Chapter XXIII: Part 23

Schwarz distinguishes two elements in what he calls “ingenuous realism,” (1) its methodology and (2) its metaphysics. The methodology of physical science consists in arranging the sense-data, while the metaphysics assume that the objectivity of the sense-data is correctly represented as “things, qualities, and effects.” Natural science arrived at a scepsis of the usual metaphysics of naïve realism by a correction of the ingenuous-realistic method, and Kant by critically investigating the background or frame of its theory of cognition. The question is, What is altered by physical science in the conception of ingenuous realism, what by physiology, what by philosophy and why?

In the consciousness of an ingenuous realist the data of touch receive a preference over those of the other senses, which is due to their greater stability. The color of an object disappears, the sounds cease, while the objects remain comparatively the same things to the sense of touch. Thus they are considered as the real objects having certain qualities which produce the phenomena of the other senses. This view is called by Schwarz the first methodological dogma of ingenuous realism. The second dogma is the conception that sense-data are considered as relatively permanent. So colors are conceived to exist objectively in the dark, an error which has been sufficiently explained by Helmholtz in his “Physiological Optics,” § 26. The third dogma completes the second; it is the view that the relative permanence or disappearance of the qualities of objects depends upon causes. Fire is said to be the cause which makes a wire red-hot. The ingenuous realist knows no reciprocal causation, no action and reaction, no _Wechselwirkung_. He assumes in addition to the objects certain force-beings which are regarded as the causes of all change. The sun is said to produce light.

Schwarz explains very well how this view of ingenuous realism naturally arises and also how in the progress of thought it naturally corrects itself. Suppose there were thinking beings with whom smell took the place of touch and sight, would not their world-conception be based upon the data of the sense of smell as is ours upon the data of mechanical motions? If the females of a certain butterfly (_Frostspanner_) are caught in the country and placed at a great distance in some house of the city, the males will be seen on the next morning in great numbers fluttering before the window of the room in which the females are kept. What a perfection of the sense of smell while the senses of touch and sight are very poorly developed! The dog owes his intelligence mainly to the development of the sense of smell. Would not beings whose intelligence is mainly due to the sense of hearing rather attempt to hear the world than to grasp or comprehend it,—to _behorchen_ rather than to _begreifen_?

Ingenuous realism is not consistent, and its methodology leads to alterations of its metaphysics. We shall have to attribute either to all the sense-data objective reality or to none of them. The data of touch cannot be treated as exceptions and thus we have the alternative either to return from our scepsis to realism, not to the ingenuous but to a critically modified view of it, or to adopt the extremest form of idealism, be it that of Berkeley or the subjectivism of Fichte.

The author (not unlike Professor Avenarius in his book “Der menschliche Weltbegriff”) takes the former view. He says in the concluding chapter (_Die Mängel der Ding-an-sich-Hypothese_): “This view, viz. that of ingenuous realism, will in the end of our inquiry be seen to be not only the most natural, and practically considered the most useful metaphysical theory, but also that conception which is freest from all theoretical obscurities” (p. 381).

We believe that the book which contains much valuable material, would have been more useful than it actually is, if a chapter had been added containing a summary of the whole inquiry and delineating in great outlines the critically modified form of realism whose most appropriate name we should say is monism—not materialism or mechanicalism which allows all facts to be swallowed up by the conception that the world consists only of matter in motion, but that monism which is a unitary view of the whole, mindful of the fact that the sense-data as well as our concepts are one-sided aspects only of the one and all. If we bear this truth in mind we shall avoid from the beginning the three dogmas (alias errors) of ingenuous materialism.

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DIE ENTWICKELUNG DES CAUSALPROBLEMS IN DER PHILOSOPHIE SEIT KANT. Studien zur Orientirung über die Aufgaben der Metaphysik und Erkenntnisslehre. (Part II.) By Dr. _Edmund Koenig_. Leipsic: Otto Wigand.

The present work forms the conclusion of a volume published by Dr. Koenig in 1888, entitled _Die Entwickelung des Causalproblems von Cartesius bis Kant_. This same subject is here pursued in the history of modern philosophy since Kant.

The problem of causality, according to Dr. Koenig, has two aspects, an epistemological and a metaphysical. The pre-Kantian efforts dealt chiefly with the latter, the post-Kantian more principally with the former. The latter, the metaphysical question, is, How do things in the world of reality produce effects in one another? The former, or that which relates to the theory of knowledge, is, (1) What is the logical foundation of the idea of causality, what do we imply when we set up two objects as cause and effect, and (2) By what right and to what extent are we justified in imputing to the axiom of causality an objective validity? With respect to the latter, the epistemological, point of view, Hume and Kant believed they had established indisputably that experience as given does not furnish sufficient grounds either for the idea or the axiom of causality. On the other hand, others, like Maine de Biran, Schopenhauer, and Trendelenburg, hold, that causality is given us in experience, that we apprehend the causal relation subsisting between things, together with the things. Herbart maintains that the idea of the causal relation has been reached by the logical elaboration of experience in conformity with the general laws of logical thought. Mill and Spencer see in this idea an element that goes beyond experience, but justify it only psychologically, not logically. According to Lotze, Riehl, Wundt, v. Hartmann, Volkelt, the idea is either wholly or partly of intellectual origin. Finally, Comte and a few modern scientists look upon the idea of causality as logically valueless and scientifically superfluous.

This is, in brief, the opinions of the greatest thinkers whom Koenig treats of, respecting the logical composition of the idea of causality. But another question, that namely as to the character of the relation in which in the causal judgment the notions of the concrete causes and their effects exist, is one closely allied with this. Some hold, (Trendelenburg, Goering, Herbart, Hamilton, Spencer,) that the relation is one of identity; others that it is synthetical. This aspect is also developed in connection with the last-named thinkers.

With respect to the axiom of causality, we find diametrically opposed to each other the doctrines of empiricism and apriorism; but a number of intermediate opinions have also established themselves. Of the first, Schopenhauer, Lotze, and Volkelt are representatives, but only the theory of the first-named is developed at length. The empiricism of Mill and Goering meets with exhaustive treatment, as does the opposed view of Laas, Riehl, and Wundt and the conciliatory view of Spencer.

With respect to the metaphysical aspect of the question, above-mentioned, we find the modes of conception of phenomenalism and realism opposed. The latter only is, in the nature of its doctrine, required to explain ontologically the coming about of the causal relation in reality; the former does not recognise Being in itself, and hence there can be no causal connection of such. Schopenhauer’s attempt (the view of the forces of nature as the emanation of a Universal Will), and the splendid ontological theories of Herbart and Lotze are regarded by Dr. Koenig as being no more a solution of the problem than were the efforts of their famous predecessors Spinoza, Malebranche, and Leibnitz. These dogmatic realists, as Koenig calls them, proceed from the assumption of the knowableness of the absolute; opposed to them, in this regard, are Spencer, Von Hartmann, and Volkelt, the critical realists, the first of whom gives an ontology that is a vague and metaphysical rendering of the principle of the conservation of energy, the two last of whom impute a transcendental ontological significance to the idea of causality.

The connection, Dr. Koenig concludes, is thus apparent and definite between the metaphysical and epistemological divisions of the question. The ontologist, unless he proceed dogmatically, must prove, that the notion of causality in the form in which critical analysis has established it as a valid and indispensable empirical idea, calls inevitably for the notion of an absolute reality and of a state of things in that reality corresponding to the forms of the connection given. Therefore, the logical analysis of the idea of causality is in any philosophy, pre-eminently determinative of its whole position and bearing.

On the whole, then, in the treatment of the problem forming the subject of this work, four comparatively independent views are found opposed to one another and considered in this opposition; viz., Sensualism and Intellectualism, Positivism and Rationalism, Empiricism and Apriorism, Realism and Phenomenalism. The author views the result of his researches to be, the proof of the untenability of Sensualism, Rationalism, Empiricism, and Realism, so far as this, by an historico-critical analysis, is possible.

This is but a brief sketch of the treatment pursued by the author. The author’s own view has been barely hinted at. He is a Kantian. He calls himself a “transcendental idealist.” Dr. Koenig’s developments, appreciative, acute and pointed as they are, are too detailed and exhaustive to be separately taken into discussion here; but we may illustrate his point of view by a summary of a few remarks of his on the ontological problem as solved by physics. They are as follows.

The _natural_ modes of thought cling irresistibly to the notion of a constant substratum; this being so, how does process, how does change spring from an invariability of existence? Physical science answers, by _force_; which exists as a constant potentiality of the substratum, is now active, now latent. Dr. Koenig maintains that in this physical science accomplishes nothing towards the solution of the present problem; it does not by its notion of force make intelligible the _acting_ of bodies on each other, for when it comes to define the mode of action of force it involves itself in hopeless difficulties. What is the consequence then, of this dilemma of science, where it can neither render plain the “nature” of the material substratum, nor the nature of “force,” which is, so to speak, the source of the activity of the substratum? It is either agnosticism, which places limits to our knowledge, and which Dr. Koenig rejects as unbecoming true thought, or it is that theory which regards the phenomena alone as real and views the concepts of theoretical physics as the mere shifts and helps of thought whereby we bring the phenomena into connection with one another. This latter view also Dr. Koenig cannot accept. His express contention is, that we can interpret, _ontologically_, the phenomena of reality by the notions of substance, force, etc.; he holds that the position of transcendental idealism is the correct theory here, the position namely that matter and force conceived as transcendent, independent entities cannot be _thought away_, because substantiality and causality are _forms_ of transcendental apperception, which alone can make nature an object of cognition; matter and force must, for purposes of empiric observation, of necessity possess the same reality as phenomena themselves.

In connection with this subject Dr. Koenig contests Mach’s doctrine, that natural laws are simple economical descriptions of phenomena; he contends that “law” is the foundation of natural science, and particularly so the law of causality.

This, however, does not say much. For the formal laws _in themselves_ are empty. The law, the axiom of causality may, _a priori_, be without exception; but this circumstance, the _conviction_ we may call it, offers us no hold on nature. When we investigate nature we have to perceive _definite facts_; about which we formulate particular laws or statements. The law of causality, however, does not help us to _discern_ the determinative facts or features of any phenomenon. It simply says that _if_ we have hit upon the determinative facts and formulated a law describing them, that law holds good throughout all nature. But what is to tell us _what_ the characteristic and determinative features of a given event are and when we have lighted on them? The law of causality? Surely not. The law of causality cannot tell us that for falling bodies _v_ = _gt_, i. e. that _t_ is decisive. It simply says that when once this fact has been _discerned_ it holds universally good. But it would have asserted the same thing with regard to Galileo’s first (false) assumption, namely that _v_ = _Cs_. If, then, the law of causality cannot tell us what those features are between which the causal connection is assumed to exist, what is to tell us? Our observation simply, which must be tested by experience. But our observation has no limits placed to it except this, that it shall select some fact that _represents_ the phenomenon and best and most easily enables _us_ to represent it. And there is nothing that requires that there should be only _one_ feature or _one_ aspect of an event by which it is representable; there may be several, as the development of science proves. Accordingly, what selection we make may depend on arbitrary and historical circumstances. And this, as we take it, is Prof. Mach’s contention. If it is true, Dr. Koenig’s criticism of Mach’s view does not hold in its whole extent.

Dr. Koenig’s treatment of the separate representative thinkers is exhaustive and in an eminent degree scientific. His work is distinguished by accuracy and pointedness of characterisation, and by special knowledge of great range. It is a valuable contribution which he has given us, to the study of the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, and he has been true to his promise, as we judge, critically to discuss and not summarily to dispose of the opinions of others.

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EINE NEUE DARSTELLUNG DER LEIBNIZISCHEN MONADENLEHRE AUF GRUND DER QUELLEN. By _Eduard Dillmann_. Leipsic: O. R. Reisland, 1891.

The author is an admirer of Leibnitz’s monadology which he considers as “the most beautiful, most perfect fruit of philosophic thought and the most glorious system to be found in the history of philosophy.” This enthusiasm however is not shown in panegyrics but in a careful investigation of the great master’s work and we should scarcely know the attitude of the author toward the philosopher whose thoughts he discusses, if he did not give vent to his feelings in a few sentences of the concluding chapter. The rest of the book consists of purely critical and historical studies by a sober and cool-headed scholar. Leibnitz’s system as it is represented in our histories of philosophy and as it is currently conceived lacks a unitary and leading idea, so that many of its most fundamental propositions appear to be at variance. Mr. Dillmann maintains that Leibnitz’s philosophy as it really is does not lack this unity; he has made an extensive and most diligent study of Leibnitz’s works and proves with great plausibility through the assistance of many pertinent quotations the justice of his cause.

Leibnitz’s monadology is according to Dillmann essentially a conciliatory system. It attempts to reconcile the world-conceptions of his time. The mechanical explanation of nature as it was proposed in modern times and according to which all processes should be conceived as motions of bodies is harmonised with the formalistic views of classical antiquity and of the schoolmen which seeks for the causes of all phenomena in substantial forms. In aiming at such a combination, he had to show that all single phenomena of bodies and also their qualities had some ground and that the principle of the body itself consisted in a substantial form. This led him to conceive of bodies and of all things not as phenomena of an external world but as representations in the mind, and thus an entirely new standpoint was gained (p. 511). Representations are the inner states of Monads (p. 318). Monads are substances because representations are units; for representations are the many expressed in a unity (p. 319). Every monad is a concentration of the universe (p. 313). It is as if God had multiplied the universe as often as there are souls (p. 314). Every substance is a little world in itself, expressing the great world of the universe. The substance imitates in its little world what God does in the universe (p. 313).

Leibnitz’s God-idea has suffered most from a misconception of the fundamental idea of his system. Dillmann declares that the traditional view, especially Fischer’s, is in conflict with the philosopher’s own words. While Fischer says that Leibnitz’s God has created the substances and arbitrarily endowed them with their natures, Dillmann maintains on the ground of ample quotations that Leibnitz considers the forms of all possible existences as given: not even God can alter them. God however can and did compare all possible worlds, and then created that which his wisdom found to be the best world. “God,” says Leibnitz, “does not select a general Adam, but such a one,” i. e. an individual Adam, “whose perfect representation is found among all the possible beings which exist in the ideas of God. The nature of every creature is determined by eternal truths which are in the understanding of God independent of his will.” “God’s decree consists alone in the decision arrived at after having compared all possible worlds and having admitted into existence that one which is the best of all.”

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LEITFADEN DER PHYSIOLOGISCHEN PSYCHOLOGIE IN 14 VORLESUNGEN. By Dr. _Th. Ziehen_, Docent in Jena. Mit 21 Abbildungen im Text. Jena: Gustav Fischer. 1891.

The merits of these 14 lectures on physiological psychology are thoroughness, lucidity, and conciseness; the whole book is a pamphlet of 174 pp. only. The method of presentation is in all its detail work positive, stating the facts as they have been found to be by experience and as they are corroborated by experiment. Upon the whole it is a good résumé of the present state of knowledge. A translation would be very desirable and it is to be hoped that some of our psychologists will undertake the work.

The contents are briefly as follows: I. Contents and scope of psychology. II. Sensation, association, action. III. Stimulus, sensation. IV. Taste, smell, touch. V. Hearing. VI. Vision. VII. Affective aspect of sensation (pleasure and pain). VIII. Sensation, memory, concept. IX. Association of ideas. X. Judgment and syllogism. XI. Attention, voluntary thought, the ego (Ziehen says: “psychologically considered the simple ego is a theoretical fiction,” p. 139). XII. Diseased thinking, sleep, hypnosis. XIII. Action, expressive motions, language. XIV. Will, general conclusions.

Although Dr. Ziehen’s pamphlet is upon the whole an excellent treatise, we cannot agree with the author in several questions which are of great importance in their consequences.

Dr. Ziehen acknowledges that the specifically nervous processes, a sensible stimulus and a reaction, which latter is a motory effect, cannot be explained from physical laws alone (p. 4). Yet at the same time he denies that the fact that the reflexes are adapted to a purpose (_Zweckmässigkeit_) proves the presence of a psychical parallelism. “Pflüger,” he says, “was wrong in attributing for this reason to the spinal cord a spinal-cord-soul.” The _Zweckmässigkeit_ of reflexes (i. e. their being adapted to a purpose) has originated not otherwise than the _Zweckmässigkeit_ of the color of the bird’s plumage, i. e. through natural selection and inheritance. This argument might be admissible, if we had not to account for the gradual origin of consciousness also. There was a time when our personal consciousness did not exist, and there was also a time when no conscious being lived upon the earth. Unless we assume that consciousness suddenly appeared, creating out of its own subjectivity alone the objective world which appears to us as what we call matter in motion, we shall have to adopt some monistic view of the subject. To consider the psychical states as known and the objectivity of existence as utterly unknown is no monism.

Dr. Ziehen is opposed to the idea of psychical parallelism which he conceives to be dualism, but he proposes a spiritual monism in its stead, the difficulties of which he does not explain. It is to be regretted that Dr. Ziehen has not understood the main idea of the parallelism doctrine. He says in a foot-note (p. 6): “In the most extreme way, but with quite insufficient reasons Lewes has maintained the omnipresence of consciousness.” This is a misstatement of Lewes’s view, which by the bye is held by the reviewer also, although he confesses that the term parallelism is inappropriate and leads to misunderstandings. The theory of parallelism, (at least as the reviewer holds it) is not dualistic but monistic. It implies that the subjectivity and objectivity of existence are two different abstractions of one and the same reality. Its parallelism is a parallelism of these two sets of abstraction, while the reality from which they have been derived is one throughout. There exist no subjects that are not objects to other subjects, and every object admits of a subjective aspect. There is a something supposed to be present throughout nature which under certain conditions appears as consciousness. This certain something is called by Clifford elements of feeling, by Lloyd Morgan metakinesis, it has been characterised in the editorials of _The Monist_ as the subjectivity of existence, and the presence of this something in the spinal cord was called by Pflüger _Rückenmarksseele_.

It appears to me that if we could explain the well adapted reaction of nervous substance without assuming a psychical element in it, we could explain the whole process of evolution and the historical development of mankind, without the assumption of consciousness. Yet it is obvious that even the explanation of the color of the bird’s plumage by the theory of natural selection and heredity presupposes the presence of psychical elements somewhere. Either the bird and his mates show a color sense, or his enemies do, whose persecution he escapes, or the animals upon whom he preys do. Man’s entire existence, physical and psychical, including his feelings of pleasure and pain, can be explained by the theory of natural selection and heredity; yet this is no proof that psychical elements do not exist in him.

It has become customary at present to define “psychical” as that only which appears in states of consciousness, and to exclude subconscious and unconscious states. Dr. Ziehen says: “Everything given in consciousness and that alone is conscious” (p. 3). Yet he introduces after all the expression “psychically latent,” “latent memory pictures,” and similar expressions. Dr. Ziehen says, “We cannot even have a conception of that which an unconscious idea can be”; yet what is a latent memory-picture but an unconscious idea?

There are two kinds of unconscious ideas: (1) Latent ideas. Every man’s brain is full of latent ideas, i. e. of memory-pictures which are at present unconscious but can become conscious at once if their activity is roused by an appropriate stimulus. (2) Ideas unrelated to the centre of consciousness. Those active ideas which, although at present in a state of activity, are unrelated to the centre of consciousness that constitutes the ego of the man, remain unconscious. Unconscious cerebration (which takes place in dreams, in diseased brains and also in certain phases of healthy brains being, as it were, a by-play of their conscious activity) need not be destitute of feeling. Any pain may be lessened when our attention is called away from it. The nervous disorder remains the same, the feeling substance of the nervous structures in which the pain was perceived also remains the same, its activity and throbbing pulsations do not cease. Yet if we succeed in separating its immediate relation to the centre of consciousness it sinks down into subconsciousness. There is no reason for assuming that the feeling, no longer perceived, is wiped out entirely.

While Dr. Ziehen’s pamphlet is a presentation of the results of positive science, we were astonished to find in the first chapter the following statement: “Later on we shall have to investigate whether there are for all psychical phenomena such material parallel processes in the central nervous system, and our answer will be decidedly in the negative.” And again we find in the schedule of psychology a distinction between (_a_) psychical processes _not_ contingent upon cerebral functions (transcendental psychology), and (_b_) psychical processes contingent upon cerebral functions (physiological psychology). These statements are the more perplexing as the author joins the opposition made by Münsterberg against Professor Wundt’s idea of apperception, which is rejected as metaphysical, mystical, and even animistic. While we cannot in all points agree with Professor Wundt’s theory of apperception, which received a critical examination by Professor Delabarre (see _The Monist_ II, No. 2, p. 297), we can most positively say that Dr. Ziehen in so far as he classes Wundt’s view among the dualistic theories, misunderstands Wundt’s position. Wundt’s physico-psychical parallelism cannot be identified with the metaphysical fiction of a subject, be this subject called ego or soul.[66] Wundt says in a late publication of his: “Psychology of to-day, since Kant has shown the way, seeks the nature of the soul again, as did Aristotle of yore, in the facts of the spiritual life themselves and not in an unknowable ‘thing in itself’....” _Deutsche Rundschau_ of 1891, p. 203. Wundt’s “apperception” is no metaphysical being, but simply means the focus of perception, the centre of consciousness. Wundt is certainly not infallible and we are inclined to believe that in some details he is mistaken. He is nevertheless one of the very greatest leaders among the investigators of the soul and his monism as well as his antimetaphysical tendencies cannot be doubted.

Ziehen reaches his monism by considering objective existence, as it appears to us and which we call matter, as “something utterly unknowable.” He says, “The psychical series alone is given.... Thus the psycho-physical dualism or parallelism is apparent only. Considering that the psychical series alone is given, we shall understand, that we had repeatedly to face in our investigations such factors in which the material foundations are missing. I here remind you of the projection of our sensations into space and time, for which we could not find a psycho-physical explanation.”

We hope that Dr. Ziehen will soon find occasion to explain his philosophical views. Such an explanation may throw light on his psychological theory. We do not as yet see how he can solve without inconsistency the many difficulties in which his philosophical standpoint will involve his psychology.

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PSYCHOLOGIE DER SUGGESTION. By _Dr. Hans Schmidkunz_. Stuttgart, 1892,—pp. 425. Large 8vo.

The rapidly increasing devotion to the study of Hypnotism has yielded many valuable results, both practical and theoretical. Its application to the cure of disease—psychotherapeutics—has been most extensively introduced and bids fair to become the representative in scientific form of the germ of truth buried amongst the vast rubbish-heap of suspicious practices and pseudo-scientific “isms.” New light has been thrown on the questions of responsibility and the legal aspects of slightly abnormal states. Education and ethics, it has been more than hinted, are to find practical aids in hypnotism; while in the light of modern scientifically recognised phenomena, many of the events influential in the development of religions find a rationalistic interpretation. But the science which more than all others, the study of hypnotism is destined to enrich, is that of Experimental Psychology; and it is this phase of the subject to which Dr. Schmidkunz has devoted his volume.

The central core of the whole subject is the fact of suggestion,—a fact so comprehensive that it is almost easier to say what it is not than what it is. If we make allowance for that portion of our conduct that is based upon individual acquisitions and proceeds by logically reasoned steps, all the rest is more or less the result of suggestions, of one kind or another. To appreciate the psychology of this process it is necessary to appreciate its varieties and universality. We receive suggestions from things and deeds; the sight of food makes us hungry; the sight of our neighbor consulting his watch induces a strong desire to know what time it is. Words are powerful implements of suggestion; we accept those doctrines that we hear about us and are influenced much more frequently than we are convinced. The personal factor in suggestion is important; to some we feel attracted and accept as leaders, while others excite repulsion and antagonism. The indirectness of the process of suggestion is to be noted; in most cases we are quite unconscious of the influences exerted upon us and by which our conduct is guided, and this ignorance of the motives of our acts, Spinoza tells us, is the cause of the illusion of free will. Sympathy, imitation, the contagion of masses, the action of the mind upon the body, the formation of public sentiment,—all exemplify the process of suggestion and add their testimony to its power and domain.

We must recognise, too, that our suggestibility is a variable phenomenon; at some moments we are self-assertive and determined, at others passive and readily following another’s lead. Sometimes we take the reins in our own hands, and again allow the vehicle to find its way as it will. Every night we pass into a condition in which conscious control is abandoned and logic gives way to suggestion. A trifling illness, a dose of medicine may increase our suggestibility, and place us in a position allied to that of the hypnotic subject. All this prepares the way for recognising as the distinctive characteristic of the hypnotic condition, an exaggerated suggestibility. Not alone is there a ready yielding to every suggestion of the operator, but functions normally not under volitional control may be appealed to and utilised by the slighter and subtler processes of hypnotic suggestion. The variable threshold between the voluntary and the involuntary is shifted to a surprising extent. That complex interrelation of centres with which the sense of personality is intimately connected yields to the same influences and makes possible an experimental study of this vexed problem.

This, then, is the Psychology of Suggestion, the contribution that Hypnotism makes to Psychology. It lays stress upon the great rôle this process plays in every day mental life and thus asks us to see in hypnotism a condition closely allied to the normal, and simply illustrating in an unusually striking way, one great factor in our mental composition. It rearranges the hierarchy of mental faculties and finds a more important place for suggestion than has been before accorded to it. From a somewhat obscure and sporadic phenomenon occasionally entering into mental states, it is raised to the dignity of one of the most frequent, most important, most fertile generalisations of scientific psychology. Whether one fully agrees with this position or not, it is certainly a service to have it so comprehensively, even if at times prolixly stated, and to be assured that the study of Psychology is deriving as much benefit from the researches in hypnotism as are the more practical sciences.

J. J.

HYPNOTISME, SUGGESTION, PSYCHOTHEROPIE. Études Nouvelles par le _Dr. Bernheim_, Professeur à la Faculté de médécine de Nancy. Paris: 1891. Octave Doin, pp. 518.

The literature of the new science of Hypnotism continues to increase with unabated pace; most of the contributions consist of studies of a few cases or a brief exposition of a single point, in most cases of points relative to the application of hypnotism to disease. The present volume, however, is of special importance not alone because of the authority that Dr. Bernheim’s name brings with it,—but because of the comprehensiveness and the skill and interest of the exposition. It is supplementary to Dr. Bernheim’s former volume, “Suggestive Psychotherapeutics,” (1886-87, English translation, 1889) and reflects the progress that has resulted from continued and systematic observation. The therapeutic interest in it naturally finds most complete representation and about half the volume is devoted to the description of cases cured or benefited by suggestive treatment. Although nervous complaints predominate in these well arranged and well described cases, yet the method is shown applicable to all the ills that flesh is heir to. While this portion of the volume will be of greatest interest to the medical world, the psychologist will find most food for reflection in the first and more theoretical half of the book. He will find there an interesting historical sketch illustrating how processes similar to those now studied as hypnotism have been in use from ancient times; how all the various healers, and the various processes and agencies used by them, involve different modes of application of the one principle of suggestion. “It is the human imagination that works miracles.”

Suggestion is defined as the act by which an idea is introduced in the brain and accepted by it, and thus many of the means by which one person influences another under every day, normal circumstances would be included in the term. Hypnotism is simply one of the most important and efficient methods of producing a state of increased suggestibility. In every day life we have abundant evidence of the tendency of ideas to be realised in actions; with every change in thought and emotion there is associated some motor expression, too subtle perhaps for analysis and description, but still present and significant. Under excitement and nervous strain these motor accompaniments of thought are increased and serve as the basis of the muscle reader’s skill. Again the possibility of disbelief and of recognising the illusory character of a sensation involve the control of higher directing powers; the accumulated experience of the past passes sentence upon the new candidate. If we imagine a condition in which this form of control is abolished, we should have a subject accepting as real almost any idea or sensation that is suggested to him, and expressing freely and unreservedly his acceptance of the same. And this it is that hypnotism does. It builds upon the natural credulity which it is the difficult task of reason to shape and control, and brings into prominence the automatic, subconscious phases of mental action. It does not endow subjects with new faculties or deprive them of their individuality, but shows in a strangely perverted perspective the various faculties and processes that go to build the endlessly complex elements of a personality. This “suggestion” view of hypnotism is the contribution of the Nancy School, and is fast becoming the recognised view of science; one will nowhere find a clearer and more convincing exposition of it than in Dr. Bernheim’s pages.

It is clearly impossible to summarise the various details that make up the body of the volume; but all the important topics are discussed and result in conclusions unusually free as well from vagueness as from narrowness. The processes inducing the state, the proportion of susceptible individuals, the various kinds and stages of hypnotism, its relation to sleep and other normal states, the rôle of memory in hypnotism, the interesting post-hypnotic, negative and retroactive hallucinations, its relation to hysteria, its possible use in crime,—these are some of the chief topics treated. The volume is a valuable contribution to the literature of the subject, reflects its most recent acquisitions, and would well merit a presentation in an English translation.

J. J.

HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. In two volumes; Senses and Intellect, and, Feeling and Will. By _James Mark Baldwin_, M. A., Ph. D., Professor in the University of Toronto. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1891.

These are two books diligently worked out, the former of 343, the latter of 397 pp. They cover almost the entire field of psychology excluding however the treatment of such abnormal states as are Mental Pathology and Hypnotism. The author is a disciple of Dr. McCosh, and is strongly influenced by Wundt, of Leipzig, and Rabier, of Paris; yet he has developed an independent view of the nature of the soul which perhaps comes nearest to that of Prof. William James, of Harvard. The two books are actually two parts of one work, the one complementing the other. The former however is not, as the name suggests, an exposition of the nature of the senses in their relation to or as the basis of the intellect; it is an inquisition into consciousness, sensation, perception, association, imagination, rational thought, and kindred subjects. The latter, after an introduction of 50 pp., characterising the mechanism of the nervous system, treats of feeling as sensation, as pleasure and pain, as interest and belief, as emotion, and passes over to the subject of a motor consciousness, or will, ending in a chapter on volition.

Professor Baldwin states that “after we enter consciousness we find a principle of apperception to which there is no analogy in physiological integration,” adding in a foot-note: “Since the section of the ‘Unity of Composition’ theory was written, Professor James has published an acute criticism in substantial agreement with it, and the passage quoted makes reference to the sixth chapter of Professor James’s Psychology in which he rejects the so-called ‘mind-stuff,’ theory, declaring a self-compounding of mental facts to be inadmissible and proposes at last what he calls ‘soul-theory.’” Professor James in this chapter commits the mistake indicated in the editorial of the last number of _The Monist_ (p. 248) that he considers things as things in themselves and then looks for a relation producing principle. He says:

“In the parallelogram of forces, the ‘forces’ themselves do not combine into the diagonal resultant; a _body_ is needed on which they may impinge, to exhibit their resultant effect.”

“Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence.”

Thus Professor W. James is in need of what he calls a “medium.” He says:

“_All the ‘combinations’ which we actually know are EFFECTS, wrought by the units said to be ‘combined,’ UPON SOME ENTITY OTHER THAN THEMSELVES._ Without this feature of a medium or vehicle, the notion of combination has no sense.”

We observe that feelings which originate through the impressions of the outer world upon some sentient organism, enter into relations to each other, as naturally as things are in relations, or under certain circumstances will enter more closely into relations with each other. The “soul” accordingly is postulated by Professor James as a medium to combine the effects of the manifold brain processes in order to “escape the absurdity of supposing feelings which exist separately and then ‘fuse together’ by themselves. The separateness is in the brain-world, on this theory, and the unity in the soul world, and the only trouble that remains to haunt us is the metaphysical one of understanding how one sort of world or existent thing can affect or influence another at all.” This is dualism and we suppose that Professor James is conscious of it.

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UNTERSUCHUNGEN ZUR PHYSIOLOGISCHEN MORPHOLOGIE DER THIERE. II. ORGANBILDUNG UND WACHSTHUM. By Dr. _Jacques Loeb_. Mit 2 Tafeln in Lithographie und 9 Figuren im Text. Würzburg: Georg Hertz. 1892.

Dr. Jacques Loeb formerly of Zürich and lately returned from the Zoological station at Naples has been appointed Professor at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Former publications of his were reviewed in _The Monist_ I, No. 2, p. 300. The present pamphlet is a continuance of his investigations in physiological morphology. Some of his experiments are made with _Antennularia antennina_ (a hydroid polyp) and the author describes how without mutilation, simply by giving the creature a fixed position he succeeded in making it develop certain organs in certain places, thus proving gravitation to be an important factor in determining the growth of certain limbs. Dr. Loeb adds a few articles on the dependence of the longitudinal growth and also of the regeneration of Tubularia upon the concentration of the salt-water. His experiments with _Ciona intestinalis_ (a solitary ascidia) prove that (1) a section in the side of the oral orifice as well as of the anus will cause the formation of ocelli on the margin of the section, (2) after an extirpation of the central nervous system the reflexes continue although with a higher threshold of the stimulus, and (3) the ciona is capable of developing the central nervous system again.

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DAS DASEIN ALS LUST, LEID, UND LIEBE. Die altindische Weltanschauung in neuzeitlicher Darstellung. Ein Beitrag zum Darwinismus. Mit 2 Tondrucken, 24 Zeichnungen und 10 Tabellen. By Dr. _Hübbe-Schleiden_. Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke & Sohn, 1891.

The author of this book is Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden, editor of _The Sphinx_, a monthly magazine published in Germany which professes to “lay down historically and experimentally the supersensible World-Conception upon a monistic basis.” Love of Mysticism is the main feature of _The Sphinx_ as well as Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden’s book. _The Sphinx_ contains reports of cases of telepathy and is quite serious in investigating the spook of a haunted house. The present book contains the author’s confession of faith. The symbols by which he depicts his world-conception reveal a cabalistic taste, and we believe that the illustrations will be rather repugnant to the man of science, as they give the impression of fantasticism. The main idea of the book is to modernise the old Hindoo view that “Kama” desire or _Lust_ is the ground of all being, as is said in the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad (IV, 4, 5): “Man consists entirely of desire (_Kama_); as is his desire, so is his will (_Kratu_); as is his will, so is his life (_Karma_, i. e., activity); as is his life, so is his fate.”

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden rejects the Hindoo view of a migration of soul in so far as it suggests the idea of something personal; he prefers to speak of a transformation of soul. This, he says, has been and it may be called “metaphysical Darwinism”, and we must confess that the nucleus of the idea touches the most vital point of all the problems of life. We cannot explain ethics and the ethical instinct of man without taking into consideration that man lives and aspires for something that will outlast his individual existence. The author says: “Why do you strive for something higher, for perfection, for completion or whatever your aim may be called? Why all that, if you imagine that your individuality has only this one life upon earth and you can realise only a very small part of what you strive for? Why all your trouble, if the main thing is in vain?” We agree with the author that our moral instinct, our ideals and aspirations which are most powerful realities in life point to a life beyond the grave, they indicate that death is no finality and evolution teaches us that our souls actually continue to exist. Our souls in their individual features are parts only of the whole evolution of our race and these very individual features of our souls can be and will be preserved in the future generations.

Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden’s book is characteristic of a strange tendency of our time to combine the results of modern science with the old notions of occultism. There is in it a psychological and ethical truth overgrown with a fanciful imagination.

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MAX MÜLLER AND THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. A Criticism. By _William Dwight Whitney_, Professor in Yale University. New York: D. Appleton and Company. 1892.

The Professors W. D. Whitney and F. Max Müller are not on good terms. They do not only disagree on several fundamental and many minor points, concerning the science of language, but their warfare, as is well known, is at the same time of a personal nature. The present little volume is a criticism of the new edition of Max Müller’s “Science of Language.” The great Yale philologist recognising that this work of his antagonistic Oxford colleague “is still the principal and most authoritative text-book of that study,” and noting that “its author has gained no new light from the criticisms that have been made upon his work,” feels called upon to warn the reader that “it may not be trusted where it is untrustworthy and so do harm to the science which it was intended to help.” The title of the book, according to Professor Whitney, ought to be “Facts and Fancies in Regard to Language and Other Related Subjects.”

Schleicher says: “Languages are natural organisms which, without being determinable by the will of man, grew and developed themselves in accordance with fixed laws.... Its method is on the whole and in general the same with that of the other natural sciences.” Professor Whitney censures Max Müller for calling the first part of Schleicher’s proposition “sheer mythology,” and then adopting the inference made therefrom considering the science of language as a physical science. Now it is true that the expression “organism” must not be taken literally; languages are not animals or plants, but they have some quality that is comparable to animals and plants. Their life and the development of their life is in many respects analogous to the life of organisms. Professor Whitney regards language as “a body of conventional signs for ideas” and protests against Prof. Max Müller’s usage of the word “conventional” as if it implied “a convention of people gathered to discuss and decide on the words and forms by which conceptions should be represented.” In contradistinction to Max Müller who holds that philology is a physical science, Professor Whitney regards it as an historical science. “Physical science,” says Max Müller, “deals with the works of God, historical science with the works of man.” Thus optics is a physical science, painting an historical science. Whitney declares that individuals initiate changes and the community either accepts and uses them, making them language by its use or rejects and annuls them by refusing to use them. In one word Max Müller says language is φύσει, a product of nature, and Whitney says it is θέσει, an institution of man. We believe that Professor Whitney stands almost alone in his conception of language.

Another no less important point is Professor Whitney’s objection to Prof. Max Müller’s proposition of the Identity of Language and Thought. Here Professor Whitney will find many supporters for his case; but we must add that Prof. Max Müller does not exactly mean what he says. He means by identity inseparableness. It is not so much Max Müller’s position that should be attacked as his misleading terminology. Concerning the origin of language Professor Whitney finds an instructive parallel in the beginnings of writing which were mutually intelligible signs, or in the written language of mathematics. “So we do no longer see,” he says, “the two and three strokes in our figures 2 and 3, although they are really there disguised from view.” This is a good simile, and undoubtedly _cum grano salis_ true. But it is rather strange that Professor Whitney should find Noiré’s theory of the origin of language “utterly fantastic.”

These are fundamental differences. There are some more, less important points such as the etymology of king being the Sanskrit _janaka_. Max Müller proposes a very improbable reason for the change of meaning in the Lat. _fagus_, O. Germ. _boka_ (beech), Greek _phegos_, Lat. _quercus_, and Germ. _foraha_ (fir). Professor Whitney might have mentioned that a more probable reason for this change has been proposed of late by those who seek the home of the Aryans in Europe. A migrating people would naturally have called in their old home the beech, in their new the oak “a tree with edible fruit.” The same method is applicable to explain the change of meaning in _forah-a-quercus_ which means in northern countries a fir and in Italy an oak.

Professor Whitney sums up his case as follows (p. 77): he finds “language study ... declared on transparently false grounds, to be a physical science, and language an existence which man had no part in making and changing; dialectic growth misunderstood, families of language regarded as exceptional, and a ‘Turanian’ barathrum arranged to catch all little-known varieties of speech; antecedent unity of dialect taught in one case and denied in another; a word held to be killed by the least mispronunciation; _conventional_ explained to mean ‘voted by a convention’; thought and its expression viewed as inseparable, and even identical; the origin of language seemingly ascribed to an instinctive ding-dong of the tongue—and so on; to complete the list would be almost to give a table of principal contents of the two volumes—and a style of discussion used throughout which indicated that the author was playing with his subject rather than investigating it seriously.... The book is not science, but literature. Taken as literature, it is of high rank, as the admiration of the public sufficiently testifies; its author has a special gift for interesting statement and illustration, for lending a charm to the subjects he discusses; and he carries captive the judgments of his hearers and of many of his readers. He is a born _littérateur_.”

Professor Whitney concludes: “Now as heretofore, I rest my defense on not the just intent alone, but the real substantial justice of my criticisms; if they are unfounded, I deserve reprehension for making them; if they are right, then there is nothing, either in the degree of importance of the subjects to which they relate, or in the personality against whom they are directed, to call for their condemnation.”

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SEIFENBLASEN. Moderne Märchen. By _Kurd Lasswitz_. Hamburg and Leipsic: Leopold Voss. 1890.

“Märchen,” in the province of science, we are inclined to believe are a prize problem for our modern poets. Who will solve it? Kurd Lasswitz has made an attempt and considering the great difficulty of the problem, we are not inclined to criticise him. The author, who has worked in scientific fields and has proved his ability as a close student, exhibits in these “soap-bubbles” a fertile imagination and poetic invention. Most of his sketches fall short of the ideal märchen of science as we conceive it, but their reading is suggestive and deserves the attention of those whose disposition favors the creation of a middle ground between science and poetry.

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FOOTNOTES:

[66] Ziehen declares (p. 129) that the problem of physiological psychology consists in reducing the different forms of thinking up to the most complex argumentation to simple associations of ideas and its laws. Wundt says, that there are many psychical idea-combinations which cannot be explained simply by association of ideas. So, Ziehen continues (p. 130), Wundt assumes above idea associations a special faculty of the soul called apperception, which serves now as attention, now as will, but is in either case a metaphysical faculty of the soul, the active subject which independent of mechanical causality is said to be the cause of these phenomena.—I do not think that anyone who knows Wundt will accept this as a fair representation of his views.

PERIODICALS.

REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.

CONTENTS: December, 1891. No. 192

UN PROBLÈME D’ACOUSTIQUE PSYCHOLOGIQUE. By _L. Dauriac_.

LES ORIGINES DE NOTRE STRUCTURE INTELLECTUELLE ET CÉRÉBRALE.
II. L’ÉVOLUTIONNISME. By _A. Fouillée_.

LÉONARD DE VINCI ARTISTE ET SAVANT. By _G. Séailles_.

SUR LES DESSINS D’ENFANTS. By _J. Passy_.

SUR UN CAS D’INHIBITION PSYCHIQUE. By _A. Binet_.

CONTENTS: January, 1892. No. 193.

LE PROBLÈME DE LA VIE. By _Dunan_.

LA MALADIE DU PESSIMISME. By _B. Pérez_.

PHILOSOPHES ESPAGNOLS DE CUBA: F. VARELA, J. DE LA LUZ. By
_J.-M. Guardia_.

VARIÉTÉS: LE PROBLÈME D’ACHILLE. By _J. Mouret_.

CONTENTS: February, 1892. No. 194.

LES MOUVEMENTS DE MANÈGE CHEZ LES INSECTES. By _A. Binet_.

LE PROBLÈME DE LA VIE (2nd article). By _Dunan_.

PHILOSOPHES ESPAGNOLS DE CUBA (concluded). _J.-M. Guardia_.

REVUE GÉNÉRALE: JUSTICE ET SOCIALISME, D’APRÈS LES PUBLICATIONS
RÉCENTES. By _Belot_.

One of the problems of the unique and great work of Carl Stumpf’s “Tonpsychologie” is the subject of L. Dauriac’s essay. The question is when several sounds enter the ear at the same time, the plurality of which is not directly known, do you have your information through an inner sense? Does every unit of the irritation correspond to a distinct unit of sensation? Is there in consciousness a simultaneousness of sensations similarly as outside of consciousness there is a simultaneousness of vibrations? M. Dauriac maintains that Stumpf’s question can be answered only on the ground of metaphysical postulates, and if preconceived solutions are to be excluded, it must be considered as insoluble.

Alfred Fouillée, in his second article on the origin of our intellectual and cerebral structure, which treats on evolutionism, comes to the conclusion that the hypothesis which in the most simple way explains the agreement of thoughts and objects is the doctrine of a radical unity generally called Monism.

J. Passy notes certain characteristic and psychologically interesting features of the drawings of children.