Chapter XV: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (5)

Monism is decidedly theistic although not anthropotheistic. It is monotheistic in so far as it recognises that the all-existence in which we live and move and have our being is the ἙΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΝ, the One and All. But there is not the slightest reason for the theory, and there are sufficient reasons against it, that the universe is possessed of a huge world-ego, that it is a person or a mind.

We maintain on the one hand that the laws of nature are not designs arranged With consciously preconceived purposes. Yet on the other hand, we do not forget, that the world-order possesses quite definite features and that the course of evolution runs in a very unmistakable direction. We can plainly decipher its character, and the great religious teachers of mankind have with a truly prophetic instinct proclaimed the ethical injunctions to be derived therefrom—injunctions which, millenniums after them, science has discovered to be founded in the nature of things.

God is no mind, yet God is mentality, the source of all mind: God is not a spirit, but he is spirituality. The subjectivity of the universe from which all consciousness rises is part of his being, and whatever that subjectivity, considered as a whole, be or be not, that much is certain, that in grandeur it corresponds to the objectivity of the world. It does not think in symbols as a man does; it is not a mind: but it exists nevertheless. Whatever it is like we learn from the revelation of its appearance in objective existence, from the cosmic order, the laws of nature, and the moral ideas of mankind.

Knowledge of nature means knowledge of God, for nature is God as he appears and the objectivity of being is the revelation of God.

We would not limit God to the subjectivity of nature: God is both subjectivity and objectivity combined. He is that All-power that is, was, and will be, thus being the ultimate authority of conduct.

God is not a mind, he is more than a mind; God is not a system of symbols, he is the reality symbolised in mind. He is not a person, he is super-personal.

He who does not see that the God of monism is greater than the God of anthropotheism, had better believe in a personal God, until he appreciates the truth that God is not personal but super-personal. For after all anthropotheism is nearer the truth than atheism, for atheism (well understood, the atheism of our definition above) is a moral nihilism devised to shake off all ethical obligation so as to make the lust of the moment and the pleasure of the individual the supreme rule of action.

Monism, accordingly, does not leave the problem of theism where it was before. Monism proves that God is not to be conceived in the likeness of man, but the reverse: man, being a system of symbols representing the world, is to be conceived as having been made or rather as having originated in the likeness of God. God is the original, man is the copy. God is the whole, man is the part, in which the whole finds a more or less correct representation. The picture is not perfect, but the grandest duty a man has is the constant approach to a greater perfection. Man is the temporal, God is the eternal. Man is limited, God is the infinite.

EDITOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4.

[42] Spontaneous motion (as here defined) does not mean action without a cause; nor does the spontaneity of the cart exclude the co-operation of other spontaneities (_e. g._ the attraction of the earth) entering as factors in bringing about the final result.

[43] This theory of pleasure and pain was first set forth in an editorial article of No. 120 of _The Open Court_, which has been republished in the chapter “Pleasure and Pain,” pp. 338-345, of _The Soul of Man_. A correct view of the nature of pleasure and pain is of great importance, especially in ethics. Notwithstanding the palpable erroneousness of the old view, several articles written by prominent authors have appeared of late, that continue in the old strain without taking notice of the criticism that overthrows the basis of their theories.

[44] _Italics are ours._

[45] This same position is maintained with equal vigor in Professor Romanes’s latest work _Darwin and After Darwin_, pp. 412-442. The Open Court Publishing Co., 1892.

LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.

I.

FRANCE.

Dr. Paul Sollier has just published, in the Bibliothéque Charcot-Debove,[46] a new and excellent work, _Les troubles de la memoire_. This work is not identical in its purpose with that of M. Ribot; it corrects the latter in certain points, completes and corroborates it in others. M. Sollier set out to discuss this question solely from a medical standpoint, which was intentionally passed over by M. Ribot, but he has also necessarily touched upon its psychological aspects, and, as he informs us himself, he was obliged on the whole to make a medico-psychological study of the question.

The subject is a vast one; one could include in it aphasia and all the weaknesses resulting from the destruction of the brain-centres, whether those of motion or of sensation. M. Sollier has taken the pains to reduce it, however, to definite limits. He studies especially the subject of acquired amnesia (diminutive changes and disaggregations of the memory). He does not consider the subject of congenital amnesia, which is an absence and not a loss of memory. Strictly considered, the only cases of true amnesia, or _organic_ amnesia, are those which result from the destruction of the nerve-centres, since in this case there is an absolute loss of the power of forming mental images, and not simply an enfeebling or forgetting of them, which is characteristic of _functional_ amnesia. From a clinical standpoint amnesia exists only in the last case. Though the effect may be the same in both cases, the causes are not identical.

Clinical investigation cannot, however, overlook the diminutive changes which take place in the memory and which, as early as 1817, were called by Louyer-Villermay dysmnesia, and which are always closely allied to organic modifications of the brain. As regards amnesia itself, it is important to distinguish simple amnesia from retrogressive and progressive amnesia. M. Sollier explains the motive causes of these different conditions with great lucidity, and renders them easy of comprehension by means of ingenious illustrations.

I call attention to the information he gives us as to the conditions under which a revival of mental images takes place, p. 30; to his criticism of Ribot’s opinion, according to which the power of correctly locating events in the scale of time is the true characteristic of psychical memory: it is quite enough if it reproduces events as in the past, that is to say if there exists a conscious knowledge which shows that the mental conception belongs to the past, or is, simply, a remembrance, p. 35 and 40; to his remarks on the strengthening of mental images due to the repetition of remembrances, the necessary sequence of which is that a weakening of old memories follows the destruction of accumulated mental images, p. 48; to his explanation of the processes of retrogressive amnesia (coming suddenly after an attack of vertigo, a blow, etc.) which he bases upon a supposition of a group of mental conceptions in touch with one another, in such a way that the loss of one leading conception in a group deprives this group of sufficient consistency to form a conscious synthesis, p. 70.

As regards the classifications of amnesia M. Sollier censures that of M. Ribot as being neither openly psychological nor openly clinical, and of taking successively as bases the extent of an observed phenomenon, its evolution, its location in time. Moreover, from a clinical standpoint it has led to a joining together of totally incongruous disorders. M. Sollier therefore rejects it, and contents himself with adopting first of all, with M. Falret, the natural classification of general amnesia and of partial amnesia. Moreover, in taking account of the systematising of lost remembrances, he proposes to make a distinction as to the two varieties of systematised (functional) and of non-systematised (organic) amnesia, considered from the purely psychological standpoint, p. 59. We should thus have, firstly, the classification of general amnesia, including (A) true organic amnesia (destruction of the centre of mental images), and, under the classification of the systematised, (B) functional, or apparent, amnesia (imperfect performance of the functions of the centres): this latter subdividing into two groups, (_a_) amnesia with its varieties (_a´_) simple, (_b´_) retrogressive, (_c´_) progressive, and (_b_) paramnesia: (_a´_) that of locality, (_b´_) that of exactness; to which it is proper to add (_c_) dysmnesia, which is organic-functional. Secondly, the classification of partial amnesia whether systematised or not, which may be either organic or functional. M. Sollier abandons, moreover, every pathological or etiological classification as being exceedingly unsatisfactory. In the presence of a patient, he justly remarks, the physician can only employ semiology.—I will not enter here into the details of the inquisitor-like investigation entered upon by the author. I must even proceed without stopping through the observations intended for medical men, which form the second part of the work, but I judge that every reader will also find therein many facts which may prove of interest. After having read it, one is more impressed than ever with the importance and delicacy of the motive forces of the memory, in noting the frequency and the varieties even of its sources of weakness. M. Sollier has the credit of pointing them out—in the shape of “defects in synthetical power” and in “will power”—in the sources of weakness where one had not been accustomed to look for them. It would be interesting, he thinks, to find out what part amnesia may perhaps take in the pathogeny of certain nervous disorders, and the influence which it has on their evolution. Specialists for the insane might find therein a new subject of study, and psychology will profit, on the other hand, by that which clinical experience offers it. Is not its main object to learn to understand life as a unit at the same time that it analyses it as a diversity?

* * * * *

When one passes from a book like that of M. Sollier to the work of M. l’Abbé MAURICE DE BAETS, _Les bases de la morale et du droit_,[47] one is impressed by the change of method. It has become impossible for us to consider pathology as unallied to questions of morality; and we have accomplished this great object of studying matters pertaining to the moral world, the evolution of law, without seeking our base of support in a religious faith or in a metaphysical affirmation. Even M. l’Abbé de Baets himself declares emphatically that he desires to adopt only one starting point from among those we are acquainted with,—the verification of facts,—and truly he shows a good will and knowledge; nevertheless the ground which he considers so firm has, as we believe, no stability. All seems strange to us, if I may so speak, in books of this description. The tone which is peculiar to them, the nature of the facts cited, the progress of the reasoning, impeach them just as surely as the blue color of his costume reveals afar off an inhabitant of the Celestial Empire. I am not an impassioned adversary of the clergy; far from it. I appreciate their intentions and esteem their persons as one should, but I am unable to share their opinions, and I consider indeed that they deceive themselves when they think that faith has ever given to the world an absolute assurance. It has not given it because it has not proved sufficient. Mankind, variable and vacillating though it may be, does not change its beliefs because of fickleness of heart: its mental evolution takes place too slowly for that, and is also too painful. The Catholic church of to-day has adopted as its watch-word the return to St. Thomas of Aquinas; it will gain by this unity of effort, without succeeding however in leading back the minds of men to its point of view. The diverse ways we follow tend doubtless as a matter of fact toward the same objective point, and run more or less in the same direction; but humanity scarcely ever passes back again over the paths which it has once traversed.

* * * * *

We have another little volume by M. LOMBROSO, _Les applications de l’anthropologie criminelle_; a sequel to _Nouvelles recherches_, which I have mentioned before. We find here interesting pages in regard to transportation and reform schools, and a criticism of the new theories of the penal code (Garofalo, Tarde, Sighele, Onanoff and Blorg, Ferri)—a part of the question considered in the Congress. A chapter indeed is devoted to the subject of criminal anthropology in modern literature, in regard to which it seems to me M. Lombroso always makes more of a question than is desirable, but which he well understands how to criticise. Then follow several pages on the criminal type in art, after a work of Dr. Edward Lefort; then comes a description of anthropological instruments and methods. I will not affirm that this last work brings us much of novelty; it is chiefly a new and energetic presentation of his views, and M. Lombroso has no doubt whatever that by dint of striking the nail upon the head he will succeed in driving it into the wall of his adversaries.

* * * * *

The work of M. B. BOURDON, _L’expression des emotions et des tendances dans le langage_, is certainly one of the most curious books one can read. He treats in an original manner of phonetical questions, which are less rife in France than in England and Germany, as to what sounds signify, or speech; what is their worth in intensity, elevation, form or quality, duration; what phenomena are shown by successions of intensity, of elevation, of elementary articulation, of syllables, of words, etc., of duration; what are the relations of these phenomena to versification and what comparison one can make between writing and speech: such are the problems particularly studied, at times with the aid of very simple but instructive facts culled from experience.

These studies—I need scarcely add that they are comparative ones—are of interest for various reasons. They lead up to new ideas of grammar and of language, and furnish arguments for a reform in orthography of which M. Bourdon is a very warm partisan. His readers will not be slow to notice for the matter of that, that he is in regard to this frankly revolutionary; and it may seem paradoxical to say to them, for example, that “the distinction between analytical and synthetical languages is absolutely artificial, and could only be produced through our bad systems of writing.” Writing, M. Bourdon indeed remarks, introduces separations in places where spoken language makes no pause. The English write _I will go_, they pronounce it _Iwillgo_. The analysis which pertains to writing masks the true cohesion of the spoken language, and “if in the past all series of articulations had been written as a single word which were in fact pronounced as a single word, we should not have known the error which consists in opposing certain languages classed as synthetical to others which we class as analytical.” The argument is perhaps not a decisive one, and in the neo-Latin languages, for example, one can scarcely deny that the analysis of the written language has conformed to the work of decomposition of the antique forms, so as to adapt itself to the new groupings of their essential elements, groupings wherein these elements remain variable because speech separates them effectively, in many cases by interpolating governing words or others.

But it is not my intention to enter into these detailed discussions. I leave M. Bourdon in further calling attention to his last chapter, _Ecriture_. Persons curious as to graphology will find in it some good ideas concerning this method of “character reading.” The author does not tell everything, and I have a suspicion that he greatly despises certain signs valued by the graphologists, and arrived at empirically, but we should note what he has actually said.

* * * * *

Under the title, _Le monde physique, Essai de conception expérimentale_, M. Dr. JULIEN PIOGER offers to the public a sketch of a world-system. This system is summed up in the expression of “Universal Solidarity,” and is based on the idea of infinitely minute matter-particles, or “infinitesimals,” the mutual relations of which, and their equilibrium, constitute the machinery of the universe. The atomic-mechanical hypothesis, says M. Pioger, is wrong in resolving matter into perfected differential particles and in assigning to its atoms qualities which make of them either true material corpuscules or a real entity, “a thing in itself.” On the contrary, far from intending to assign a limit to materiality, the hypothesis of infinitesimals confines itself to limiting the conception which we may have of it. The infinitesimal corresponds to the infinitely small, that is to say to the non-perfected, to the non-differentiable, beyond our cognisance and our perceptivity; it expresses the most reduced condition of the affinities which constitute matter; it is the expression of the infinitesimal existence of that which we call motion, extension, ponderability, under the general name of matter. Now the most simple thing which can be conceived of in the physical world, is the _couple_ formed by the essential equipoise of two infinitesimals. In developing the couple it becomes possible to form the universe in all its great variety. The solidarity of the parts in the whole appears as the essential condition of existence of all that which Is—the necessary condition of all individuality.

In conclusion I call attention to two new editions, one the well-known work of M. BERNARD PÉREZ, _Les trois premières années de l’enfant_, fifth edition, revised and supplied with an introduction by Mr. James Sully; the other _Les functions du cerveau_, by M. JULES SOURY, a work highly esteemed, embodying the most recent researches.

LUCIEN ARRÉAT.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Rueff, publisher.

[47] This book and the following ones are published by F. Alcan.

II.

GERMANY.

One of our foremost psychiatrists, Professor v. Krafft-Ebing of Vienna, says in his celebrated text-book on psychiatry: “If Pedagogy made a more serious study of the character of man in his psychopathological relations, many of the mistakes and severities of our system of education would be removed, many an unsuitable choice of vocation would be left unmade, and thus many a psychical existence rescued.”

Any one who is at all familiar with the most important doctrines of the diseased phenomena of mental life, and who knows how frequently psychical disturbances of a more or less serious nature occur during childhood, will fully agree with Krafft-Ebing, and will only regret that pedagogy, in this important direction, has completely neglected its task.

Although lately the necessity of psychiatric knowledge for the pedagogue has been insisted upon in professional circles, for instance, by Professor STRUEMPELL in his _Pedagogic Pathology_ (comp. _The Monist_ II, 106), yet instruction in this department occupies a wholly subsidiary place in pedagogic education, and has not been made as it should have been, an organic part of the same. The writer of these lines has accordingly discussed this subject in a special treatise, maintaining that the most important diseased phenomena of mental life might be treated as a part of pedagogic psychology (comp. _The Monist_ I, 619).

The demands made were met in different ways. While the English and American press accepted these demands without reserve (for instance, in HALL’S _Pedagogical Seminary_, I, 297), in Germany there has been more caution displayed, inasmuch as the opposing difficulties were regarded as greater than they probably were (Professor REIN’S _Pädagogische Studien_, 1892, Heft I).

We have, however, simply to call to mind the doctrine which more than twenty years ago Maudsley in his “Physiology and Pathology of the Mind” laid such special emphasis upon, that psychic laws are the same in healthy and diseased phenomena, only that they do not operate under the same conditions and therefore produce different symptoms. Far from its being true, therefore, that the introduction of psychopathology into psychology can be opposed by any especially well-founded objections, such a procedure will, on the contrary, be found to be, just as Maudsley said, an appropriate and absolutely indispensable auxiliary of the study of this science. And that which was emphasised by Maudsley, and lately also by MUENSTERBERG in the treatise already discussed in _The Monist_ (II, 289), _On the Problems and Methods of Psychology_ (Leipsic, 1891, Abel), Ziehen has done in his “Outlines of Physiological Psychology” in a manner which will be full of suggestions for the pedagogue (comp. _The Monist_ I, 598).

To be sure, the work of Ziehen is very far from supplying all that the pedagogue needs. We have in this work a vast mass of valuable observations, which will have to be elaborated in a manner that accords with the needs of pedagogy, if this science is to derive any material profit from psychiatry. For the bibliography of this subject we shall refer the reader to a former correspondence of ours (_The Monist_ II, 103), and select at present for examination one province only,—a province which is deserving of especial consideration, inasmuch as the phenomena which occur in it are phenomena which most frequently confront the pedagogist, and are most likely to be overlooked by the untrained eye. We refer to the _psychopathic subsidiary phenomena_ of DR. KOCH, by which expression this author comprises all the psychical irregularities, be they natural or acquired, affecting the life of the human personality, which, though not even in the severest cases amounting to actual mental disorders, yet in the most favorable instances so affect the persons afflicted that they appear as lacking the full possession of mental normality and capacity. The second part of Koch’s work, mentioned in _The Monist_ in the place above cited, has just now appeared. (Ratisbon, 1892, Otto Maier). Having discussed in the first part of his work inherited and chronic psychopathic subsidiary phenomena, the author now proceeds to discuss acquired subsidiary factors, and holds out the prospect of a third part, on the appearance of which we shall have occasion again to discuss the entire work from a different point of view. For the present, only the pedagogic aspect of the question interests us. On many readers, Koch’s book must have made the impression,—to judge from his concluding remarks,—that the author shares Lombroso’s point of view, and to very many pedagogues such a position would be, from the very outset, a bad recommendation, for it would necessarily, in the very nature of the case, involve the pedagogue in great embarrassment, in the same way as it has involved the philosophical jurist. But embarrassment is no reason why we should close our ears to the truth, and if Lombroso should be right in all his teachings, pedagogy would also be obliged to accommodate its doctrines to his. Upon the whole, however, Koch is opposed to him. Thus when he says: “What I commend Lombroso for is that he has observed much, has collected rich materials, and has been the source of great incentives in many directions, and has worked suggestively in many ways; what I reproach him with is that he has confounded the healthy with the diseased, and has brought under one and the same category without sufficient and appropriate tests, psychotic phenomena and phenomena which are psychopathically merely of a subsidiary order; what I reject is his theory of degeneration and his peculiar views of philosophy.”

Material, such as Koch and others offer, must first be elaborated into a pedagogic psychopathology—or better still into a pedagogic pathopsychology—before pedagogy, as a whole, can assume in this direction the proper form. Though we consider, now, this preparatory work as indispensable, we can, nevertheless, not think of denying the value of works which, without any profession of far-reaching psychological analysis, put in effective and available form for pedagogy the diseased phenomena of the mental life of children. The first German work of this kind, so far as we know, is from the pen of a Leipsic teacher, GUSTAV SIEGERT, and bears the title _Problematische Kindesnaturen_.[48] This little work is now followed by a more comprehensive treatise, published by a Bremen alienist, Dr. SCHOLZ, already known to the readers of _The Monist_ (II, 104), and bearing the title _Die Characterfehler des Kindes, eine Erziehungslehre für Schule und Haus_.[49] Such books are valuable not only for the observations they offer and the isolated explanations and pedagogic advice they present, but also for the suggestions which the attentive and psychologically cultivated reader can always receive from them.

Like Siegert, Scholz principally shows us isolated child-types wherein diseased qualities play a more or less pronounced rôle. But while the former’s presentation is somewhat journalistic in style, that of the latter is more didactic; although this tendency is not an absolutely rigid one, as the author counts mothers as readers of his book. But if the form of presentation leads one to infer greater profundity in Scholz than in Siegert, this is in still higher degree the case with the arrangement of the material. While Siegert strings his child-pictures loosely together, Scholz arranges them according to real psychological points of view, so that (remarkable to say) the faults of children are discussed, first, in the province of feeling and sentiment, then in that of representation, and finally in that of volition and action. The introductory and concluding chapters show, also, that Scholz attempts to enter more profoundly into the subject than Siegert proposes, and we cherish the hope that, now that this popular work has appeared, Scholz will very soon present us with a strictly scientific book, in which he shall have occasion to deal with some particular points, such as, for instance, falsehood and unchastity, more comprehensively than was perhaps possible in a book intended for his present circle of readers.

With respect, now, to all systematic presentations of pedagogy, psychopathology can, as we have before indicated, never attain in them its proper position, until the above-mentioned preparatory work has been completed. But this fact should not preclude one’s calling especial attention to the importance of this province, at least in some incidental manner.

In such a work as the _Allgemeine Pädagogik_ of ZILLER,[50] for instance, the third edition of which has just been published by F. Mattes of Leipsic, there surely was abundant opportunity to do this—an opportunity which one might say almost amounted to obligation. For Ziller treats hereditary and acquired characteristics in great detail, and such treatment remains necessarily a one-sided one, if abnormal traits are not considered in it. Ziller, with Herbart, demands that individuality always be taken as the starting-point. But how many child-individualities are there, which, in the different periods of their development, may be regarded as fully normal!

The reason of this omission must be looked for partly in the circumstance, that Ziller, as well as the new editor of this otherwise valuable work, belongs to the Herbartian school. If, namely, we compare the psychological literature of the Herbartian school with the publications of French, English, and American writers, or even with the works which in recent times have issued from other philosophical quarters of Germany, it will be unmistakably seen that the pathological conditions of the mind have been little considered by the followers of Herbart. Nor have voices been wanting, that would make Herbart himself responsible for this error. He did not, they say, sufficiently appreciate the importance of the pathological phenomena of mind, and his pupils were in this respect influenced by him. But this reproach will be found, on close examination, to be untenable. Herbart, it is true, did express himself repeatedly against the overestimation of “rare and curious phenomena,” unusual mental states and such things,[51] and his warning is applicable also to our epoch, which produces many psychological works in which remarkable things are to be read but which contribute nothing worth mentioning towards the explanation of even comparatively simple events. Herbart holds, that the psychology of the normal and ordinary states should be the first and principal object of scientific attention; the explanation of much that is extraordinary will then follow. With regard to this latter point, he remarks very positively: “I do not, however, wish by this, to gainsay the value of any real psychological observation. There must be a welcome place in science for every experience.” It will be seen, therefore, that Herbart is not at all far from the point of view of Maudsley and other investigators. We find, in fact, that he mentions repeatedly abnormal mental conditions, and also systematically treats them, even quoting such celebrated alienists as Reil and Pinel (_Text-book of Psychology_, §§ 142-149). The probability is, therefore, that psychopathology would have been properly employed in Herbart’s psychology, if it had been at all elaborated in his day, and its influence would through Herbart have been directly felt in pedagogy, as no pedagogist has made better or more careful use of psychology than he.

But Herbart’s pupils have done no further work in the province pointed out by him. It is true, his psychology has been made use of by physicians like Griesinger and Spielmann, and recently also to some extent by Krafft-Ebing, but the works of these men have had no influence on the psychological text-books of the Herbartian school, and consequently the science has up to the present day exerted no noticeable influence on pedagogy, either in Waitz, in Stoy, or in Ziller. In other pedagogic schools, this has, it is true, also been the case; but in these, who make no pretensions of relying on the teachings of psychology, the sin is more easily pardoned. But this is not the only respect in which Ziller’s _Pedagogy_ is not up to the times. Ziller defined pedagogy as the influences, formed according to ethical points of view, which are brought to bear on the mind of the pupil, and would not admit influences brought to bear on the body, in so far as such should enter into the pedagogic system. This misconception also springs from Ziller’s adherence to the Herbartian school, which represents, as we well know, a metaphysical pluralism; but it is in a still higher degree due to the fact, that in Ziller’s day both the intimate relation between physiological and psychological processes had not been satisfactorily established, and also were not sufficiently known to him. If it were otherwise, his pluralism need by no means have necessarily led him into such one-sidedness, for this metaphysical pluralism does not exclude a monistic conception of _phenomena_; even assuming this doctrine, one may say that motion and feeling are two different but inseparable sides of the same phenomenon. The “real things” produce by their interaction, simultaneously and of necessity, both an inner side and an outer; for which reason one of our foremost psychologists, Volkmann of Volkmar, explicitly terms Herbart’s psychology monistic (_Text-book of Psychology_, second edition, I, 63).

A psychologico-physiological work, from which the new editor of Ziller’s _Pedagogy_ might have extracted many valuable things, is the book of the Italian MOSSO, _On Fatigue_, which has just been translated into German,[52] and which will excite much attention owing to the present active discussion of the question of overwork.

Supplementary to this work I will also mention a little tract by DR. BURGERSTEIN of Vienna, entitled _Die Arbeitskurve einer Schulstunde_.[53] This tract is a lecture, which the author gave at the Seventh International Congress for Hygiene and Demography at London, and in which he seeks to find by statistical methods, the duration of a “school-period”—a very laboriously composed treatise and one difficult to read, but possessed of high interest in psychological and pedagogic respects.

From pedagogy to evolution is but a step, at least it is in Ziller’s development of Herbart’s ideas. It is true, Ziller has taken a decided stand against Darwinism, for Ziller works with two contradictory ideas; but his theory of education possesses points of resemblance and analogy to the Darwin-Haeckel theory of development. According to Ziller, each individual passes, also intellectually, through all the stages of development that mankind at large has passed through, only in a shorter time; and it is in conformity with such succession that the order of the various courses of a pedagogical system is to be arranged. Following Ziller’s precedent, PROFESSOR VAIHINGER, of Halle, in his treatise _Naturforschung und Schule_ (Science and the Schools), has taken up the school-reform initiated by Professor Preyer, and has expressly transferred the fundamental law of biogenesis to pedagogy. How instruction is to be arranged under this point of view, cannot be explained in this letter, which is already long enough. We shall simply remark that the idea has found in Germany a large number of both friends and opponents.

The opponents have recently been joined by a natural scientist, DR. HAMANN, professor of zoology in Göttingen, who has just published a book under the title _Entwicklungslehre und Darwinismus_ (Evolution and Darwinism),[54] in which he does not combat the theory of evolution itself, but simply the Darwin-Haeckelian form of that theory, placing himself in the ranks of His and Hensen. The book appeared almost simultaneously with the fourth edition of HAECKEL’S _Anthropogeny_,[55] but the author, nevertheless, in his supplementary remarks, discusses the “apology” which Haeckel subjoined to his work. Haeckel’s book needs no recommendation in scientific circles; it will be sufficient to state that the work has been subjected to essential alterations, but that its fundamental features have remained the same.

A new psychology, on the Darwinian basis, by Prof. FRITZ SCHULTZE of Dresden, is now in course of publication, entitled _Vergleichende Seelenkunde_ (Comparative Psychology[56]). The first part, which treats of the fundamental principles of physiological psychology, has already appeared. On the completion of the work we shall have occasion to return to it.

CHR. UFER.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] _Problematic Child-natures._ Leipsic, 1890, Robert Vogtländer.

[49] _Faults of Character in Children, A System of Instruction for School and Home._ Leipsic. Eduard Heinrich Mayer.

[50] Compare also, _The Educational Review_ (New York), Vol. II, page 30.

[51] _Psychologie als Wissenschaft_, § 5.

[52] Salomon Hirzel, Leipsic.

[53] Hamburg, 1891, Leopold Voss.

[54] Jena, 1892, Hermann Costenoble.

[55] Leipsic, 1892, Engelmann.

[56] Leipsic, 1892.

CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.

A LETTER FROM MR. HERBERT SPENCER.

_To the Editor of The Monist_:

As I feel it a duty to reserve, for other purposes, the very small power of work now left to me, I am obliged to decline entering upon a controversy. I must leave readers to examine for themselves—little hoping, however, that they will do so.

One point only I wish to note. The use of the expression “forms of thought,” instead of “forms of intuition,” was simply an inadvertence; as will be manifest on observing that though I have used the wrong expression in the note, I have used the right expression in the text (p. 203), as also throughout my criticism of Kant’s doctrine in _The Principles of Psychology_, Part VII, Chapter IV, “The Reasonings of Metaphysicians,” § 399.

HERBERT SPENCER.

LOGIC AS RELATION-LORE.

In the French _Revue Philosophique_, in the August and September 1891 numbers of the same, M. George Mouret has an essay entitled “Mathematical Equality” in the course of which and as though subsidiary to his ostensible purpose he discourses upon the topics of relations and concepts and upon the fundamental elements of logic in general. His essay is really more important as a contribution to logical doctrine than as a treatment of mathematical equality.

The scope of his discourse will be seen by reference to his closing paragraphs in which he sums up what he considers to be the results achieved by him in his essay. Therein, he says that he has “treated of the general theory of the composition of concepts and relations and set the foundations of the logic of analysis and the logic of definition.”

I. THE SPENCERIAN AXIOM.

The determining factor of every philosophical dissertation is of course some very general supposition which is taken as established and which exercises a controlling influence over all the observations of its author.

In this case this determining supposition is found in what M. Mouret calls his “_axiom_ of _symmetry_.” The same is thus stated by him “_Two things which have the same symmetrical relations to a third thing have between them that same relation._”

M. Mouret is not one of those scholars that lack hospitality for other writings than those of their own nationality. From this fault so noticeable in the work of so many of the French scholars M. Mouret himself seems to be free. Indeed so far as regards the previous work done in the domain he sets himself to examine, he accords almost exclusive esteem to the writings of English thinkers. In fact he declares himself so far as regards his present topic a disciple of Mr. Herbert Spencer and puts his “axiom of symmetry” as an adaptation of that maxim of his said master which is of the tenor as follows, viz: “_Things which have a definite relation to the same thing have a definite relation to one another._” This maxim, as Mr. Spencer tells us, was suggested to him by a remark of the late eminent author who is known to the world under the pseudonym of George Eliot, who herself stated it under the form “_Things that have a constant relation to the same thing have a constant relation to each other._”

Those who are well acquainted with the psychology of Mr. Spencer will recognise that this maxim of his is made by him the very backbone of all his observations upon reasoning. If it has the validity which he imputes to it, it has an importance which it will be hard to overestimate, but if on the contrary, and as we shall submit, it is in every form in which it has been stated, certainly unsound and misleading, it is high time that its virtue should be brought into question.

The _dicta_ of the masters whether they first enounce the same or whether they only give currency thereto by their ratification are always proper subjects for special scrutiny. There is always found a disposition to accept them on their mere _ipse dixit_ without any attempt at criticism or independent observation. This is decisively _not_ the scientific mood or mode. The spirit of that modern leaven that is currently referred to under the name of Science is characteristically a critical one, and one that is considerably irreverent in regard to the authority of mere personality. In this it is happily distinguished from the spirit that has marked the past history of what may be called the “regular” schools of philosophy.

M. Mouret is not alone in his inadvertent esteem for the maxim in question. In the issue of _Mind_ for October 1891 Mr. L. T. Hobhouse publishes an article entitled “Induction and Deduction,” in which he gives an undue appraisal to the worth of the maxim under consideration, even though the author of the article seems to be well aware that said maxim stands in much need of qualification.

We venture to say that this maxim in all its forms has gained whatever currency it has enjoyed in virtue alone of the incompetent comprehension that too generally prevails in regard to the nature and characteristics of that sort of things that are relations.

A notable example of this lack of comprehension is supplied in the logical treatise of Mr. Carveth Read, a work ostensibly founded upon the significance of the category of relation and yet in which at the very start the author tells us that a relation is something which is indefinable.

II. IMPORTANCE OF RELATION-LORE.

This topic of relations is one that is neglected in a degree that reflects no credit upon the pretensions of those who undertake to instruct others in matters logical and philosophical. The thing itself is in the thinking of every one and the term and its derivations are in universal use. They are used as though they imported an idea that no one was liable to misapply or to misunderstand. The truth, however, is that of all the stock terms in our graver discourse this very word “relation” and its derivatives are the ones that are oftenest heard and read without any lucidity of mind concerning their proper intent as a part of their context. They are used with an assortment of meanings and non-meanings that are quite distracting to try to follow and quite vain to try and reconcile. In particular the difference between _relationship_ and _relation_, between the _ground_ or _foundation_ of the relation and the relation itself, between the plural fact, whether of tendency, interaction, transition, or _status_, that is a co-condition with the relations, and the relations that co-condition that same plural fact, is constantly ignored in thinking and in the expression thereof, to the more or less confusion in, and inconsequence of, the whole discourse delivered.

It is no slight commendation of the perspicacity of M. Mouret to observe that he has discovered that the way towards a resolution of the problems he sets himself to work out lies through what to him appears the altogether unexplored regions of relation-lore, for it is evident that he regards himself as a pioneer in this field.

III. WORKS ON RELATION-LORE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

In observing this we cannot but hold M. Mouret unfortunate in not having been put upon better lines of inquiry. He seems to have been wholly unaware of the treasures of investigation in this domain that exist in the English language and that for many years have been available for the student. His case in this respect is seen in the exaltation which he gives to the semi-popular discourses of Mr. Spencer and Mr. Read, as contrasted with the profound researches of DeMorgan and Boole and their disciples. It is evident that he has judged concerning the comparative quality of the various lines of English research not after an examination of his own, but after the current popular renown. For example, he speaks of the work of DeMorgan and Boole as presenting “only a simple mode of representing some of the logical laws” and as being “surrounded with a formidable and complicated apparel which disguises the value of their tentatives.”

Since M. Mouret is manifestly an earnest student of the topic of relation-lore this language shows that he has at best only a second or third-hand knowledge of what DeMorgan and Boole really did. He ought to have known that in the recondite field of research in question all really competent treatment of the same would be very far from having any “popular” quality. For a man to discourse of relation-lore in ignorance of what DeMorgan, the very father of the “Logic of Relatives,” accomplished is like discoursing of Darwinism in ignorance of “The Origin of Species.”

We opine that when M. Mouret shall have consulted the great memoir of DeMorgan in the tenth volume of the “Cambridge Philosophical Transactions” or better, when he shall have become acquainted with the more developed work of Mr. C. S. Peirce, to whom beyond question relation-lore is most indebted for its present state of progress, he will have a better esteem for the value of the “tentatives” of DeMorgan and Boole and their disciples. Mr. Peirce has published three principal papers on the subject in question. The first of these was published in 1870 in the ninth volume of the “Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.” Then in 1880 and in 1884, while Mr. Peirce was lecturer on logic at Johns Hopkins University, he published in the _American Journal of Mathematics_ two papers dealing more or less extensively with relation-lore. One of these his “_Hauptwerk_” as it is called by Professor Schroeder of Carlsruhe, appears in the third volume of the journal mentioned and the other in the seventh volume of the same. Mr. Peirce was one of the contributors to our new American “Century Dictionary,” and in that work under the definitions of Relation and Relativity there appears a summary treatment of the subject which is as we take it the work of Mr. Peirce and which might have given to M. Mouret hints which he would have appreciated. Also the editor of this magazine in his article “Are there Things in Themselves?” in the January 1892 number thereof incidentally touches upon the topic under consideration in such a way as to correct some of the more inveterate misconceptions.

IV. M. MOURET’S THEORY OF RELATIONS.

The article of M. Mouret is in so many points so excellent a discourse that the chief reflection one is inclined to make is that upon its own principles it ought to have been better. He seems to have been widely awake to the primordial nature of relations as philosophical data. He says: “Every notion or relation is a _function_ of relations more directly known and enters as a relational element into other relations less proximate to the common sources,” and also that “every concept or notion ought to resolve into a group of relations.”

By such tokens as these we naturally look to see M. Mouret making it his very first concern to explain fully the nature of those primordial data that are relations. Indeed he seems himself to be fully aware of this natural expectation for he says: “What then is a relation; what is a concept or notion? To this double question an answer is necessary and a precise answer not consisting in the substitution of one form of words for another form of words bearing the same meaning or no meaning at all.”

We cannot however find that he has done this. Instead of it and almost while saying that every concept and notion ought to resolve in a group of relations he announces, “What I have to examine is the constitution, the structure of these _relation-generating groups_.” Thus he starts with a synthesis when what is needed is analysis. He starts with supposing a group of relational elements indeterminate in number and proceeds to inquire as to the conditions that must subsist with regard to them, respectively and in combination, in order that a _definite_ relation may subsist as to a pair of the relational elements. These conditions he finds to be four in number. First, he finds that—

“It is necessary that every one of the terms of the group should be connected one to the other by _definite relations_; that between any two terms there must always be intermediate terms that connect them in a continuous way.” This he calls the condition of “Solidarity.” Secondly, he finds that there must obtain the condition of _Co-Existence_. By co-existence he intends—

“Not a definite co-existence in time, that is to say, a relation of simultaneity or concomitance, nor yet that established co-existence which constitutes the causal relation, but an indefinite co-existence independent of the order of its terms and of all consideration of time or duration.”

Having thus supposed his group all well stocked with relations, he proceeds to relegate most of them to the limbo of inconsequence by invoking a _principle_ which he calls the principle of _indetermination_. By virtue of this principle in every particular case the _particular determinations_ of all the terms become indeterminate and those of the intermediate terms doubly so. Thus the supposed facts of the case become fit for the existence of the _Third_ condition, that of _Abstraction_, and for the arising of a general concept or notion.

But corresponding to every concept or notion is its negative or opposite concept or notion. As this negative depends necessarily upon certain _particular determinations_ of the same terms that bear the _particular determinations_ and which being singly indeterminate admit of the positive concept or notion, there necessarily must obtain two systems of singly indeterminate _particular determinations_ relative to but incompatible with one another, and so relative that the negation of one set entails the obtaining of the other set, or in other words either set being negated entails the obtaining of the other set. These facts constitute what M. Mouret calls the _principle_ of _incompatibility_ and involve his _Fourth_ condition of _Relativity_ stated by him as follows:

“All the particular determinations of the extreme terms must
not be compatible with the system and the negation of certain
relations of the system must entail the negation of the
relation which they make between the extreme terms.”

V. REFLECTIONS ON M. MOURET’S THEORY.

Now we cannot regard this as a successful attempt to explain the nature and characteristics of relations, or to unfold the involutions of relation-lore.

We fully realise that if every concept or relation resolves into a group of relations we must in some form or other take what are relations in reality as data to begin with, but this does not prevent us from taking our datum terms for our turn of explanation as not requiring at present any recognition other than as relational elements. What is needful as a prime requisite on the very start of any research in relation-lore is to obtain a clear idea of what is meant by a relation. Meanings are primarily matters of mental status. We have to determine the relation that subsists between the mind and the object through the mediating interpretation of a word, and the mental affection lies nearest and logically comes first. It may very well be that the mental affection requires correction, but this cannot take place until its faults are observed, and these cannot become evident until the mental affection is itself duly understood.

The disciples of that school of logic in which DeMorgan and Boole, both eminent mathematicians, hold so exalted a rank as discoverers, regard cognition as arising in consequence of brain functioning or _mental operation_ and study the results of this operation as yielding their import in dependence upon and only in dependence upon the proper operation in virtue of which they arise.

Now no cognition whatever, even of the most elementary sort, arises except in connection with and in consequence of that operation of the sensibility which is _distinction_. Distinction is of multitudinous and manifold aspects. In all its phases whether it be passive or active it is naught else than the arising or the assigning of relations. The attempt to posit an unqualifiedly absolute—that is, an unqualifiedly unrelated—universe of discourse must be futile and blank, necessarily and insuperably. Any form of notation that pretends to express such a universe of discourse, is only saved, if at all, from being unqualifiedly nonsensical, by standing as antithetical—that is, by being _related_ to forms of notation that express relation and nothing else than relation. This rigorously prime operation of distinction is not only pure relation-ing but it is of that sort of relation-ing that is at once a distinguishing and a conjoining. The “One and the Many” are insuperably implicit therein. Distinction having operated to various extents, and thereby various relations having come into view, we become aware of those items of experience that are objects or facts. Each and every one of these objects or facts are in truth distinguished and are therefore in no strict sense _indiscernible_ from each other, but since no science can possibly obtain in relation to mere particulars we find it useful to disregard various points of distinction that obtain in respect to various objects and facts and to converge our regard upon the points wherein distinction, not absolutely vanishes, but _tends to vanish_.

By this operation, which is _abstraction_, various objects and facts become in mental regard fit and useful to be taken as copies of one another and as indifferent for use in most of the turns of mental life.

There are indeed various relations, objects, and facts, with respect to which no further operation or operations of distinction than the mere distinctions of the time, the place, or the occasion of their various manifestations have been applied nor can without great difficulty be applied. But we are therefore by no means entitled to say that such are in truth irresolvable. Contrarily, and reasoning inductively we are justified in concluding that every relation, object, and fact will under analysis of adequate power resolve without limit into other relations, objects, and facts.

We are not yet prepared to see that the ultimate components of relations, objects, and facts resolve into relations, and nothing but relations, because we are not yet prepared with an explicit idea of the nature and characteristics of these elementary objects.

The study of M. Mouret since it starts with relations combining them under the conditions of Solidarity Co-Existence, Abstraction and Relativity, (which are nothing else than other relations or compounds of relations,) does not seem to us to advance us at all in the most fundamental requisite. He says no more than to say that in order for the groups of relations to generate further definite relations the relations thus grouped together must be related to one another and then that most of these relations must be disregarded.

M. Mouret distinguishes, with respect to a relation three factors, the _Matter_, or the relational elements grouped together, the _Form_, or the order in which the relational elements are arrayed, and the _Foundation_.