In an appendix the author treats of the eyes, hair, and beard among the Italian races, which gives numerous statistics collected by the Italian Anthropological Society. It appears that the men of Tuscany as well as of Piedmont are noted for scantiness of beard. Probably this fact is due to the existence of a special race element, rather than a difference of climate as would seem to be suggested. The presence of red hair in all parts of Italy, although only in small quantities, is also difficult of explanation. Strange to say it is the most common in regions which are poorest in fair hair. From this we must suppose it to have some relation to dark hair, an opinion which agrees with the observation that in England dark hair in young children is sometimes interspersed with red hairs, which either change or disappear with age. The hair is known to darken considerably after puberty is reached, and possibly red hair may be due to the persistence, through special conditions of which we are not aware, of an infantile character.
We must not leave M. Mantegazza's excellent and entertaining work without referring to the plates given in the Appendix, among which are morphological, æsthetic, and intellectual trees of the human race, and figures of ethnic types illustrative of remarks made in the text. It also has a good index.
IN DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE WAY OUT. ByGen. Booth, of the SalvationArmy. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
In this book,—which is considered by many to be the most profound, serious, and comprehensive study of the social problem that has yet appeared, as much so because it seems to strike at the root of the grievance as because it offers a practical remedy,—the author proposes to so ameliorate the conditions of the abandoned classes in England as not only to make the members of them self-supporting and respectable, but after a twenty years' trial of his scheme to so change the industrial condition of the kingdom that there will not be found an able-bodied man or woman in all England unable to find work or food. What politico-economical reformers have had most to contend with is the poverty or lack of opportunity for labor which seems to be inherent in the present social structure,—a condition where, to express it clearly, there seems to be not enough work for all the people. Hence the standing army of tramps to the number of 30,000 in America and more than 20,000 in the city of London alone. The submerged class that the author of this book seeks to elevate or save from sin and utter uselessness has been variously estimated. Mr. Chamberlain says that there is in England a population equal to that of the metropolis—between four and five millions—who are in a state of abject destitution and misery. Mr. Griffin estimates the number to be 1,800,000, while the author of "In Darkest England" thinks 3,000,000 to be a moderate statement. Many causes may be ascribed to this deplorable state of humanity, such as natural incapacity for work, predisposition to idleness, enforced beggary, crime, misfortune, poverty, drunkenness, and waste,—all of which operate to drag these unfortunate ones to the lowest level of life. He thinks that the inability of a large proportion of the people to obtain work drives them either into despair, sin, crime, and suicide, or to merely exist, carrying with them, year by year, the bitter ashes of a life from which the furnace of misfortune has burned away all joy and hope and strength. They are a helpless and pathetic class,—men and women who "are being sucked down into the quicksands of modern life." And when it is known that England is rich enough to drink rum in quantities which appal the chancellor of the exchequer and yet not rich enough to provide any other shelter for her homeless ones and outcasts than the midnight sky, modern civilisation with all its boasted Christianity and humanitarianism presents indeed a deplorable aspect, appearing to be but a mockery and a farce.
The method which this book seeks to popularise and use as the means of elevating to usefulness the outcasts, the indigent, and unemployed classes of England and of the civilised world, is none other than the scheme originally applied in Bavaria by Count Rumford—an American better known as Benjamin Thompson, a graduate of Harvard, who, having entered the Bavarian service at the close of the war for independence, became the governor of Munich. The scheme is threefold. It is proposed to organise the submerged classes, with their consent of course, into a gigantic co-operative society, subdivided into (1) The City Colony, (2) The Farm Colony, (3) The Over-Sea Colony. "The scheme in its entirety," we are informed, "may aptly be compared to a great machine foundationed in the lowest slums and purlieus of our great towns and cities, drawing up into its embrace the depraved and destitute of all classes; receiving thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals, all alike, on the simple conditions of their being willing to work and conform to discipline. Drawing up these poor outcasts, reforming them, and creating in them habits of industry, honesty, and truth; teaching them methods by which alike the bread that perishes and that which endures to everlasting life can be won; forwarding them from the city to the country and there continuing the process of regeneration and then pouring them forth on the virgin soils that await their coming in other lands." The scheme is so comprehensive that it includes slum crusades, wagon hospitals, a brigade of Christian apostles near prison-gates to meet and help discharged prisoners, rescue homes for unfallen girls when on the danger line between sin and starvation, bureaus of intelligence, refuges for street children, industrial schools, asylums for moral lunatics, a matrimonial bureau, and banks for the poor. The project is not to be summarily rejected as utopian. It is a gigantic effort to utilise the human refuse that sieves itself through all the means available for enlightenment to the very bottom of the social structure. Into this vast machine the whole mass of soiled humanity would be taken and by the refining process which is clearly elaborated in the book we could touch this material with a new spirit and thus reclaim the men, women, and children to self-support, honor, honesty, and usefulness. For the success of the project "General" Booth has asked for one million pounds.
Three serious objections may be made to the scheme. The first is the placing into the hands of one man or one organisation the power of disposing, and the custody, of five millions of dollars—an objection which Professor Huxley makes with good reason. The second is, the theological environment which is a seeming part and parcel of the whole machine. And the third is, the superficial and unradical character of the remedy. Concerning the first objection it may be simply said, that history proves that the experiment which the "General" is about to make is a dangerous one. Professor Huxley maintains with more than usual gravity, that the unquestionable obedience which every soldier in the Salvation Army is expected, and by verbal contract is duly bound, to maintain for all orders from headquarters, gives the most suspicious aspect to the probable tyrannical development of his army in the future, as was illustrated for example in the Franciscan order founded in the thirteenth century by St. Francis. After his death, although the order was pledged by him to mendicancy and absolute separation from all worldly entanglements, it became "one of the most powerful, wealthy, and worldly corporations in all Christendom, with their fingers in every sink of political and social corruption." What guarantee is there that the Salvation Army may not become likewise involved and exercise an imperialism and fanaticism not to be exceeded even by the Jesuits or Mormons? "It is" writes Professor Huxley in theLondon Times, "a greater evil to have the intellect of a nation put down by organised fanaticism, to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail, to watch the degradation of men who should feel themselves individually responsible for their own and their country's fate, to mere brute instruments ready to the hand of a master for any use to which he may put them."
Another objection and one equally as fatal is the religious aspect which is given to the movement. As such it bears a relation to the problem of civilisation which is all important. To insist that every wicked man or woman in order to be righteous and happy must, ought, or will, believe in historical Christianity, is absurd enough, and to project or infuse into the whole character of a social reform movement a theological idea as a necessary element in its efficacy is certainly ridiculous, but to make the work of the elevation of the degenerate masses of mankind a mere accessory to a belief in an irrational and already obsolete religious doctrine or contingent upon it,—at least to emphasize it as a means to the adoption of the unfortunates into one organisation where all believe alike, or where by virtue of the gratitude they bear to those who have materially helped them, they conform or try to conform to their mode of thinking,—is indeed one of the sad mistakes upon which the "General's" social project is built. For in the submerged class, there are doubtless many who are not Christians in belief, who indeed, however fortunate they may become, yet could not subscribe to the creed of the Evangelical Church or honestly engage in a work organised in the interest of so-called historical Christianity. It is not necessary in order to make man good to make him a Christian, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, in belief. The point to emphasise is goodness of character and not merely an intellectual profession of faith. Once get a man to be good, or to hate sin and love righteousness, and he will, if he never makes a Christian profession, be as useful a man as society might wish. Righteousness will take any man or woman safely and happily through the world. The truth is just as the poet stated it:
"A man may cry 'Church! Church!' at every word,And have no more grace than other people;The daw's not reckoned a religious birdBecause he keeps a-cawing in the steeple."
It is not, therefore, necessary, to the success of "General" Booth's scheme that it should be hitched to some popular, although unscientific and unreasonable religious conception of life; or that he should consider a reform in the life of any man a miracle, and therefore attribute all such to the direct interposition of God. The scheme, if a success at all, will depend, as the organisation of the Salvation Army has depended, upon the enthusiasm and enterprise of the "General" and his constituency. And all reliance upon God without any intelligent human effort in behalf of the outcasts of society would only gorge a greater multitude of humanity into the bogs and sinks of iniquity. As well might we expect a locomotive to move by tacking scripture all over it, as to expect any great social reform movement to be a success by associating it or making it depend upon some sort of religious creed. Still whatever may be said against religious interference with social problems, the work of "General" Booth puts to shame the church whose trifling doctrinal and polemical controversies have so blinded its judgment as to neglect its duties toward the submerged classes and leave them to so enormously increase that in order to save the world from almost hopeless ruin a new organisation such as the Salvation Army had to come forth. The church has a far more important duty to perform than that of merely existing, and it will never emblason the record which its founder gave it by his self-sacrificing life and his noble death upon the cross until it takes its wealth of brain, heart, and money, and becomes indeed the modern Saviour of the world.
The third objection and doubtless the most important one of all is the superficial and unradical character of the remedy. It is not here implied that the project is useless although inclusive. The point made is this, that whatever the "General" may do to dredge the bogs of sin and clean the streets of beggars, the idlers, the unemployed, the waifs, the prostitutes, the drunkards, and the criminal class, and put all such in the way of usefulness, manliness, and respectability, what does he do or what is to be done to keep the new or fresh material from sinking into mire? While the "General" is working among the lowest, thousands are being prepared among the highest for the inevitable fate from which he is plucking the helpless ones as brands from the burning. While he is gathering up the submerged and placing them in his machine, the mill without still grinds on and on, crushing as large a number year by year as he may help and save. His method might consistently be compared to one where a man would transform rotten apples into good ones without affecting the tree that produces them. Although the criminal and sinful classes influence the innocent and unsophisticated, yet it cannot be proven that the bulk of the people will remain pure, true, honest, upright, if there were no sinful or criminal class! And hence even if all such who are avowedly sinful were made better and their pernicious influence removed from the world by the method here proposed, sin itself would still inhere in the nature of man's life and would drag thousands down to ruin and misery. Like the mosaic paintings which can only be destroyed by destroying the stones upon which they are impressed, so sin seems to be bound up in human nature. To get at it and destroy it utterly by onecoupone must annihilate the constitution of the universe. The problem of civilisation is such that it cannot be solved by one specific reform. For to develop man it seems to be necessary that he should pass through the treatment which the long and inevitable process of experience and education can give. Although sin like poverty is but relative, yet it is the name for the conduct into which man is led either by a neglect or abuse of opportunity, or by some inevitable fatality. It is not here contended that man cannot rid himself or society of any disposition to sin. What is maintained is that it cannot be abolished from the world by any spasmodic effort such as that which characterises the present project, but that it will pass away only where and when humanity becomes perfectly educated. And this state of civilisation, by the way, does not seem to be so surprisingly near at hand. Nor can material help, such as food, shelter, clothing, and what not, altogether effect or even change the moral status of a man's life. Thousands whose material wants are amply provided for revel in sin and corruption, and the dreadful orgy where vice holds carnival reels and swaggers in the palaces where amid gilded refinements and dazzling splendor the so-called better classes disport themselves. It is true that when a man is starving or naked, bread and clothing are the things which will satisfy his most immediate wants, and not prayers or sermons. To supply such wants is easy enough, but to so arouse or kindle into a flame of fortitude and manliness, the diseased conscience and the perverted judgment, to so operate upon the will as to make the man able to not only choose but do the right, is the great and radical difficulty which is not so easily overcome. Psychology and medicine seem to have no remedy to offer, while religion for these many years has simply touched the hem of the garment—while the abandoned classes have seemingly multiplied on our hands.
In concluding these remarks we cannot forbear to express our regret that the real author of the book has given it over to "General" Booth and allowed him not only the credit of authorship, but most likely also the privilege of mixing up a scheme of social reform with the politics of the Salvation Army. The book was "boomed" in this way, but we fear that it will at the same time be doomed in this way. The Salvation Army and its founder have reaped much undeserved praise. "General" Booth has received incredible sums from enthusiasts to support the scheme, and these sums have to a great extent been used to advertise it. It appears to us that "General" Booth has contracted a debt which he will be unable to pay. The better situated classes of society do not lack in sympathy for their wretched fellow-men, and it sets us thinking, how strong human sentimentality must be that the propagation of the mere idea of curing the evils of mankind proposed in this book as feasible with the aid of one million pounds furnishes ample means to a religious enthusiast whose method of salvation is rather noisy than thorough, representing a kind of barbarous relapse and only adapted to the lowest and most uneducated classes. We should know that sentimentality cannot save. Sentiment and sympathy are good things, but unless they are backed by a cold consideration of fact and rational foresight, they are worse than useless.
It will be wise to consider the propositions made in "In Darkest England" without taking into consideration the rôle to be played in the scheme by the Salvation Army. But while the reader may be just enough to consider the plan of social reform on its own merits, "General" Booth is in possession of the funds and will be the general manager of the experiment.
Γκ.
PLANKTON-STUDIEN. Vergleichende Untersuchungen ueber die Bedeutung und Zusammensetzung der pelagischen Fauna und Flora. ByErnst Haeckel. Jena: Gustav Fischer.
The first systematic studies of the innumerable organisms which almost everywhere drift about in the ocean, were made by Professor Johannes Müller who some forty years ago made excursions in the North Sea. Haeckel, then a student twenty years old, accompanied him on one of these excursions to Heligoland. Since then these investigations have been conducted on a larger scale. The English vessel "Challenger" cruised in different oceans for no less than forty months, and the results of this great undertaking were published by John Murray in the "Voyage of H. M. S. Challenger"—a voluminous work consisting of eighty-two zo-ological reports, to which Professor Haeckel also has contributed his "Report on the Deep-Sea Keratosa." The German government sent out the German cruiser "National" on the same errand. The scientists of the expedition were Hensen, Brandt, Dahl, Schütt, Fischer, Krümmel. They were at sea altogether ninety-three days making a circuitous trip on the Atlantic ocean, touching at the Bermudas, Brazil, and the Azores. The results of the expedition, published in reports by Hensen, Brandt, Du Bois-Reymond, and Krümmel, were considered as very satisfactory and received the unreserved applause of the German press. Professor Haeckel is of a different opinion. He considers the reports as standing in flat contradiction to former valuable observations, especially to those of the English "Challenger" and the Italian "Vettor Pisani" expeditions. Hensen's results rest upon a weak supposition and contain wrong generalisations; even his method is, according to Haeckel, entirely useless, giving a wrong presentation of the problems of pelagic biology.
The word "plancton" was introduced by Hensen. Haeckel adopts it because he considers the Greek term preferable to Johannes Müller'sAuftriebor pelagicMulder(the latter has been adopted also by English, French, and Italian planctologists). By plancton (πλαγκτόν), derived from πλάζω, to roam about, is understood the drifting micro-organisms of the sea.
Professor Haeckel in the present volume not only corrects Professor Hensen's errors, but also gives a report of his own observations. Not the least valuable part of the brochure is the exact terminology which Professor Haeckel proposes in order to escape the confusion necessarily resulting from a looseness of terms.
DIE ALLGEMEINE WELTANSCHAUUNG IN IHRER HISTORISCHEN ENTWICKELUNG.Charakterbilder aus der Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften. ByCarus Sterne. Mit zahlreichen Porträts und Textabbildungen.Stuttgart: Otto Weisert.
Dr. Ernst Krause, better known by thenom de plumeof "Carus Sterne," has here undertaken to present the modern world-conception as contrasted with the olden one. We have scarcely ever met with a book that contains in so popular a form all the noteworthy facts of the great progress that has been achieved in science since the time of Copernicus. The results of the evolution-theory are generally known, but the road and the stations of the road on which science has reached its present position, now almost universally recognised among men, are almost forgotten. No one perhaps is better able to tell us of this great struggle for truth than the enthusiastic disciple of Darwin, Carus Sterne. Carus Sterne and his friend Prof. Ernst Haeckel, have done no small work in obtaining recognition for the theory of evolution in Germany. While Haeckel's work has been confined to the field of exact science, Carus Sterne has complemented the labors of his co-worker by pointing out the moral truths contained in Darwinism. We are aware of the fact that Carus Sterne has also written purely scientific works, "Werden und Vergehen," for instance; but what we wish to emphasise as his especial merit is that he was, so far as we know, the first to call attention to the moral workings of nature in her great cosmic empire. As an article characteristic of this trait in Carus Sterne's writings we refer the reader not familiar with German literature to his article "The Education of Parents by their Children," a translation of which appeared in Nos. 22 and 23 ofThe Open Court.
The present book (over 400 pages) discusses the following subjects: Pagan and Christian Cosmology; Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler; The Controversy Concerning the Geo-centric View; The Infinitude of Habitable Worlds; From Bacon to Newton; The Beginnings of an Animal- and Plant-Geography; The Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation; The Discussion Concerning the Origin of Birds; The Terrestrial Globe and Its Fossils; Diluvianism; The Mongrel Theory; The Doctrines of Preformation and Metamorphosis; The Doctrine of Catastrophes; Persistence or Mutability; The Controversy on the Anthropocentric View; The Origin of Language; On the History of Evolution.
UEBER DIE AUFGABEN EINER ALLGEMEINEN RECHTSWISSENSCHAFT. By Dr.Alb.Herm. Post. Oldenburg and Leipsic: A. Schwartz.
The author of this little book, Dr. Albert Hermann Post, a Judge of the courts of the free city of Bremen, Germany, has made the study of ethnological jurisprudence the scientific work of his life. His idea and purpose are to establish a positive science of jurisprudence in the widest and most comprehensive sense of the word, on the basis of an investigation of all the forms of law, available to research, that have ever appeared. A universal science of jurisprudence, according to this conception, would have for its subject-matter the contents of the jural sense or consciousness of the entire human race,—the jural facts of the totality of human society. In other words, this science must be, not only historical, butethnological. It must include the jural life not only of the civilised, but also of the uncivilised races of mankind: it must comprehendall. It thus constitutes a step beyond that great movement of the beginning of this century which gave us the science of the history of law. It extends the latter, supplements it, and aims to find in the juro-social existence of undeveloped and uncivilised races the germs of legal practices and institutions that the literary history and traditions of civilised peoples would never supply.
The matter of the present work of Dr. Post takes up some 215 pages. It treats of the available sources of such a universal science of law, of the elaboration of these sources; it gives a concise and illustrative epitome of the most important parallel phenomena met with in the jural life of the human race,—e. g. in the departments of the Law of Inheritance, of Property, of Marriage, etc., etc.,—and a survey of the separate ethnic divisions of law over the whole earth.
It is a grand task—the realisation of this conception. And its execution in its enormous magnitude is only possible through the speedy and intelligent co-operation of scientists and travellers as well as jurists. It will make of jurisprudence anatural science, as distinguished from thea prioricharacter this study has up till now assumed; and its prosecution will impart into the science a light and freshness which it sadly needs. Next to theology, the science of law is least pervaded with the spirit of modern research. And this is eminently so in our country, where hardly the history, let alone the ethnology of law, is studied.
We are tempted to give a much more thorough and detailed exposition of Dr. Post's ideas. But an original article will appear from his pen in a future number ofThe Monist, and therefore we are brief.
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MIND. January, 1891. No. LXI.
ON PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPRESSION IN PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof.A. Bain.
APPERCEPTION AND THE MOVEMENT OF ATTENTION. ByG. F. Stout.
HELMHOLTZ'S THEORY OF SPACE-PERCEPTION. ByJ. H. Hyslop.
THE PRINCIPLE OF INDUCTION. ByL. T. Hobhouse.
THE UNDYING GERM-PLASM AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL. ByR. vonLendenfeld.
CRITICAL NOTICES: Pikler's "The Psychology of the Belief inObjective Existence"; Ferrier's "The Croonian Lectures onCerebral Localisation"; Jevons's "Pure Logic and otherMinor Works"; Marshall's "Principles of Economics, I";Mackenzie's "An Introduction to Social Philosophy"; Fouillée's"L'Evolutionnisme des Idées-Forces"; Koenig's "Die Entwicklungdes Causalproblems."
On Physiological Expression in Psychology.In opposition to the "subjective purism" in psychology advocated by Mr. Stout and Mr. Bradley. The mixture of the psychical with the physical is such as to prove that mental processes, however distinct from bodily processes, have never owned even a vocabulary of their own. Pleasure and pain are psychical states, but we cannot theorise fully upon them without adverting to their physical causes or conditions. The action of drugs proves that the physical constitution of the nerve-substance is a paramount condition of our sensibility, pleasurable or painful. By taking the organs of special sense in separation we can exhaust the modes of sensibility under each, and when we look minutely into the anatomy of the several organs, we obtain further helps to the subdivision and distinction of the individual sensations. Connected with the physics of the brain, apart from the nervous substance and its conditions, is the important state known as excitement, with its opposites quiescence, languor, repose, drowsiness, sleep, and insensibility. The theory of the Will must rely, in the first instance, upon subjective sequences, but the physical consequences of pleasure and pain are a two-fold activity—Expression and Volition, and for verification of any hypothesis as to priority between these two forms of the physical outcome of feeling, the sequence must be taken on the physical side alone. As regards the emotions, taken in themselves, the tracing of physical concomitance is unavoidable. In Psycho-physics the experiments are made upon the physical side, though not to the exclusion of subjective reference. A law relating to the seat of ideas obtained in the first instance through the senses, declares the nervous tracts to be the same in both, thus connecting Sense with Intellect. It has always been impossible to avoid describing ideas as modified repetitions of sensation, and employing for that purpose the materialism of the sense-organs. While eminently applicable to all the phenomena of mind at their elementary stage—Sensation, Intellect, Emotion, Will—physiological conditions cease to have the like bearing in the higher complications. In all that part of Association that states the order of recurrence of our ideas in Memory, subjective investigation is paramount and exclusive. But the state described as conscious intensity, excitement, mental concentration, attention, interest, is expressible both subjectively and physiologically. The constant application of spiritual remedies to bodily ailments is an important aspect of the union of mind and body, and their interaction in those instances is of great significance.
Apperception and the Movement of Attention.Thinking is action directed towards intellectual ends. Intellectual ends are attained by an appropriate combination of movements of attention. Attention and apperception, as this word is applied by Steinthal, reciprocally determine each other. The nature of attention is explained in accordance with the monoideism of M. Ribot, but contrary to his view it is declared to be a constant character of our mental life, although the monoideism is not always complete. Apperception is the process by which a mental system incorporates or tends to incorporate a new element. The effect of attention is largely dependent on the apperception which accompanies it, and of which it is an auxiliary process. The movement of attention fastening upon the presentation to be apperceived, fixes it in the focus of consciousness, until the appercipient system has finally succeeded or failed in assimilating it. The reason why one ideal group becomes appercipient in preference to the others lies mainly in its greater affinity with the presentation to be apperceived. The conditions determining the strength of apperceptive systems may be either extrinsic or intrinsic. The extrinsic consist in passing circumstances which from time to time favor its activity. The intrinsic conditions are inherent in the constitution of the system itself. Among the former are the co-operation of another system; the recovery or the intensity of its own previous action; the influence of organic sensation; its own freshness arising from previous repose. Of these the organic sensation is of fundamental importance. The influence of the cœnæsthesis pervades the whole mental life. Every specific kind of emotion is accompanied by a characteristic mode of organic reaction. The intrinsic conditions are the comprehensiveness of the system; its internal organisation, of which the philosophy of Hegel is cited as an example; the strength of the cohesion between its parts; the nature of the sensory material which enters predominantly into its composition, that is, the comparative excitability of ideas derived from different senses. The normal working of competition, co-operation, and conflict, may be illustrated by contrasting it with the pathological state calledsuggestibility, in which those processes are more or less completely in abeyance. The conditions which determine the train of ideas arise from the fact that attention, being a motor process, depends on feeling, which dependence cannot be separated from that on apperception. Feeling gives unity to mental process, and is a simple mode of consciousness resulting from the excitement of a multiplicity of elements, and it causes attention to be concentrated on the central presentation from which the wave of excitement is radiated. The essential characteristic of a train ofthought, as distinguished from a mere train of ideas, is that the relation linking each idea to its predecessor forms also a source of the interest through which it attracts attention. The ground of the distinction is that thinking involves the activity of a proportional system as such, that is "a system adapted to apperceive objects in other respects most diverse from each other, merely because they agree in being capable of entering into certain relations." The modified working of the principle of association through the apperceptive activity of a proportional system, isproportionaloranalogical production, which may possibly operate in every instance of the suggestion of one idea by another. A reversion of attention to a previous link in a chain of ideas, giving rise to a modified repetition of it, is a distinctive feature ofthinking. In a separate article will be dealt with the special part played by language, which from a psychological point of view is "a peculiar movement of attention having a peculiar influence on apperceptive process."
Helmholtz's Theory of Space-Perception.The doctrine of "unconscious inference" is explicitly founded upon the general theory of knowledge formed by Helmholtz, which is identical with that of Kant, and Helmholtz's investigation into the genesis of space-perception applied to the problem which Kant did not consider, namely, the perception of particular or concrete spaces. The distinction made by the former between the inference from the data of sense and that in which the data are consciously known to be signs, by calling the inductive inferences of the sciencesconscious, and those involved in external perception of worldunconscious, is open to the charge of involving a contradiction. On the one hand, the theory of "unconscious inference" supports the empirical doctrine of perception only in consequence of calling the process an inference. On the other hand, to call the process "unconscious" is to restore the conception of immediacy which the idea of inference is supposed to exclude. This contradiction may not be insisted on, but, as the phenomena of binocular adjustment discussed in a previous article showed in the visual consciousness aqualewhich, with or without its relation to tactual and muscular extension, was other than plane dimension, Helmholtz must, unless thisqualecan be proved to be result of inference, limit the application of his theory to the synthetic connection between touch and sight.Parallax of motion, which consists of the different afferent movements or velocities of bodies in horizontal meridians, and situated at different distances from the observer, seems to do the same for monocular vision that adjustment and fusion do for binocular vision. The phenomena attending certain experiments in which the parallax of motion was observed "correspond exactly to the conception of those who hold that the representative of plane dimension in the retinal image decides the nature of all perceptions whose character is not presented in the image except as a visual sign, and hence that aught beyond magnitude must be the result of influence." An examination of Helmholtz's fundamental principle, "the denial of all pre-established harmony between the nature of impressions and the nature of the external world," confirms the view that the conception of space may be properly a visual one, requiring the superior constancy of touch to correct illusions growing out of the complexities of vision. If we limit visual phenomena as data to mere variations of kind and distinctness in color, we cannot account for such cases as the appearance and inversion of mathematical perspective, binocular localisation and translocation, and the distinct effect of the monocular parallax of motion, qualities which are dimensional in their nature. "While the complexities of space-perception make the co-operation of inferential agencies very probable, yet the spacial quality must be originally given somewhere in consciousness either as an object of perception or as a mental construction, in order to furnish a basis for inferences to its existence or its relations where they are not immediately cognised. This makes the developed conceptions of abstract and synthetic space a complex of inferences and intuitions."
The Principle of Induction.The ultimate major premiss of Induction according to Mill is the Law of Causation which, as he treats it, is a wide generalisation true of sequences just as other generalisations are true of the facts of space. Hence it is itself an induction like other inductions. What is wanted is "an axiom expressing in general terms what we do when we make a particular statement universal, which makes explicit the truth implied by the making of any generalisation whatever." The Law of Causation will be found to be a particular application of this wider axiom, and the axiom itself must be sought from the analysis of ordinary simple generalisations. When we connect truths together, or reason, wesupportan inferred judgment by some other assertion. That we should be able to reason at all involves that any fact, asB, should have some other fact, asC, to which it is always related; that is, "any fact precisely resembling thisB, whatever its other attributes and concomitants may be, will be found in a precisely similar relation to a precisely similarC." A relation exists between two facts whenever the mind can at once distinguish the facts as two, and at the same time attend to them together and assert something of them considered together. We may speak of a relation between different aspects of the same existing thing. The three alternatives afforded by the axiom as ultimately stated correspond to the three cases in whichAis the "sum of the conditions ofB," or in any way a universal correlate ofB; in which it is the cause ofBin the popular sense of the term; and in which its connection withBis merely 'causal,' that is, "the Law of Causation is the Axiom of Reasoning as applied to the sequences of phenomena." Every fact observed stands in universal relation to some other fact. The judgment of that relation "is implied in the rudimentary inference which states only the particular fact observed and the particular fact now expected. It is explicit in the reason that is conscious of its own grounds and methods, and takes there the form of the universal judgment, or major premiss."
The Undying Germ-Plasm and the Immortal Soul.All unicellular beings such as the Protozoa and the simpler Algæ, Fungi, etc., reproduce themselves by means of simple fission, and consequently they are immortal. All the single individuals of a family of unicellular beings belong to each other, although they be isolated. Amongst certain infusoria they do, in fact, remain together and build up branching colonies. Later on, division of labor made its appearance and increased the dependence of the individuals upon one another, so that their individuality was to a great extent lost. By the development of this process, multicellular Metazoa arose from colonies of similar Protozoa, and at length culminated in the higher animals and man. All the cell-series are immortal, but they all must die because the structure which is built up by them collectively is mortal. The reproductive cells are the only kind adapted for existence outside the body, and from time to time some of the human reproductive cells succeed in conjugating, and from them a new individual arises. The whole structure of man is acquired with the one object in view of maintaining the series of reproductive cells, of which he is, so to speak, the slave. They are the most important and essential and also the undying parts of the organism. The series of reproductive cells thus possess the essential attributes of the human soul. If we compare the conception of the soul as held by various related religions, and take the characteristics invariably ascribed to the soul, we find that they hold also for the series of reproductive cells continually developing within the body. The ordinary conception of the fate of the soul after death agrees fundamentally with the result of observation on the prosperity of the series of germ-cells. That fate depends on conduct in the body, and the only possible definition of a good deed, that is approved by conscience, is one which will benefit the series of germ-cells arising from one individual, that is ourselves and our family, and further which will be of use to others with their own series of germ-cells, and that in proportion to the degree of connection or relationship. Thus, "the apparently enigmatical conception of the eternal soul is founded on the actual immortality and continuity of the germ-plasma." (London: Williams & Norgate.)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. January, 1891. Vol. I. No. 2.
THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES. ByD. G. Ritchie.
A NEW STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. ByProf. Josiah Royce.
THE INNER LIFE IN RELATION TO MORALITY. ByJ. H. Muirhead.
MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE. ByProf. John Dewey.
MORALS IN HISTORY. ByProf. Fr. Jodl.
THE ETHICS OF DOUBT—CARDINAL NEWMAN. ByW. L. Sheldon.
THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM. Steinthal—The Social Utopia;Paulsen—Socialism and Social Reform. ByProf. Franklin H.Giddings.
ETHICAL AND KINDRED SOCIETIES IN GREAT BRITAIN. ByMrs. M.McCallum.
A New Study of Psychology.There are three fairly distinct types of treatment in text-books of psychology. The first type, is the science of the "mind" considered as an entity, of whose nature we might otherwise know much or little, but of which we at all events knew that it had a certain substantial unity. This was supplemented, or succeeded, by the theory of the 'ideas,' and their 'associations.' A third method confines its investigations to the facts and laws of the nervous system, with only such use of introspection as was found absolutely indispensable. Professor James, in his "Principles of Psychology," does not accept primarily any one of these views. The unit he adopts in mental analysis might be defined as "so much of the mental process as may be supposed to run parallel to a relatively simple nervous function in the cortex of the living brain, in so far as this cortex functions with a certain unity." Professor James rejects the unconscious in every form, and above all the unconscious mind-atom. He says, "the special natural science of psychology must stop with the mere functional formula. If the passing be the directly verifiable existent, which no school has hitherto doubted it to be, then that thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need not look beyond." This life of passing thoughts needs only the fundamental hypothesis that the moments as they pass really know one another, that the present is actually acquainted with the past, in order to give as a resultant of the whole life such unity as we need for purposes of psychological science. In relation to volition and freedom, Professor James holds that the idea of the end tends more and more to make itself all-sufficient, and that "motives," so-called, are "ideas of ends" which owing to their conflict, are unable to pass over into acts so long as they remain mere motives. The experience of deciding a conflict of motives is "the experience of the triumph of one idea of the end over other ideas." The act of voluntary decision is experienced as an act of "conscious attention to an idea," and nothing else. Volition is primarily a relation, "not between ourself and extra-mental matter, but between ourself and our own states of mind." Professor James's own belief is that the question of freewill is insolvable on strictly psychological grounds, although on ethical grounds he ascribes to the alternative of freedom. In relation to the question of pleasure and pain as motives, he points out that the 'idea-motor' acts, even on a very high plane, express the presence of the 'idea of an end,' and this end may itself be very painful, yet it tends to carry itself out. It wins because we attend to it, and whether or no attention is free, certain it is that attention often rather determines pleasure and pain themselves, than is determined by them. In conclusion Professor Royce says in relation to Professor James's book: "His 'passing moments,' which can 'know' and which can freely 'attend,' which are 'self-related,' and which have 'unity,' and which are still so intimately bound to the 'neural process,' have just the paradoxical and hypothetical character which requires one, in one's philosophy, to go beyond them, and to declare them but illusory expressions in phenomenal form of an infinitely deeper truth."
The Inner Life in Relation to Morality.The emotions that are called up by the thought of the world as an organic whole constitute the inner life, that which Clifford calls 'cosmic emotion.' These emotions, although they do not end in the human soul, impart a spirit and diffuse an air over the rest of life: they have no separate external expression of their own. The pivot of man's inner life is the thought of himself as a part or member of a universal order. The object of the paper is to answer the questions: what this thought is, or ought to be; what are some of the forms which the feeling it rouses takes; what are some of its special relations to social morality; and what practical means may be suggested under modern conditions for the cultivation of it. The view of the world most characteristic of the time in which we live, has laid the foundation for an entirely new attitude of mind towards the cosmos at large. The world is now known to be an organic whole. This organism is the invisible background which is presupposed in the partial glimpses of it which we call common perception and the special sciences. If we lookinwardswe have thehuman conscienceas the symbol of a microcosm of moral relations between the different parts of our nature on the one hand and the different members of human society on the other. The cosmic principle clothing itself in the twofold garb of which we know it, is the ultimate object of the emotion described as the inner life. This brings with it that which lies at the root of all religion—the sense of dependence, by which is meant, the feeling that we are born into and supported by a world which our individual wills did not make. This at first produces a vague sense of fear in the presence of forces other and mightier than ourselves. But generally it has passed in us into a higher form, a sense of fearless faith in truth and right, which are the laws of nature. The faculty of relating ourselves to the world in its widest, which is also its deepest, aspects, with its appropriate feeling invests our everyday duties with a new meaning, and gives them a wider range by connecting them with the general life of the world. Morality is thus raised to a higher power; it passes from "mere morality" into "morality touched with emotion," and thus becomes a species of religion. Among other means of cultivating the inner life are the attending theservicesof the churches, although faith has been lost in their dogmas; the reading of the books, whether belonging to Christian literature or not, which are in the best sense religious; the study of philosophy. We are on the right lines if we cling to the great watchwords of our own time,—Evolution, Progress, Organic Order.
Moral Theory and Practice.Moral theory is the analytic perception of the conditions and relations in hand in a given act,—it is the action in idea. It is the construction of the act in thought against its outward construction. It is, therefore, the doing,—the act itself, in its emerging. So far are we from any divorce of moral theory and practice, that theory is the ideal act, and conduct is the executed insight. Moral conduct is absolutely individualised, and it is precisely that which realises an idea, a conception. The breadth of action is measured by the insight of the agent. Just so far as the question, What are the conditions which require action and what the action they demand, is raised and answered, is action moral and not merely instinctive or sentimental. This is a work of analysis, which requires the possession of certain working tools. What we call moral rules are precisely such tools of analysis. The Golden Rule is a marvellous tool of analysis but it gives no knowledge, of itself, of what we should do. As a tool of analysis the moral rule is an idea. A philosophic theory of ethics is a similar idea to the Golden Rule, but one of deeper grasp, and therefore wider hold. It bears much the same relation to the particular rule as this to the special case. It is a tool for the analysis of its meaning, and thereby a tool for giving it greater effect. At the back of the Golden Rule are other larger ideas which have realised themselves, and been so buried in the common consciousness of men, that they have become integrated with the content of the Golden Rule which itself has become a vast idea, or working tool, of practice. Every philosophic theory of ethics performs in its degree this same service. A man's duty is, not to obey rules, but to respond to the nature of the actual demands which he finds made upon him. The rule is merely an aid toward discriminating what the nature of these relations and demands is. A man has not to do Justice, and Love, and Truth; he has to do justly and truly and lovingly. The relative distinction between the "is" and the "ought," is that the "ought" is the "is" ofaction. The difference between a practical and a theoretical consciousness is that the former is consciousness ofsomething to be done. And this consciousness of something to be done is the consciousness of duty. Theory is the cross-section made by intelligence of the given state of action in order to know the conduct that should be; practice is the realisation of the idea thus gained: it is theory in action.
Morals in History.A glance at the history of morals reveals independence and changeableness always and everywhere side by side. So far as we are acquainted with man in social community, the will of the community speaks to the individual concerning his practical conduct with authority; and as an inner appropriation of that will, "the authority of conscience, of practical reason, which naturally exists only in the individual, but through friction with the community becomes filled with a universally valid content." The origin of the common will is lost in the mysterious darkness of primitive times, or of divine revelation. It is science which first extends the individual's circle of experience. Morality is a product of evolution, and is in a state of continual transformation. The sum of the ethical principles or ideals which at any time are current in any nation, presents nothing else than the conception of all that is reciprocally required in a practical direction of its members, for the advantage and profit of the community and the individual persons in it. The requirements of social adaptation are raised into the consciousness of the community. Thus full harmony between the practical needs of a time and its ethics can only be a transitory one. The conditions which evoke the individual will to carry out its own ideals over against the current ones, are none other than those upon which the formation of new organs in general is dependent. The new principles must be of assistance to felt needs; they must be founded in the vital relations of the social body. In answer to the question whether there is progress in morality, it must be said that the circle is becoming continually greater of those over whom the strict import of the conception of humanity is extended. And this is accompanied by an increasing tenderness towards individuals within the limits unchangeably set by the needs of the community. The means by which we strive to actualise our ideals are becoming more rational, and "the consciousness is continually becoming clearer, with which all moral principles and judgments are referred to what they signify for the welfare of the race and for its capacity to develop." But do men become better? Probably, on the whole, the inner relations of morality remain unchanged, although quite important shifting may take place at special times and in special stages. It may be that "considered from the highest historical point of view, subjective morality—that is, the conformity of individuals to the standard—relatively declines as the higher elaboration of the moral ideals advances." But this need by no means be the last word of historical development. Intelligence carries illumination into unknown paths which no one as yet has traversed, making the surrounding darkness blacker. But the will finds the means of achieving what is clearly conceived. We have no occasion to be distrustful of the energies of our race. We must not overlook the increasing influence which our scientific knowledge must exercise, not only upon the industrial but also upon the social instinct. The conviction is making rapid strides that even the widest lordship of man over nature must ultimately be a curse to the ruler himself, unless he succeeds in establishing the more beautiful and important supremacy over man; that is, over the natural forces in his own breast—the brutality of passion, the hardness of egoism, and the crudity of moral ignorance. But this can be the work only of scientific knowledge and of its increasing application to social ethical problems.
The Ethics of Doubt—Cardinal Newman.There was an ethical trend in the character and spirit of Cardinal Newman, which lifted him above any one sect or creed and made him a power to all classes of serious minds. The especial influence now excited upon us by his thought, comes from his very antagonism to what is the conspicuous feature in the intellectual life of our century,—the prevalence of doubt, and the growth of rationalism. Goethe sounded the note of warning as to the chief menace that would come to our age through rationalism; that there are few who have a great mind and at the same time are disposed to action; intellect broadens the thought, but tends to weaken the will. Newman has brought it home to us that there is a certain kind of rationalism which is dangerous to character, and we may be forced to consider whether we shall not soon be required in the sphere of ethics to discourage somewhat the universal tendency of doubt and distrust with reference to elemental convictions. There is no question that for many minds the first doubt as to whether a certain class of acts is wrong was the first step in moral decline. A principle of external authority in ethics is required, although not such an authority as that of the state or an absolute church. What we are in need of is that strength of conviction which would make us willing to die for a belief with reference to thehumanworld. If we were more and more given to recognising the value of this other external authority,—that is, the consensus of all the past voices of history when they speak to us on the moral life,—we might find, more and more, that enthusiasm coming back and firing once more the hearts of the great men of the age, just as the other kind of authority gave hope, fire, and enthusiasm to the purpose of Newman. Notwithstanding the contrast between Newman, the apostle of faith, and Emerson who has been called the apostle of scepticism or of individualism, they had the same intensity of feeling and appalling sincerity, and both had a like expression of spiritual repose. A mediocre follower of either of them can never be a satisfactory character. An ultra-individualism in everything enfeebles the will, just as the complete abnegation of the freedom of thought dwarfs the intellect. In order to have a perfect solution of the difficulty, we need to draw both from Emerson and Newman.
The Ethics of Socialism.The question may be raised whether the philosophical ground of ethical truth does not afford philosophical standing to some sort of socialism. This view of the problem has evidently pervaded the thinking of Professor Paulsen in his "System der Ethik mit einem Umriss der Staats- und Gesellschaftslehre," and it is prominent in the "Allgemeine Ethik" of D. H. Steinthal. The first question that ought to be raised in regard to socialism is the sociological question, whether society is a product of that universal evolution which brought man himself into existence and conditions all his thought and doings. If so, we may be sure that there are certain general principles, or laws, to which social evolution has conformed in the past, and to which it will go on conforming in the future. The ethical problems involved in the socialistic propositions now before the public may be reduced to two.First, if not all men are converted in thought and feeling to socialism, can a majority have any ethical right to compel a minority to surrender individual initiative and submit to dictation of occupation?Secondlywhat is an ethical distribution of product among the workers that create it? Plato and Aristotle alone laid the foundation for a rationalistic argument from purely ethical premises, showing that majorities may rightfully do more than enforce contracts and keep the peace, but the modern restatement and completion of that argument remains to be made. As to the second problem, a strong argument could be made in support of the proposition that an ethical distribution of wealth would be one that should afford equality of satisfaction throughout society, of the desires that are ethically commendable. When the clever literary people hypnotised by Mr. Bellamy's dazzling vision begin to resume their intellectual self-direction, they will discover that equality of income and equality of satisfaction, of legitimate desires, are two different things.
Ethical and Kindred Societies in Great Britain.Speaking broadly the attitude of the societies towards theology and its exponents may be described as one of non-interference or neutrality. They desire to be rather constructive than destructive in their action, for they believe that desirable changes can only be effected by the slow processes of organic growth. With one exception they have none of the characteristics of a church, and they may be described as lecturing and debating societies with or without the addition of what is commonly known as "practical work." They do not retain the services of a single lecturer, but prefer to have speakers who are independent of each other. (Philadelphia:International Journal of Ethics, 1602 Chestnut St.)
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. February, 1891. No. 182.
REALISME ET IDEALISME. ByPaul Janet.
L'ART ET LA LOGIQUE. (1st Art.) ByG. Tarde.
MORALE ET MÉTAPHYSIQUE. ByJ. J. Gourd.
M. Janet remarks, in his article onRealism and Idealism, that since Kant philosophy has concentrated all its efforts on the problem of the objectivity of knowledge. The agreement of reality and thought is a truth of which no one doubts, although many centuries were necessary for its observation. Not only is there agreement between nature and mind, but there is analogy, resemblance, affinity, between these two terms. Not only does nature obey the laws of our mind, implying that there is in it a logical and rational element, but it seems to act with the art which intelligence would employ, if it wished to create the products of nature. How is this union of nature and the mind to be explained? Two solutions present themselves: in which thought can be explained by nature, or nature by thought. The first of these solutions is that calledrealism; the second isidealism. Each of these systems has strong reasons in its favor. As to the first, thought and nature are not commensurate and opposed. Thought makes itself part of nature, and the only thought we know directly is our own. For human intelligence is bound to the organisation, and appears to follow all its vicissitudes. The basis of idealism is not less firm. External things exist for us only on the condition of passing through our consciousness. Further, the psychological and physiological analysis of sensations reclaims them all as being only states of the ego. But there are serious objections to both hypotheses. Realism is susceptible of two forms. If thought, considered in relation to the origin of ideas, is explained by sensation, it becomes empiricism; if considered in relation to the substratum of thought, this is explained by organisation, it becomes materialism. As against empiricism, may be objected with Kant that sensation does not explain the necessity and universality of scientific judgments. Against materialism, Fichte showed that a thing which is only a thing could never attain to thought. Thus empiricism is overthrown by the impossibility of explaining science; materialism by the impossibility of explaining thought. In order to meet the objection of Kant, and to explain the appearance ofa priori, the new empiricists have invoked: (1) the principle of inseparable associations; (2) the principle of hereditary associations. On the other side, the new defenders of materialism in order to explain the transformation of motion into thought, have invoked the great principle of the correlation and transformation of forces in nature. But as to inseparable associations, it may be said, that they give us rather a necessity of fact, than a necessity of law. What science requires is absolute and not relative necessity. The same may be said of the principle of hereditary associations, which merely prolong the chain of experiences. But, further, association itself requires explanation, which shows that it cannot account for the principle of causality. As to the use of the principle of transformation of forces to explain the passage of motion into thought, if the objective and physical cause of our sensations is meant, there is merely transformation of motion into motion. If it is said that sensations are only transformed motions, this affirms what is in question, how motion can transform itself into thought. There are no less serious objections against idealism. The principal one is: all our reasonings about nature are established only on condition that we take nature as our basis. We thus reach the double conclusion: neither nature has produced thought, nor thought has produced nature. The ego is, however, in nature, and nature is a representation of the ego, but, while admitting the reciprocal penetration of the two principles, we are obliged to recognise their mutual independence. There is harmony, not identity. But is there not some being in which the real of nature and the real of thought coexist, and who, according to the formula of Schelling, is the absolute subject-object? Idealism, to be consequent, ought to go as far as the absolute consciousness, to the union of the subjective and objective thought. If the two inferior terms are identified in the absolute mind, this will find in nature and in the mind a double expression of itself. Nothing prevents us then, says our author, from understanding nature, with Schelling, as the drowsy mind seeking to arouse itself, and the ego on the contrary as a nature which awakens itself.
M. Tarde inArt and Logicremarks that the word art has two senses. In its wide conception, it includes all the exercises of the imagination and of human ingenuity, invention in a thousand forms. But in another sense of the word, it answers to the æsthetic needs of society. If we had regard only to the art of the most advanced epochs, we should perhaps say that it serves to satisfy the need of inventive expression or of expressive invention. It seems then, in effect, to be before all expressive or inventive, and the second of these traits appears the most essential. The property of art and also of morality is to seek and to believe to find a divine end in life, a great end worthy of individual sacrifice. When art presents itself separated from morality, when it is an agent not of harmony but of social dissolution, it is a sign that it is imported from abroad. Art is then immoral and dissolvent. In all ages truly logical art has been only the translator and the illuminator of morality.
The work of art is not like a product of industry, an artificial organ added to the individual, it is an artificial, imaginary mistress. The privilege of art is to arouse in us sentiments which play in the social life and logic, precisely the rôle of love in the individual life and logic. The sentiment of art is acollective loveand rejoices to be such. Art is social joy, as love is individual joy.
Morality and Metaphysics.Between practical philosophy and theoretical philosophy there is a real difference of nature. The former concerns the action and the latter the perception, and as we cannot do what yet is not, nor see what is already done, the one has relation to the future, the other to the present or the past. With this difference, they resemble each other, in that both consist in a putting in order, a co-ordination of their objects. Experience is sufficient to furnish all that is necessary for the explanation of practical co-ordination. This requires a fundamental notion of practical order, which metaphysicians see in the notion of the good, but, as the reality of the good cannot be established, it is a chimerical and arbitrary conception. We must seek in the co-ordinated objects themselves the fundamental element around which they will be disposed according to their proper nature. This cannot be the good, since this is the result of practical co-ordination. It is pleasure, not a particular kind of pleasure, but that which is possessed in common by all that pleases, all that satisfies. Volition can never go beyond pleasure. If we desire before having really been sensible of pleasure, it is because we have been ideally sensible of it. Pleasure is inherent in every practical function, it is practically constant, it is practically categorical. We cannot go beyond pleasure of some kind. It cannot be said that pleasure is preceded by function, life. These are only results, groups which have components, and therefore they cannot be the last principle of action. Thus one problem is resolved without recourse to metaphysics.—After the principle of simple co-ordination, must be sought that of the co-ordination which subordinates, which marks a sort of hierarchy. For this the idea of pleasure is not sufficient. It is necessary to limit the point of view, and in the difference of quantity of pleasure will be found the rule of co-ordination. The distinction of more or less offers itself at once, and gives place naturally to degrees, then to a subordination. The rule of the good is: the amplitude of the co-ordination, the degree of intelligibility, the number of facts which compose the object of volition. It is necessary to distinguish between urgency and superiority in proper value. Things which are the most urgent have not necessarily the most value in themselves. Thus the practical subordination ought to dispose its objects inversely, according to whether it is occupied with their urgency or their proper value. Here also practical philosophy is not obliged to have recourse to metaphysics. Practical philosophy not only ought to regulate its objects on the basis that it has previously fixed, but still ought to assure this regulation for the future. This requires that its coördinations should be made objects of commandment, obligation. The conception of the future pleasure enters into the present; and to each volition is bound by anticipation, ideally, but positively, the future benefit of the practical co-ordination. Thus obligation has its source in a volition imposing practical co-ordination on future volitions. Obligation is in reality causal determination, and as there is a volition more or less marked in each act, and the causal chain is never interrupted, we can be said to be always under the influence of obligation, the power of which increases with life. Determination is uniformisation; and nothing else is asked for the moral imperative. Causal determination is opposed directly to the unconditionment of liberty; but obligation, as well as causal determination in general, remains, moreover, in every partial state, limited by its opposite, liberty, which ever recoils before the continual encroachments of obligation, but without ceasing to be. There is no difficulty in admitting a sanction for the good, although it does not constitute a distinct and new element. The sanction is the consequences of actions from the point of view of pleasures. By the side of moral happiness or unhappiness, should be reserved a place for a happiness or unhappiness in some sort "amoral." The moral good does not exhaust all the good. It is necessary to distinguish between the moral good and the unrestrained good (bien libre). There is an immoralisable element which represents the veritable autonomy of the will. As in all coördinations, by reason of all bending under the rule, the moral hierarchy will sometimes injure the reality. Here the notion of the unrestrained good happily intervenes. The reality always reserves its rights in the face of co-ordinations, whatever be their nature. When it asserts itself it is sublime, it is, so to say, raised above every rule, majestic in its sovereign liberty. (Paris: Félix Alcan.)
ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE DER SINNESORGANE. Vol. II.Nos. 1 and 2.
VERSUCH EINER ERWEITERTEN ANWENDUNG DES FECHNERSCHEN GESETZES IMFARBENSYSTEM. ByH. v. Helmholtz.
WAS IST UNSER NERVENSYSTEM UND WAS GEHT DARIN VOR? ByJustusGaule.
PHYSIOLOGISCH-PSYCHOLOGISCHE STUDIEN UEBER DIE ENTWICKELUNGDER GESICHTSWAHRNEHMUNGEN BEI KINDERN UND BEI OPERIERTENBLINDGEBORENEN. ByE. Raehlrnann.
ZWANGSVORSTELLUNGEN OHNE WAHNIDEEN. ByD. Hack-Tuke.
EIN VERSUCH UEBER DIE INTRAKRANIELLE LEITUNG LEISESTER TOENE VONOHR ZU OHR. ByKarl L. Schaefer.
BESPRECHUNGEN. Wundt, Ueber die Methoden der Messung desBewusstseinsumfanges. BySchumann.
Professor E. Hering introduced the method of defining colors by data of measurement derived from sensations. He thus became the founder of a new conception in Optics which in many respects promises to give more correct and better explanations not only of the physiology of sight but also of the theory of colors; his views collide however in some important points with the views of the old school, the leader of which is Professor Helmholtz of Berlin. The first article of the present number of this magazine treats of one of these problems, and the author, Professor Helmholtz, believes that the results of his experiments do not show a gradation of the perceptibility of differences which would justify Professor Hering's theory of colors. Professor Helmholtz applies Fechner's law concerning the measurement of perceptible differences to color-sensations. For the experiments he has made, a wheel was employed (after the method of Maxwell) into which slips of colored paper of various breadth could be inserted. He found by this "photometrical" method that "the effect of an additional color upon the luminosity is effectually weakened by the amount of the same color present in the whole mixture…. Equal small amounts of the quantity of light produce the smaller effects the larger the quantities of the same light are in the whole field." We pass by other results of Professor Helmholtz's experiments, for it takes a specialist to go over his calculations and tables; and the investigation has by no means been brought to a final conclusion. "If the strong deviation is not based upon an error," Professor Helmholtz says, "quite another and a different hypothesis would come into question, viz, whether it may not always be the clearest sensation which has effect and that which remains below the threshold does not come into consideration." The revision of his "Handbuch der physiologischen Optik" has been the occasion for these experiments of Professor Helmholtz.
Professor Gaule of Zurich propounds a most interesting theory about the development of the trophic functions and the chemical actions of the nervous system. He starts with the idea that the processes of the nervous system are in accord with the law of the conservation of energy. Du Bois Reymond's remark that love and hatred, pleasure and pain would remain unexplained even if all the changes that take place in the arrangement of atoms in our nerves were known and mathematically computable, has made a deep impression because it expresses the disparity of our definitions of atoms on the one side and feelings on the other. Yet our atomistic theory is not final; it is only an auxiliary conception which will simplify thought so long as the present method of considering phenomena from a chemical or physical and geometrical standpoint is retained. As soon as we create a common auxiliary conception to comprise all these sciences, we shall have to broaden our definitions. Taking this position as his philosophical basis, Professor Gaule attempts to consider nervous processes as reflex actions, the latter being clearly conceivable as subject to the law of the conservation of energy. Living beings appear as complexes of forces developed from the chemical actions taking place in their organisms. Through a saturation of the affinities of their carbon and hydrogen atoms with oxygen their potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. The latter is used in many various ways, partly for building up more complex molecules, partly for again storing potential energy, and partly,—and this is a predominant process in animal organisms,—for setting forces free which will serve as a source of their activity. It is such a source of activity which the impressions of the outside world affect. The impression is calledReizor irritation, and the irritation has often been compared to the fuse or the spark igniting a powder-mine. We must however bear in mind that the organism is unlike the powder-mine, not at rest but in constant action and the irritation does not properly speaking evoke a reflex but it only modifies the action taking place. All this is generally conceded by the physiologist. Professor Gaule then proceeds to explain his idea of the nervous development. The cells of the epithelium in the skin perform a peculiar process, called in GermanVerhornung; they turn into horn (keratine) by the protoplasm's losing its albuminoids. The process does not take place in one cell but in several layers of cells and represents like all actions a play of forces, raising the more keratinised strata from the basal membrane to the surface. The keratinising however is, according to Gaule, only the less important surface-phenomenon of another peculiar process which is directed toward the interior of the organism. An excretion takes place forming extremely fine threads around the cells which pass through the pores of the basal membrane (a fact proved by Caninis and Fraenkel) where they form a plexus. Out of the net-like meshes of these plexuses grow increasingly strong filaments which form the trunks of the nerves. These views agree very well with the observations of Professor His on the fœtal development of the nerves. Professor His has indubitably proved that the olfactory nerve for instance does not grow out of but into the hemispheres. The direction of the nervous growth is the same as the direction of their function. Many of the sensory nerves have been proven to, and it is probable that all of them do grow from the periphery into the central organ. Hensen in opposition to this has proposed the theory of an original connection between the peripheral root of the nerve and the central organ; yet whatever side of the controversy may be found in the end to be correct, the result does not much affect Professor Gaule's theory, that the ends of the nerves represent the roots from which they grow and every special irritation must specially affect the secretion which forms the nerve. Having been rather explicit in the basal ideas of Professor Gaule's proposition we can now be brief. The axis-cylinder of the nervous fibre corresponds to the secretion of the nervous root; around it is found the marrow-sheath, a tube of absorbing cells containing, also as proved by Ruehne, a net of neuro-keratine; this neuro-keratine again absorbs the axis-cylinder. To the question Why does not the axis-cylinder disappear? Professor Gaule answers, Because it is constantly renewed. Thus we have a constant flow in the nervous substance, an exchange of materials, an absorption, a secretion, and re-absorption; and in this way it can be, a progress of chemical action conditioning the vertical direction of the nerves upon their plexuses and also the form of the marrow-sheath which appears like craters, one inserted within the other and filed upon the axis-cylinder. Professor Gaule proposes no definite opinion as to the development of the motor nerves; he makes some suggestions which need however further explanation and demonstration. He has apparently not yet finished his investigations and we may expect to hear again from him.