp. 34-38). The
author notes a certain " sociological colouring " of his own work, and explains
it by the circumstance that sociology is the science in which (together with
psychology) his special interests lie. He has devoted much attention to
English thinkers, and English influence is evident throughout. Altogether
the book is founded on wide study, and in detail is accurate and impartial.
The author proposes following it up by a more extensive work.
Religionspliilosophie. Von GUSTAV TEICHMULLER, ordentl. Professor der
Philosophic an der Universitat Dorpat. Breslau : W. Koebner, 1886.
Pp. xlvi., 558.
Prof. Teichmuller's object in this work is by a criticism of all possible
religions, or " logical chemistry of the religious life," to prepare the way
for a new " Christian philosophy ". In Part i. of his book (" Foundations,"
NEW BOOKS, 307
pp. 1-110), lie arrives at the following classification of religions : (1)
Projective Theology, (2) Pantheistic Religions, (3) Christianity. The
remaining two parts (ii. "Projective Religions," pp. 111-354; iii. "The
Pantheistic Religions," pp. 355-541) have for their purpose to expound and
criticise the forms of religion classified under the first two heads. Of the
" projective religions " there are two chief forms " the religion of fear "
and " the religion of sin " or " of law ". Pantheism has three chief forms
the religions " of action," " of feeling " and " of thought ". The projective
religions, attacked by criticism, disappear, and the "transitional form" of
Atheism or Positivism passes over into Pantheism. Since the three
Pantheistic religions in their turn dissolve under criticism, all that
remains for us is either to become " atheists of the second power " or else
go on " to the third and last stage of religious culture, to the philosophy
of Christianity ". In order to set free the religious truth in Christianity
from its " Hellenic fetters " of Platonic Idealism, a " new philosophy " is
required. " The peculiarity of the new philosophy rests on the distinction
of consciousness from the function of cognition " (p. xxii.). Consciousness,
like the motion of a body, is capable of all degrees, while objects of
cognition, like bodies in motion, remain the same. In consequence of this
distinction, philosophy as a mere affair of cognition no longer swallows up
the mind in itself, " but as a member in a system of co-ordinates recognises
the remaining functions of the mind, also the Ego, as independent powers".
Die italienische Philosophie des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Von Dr. KARL
WERNER. Fiinfter Band : Die Selbstvermittelung des nationaleri
Culturgedankens in der neuzeitlichen italienischen Philosophie.
Wien : G. P. Faesy, 1886. Pp. xi., 427.
In this, the fifth volume of his work on the Italian philosophy of the
19th century (for the first four volumes, see MIND x. 479 ; xi. 132, 447),
Dr. Werner treats of special or applied philosophy under the heads of (1)
" Nature-philosophy and ^Esthetics " (pp. 3-200) ; (2) " Psychology and
Pedagogics " (pp. 201-231) ; (3) " Ethics and Jurisprudence, Doctrine of
the State and of Society" (pp. 233-347); (4) "Philosophy of History"
(pp. 349-378) ; (5) " History of Philosophy " (pp. 379-420). The present
volume has the merits of its predecessors ; but as it is even more exclusively
expository, it does not offer occasion for detailed remark. By way of
criticism of the doctrines expounded, the author indicates that what is
required for the completion of the national thought that the philosophers
of Italy have been struggling to express, is the theistic and Catholic idea.
Das Problem der Continuitat in MatJiematik und Mechanik. Historische und
systematische Beitrage von Dr. FERDINAND AUGUST MULLER, Privat-
docent der Philosophic an der Universitat Giessen. Marburg : N.
G. Elwert, 1886. Pp. iv., 123.
Leibniz's " law of continuity " being, in the author's view, the point of
most intimate connexion of the Critical with the Leibnizian philosophy,
he has set himself to trace the development of this and the related concep-
tions in Leibniz and Kant. Leibniz made ari advance on Descartes by
placing the idea of permanence or substance in action instead of extension;
but his idea of substance was taken from the Ego regarded as active, and
then applied to matter ; and, generally, there was in Leibniz a mixture of
mathematical with dynamical and of these with psychological conceptions.
Kant destroyed for ever the conception of " mental substance," and for the
first time separated mathematics from dynamics. The doctrine of the
conservation of energy in which " the dynamical unity of nature " is now
308 NEW BOOKS.
expressed grew up, the author seeks to show, oil Kantian ground, and is
an expression of what is affirmed in Kant's " analogies of experience "
" substance, causality and reciprocity ". " The law of the conservation of
energy signifies conservation in reciprocal action."
In Sachen des Spiritismus und einer naturwissenschaftlichen Psychologie. Von
A. BASTIAN. Berlin : Nicolaische Verlags-Buchhandlung (R. Strieker),
1886. Pp. xx., 216.
The present work is closely connected in subject with the author's
immediately preceding book, noticed in MIND xi. 446. The first part of
it is occupied with primitive and later animism, doctrines of transmigra-
tion, " coiivulsionary " religious sects, "occult philosophy," &c., in their
relations to modern Theosophy and Spiritualism. From p. 137 onwards
the author expounds again with all his accustomed learning and variety of
citation his doctrine of Folk-psychology as natural science.
Das Korperliche Gefuhl Em Beitrag zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des
Geistes. Von Dr. EUGEN KRONER. Breslau : E. Trewendt, 1887.
Pp. viii., 210.
The purpose of this book is to show that, " both phylogenetically and
ontogenetically," " emotional tone," i.e., feeling regarded as pleasurable or
painful, is not something secondary, but is the primitive basis out of
which all other parts of the mental life are successively developed.
"Feeling," in this sense, is best called "corporal feeling," because it
always expresses directly the promotion or checking of bodily function.
By way of distinction, the " true feelings " of the Herbartian school may
be called specifically "mental". "Feeling in the special sense," or
"emotion," depends on "representations," which, according to the true
" genetic " order, occupy an intermediate and not a fundamental position
such as the author finds to be accorded to them, expressly or tacitly, by
all former psychologies. He regards it as another defect of all former
psychologies at least of all those he discusses that, while employing the
" descriptive " and the " analytical," they neglect the " genetic " method.
The new method and doctrine are to be applied to all psychological
problems in the manner suggested by Haeckel's dictum, that the history
of the individual is an epitome of the history of the race. The true
statement of the psychological problem of perception, for example, is
found to be : " How, out of pure feeling (Gefiihl), that is to say, the
consciousness of well- or ill-being, does there develop itself first an untoned
feeling (Empfindung), and, further, a relation of the same to external
objects 1 " The volume is divided into an introductory historical section
(pp. 1-27) and two others, of which the first deals with "general bodily
feeling" ("Das Gemeingefiihl," pp. 28-138), the second with the feeling
that accompanies the functioning of the organs of special sense (" Das
sirmliche Gefiihl," pp. 139-206). Phylogenetically as well as ontogene-
tically, the second kind of feeling by which we are to understand, as
before, emotional tone, not specific sensations as such is developed im-
mediately out of the first, and the boundary between them cannot be
exactly drawn. In a future volume the author proposes to deal more
particularly with " the biological significance of corporal feeling ".
Die deutsche Aestlietik seit Kant. Von EDUARD VON HARTMANN. Erster
historisch-kritischer Theil der Aesthetik. 5 Lieferungen. Berlin :
C. Duncker (C. Heymons), 1886. Pp. xii., 584.
This new work by Von Hartmann appears from the first in the cheap
edition of " Selected Works," of which it forms parts 8-12. As is
NEW BOOKS. 309
indicated in the sub-title, it is preliminary to a constructive treatise on
^Esthetics. The author's objects are, (1) to trace modern aesthetic theories
to their origin in Kant's Kritik der Urtheilskraft, and (2) to supplement
former histories by accounts of some less-known German writers. In
Kant he finds not only the origin of all scientific treatment of aesthetics,
but also of each single direction of thought that has been followed up in
Germany. Book i. (pp. 1-362) gives an account of the historical develop-
ment of general aesthetic doctrine according to the author's scheme.
Book ii. (" The Development of the most important Special Problems,"
pp. 363-580) is divided as follows:-!. "The Contrary and the Modifica-
tions of the Beautiful," 1. "The Ugly," 2. " The Sublime and its Contrary,"
3. "The Comic," 4. "The Tragic," 5. "The Humorous". II. "Disputed
Questions," 1. " The Place of Architecture in the System of the Arts," 2.
" Idealism and Formalism in the ^Esthetics of Music," 3. " The Significance
of the Arts of Acting and Dancing," 4. " The Classification of the Arts,"
5. " The Combination of the Arts ".
Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Von KARL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH
KRAUSE. Aus dem handschriftlichen Nachlasse des Verfassers
herausgegeben von Dr. PAUL HOHLFELD und Dr. AUG. WUNSCHE.
Leipzig : 0. Schulze, 1887. Pp. xiv., 481.
This volume, composed in 1829, but now first published, is not the
complete History of Philosophy projected by the author, but forms what
was to have been the second part of his whole work. After an introduction
(pp. 1-32) it is divided into three "chief Parts," the first (pp. 33-174)
treating of ancient, the second (pp. 174-227) of mediaeval, the third (pp.
228-478) of modern philosophy. The present volume was to have been
preceded by a general theory of history of philosophy and its place among
the sciences, and followed by estimates of the philosophers whose systems
are expounded. Of these first and third parts only some fragments are
in existence ; but from the indications given we may infer what would
have been the general character of the more extended treatment. Krause
is dominated by the idea of human history as an organic whole in which
the history of philosophy is included. History of philosophy, as well as
general history, has certain stages of development that follow one another
according to assignable laws. First there was a " golden age " in which
philosophy and all the sciences formed an organic unity of knowledge.
From this age a tradition has been handed down to later ages. It has been
the problem of metaphysical systems to reconstruct the primitive unity of
knowledge, but all have hitherto succumbed to scepticism. The problem
itself, however, is not insoluble ; and it is only in relation to a system of
" absolutist " metaphysics impregnable to scepticism that the systems of
the past can be definitively judged. Krause's Wesenlehre claims to be such
a system. The " pure history of philosophy," which alone has been
completed, is, however, to be an impartial exposition of all systems, in-
cluding the Wesenlehre itself.
Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit in ihren Beziehungen
zur Gegenwart. Von MORIZ CARRIERS. Zweite vermehrte Auflage.
2 Theile. Leipzig : F. A. Brockhaus, 1887. Pp. xi., 419 ; vii., 319.
This standard work, which has long been out of print, now appears in
a second and enlarged edition. While incorporating the results of later
study, the author has avoided the kind of rewriting that would have
tended to destroy the original character of the book (first published in
1846). In general arrangement, as well as in the estimates of particular
figures, it remains substantially the same. Critical Notice will follow.
310 NEW BOOKS.
Historia Philosophise Graecae. Testimonia Auctorum conlegerunt Notisque
instruxerunt H. RITTER et L. PRELLER. Pars prima septimum edita.
Physicorum Doctrinae recognitae a FR. SCHULTESS. Gothae : Sumpti-
bus Fridr. Andr. Perthes, 1886. Pp. viii., 180.
First published in 1838, revised by Preller for a second edition in 1857,
and then issued in successive editions without further change till taken in
hand by Teichmuller for a sixth in 1878, the collection of Greek (or Latin)
extracts, with Latin notes, that has served students of Greek philosophy so
well through half a century, here begins, in a seventh edition, to be brought
up fully to the level of the latest and best research in the subject. In no
department has later inquiry been so active and fruitful as in that of the
early " Nature-philosophy," and it is to this that the new editor (known
by his Platonic studies) has for the present confined his labours, without
giving any definite promise as to the remainder of the work. The part is
increased by about half as much matter again as it contained on finally
leaving Preller's hands, and otherwise appears in a considerably altered
form. Preller's division of Ionics Pythagoreans Eleatics and Empedocles,
substituted -for the original division into supporters of a single mutable
principle and supporters of one or more immutable principles, now gives
place to a general ordering of the "Physici" in chronological succession,
with the result that Empedocles is separated from the Eleatics by Anaxa-
goras, and is now followed by Leucippus and Democritus, with Diogenes,
Archelaus and Hippo bringing up the rear. The additions (or substitu-
tions) are made pretty uniformly throughout, and affect the extracts as well
as the notes, though of course it is in the latter that the remarkable
thoroughness of the editor's work becomes most apparent. Marginal indi-
cation of the subjects of paragraphs is a new and very welcome feature.
RECEIVED also :
G. S. Fullerton, The Conception of the Infinite, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott
& Co., pp. vii., 131.
A. Alexander, Some Problems of Philosophy, New York, Charles Scribner's
Sons, pp. 170.
A. Spir, Esquisses de Philosophie Critique, Paris, F. Alcan, pp. xi., 189.
Ch. Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, Paris, F. Alcan, pp. 164.
L. Natanson, La Circulation des Forces dans ks fltres anime's, Paris, Bureau
des deux Revues, pp. 74.
E. Morselli, La Filosofia Monistica in Italia, Milano-Torino, Dumolard,
pp. 42.
C. Sigwart, Vorfragen der Ethik, Freiburg i. B., J. C. B. Mohr (Paul
Siebeck), pp. 48.
R. Eucken, Zur Wiirdigung Comtek u. des Positivismus, Jena, pp. 28.
F. V. v. Wasserschleben, Die drei metaphysischen Fragen nach Kant's
Prolegomena, Berlin, C. Duncker (C. Heymons), pp. vii., 115.
tl. Was, Plato's Symposion, Eene Erotische Studie, Arnheim, P. Gouda Quint,
pp. xi., 103.
NOTICE of some of these will follow.
VIII. NOTES AND COKKESPONDENCE.
ON MR. WARD'S " PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES (in.) ".
In Mr. Ward's article on Psychological Principles, in the last number of
MIND, he illustrates the imperfections of present Psychology, as regards
the use of terms, by a copious reference to my modes of expressing the
fundamental conceptions of the science. It will be long ere we attain an
unimpeachable phraseology for the highest generalities of the mind,
and none of us can be too thankful for the criticism that shows us our
weak points. At the same time, it is not in human nature to acknowledge
errors wholesale, without an attempt at palliation ; and I must endeavour
to justify, as far as may be, some at least of the expressions that Mr. Ward
refers to.
One thing I am free to admit, namely, that in approaching the subject
at the commencement, I use a variety of terms that are not strictly denned,
and treat as nearly synonymous words that have a real difference of
meaning. In the first statement of notions that are new to the reader, it
is scarcely possible to preserve exactness ; at all events, there is another
condition to be attended to, namely, to be suggestive. It would be well
if these two things could be combined perfect propriety in the use of
terms, and the suggestion of meanings requisite to some faint compre-
hension of the subject-matter. I, for one, however, confess myself unequal
to the reconciliation of the two objects. 1 despair of giving an accurate
conception of the fundamental constituents of mind at the outset ; I am
only too glad if I can give an approximation to begin with, and gradually
improve upon the statement, so as to end with just and definite notions of
all essential matters. Thus it is, that I take the definition of the wide
term Consciousness as the concluding topic of my larger work.
Of course, this is a wholly indefensible position, if the vagueness
allowed at the outset is maintained all through. I can, however, show
that this is not the case with several of Mr. Ward's instances. He is
especially severe upon my use of the word ' Sensation ' in the classification
of Feelings. He says very truly that I divide Feelings into Pleasurable,
Painful and Indifferent, and again into Sensations and Emotions. He
asks what is the connexion between these quite distinct classifications.
I fail to see the relevancy of the question, inasmuch as any genus may be
broken up into species on different lines. The real point of the criticism
I take to be, that Sensations are pre-eminently involved with our Intelli-
gence, which would seem to make the classification very absurd. Mr.
Ward should have done me the justice to remark how careful I am, from
the very beginning, to state the double inclusion under Sensations ; not to
speak of the whole method of the detailed description, which gives the
doubleness an emphasis that can hardly be mistaken. In the Introduction
to The Senses and the Intellect, this expression occurs : "Our SENSATIONS,
as will be afterwards seen, come partly under Feeling and partly under
Thought". Again, in the Introduction to the Manual, which contains
some instances of the unqualified use of Sensation, there is this corrective
" Sensation, which contains a department of Feeling ". It is this depart-
ment that allows Sensations and Emotions to be coupled as exhausting the
region of Feeling. These give the sub-genera of Feeling, while the other
division exhibits the final classification of the different species of Sensations
and Emotions. Thus, among the Sensations of Hearing (Emotional) are
included Pleasures, Pains and states of Neutral excitement.
312 NOTES AND COKEESPONDENCE.
The criticism that most excites my wonder is found in the following
expressions. " Psychologists seem to be aware of no confusion when they
talk indifferently of states of mind, contents of mind, acts of mind : treat the
same fact now as a process, now as a product." Again, quoting riiy general
analysis of mind, Mr. Ward remarks " We are told of three properties or
functions of mind, as if there were no difference between predicating
property and function ". I have already given an apology for using, at the
outset, a variety of terms that cannot be denned at that stage. But I can
quote Mr. Ward himself, as acknowledging the very same difficulty in his
own treatment. This is the introductory sentence on Feeling in his
Encyclopaedia Britannica article : " We might now proceed to inquire
more closely into the character and relations of the three states, modes or
acts of this subject". Here he appends the following foot-note. "It is
useless at this point attempting to decide on the comparative appro-
priateness of these and similar terms, such as 'faculties,' 'capacities,'
'functions,' &c." That is to say, he is aware that he must find access
to his readers' minds by the use of whatever terms are familiar to
them, and leave precise defining to a later stage. This is exactly my
justification. Yet he goes on harping on the same theme, as when he says,
"states, actions and powers are certainly not congruent conceptions". I
should not say they were.
Another alleged fault in my exposition is to misuse the ambiguous term
'Consciousness'. It seems to me that this is about the least ambiguous
word in Psychology : its width of comprehension is a safeguard against its
abuse. But Mr. Ward makes out a fallacy of division in calling a sensation
a conscious state. For the life of me, I can see no harm in this ; nor would
I venture to say that a sensation is not a conscious state, not a mode of
consciousness at all. I ma) 7 be the victim of self-conceit, but I fancy I
can always keep myself straight with the word 'consciousness'; it is
seZ/-consciousness that floors me, and I am generally on my guard against
using the combination. The difficulty, however, lies with ' self,' and not
with consciousness.
The sort of error that I am charged with, in the handling of conscious-
ness, is the confounding the powers of the Intelligence, as Discrimination
and Assimilation, with the materials discriminated and assimilated. Of
course the sensation of blue is a conscious state ; the act of distinguishing
blue from violet is also a conscious state, but they are not both in the same
category ; and if, like Mr. Ward, I huddle, at the outset, states, modes
and acts, I trust to the detailed exemplification of Sense on the one hand,
and of Intellect on the other, to correct all essential errors of confusion of
the kind attributed to me.
The difficulties in connexion with Consciousness are, to my mind,
greatly surpassed by those that beset Feeling. Mr. Ward, in his article in
the Encyc. Brit, deserves the highest credit for his endeavour to clear up
this word ; and I freely allow that he has achieved considerable success.
At the same time, it takes no small effort to follow his nice distinctions ;
and he cannot help beirg aware that a feeling very readily passes into a
thing of intellect namely, by being subject to identification and discrimi-
nation. These powers deserve to be named as distinct facts ; but without
the feelings to be operated upon they are non-existent. Nay more, both
the change accompanying discrimination, and the resuscitation of agree-
ment, besides their intellectual result, give a more or less considerable
shock of consciousness, which I cannot rank with either Intellect or Will,
and therefore it must be under Feeling or nowhere.
If instead of culling a number of phrases out of their context, Mr.
Ward had followed the preliminary sketch of the fundamentals of the
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 313
mind at the opening of the Senses and Intellect, he could have marked
exactly the points where I went out of the right path, in separating
Feeling, Volition and Intellect, He would have seen that I was seriously
oppressed with the difficulty of assigning the relationship of Feeling and
Intellect, and, at all events, gave a perfectly unambiguous statement of
that relationship in the following sentences :
" In proportion as a mental experience contains the facts named dis-
crimination, comparison and retentiveness, it is an Intellectual experience ;
and in proportion as it is wanting in these, and shows itself in pleasure or
pain, it is of the nature of Feeling. The very same state of mind may
have both an intellectual side and an emotional side ; indeed, this is a
usual occurrence. And, like many things that are radically contrasted, as
day and night, these two distinct facts of our nature pass into one another
by a gradual transition, so that an absolute line of separation is not always
possible a circumstance that does not invalidate the genuineness of their
mutual contrast."
I can scarcely undertake to improve upon the clearness of this state-
ment ; and if Mr. Ward had inserted his critical knife at the defective
transitions, I should have been greatly obliged to him.
Mr. Ward's remarks upon the misuse of Feeling in connexion with the
germ of the Will, I cannot detach sufficiently from the doctrine itself, to
say how far his cavil is well or ill-founded. My belief is that none of
those mistakes that he dwells upon are really involved in the exposition.
The whole subject has its difficulties, which will remain after the phras-
eology is amended to Mr. Ward's heart's content. I should prefer being
challenged upon the substance and meaning of the general doctrine of
Will ; and will remain for the present under the accusation of having used
improper and confusing language in relation to it. I shall of course take
care, in any re-statement, to benefit by the criticisms now passed upon the
wording of the illustration.
A few words now upon the proposed use of Attention. * Granting that
the meaning intended to be expressed has all the importance attributed to
it, we must yet be aware of what is involved in inducing a hundred
millions of people to surrender the negative word ' inattention ' when the
situation occurs wherein it is at present employed. The name ' tempera-
ture ' saves us from the awkwardness of employing ' heat ' for all degrees
down to the bottom of the scale. It was some attempt of this nature, to
use heat in connexion with snow, that drew out the Irishman's question
* How many snow-balls will it take to boil a kettle 1 ' So, a word corre-
sponding to Temperature for Heat and Cold, or to Magnitude for Large
and Small, has to be adopted or invented, as the only way to avoid a hope-
less collision with popular usage. We may of course have one meaning in
general circulation, and another in the schools of Psychology. Such diver-
sities are frequently unavoidable ; but there is a peculiar aggravation in
the conflict of usage in this instance, and the sooner we get out of it the
better.
Mr. Ward repeatedly emphasises the want of coincidence between
Attention, even in his enlarged view, and Consciousness. I should like,
for my own satisfaction, that he would attempt a positive definition of the
part or parts of consciousness excluded from Attention. "Attention," he
says, " will cover part of what is meant by consciousness, so much of it,
that is, as answers to being mentally active, active enough at least to
receive impressions." Now this negative definition should be supplemented
by something positive. At least, we might have a few exemplary or repre-
sentative particulars, to give us a faint notion of the kind of consciousness
that lies outside Attention.
A. BAIN.
314 NOTES AND COREESPONDENCE.
ON A FEATURE OF ACTIVE ATTENTION.
I should like, in consequence of Mr. Ward's article (MiND No. 45), to be
allowed a lew words on an essential point. To Mr. Ward's objections in
general I cannot reply, because the only answer I could make would be to
confess that I have failed entirely and throughout to convey to him my
meaning. I am sorry for this, because otherwise I should have valued his
criticism. All I wish to do here is to attempt to clear up one point as to
active attention namely, the manner in which it may intensify sensations.
The account which I adopted (MiND No. 43) was that the result is caused
by a transfer of strength from an idea tli rough blending.
If we take for example a composite smell, one of its elements may
engross me directly by its strength. Again, resolving to observe and
bringing the idea of one element, I may find the answering component in
sensation strengthened. Or again, that component may excite ideas, its
own forming the centre, and upon this we may find the sensation grow
stronger. In all these cases I think the idea blends itself with the sensa-
tion, so adding strength thereto. No doubt much happens besides, but I
think thus much to be essential, and I tried (as I believed) to say so
(MiND No. 43, pp. 310-312).
Nor need anyone who holds that the working idea interests through
pleasure be, I think, at a loss. If he should be so misled as to doubt that
there are ideas of pleasure, he need not therefore cease to believe that ideas
may be pleasant. Nor need he doubt that an idea, like every other
psychical event, has a force which is not the same as its pleasantness.
He will say, I think, that the influence of this pleasure on the sensation is
another and a further question, but that here the essential point to his
mind is a transfer of strength as distinct from pleasantness. But, for
myself, I do not hold that interest must consist in pleasure, and I really
did my best, though it would seem not successfully, to say so. (Ibid., p.
310. Cp. 315, and 306, note.) I ought indeed to "have mentioned, when,
for argument's sake, I treated the interest of ideas as their pleasantness,
that I did not intend that to hold good, for argument's sake, of sensations
also. This, in fact, did not occur to me, and so I omitted to issue any
warning to the reader.
I will only add my regret that my paper should have appeared to be a
criticism on Mr. Ward individually/ Nothing in it referred to him, and
when the MS. left my hands I do not think that I had read one word of
his .writing. I have had that pleasure since, and can assure Mr. Ward
that, though I think the view of Attention which he has adopted is quite
inadmissible, this is far from blinding me to the solid value of his work
in general.
F. H. BRADLEY.
" ILLUSORY PSYCHOLOGY." A REJOINDER.
Perhaps I may be allowed a few words of rejoinder to Prof. Dewey's
reply on this subject in MIND No. 45. I would not ask it, since plainly
controversy must end somewhere, did not Prof. Dewey allege, as his reason
for making no attempt to deal specifically with my objections, that I have
mistaken the bearing of both his articles so completely as to render my
objections irrelevant. This allegation cannot be allowed to pass un-
challenged. It is entirely erroneous. I made no mistake of the kind. I
did not suppose " that it was the object of one [the art. in MIND No. 41] to
explain the nature of the individual and the universal consciousness, and
of the other [that in MIND No. 42] to give some definite directions regarding
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 315
the application of the method to philosophy and psychology " (p. 83). If
I had imagined this, I should never have taken pen in hand to reply to
them. My conception of their purpose was almost identical with Prof.
Dewey's present description of it (p. 88) : " The article in MIND No. 41 was
written to show that psychology could not be even psychology, much, less
philosophy, until the universal factor in consciousness was attended to.
. . . The article in MIND No. 42 was written to show that transcenden-
talism was incomplete till it recognised that the universal content can be
realised only in an individual bearer."
It was precisely against Prof. Dewey's attempt to show these things that
I argued ; and of course in doing so I followed his articles as closely as I
could, in order to bring out what seemed to me the writer's misconception,
not of English Psychology only, but also of German Transcendentalism.
Had I stated what I conceived his general purpose to be, and argued
against the misconceptions I supposed it to contain, it might have been
plausibly, though at the same time quite sincerely, replied, that I had set
up a figure of straw to contend with.
But now we see, on Prof. Dewey's own showing, what it was that he was
aiming at. It was an alliance, or perhaps we may say an union, between
English Psychological Philosophy and German Transcendentalism, in
which the first was to supply the method, and the second " the universal
factor" whatever that may mean. No doubt some very striking
philosophy was anticipated as the result. Now this idea appeared to me
to involve a radical misconception of the nature of both the suggested
allies ; but to show this by examining what I might suppose to be Prof.
Dewey's idea of their nature was not my business : it was enough for me
to point out the misconceptions, confusions and self-contradictions involved
throughout his pleading in favour of the alliance. I considered that, if
the misconceptions were really there, they would inevitably show them-
.selves in the pleading. I also thought that, in recommending Transcen-
dentalism, he could hardly avoid making some of the assumptions commonly
made by that which he recommended. This proved to be the case. But
it was with the assumptions as made by the advocate, not as appearing in
the system advocated, that I was primarily concerned.
I will now state what I suppose the chief of these misconceptions to
have been, repeating that it was they and the plea founded on them which
alone induced me to criticise Prof. Dewey's articles at all. I should not
have cared to do so, if my notion of his purpose had been what he supposes.
But the idea of an alliance or union between English Psychological
Philosophy and German Transcendentalism, on the ground that both were
based solely and directly on conscious experience, and the representation
of this principle as at once fundamental and common to both, though too
much lost sight of in application, especially on the English side, seemed
to me too mischievous to sound philosophy to be allowed to pass altogether
without comment.
In the first place, then, it is a great misconception to suppose, that
English Philosophy when following psychological method is based solely
and directly on an appeal to conscious experience. English Philosophy
has always aimed at being so based, and this is the very thing which
constitutes its characteristic merit. But English Philosophy, following
psychological method, or, as Prof. Dewey thinks, "that way of looking at
philosophical questions which is specifically English (and which, following
the usual custom, I called psychological)," departs from this sound principle
precisely at the point when the psychological method is adopted by it.
Psychology alone, whether English or not, makes no claim to be founded
directly and solely on experience, but on experience and hypothesis
316 NOTES AND COKBESPONDENCE.
together, the hypothesis of some real agency in the Subject, the ultimate
nature of which is sometimes considered as still open to investigation. It
is clear that some such hypothesis is necessary for it as a science, just as
physical science requires the hypothesis of the reality and real agency of
Matter. The English school of philosophy, on the other hand, has ever
since the time of Bacon laid claim to be founded on experience alone. If
this be so, then it is a serious misconception to represent English philosophy
on psychological method as standing simply and solely on conscious ex-
perience. English philosophy does so, but English psychological philosophy
does not.
The second misconception consists in making the very same supposition
with regard to German Transcendentalism, or Transcendentalism simply,
if that sounds better, seeing that all Transcendentalism is in point of fact
derived from Germany ; I mean the supposition that it also is based
directly and solely on conscious experience, without aid from assumption
or hypothesis. Down to the time of Berkeley philosophers and
psychologists alike had, with few exceptions, accepted the existence of an
immaterial soul or mind in some form or other, as matter of philosophical,
concurrently with theological, tradition. The soul or mind was in those
days conceived as a real empirical agent, only that it was not perceptible
by the senses. Kant took the step of substituting for it a more shadowy,
but still empirical agent, namely, a noumenal and transcendent one, which
by hypothesis could not per se be even thought as an object of experience
at all. This is the origin of what is called Transcendentalism, which is
nothing but a doubly refined form of empiricism. I mean that both the
soul or mind and its transcendent substitute are objects conceived on the
same type as ordinary objects of pre-philosophic common sense ; objects
not analysed as realities into their constituent elements, but reduced un-
analysed to shadows ; the latter of which was at the same time placed (so
it was hoped) beyond the reach ot criticism, by the avowal that its nature
was to be non-phenomenal itself, but to have phenomenal manifestations.
Singularly enough, it was declared to be unthinkable and yet actually
thought of as a real agent by one and the same theory. The Soul had
been the animating reality of Man, and the Transcendent Subject was the
animating reality of Man and Nature.
Transcendentalism is thus founded on an a priori assumption. I do
not of course say that this original form of it has been retained to the
present day. What I do say is, that the various forms of it at the present
day have this as their common origin, and in virtue of it are founded
upon an a priori assumption, and not upon experience simply. Transcen-
dentalists are not conscious of it as an assumption, and that is the worst of
the mischief. For in consequence they think that the form or forms of it
which they themselves adopt furnish an explanation of the universe. They
take their assumption as a vision into the heart of things. Prof. Dewey
shows in his Reply that he is very hazy on the nature of assumptions. He
says " to make assumptions is simply to see how facts look when some
integral factor is omitted " (p. 88). If that is assumption, then what is
abstraction 1 He mistakes abstraction for assumption.
It follows from the above, that neither of Prof. Dewey's two exhortees,
psychological philosophy and transcendentalism, is based upon that
principle of appealing to experience alone, which Prof. Dewey attributes
to them in common. If they are to forgather, it must be on the basis, not of
their common experientialism, but of their common empiricism. Not that such
an alliance need be deprecated, provided its true principle be acknowledged,
and its true nature understood. If Prof. Dewey had said that English
Psychological Philosophy and German Transcendentalism were alike in
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 317
basing themselves on certain common or similar assumptions, instead of
saying that they were alike in basing themselves on experience alone, the
statement would have been unobjectionable. An alliance on this basis
might have been mutually advantageous, had it been practicable. One at
least of the proposed allies was in considerable need of aid. English
psychological philosophy received a deadly blow from cc. 11 and 12 of
J. S. Mill's Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, the chapters entitled
respectively " The Psychological Theory of the Belief in an External
World " and " The Psychological Theory of the Belief in Matter, how far
applicable to Mind," wherein the great empiricist frankly and honestly
admitted that he found himself in presence of "the final inexplicability".
This was in fact an admission that the psychological theory had broken
down in philosophy, as a theory seeking to give a final explication of all
things by referring them to other things, after the fashion of science,
might have been expected to do.
Now Prof. Dewey thinks, that the psychological theory can be restored
to philosophical efficiency, if only it borrows from Transcendentalism the
principle of identifying the individual with the universal consciousness,
by "viewing" the former "in its finality" (MiND No. 41, p. 18). Un-
fortunately an individual consciousness " viewed in its finality " is not a
reality capable of having experience, is not a real Subject at all, but merely
a philosopher's idealisation of one. To identify the individual with the
universal consciousness is to assume that all individuals are omniscient.
Few Englishmen will find it easy to make this assumption.
In reality it is English Philosophy that is attacked by being identified
in principle with English Psychological Philosophy, when the latter is
simultaneously identified in principle with German Transcendentalism.
For the double identification not only robs English Philosophy of that
which is its special attribute, its foundation in experience alone, but
transfers that attribute to its ancient antagonist, the a priori school of
thought, in the person of its modern offspring Transcendentalism. There
was a charming audacity about the transference, which, while it charmed,
incited to a reply. If the proposed allies forgather, I thought, they shall
at least not make off with their ill-gotten booty undetected.
It is doubtless in a very large measure to the natural re-action against
J. S. Mill's empiricism, whether held to have broken down or not, that the
recent recourse to Transcendentalism on the part of many students of
philosophy in this country is owing. They did not, however, like Prof.
Dewey, dream of an alliance, but took refuge in what they thought was
the antagonistic principle. They saw that to appeal to empirical experience
was not to appeal to experience simply ; but that Transcendentalism also
was at bottom an appeal to empirical experience, this they saw not. In
reality the other of empirical experience, its explanation, or translation
into philosophic thought, is not obtained by transcending it, but by
analysing it. Now analysis is the work of experience simply.
Barring the writings of Salomon Maimon, a younger contemporary of
Kant's, to which I have drawn attention elsewhere, my own is the only
attempt, so far as I know, to base philosophy directly arid solely upon
-experience, distinguished from empiricism, and without admitting assump-
tions ; unless, indeed, John Grote's admirable Exploratio Philosophica,
published in 1865, the same year as my Time and Space, may count as the
preliminary of one. The term philosophy I take of course in its widest and
fullest sense, in which it means the endeavour to make the Universe
intelligible to human thought ; not to assign its first cause, or real con-
dition, as if it was a particular finite object, but to give a rationale of it,
always from a human point of view, a point of view from which, not the
318 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
Unseen itself, but man's relation to it, is the last object seen, the object
which occupies and limits his horizon. That I take to be what philosophy
in all ages has aimed at, to understand, not to construct, the Universe, as-
if human logic contained the secret of its construction, or human diction-
aries the Ineffable Name.
The present position of philosophy is not only a scandal to the intellec-
tual world ; it is also fraught with danger to the best interests of
humanity. Until it is reconstituted, there can be no unity directing
human effort : one man will be a Positivist, another a Transcendentalist,
another a Materialist, and so on ; while all such speculative divergences
necessarily involve corresponding divergences in the practical direction of
conduct. It has seemed to me that nothing else but experience, experience
simply and solely, can be the basis of the required all-embracing unity,
dominating but not excluding minor individual differences. And as it
happens, this very recourse to experience alone as the basis of true know-
ledge has been the guiding idea and characteristic mark of English
Philosophy, long before Transcendentalism was brought to the birth.
I pass over Prof. Dewey's counter criticism of myself, not from any
want of respect for my skilful critic, but because it would far exceed my
allotted limits to put the incidental statements of opinion, which my
article contains, in their proper setting. If this could be done, I think I
discern several points on which we should find ourselves in substantial agree-
ment. I am far from wishing to exaggerate our differences, and on these
questions have no reluctance to leave the last word with Prof. Dewey.
SHADWORTH H. HODGSON.
The following from Prof. W. James has just come :
" Professor Stumpf writes to me that in the quotation I made from him
in the last No. of MIND, p. 27, n., I mistranslated his words Stelle and Ort
by position, which is properly the equivalent of Lacje or of Stellung, and
connotes relation to some other position, as Ort and Stelle do not. I am
sorry that I failed to catch a shading of his meaning which was manifestly
essential. I confess, however, that I find a difficulty in thinking of Ort
as disconnected with Lage, of place as not implying position, of locus as
independent of situs. Prof. Stumpf develops his view in a passage which
I would gladly place before the readers of MIND if room could "be found
for it in the April No. ; but it does not induce me to modify my own
text." [Extract perforce omitted. EDITOR.]
Lord Gifford, one of the Scottish Judges, recently deceased, has willed
80,000, in various proportions, to the four Scottish Universities, to be
devoted to the foundation of Lectureships in Natural Theology. The
terms of the bequest are sufficiently remarkable, as some extracts from
the trust-deed will show. In the preamble he says : " 1 give my body to
the earth as it was before, in order that the enduring blocks and materials
thereof may be employed in new combinations ; and I give my soul to God,
in whom and with whom it always was, to be in Him and with Him for
ever in closer and more conscious union". Out of his estate he considers
himself bound to employ a certain residue for " the good of his fellow-
men," and therefore desires the Lectureships to be founded "for promoting,
advancing, teaching and diffusing the study of Natural Theology, in the
widest sense of the term ; in other words, the knowledge of God, the
Infinite, the All, the First and Only Cause, the One and the Sole Sub-
stance, the Sole Being, the Sole Reality, and the Sole Existence, the know-
ledge of His nature and attributes, the knowledge of the relations which
NOTES AND COEEESPONDENCE. 319
men and the whole universe bear to Him, the knowledge of the nature
and foundation of ethics or morals, and of all obligations and duties
thence arising " ; having long " been deeply and firmly convinced "
that such knowledge, " when really felt and acted on, is the means of
man's highest well-being and the security of his upward progress".
The lecturers are to be paid out of the annual proceeds of the funds,
and to be appointed for two years only, but " the same lecturer may
be reappointed for other two periods of* two years each, provided that
no one person shall hold the office of lecturer in the same city for
more than six years in all, it being desirable that the subjects be
promoted and illustrated by different minds ". Then follow these notable
provisions : " Fourth, the lecturers appointed shall be subjected to no test
of any kind, and shall not be required to take any oath, or to emit or sub-
scribe any declaration of belief, or to make any promise of any kind ; they
may be of any denomination whatever, or of no denomination at all (and
many earnest and high-minded men prefer to belong to no ecclesiastical
denomination) ; they may be of any religion or way of thinking, or, as is
sometimes said, they may be of no religion, or they may be so-called sceptics
or agnostics or free-thinkers, provided only that the 'patrons' will use dili-
gence to secure that they be able, reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers
of and earnest inquirers after truth. Fifth, I wish the lecturers to treat their
subject as a strictly natural science, the greatest of all possible sciences in-
deed, in one sense, the only science, that of Infinite Being without reference
to or reliance upon any supposed special exceptional or so-called miraculous
revelation. I wish it considered just as astronomy or chemistry is. I have
intentionally indicated, in describing the subject of the lectures, the gene-
ral aspect which personally I would expect the lectures to bear, but the
lecturers shall be under no restraint whatever in their treatment of their
theme ; for example, they may freely discuss (and it may be well to do so)
all questions about man's conceptions of God or the Infinite, their origin,
nature and truth, whether he can have any such conceptions, whether God
is under any or what limitations, and so on, as I am persuaded that nothing
but good can result from free discussion." It will be interesting to watch
the fortunes and the outcome of the large-hearted man's foundations.
THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY FOR THE SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF PHILOSOPHY.
(22 Albemarle Street, W.). The papers read since last record have been
the following : In 1886 Dec. 6, " Neo-Kantianism in relation to Science,"
by Mr. G. J. Eomanes, F.E.S. ; and Dec. 20, " Malebranche," by Mr. H.
W. Carr, Hon. Sec. In 1887 Jan. 10, "The Ancient Distinction of Logic,
Physic and Ethic," by the Rev. A. Chandler ; Jan. 24, " The Theory of
Motion," by the Rev. E. P. Scrymgour, Y.P. ; Feb. 7, " The Monadology
of Leibniz," by Miss M. S. Handley; and Feb. 21, "Recent Psych ophysical
Researches," by Dr. J. M. Cattell. The papers in every instance were
followed by a discussion.
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. An. xii., No. 1. R. Garofalo Le delit
naturel. V. Brochard La methode experimental chez les anciens. G.
Sorel Le calcul des probability's et 1'experience. Observations et Docu-
ments (A. Binet Note sur 1'ecriture hysterique. H. Neiglick De la
methode des graduations moyennes pour les sensations lumineuses).
Analyses et Comptes-rendus. Correspondance (M. Bernheim De la
suggestion et de ses applications therapeutiques. M. A. Bertrand Corres-
pondance inedite de Maine de Biran). Rev. des Period. Soc. de Psycho-
logic physiolog. (P. Tannery Sur la parole interieure. Ch. Richet De
la composition typographique et du style de quelques livres imprimes).
No. 2. J. Delboeuf De la pretenclue veille somatique (i.). L. Bianchi et
320 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
G. v. Sommer La polarisation psychique dans la phase somnambulique
de 1'hypnotisme. F. Bouillier Ce que deviennent les idees. Ch. Richet
Objet de la psychologic geiierale. Analyses, &c. (Scotus Novanticus,
Mttaphysica nova et vetusta ; J. Sully, The Teacher's Handbook of Psycho-
logy, &c.). Rev. des Period. Soc. de Psych, phys. (Lauret et Duchaussoy
Sur mi cas hereditaire d'audition coloree). No. 3. R. Garofalo
L'anomalie du criminel. J. Delboeuf De la pretendue veille, &c. (fin).
A. Calinon Le temps et la force. Analyses, &c. (H. Maudsley, Natural
Causes and Supernatural Seemings, &c.). Soc. de Psych, phys. (H.
Beaunis Une experience sur le sens musculaire. A. de Rochas Hypno-
tisme et changement de personnalite. C. Sauvaire Hyperesthesie des sens
dans 1'etat hypnotique).
LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE (Nouv. Ser.). An. ii., No. 12. Z. Les
hypotheses cosmogoniques. A. Sabatier Le christianisme et la doctrine
de 1'evolution (i.). F. Pillon Un sermon sur le theisme chretien. . . .
Notices bibliog. An. iii., No. 1 ... A. Sabatier Le christianisme,
&c. (fin). C. Renouvier Reponse a M. A. Sabatier (i.). F. Pillon Le
mysticisme apocalyptique au moyen age. Notices bibliog. No. 2. C.
Renouvier Reponse, &c. (ii.). G. Lechalas L'activite de la matiere. . . .
RIVISTA ITALIANA DI FILOSOFIA. Vol. ii., Disp. 1. R. Mariano La
storia della Chiesa, sua natura, suoi rapporti e suo metodo. N. Fornelli
II nostro ideale nell' educazione. G. Jandelli Un libro sulla psicologia
-del fanciullo. Bibliografie, &c. Disp. 2. C. Ricco II peccato. N.
Fornelli II fondainento morale della pedagogia secondo Herbart, &c. R.
Pasquinelli La dottrina di Socrate nella sua relazione alia morale ed alia
politica. F. Masci Una riposta al prof. Ardig6. Bibliografie, &c.
RIVISTA DI FILOSOFIA SCIENTIFICA. Yol v., No. 11. D. Levi Gli
JEroici Furori di G. Bruno : studio critico. R. Acanfora-Venturelli Sul
principio d' identita. G. Cesca La relativita della conoscenza (ii.). B.
Bruno Appunti sul concetto di causalita : La relazione tra cause ed
effetti. Riv. Anal. Riv. Bibliog., &c. No. 12. E. Dal Pozzo di Moin-
bello L'evoluzione dall' inorganico all' organico. U. Rabbeno La
funzione economica nella vita politica. G. Cattaneo L'origine dei sessi.
Riv. Bib., &c.
PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Bd. xxiii., Heft 3, 4. J. Bergmann
Spinoza. Recensionen u. Anzeigen. Litteraturbericht. Bibliographic.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR VOLKERPSYCHOLOGIE u. SPRACHWISSENSCHAFT. Bd.
xvii., Heft 1. J. Happel Ueber die Bedeutung der volkerpsychologisclien
Arbeiten Adolf Bastiaiis. Th. Achelis Der wissenschaftliche charakter
der Ethnologic. Dr. Guggenheim Zur Geschichte des Inductionsbegriffs.
Beurteilungen. H. Steinthal Benierkungen zu " Der wiss. Charakter der
Ethnologic".
VlERTELJAHRSSCHRIFT FUR WISS. PHILOSOPHIE. Bd. xi., Heft 1. J.
v. Kries Ueber Unterscheidungszeiten. Schmitz-Dumont StambegrifFe
(Kategorien) u. Hauptbegriffe des Denkens. B. Kerry Ueber An-
schauung u. ihre psychische Verarbeitung (iii.). Anzeigen (H. Sidgwick,
Outlines of the History of Ethics, &c.). Selbstanzeige, &c.
PHILOSOPHISCHE STUDIEN. Bd. iv., Heft 1. W. Wundt Ueber Ziele
u. Wege der Volkerpsychologie. H. Neiglick Zur Psychophysik des
Lichtsinnes. W. Wundt Benierkungen zu vorstehendem Aufsatze. J.
Merkel Das psychophysische Grundgesetz in Bezug auf Schallstarken (i.).
ERRATUM. In Mr. Ward's article in MIND No. 45, p. 47, last line of
text, for work read force.
No. 47.] [JULY, 1887.
MIND
A QUARTERLY REVIEW
OF
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.
I. THE PEKCEPTION OF SPACE. (III.) 1
By Professor WILLIAM JAMES.
4. Visual Space.
IT is when we come to analyse minutely the conditions of
visual perception that difficulties arise which have made
psychologists appeal to new and quasi - mythical mental
powers. But I firmly believe that even here exact investi-
gation will yield the same verdict as in the cases studied
hitherto. This subject will close our survey of the facts, and
if it give the result I foretell, we shall be in the best of
positions for a few final pages of critically historical review.
If a common person is asked how he is enabled to see
things as they are, he will simply reply by opening his
eyes and looking. This innocent answer has, however, long
since been impossible for science. There are various para-
doxes and irregularities about what we appear to perceive
under seemingly identical optical conditions, which imme-
diately raise questions. To say nothing now of the time-
honoured conundrums of why we see upright with an
inverted retinal picture, and why we do not see double ;
and to leave aside the whole field of colour-contrasts and
1 Continued from MIND Nos. 45, 46.
521
322 w. JAMES :
ambiguities, as not directly relevant to the space-problem ;
it is certain that the same retinal image makes us see quite
differently-sized and differently-shaped objects at different
times, and it is equally certain that the same ocular move-
ment varies in its perceptive import. It ought to be
possible, were the act of perception completely and simply
intelligible, to assign for every distinct judgment of size,
shape and position, a distinct optical modification of some
kind as its occasion. And the connexion between the two
ought to be so constant that, given the same modification,
we should always have the same judgment. But if we
study the facts closely we soon find no such constant con-
nexion between either judgment and retinal modification, or
judgment and muscular modification, to exist. The judgment
seems to result from the combination of retinal, muscular
and intellectual factors with each other; and any one of
them may occasionally overpower the rest in a way which
seems to leave the matter subject to no simple law.
The scientific study of the subject, if we omit Descartes,
began with Berkeley, and the particular perception he
analysed in his New Theory of Vision was that of distance
or depth. Starting with the physical assumption that a
difference in the distance of a point can make no difference
in the nature of its retinal image, since " distance being a
line directed endwise to the eye, it projects only one point
in the fund of the eye which point remains invariably the
same, whether the distance be longer or shorter," he con-
cluded that distance could not possibly be a visual sensation,
but must be an intellectual " suggestion " from " custom"
of some non-visual experience. According to Berkeley this
experience was tactile. His whole treatment of the subject
was excessively vague no shame to him, as a breaker of
fresh ground but, as it has been adopted and enthusiastically
hugged in all its vagueness by nearly the whole line^of British
psychologists who have succeeded him, it will be well for
us to begin our study of vision by refuting his notion that
depth cannot possibly be perceived in terms of purely visual
feeling.
(a) The Third Dimension.
Berkeley ans unanimously assume that no retinal sensa-
tion can primitively be voluminous ; if it be extended at all
(which they are barely disposed to admit), it can be extended
only in the first two dimensions, not in the third. At start-
ing we have denied this, and adduced facts to show that all
sensations are voluminous in three dimensions. It is
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 323
impossible to lie on one's back on a hill, to let the empty
abyss of blue fill one's whole visual field, and to sink deeper
and deeper into the merely sensational mode of conscious-
ness regarding it, without feeling that an indeterminate,
palpitating, circling depth is as indefeasibly one of its attri-
butes as its breadth. We may artificially exaggerate this
sensation of depth. Rise and look from the hill-top at the
distant view ; represent to yourself as vividly as possible the
distance of the uttermost horizon ; and then loitli inverted
head look at the same. There will be a startling increase in
the perspective, a most sensible recession of the maximum
distance ; arid as you raise the head you can actually see
the horizon-line again draw near. 1
Mind, I say nothing as yet about our estimate of the
' real ' amount of this depth or distance. I only want to
confirm its existence as a natural and inevitable optical
consort of the two other optical dimensions. The field of
view is always a volume-unit. Whatever be supposed to be
its absolute and ' real ' size, the relative sizes of its dimen-
sions are functions of each other. Indeed, it happens per-
haps most often that the breadth- and height-feeling take
their absolute measure from the depth-feeling. If we plunge
our head into a wash-basin, the felt nearness of the bottom
makes us feel the lateral expanse to be small. If, on the
contrary, we are on a mountain-top, the distance of the
horizon carries with it in our judgment a proportionate
height and length in the mountain-chains that bound it to
our view. But as aforesaid, let us not consider the question
1 What may be the physiological process connected with this increased
sensation of depth, is hard to discover. It seems to have nothing to do with
the parts of the retina affected, since the mere inversion of the picture (by
mirrors, reflecting prisms, &c.), without inverting the head, does not seem
to bring it about ; nothing with sympathetic axial rotation of the eyes,
which might enhance the perspective through exaggerated disparity of
the two retinal images (see J. J. Muller, "Kaddrehung u. Tiefendimen-
sion," Sachs. Acad. Berichte, 1875, page 125), for one-eyed persons get
it as strongly an those with two eyes. I cannot find it to be connected
with any alteration in the pupil or with any ascertainable strain in the
muscles of the eye, sympathising with those of the body. The exaggera-
tion of distance is even greater when we throw the head over backwards
and contract our superior recti in getting the view, than when we bend
forward and contract the inferior recti. Making the eyes diverge slightly
by weak prismatic glasses has no such effect. To me, and to all whom I
have asked to repeat the observation, the result is so marked that I do not
well understand how such an observer as Helmholtz, who has carefully
examined vision with inverted head can have overlooked it. (See his
Phys. Optik, pp. 433, 723, 728, 772.) I cannot help thinking that anyone
who can explain the exaggeration of the depth-sensation in this case, will
at the same time throw much light on its normal constitution.
324 w. JAMES :
of absolute size now, it must later be taken up in a
thorough way. Let us confine ourselves to the way in
which the three dimensions seen get their values fixed,
relatively to each other.
Reid, in his Inquiry into the Human Mind, has a section
" Of the Geometry of Visibles," in which he assumes to trace
what the perceptions would be of a race of ' Idomenians '
reduced to the sole sense of sight. Agreeing with Berkeley
that sight alone can give no knowledge of the third dimension,
he humorously deduces various ingenious absurdities in their
interpretations of the material appearances before their eyes.
Now I firmly believe, on the contrary, that one of Reid's
Idomenians would frame precisely the same conception of
the external world that we do, if he had our intellectual
powers. 1 Even were his very eyeballs fixed and not movable
like ours, that would only retard, not frustrate, his education.
For the same object, by alternately covering in its lateral
movements different parts of his retina, would determine
the mutual equivalencies of the first two dimensions of the
field of view ; and by exciting the physiological cause of his
perception of depth in various degrees, it would establish a
scale of equivalency between the first two and the third.
First of all, one of the sensations given by the object
is chosen to represent its * real ' size and shape, in accord-
ance with the principles laid down on pp. 191 and 193.
One sensation measures the * thing ' present, and the
' thing ' then measures the other sensations. The peri-
pheral parts of the retina are equated with the central by
receiving the image of the same object. This needs no
elucidation in case the object does not change its distance or
its front. But suppose, to take a more complicated case,
that the object is a stick, seen first in its whole length, and
then rotated round one of its ends ; let this fixed end be the
one near the eye. In this movement the stick's image will
grow progressively shorter ; its farther end will appear less
and less widely separated from the fixed near end ; soon it
will be screened by it, and then re-appear on the opposite
side, and finally on that side resume its original length.
Suppose this movement to become a familiar experience ;
1 " In Froriep's Notizen, 1838, July, No. 133, is to be found a detailed
account, with a picture, of an Esthonian girl, Eva Lauk, then 14 years old,
born with neither arms nor legs, which concludes with the following
words : ' According to the mother, her intellect developed quite as fast as
that of her brother and sisters ; in particular, she came as quickly to a
right judgment of the size and distance of visible objects, although, of
course, she had no use of hands'." (Schopenhauer, Well als Wille, ii. 44.)
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 325
the mind will presumably react upon it after its usual
fashion (which is that of unifying all data which it is in any
way possible to unify), and prefer to consider it the move-
ment of a constant object rather than the transformation of
a fluctuating one. Now, the sensation of depth it receives is
awakened more by the far than by the near end of the
object. But how much depth ? What shall measure its
amount ? Why, at the moment the far end is ready to be
eclipsed, the difference of its distance from the near end's
distance must be judged equal to the stick's whole length ;
but that length has already been judged equal to a certain
optical sensation of breadth. Thus amounts of the visual
depth-feeling become signs of fixed amounts of the visual
breadth-feeling. The measurement of distance is, as Berke-
ley truly said, a result of suggestion and experience. But
visual experience alone is adequate to produce it, and this
he erroneously denied.
Suppose a colonel in front of his regiment at dress-parade,
and suppose he walks at right angles towards the midmost
man of the line ; the line will visibly shrink as he advances,
and at the same time the colonel will perceive his distance
from the extreme man at each end of the line to increase
relatively to his distance from the midmost man whom he
approaches. When he finally touches this midmost man,
his distance from the ends is felt by him to be at its maxi-
mum, although the line as a whole subtends hardly any
retinal angle. What distance shall he judge it to be ?
Why, half the length of the regiment as it was originally
seen, of course ; but this length was a moment ago a retinal
object spread out laterally before his sight. He has merely
equated a retinal depth-feeling with a retinal breadth-feeling.
If the regiment moved, and the colonel stood still, the result
would be the same. In such ways as these, a creature
endowed with eyes alone could hardly fail of measuring out
all three dimensions of the space he inhabited. And we
ourselves, I think, although we may often ' realise ' distance
in locomotor terms (as Berkeley says we must always do), yet
do so no less often in terms of our retinal map, and always
in this way the more spontaneously. Were this not so, the
three dimensions could not possibly feel to us as homo-
geneous as they do, nor as commensurable inter se.
Let us, then, admit distance to be at least as genuinely
optical a content of consciousness as either height or breadth.
The question immediately returns, Can any of them be said
in any strictness to be optical sensations ? W"e have contended
all along for the affirmative reply to this question, but must
326 w. JAMES :
now cope with difficulties greater than any that have assailed
us hitherto.
A sensation is presumably the mental affection that
follows most immediately upon the stimulation of the sense-
tract. Its antecedent is directly physical, no psychic links,
no acts of memory, inference or association intervening.
Accordingly, if we suppose the nexus between neural
process in the sense-organ on the one hand, and conscious
affection on the other, to be by nature uniform, the same
process ought always to give the same sensation ; and conversely,
if what seems to be a sensation varies whilst the process in the
sense-organ remains unchanged, the reason is presumably that it
is really not a sensation but a higher mental product, whereof the
variations depend on events occurring in other parts of the nervous
system than the sense-organ in question, probably higher cerebral
centres.
Now the size of the field of view varies enormously in all
three dimensions, without our being able to assign with any
definiteness the process in the visual tract on which the
variation depends. We just saw how impossible such
assignment was in the case where turning down the head
produces the enlargement. In general, the maximum feeling
of depth or distance seems to take the lead in determining
the apparent magnitude of the whole field, and the two
other dimensions seem to follow. If, to use the former
instance, I look close into a wash-basin, the lateral extent of
the field shrinks proportionately to its nearness. If I look
from a mountain, the things seen are vast in height and
breadth, in proportion to the farness of the horizon. But
when we ask what changes in the eye determine how great
this maximum feeling of depth or distance (which is un-
doubtedly felt as a unitary vastness) shall be, we find
ourselves quite unable to point to any one of them as being
its absolutely regular concomitant. Convergence, accom-
modation, double and disparate images, differences in the
parallactic displacement when we move our head, faintness
of tint, dimness of outline, and smallness of the retinal
image of objects named and known, are all processes that
have something to do with the perception of ' far ' and of
1 near ' ; but the effect of each and any one of them in
determining such a perception at one moment, may at
another moment be reversed by the presence of some other
sensible quality in the object, that makes us, evidently by
reminding us of past experience, judge it to be at a different
distance and of another shape. If we paint the inside of a
pasteboard mask like the outside, and look at it with one
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 327
eye, the accommodation- and parallax-feelings are there, but
fail to make us see it hollow, as it is. Our mental knowledge
of the fact that human faces are always convex, overpowers
them, and we directly perceive the nose to be nearer to us
than the cheek instead of farther of.
The other organic tokens of farness and nearness are
proved by similar experiments (of which we shall ere long
speak more in detail) to have an equally fluctuating import.
They lose all their value whenever the collateral circum-
stances favour a strong intellectual conviction that the object
presented to the gaze contradicts their verdict cannot be
either what or ivhcre they, if left to themselves, would make
us perceive it to be.
Now the query immediately arises : Can the feelings of
these processes in the eye, if they are so easily neutralised
and reversed by intellectual suggestions, ever have been
direct sensations of distance at all?. Ought we not rather
to assume, since the distances we see in spite of them are
conclusions from past experience, that the distances we see
by means of them are equally such conclusions ? Ought
we not in short to say unhesitatingly that distance must be
an intellectual and not a sensible content of consciousness ?
and that each of these eye-feelings serves as a mere signal
to awaken this content, our intellect being so framed that
sometimes it notices one signal more readily and sometimes
another ?
Reid long ago (Inquiry, c. vi. sec. 17) said, " It may be
taken for a general rule, that things which are produced by
custom may be undone or changed by disuse or by contrary
custom. On the other hand, it is a strong argument that
an effect is not owing to custom, but to the constitution of
nature, when a contrary custom is found neither to change
nor to weaken it." More briefly, a way of seeing things that
can be unlearned was presumably learned, and only what we
cannot unlearn is instinctive.
This seems to be Helmholtz's view, for he confirms Reid's
maxim by saying in emphatic print, " No elements in our
perception can be sensational which may be overcome or
reversed by factors of demonstrably experimental origin.
Whatever can be overcome by suggestions of experience
must be regarded as itself a product of experience and
custom. If we follow this rule it will appear that only
qualities are sensational, whilst almost all spatial attributes
are results of habit and experience." x
1 Physiol. OptiJc, p. 438. Helmholtz's reservation of 'qualities' is incon-
sistent. Our judgments of light and colour vary as much as our judgments
328 w. JAMES :
This passage of Helmholtz's has obtained, it seems to me,
an almost deplorable celebrity. The reader will please
observe its very radical import. Not only would he, and
does he, for the reasons we have just been ourselves con-
sidering, deny distance to be an optical sensation ; but,
extending the same method of criticism to judgments of
size, shape and direction, and finding no single retinal or
muscular process in the eyes to be indissolubly linked with
any one of these, he goes so far as to say that all optical
space-perceptions whatsoever must have an intellectual
origin, and a content that no items of visual sensibility can
account for. 1
As Wundt and others agree with Helmholtz here, and as
their conclusions, if true, are irreconcilable with all the sen-
sationalism which I have been teaching hitherto, it clearly
devolves upon me to defend my position against this new
attack. The wisest order of procedure seems this : first,
Reid's and Helmholtz's principle for distinguishing between
what is sensible and what is intellectual, must be disproved
by showing cases of other senses than sight in which it is
violated; secondly, we must review the further facts of vision
to which the principle is supposed to apply ( this will be
the longest segment of our task) ; and thirdly, it must be
shown that the facts admit of another interpretation com-
pletely in accordance with the tenor of the space-theory we
have ourselves defended hitherto. I think we shall, without
extreme difficulty, make good all the parts of this perhaps
presumptuous-sounding program. 2
of size, shape and place, and ought by parity of reasoning to be called in-
tellectual products and not sensations. In other places he does treat colour
as if it were an intellectual product.
1 It is needless at this point to consider what Helmholtz's views of the
nature of the intellectual space-yielding process may be. He vacillates
we shall later see how.
- Before embarking on this new topic it will be well to shelve, once for
all, the problem of what is the physiological process that underlies the
distance-feeling. Since one-eyed people have it, and are only inferior to
the two-eyed in measuring its gradations, it can have no exclusive con-
nexion with the double and disparate images produced by binocular parallax.
Since people with closed eyes, looking at an after-image, do not usually
see it draw near or recede with varying convergence, it cannot be simply
constituted by the convergence-feeling. For the same reason, the feeling of
accommodation cannot be identical with the feeling of distance. The
differences of apparent parallactic movement between far and near objects
as we move our head, cannot constitute the distance-sensation, for such dif-
ferences may be easily reproduced experimentally (in the movements of
visible spots against a background) without engendering any illusion of
perspective. Finally, it is obvious that visible faintness, dimness and
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 329
(&) Suggested Feelings can overpower Present Feelings.
First, then, is it impossible that actual present sensations
can be altered by suggestions of experience ? In the case of
hallucinations, we perfectly well know that the retinal image
of the side of a room can be blotted out of view by an over-
excitement of the cerebral sight-centres. And, as Stumpf
remarks (Ursprung der Raumvorstellung , 210), hallucinations
shade gradually into the illusions of everyday life. The
filling-out of the blind spot is a permanent hallucination.
smallness are not per se the feeling of visible distance, however much in the
case of well-known objects they may serve as signs to suggest it.
A certain maximum distance-value, however, being given to the field of
view of the moment, whatever it be, the feelings that accompany the pro-
cesses just enumerated, become so many local signs of the gradation of dis-
tances within this maximum depth. They help us to subdivide and
measure it. Itself, however, is felt as a unit, a total distance- value, deter-
mining the vastness of the whole field of view, which accordingly appears
as an abyss of a certain volume. And the question still persists, what
neural process is it that underlies the sense of this distance- value 1
Bering, who has tried to explain the gradations within it by the inter-
action of certain native distance- values belonging to each point of the two
retinas, seems willing to admit that the absolute scale of the space-volume
within which the natively fixed relative distances shall appear is not fixed,
but determined each time by " experience in the widest sense of the word "
(Beitrage, p. 344). What he calls the Kernpunkt of this space-volume,
is the point we are momentarily fixating. The absolute scale of the whole
volume depends on the absolute distance at which this Kernpunkt is judged
to lie from the person of the looker. " By an alteration of the localisation
of the Kernpunkt, the inner relations of the seen space are nowise altered ;
this space in its totality is as a fixed unit, so to speak, displaced with
respect to the self of the looker " (p. 345). But what constitutes the localisa-
tion of the Kernpunkt itself at any given time, except " Experience," i.e.,
higher cerebral and intellectual processes, involving memory, Hering does
not seek to define.
Stumpf, the other sensationalist writer who has best realised the diffi-
culties of the problem, thinks that the primitive sensation of distance
must have an immediate physical antecedent, either in the shape of " an
organic alteration accompanying the process of accommodation, or else
given directly in the specific energy of the optic nerve." In contrast with
Hering, however, he thinks that * it is the absolute distance of the spot
fixated which is thus primitively, immediately and physiologically given,
and not the relative distances of other tilings about this spot. These, he
thinks, are originally seen in what, broadly speaking, may be termed one
plane with it. Whether the distance of this plane, considered as a pheno-
menon of our primitive sensibility, be an invariable datum, or susceptible
of fluctuation, he does not, if I understand him rightly, undertake dogma-
tically to decide, but inclines to the former view. For him then, as for
Hering, higher cerebral processes of association, under the name of " Expe-
rience," are the authors of fully one-half part of the distance-perceptions
we at any given time may have.
Hering's and Stumpfs theories are reported for the English reader by
Mr. Sully (in MIND iii., pp. 172-6). Mr. Abbott, in his Sight and Touch
330 w. JAMES :
Faces, colours, shapes, change in the twilight, according as
we imagine them to represent this or that object. Motion-
less things appear to move under the same circumstances.
The colour of the marginal field of view is seen like that of
the central in the absence of any reason why we should
judge it different (as in looking at the blue sky or a white
wall), though a small marginal patch seen alone would be
quite different. Colour is surely a sensation !
But leave the optical realm, where everything has been
made doubtful. Touch is a sensation ; yet who has not felt
(pp. 96-8), gives a theory which is to me so obscure that I only refer the
reader to its place, adding that it seems to make of distance a fixed function
of retinal sensation as modified by focal adjustment. Besides these three
authors I am ignorant of any, except Panum, who may have attempted to
define distance as in any degree an immediate sensation. And with them
the direct sensational share is reduced to a very small proportional part, in
our completed distance-judgments.
Professor Lipps, in his singularly acute Psychologische Studien (pp. 69 ff.),
argues, as Ferrier, in his review of Berkeley (Philosophical Remains, ii.
330 ff.), had argued before him, that it is logically impossible we should
perceive the distance of anything from the eye by sight ; for a seen distance
can only be between seen termini ; and one of the termini, in the case of
distance from the eye, is the eye itself, which is not seen. Similarly of the
distance of two points behind each other : the near one hides the far
one, no space is seen between them. For the space between two objects to
be seen, both must appear beside each other, then the space in question will
be visible. On no other condition is its visibility possible. The conclusion
is that things can properly be seen only in what Lipps calls a surface, and
that our knowledge of the third dimension must needs be conceptual, not
sensational or visually intuitive.
But no arguments in the world can prove a feeling which actually exists
to be impossible. The feeling of depth or distance, of farness or awayness,
does actually exist as a fact of our visual sensibility. All that Professor
Lipps's reasonings prove concerning it is that it is not linear in its character,
or in its immediacy fully homogeneous and consubstautial with the feeling
of lateral distance between two seen termini ; in short, that there are two
sorts of optical sensation, each inexplicably due to a peculiar neural process.
The neural process is easily discovered, in the case of lateral extension or
spread-outness, to be the number of retinal nerve-ends affected by the
light ; in the case of protension or mere farness, it is more complicated
and, as we have found, is still to seek. The two sensations unite in the
primitive visual bigness. The measurement of their various amounts
against each other obeys the general laws of all such measurements. We
discover their equivalencies by means of objects, apply the same units to
both, and translate them into each other so habitually that at last they get
to seem to us even quite similar in kind. This final appearance of homo-
geneity is doubtless much facilitated by the fact that in binocular vision
two points situated on the prologation of the optical axis of one of the eyes,
so that the near one hides the far one, are by the other eye seen laterally
apart. Each eye has in fact a foreshortened lateral view of the other's line
of sight. In The Times for Feb. 8, 1884, is an interesting letter by J. D.
DotLgal. who tries to explain by this reason why two-eyed rifle shooting
has such advantages over shooting with one eye closed.
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 331
the sensible quality of touch change under his hand, as
sudden contact with something moist, or hairy in the dark,
awoke a shock of disgust or fear which faded into calm
recognition of some familiar object ? Even so small a thing
as a crumb of potato on the table cloth, which we pick up,
thinking it a crumb of bread, feels horrible for a few moments
to our fancy, and different from what it is.
Weight or muscular feeling is a sensation ; yet who has
not heard the anecdote of Wollaston when Sir Humphrey
Davy showed him the metal sodium which he had just
discovered? " Bless me, how heavy it is," said Wollaston ;
.showing that his idea of what metals as a class ought to be,
had falsified the sensation he derived from a very light sub-
stance.
Smell is a sensation ; yet who does not know how a sus-
picious odour about the house changes immediately its
character the moment we have traced it to its perhaps
small and insignificant source? When w r e have paid the
faithless plumber for pretending to mend our drains, the
intellect inhibits the nose from perceiving the same unaltered
odour, until, perhaps, several days go by. As regards the
ventilation or heating of rooms, we are apt to feel for some
time as we think we ought to feel. If we believe the venti-
lator is shut, we feel the room close. On discovering it
open, the oppression disappears. 1
Taste is a sensation; yet there are but few people, in tast-
ing wine, butter, oil, tea, meats, &c., who are not liable,
temporarily at any rate, completely to misjudge the quality of
what is in their mouth, through false expectation, or in con-
1 An extreme instance of the power of imagination over the sense of
smell is given in the following extract : " A patient called at my office one
day in a state of great excitement from the effects of an offensive odour in
the horse-car she had come in, and which she declared had probably ema-
nated from some very sick person who must have been just carried in it.
There could be no doubt that something had affected her seriously, for she
was very pale, with nausea, difficulty in breathing, and other evidences of
bodily and mental distress. I succeeded, after some difficulty and time,
in quieting her, and she left, protesting that the smell was unlike anything
she had ever before experienced and was something dreadful. Leaving
my office soon after, it so happened that I found her at the street corner,
waiting for a car : we thus entered the car together. She immediately
called my attention to the same sickening odour which she had experienced
in the other car, and began to be affected the same as before, when I
pointed out to her that the smell was simply that which always emanates
from the straw which has been in stables/ She quickly recognised it as
the same, when the unpleasant effects which arose while she was possessed
with another perception of its character at once passed away." (C. F.
Taylor, Sensation and Pain, p. 37 ; N. Y., 1882.)
332 w. JAMES :
sequence of some authority in such matters, standing by
and dogmatically declaring the article to be different from
what it is. In the matter of taste, it seems to me that most
men are normally nearer to the trance-state than in respect
of their other sensations. ' Suggestion ' influences them
more easily. The trance-subject's peculiarity is that all sen-
sations are falsified and overpowered by the imagination. In
all men some sensations are. And between the two extremes
there are exemplifications of every intermediate degree.
As we approach the sense of Hearing, the conditions be-
come even more like those of sight, and the deceptions which
Keid's and Helmholtz's principle denies to be possible,
abound. Everyone must recall some experience in which
a sensation of sound altered its acoustic character as soon
as the intellect referred it to a different source. The other
day a friend was sitting in my room, when the clock, which
has a rich low chime, began to strike : " Hollo ! " said he,
" hear that hand-organ in the garden," and was surprised
at finding the real source of the sound. I had myself some
years ago a very striking illusion of the sort. Sitting read-
ing late one night, I suddenly heard a most formidable noise
proceeding from the upper part of the house, which it seemed
to fill. It ceased, and in a moment renewed itself. I went
into the hall to listen, but it came no more. Resuming my
seat in the room, however, there it was again, low, mighty,,
alarming, like a rising flood or the avant-courier of an awful
gale. It came from all space. Quite startled, I again went
into the hall, but it had already ceased once more. On
returning a second time to the room, I discovered that it was.
nothing but the breathing of a little Scotch terrier which lay
asleep on the floor. The noteworthy thing is that as soon
as I recognised what it was, I was compelled to think it a
different sound, and could not then hear it as I had heard it
a moment before. 1
1 In an anecdote given by M. Delboeuf to prove a different point, this
was probably also the case, though it is not so stated. " The illustrious.
P. J. van Beneden, senior, was walking one evening with a friend along a
woody hill near Chaudfontaine. 'Don't you hear,' said the friend, 'the
noise of a hunt on the mountain ? ' M. van Beneden listens and distin-
guishes in fact the giving-tongue of the dogs. They listen some time,,
expecting from one moment to another to see a deer "bound by; but the
voice of the dogs seems neither to recede nor approach. At last a country-
man conies by, and they ask him who it is that can be hunting at this late
hour. But he, pointing to some puddles of water near their feet, replies :
' Yonder little animals are what you hear '. And there there were in fact
a number of toads of the species Bombinator igneus. . . . This batrachian
emits at the pairing season a silvery or rather crystalline note. . . . Sad
and pure, it is a voice in nowise resembling that of hounds giving chase."
(Examen Critique de la Loi Psychophysique, 1883, p. 61.)
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 333
These examples, to which I could easily add others if I
had room, are perhaps sufficient to break down in the
reader's mind the authority of a dictum which has been
left so strangely unquestioned. So far from its being true,
as Helmholtz says, that a genuine present sensation
cannot have its character transformed by suggestions from
past experience, it would seem as if the exact contrary
were the rule, and as if, with Stumpf, 1 we might reverse
Helmholtz's query, and ask : " What would become of our
sense-perceptions in case experience were not able so to
transform them?" Adding, "All wrong perceptions that
depend on peculiarities in the organs are more or less per-
fectly corrected by the influence of imagination following
the guidance of experience ".
If, therefore, among the facts of optical space-perception
(which we must now proceed to consider in more detail) we
find instances of an identical organic eye-process, giving us
different perceptions at different times, in consequence of
different collateral circumstances suggesting different objec-
tive facts to our imagination, we must not hastily conclude,
with the school of Helmholtz and Wundt, that the organic
eye-process pure and simple, without the collateral circum-
stances, is incapable of giving us any sensation of a spatial
kind at all. We must rather seek to discover ly what means
the circumstances can so have transformed a space-sensation,
which, but for their presence, would probably have been felt in
its natural purity. And I may as well say now in advance,
that we shall find the means to be nothing more or less than
association the suggestion to the mind of optical sensations
not actually present, but more habitually associated with the
" collateral circumstances " than the one which they now
displace. But before this conclusion emerges, it will be
necessary to have reviewed the most important facts of
optical space-perception, in relation to the organic conditions
on which they depend. Readers acquainted with German
optics will excuse what is already familiar to them in the
following section.
(c) The Two Theories of Retinal Perception.
Let us begin the long and rather tedious inquiry by the
most important case. Physiologists have long sought for a
simple law by which to connect the seen direction and
distance of objects with the retinal impressions they pro-
1 Op. cit. p. 214.
334
w. JAMES :
duce. Two principal theories have been held on this matter,
the " theory of identical points," and the " theory of projec-
tion " each incompatible with the other, and each beyond
certain limits becoming inconsistent with the facts.
The theory of identical points starts from the truth that
on both retinse an impression on the upper half makes us
perceive an object as below, on the lower half as above, the
horizon ; and on the right half an object to the left, on the
left half one to the right, of the median line. Thus each
quadrant of one retina corresponds as a whole to the similar
quadrant of the other ; and within two similar quadrants,
Fig. 1.
al and ar, for example, there should, if the correspondence
were consistently carried out, be geometrically similar points
which, if impressed at the same time by light emitted from
the same object, should cause that object to appear in the
same direction to either eye. Experiment verifies this
surmise. If we look at the starry vault with parallel eyes,
the stars all seem single ; and the laws of perspective show
that under the circumstances, the parallel light rays coming
from each star must impinge on points within either retina
which are geometrically similar to each other. The same
result may be more artificially obtained. If we take two
exactly similar pictures, smaller, or at least no larger, than
those on an ordinary stereoscopic slide, and if we look at
them as stereoscopic slides are looked at, that is, at one with
each eye (a median partition confining the view of either eye
to the picture opposite it), we shall see but one flat picture,
all of whose parts appear sharp and single. 1 Identical points
1 Just so, a pair of spectacles held an inch or so from the eyes seem like
one large median glass. The faculty of seeing stereoscopic slides single
without an instrument, is of the utmost utility to the student of physio-
logical optics, and persons with strong eyes can easily acquire it. The
only difficulty lies in dissociating the degree of accommodation from the
degree of convergence which it usually accompanies. If the right picture
is focussed by the right eye, the left by_ the left eye, the optic axes must
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 335
being impressed, both eyes see their object in the same
direction, and the two objects consequently coalesce into
one.
The same thing may be shown in still another way.
With fixed head converge the eyes upon some conspicuous
objective point behind a pane of glass ; then close either
eye alternately and make a little ink-mark on the glass
' covering ' the object as seen by the eye which is momen-
tarily open. On looking now with both eyes the ink-marks
will seem single, and in the same direction as the objective
point. Conversely let the eyes converge on a single ink-spot
on the glass, and then by alternate shutting of them let it
be noted what objects behind the glass the spot covers to
the right and left eye respectively. Now with both eyes
open, both these objects and the spot will appear in the
same place, one or other of the three becoming more distinct
according to the fluctuations of retinal attention. 1
Now what is the direction of this common place ? The
only way of defining the direction of an object is by pointing
to it. Most people, if asked to look at an object over the
horizontal edge of a sheet of paper which conceals their
hand and arm, and then to point their finger at it, raising
the hand gradually so that at last a finger-tip will appear
above the sheet of paper, are found to place the finger not
between either eye and the object, but between the latter
and the root of the nose, and this, whether both eyes or
either alone be used. Hering and Helmholtz express this
by saying that we judge of the direction of objects as they
would appear to an imaginary cyclopean eye, situated
between our two real eyes, and with its optical axis bisect-
ing the angle of convergence of the latter. Our two retinae
act, according to Hering, as if they were superposed in the
place of this imaginary double-eye ; we see by the corres-
ponding points of each, situated far asunder as they really
are, just as we should see if they were superposed and could
both be excited together.
either be parallel or converge upon an imaginary point some distance
behind the plane of the pictures, according to the size and distance apart
of the pictures. The accommodation, however, has to be made for the
plane of the pictures itself, and a near accommodation with a far-off
convergence is something that the ordinary use of our eyes never teaches
us to effect.
1 These two observations prove the law of identical direction only for
objects which excite the fovere or lie in the line of direct looking. Ob-
servers skilled in indirect vision can, however, more or less easily verify
the law for outlying retinal points.
336 w. JAMES :
The judgment of objective singleness and that of identical
direction seem to hang necessarily together. And that of
identical direction seems to carry with it the necessity of a
common origin, between the eyes or elsewhere, from which
all the directions felt may seem to be estimated. This is
why the cyclopean eye is really a fundamental part of the
formulation of the theory of identical retinal points, and why
Hering, the greatest champion of this theory, lays so much
stress upon it.
It is an immediate consequence of the law of identical
projection of images on geometrically similar points that
images which fall upon geometrically disparate points of the
two retinae should be projected in disparate directions and
that their objects should consequently appear in two places
or double. Take the parallel rays from a star falling upon
two eyes which converge upon a near object O, instead of
being parallel, as in the previously instanced case. If SL
and SB in Fig. 2 be the parallel rays, each of them will fall
upon the nasal half of the retina which it strikes.
But the two nasal halves are disparate, geometrically
symmetrical, not geometrically similar. The image on the
left one will therefore appear as if lying in a direction left-
ward of the cyclopean eye's line of sight ; the image of the
right one will appear far to the right of the same direction.
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 337
The star will in short be seen double, ' homonymously '
double.
Conversely if the star be looked at directly with parallel
axes, will be seen double, because its images will affect the
outer or cheek halves of the two retinae, instead of one outer
and one nasal half. The position of the images will here be
reversed from that of the previous case. The right eye's
image will now appear to the left, the left eye's to the right
the double images will be ' heteronymous '.
The same reasoning and the same result ought to apply
where the object's place with respect to the direction of the
two optic axes is such as to make its images fall not on
non-similar retinal halves but on non-similar parts of similar
halves. Here of course the directions of projection will be
less widely disparate than in the other case, and the double
images should appear to lie less widely apart.
Careful experiments made by many observers according to
the so-called haploscopic method confirm this law and show
that corresponding points, of single visual direction, exist upon
the two retinae. For the detail of these one must consult
the special treatises.
Note now an important consequence. If we take a
stationary object and allow the eyes to vary their direction
and convergence, a purely geometrical study will show that
there will be some positions in which its two images impress
corresponding retinal points, but more in which they im-
press disparate points. The former constitute the so-called
horopter, and their discovery has been attended with great
mathematical difficulty. Objects or parts of objects which
lie in the eyes' horopter at any given time cannot appear
double. Objects lying out of the horopter would seem, if
the theory of identical points were strictly true, necessarily
and always to appear double.
Here comes the first great conflict of the identity-theory
with experience. Were the theory true, we ought all to
have an intuitive knowledge of the horopter as the line of
distinctest vision. Objects placed elsewhere ought to seem,
if not actually double, at least blurred. And yet no living
man makes any such distinction between the parts of his
field of vision. To most of us the whole field appears single,
and it is only by rare accident or by special education that
we ever catch a glimpse of a double image. In 1838,
Wheatstone, in his truly classical memoir on binocular vision
and the stereoscope, 1 showed that the disparateness of the
1 This essay, published in the Philosophical Transactions, contains the
germ of almost all the methods applied since to the study of optical percep-
22
338 w. JAMES :
points on which the two images of an object fall does not
within certain limits affect its seen singleness at all, but
rather the distance at which it shall appear. Wheatstone
made an observation, moreover, which subsequently became
the bone of much hot contention, in which he strove to show
that not only might disparate images fuse, but images on
corresponding or identical points might be seen double. 1
I am unfortunately prevented by the weakness of my own
eyes from experimenting enough to form a decided personal
opinion on the matter. It seems to me, however, that the
balance of evidence is against the Wheatstonian interpreta-
tion, and that disparate points may fuse, without identical
points for that reason ever giving double images. The two
questions, " Can we see single with disparate points ? " and
"Can we see double with identical points?" although at
the first blush they may appear, as to Helmholtz they
appear, to be but two modes of expressing the same in-
quiry, are in reality distinct. The first may quite well be
answered affirmatively and the second negatively.
Add to this that the experiment quoted from Helmholtz
above by no means always succeeds, but that many indi-
viduals place their finger between the object and one of their
eyes, oftenest the right. 2 Finally, observe that the identity-
theory, with its Cyclopean starting-point for all lines of
direction, gives by itself no ground for the distance on any
Line at which an object shall appear, and has to be helped
out in this respect by subsidiary hypotheses, which, in the
hands of Hering and others, have become so complex as
easily to fall a prey to critical attacks ; and it will soon seem
tion. It seems a pity that England, leading off so brilliantly the modern
epoch of this study, should so quickly have dropped out of the field.
Almost all subsequent progress has been made in Germany, Holland and,
longo intervallo, America.
1 This is no place to report this controversy, but a few bibliographic
references may not be inappropriate. Wheatstone's own experiment is in
section 12 of his memoir. In favour of his interpretation see Helmholtz,
Phys. Opt., pp. 737-9 ; Wundt, Physiol PsychoL, 2te Ann., pp. 144 ; Nagel,
tielien mit zwei Augen, pp. 78-82. Against Wheatstone see Volkmann,
Arch. f. Ophth., v. 2-74 and Untersuchungen, p. 266 ; Hering, Beitrage zur
Physiologic, 29-45, also in Hermann's Hdbch. d. Physiol., Bd. iii., 1 Th.,
p. 435 ; Aubert, Physiologic d. Netzhaut, p. 322 ; Schon, Archiv. /. Ophthal,
xxiv., 1, p. 56-65 ; and Bonders, Ibid., xiii., 1, p. 15 and note.
2 When we see the finger the whole time, we usually put it in the line
joining object and left eye if it be the left finger, joining object and right
eye if it be the right finger. Microscopists, marksmen or persons one of
whose eyes is much better than the other almost always refer directions to
a single eye, as may be seen by the position of the shadow on their face
when they point at a candle-flame.
THE PEECEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 339
as if the law of identical seen directions by corresponding
points, although a simple formula for expressing concisely
many fundamental phenomena, is by no means an adequate
account of the whole matter of retinal perception. 1
Does the projection-theory fare any better? This theory
admits that each eye sees the object in a different direc-
tion from the other, along the line, namely, passing from
the object through the middle of the pupil to the retina.
A point directly fixated is thus seen on the optical axes of
both eyes. There is only one point, however, which these
two optical axes have in common, and that is the point to
which they converge. Everything directly looked at is seen
at this point and is thus seen both single and at its proper
distance. It is easy to show the incompatibility of this
theory with the theory of identity. Take an objective point
(like in Fig. 2, when the star is looked at) casting its
images R' and I/ on geometrically dissimilar parts of the
two retinae and affecting the outer half of each eye. On
the identity-theory it ought necessarily to appear double,
whilst on the projection-theory there is no reason whatever
why it should not appear single, provided only it be located
by the judgment on each line of visible direction, neither
nearer nor farther than its point of intersection with the
other line.
Every point in the field of view ought, in truth, if the
projection-theory were uniformly valid, to appear single,
entirely irrespective of the varying positions of the eyes, for
from every point of space two lines of visible direction pass
to the two retinae ; and at the intersection of these lines, or
just where the point is, there, according to the theory, it
should appear. The objection to this theory is thus pre-
cisely the reverse of the objection to the identity-theory. If
the latter ruled, we ought to see most things double all the
time. If the projection-theory ruled, we ought never to see
anything double. As a matter of fact we get too few double
1 Professor Joseph Leconte, who believes strongly in the identity-theory,
has embodied the latter in a pair of laws of the relation between positions
seen single and double, near or far, on the one hand, and convergences and
retinal impressions, on the other, which, though complicated, seems to me
by far the best descriptive formulation yet made of the normal facts of
vision. His account is easily accessible to the reader in his volume Sight,
of the " International Scientific Series," bk. ii., c. 3, so I say no more
about it now, except that it does not solve any of the difficulties we are
noting in the identity-theory, nor account for the other fluctuating percep-
tions of which we go on to treat.
340
W. JAMES
images for the identity-theory, and too many for the pro-
jection-theory.
The partisans of the projection-theory, beginning with
Aguilonius, have always explained double images as the
result of an erroneous judgment of the distance of the object,
the images of the latter being projected by the imagination
along the two lines of visible direction either nearer or
farther than the point of intersection of the latter. A
diagram will make this clear.
3.
O being the point looked at, M being an object farther,
and N an object nearer than it, will send the lines of visible
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.) 341
direction MM and NN to the two retinae. If N be judged as
far as O, it must necessarily lie where the two lines of visible
direction NN intersect the plane of the arrow, or in two
places, at N' and at N". If M be judged as near as 0, it must
for the same reason form two images at M' and M".
It is, as a matter of fact, true that we often misjudge the
distance in the way alleged. If the reader will hold his fore-
fingers, one beyond the other, in the median line, and fixate
them alternately, he will see the one not looked at, double ;
and he will also notice that it appears nearer to the plane of
the one looked at, whichever the latter may be, than it really
is. Its changes of apparent size as the convergence of the
eyes alter, also prove the change of apparent distance. The
distance at which the axes converge seems, in fact, to exert
a sort of attraction upon objects situated elsewhere. Being
the distance of which we are most acutely sensible, it invades,
so to speak, the whole field of our perception. If two half-
dollars be laid on the table a few inches apart, and the eyes
fixate steadily the point of a pen held in the median line at
varying distances between the coins and the face, there will
come a distance at which the pen stands between the left
half-dollar and the right eye, and the right half-dollar and
the left eye. The two half-dollars will then coalesce into
one ; and this one will show its apparent approach to the
pen-point by seeming suddenly much reduced in size. 1
Yet, in spite of this tendency to inaccuracy, we are never
actually mistaken about the half-dollar being behind the
pen-point. It may not seem far enough off, but still it is
farther than the point. In general it may be said that where
the objects are known to us, no such illusion of distance
occurs in any one as the theory would require. And in some
observers, Hering for example, it seems hardly to occur at
all. If I look into infinite distance and get my finger in
double images, they do not seem infinitely far off. To make
objects at different distances seem equi-distant, careful pre-
cautions must be taken to have them alike in appearance,
and to exclude all outward reasons for ascribing to the one
a different location from that ascribed to the other. Thus
Bonders tries to prove the law of projection by taking two
similar electric sparks, one behind the other on a dark
ground, one seen double ; or an iron rod placed so near to
the eyes that its double images seem as broad as that of a
fixated stove-pipe, the top and bottom of the objects being
1 Naturally it takes a smaller object at a less distance to cover by its
image a constant amount of retinal surface.
342
w. JAMES :
cut off by screens so as to prevent all suggestions of perspec-
tive, &c. The three objects in each experiment seem in the
same place. 1
Add to this the impossibility, recognised by all observers,
of ever seeing double with the fovece, and the fact that
authorities as able as those quoted in the note on Wheat-
stone's observation, deny that they see double then with
identical points, and we are forced to conclude that the pro-
jection-theory, like its predecessor, breaks down. Neither
formulates exactly or exhaustively a law for all our percep-
tions.
What does each theory try to do ? To make of seen loca-
tion a fixed function of retinal impression. Other facts may
be brought forward to show how far from fixed are the
perceptive functions of retinal impressions. We alluded a
while ago to the extraordinary ambiguity of the retinal image
as a revealer of magnitude. Produce an after-image of the
sun and look at your finger-tip ; it will be smaller than
your nail. Project it on the table, and it will be as big as a
strawberry ; on the wall, as large as a plate ; on yonder
mountain, bigger than a house. And yet it is an unchanged
retinal impression. Prepare a sheet with the following
figures strongly marked upon it, and get by direct fixation a
distinct after-image of each.
Fig. 4.
Project the after-image of the cross upon the upper left-
hand part of the wall, it will appear as in Fig. 5; on the upper
right hand it will appear as in Fig. 6. The circle similarly
Fig. 5.
Fig. 6.
Archivf. Ophthal, Bel xvii., Abth. 2, pp. 44-6 (1871).
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE, (ill.)
343
projected will be distorted into two different ellipses. If the
two parallel lines be projected upon the ceiling or floor far
in front, the farther ends will diverge; and if the three
parallel lines be thrown on the same surfaces, the upper pair
will seem farther apart than the lower.
Adding certain lines to others has the same distorting
effect. In what is known as Zollner's pattern (Fig. 7), the
long parallels tip towards each other the moment we draw
the short slanting lines over them, yet their retinal images
Fig. 7.
x.
x \
x
x \ x
X X X X X X X
'_/_/// S S
x x \ \ x x \ x \\x\\\
are the same they always were. A similar distortion of
parallels appears in Fig. 8.
Fis. 8.
Drawing a square inside the circle (Fig. 9) gives to the
outline of the latter an indented appearance where the
square's corners touch it. Drawing the radii inside of one
of the right angles in the same figure makes it seem larger
344
W. JAMES
Fig. 9.
than the other. In Fig. 10, the retinal image of the space
between the extreme dots is in all three lines the same, yet
it seems much larger the moment it is filled up with other
dots.
Fig. 10.
In the stereoscope certain pairs of lines which look single
under ordinary circumstances immediately seem double
when we add certain other lines to them. 1
(d) Ambiguous Import of Eye-movements.
These facts show the indeterminateness of the space-
import of various retinal impressions. Take now the eye's
movements, and we find a similiar vacillation. When we follow
a moving object with our gaze, the motion is ' voluntary ' ;
when our eyes oscillate to and fro after we have made our-
selves dizzy by spinning around, it is ' reflex ' ; and when
the eyeball is pushed 
