To the older idealism as to the new the essence of mind or spirit is freedom. But the guarantee of freedom is to be sought for not in the denial of law, but in the whole nature of mind and its relation to the structure of experience.Without mind no orderly world: only through the action of the subject and its “ideas” are the confused and incoherent data of sense-perception (themselves shot through with both strands) built up into that system of things we call Nature, and which stands out against the subject as the body stands out against the soul whose functioning may be said to have created it. On the other hand,without the world no mind: only through the action of the environment upon the subject is the idealizing activity in which it finds its being called into existence. Herein lies the paradox which is also the deepest truth of our spiritual life. In interpreting its environment first as a world of things that seem to stand in a relation of exclusion to one another and to itself, then as a natural system governed by rigid mechanical necessity, the mind can yet feel that in its very opposition the world is akin to it, bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. What is true of mind is true of will. Idealism starts from the relativity of the world to purposive consciousness. But this again may be so stated as to represent only one side of the truth. It is equally true that the will is relative to the world of objects and interests to which it is attached through instincts and feelings, habits and sentiments. In isolation from its object the will is as much an abstraction as thought apart from the world of percepts, memories and associations which give it content and stability. And just as mind does not lose but gain in individuality in proportion as it parts with any claim to the capricious determination of what its world shall be, and becomes dominated by the conception of an order which is immutable so the will becomes free and “personal” in proportion as it identifies itself with objects and interests, and subordinates itself to laws and requirements which involve the suppression of all that is merely arbitrary and subjective. Here, too, subject and object grow together. The power and vitality of the one is the power and vitality of the other, and this is so because they are not two things with separate roots but are both rooted in a common reality which, while it includes, is more than either.Passing by these contentions as unmeaning or irrelevant and seeing nothing but irreconcilable contradiction between the conceptions of the world as immutable law and a self-determining subject pragmatism (q.v.) seeks other means of vindicating the reality of freedom. It agrees with older forms of libertarianism in taking its stand on the fact of spontaneity as primary and self-evidencing,but it is not content to assert its existence side by side with rigidly determined sequence. It carries the war into the camp of the enemy by seeking to demonstrate that the completely determined action which is set over against freedom as the basis of explanation in the material world is merely a hypothesis which, while it serves sufficiently well the limited purpose for which it is devised, is incapable of verification in the ultimate constituents of physical nature. There seems in fact nothing to prevent us from holding that while natural laws express the average tendencies of multitudes they give no clue to the movement of individuals. Some have gone farther and argued that from the nature of the case no causal explanation of any real change in the world of things is possible. A cause is that which contains the effect (“causa aequat effectum”), but this is precisely what can never be proved with respect to anything that is claimed as a real cause in the concrete world. Everywhere the effect reveals an element which is indiscoverable in the cause with the result that the identity we seek for ever eludes us. Even the resultant of mechanical forces refuses to resolve itself into its constituents. In the “resultant” there is a new direction, and with it a new quality the component forces of which no analysis can discover.16
To the older idealism as to the new the essence of mind or spirit is freedom. But the guarantee of freedom is to be sought for not in the denial of law, but in the whole nature of mind and its relation to the structure of experience.Without mind no orderly world: only through the action of the subject and its “ideas” are the confused and incoherent data of sense-perception (themselves shot through with both strands) built up into that system of things we call Nature, and which stands out against the subject as the body stands out against the soul whose functioning may be said to have created it. On the other hand,without the world no mind: only through the action of the environment upon the subject is the idealizing activity in which it finds its being called into existence. Herein lies the paradox which is also the deepest truth of our spiritual life. In interpreting its environment first as a world of things that seem to stand in a relation of exclusion to one another and to itself, then as a natural system governed by rigid mechanical necessity, the mind can yet feel that in its very opposition the world is akin to it, bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. What is true of mind is true of will. Idealism starts from the relativity of the world to purposive consciousness. But this again may be so stated as to represent only one side of the truth. It is equally true that the will is relative to the world of objects and interests to which it is attached through instincts and feelings, habits and sentiments. In isolation from its object the will is as much an abstraction as thought apart from the world of percepts, memories and associations which give it content and stability. And just as mind does not lose but gain in individuality in proportion as it parts with any claim to the capricious determination of what its world shall be, and becomes dominated by the conception of an order which is immutable so the will becomes free and “personal” in proportion as it identifies itself with objects and interests, and subordinates itself to laws and requirements which involve the suppression of all that is merely arbitrary and subjective. Here, too, subject and object grow together. The power and vitality of the one is the power and vitality of the other, and this is so because they are not two things with separate roots but are both rooted in a common reality which, while it includes, is more than either.
Passing by these contentions as unmeaning or irrelevant and seeing nothing but irreconcilable contradiction between the conceptions of the world as immutable law and a self-determining subject pragmatism (q.v.) seeks other means of vindicating the reality of freedom. It agrees with older forms of libertarianism in taking its stand on the fact of spontaneity as primary and self-evidencing,but it is not content to assert its existence side by side with rigidly determined sequence. It carries the war into the camp of the enemy by seeking to demonstrate that the completely determined action which is set over against freedom as the basis of explanation in the material world is merely a hypothesis which, while it serves sufficiently well the limited purpose for which it is devised, is incapable of verification in the ultimate constituents of physical nature. There seems in fact nothing to prevent us from holding that while natural laws express the average tendencies of multitudes they give no clue to the movement of individuals. Some have gone farther and argued that from the nature of the case no causal explanation of any real change in the world of things is possible. A cause is that which contains the effect (“causa aequat effectum”), but this is precisely what can never be proved with respect to anything that is claimed as a real cause in the concrete world. Everywhere the effect reveals an element which is indiscoverable in the cause with the result that the identity we seek for ever eludes us. Even the resultant of mechanical forces refuses to resolve itself into its constituents. In the “resultant” there is a new direction, and with it a new quality the component forces of which no analysis can discover.16
It is not here possible to do more than indicate what appear to be the valid elements in these two conflicting interpretations of the requirements of a true idealism. On behalf of the older it may be confidently affirmed that no solution is likely to find general acceptance which involves the rejection of the conception of unity and intelligible order as the primary principle of our world. The assertion of this principle by Kant was, we have seen, the corner-stone of idealistic philosophy in general, underlying as it does the conception of a permanent subject not less than that of a permanent object. As little from the side of knowledge is it likely that any theory will find acceptance which reduces all thought to a process of analysis and the discovery of abstract identity. There is no logical principle which requires that we should derive qualitative change by logical analysis from quantitative difference. Everywhere experience is synthetic: it gives us multiplicity in unity. Explanation of it does not require the annihilation of all differences but the apprehension of them in organic relation to one another and to the whole to which they belong. It was, as we have seen, this conception of thought as essentially synthetic for which Kant paved the way in his polemic against the formalism of his continental predecessors. The revival as in the above argument of the idea that the function of thought is the elimination of difference, and that rational connexion must fail where absolute identity is indiscoverable merely shows how imperfectly Kant’s lesson has been learned by some of those who prophesy in his name.
Finally, apart from these more academic arguments there is an undoubted paradox in a theory which, at a moment when in whatever direction we look the best inspiration in poetry, sociology and physical science comes from the idea of the unity of the world, gives in its adhesion to pluralism on the ground of its preponderating practical value.
On the other hand, idealism would be false to itself if it interpreted the unity which it thus seeks to establish in any sense that is incompatible with the validity of moral distinctions and human responsibility in the fullest sense of the term. It would on its side be, indeed, a paradox if at a time when the validity of human ideals and the responsibility of nations and individuals to realize them is more universally recognized than ever before on our planet, the philosophical theory which hitherto has been chiefly identified with their vindication should be turned against them. Yet the depth and extent of the dissatisfaction are sufficient evidence that the most recent developments are not free from ambiguity on this vital issue.
What is thus suggested is not a rash departure from the general point of view of idealism (by its achievements in every field to which it has been applied, “stat mole sua”) but a cautious inquiry into the possibility of reaching a conception of the world in which a place can be found at once for the idea of unity and determination and of movement and freedom. Any attempt here to anticipate what the course of an idealism inspired by such a spirit of caution and comprehension is likely to be cannot but appear dogmatic.
Yet it may be permitted to make a suggestion. Taking for granted the unity of the world idealism is committed to interpret it as spiritual as a unity of spirits. This is implied in the phrase by which it has sought to signalize its break with Spinozism: “from substance to subject.” The universal or infinite is one that realizes itself in finite particular minds and wills, not as accidents or imperfections of it, but as its essential form. These on their side, to be subject in the true sense must be conceived of as possessing a life which is truly their own, the expression of their own nature as self-determinant. In saying subject we say self, in saying self we say free creator. No conception of the infinite can therefore be true which does not leave room for movement, process, free creation. Oldness, sameness, permanence of principle and direction, these must be, otherwise there isnothing; but newness of embodiment, existence, realization also, otherwise nothingis.Now it is just to these implications in the idea of spirit that some of the prominent recent expositions of Idealism seem to have failed to do justice. They have failed particularly when they have left the idea of “determination” unpurged of the suggestion of time succession. The very word lends itself to this mistake. Idealists have gone beyond others in asserting that the subject in the sense of a being which merely repeats what has gone before is timeless. This involves that its activity cannot be truly conceived of as included in an antecedent, as an effect in a cause or one term of an equation in the other. As the activity of a subject or spirit it is essentially a new birth. It is this failure that has led to the present revolt against a “block universe.” But the difficulty is not to be met by running to the, opposite extreme in the assertion of a loose and ramshackle one. This is merely another way of perpetuating the mistake of allowing the notion of determination by anotheror a preceding to continue to dominate us in a region where we have in reality passed from it to the notion of determination by self or by self-acknowledged ideals. As the correction from the one side consists in a more whole-hearted acceptance of the conception of determination by an ideal as the essence of mind, so from the other side it must consist in the recognition of the valuelessness of a freedom which does not mean submission to a self-chosen, though not self-created, law.The solution here suggested is probably more likely to meet with opposition from the side of Idealism than of Pragmatism. It involves, it will be said, the reality of time, the dependence of the Infinite in the finite, and therewith a departure from the whole line of Hegelian thought. (1) It does surely involve the reality of time in the sense that it involves the reality of existence, which it is agreed is process. Without process the eternal is not complete or, if eternity means completeness, is not truly eternal. Our mistake lies in abstraction of the one from the other, which, as always, ends in confusion of the one with the other. Truth lies in giving each its place. Not only does eternity assert the conception of the hour but the hour asserts the conception of eternity—with what adequacy is another question. (2) The second of the above objections takes its point from the contradiction to religious consciousness which seems to be involved. This is certainly a mistake. Religious consciousness asserts, no doubt, that God is necessary to the soul: from Him as its inspiration, to Him as its ideal are all things. But it asserts with equal emphasis that the soul is necessary to God. To declare itself an unnecessary creation is surely on the part of the individual soul the height of impiety. God lives in the soul as it in Him. He also might say, from it as His offspring, to it as the object of His outgoing love are all things. (3) It is a mistake to attribute to Hegel the doctrine that time is an illusion. If in a well-known passage (Logic§ 212) he seems to countenance the Spinoxistic view he immediately corrects it by assigning an “actualizing force” to this illusion and making it a “necessary dynamic element of truth.” Consistently with this we have the conclusion stated in the succeeding section on the Will. “Good, the final end of the world, has being only while it constantly produces itself. And the world of the spirit and the world of nature continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves only in a recurring cycle while the former certainly also makes progress.” The mistake is not Hegel’s but ours. It is to be remedied not by giving up the idea of the Infinite but by ceasing to think of the Infinite as of a being endowed with a static perfection which the finite will merely reproduces, and definitely recognizing the forward effort of the finite as an essential element in Its self-expression. If there be any truth in this suggestion it seems likely that the last word of idealism, like the first, will prove to be that the type of the highest reality is to be sought for not in any fixed Parmenidean circle of achieved being but in an ideal of good which while never fully expressed under the form of time can never become actual and so fulfil itself under any other.Bibliography.—(A) General works besides those of the writers mentioned above: W. Wallace,Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel(1894), and Hegel’sPhilosophy of Mind(1894); A. Seth and R. B.Haldane,Essays in Phil. Criticism(1883); John Watson,Kant and his English Critics(1881); J. B. Baillie,Idealistic Construction of Experience(1906); J. S. Mackenzie,Outlines of Metaphysics(1902); A. E. Taylor,Elements of Metaphysics(1903); R. L. Nettleship,Lectures and Remains(1897); D. G. Ritchie,Philosophical Studies(1905).(B) Works on particular branches of philosophy: (a)Logic—F. H. Bradley,Principles of Logic(1883); B. Bosanquet,Logic(1888) andEssentials of Logic(1895). (b)Psychology—J. Dewey,Psychology(1886); G. F. Stout,Analytic Psychology(1896); B. Bosanquet,Psychology of the Moral Self(1897). (c)Ethics—F. H. Bradley,Ethical Studies(1876); J. Dewey,Ethics(1891); W. R. Sorley,Ethics of Naturalism(2nd ed., 1904); J. S. Mackenzie,Manual of Ethics(4th ed., 1900); J. H. Muirhead,Elements of Ethics(3rd ed., 1910). (d)Politics and Economics—B. Bosanquet,Philosophical Theory of the State(1899), andAspects of the Social Problem(1895); B. Bonar,Philosophy and Political Economy in their historical Relations(1873); D. G. Ritchie,Natural Rights(1895); J. S. Mackenzie,An Introd. to Social Phil.(1890); J. MacCunn,Six Radical Thinkers(1907). (e)Aesthetic—B. Bosanquet,History of Aesthetic(1892), andIntrod. to Hegel’s Phil. of the Fine Arts(1886); W. Hastie,Phil. of Art by Hegel and Michelet(1886). (f)Religion—J. Royce,Religious Aspect of Philosophy(1885), andThe Conception of God(1897); R. B. Haldane,The Pathway to Reality(1903); E. Caird,Evolution of Religion(1893); J. Caird,Introd. to the Phil. of Religion(1880); H. Jones,Idealism as a Practical Creed(1909).(C) Recent Criticism. Besides works mentioned in the text: W. James,Pragmatism(1907),A Pluralistic Universe(1909),The Meaning of Truth(1909); H. Sturt,Personal Idealism(1902); F. C. S. Schiller,Humanism(1903); G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica; H. Rashdall,The Theory of Good and Evil(1907).See alsoEthicsandMetaphysics.
Yet it may be permitted to make a suggestion. Taking for granted the unity of the world idealism is committed to interpret it as spiritual as a unity of spirits. This is implied in the phrase by which it has sought to signalize its break with Spinozism: “from substance to subject.” The universal or infinite is one that realizes itself in finite particular minds and wills, not as accidents or imperfections of it, but as its essential form. These on their side, to be subject in the true sense must be conceived of as possessing a life which is truly their own, the expression of their own nature as self-determinant. In saying subject we say self, in saying self we say free creator. No conception of the infinite can therefore be true which does not leave room for movement, process, free creation. Oldness, sameness, permanence of principle and direction, these must be, otherwise there isnothing; but newness of embodiment, existence, realization also, otherwise nothingis.
Now it is just to these implications in the idea of spirit that some of the prominent recent expositions of Idealism seem to have failed to do justice. They have failed particularly when they have left the idea of “determination” unpurged of the suggestion of time succession. The very word lends itself to this mistake. Idealists have gone beyond others in asserting that the subject in the sense of a being which merely repeats what has gone before is timeless. This involves that its activity cannot be truly conceived of as included in an antecedent, as an effect in a cause or one term of an equation in the other. As the activity of a subject or spirit it is essentially a new birth. It is this failure that has led to the present revolt against a “block universe.” But the difficulty is not to be met by running to the, opposite extreme in the assertion of a loose and ramshackle one. This is merely another way of perpetuating the mistake of allowing the notion of determination by anotheror a preceding to continue to dominate us in a region where we have in reality passed from it to the notion of determination by self or by self-acknowledged ideals. As the correction from the one side consists in a more whole-hearted acceptance of the conception of determination by an ideal as the essence of mind, so from the other side it must consist in the recognition of the valuelessness of a freedom which does not mean submission to a self-chosen, though not self-created, law.
The solution here suggested is probably more likely to meet with opposition from the side of Idealism than of Pragmatism. It involves, it will be said, the reality of time, the dependence of the Infinite in the finite, and therewith a departure from the whole line of Hegelian thought. (1) It does surely involve the reality of time in the sense that it involves the reality of existence, which it is agreed is process. Without process the eternal is not complete or, if eternity means completeness, is not truly eternal. Our mistake lies in abstraction of the one from the other, which, as always, ends in confusion of the one with the other. Truth lies in giving each its place. Not only does eternity assert the conception of the hour but the hour asserts the conception of eternity—with what adequacy is another question. (2) The second of the above objections takes its point from the contradiction to religious consciousness which seems to be involved. This is certainly a mistake. Religious consciousness asserts, no doubt, that God is necessary to the soul: from Him as its inspiration, to Him as its ideal are all things. But it asserts with equal emphasis that the soul is necessary to God. To declare itself an unnecessary creation is surely on the part of the individual soul the height of impiety. God lives in the soul as it in Him. He also might say, from it as His offspring, to it as the object of His outgoing love are all things. (3) It is a mistake to attribute to Hegel the doctrine that time is an illusion. If in a well-known passage (Logic§ 212) he seems to countenance the Spinoxistic view he immediately corrects it by assigning an “actualizing force” to this illusion and making it a “necessary dynamic element of truth.” Consistently with this we have the conclusion stated in the succeeding section on the Will. “Good, the final end of the world, has being only while it constantly produces itself. And the world of the spirit and the world of nature continue to have this distinction, that the latter moves only in a recurring cycle while the former certainly also makes progress.” The mistake is not Hegel’s but ours. It is to be remedied not by giving up the idea of the Infinite but by ceasing to think of the Infinite as of a being endowed with a static perfection which the finite will merely reproduces, and definitely recognizing the forward effort of the finite as an essential element in Its self-expression. If there be any truth in this suggestion it seems likely that the last word of idealism, like the first, will prove to be that the type of the highest reality is to be sought for not in any fixed Parmenidean circle of achieved being but in an ideal of good which while never fully expressed under the form of time can never become actual and so fulfil itself under any other.
Bibliography.—(A) General works besides those of the writers mentioned above: W. Wallace,Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel(1894), and Hegel’sPhilosophy of Mind(1894); A. Seth and R. B.Haldane,Essays in Phil. Criticism(1883); John Watson,Kant and his English Critics(1881); J. B. Baillie,Idealistic Construction of Experience(1906); J. S. Mackenzie,Outlines of Metaphysics(1902); A. E. Taylor,Elements of Metaphysics(1903); R. L. Nettleship,Lectures and Remains(1897); D. G. Ritchie,Philosophical Studies(1905).
(B) Works on particular branches of philosophy: (a)Logic—F. H. Bradley,Principles of Logic(1883); B. Bosanquet,Logic(1888) andEssentials of Logic(1895). (b)Psychology—J. Dewey,Psychology(1886); G. F. Stout,Analytic Psychology(1896); B. Bosanquet,Psychology of the Moral Self(1897). (c)Ethics—F. H. Bradley,Ethical Studies(1876); J. Dewey,Ethics(1891); W. R. Sorley,Ethics of Naturalism(2nd ed., 1904); J. S. Mackenzie,Manual of Ethics(4th ed., 1900); J. H. Muirhead,Elements of Ethics(3rd ed., 1910). (d)Politics and Economics—B. Bosanquet,Philosophical Theory of the State(1899), andAspects of the Social Problem(1895); B. Bonar,Philosophy and Political Economy in their historical Relations(1873); D. G. Ritchie,Natural Rights(1895); J. S. Mackenzie,An Introd. to Social Phil.(1890); J. MacCunn,Six Radical Thinkers(1907). (e)Aesthetic—B. Bosanquet,History of Aesthetic(1892), andIntrod. to Hegel’s Phil. of the Fine Arts(1886); W. Hastie,Phil. of Art by Hegel and Michelet(1886). (f)Religion—J. Royce,Religious Aspect of Philosophy(1885), andThe Conception of God(1897); R. B. Haldane,The Pathway to Reality(1903); E. Caird,Evolution of Religion(1893); J. Caird,Introd. to the Phil. of Religion(1880); H. Jones,Idealism as a Practical Creed(1909).
(C) Recent Criticism. Besides works mentioned in the text: W. James,Pragmatism(1907),A Pluralistic Universe(1909),The Meaning of Truth(1909); H. Sturt,Personal Idealism(1902); F. C. S. Schiller,Humanism(1903); G. E. Moore,Principia Ethica; H. Rashdall,The Theory of Good and Evil(1907).
See alsoEthicsandMetaphysics.
(J. H. Mu.)
1Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, p. 197 (ed. Hartenstein).2Institutes of Metaphysics(1854);Works(1866).3Secret of Hegel(1865).4Dialogues of Plato(1871).5Journal of Spec. Phil.(1867).6Hume’sPhil. Works(1875).7Critical account of the Phil. of Kant(1877).8Knowledge and Reality(1885); Logic (1888).9Appearance and Reality(1893).10Studies in Hegelian Cosmology(1901).11Elements of Metaphysics(1903).12The World and the individual(1901).13SeeMind, New Series, xii. p. 433 sqq.14Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society (1900-1901), p. 110.15Mind, New Series, xiii. p. 523; cf. 204, 350.16The most striking statement of this argument is to be found in Boutroux’s treatiseDe la contingence des lois de la nature, first published in 1874 and reprinted without alteration in 1905. The same general line of thought underlies James Ward’sNaturalism and Agnosticism(2nd ed., 1903), and A. J. Balfour’sFoundations of Belief(8th ed., 1901). H. Bergson’s works on the other hand contain the elements of a reconstruction similar in spirit to the suggestions of the present article.
1Kritik d. reinen Vernunft, p. 197 (ed. Hartenstein).
2Institutes of Metaphysics(1854);Works(1866).
3Secret of Hegel(1865).
4Dialogues of Plato(1871).
5Journal of Spec. Phil.(1867).
6Hume’sPhil. Works(1875).
7Critical account of the Phil. of Kant(1877).
8Knowledge and Reality(1885); Logic (1888).
9Appearance and Reality(1893).
10Studies in Hegelian Cosmology(1901).
11Elements of Metaphysics(1903).
12The World and the individual(1901).
13SeeMind, New Series, xii. p. 433 sqq.
14Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society (1900-1901), p. 110.
15Mind, New Series, xiii. p. 523; cf. 204, 350.
16The most striking statement of this argument is to be found in Boutroux’s treatiseDe la contingence des lois de la nature, first published in 1874 and reprinted without alteration in 1905. The same general line of thought underlies James Ward’sNaturalism and Agnosticism(2nd ed., 1903), and A. J. Balfour’sFoundations of Belief(8th ed., 1901). H. Bergson’s works on the other hand contain the elements of a reconstruction similar in spirit to the suggestions of the present article.
IDELER, CHRISTIAN LUDWIG(1766-1846), German chronologist and astronomer, was born near Perleberg on the 21st of September 1766. After holding various official posts under the Prussian government he became professor at the university of Berlin in 1821, and eighteen years later foreign member of the Institute of France. From 1816 to 1822 he was tutor to the young princes William Frederick and Charles. He died in Berlin on the 10th of August 1846. He devoted his life chiefly to the examination of ancient systems of chronology. In 1825-1826 he published his great work,Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie(2 vols.; 2nd ed., 1883), re-edited asLehrbuch der Chronologie(1831); a supplementary volume,Die Zeitrechnung der Chinesen, appeared in 1839. Beside these important works he wrote alsoUntersuchungen über d. Ursprung und d. Bedeutung d. Sternnamen(1809) andÜber d. Ursprung d. Thierkreises(1838). With Nolte he published handbooks on English and French language and literature. His son,Julius Ludwig Ideler(1809-1842), wroteMeteorologia veterum Graecorum et Romanorum(1832).
IDENTIFICATION(Lat.idem, the same), the process of proving any one’s identity,i.e.that he is the man he purports to be, or—if he is pretending to be some one else—the man he really is; or in case of dispute, that he is the man he is alleged to be. As more strenuous efforts have been made for the pursuit of criminals, and more and more severe penalties are inflicted on old offenders, means of identification have become essential, and various processes have been tried to secure that desirable end. For a long time they continued to be most imperfect; nothing better was devised than rough and ready methods of recognition depending upon the memories of officers of the law or the personal impressions of witnesses concerned in the case, supplemented in more recent years by photographs, not always a safe and unerring guide. The machinery employed was cumbrous, wasteful of time and costly. Detective policemen were marched in a body to inspect arrested prisoners in the exercising yards of the prison. Accused persons were placed in the midst of a number of others of approximately like figure and appearance, and the prosecutor and witnesses were called in one by one to pick out the offender. Inquiries, with a detailed description of distinctive marks, and photographs were circulated far and wide to local police forces. Officers, police and prison wardens were despatched in person to give evidence of identity at distant courts. Mis-identification was by no means rare. Many remarkable cases may be quoted. One of the most notable was that of the Frenchman Lesurques, in the days of the Directory, who was positively identified as having robbed the Lyons mail and suffered death, protesting his innocence of the crime, which was afterwards brought home to another man, Duboscq, and this terrible judicial error proved to be the result of the extraordinary likeness between the two men. Another curious case is to be found in American records, when a man was indicted for bigamy as James Hoag, who averred that he was really Thomas Parker. There was a marvellous conflict of testimony, even wives and families and personal friends being misled, and there was a narrow escape of mis-identification. The leading modern case in England is that of Adolf Beck (1905). Beck (who eventually died at the end of 1909) was arrested on the complaint of a number of women who positively swore to his identity as Smith, a man who had defrauded them. An ex-policeman who had originally arrested Smith also swore that Beck was the same man. There was a grave miscarriage of justice. Beck was sentenced to penal servitude, and although a closer examination of the personal marks showed that Beck could not possibly be Smith, it was only after a scandalous delay, due to the obstinacy of responsible officials, that relief was afforded. It has to be admitted that evidence as to identity based on personal impressions is perhaps of all classes of evidence the least to be relied upon.
Such elements of uncertainty cannot easily be eliminated from any system of jurisprudence, but some improvements in the methods of identification have been introduced in recent years. The first was in the adoption of anthropometry (q.v.), which was invented by the French savant, A. Bertillon. The reasons that led to its general supersession may be summed up in its costliness, the demand for superior skill in subordinate agents and the liability to errors not easy to trace and correct. A still more potent reason remained, the comparative failure of results. It was found in the first four years of its use in England and Wales that an almost inappreciable number of identifications were effected by the anthropometric system; namely, 152 in 1898, 243 in 1899, 462 in 1900, and 503 in 1901, the year in which it was supplemented by the use of “finger prints” (q.v.). The figures soon increased by leaps and bounds. In 1902 the total number of searches among the records were 6826 and the identifications 1722 for London and the provinces; in 1903 the searches were 11,919, the identifications 3642; for the first half of 1904 the searches were 6697 and the identifications 2335. In India and some of the colonies the results were still more remarkable; the recognitions in 1903 were 9512, and 17,289 in 1904. Were returns available from other countries very similar figures would no doubt be shown. Among these countries are Ireland, Australasia, Ceylon, South Africa, and many great cities of the United States; and the system is extending to Germany, Austria-Hungary and other parts of Europe.
The record of finger prints in England and Wales is kept by the Metropolitan police at New Scotland Yard. They were at first limited to persons convicted at courts at quarter sessions and assizes and to all persons sentenced at minor courts to more than a month without option of fine for serious offences. The finger prints when taken by prison warders are forwarded to London for registration and reference on demand. The total number of finger-print slips was 70,000 in 1904, and weekly additions were being made at the rate of 350 slips. The advantages of the record system need not be emphasized. By its means identification is prompt, inevitable and absolutely accurate. By forwarding the finger prints of all remanded prisoners to New Scotland Yard, their antecedents are established beyond all hesitation.
In past times identification of criminals who had passed through the hands of the law was compassed by branding, imprinting by a hot iron, or tattooing with an indelible sign, such as a crown, fleur de lys or initials upon the shoulder or other part of the body. This practice, long since abandoned, was in a measure continued in the British army, when offenders against military law were ordered by sentence of court-martial to be marked with “D” for deserter and “B.C.” bad character; this ensured their recognition and prevented re-enlistment; but all such penalties have now disappeared.
(A. G.)
IDEOGRAPH(Gr.ἰδέα, idea, andγράφειν, to write), a symbol or character painted, written or inscribed, representing ideas and not sounds; such a form of writing is found in Chinese and in most of the Egyptian hieroglyphs (seeWriting).
IDIOBLAST(Gr.ἴδιος, peculiar, andβλαστός, a shoot), a botanical term for an individual cell which is distinguished by its shape, size or contents, such as the stone-cells in the soft tissue of a pear.
IDIOM(Gr.ἰδίωμα, something peculiar and personal;ἴδιος, one’s own, personal), a form of expression whether in words, grammatical construction, phraseology, &c., which is peculiar to a language; sometimes also a special variety of a particular language, a dialect.
IDIOSYNCRASY(Gr.ἰδιοσυγρασία, peculiar habit of body or temperament;ἴδιος, one’s own, andσύγκρασις, blending, tempering, fromσυγκεράννυσθαι, to put together, compound, mix), a physical or mental condition peculiar to an individual usually taking the form of a special susceptibility to particular stimuli; thus it is an idiosyncrasy of one individual that abnormal sensations of discomfort should be excited by certain odours or colours, by the presence in the room of a cat, &c.; similarly certain persons are found to be peculiarly responsive or irresponsive to the action of particular drugs. The word is also used, generally, of any eccentricity or peculiarity of character, appearance, &c.
IDOLATRY,the worship (Gr.λατρεία) of idols (Gr.εἴδωλον),i.e.images or other objects, believed to represent or be the abode of a superhuman personality. The term is often used generically to include such varied, forms as litholatry, dendrolatry, pyrolatry, zoolatry and even necrolatry. In an age when the study of religion was practically confined to Judaism and Christianity, idolatry was regarded as a degeneration from an uncorrupt primeval faith, but the comparative and historical investigation of religion has shown it to be rather a stage of an upward movement, and that by no means the earliest. It is not found, for instance, among Bushmen, Fuegians, Eskimos, while it reached a high development among the great civilizations of the ancient world in both hemispheres.1Its earliest stages are to be sought in naturism and animism. To give concreteness to the vague ideas thus worshipped the idol, at first rough and crude, comes to the help of the savage, and in course of time through inability to distinguish subjective and objective, comes to be identified with the idea it originally symbolized. The degraded form of animism known as fetichism is usually the direct antecedent of idolatry. A fetich is adored, not for itself, but for the spirit who dwells in it and works through it. Fetiches of stone or wood were at a very early age shaped and polished or coloured and ornamented. A new step was taken when the top of the log or stone was shaped like a human head; the rest of the body soon followed. The process can be followed with some distinctness in Greece. Sometimes, as in Babylonia and India, the representation combined human and animal forms, but the human figure is the predominant model; man makes God after his own image.
Idols may be private and personal like the teraphim of the Hebrews or the little figures found in early Egyptian tombs, or—a late development, public and tribal or national. Some, like the ancestral images among the Maoris, are the intermittent abodes of the spirits of the dead.
As the earlier stages in the development of the religious consciousness persist and are often manifest in idolatry, so in the higher stages, when men have attained loftier spiritual ideas, idolatry itself survives and is abundantly visible as a reactionary tendency. The history of the Jewish people whom the prophets sought, for long in vain, to wean from worshipping images is an illustration: so too the vulgarities of modern popular Hinduism contrasted with the lofty teaching of the Indian sacred books.
In the New Testament the wordεἰδωλολατρεία(idololatria, afterwards shortened occasionally toεἰδολατρεία,idolatria) occurs in all four times, viz. in 1 Cor. x. 14; Gal. v. 20; 1 Peter iv. 3; Col. iii. 5. In the last of these passages it is used to describe the sin of covetousness or “mammon-worship.” In the other places it indicates with the utmost generality all the rites and practices of those special forms of paganism with which Christianity first came into collision. It can only be understood by reference to the LXX., whereεἴδωλον(like the word “idol” in A.V.) occasionally translates indifferently no fewer than sixteen words by which in the Old Testament the objects of what the later Jews called “strange worship” (עבודה זרה) are denoted (seeEncyclopaedia Biblica). In the widest acceptation of the word, idolatry in any form is absolutely forbidden in the second commandment, which runs “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image; [and] to no visible shape in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth, shalt thou bow down or render service” (seeDecalogue). For some account of the questions connected with the breaches of this law which are recorded in the history of the Israelites see the articleJews; those differences as to the interpretation of the prohibition which have so seriously divided Christendom are discussed under the head ofIconoclasts.
In the ancient church, idolatry was naturally reckoned among thosemagna criminaor great crimes against the first and second commandments which involved the highest ecclesiastical censures. Not only were those who had gone openly to heathen temples and partaken in the sacrifices (sacrificati) or burnt incense (thurificati) held guilty of this crime; the same charge, in various degrees, was incurred by those whose renunciation of idolatry had been private merely, or who otherwise had used unworthy means to evade persecution, by those also who had feigned themselves mad to avoid sacrificing, by all promoters and encouragers of idolatrous rites, and by idol makers, incense sellers and architects or builders of structures connected with idol worship. Idolatry was made a crime against the state by the laws of Constantius (Cod. Theod.xvi. 10. 4, 6), forbidding all sacrifices on pain of death, and still more by the statutes of Theodosius (Cod. Theod.xvi. 10. 12) enacted in 392, in which sacrifice and divination were declared treasonable and punishable with death; the use of lights, incense, garlands and libations was to involve the forfeiture of house and land where they were used; and all who entered heathen temples were to be fined. See Bingham,Antiqq.bk. xvi. c. 4.
See alsoImage-worship; and on the whole question,Religion.
See alsoImage-worship; and on the whole question,Religion.
1According to Varro the Romans had no animal or human image of a god for 170 years after the founding of the city; Herodotus (i. 131) says the Persians had no temples or idols before Artaxerxes I.; Lucian (De sacrif.11) bears similar testimony for Greece and as to idols (Dea Syr.3) for Egypt. Eusebius (Praep. Evang.i. 9) sums up the theory of antiquity in his statement “the oldest peoples had no idols.” Images of the gods indeed presuppose a definiteness of conception and powers of discrimination that could only be the result of history and reflection. The iconic age everywhere succeeded to an era in which the objects of worship were aniconic,e.g.wooden posts, stone steles, cones.
1According to Varro the Romans had no animal or human image of a god for 170 years after the founding of the city; Herodotus (i. 131) says the Persians had no temples or idols before Artaxerxes I.; Lucian (De sacrif.11) bears similar testimony for Greece and as to idols (Dea Syr.3) for Egypt. Eusebius (Praep. Evang.i. 9) sums up the theory of antiquity in his statement “the oldest peoples had no idols.” Images of the gods indeed presuppose a definiteness of conception and powers of discrimination that could only be the result of history and reflection. The iconic age everywhere succeeded to an era in which the objects of worship were aniconic,e.g.wooden posts, stone steles, cones.
IDOMENEUS,in Greek legend, son of Deucalion, grandson of Minos and Pasiphaë, and king of Crete. As a descendant of Zeus and famous for his beauty, he was one of the suitors of Helen; hence, after her abduction by Paris, he took part in the Trojan War, in which he distinguished himself by his bravery. He is mentioned as a special favourite of Agamemnon (Iliad, iv. 257). According to Homer (Odyssey, iii. 191), he returned home safely with all his countrymen who had survived the war, but later legend connects him with an incident similar to that of Jephtha’s daughter. Having been overtaken by a violent storm, to ensure his safety he vowed to sacrifice to Poseidon the first living thing that met him when he landed on his native shore. This proved to be his son, whom he slew in accordance with his vow; whereupon a plague broke out in the island, and Idomeneus was driven out. He fled to the district of Sallentum in Calabria, and subsequently to Colophon in Asia Minor, where he settled near the temple of the Clarian Apollo and was buried on Mount Cercaphus (Virgil,Aeneid, iii. 121, 400, 531, and Servius on those passages). But the Cretans showed his grave at Cnossus, where he was worshipped as a hero with Meriones (Diod. Sic. v. 79).
IDRIA,a mining town in Carniola, Austria, 25 m. W. of Laibach. Pop. (1900) 5772. It is situated in a narrow Alpine valley, on the river Idria, an affluent of the Isonzo, and owes its prosperity to the rich mines of quicksilver which were accidentally discovered in 1497. Since 1580 they have been under the management of the government. The mercurial ore lies in a bed of clay slate, and is found both mingled with schist and in the form of cinnabar. A special excellence of the ore is the greatness of the yield of pure metal compared with the amount of the refuse. As regards the quantity annually extracted, the mines of Idria rank second to those of Almaden in Spain, which are the richest in the world.
IDRIALIN,a mineral wax accompanying the mercury ore in Idria. According to Goldschmidt it can be extracted by means of xylol, amyl alcohol or turpentine; also without decomposition, by distillation in a current of hydrogen, or carbon dioxide. It is a white crystalline body, very difficultly fusible, boiling above 440° C. (824° F.), of the composition C40H28O. Its solution in glacial acetic acid, by oxidation with chromic acid, yielded a red powdery solid and a fatty acid fusing at 62° C., and exhibiting all the characters of a mixture of palmitic and stearic acids.
IDRISI,orEdrisi[Abu Abdallah Mahommed Ibn Mahommed Ibn Abdallah Ibn Idrisi,c.A.D.1099-1154], Arabic geographer. Very little is known of his life. Having left Islamic lands and become the courtier and panegyrist of a Christian prince, though himself a descendant of the Prophet, he was probably regarded by strict Moslems as a scandal, whose name should not, if possible, be mentioned. His great-grandfather, Idrisi II., “Biamrillah,” a member of the great princely house which had reigned for a time as caliphs in north-west Africa, was prince of Malaga, and likewise laid claim to the supreme title (Commander of the Faithful). After his death in 1055, Malaga was seized by Granada (1057), and the Idrisi family then probably migrated to Ceuta, where a freedman of theirs held power. Here the geographer appears to have been born inA.H.493 (A.D.1099). He is said to have studied at Cordova, and this tradition is confirmed by his elaborate and enthusiastic description of that city in his geography. From this work we know that he had visited, at some period of his life beforeA.D.1154, both Lisbon and the mines of Andalusia. He had also once resided near Morocco city, and once was at (Algerian) Constantine. More precisely, he tells us that inA.D.1117 he went to see the cave of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus; he probably travelled extensively in Asia Minor. From doubtful readings in his text some have inferred that he had seen part of the coasts of France and England. We do not know when Roger II. of Sicily (1101-1154) invited him to his court, but it must have been between 1125 and 1150. Idrisi made for the Norman king a celestial sphere and a disk representing the known world of his day—both in silver. These only absorbed one-third of the metal that had been given him for the work, but Roger bestowed on him the remaining two-thirds as a present, adding to this 100,000 pieces of money and the cargo of a richly-laden ship from Barcelona. Roger next enlisted Idrisi’s services in the compilation of a fresh description of the “inhabited earth” from observation, and not merely from books. The king and his geographer chose emissaries whom they sent out into various countries to observe, record and design; as they returned, Idrisi inserted in the new geography the information they brought. Thus was gradually completed (by the month of Shawwal,A.H.548 = mid-January,A.D.1154), the famous work, best known, from its patron and originator, asAl Rojari, but whose fullest title seems to have been,The going out of a Curious Man to explore the Regions of the Globe, its Provinces, Islands, Cities and their Dimensions and Situation. This has been abbreviated toThe Amusement of him who desires to traverse the Earth, orThe Relaxation of a Curious Mind. The title ofNubian Geography, based upon Sionita and Hezronita’s misreading of a passage relating to Nubia and the Nile, is entirely unwarranted and misleading. TheRogerian Treatisecontains a full description of the world as far as it was known to the author. The “inhabited earth” is divided into seven “climates,” beginning at the equinoctial line, and extending northwards to the limit at which the earth was supposed to be rendered uninhabitable by cold. Each climate is then divided by perpendicular lines into eleven equal parts, beginning with the western coast of Africa and ending with the eastern coast of Asia. The whole world is thus formed into seventy-seven equal square compartments. The geographer begins with the first part of the first climate, including the westernmost part of the Sahara and a small (north-westerly) section of the Sudan (of which a vague knowledge had now been acquired by the Moslems of Barbary), and thence proceeds eastward through the different divisions of this climate till he finds its termination in the Sea of China. He then returns to the first part of the second climate, and so proceeds till he reaches the eleventh part of the seventh climate, which terminates in north-east Asia, as he conceives that continent. The inconveniences of the arrangement (ignoring all divisions, physical, political, linguistic or religious, which did not coincide with those of his “climates”) are obvious.
Though Idrisi was in such close relations with one of the most civilized of Christian courts and states, we find few traces of his influence on European thought and knowledge. The chief exception is perhaps in the delineation of Africa in the world-maps of Marino Sanuto (q.v.) and Pietro Vesconte. His account of the voyage of theMaghrurinor “Deceived Men” of Lisbon in the Atlantic (a voyage on which they seem to have visited Madeira and one of the Canaries) may have had some effect in stimulating the later ocean enterprise of Christian mariners; but we have no direct evidence of this. Idrisi’s Ptolemaic leanings give a distinctly retrograde character to certain parts of his work, such as east Africa and south Asia; and, in spite of the record of the Lisbon Wanderers, he fully shares the common Moslem dread of the black, viscous, stormy and wind-swept waters of the western ocean, whose limits no one knew, and over which thick and perpetual darkness brooded. At the same time his breadth of view, his clear recognition of scientific truths (such as the roundness of the world) and his wide knowledge and intelligent application of preceding work (such as that of Ptolemy, Masudi and Al Jayhani) must not be forgotten. He also preserves and embodies a considerable amount of private and special information—especially as to Scandinavia (in whose delineation he far surpasses his predecessors), portions of the African coast, the river Niger (whose name is perhaps first to be found, after Ptolemy’s doubtful Nigeir, in Idrisi), portions of the African coast, Egypt, Syria, Italy, France, the Adriatic shore-lands, Germany and the Atlantic islands. No other Arabic work contains a larger assortment of valuable geographical facts; unfortunately the place-names are often illegible or hopelessly corrupted in the manuscripts. Idrisi’s world-map, with all its shortcomings, is perhaps the best product of that strangely feeble thing—the Mahommedan cartography of the middle ages.
Besides theRojari, Idrisi wrote another work, largely geographical, cited by Abulfida asThe Book of Kingdoms, but apparently entitled by its authorThe Gardens of Humanity and the Amusement of the Soul. This was composed for William the Bad (1154-1166), son and successor of Roger II., but is now lost. He likewise wrote, according to Ibn Said, onMedicaments, and composed verses, which are referred to by the Sicilian Mahommedan poet Ibn Bashrun.
Two manuscripts of Idrisi exist in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and other two in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. One of the English MSS., brought from Egypt by Greaves, is illustrated by a map of the known world, and by thirty-three sectional maps (for each part of the first three climates). The second manuscript, brought by Pococke from Syria, bears the date ofA.H.906, orA.D.1500. It consists of 320 leaves, and is illustrated by one general and seventy-seven particular maps, the latter consequently including all the parts of every climate. The general map was published by Dr Vincent in hisPeriplus of the Erythraean Sea. A copy of Idrisi’s work in the Escorial was destroyed by the fire of 1671.An epitome of Idrisi’s geography, in the original Arabic, was printed, with many errors, in 1592 at the Medicean press in Rome, from a MS. preserved in the Grand Ducal library at Florence (De geographia universali. Hortulus cultissimus ...). Even the description of Mecca is here omitted. Pococke supplied it fromhis MS. In many bibliographical works this impression has been wrongly characterized as one of the rarest of books. In 1619 two Maronite scholars, Gabriel Sionita, and Joannes Hezronita, published at Paris a Latin translation of this epitome (Geographia Nubiensis, id est, accuratissima totius orbis in VII. climata divisi descriptio). Besides its many inaccuracies of detail, this edition, by its unlucky title ofNubian Geography, started a fresh and fundamental error as to Idrisi’s origin; this was founded on a misreading of a passage where Idrisi describes the Nile passing into Egypt through Nubia—not “terram nostram,” as this version gives, but “terram illius” is here the true translation. George Hieronymus Velschius, a German scholar, had prepared a copy of the Arabic original, with a Latin translation, which he purposed to have illustrated with notes; but death interrupted this design, and his manuscript remains in the university library of Jena. Casiri (Bib. Ar. Hisp.ii. 13) mentions that he had determined to re-edit this work, but he appears never to have executed his intention. The part relating to Africa was ably edited by Johann Melchior Hartmann (Commentatio de geographia Africae Edrisiana, Göttingen, 1791, andEdrisii Africa, Göttingen, 1796), Here are collected the notices of each region in other Moslem writers, so as to form, for the time, a fairly complete body of Arabic geography as to Africa. Hartmann afterwards published Idrisi’s Spain (Hispania, Marburg, 3 vols., 1802-1818).An (indifferent) French translation of the whole of Idrisi’s geography (the only complete version which has yet appeared), based on one of the MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, was published by Amédée Jaubert in 1836-1840, and forms volumes v. and vi. of theRecueil de voyagesissued by the Paris Société de Géographie; but a good and complete edition of the original text is still a desideratum. A number of Oriental scholars at Leiden determined in 1861 to undertake the task. Spain and western Europe were assigned to Dozy; eastern Europe and western Asia to Engelmann; central and eastern Asia to Defrémery; and Africa to de Goeje. The first portion of the work appeared in 1866, under the title ofDescription de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne par Edrisi, texte arabe, publié avec une traduction, des notes et un glossaire par R. Dozy et M. J. de Goeje(Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1866); but the other collaborators did not furnish their quota. Other parts of Idrisi’s work have been separately edited;e.g.“Spain” (Descripcion de España de ... Aledris), by J. A. Condé, in Arabic and Spanish (Madrid, 1799); “Sicily” (Descrizione della Sicilia ... di Elidris), by P. D. Magri and F. Tardia (Palermo, 1764); “Italy” (Italia descritta nel “libro del Re Ruggero,” compilato da Edrisi), by M. Amari and C. Schiaparelli, in Arabic and Italian (Rome, 1883); “Syria” (Syria descripta a ... El Edrisio ...), by E. F. C. Rosenmüller, in Arabic and Latin, 1825, and (Idrisii ... Syria), by J. Gildemeister (Bonn, 1885) (the last a Beilage to vol. viii. of theZeitschrift d. deutsch. Palästina-Vereins). See also M. Casiri,Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis(2 vols., Madrid, 1760-1770); V. Lagus, “Idrisii notitiam terrarum Balticarum ex commerciis Scandinavorum et Italorum ... ortam esse” inAtti del IV° Congresso internaz. degli orientalisti in Firenze, p. 395 (Florence, 1880); R. A. Brandel “Om och ur den arabiske geografen Idrisi,”Akad. afhand.(Upsala, 1894).
Two manuscripts of Idrisi exist in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and other two in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. One of the English MSS., brought from Egypt by Greaves, is illustrated by a map of the known world, and by thirty-three sectional maps (for each part of the first three climates). The second manuscript, brought by Pococke from Syria, bears the date ofA.H.906, orA.D.1500. It consists of 320 leaves, and is illustrated by one general and seventy-seven particular maps, the latter consequently including all the parts of every climate. The general map was published by Dr Vincent in hisPeriplus of the Erythraean Sea. A copy of Idrisi’s work in the Escorial was destroyed by the fire of 1671.
An epitome of Idrisi’s geography, in the original Arabic, was printed, with many errors, in 1592 at the Medicean press in Rome, from a MS. preserved in the Grand Ducal library at Florence (De geographia universali. Hortulus cultissimus ...). Even the description of Mecca is here omitted. Pococke supplied it fromhis MS. In many bibliographical works this impression has been wrongly characterized as one of the rarest of books. In 1619 two Maronite scholars, Gabriel Sionita, and Joannes Hezronita, published at Paris a Latin translation of this epitome (Geographia Nubiensis, id est, accuratissima totius orbis in VII. climata divisi descriptio). Besides its many inaccuracies of detail, this edition, by its unlucky title ofNubian Geography, started a fresh and fundamental error as to Idrisi’s origin; this was founded on a misreading of a passage where Idrisi describes the Nile passing into Egypt through Nubia—not “terram nostram,” as this version gives, but “terram illius” is here the true translation. George Hieronymus Velschius, a German scholar, had prepared a copy of the Arabic original, with a Latin translation, which he purposed to have illustrated with notes; but death interrupted this design, and his manuscript remains in the university library of Jena. Casiri (Bib. Ar. Hisp.ii. 13) mentions that he had determined to re-edit this work, but he appears never to have executed his intention. The part relating to Africa was ably edited by Johann Melchior Hartmann (Commentatio de geographia Africae Edrisiana, Göttingen, 1791, andEdrisii Africa, Göttingen, 1796), Here are collected the notices of each region in other Moslem writers, so as to form, for the time, a fairly complete body of Arabic geography as to Africa. Hartmann afterwards published Idrisi’s Spain (Hispania, Marburg, 3 vols., 1802-1818).
An (indifferent) French translation of the whole of Idrisi’s geography (the only complete version which has yet appeared), based on one of the MSS. of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, was published by Amédée Jaubert in 1836-1840, and forms volumes v. and vi. of theRecueil de voyagesissued by the Paris Société de Géographie; but a good and complete edition of the original text is still a desideratum. A number of Oriental scholars at Leiden determined in 1861 to undertake the task. Spain and western Europe were assigned to Dozy; eastern Europe and western Asia to Engelmann; central and eastern Asia to Defrémery; and Africa to de Goeje. The first portion of the work appeared in 1866, under the title ofDescription de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne par Edrisi, texte arabe, publié avec une traduction, des notes et un glossaire par R. Dozy et M. J. de Goeje(Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1866); but the other collaborators did not furnish their quota. Other parts of Idrisi’s work have been separately edited;e.g.“Spain” (Descripcion de España de ... Aledris), by J. A. Condé, in Arabic and Spanish (Madrid, 1799); “Sicily” (Descrizione della Sicilia ... di Elidris), by P. D. Magri and F. Tardia (Palermo, 1764); “Italy” (Italia descritta nel “libro del Re Ruggero,” compilato da Edrisi), by M. Amari and C. Schiaparelli, in Arabic and Italian (Rome, 1883); “Syria” (Syria descripta a ... El Edrisio ...), by E. F. C. Rosenmüller, in Arabic and Latin, 1825, and (Idrisii ... Syria), by J. Gildemeister (Bonn, 1885) (the last a Beilage to vol. viii. of theZeitschrift d. deutsch. Palästina-Vereins). See also M. Casiri,Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis(2 vols., Madrid, 1760-1770); V. Lagus, “Idrisii notitiam terrarum Balticarum ex commerciis Scandinavorum et Italorum ... ortam esse” inAtti del IV° Congresso internaz. degli orientalisti in Firenze, p. 395 (Florence, 1880); R. A. Brandel “Om och ur den arabiske geografen Idrisi,”Akad. afhand.(Upsala, 1894).