Chapter XXV: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (15)

“The Christian faith is not a philosophical system, not a theological dogma and still less the residue of an old superstition, but the immediate and living certainty of the heart concerning the nature of the good and its importance in real life. This faith can be to-day the same as it was in Luther’s, or St. Augustine’s, or the apostles’ time who saw Jesus with their own eyes bodily. If Christianity, did indeed consist of a number of doctrines and opinions, it would certainly be true, as some claim, that it has been dead a long time, for doctrines and opinions are not long-lived. If Christianity really did consist of the belief in the creation of the world five thousand years ago out of nothing, the rib story of Eve, the story of Eden and the fall, etc., etc., ... then indeed it would be impossible for a thinking man of to-day to be a Christian. But all that is not the faith of Christianity, it is not the religion of Jesus. And if all the leaders of all the confessions declare that this is the Christian faith and that he who does not believe all these things can have no part in Christ, their proposition must be rejected as untrue. No one can be saved by believing these things; while the request of the church to believe in certain opinions set forth by men has expelled many an honest man.... In the life and death of Jesus I have learned to understand the meaning of life and I call God and the revelation of God that which makes my life possible and explains to me the significance of my life.... Is such a faith compatible with the above-mentioned monistic world-conception? My answer is, By all means.”

This is Professor Paulsen’s solution of the problem of a reconciliation of science and religion—and we add that it is ours too.

P. C.

FIRST STEPS IN PHILOSOPHY. By _William Mackintire Salter_. Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Co. 1892. Price, $1.00. Pages, 155.

This little book is divided into two parts: (1) Physical, (2) Ethical. In the first, Mr. Salter discusses the conception of matter; in the second, that of duty. Mr. Salter’s philosophical position is epitomised in a sentence which he quotes from Herbert Spencer. This sentence states, that, “what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective agencies which are unknown and unknowable.” Mr. Salter’s philosophical position, accordingly, is, first, Idealism, and, second, Agnosticism.

In ethics, Mr. Salter’s view embraces Utilitarianism, or Hedonism, and Intuitionism, both of which, he says, are incomplete in themselves, and must be supplemented by other elements. Utilitarianism makes happiness the ultimate end; Intuitionism, virtue; and Mr. Salter adds, such an end must embrace the “realisation of _all_ our capacities.” Mr. Salter’s ethical position has been before discussed in our journals.

If we study Mr. Salter’s philosophical views, we shall find that his theory is a reproduction of Berkeley’s analysis of the data of knowledge, embellished by the results of modern physiological psychology. Yet Mr. Salter’s theory, although it everywhere shows the traces of a close study of Berkeley’s views, presents the strange historical anomaly of undoing Berkeley’s work. Berkeley’s undoubted aim was to place knowledge on a basis of fact and refute, in a philosophical manner, the agnosticism, metaphysicism, and transcendentalism prevalent in his day. But Mr. Salter adds to Berkeley’s results the very things that Berkeley sought to overthrow, and thus renders the latter’s analysis (and consequently his own) in need of an equivalent analysis.

Take, for instance, the above-quoted sentence from Herbert Spencer, to which Mr. Salter assents. “Objective agencies,” “unknown and unknowable”! Is this consistent? All knowledge is a knowledge of sensations, a knowledge _of_ and _in_ the mind, says the idealist, and we cannot, by any process of ratiocination, arrive at things “outside” the mind. Yet he himself, it seems, arrives at a knowledge of “objective agencies” outside the mind (pp. 65, 69), and, what is more wonderful, at agencies that are “unknown” and “unknowable.” Surely, this is not abiding by an analysis of the facts of sensation (Berkeley). It is as unrational a procedure to infer metaphysical objective agencies, as it is to infer a metaphysical substratum “matter,” which last is the error of the realist.

Again, take the notion of cause. Here, also, the same unwarrantable abandonment of the facts of sensation, i. e. of _all that is_, is evident.

At the end of an analysis, in which he shows that “all the choir of Heaven and the furniture of the earth,” and “all which it inhabit,” retreat and vanish in mind, Mr. Salter asks: “But is there absolutely nothing real and objective left? So far as sensible phenomena are concerned, we must answer, No, absolutely nothing is left; the whole sensible (material) world is but an effect upon ourselves. But,” he adds, “it would be a hasty inference,” on these grounds, “to say that nothing whatever is left.” And when asked “what is left,” he answers, “all that causes sensation.” We can never know scientifically what these causes are, but “we have an inextinguishable faith” _that_ they are, “there being no particular thing we are more sure of than that for every event (and every sensible phenomenon is an event, viz., in ourselves) there is some kind of explanation or cause.” To sum up: The theory of “sensible or physical idealism”[85] implies a “supersensible or metaphysical realism.” In the theory of sensible idealism things only exist as sensations; “only exist, that is, _save in their supersensible or transcendental causes_”—which, says the author, we must always add.

What is a cause? Cause is an abstraction. An abstraction from what? from a real, physical world, or from a metaphysical, transcendental world? Plainly, from our real world, from Mr. Salter’s world of “sensible reality.” By what philosophical warrant, then, is this concept applied to a world from which it has not been derived and to which it surely cannot apply! It is wrong to speak of a cause of the All. The All has no cause, just as it has no weight.

All these difficulties arise from the notion that there are two kinds of knowledge and two kinds of existences. Idealism, to be consistent, must be absolute; Mr. Salter’s idealism is not absolute. This is exactly the criticism that the reading of his book at once forces on one. All knowledge is knowledge of sensations, i. e. of reality; things not accessible to sensation are not real, they do not exist; consequently, all entities transcendental, metaphysical, and supersensible do not exist. This is the conclusion to which any philosophy, idealism, realism, or what not _must_ lead.

Nowadays, few people dispute the fundamental thesis of idealism (of course, expressed in different terms from those of Mr. Spencer’s sentence). In a sense, it is established. Its only drawback is, that its “establishment” accomplishes nothing. It leaves the problem of philosophy where it found it.[86] Reality is still reality. The same difficulties and perplexities exist. The universe still mocks us. And foremost among the riddles that the world opposes to man, stands that eternal query: “What is mind?” Mr. Salter’s views of this question will show us what contributions his theory is likely to make to philosophy.

Mr. Salter defines mind as “that which experiences sensations and thoughts, or, more simply, that which feels and thinks.” It is not feeling, not thinking, but _that which_ feels and thinks. It is thus an agent, a subject. It is difficult to understand how this notion of mind is come at, without self-contradiction. In their origin, all notions of mind-subjects, mind-essences, mind-agencies, and so forth, are materialistic. They must be volatilised and stripped of their substantial attributes, if they are to take a place in an idealistic philosophy, and then, as they “cannot be ranged along with the sensible phenomena of which the mind takes cognisance,” there is but one realm left to exist in, which is the transcendentalistic.

All this comes from carrying the abstraction by which “mind” is reached, to mathematically infinite limits. In this abstraction the world retreats and fades away into nothingness. And what is left? Not a single idea or fact by which we can fix our abstraction. Mind is all, and mind is nothing. It is not matter, not time, not space—not even a mathematical point, which we expect it to become in its infinitely contracting perspective. It has no attributes, no qualities; it is nothing and nowhere. This conception of mind, Mr. Salter says, is only mysterious as we _make_ it so, by careless and inaccurate thinking. And Mr. Salter is right. It would require much careless thinking to make such a conception mysterious. A thing or notion that cannot be defined, placed, or brought into connection with any other thing or notion in the world, is not _mysterious_, but simply does not exist. In that respect, it is as plain as day.

The same confusion exists in the discussion which disposes of the query, “_Where_ is mind?” The idealist, in Mr. Salter’s sense, does not admit that the mind is in, or in anywise spatially connected with, the brain. The question, _where_ is mind? he says, has no meaning, any more than the question, what is the color of a pleasure? This is true. Mind is an abstraction. In this sense it has no spatial existence. But the phenomena from which this abstraction has produced itself, _are_ linked with phenomena which have spatial existence, and in this sense the mental processes are not mysterious nothings and nowheres. When I lose that group of sensations called my leg, I know that, generally, I have lost the feeling of my leg. So, also, when a certain part of that group of sensations called my brain is destroyed, I know that I shall then have lost my power of memory or of speech or of motion. I may also experiment with other groups of sensations called dogs and cats, which I know have mental powers. In the light of these facts it is not correct, either in philosophy or common sense, to say that mental processes are absolutely independent of locality. I know that my thoughts are not connected with the group of sensations I call the moon, and I know they are not connected with that group of sensations that I call Mr. Smith. I am always aware of them as connected with that group of sensations which I call “myself.”

Mr. Salter, in fact, half recognises this. He says, “The mind _is_ dependent on the body in the sense that our general power of sensation and thought is connected with those sensations we call our body.” Yet, “why this should be so is mysterious.” Indeed! One is inclined to ask Mr. Salter here, what species of explanation or knowledge he wishes of this phenomenon. Is explanation, or knowledge, something more than the recognition and seeing of a plain connection between the groups of sensations that constitute reality? In Mr. Salter’s analysis, all the facts of the world are mysterious. Why a thing is as it is and is not other than it is, is mysterious. He utterly fails to understand why the power of perceiving colors is linked with the particular group of sensations he calls his eye, and why it should not just as well be linked with some other group or no group at all.

Why do I see with my eye? Why do I not see with my hand or with the hairs of my head, or why do I not eat with my elbow, instead of my mouth? Why do not stones fall upwards? Why do not magnets point towards the East? Why do not the planets move about Jupiter or Saturn? Mr. Salter’s question makes a jumble of the whole universe.

It is not the object of science or philosophy to find out why things are not what they are, but to find out what they are. In this inquiry the why and wherefore, properly understood, will evolve themselves.

Science simply concerns itself with the connection of the groups of sensations which the idealist, and for that matter every one else, calls reality. It cannot concern itself with anything else. All other things are artificial and self-made existences. Nothing exists but reality and the connections of reality. To seek for any other connections than those that exist is absurd and futile. And to seek for any other causes or cause of relations than such as really are is also futile. Before we speak of the knowledge of a thing we must analyse and define our notion of knowledge, and before we speak of the cause of a thing we must analyse and define our notion of cause. In our view, the relation which Mr. Salter doubts, is so intimately and inextricably one, that the causal relation disappears. Neither is the cause of the other. We may, for the purposes of inquiry, start from either as our general concept, but we should never go so far as utterly to expel from reality the other. True science and philosophy are neither idealistic nor materialistic, but _real_. The two positions are extreme positions, and each is useful only as a safeguard against the errors of the others. Reality is reality; that is the main thing. Whether it is idealistic or materialistic is of minor consequence. Besides reality there is nothing; its negation is non-existence.

We do not wish in these criticisms to repudiate all that is in Mr. Salter’s book. A great many of its reflections are helpful and suggestive. We may refer, for example, to the passages in which the body is regarded as a gradually decreasing wall of separation between that part of reality which is known subjectively and that part which is known objectively. This is really a unitary view. We believe, however, that if Mr. Salter would carefully analyse the notions of knowledge, explanation, cause, effect, and, therefore, the notion of reality, he would not push his philosophy to the mysterious extreme at which it finally arrives, and he would absolutely reject such unscientific conceptions as supersensible realism, metaphysical realism, and supersensible or transcendental causes. These render the reading of his book as a philosophical help unsatisfactory, and leave the mind even more confused and perplexed than it was before. However, all discussions of this sort have their value, and Mr. Salter’s book possesses a virtue which few other philosophical productions can boast of: it is very short. The author’s pleasant style will also add to the pleasure of its perusal, and if read critically the book will evoke much helpful thought.

T. J. MCCORMACK.

A REVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS OF ETHICS FOUNDED ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. By _C. M. Williams_. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1893.

This is a book, the perusal of which will leave the earnest student of moral science full of disappointment. Not at all that it manifests any lack of ability or information. On the contrary, it is at once clearly and entertainingly written, and at the same time packed with notes and comments that are full of interest and instruction.

The course of the book may be briefly stated. The first part, comprising nearly half of its six hundred pages, is devoted to the statement of the ethical doctrines maintained by thirteen prominent writers, whose views have been formed more or less under the influence of the theory of evolution, viz.: Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Baratt, Stephen, Carneri, Höffding, Gizycki, Alexander, and Paul Ree. The rest of the book is the review of our author. This review is conducted under the topical heads: The Concepts of Evolution; Intelligence and End; The Will; Thought, Feeling, and Will in Evolution; Egoism and Altruism in Evolution; Conscience; Moral Progress in History; The Results of Ethical Inquiry on an Evolutional Basis; and The Ideal and the Way of Its Attainment.

These are all topics of great interest and importance, and the author has brought to the consideration of them a mind fully stored and entirely competent. But we look in vain for that discourse and criticism which above all other matters relating to moral science those who are interested in human welfare crave from those who tender their reflections upon ethical topics.

The great need of moral science is the discovery and certification of its basis. It is a need that far transcends the scope of mere moral science, for upon its right determination depends the right determination of a multitude of questions that deeply involve the welfare of humanity. It is a need that is not merely crying to be supplied. It is absolutely wailing. Could it only be rightly determined, mankind would fast enough orient itself in the course of evolution and with undissipated energy work out its best possible development. But undiscovered or uncertified it balks all process, save only that mechanical, halting, stumbling process that has hitherto obtained; a process that is, as all may observe, one that has little if any inward coördination, but is full of inability and cross-purposes. Since it was the professed purpose of our author to review a number of the more prominent systems of ethics, which he esteems to be founded on the theory of evolution, his failure to notice and to comment upon so conspicuous a feature of moral science would naturally lead a reader, unversed in the works noticed, to suppose that those works had altogether slighted this topic. Such is, however, not the case. With the exception of perhaps Darwin and Wallace, all the writers reviewed by our author have given more or less attention to this matter, and they have left us in no doubt as to the positions which they severally hold. Most of them are Hedonists of one sort or another. Haeckel, Carneri, Rolph, and Alexander are, we believe, the only exceptions.

But a more serious criticism upon the work under notice is suggested by its very title. That title as much as says that the various works which are reviewed by our author are “founded” upon the theory of evolution, at least in so far as their ethical doctrines are concerned.

Now, what is the theory of evolution? What is its essential nature? Does not its very form consist in the affirmation of an eternal secular mutation, in which there is no discontinuity whatever? It says that existence in sum and in every detail is eternal and continuous process. It uncompromisingly forbids all suppositions of any absolute beginning, or of any absolute end, or of any absolutely final adjustment. Hence, no system of ethics can with truth be said to be “founded” upon the theory of evolution that ignores or forgets this essential character of it. Now, when we turn to the consideration of the various “systems” which our author supposes to be “founded” upon the theory of evolution, we find them, one and all, occupied more or less with suppositions of ends. All are forecasting some “ideal” condition, which, being attained, all chances of retrogression will be foreclosed and all possibilities of betterment will be exhausted. In other words, they suppose an attainment of death, or rather an attainment of a death-in-life more utterly horrible than any actual death can possibly be. The very first condition for an ethics that will be truly evolutional must be the fit and full recognition of a boundless horizon to evolution in morals as well as in all else. Emerson perceived the truth when he said in “The Sphynx”:

“Profounder, profounder
Man’s spirit must dive;
To his aye rolling orb
No goal will arrive.
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found; for _new_ heavens
He spurneth the old.”

And at present, the most serious efforts to establish a truly clear-sighted ethics of evolution, with an unequivocal disavowal of any and all Hedonism, is made by the editors of _The Monist_. It, indeed, is the key-note of the missionary work that characterises all the publications of The Open Court Publishing Co.

Any truly evolutional ethics must show itself a doctrine that applies just as well to regress as to progress. Evolution is too often confounded with progress, but degeneration is just as truly evolutional as is the contrary movement, and, looking the facts of existence in the face, mankind has no assurance of any unchangeable course of betterment. The principles of morals are, however, not dependent upon the benign action of nature. When the earth’s stock of fuel shall become exhausted, or when the ice age returns, or when the sun grows cold, there will be no alteration thereby in the moral law. Good and evil must and will be the same under all circumstances, and no system of ethics is nor can be anything but a temporary makeshift, that does not as well fit the _diastoles_ as it does the _systoles_ of existence. We must look for a doctrine that shall inform the conduct of men not only for the fore part of the day, when all is jubilant and bounding and man asks only for some good task to do, but also for the evening and night, when man grows weary and craves for rest; for not only youth and maturity, but for waning strength, old age, and death; for not only the progressive era of cosmic history, but for the periods when natural conditions may disfavor mankind, when, say, man may gradually be so reduced in resources that the same will barely suffice for simple life-preservation; when under the stress of natural conditions the human intellect, in the course of generations, becomes step by step eliminated; when indeed humanity itself tends perhaps slowly, but with certainty, towards permanent extinction.

They who complacently protest that the theory of evolution leaves the domain of moral science substantially unaffected are surely in great default either in their comprehension of the nature and implications of that theory, or in their powers of circumspection, while those who suppose that moral science becomes evolutional simply because of a little application of that theory to some of the subordinate questions that are involved, show themselves in a plight as bad as the others if not worse.

Our author notices without dissent, and even with seeming concurrence, the various remarks made by many of the writers reviewed by him in discredit of teleology.

Since as we have before protested the theory of evolution forbids all suppositions of any ends that are absolutely final, it of course follows that teleology is in the strictness of its meaning inadmissible, even in ethics. But in dismissing teleology, let us not pour out the child with the bath. However it ought to be with the interpretation of the order of nature as a speculative exercise, something that is analogous to teleology is an absolute necessity if ethics is to be anything more than a curious study of human practise. The universe may manifest no purpose, design or secular tendency, but man is and can be nothing but a miserable estray on the ocean of existence unless he sails on a course, instead of merely drifting. To do this he must take something by which to steer, and any plausible stability is better than no bearings whatever. At any rate man is insuperably drawn to thus mark out his course. If the theory of evolution forbids him to suppose any ends that are absolutely final, it does not prevent him from ascertaining directions. Indeed evolution affords him data of the very first importance for that behoof. Instead of ends we have aims and if ethics is to become that counsel and guide to humanity, which we yearn for so anxiously, it must ascertain and certify that single paramount aim to which all other tendencies are naturally subsidiary. Teleology, or rather the determination of the aim of evolution, must prepare the foundation before any evolutional ethics that is worthy the name can be established.

Again our author with considerable debate notices the remarks of the writers reviewed by him on the old question of free will and necessity,—but like the positing of some end or aim to be subserved, free will is one of the presuppositions of ethics. When man begins to debate the possibility of rightly ascertaining the true end or aim for his pursuit, or when he begins to moot the question of free will, he is debating not any question of ethics proper, but only whether such a science is possible. Unless conditions and events are functions, as well of man’s personality as of his environment; unless persons count for something in the variations of the course of nature, it is altogether vain and idle to be troubled with questions of morality.

Free will and somewhat to be achieved are principles which whether well or ill founded, ethics proper must take for granted before it has or can have any _raison d’être_. As for free will, however the metaphysicians may have stumbled over their own feet, the common sense of mankind has never wavered. As a practical question (and ethics is pre-eminently a matter of practice) this question is not an open one.

But on the question of what is the true paramount aim for man to pursue, the decision that shall finally satisfy man is yet to be made. The best proof that no satisfactory answer has yet been made is the fact that we are still seeking an answer. As with regard to the needful prime condition for a truly evolutional ethics we found wisdom in the poetical insight, so again in this exigency we personally find the most profound ethical philosophy in that same insight.

“’Tis Life of which our nerves are scant.
’Tis Life, not death for which we pant,
More Life, and fuller that we want.”

FRANCIS C. RUSSELL.

DER PESSIMISMUS IM LICHTE EINER HÖHEREN WELTAUFFASSUNG. By _Dr. J. Friedländer_ and _Dr. M. Berendt_. Berlin W.: S. Gerstmann. 1893.

The authors’ aim is the refutation of pessimism and the foundation of a higher world-conception. This latter is a pantheism spiritualised by moral ideals and contrasted to Darwinism and materialism. Natural science is said to be the surrounding walls of the new view, furnishing (1) negative truths of criticism and (2) a knowledge of the positive features of nature. The negative truths are: the impossibility of the existence of a personal God, of the efficiency of prayer, of miracles, of the immortality of the soul, of the separate existence of souls without bodies. The positive results of natural science are the unity of nature, the indestructibility of nature, the harmony of the All, the indivisibility of nature, the irrefragable necessity of natural processes according to immutable laws, and the freedom or independence of nature, as having its cause in itself, uncreated and uninfluenced by any extramundane being.

Natural science alone, according to the authors, is not sufficient to constitute the new world-conception. A one-sided view of natural science together with the obsolete conceptions of theism are exactly what has brought forth the philosophical pessimism of our time. Natural science, accordingly, is not to be regarded as the sole source of truth; it is to be corrected by pantheism. The former teaches us “to regard matter and its motion, so to say, as a dead inert substance to which motion is attached; it treats matter as an immediate reality. Pantheism, however, teaches that matter is to be conceived as the interrelation of the innumerable live acts of will appearing successively in time and side by side in space,” etc. The authors point out that the necessity of law which regulates the mechanical processes of nature does not exclude freedom; for “freedom is not arbitrariness but is controlled by an immanent _Gesetzmässigkeit_.”

This summary is sufficient to characterise the ideas of the Drs. Friedländer and Berendt. We cannot say that they admit of no criticism, (e. g. their conception of natural science must be pronounced as too narrow if not actually erroneous, nor should the law of the survival of the fittest be interpreted in the sense that strength means brutal force,) but we can, nevertheless, express our sympathy with the aim of the authors as well as with the spirit in which they pursue it.

κρς.

DIE PHILOSOPHIE UND DIE SOCIALE FRAGE. By _Gustav Engel_. Leipsic: C. E. M. Pfeffer. 1892.

ACHT ABHANDLUNGEN, HERRN PROFESSOR DR. KARL LUDWIG MICHELET ZUM 90. GEBURTSTAG ALS FESTGRUSS DARGEREICHT VON MITGLIEDERN DER PHILOSOPHISCHEN GESELLSCHAFT. Leipsic: C. E. M. Pfeffer. 1892.

WIE STEHT ES JETZT MIT DER PHILOSOPHIE, UND WAS HABEN WIR VON IHR ZU HOFFEN? By _Dr. Wilhelm Paszkowski_. Halle a. S.: F. Beyer, 1892.

This lecture by the well-known writer on the science of statistics and its related subjects was read before the Philosophical Society of Berlin on the 31st of May, 1890. It discusses the problem of socialism, or rather the aspirations of the German social democracy from the philosophical point of view of the lecturer, which is a modernised Hegelianism. This lecture drew forth on the evening of its delivery considerable discussion, which was participated in by Herr Kahle, a socialist, and Herr Runze. The discussions of these gentlemen, together with Mr. Engel’s reply, are embodied in the pamphlet.

The second of these two pamphlets is also a publication of the Philosophical Society of Berlin. It consists of eight treatises, essays, or lectures, which were presented by the members of the society to Prof. Karl Ludwig Michelet as a festival gift on his ninetieth natal day. The authors of these eight essays are: Adolf Lasson, August Cieszkowski, Gustav Engel, Friedrich Kirchner, Wilhelm Paszkowski, Max Runze, Georg Ulrich, and F. Zelle. They deal with philosophical subjects, chiefly such as pertain to the Hegelian philosophy. Appended to the pamphlet is a bibliography of the writings of this Nestor of the Philosophical Society by F. Ascherson.

The author of the third pamphlet complains about the decay of philosophy: “Metaphysics, the inner fane in the temple of science, stands desolate,” and the last disciples of Hegel can no longer prevent the deluge which sweeps away the idealism of their grand old master.

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DER MATERIALISMUS, EINE VERIRRUNG DES MENSCHLICHEN GEISTES, WIDERLEGT DURCH EINE ZEITGEMÄSSE WELTANSCHAUUNG. By _Dr. Eugen Dreher_. Berlin: S. Gerstmann. 1892.

The author of this pamphlet, at present a docent at the University of Halle, feels somewhat oppressed by the materialistic tendencies of our times. His desire is to establish in the world a province of the ideal, and this domain of idealistic aspirations and hopes, he says, must and can be based upon a scientific foundation. To reach this goal, the author propounds a philosophy which is confessedly dualistic, and which must be made a kind of religion. Descartes’s _Cogito, ergo sum_, is to him the beginning of all philosophy. The existence of the All is devoid of sense, unless there is an ego to think it. This dualism, if made a religion, will throw light upon the problems of the labyrinth of life.

The aspirations of the author are serious and noble. We cannot, however, agree with the results of his reasonings. He does not seem to have considered Kant’s objections to the fallacy of the _cogito, ergo “ego” sum_. Nor is he familiar with Lichtenberg’s famous remark, that “we should say by rights ‘it thinks,’ exactly as we say ‘it rains.’” The same moral conclusions at which the author arrives may be reached, the same province for ideal aspirations in the world may be gained, the same religious comfort may be found, without any surrender of the monistic view of the world. Materialism is an error of human thought. But the error cannot be cured by dualism.

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UEBER DIE GRUNDFORMEN DER VORSTELLUNGSVERBINDUNG. Psychologische Studie. By _Max Offner_. Marburg: R. Friedrich. 1892.

This little brochure is a carefully worked out study of the phenomena of association. The author’s view is summed up in the following statement: “The attempt to reduce the phenomena of association, in conformity with their real nature, to one single ultimate process cannot be regarded as successful, and we shall have to control our aspirations after a unitary conception and rest satisfied with reducing the various phenomena of association to two processes which are closely related, namely: (1) to an association of simultaneity; and (2) to an association of immediate succession.” There is much that is suggestive in the sixty-seven pages of this pamphlet.

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FINITE HOMOGENEOUS STRAIN, FLOW, AND RUPTURE OF ROCKS. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. By _George F. Becker_. Rochester: Published by the Society. 1893.

This is a purely technical research, concerning the causes and form of the discontinuity of rock masses. The studies presented are the outgrowth of field-work in the Sierra Nevada of California. This range is so intersected by false joints, schistose and slaty cleavages, that on a scale of one mile to the inch their average separation would be for the most part microscopic. The dynamic manifestations in these regions are very systematic. Some of the strains which have produced this phenomenon have been infinitesimal, and others have been finite. Only the latter are here treated. Finite strain, the relations of stress to strain, the nature of finite shear, viscosity, flow, plasticity, ductility, and rupture, the relation of plastic solids to fluids, the spacing of fissures formed by inclined pressures, jointing, and slaty cleavage, are the chief subjects discussed. The most important result of the investigation is that jointing, schistosity, and slaty cleavage all imply relative movement and are thus as truly orogenic as falls of notable throw. “In the light of this conclusion,” says the author, “it appears that if one could reproduce the orogeny of the Sierra in a moderate interval of time on a model made to a scale of one mile to the inch, it would seem to yield to external and bodily forces much like a mass of lard of the same dimensions.”

This pamphlet is neatly got up, and reflects credit upon the author and publisher.

μκρκ.

DER ECHTE UND DER XENOPHONTISCHE SOKRATES. By _Karl Joël_. Volume I. Berlin: R. Gaertner. 1893.

There are two sources from which we have derived the main bulk of our knowledge concerning Socrates; namely, the writings of Plato and Xenophon. The former is generally regarded as an idealiser, and the latter as an historical biographer; for Plato simply uses the impressive figure of Socrates to expound his own philosophy, while Xenophon, the general, the politician, the historian, is supposed to give in the “Memorabilia” a simple and faithful account of what appeared to him worthy of being preserved. As Xenophon was not a philosopher himself, it is tacitly assumed that he had no reason to alter, to suppress, or to add his own personal views to the historical account of the great master whom he bore in grateful remembrance as a faithful disciple. There are some other sources; but they are less rich than those of Plato and Xenophon. Among them must be mentioned several passages in Aristotle, especially in “Magna Moralia” I, p. 1182, a 15. Our author urges with good reason that the Xenophontic Socrates is radically different from and even opposed to the real Socrates, and that we ought to rely more on Aristotle than on Xenophon. Xenophon’s “Memorabilia,” Karl Joël declares, is not an historical writing but a _Tendenzschrift_, and we have to be on our guard wherever Xenophon’s special tendency comes in.

Socrates is the representative of the philosophical spirit of Attica, and the character of his teachings may in a word be described as a noble and sublimated subjectivism. Socrates is a rationalist and as such he opposes the mysticism of the soothsayer and mantic. He goes so far in his rationalism as to identify knowledge and virtue. He cannot understand, from his point of view, (which regards the soul as a rational being only and leaves out of sight the existence of impulses,) that a man can knowingly neglect to choose the better thing and choose the worse. Plato, in order to avoid the error of Socrates, invented the distinction between the rational and irrational part of the soul and Aristotle criticises Socrates saying τὰς γὰρ ἀρετὰς ἐπιστήμας ἐποίει.

The subjectivism of Socrates appears in his trust in the δαιμόνιον, the divine voice within his soul, his rationalism in his constant request to gather information before beginning to act. He exhibits in his talks great irony; for instance, when telling a politician that as a shoemaker must know his trade before making shoes, so he, the politician, ought to know _his_ business before undertaking to manage affairs of state. Again and again he satirises the bungling levity of men who imagine that in the greatest and gravest things of life they can act without any information. Both the subjectivism and rationalism of Socrates appear in his constant inculcation of the Delphian motto “know thyself.”

What a different character is Xenophon! He was a convinced believer in manticism. There are more than a hundred passages in his writings in which not rational forethought but the art of the soothsayer is left to decide the most important questions of practical life. When the courageous ten thousand offered him the leadership in their dangerous retreat, his ambition urged him to accept, but he first asks the God, and the omens being unfavorable, he refuses. He did not accept the offer until he had received another more auspicious omen. In the same way Xenophon acts throughout. All important decisions which prudence would urge, are made dependent upon sacrifices, dreams, or the flight of birds, and more than once the safety of the army is greatly endangered by a fatal passivity caused through unfavorable omens which prevent Xenophon’s acting with decision at the right moment. It is no exaggeration to say that these ten thousand Greek soldiers escaped only by good luck the fate of the Athenian army in Sicily under Nikias. And this man, a zealous believer in manticism, should be an impartial and reliable historian of the doctrines of Socrates? The δαιμόνιον of Socrates is changed into a mystic power, a kind of _spiritus familiaris_. It has ceased to be the divinity of man’s inner self as which it appears in Plato’s account, and is represented by Xenophon as some peculiarity of Socrates which was given him as a special favor by the gods. Socrates dethroned the old fate that was supposed to rule the affairs of men and pointed out the importance of knowledge, for through knowledge we can learn to regulate our fate ourselves. The philosopher who thought little of well-being, of εὐτυχία, and demanded above all a well-doing, an εὐ πράττειν (“Memorabilia,” III, 9, 14, 15,) did not recommend asking soothsayers questions where we should better ask ourselves, although it is probable that he recommended the Athenians to apply to the Delphic oracle instead of relying upon omens not so much because he believed in prophesies, but because he thought that they would be influenced by the authority of this venerable institution whose wisdom and conservative spirit were beyond question, so that good advice could be expected from it. Karl Joël, accordingly, advises us to read the “Memorabilia” with an inversion of the points, viz., to convert the sentences qualified by “although” and “to be sure” into the main sentences and _vice versa_. In this way we shall be able to distinguish between the pagan orthodoxy of Xenophon and the rationalism of Socrates. Why does Xenophon not state directly and simply (1) Socrates advised his friend to ask the oracles in all cases of uncertainty, (2) manticism is indispensable in the economy of a household as well as of a state, and (3) the gods have not granted us any real knowledge as to a final success and reveal it through special revelations. Why must he add long sentences introduced by “although”? He adds to (1) that everybody ought to act solely according to his own conviction, to (2) that all the trades up to the highest professions had to be learned before practiced, and to (3) that those who inquired at the oracles for things which could be learned and studied in the usual way are crazy and even blasphemers.

This sketch may suffice to characterise the book which is much better than could be anticipated after a perusal of the preface, which almost induced us to lay it aside unread. It is not the modesty of the author which produces a prejudice but the random talk concerning things which neither a reader nor a reviewer will care to know. The author has apparently no talent for writing prefaces, and he would be wise to omit them in the future entirely. The book might be very much condensed, repetitions avoided, and an alphabetical index certainly should have been added.

It contains _five hundred and fifty-four_ pages; and the author says he is preparing a _second_ volume. We think it would have been better for his views if he had expressed them in a pamphlet.

κρς.

A PERPLEXED PHILOSOPHER. Being an examination of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s various utterances on the land question, with some incidental reference to his synthetic philosophy. By _Henry George_. New York: Charles L. Webster & Company. 320 pp.

The “Perplexed Philosopher” herein described is Mr. Herbert Spencer, and persons who like ginger in their ale will enjoy this book; for its eloquent invective, hot from the heart, cheers us like that stimulating drink. Because of this fiery and revengeful attack on Herbert Spencer much dignified reproof has been aimed at Mr. George by those excellent people who religiously forgive the injuries done to others, and allow only to themselves the luxury of retaliation; but when we consider the provocation given by Mr. Spencer, this counter-blow of Mr. George is mild. Mr. Spencer had a critic’s right severely or tenderly to condemn the doctrines of Mr. George; and had he kept himself within his privilege Mr. George in reply would not have had any right to assail the personal character and motives of Mr. Spencer; but the older philosopher chose to treat the younger with supercilious disdain, and this was a personal affront that fully justified a retort personal. Scorn is an ignoble argument, lawful only in return for scorn.

Apart from the truth or error they contain, the writings of Mr. George have achieved a phenomenal popularity; their influence on social opinion has been in some directions almost revolutionary; they are to-day the political creed of many men in different parts of the world, and especially of many thousands in America, Great Britain, and Australia. They are bold in theories, attractive in illustration, and admirable in their literary form. Their approval of “Social Statics” was an advertisement that multiplied by hundreds the readers of that book, and there is no philosopher great enough to affect ignorance of Mr. George’s writings, or to dismiss them with a sneer. More copies of “Progress and Poverty” have been sold than of any other book on social economics that ever has been written, and when Mr. Spencer spoke of that book as “a work which I closed after a few minutes on finding how visionary were its ideas,” he put on airs of aggravating superiority which naturally provoked the resentment of Mr. George.

After not reading the book Mr. Spencer condemned its heresies and said:

“There is the movement for land nationalisation pressed by Mr. George and his friends with avowed disregard for the just claims of existing owners....

“And now this doctrine (that society as a whole has an absolute right over the possessions of each member) is being openly proclaimed. Mr. George and his friends, Mr. Hyndman and his friends, are putting their theory to its logical issue.”

To that Mr. George replies as follows:

“In nothing I have ever written or spoken is there any justification for such a characterisation. I am not even a land nationalisationist as the English and German and American nationalisationists well know.... I have been a staunch denier of the assumption of the right of society to the possessions of each member, and a clearer and more resolute upholder of the rights of property than Mr. Spencer has been.”

Without waiting to inquire whether Mr. George includes within the “rights of property” the right to property in land, it is enough to say that here at least Mr. Spencer is at a disadvantage. He disarmed himself before going into battle by refusing to read Mr. George’s writings, and scorning to examine them he accused them of communism, confiscation, and land-nationalisation. Mr. Spencer cannot now strike back for he has thrown his weapons away. He is a prisoner in the hands of Mr. George, who couples him with Parson Wilbur denouncing a print called the _Liberator_, “whose heresies,” he said, “I take every opportunity of combating, and of which, I thank God, I have never read a single line.” The parallel is well drawn; and the lesson of it is this, never challenge a man and then treat him with contempt; if you think he is not a foeman worthy of your steel, let him alone.

Had Mr. Spencer studied the works of Mr. Henry George, he would have found in them some doctrines having a manifest family likeness to communism, confiscation, and land-nationalisation; but they avail Mr. Spencer nothing, because he would not condescend to read the chapters where those revolutionary principles are. If he would bend his brow a moment and examine them he might find that in this controversy there are two perplexed philosophers instead of one. In the book before us Mr. George remarks:

“It is this confusion of Mr. Spencer as to rent and value that has led him into confusion as to the right of property; and that, at first, at least prevented him from seeing that to secure the equal rights of men to land, _it is not necessary that society should take formal possession of land, and let it out_, and consequently, that the difficulties he anticipated in taking possession of improved land were imaginary.”

But, in “Progress and Poverty,” Chapter II, he said:

“We should satisfy the law of justice, we should meet all economic requirements, by at one stroke abolishing all private titles, declaring all land public property, and _letting it out to the highest bidders in lots to suit_, under such conditions as would safely guard the right to improvements.”

The italics are ours, directing the attention to apparent contradictions which it is for Mr. George to reconcile. And, if English words have any meaning, “abolishing all private titles” means confiscation; and “declaring all land public property and letting it out to the highest bidders,” is land-nationalisation; at least, the ordinary reader may innocently think so, yet Mr. George declares that he is not a land-nationalisationist.

As a personal defense and explanation Mr. George has a right to say that he is not a land-nationalisationist, or a communist, or an “ist” of any other kind, and we are bound to take his word for it, but in this dispute that matter is wholly immaterial. The question before the meeting is this, Is Mr. George’s book a land-nationalisationist or is it not? Is it a confiscationist or not? In “Progress and Poverty” Mr. George explains his meaning thus:

“I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate property in land. The first would be unjust, the second needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call _their_ land. Let them continue to call it _their_ land. Let them buy and sell and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell if we take the kernel. _It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent._”

The italics are by Mr. George; and a little farther on, he says;

“That is the first step upon which the practical struggle must be made. When the hare is once caught and killed, cooking him will follow as a matter of course.”

And several years afterwards, in “Protection or Free Trade,” page 302, Mr. George describes the artful mechanism of the snare by which the hare is to be caught and killed:

“Now it is evident that, in order to take for the use of the government the whole income arising from land just as effectively as it could be taken by formally appropriating and letting out the land, it is only necessary to abolish, one after another, all taxes now levied, and to increase the tax on land values till it reaches as near as may be the full annual value of the land.”

In that paragraph “government” is merely another word for “nation,” and the taking away from private owners all the lands of the country “for the use of the government” is land-nationalisation, whether the taking be done boldly by imperial decree, or furtively by taxing it up to its “full value” and out of the hands of its owners.

The discrimination above made must apply to Herbert Spencer as well as to Henry George. Mr. Spencer has a right to qualify and explain as much as he pleases; he may properly say what he thinks now about the right of land-ownership, but the question at issue is this, What are the opinions of “Social Statics” upon the land question? Are they not in principle, and very nearly in expression the opinions of “Progress and Poverty”?

It is not to be denied that “Progress and Poverty” found moral support in “Social Statics.” In fact, the disciples of Henry George, whenever their doctrines were assailed, brought Herbert Spencer into the field as a reinforcement. This, at last, gave Mr. Spencer great annoyance, and in a moment of irritation he determined even by a qualified recantation to withdraw the reserve brigade on which “Progress and Poverty” had so long depended for assistance. Hence, his letters to the _Times_ and the _St. James’s Gazette_, and the modification of his views which appears in “Justice.” He tried to do this by dropping Mr. George to the ground, while endeavoring to stand on consistent feet himself; and this it is that inspires the vehement criticism of Mr. George.

With a scalpel most logically keen Mr. George has dissected Mr. Spencer’s philosophy of land, and with almost Indian exultation he exposes its eccentricities and contradictions. As was inevitable, for we cannot get along without it, the old familiar Galileo moral is brought in by Mr. George to prove that “still it moves.” He is right; for if it is ethically and politically true, as declared by Mr. Spencer in 1850, “that equity does not permit property in land,” it will be true forever, and no extremity of recantation can make it false. The attempt of Mr. Spencer to show by duplicate metaphysics that his later opinions concerning land are not inconsistent with the occult meaning of “Social Statics,” is a failure. It cannot stand a moment before the searching analysis and legible comparisons of Mr. George.

The attempt to resolve a concrete subject, such as government ownership of land, into abstract terms of justice limited or expanded by the right of some private person to the house on the land, and the barn, and the well, and the fences, and the apple-trees, and other appurtenances, corporeal and incorporeal, has involved Mr. George himself, as well as Mr. Spencer, in some confusion of thought, and has entangled both of them in varieties of statement not easy to reconcile. This might be due to obscure definitions and multiplied explanations, or to changes of opinion, but Mr. George asserts that Mr. Spencer’s inconsistencies are the result of moral and intellectual dishonesty, prompting him to explain away his principles to propitiate the landlords and other aristocratic persons who admitted him into their high society after he became eminent, and before they knew that his philosophy denied the right of private property in land.

In his letter to the _Times_, apologising for “Social Statics,” Mr. Spencer said:

“The work referred to—“Social Statics”—was intended to be a system of Political Ethics—absolute political ethics, or that which ought to be, as distinguished from relative political ethics, or that which is at present the nearest practical approach to it.”

And then the philosopher becomes a politician and frames for the landed and the landless a moral code, ambidextrous and elastic as a party platform. Duty, justice, right, and truth, lose all their absolute qualities, and become relative to expediency and our own convenience. He teaches us to oppose wrongs until they become vested rights and then defend them. He makes ethics changeable as our coats, and the man who can afford two suits of clothes may have two suits of ethics, an “absolute” suit for Sundays and a “relative” suit for every day; an “abstract” suit for wearing about the house, and a “practical” suit for business purposes. He may wear a suit of “pure” ethics when buying, and a suit of “applied” ethics when selling; and so, at last, by those harlequin morals, it happens that what we ought to do has no relation at all to “that which ought to be.” Those pure subtleties and applied subterfuges make Mr. Spencer an easy mark for the indignant sarcasm of Mr. George, who shows what Mr. Spencer thought of absolute and relative ethics when he said in “Social Statics”: