Chapter XXII: Part 22

_Morality and Metaphysics._ Between practical philosophy and theoretical philosophy there is a real difference of nature. The former concerns the action and the latter the perception, and as we cannot do what yet is not, nor see what is already done, the one has relation to the future, the other to the present or the past. With this difference, they resemble each other, in that both consist in a putting in order, a co-ordination of their objects. Experience is sufficient to furnish all that is necessary for the explanation of practical co-ordination. This requires a fundamental notion of practical order, which metaphysicians see in the notion of the good, but, as the reality of the good cannot be established, it is a chimerical and arbitrary conception. We must seek in the co-ordinated objects themselves the fundamental element around which they will be disposed according to their proper nature. This cannot be the good, since this is the result of practical co-ordination. It is pleasure, not a particular kind of pleasure, but that which is possessed in common by all that pleases, all that satisfies. Volition can never go beyond pleasure. If we desire before having really been sensible of pleasure, it is because we have been ideally sensible of it. Pleasure is inherent in every practical function, it is practically constant, it is practically categorical. We cannot go beyond pleasure of some kind. It cannot be said that pleasure is preceded by function, life. These are only results, groups which have components, and therefore they cannot be the last principle of action. Thus one problem is resolved without recourse to metaphysics.—After the principle of simple co-ordination, must be sought that of the co-ordination which subordinates, which marks a sort of hierarchy. For this the idea of pleasure is not sufficient. It is necessary to limit the point of view, and in the difference of quantity of pleasure will be found the rule of co-ordination. The distinction of more or less offers itself at once, and gives place naturally to degrees, then to a subordination. The rule of the good is: the amplitude of the co-ordination, the degree of intelligibility, the number of facts which compose the object of volition. It is necessary to distinguish between urgency and superiority in proper value. Things which are the most urgent have not necessarily the most value in themselves. Thus the practical subordination ought to dispose its objects inversely, according to whether it is occupied with their urgency or their proper value. Here also practical philosophy is not obliged to have recourse to metaphysics. Practical philosophy not only ought to regulate its objects on the basis that it has previously fixed, but still ought to assure this regulation for the future. This requires that its coördinations should be made objects of commandment, obligation. The conception of the future pleasure enters into the present; and to each volition is bound by anticipation, ideally, but positively, the future benefit of the practical co-ordination. Thus obligation has its source in a volition imposing practical co-ordination on future volitions. Obligation is in reality causal determination, and as there is a volition more or less marked in each act, and the causal chain is never interrupted, we can be said to be always under the influence of obligation, the power of which increases with life. Determination is uniformisation; and nothing else is asked for the moral imperative. Causal determination is opposed directly to the unconditionment of liberty; but obligation, as well as causal determination in general, remains, moreover, in every partial state, limited by its opposite, liberty, which ever recoils before the continual encroachments of obligation, but without ceasing to be. There is no difficulty in admitting a sanction for the good, although it does not constitute a distinct and new element. The sanction is the consequences of actions from the point of view of pleasures. By the side of moral happiness or unhappiness, should be reserved a place for a happiness or unhappiness in some sort "amoral." The moral good does not exhaust all the good. It is necessary to distinguish between the moral good and the unrestrained good (bien libre). There is an immoralisable element which represents the veritable autonomy of the will. As in all coördinations, by reason of all bending under the rule, the moral hierarchy will sometimes injure the reality. Here the notion of the unrestrained good happily intervenes. The reality always reserves its rights in the face of co-ordinations, whatever be their nature. When it asserts itself it is sublime, it is, so to say, raised above every rule, majestic in its sovereign liberty. (Paris: Félix Alcan.)

ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE DER SINNESORGANE. Vol. II. Nos. 1 and 2.

CONTENTS:

VERSUCH EINER ERWEITERTEN ANWENDUNG DES FECHNERSCHEN GESETZES IM
FARBENSYSTEM. By _H. v. Helmholtz_.

WAS IST UNSER NERVENSYSTEM UND WAS GEHT DARIN VOR? By _Justus
Gaule_.

PHYSIOLOGISCH-PSYCHOLOGISCHE STUDIEN UEBER DIE ENTWICKELUNG
DER GESICHTSWAHRNEHMUNGEN BEI KINDERN UND BEI OPERIERTEN
BLINDGEBORENEN. By _E. Raehlrnann_.

ZWANGSVORSTELLUNGEN OHNE WAHNIDEEN. By _D. Hack-Tuke_.

EIN VERSUCH UEBER DIE INTRAKRANIELLE LEITUNG LEISESTER TOENE VON
OHR ZU OHR. By _Karl L. Schaefer_.

BESPRECHUNGEN. Wundt, Ueber die Methoden der Messung des
Bewusstseinsumfanges. By _Schumann_.

LITTERATURBERICHT.

Professor E. Hering introduced the method of defining colors by data of measurement derived from sensations. He thus became the founder of a new conception in Optics which in many respects promises to give more correct and better explanations not only of the physiology of sight but also of the theory of colors; his views collide however in some important points with the views of the old school, the leader of which is Professor Helmholtz of Berlin. The first article of the present number of this magazine treats of one of these problems, and the author, Professor Helmholtz, believes that the results of his experiments do not show a gradation of the perceptibility of differences which would justify Professor Hering's theory of colors. Professor Helmholtz applies Fechner's law concerning the measurement of perceptible differences to color-sensations. For the experiments he has made, a wheel was employed (after the method of Maxwell) into which slips of colored paper of various breadth could be inserted. He found by this "photometrical" method that "the effect of an additional color upon the luminosity is effectually weakened by the amount of the same color present in the whole mixture.... Equal small amounts of the quantity of light produce the smaller effects the larger the quantities of the same light are in the whole field." We pass by other results of Professor Helmholtz's experiments, for it takes a specialist to go over his calculations and tables; and the investigation has by no means been brought to a final conclusion. "If the strong deviation is not based upon an error," Professor Helmholtz says, "quite another and a different hypothesis would come into question, viz, whether it may not always be the clearest sensation which has effect and that which remains below the threshold does not come into consideration." The revision of his "Handbuch der physiologischen Optik" has been the occasion for these experiments of Professor Helmholtz.

Professor Gaule of Zurich propounds a most interesting theory about the development of the trophic functions and the chemical actions of the nervous system. He starts with the idea that the processes of the nervous system are in accord with the law of the conservation of energy. Du Bois Reymond's remark that love and hatred, pleasure and pain would remain unexplained even if all the changes that take place in the arrangement of atoms in our nerves were known and mathematically computable, has made a deep impression because it expresses the disparity of our definitions of atoms on the one side and feelings on the other. Yet our atomistic theory is not final; it is only an auxiliary conception which will simplify thought so long as the present method of considering phenomena from a chemical or physical and geometrical standpoint is retained. As soon as we create a common auxiliary conception to comprise all these sciences, we shall have to broaden our definitions. Taking this position as his philosophical basis, Professor Gaule attempts to consider nervous processes as reflex actions, the latter being clearly conceivable as subject to the law of the conservation of energy. Living beings appear as complexes of forces developed from the chemical actions taking place in their organisms. Through a saturation of the affinities of their carbon and hydrogen atoms with oxygen their potential energy is changed into kinetic energy. The latter is used in many various ways, partly for building up more complex molecules, partly for again storing potential energy, and partly,—and this is a predominant process in animal organisms,—for setting forces free which will serve as a source of their activity. It is such a source of activity which the impressions of the outside world affect. The impression is called _Reiz_ or irritation, and the irritation has often been compared to the fuse or the spark igniting a powder-mine. We must however bear in mind that the organism is unlike the powder-mine, not at rest but in constant action and the irritation does not properly speaking evoke a reflex but it only modifies the action taking place. All this is generally conceded by the physiologist. Professor Gaule then proceeds to explain his idea of the nervous development. The cells of the epithelium in the skin perform a peculiar process, called in German _Verhornung_; they turn into horn (keratine) by the protoplasm's losing its albuminoids. The process does not take place in one cell but in several layers of cells and represents like all actions a play of forces, raising the more keratinised strata from the basal membrane to the surface. The keratinising however is, according to Gaule, only the less important surface-phenomenon of another peculiar process which is directed toward the interior of the organism. An excretion takes place forming extremely fine threads around the cells which pass through the pores of the basal membrane (a fact proved by Caninis and Fraenkel) where they form a plexus. Out of the net-like meshes of these plexuses grow increasingly strong filaments which form the trunks of the nerves. These views agree very well with the observations of Professor His on the fœtal development of the nerves. Professor His has indubitably proved that the olfactory nerve for instance does not grow out of but into the hemispheres. The direction of the nervous growth is the same as the direction of their function. Many of the sensory nerves have been proven to, and it is probable that all of them do grow from the periphery into the central organ. Hensen in opposition to this has proposed the theory of an original connection between the peripheral root of the nerve and the central organ; yet whatever side of the controversy may be found in the end to be correct, the result does not much affect Professor Gaule's theory, that the ends of the nerves represent the roots from which they grow and every special irritation must specially affect the secretion which forms the nerve. Having been rather explicit in the basal ideas of Professor Gaule's proposition we can now be brief. The axis-cylinder of the nervous fibre corresponds to the secretion of the nervous root; around it is found the marrow-sheath, a tube of absorbing cells containing, also as proved by Ruehne, a net of neuro-keratine; this neuro-keratine again absorbs the axis-cylinder. To the question Why does not the axis-cylinder disappear? Professor Gaule answers, Because it is constantly renewed. Thus we have a constant flow in the nervous substance, an exchange of materials, an absorption, a secretion, and re-absorption; and in this way it can be, a progress of chemical action conditioning the vertical direction of the nerves upon their plexuses and also the form of the marrow-sheath which appears like craters, one inserted within the other and filed upon the axis-cylinder. Professor Gaule proposes no definite opinion as to the development of the motor nerves; he makes some suggestions which need however further explanation and demonstration. He has apparently not yet finished his investigations and we may expect to hear again from him.

E. Raehlmann, Professor Of Ophthalmology at Dorpat, presents a résumé of his experiences as to the visual development of persons blind from birth to whom by a successful operation sight had been restored. We confine ourselves to a few quotations. "Four weeks after the operation of the right eye and a fortnight after that of the left, on April 28th, the first experiments were made on Johann Rubens. April 30th, patient moved his head more than his eyes. He declared he saw perfectly; yet he was unable to recognise any object except his drinking mug, which on the previous day he had felt with his fingers. Also his shoe was not recognised until he had touched it. May 4th, patient could see that a wooden ball differed from a wooden cube, both being of the same color, but was unable to tell that one was round, the other square. Nor could he distinguish the ball from a disc. After much handling the objects he learned to recognise by sight the roundness of the ball and the squareness of the cube, but he remained unable to distinguish the ball from the disc. He learned quickly to grasp objects in the median line of his eyes but had great difficulty in finding them with his hand when placed at an angle before him.

"May 23d, a glass is again presented to the patient; he sees his picture; noticing the frame, he declares the glass to be a picture. (A picture had been presented to him repeatedly.) Now a second face is shown to him in the glass by the side of his own. Patient becomes greatly bewildered, declaring the picture to be familiar to him. Being asked whether it is that of the Professor, he denies the fact, because the Professor stood beside him. Looking over his shoulder he notices the Professor, and seeing him twice he is confounded.... Patient is left alone and remains almost half an hour before the glass. He moves his arm constantly up and down, observing with a smile how the picture in the glass makes the same movements. Requested to touch his nose, he first grasps into the glass, then behind the glass, repeating this several times. His hand then is put on his nose. Now he laughs and touches the several parts of his face, constantly observing the motions of his hand in the glass."

Most instructive cases of diseases of mind are those in which patients cannot help having and obeying certain ideas which are not, however, hallucinations. Dr. Hack Tuke in the fourth article of this number says: "I was consulted once in the case of a lady, the most important symptom of whose disease was that she had to count up to a certain number before doing the most trivial thing; when she turned at night in bed from one side to the other, or when she took out her watch, or in the morning before she rose; when she went downstairs to breakfast, she would suddenly stop on one of the steps and count; at the breakfast table when about to take the tea-pot before touching its handle"; etc. (Arithmomania). Another case. "A young law-student who had distinguished himself at school, one day read the English sentence 'it was not compatible' and shortly after that he found the sentence, 'I like it not' in German. It struck him that the negative in the one case was placed before and in the other after the word negatived, and he commenced to ponder on negations in general. It became an all-important and all-absorbing problem to him. It kept him from work. For some time he proposed questions to himself like: Why do we not have cold blood like some other animals? etc. He is at present in great danger of becoming undecisive and wavering in his actions, for his passion of ruminating on his problem of negatives weakens his will and threatens to destroy his energy." (Folie du doute.) Esquirol calls cases of _Zwangsvorstellungen_, in which a patient otherwise healthy is forced to pursue a certain trivial thought, "monomanie raisonnante"; Professor Ball, "intellectual impulses." Although hereditary influences most likely play an important part in this disease they seem to originate in emotions, and Régis for this reason calls them "délire émotif," stating that their ultimate cause must be sought in a diseased state of the ganglionic system of the intestines. Dr. Tuke favors Charcot's term "onomatomanie." The disease is a _Wortbesessenheit_, a word-mania. Certain expressions or phrases are pressing heavily upon the patient's consciousness so as to force him irresistibly to think them or to pronounce them again and again. Not all cases can be classified under word-mania, but such cases as doubt-mania (_Zweifelsucht_) or arithmomania are akin to it. Dr. Tuke's advice is not to fight the disease but to teach the patient to ignore it, to treat it as trivial, for the diseased ideas derive new strength from the opposition made to them.

Professor E. Mach explains Weber's discovery that "if a tuning fork is placed upon the head of a person, one ear being shut, the sound is heard and located in the shut ear," in the following way: The sound passes through the bones of the cranium to the labyrinth of the ear and thence out of the ear into the air, thus taking the inverse direction of other sounds we hear. If the flow in one ear be stopped, the sound-waves are reflected and the drum vibrates stronger. Hence the tone will be heard more plainly in the shut ear and will be located there. Professor Schaefer in the last article of this number describes an experiment in the same line, which in another way—the transmission of sound through air waves being excluded—proves the intercranial conductibility of very weak sounds from ear to ear. (Hamburg and Leipsic: L. Voss.)

SCHRIFTEN DER GESELLSCHAFT FUER PSYCHOLOGISCHE FORSCHUNG. No. 1.

CONTENTS:

DIE BEDEUTUNG NARCOTISCHER MITTEL FUER DEN HYPNOTISMUS. By _Dr.
Freiherrn von Schrenck-Notzing_.

EIN GUTACHTEN UEBER EINEN FALL VON SPONTANEM SOMNAMBULISMUS. By
_Prof. Dr. August Forel_.

The psychological societies of Munich and Berlin have started under the above title a periodical the first number of which is very promising. Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing makes some critical remarks on Prof. Bernheim's view to consider hypnosis as an increase of suggestibility produced by suggestion. There are observations which do not justify this definition. He then investigates the substitution of narcotics as a means for producing hypnosis and their "suggestive" effects. In the second part of his essay Dr. Schrenck-Notzing speaks about the "suggestive" effects of Indian hemp which in a special preparation under the name of hashish is used in the Orient as a means of intoxication. Reference is made to the Ismaelite secret society "Megalis et Hiemit" (the house of wisdom) consisting of missionaries (_Daïs_), adepts (_Fedaïs_) and laymen (_Refiks_), all of which are bound blindly to obey their grand master (_Dai-al-Doal_). Hassan, an adept of this society, was obliged to flee, 1090, on account of some quarrels. He founded a similar sect at the head of which stood the old man of the mountains (_Shaik-al-Djabal_). Their members, especially the lower classes, the _hashishin_, made themselves formidable in the times of the crusades by their reckless obedience in executing murder and other crimes. The order consisted of 60,000 members and their blind obedience was effected through suggestibility in the state of hashish intoxication. The word assassin is derived from their name. In the year 1255 a Mongolian governor ordered 12,000 hashishin to be executed on account of the dangerous character of their sect. The secret of their formidable obedience appears to have been the method of intoxicating the neophyte before his admission to the order with hashish in some grand mountain scenery and suggesting to him all the pleasures of paradise which he would find in blind faith and unreserved obedience to the old man of the mountain. Contempt of death, insensibility under the severest tortures, and an unspeakable joy in the fulfilment of their leader's command were the result. It can readily be perceived what a dangerous drug hashish is; nevertheless it is said that the cultivation of Indian hemp, especially among some negro tribes of Africa according to the reports of Wissmann, exercises in several respects a good influence. Some of the barbarians of darkest Africa have given up cannibalism and accustom themselves to more civilised habits. The psychical effects of hashish are described as: (1) a feeling of comfort; (2) dissociation of ideas and a lack of their control; (3) illusion concerning space and time; (4) an increased sense of hearing; (5) fixed ideas and delirium; (6) a disturbance of affective states, e. g. suspicion; (7) irresistible impulses; (8) illusions and hallucinations. Dr. v. Schrenck-Notzing freely quotes from Moreau, _Du Hashish et de l'aliénation mentale, Etude psychologique_ (Paris: Masson, 1845), and adds several experiments of his own.

Mrs. Fay, a somnambule accused of imposition and fraud, was delivered by the County Court of Zurich to Professor Forel for observation who kept her for several days in his institute. The professor's report to the County Court is very interesting in so far as Mrs. Fay, a woman without education, must be considered as a genuine somnambule exhibiting all the symptoms observed in other cases. She had been a servant girl in Basel and since her fifteenth year fell twice a day in an hypnotic sleep. She married and had several children, her youngest child was born while she was in her hypnotic sleep. She made a living by curing patients who consulted her when asleep, and was punished before on that account for imposition. During one of her hypnotic states patients were introduced to her in the presence of Professor Forel and she made her statements in vague terms as almost all somnambules do. The experiment showed that her diagnosis consisted of random guesses which in exceptional cases happened to be correct; sometimes they were not wholly incorrect, but mostly erroneous. She believes herself to be possessed by a spirit whom she calls "Ernst." Professor Forel without considering the woman as a model of truthfulness, believes in her sincerity. He cured her of her hypnotic sleep on her own request. She stated that the money she earned by curing patients did not make up for the loss she endured by not being able to earn a living by work. Professor Forel succeeded with his cure, but he states in a postscript that the woman having returned to her former surroundings, has since suffered from relapses. (Leipsic: Ambr. Abel.)

PHILOSOPHISCHE MONATSHEFTE. Vol. XXVII. Nos. 3 and 4.

CONTENTS:

QUANTITAET UND QUALITAET IN BEGRIFF, URTHEIL UND
GEGENSTAENDLICHER ERKENNTNISS. Ein Kapitel der transcendentalen
Logik. (Concluded.) By _P. Natorp_.

RECENSIONEN.

LITTERATURBERICHT.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE. By Prof. Dr. _F. Ascherson_.

The conclusion of Prof. P. Natorp's article on _Quantity and Quality in Concept, Judgment, and Objective Cognition_ appears to be the most important part of the essay. Professor Natorp is a transcendentalist. He understands Kant in a dualistic sense where the latter says that "the unity of apperception (Einheit der Apperception) is the radical faculty of all our cognition" (Radical-Vermögen aller unserer Erkentniss). Cognition is defined as "limitation of that which is _per se_ infinite." It is natural that for a transcendentalist the greatest difficulty arises when he attempts to let his _a priori_ face the facts of reality. Professor Natorp shows great skill and ingenuity in this respect. It is but consistent with his premisses to arrive at an "invincible dualism," yet he adapts his transcendentalism sufficiently to fulfil the demands of experience. Thus he does not come to a real solution but to a _modus vivendi_, which is after all the purpose of philosophy.

Professor Natorp considers the synthetic unity not as given, but as to be realised; a concept is created through definition. The data of experience on the other hand are not the defined, but the definable. They are to be defined by the forms of the concepts, and their fundamental forms are quantity and quality. He says: "The definition as this and as that (as something identical) is a function of the concept, but the concept presupposes sensation as the material to be defined. To consider sensation as given in this its absolute identity which is demanded by the concept, is after all an illusion. Therefore positivism and not idealism confounds the demands of cognition with the given reality, thus adjusting facts to our wants of knowledge. Sensation conceived as a datum and not as a postulate is and remains the infinitely definable and never absolutely defined.... It appears easy thus to reduce the dualism of form and matter, concept and sensation, the defined and the definable to one ultimate unity. In one respect positivism succeeds, attributing full definedness, and not mere definableness, to the data; and then, it finds no difficulty in letting the defining function of the concept in its peculiarity disappear by reducing it to a quality of the data."

We do not know to what kind of positivism Professor Natorp refers; yet it seems that it cannot be applied either to Comte's or to Littré's views. Nor does it dispose of the positivism editorially set forth in _The Monist_. Positivism, according to Professor Natorp, is at fault in dropping the definite function of the concept. But he endeavors to avoid the opposite mistake also, viz. "to entirely drop the definable, which might be supposed to be a mere _X_, scarcely representable in clear concepts, or to deduce it from the defining function. This other exaggeration is that of idealism which has found its purest expression in Fichte's philosophy." Professor Natorp by keeping aloof from both errors declares dualism to be insuperable; "dualism," he says, "'is a hard fact'—_eine starre Thatsache_."

The trouble with transcendentalists, it seems to us, originates in their method of starting with cognition, with the synthetic unity of apperception, with the forms of concepts. Experience means to them the sense-element of sensation, the contents of concepts without their form. They start with a dualism. When they have completed their system of transcendental forms, they find it hard to explain how to change their rigid laws into the constant flux of reality as presented to us by experience. Should the philosopher not rather start from the function of cognising, which in itself is a unity? He will find that cognition, concept, the synthetic unity of apperception, and all the complex laws of transcendental thought are products of the cognising function. If these laws are rigid, we have made them so. We have made them stable, we have fixed them for a certain purpose. Their rigidity is a legitimate fiction for that purpose, but beyond it it finds no application. Pure logic draws distinctions which do not exist in reality; pure mathematics operates with lines which considered as real things are mere nonentities. The dualism between concept and sensation, between the _a priori_ and the _a posteriori_, between thought and thing, between form and matter, is not given in experience, for in experience the formal and the material are one inseparable whole; it is the product of cognition. The cognising function differentiates the data of experience into formal and material aspects; the formal being always of a general character serves as a help for systematising and classifying the material. This appears to us the only way of realising a monistic positivism, and no philosophy can be considered as satisfactory until it represents the data of experience or positive facts in a unitary view, i. e. a harmonious conception free of contradictions.

Professor Natorp has still to battle with the Eleatic question. He begins the conclusion of his article with the following words: "Let us consider only the most important results of our deduction. An explanation of 'becoming,' of 'change' has in this way become possible; the solution of the Eleatic problem how 'change' can _be_ at all, since _being_ means unchangeable definedness; or, how becoming can be, since it includes not-being, for being means the transition from not-being into being, or from being into not-being. How can we think this combination of position and negation without contradiction, a combination of position and negation being a contradiction"? This is rather a late flower of Hegelian thought: but, being presented so vigorously and unequivocally, it illustrates clearly the mistake of transcendentalism in starting from abstract concepts or pure thought, thence coming down to the facts of reality. There transcendentalists have to fit their ideas about being and not-being to experience, and finding insuperable difficulties must consistently become dualists. Professor Natorp's solution of the Eleatic question is "to find a method of thought which overcomes the absolute contradiction of position and negation.... This is done by the comprehensive unity, which means identity and at the same time difference, viz. that one is the same as the other and yet not the same."

We should say that the Eleatic question will best be understood by a clear comprehension of the function, the purpose, and the products of cognition.

Says Professor Natorp: "Since Kant has restored in its purity the distinction made by the ancients between αἰσθητά and νοητά, φαινόμενον and νοούμενον, the authors of this distinction, the philosophers of Elea are almost nearer to us than Aristotle." The distinction between thought and sensation is indeed of extraordinary importance. Ideas (thoughts) and sensations are different, but the recognition of this difference is no reason to declare dualism as permanently established. Is not the reason of their difference the difference of abstraction made in each case.

By noumena, i. e. thoughts or ideas, we understand all mental symbols representing things. The ideas "man," "manhood," "virtue," etc., are not sensations, but symbols representing some qualities abstracted from sensations. In making the abstraction "idea" we confine the term, i. e. the symbol "idea," to its representative element alone. We leave out of sight that real ideas vibrating through our brain are at the same time nervous structures in actions; we leave also out of sight that they possess the state of awareness in common with sensations. We do it because their representative nature is of paramount importance. However, in making the abstraction "sensation" we do not exclude the state of awareness, we think first of all of the feeling of a sensation and then also of its form, viz. the special sense-impression. "I have a sensation" is almost equivalent to the phrase "I have a feeling"; a sensation of light means a feeling of the effect of ether-waves upon the retina; a sensation of sound is a feeling of the effect of air-waves upon the drum of the ear; etc. Just as much as ether-waves are not light, and air-waves not sound, (the latter being the effect of the former upon specially adapted feeling substance), so also the sensations light and sound are not the ideas we have of light and sound. The ideas of light and sound are symbols representing in feeling substance the sensations light and sound. These symbols, we suppose, have developed from the memory-images of sensations. They must in their turn also be considered as effects. They are the effects of sense-impressions upon specially adapted feeling substance, viz. upon a higher system of nervous structures, not in direct contact with the periphery, but growing upon and from the peripheral sensory reflex centres. The physiological activity of thoughts is accompanied also with the feeling element; or in other words, thoughts are, as much as sensations, states of awareness. Yet they differ from sensations in that they do not contain anything of sense-impressions; the latter being an exclusive characteristic of the action of sensory organs. The memory-picture of blackness is not a sensation and the idea of blackness still less.

The distinction between noumena or things of thought and æstheta or sensations is by no means so distinct as is often assumed; for, as we have seen, the most prominent feature of the noumenon is its representative character. Isolated sense-impressions possess no representative character, but sensations do possess it. Sensations are the connecting link between sense-impressions and thoughts, between meaningless feeling and mental states or mind, i. e. representative states of awareness. Ideas are, as it were, an extract of the representative value contained in sensations. This is my conception of the distinction to be made between αἰσθητά and νοητά, between sense-activity and thought-activity, between the phenomenon and noumenon. It is set forth at length in the discussion with Professor E. Mach in this number. It has been here again set forth at such length, because I am convinced that a final solution of the problem is of great importance. (Heidelberg: George Weiss.)

κ.

MINERVA. Rassegna Internazionale. January, 1891.

_Minerva_ will represent the first Italian venture in the direction of a comprehensive magazine of international reference and literary record. The editors, in stating the aims of their new publication, acknowledge that Italy keenly feels the lack of an international intellectual magazine. In Italy the reading public, and persons of an average culture, still seem to be cut off from all stimulating intellectual contact with the outside civilised world; while beyond the Alps, on the contrary, and across the seas, any book, or a simple magazine-article even, be it written in German, English, or French, and legitimately claim from any point of view a certain importance, is at once read by innumerable persons from San Francisco all the way to St. Petersburg. Through the intellectual medium of their international reviews, these nations seem actually to have realised one of Goethe's most ardent aspirations,—the dream of a noble and humanising "world-literature." Nearly all of the articles contained in the present issue of _Minerva_ are ably condensed translations and epitomes of articles that have recently appeared in leading English, American, and German reviews and magazines. _La Minerva_ is under the direction of Prof. Federico Garlanda of the University of Rome. (Rome: La Società Laziale. Tip Editrice.)

VOPROSY FILOSOFII I PSICHOLOGII.[94]

[94] _Questions of Philosophy and Psychology._ In the Russian
language.

CONTENTS:

FURTHER REMARKS CONCERNING THE TASK OF THIS REVIEW. By the Editor
_Prof. N. Grote_.

ETHICS AND EVOLUTION. By _B. N. Beketov_.

LETTERS ON COUNT TOLSTOI'S BOOK "FROM LIFE." By _A. A. Kozlow_.

CONCERNING THE LAW OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY. By _N. N.
Strachov_.

ON THE NATURE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. By _Prince C. N.
Trubetzkoi_.

CRITICISM AND BIBLIOGRAPHY.

THE DOCTRINE OF WILL IN THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY. By _K. Ventzel_.

BOOK REVIEWS.

REVIEW OF PERIODICALS: 1) Of foreign philosophical Reviews; 2) Of
philosophical articles in Russian ecclesiastical papers.

POLEMICAL.

APPENDIX: 1) Materials for the History of Philosophy in Russia;
2) Transactions of the Moscow Psychological Society.

Russia is perhaps that country of all civilised nations of which we know least, and even such authors as Tolstoï who are read all over the world, are perhaps, severed from their surroundings, not correctly understood by us as the Russian understands them. The present magazine, _Problems of Philosophy and Psychology_, being a strictly scientific periodical, is less peculiarly Russian without entirely losing the national characteristics of its home. The intention of the editor has been to develop and to give a chance for a further development of an independent Russian philosophy. The philosophy of the West, we are informed, does not satisfy the Russian mind; the English philosophy is one-sided empirical, the French mathematical, the German too abstract and logical. The Russian philosophy aspires to bring about a well-balanced and harmonious method of thinking in which reason, sentiment, and action—science, art and religion—are reconciled. Professor Grote, the editor of _Problems of Philosophy and Psychology_, by placing the ethical interest in the foreground, hopes that Russian philosophy will become "the salvation of the world from evil."

Among the book reviews we find six pages devoted to _The Ethical Problem_, by Dr. Paul Carus, a translation of which was made for us by Prof. A. Gunlogsen of Chicago. We find however that the reviewer, Mr. P. Astafiew, mixes the position of the author up with that of the societies for ethical culture. If he represents the Magazine's view of reconciling Science, Art, and Religion, it is sure that Religion in the shape Of his peculiar creed would get the lion's share. The interest of the little book consists to him in the fact that it clearly characterises a singular anarchical condition; by having lost the old faith, it is utterly unable to replace it. It is an assumption to base ethics and religion on positive and scientific foundations; yet the attempt is curious as a symptom of the times and especially of "enlightened" America.

In answer to one of the most important errors in Mr. Astafiew's review, we have to state that basing ethics upon the facts of life, verified and verifiable by science, does not mean that we have to study psychology in order to be moral. A man can lead a moral life without understanding anything of ethics, the science of morality. Ethics is not an indispensable condition of morality. But it is of paramount importance that ethics—as a science—is not an impossibility. The data of moral life, the impulses of duty, of conscience, of the ought, are not mystical or supernatural, i. e. extra-natural, standing in contradiction to other natural facts; they are not, as the intuitionists maintain, "unanalysable," they are not, as Professor Adler, the founder of the Ethical Societies declares, beyond the pale of science; "the ladder of science," he says, "does not reach so far." The data of moral life are facts of the natural development of man and of human society; they can be investigated by science, they can be compared with other natural facts, they can be classified and understood.

A man can throw a stone without understanding anything of Newton's laws, he can build a hut without understanding architecture. Yet for that reason the study of ballistics and of architecture are not useless. The man who has studied architecture may bridge the Niagara, which the mound-builders were unable to do. And if a bridge breaks down while the mounds of the mound-builders are still standing, it proves nothing against architecture. An ethical student may have proposed untenable theories in ethics, he may have preached a wrong morality, and may have gone astray himself: all that would prove nothing against the science of ethics. It is to be expected that ethical knowledge, if it leaveneth the whole lump of human society, will raise man's moral life higher, as surely as our knowledge of architecture made it possible that we now build palaces upon the places where in former times stood the wigwams of the Indians. (Moscow, 1891.)

κ.

VOL. I. JULY, 1891. NO. 4.

THE MONIST.

PSYCHOLOGY OF CONCEPTION.

_General Nature of Thought._—The processes marked off by the psychologist as thinking or thought constitute the highest stage of intellectual elaboration (intellection). By taking our concrete percepts and resolving them into so many abstractions, (qualities or attributes of things, relations between things,) we are enabled to carry out the process of cognition to the furthest point of unification. As long as we view a particular object, or an event, alone apart from other things, we merely _apprehend_ it. But when we bring it into relation to kindred things we _comprehend_ it. Thus, we comprehend the tiger by classing it with other members of the feline group. So we comprehend or understand the movement of the steam-engine by assimilating it to the more familiar action of the steam in the kettle in forcing up the lid.

Like imaginative production thinking is nothing but the sum of processes of separation and combination, carried out on sense-material. But in this case the elaborative processes assume a new and peculiar form. It is one thing to build up a pictorial image as the poet does, another thing to elaborate an abstract idea, such as the scientific notion of force, fulcrum, and so forth. We must now try to investigate more thoroughly the nature of this thought-elaboration.

_Thought as Activity._—It is evident that the processes here roughly described are active processes, that is to say they involve a special exertion of the forces of attention. In perception, reproduction, and constructive imagination, this active factor is at work. But it is only in thought proper that this activity becomes fully developed. To think of a particular attribute in an object, say the color of a rose, is as we all know a conscious effort or strain. A child first called upon to think about abstract qualities, and the general relations of objects finds the operation difficult and fatiguing. All thinking is in truth an exercise of the higher form of attention, viz. volitional concentration of consciousness. We only think when we have some purpose as the discovery of the likeness or difference among objects, and such a purpose only develops itself as the individual and the race attain a certain measure of development or culture. The child and the savage, like the animal, get on very well without thinking. And even a large proportion of civilised adults think only in an occasional and rudimentary way. Thought is thus in all cases a kind of artificial activity sustained only for short periods and under the stress of impulses or motives which belong to a high stage of intellectual and moral development.

The high degree of activity in thought presumably involves
a special amount of that muscular strain which forms the
sensuous base of the attitude of attention. To think is
thus to concentrate consciousness by aid of energetic motor
adjustments. These include the innervation of certain muscles,
more particularly those by which movements of the eyes and
head are carried out. To think is to keep certain ideational
elements in persistent consciousness, and this is probably
effected in part at least by an energetic and sustained
innervation of particular groups of muscles. To this it may
be added that since as we shall see presently all thinking is
bringing together in their relations a number of ideational
elements, the muscular activity in the case is of a specially
difficult kind. Such special muscular efforts would probably
effect a cutting off of other elements and so subserve that
severe narrowing of consciousness which is so marked a feature
in thought.

_Directions of Thought-Activity._—This thought-activity may be viewed as having two aspects or as following two directions, which it may be well to view apart, even though, as we shall presently see, they are inseparable aspects of one process. Just as all intellectual elaboration is at once differentiation or separation and integration or combination of what is differentiated, so thought itself is but a higher development of each phase.

_a_) _Analysis, Abstraction._—First of all, then, thought may be viewed as a carrying further and into higher forms the process of differentiation or separation of presentative elements by means of isolating acts of attention. Thus on selectively considering the color of a rose, or the form of a crystal, we are it is evident differentiating what is given in perception as a complex into a number of parts, and rendering one of these specially prominent and distinct. Such thought-separation is commonly spoken of as Analysis, i. e. the taking apart of what is conjoined in a whole, and also as Abstraction or the withdrawal of attention from what is for the moment irrelevant and confining it to one particular point, feature, or quality (Latin ab or abs, and traho).

Here it is evident a special attitude and effort of attention is required. It is one thing to note carefully a presentative complex just as it is, another thing to single out some element of this and fix the attention on it. The peculiar difficulty of this analytic attention is due to the firm coherence of the complex. The child cannot see the color of the orange just because the orange as a whole stands in the way. Hence this analytic attention is abstraction in the fullest sense, that is a deliberate turning aside from what stimulates or attracts this attention at the moment.

Such abstract singling out of an element may be supposed to involve a special modification of the muscular adjustment in attention. Hence perhaps the comparative ease with which we can single out for observation locally distinct features of an object, to which correspond different movements of the sense-organ. On the other hand the great difficulty of mentally separating the color from the form of an object may arise from the common element in the muscular adjustments concerned.

The nature of this process of analysis or abstract attention is best seen in those comparatively simple operations in which an actual presentation-complex as a group of tones or colors is being analysed. The carrying out of such a process of analysis is aided by certain conditions objective or external, and subjective or internal. Thus it is found that the closer the degree of the complication the more difficult the isolating fixation. Thus while it is comparatively easy to attend to one detail of color in an object locally separated from other color-details it is exceedingly difficult to attend to the brightness or the degree of saturation of a color apart from the quality of the tone itself. In the case of tone-masses, again, it is found that certain combinations, more especially that of the octave, are difficult to distinguish because of the tendency in this case to fusion.[95]

[95] This is Stumpf's explanation. See his account of the
different degrees of fusion. _Tonpsychologie_ ii. p. 65, and
p. 127 et seqq.

Coming now to subjective conditions we find that the detection of an element in a complex is aided by a previous familiarity with this apart from its present concomitants. Thus the singling out of the partial tones of a clang is greatly aided by the circumstance that these occur and so are known apart from the ground-tone and thus are more readily picked out and recognised.[96] Again, the separate detection of a presentative element is aided by special interest in the particular material. A fine ear for clang-effect or timbre can more readily fix its attention on this.

[96] According to Helmholtz this previous familiarity with
the elements of a composite whole when it gives rise to a
vivid expectation may produce an illusory analysis, as when
certain opticians affirmed that they could detect the supposed
constituents of green, blue, and yellow, in that color. See
_Physiol. Optik_, p. 273.

Such special interest works mainly through what is known as practice. What we are accustomed to note, and exercised in picking out from its surroundings, we are able to detect readily. This effect of practice in facilitating analysis or abstract attention to this and that constituent of a presentation-complex is abundantly shown throughout the whole domain of recent experimental inquiry into the nature and relations of sensation.

Of course all such analytical separation of presentative constituents is limited by certain conditions in our sensibility. Thus the limits of local discrimination obviously confine the range of isolating attention to local detail in our tactual and visual presentations. Since too such isolation is differentiation, i. e. the singling out of some trait or feature different in quality or intensity from surrounding features, it follows that our abstraction is in all cases limited by our discrimination. We cannot separately fixate a local detail of color if this is not qualitatively distinguishable from its surroundings, nor a local detail of form if this is not distinguishable in luminous intensity from its entourage. Similarly with respect to the difficult analysis of complex tone-presentations or clangs and taste-presentations, as the mixed flavors of a dish.

_b_) _Synthesis: Conscious Relating._—In the second place all thought is integrating or combining, or, as it is commonly expressed, a process of Synthesis. In thinking we never merely isolate or abstract. We analytically resolve the presentative complexes of our concrete experience only in order to establish certain relations among them. The most appropriate term for all such conscious relating or discernment of relation is Comparison.

All our sensational or presentative material is given in certain relations or connections, including the relation of coexistence, or coinherence in a substance, of the several qualities of a thing. Thus the several parts of an extended body stand in certain spatial relations one to another, one part being situated to the right of the other, and the object as a whole being above and behind another object, and so forth. To these space-relations must be added the time-relations of all events, such as the movements of objects, their changes of form, and so forth. Lastly with these 'external' relations are given the so-called 'internal' relations of difference and likeness. The colors, forms, and so forth that present themselves from time to time exhibit a large variety of such relations.

As long as we perceive or imagine the concrete object as such we have only a vague 'implicit' knowledge of these relations. Thus a child in looking at a house sees _implicitly_ the chimney in a definite spatial relation to the mass of the building, but the clear explicit grasp of the relation is a subsequent process going beyond perception and involving a rudiment of what we mark off as thought. In like manner when in recollection we recall a sequence of experiences, we may implicitly recognise one as following another; yet it is only by a process of thought that we explicitly single out this relation for special consideration.

The same holds good with regard to the all-comprehensive relations of dissimilarity and similarity. A child in perceiving a particular object, say a tree, differentiates it from surrounding objects, other trees, the background of the sky, etc., and in recognising a familiar object as his toy, or as an orange, he assimilates it to previous like presentations. But in these cases the consciousness of difference and likeness is implicit only. It is some way from this implicit or unconscious discrimination and assimilation to comparison proper, issuing in a clear or explicit consciousness of a relation of likeness or of unlikeness.

It follows from this that thought grows by insensible gradations out of the lower intellective operations. The perception of objects in space, and still more, the recollection of events in time, is itself an incipient subconscious stage of the thought process, i. e. grasp of relations. Hence our demarcations of the spheres of sense and thought, of concrete or pictorial and abstract representations, are not to be taken absolutely. The germ of thought is present throughout, yet as we shall see presently it is a considerable step from the implicit to the explicit seizing of these relations.[97]

[97] Cf. Lotze, _Mikrokosmus_, English translation, i. p. 655;
Ward, article "Psychology," _Encycl. Britannica_, p. 75.

All such explicit grasp of relation involves a new direction of adjustive effort, or of (volitional) attention. Just as the analytic resolution of a complex demands a special effort in the way of limited concentration and resistance to irrelevant concomitants, so the comparison of two presentations in order to discern their relation imposes a further special task in the shape of a comprehensive grasp. The special difficulties of the process are manifest. Comparative attention to two presentations, say two colors in local, or two tones in temporal juxtaposition is not merely the carrying out of a simple adjustive process in one direction only, but the carrying out of a double and yet co-ordinated adjustive process.

The fact that there is a general tendency to simple modes of adjustment subserving a comparatively simple structure or pattern of consciousness, and the fact that complex simultaneous adjustments, as in the case of doing different things at the same time, and in that of the synthetic relating process of thought, are rare and acquired with difficulty, suggest that a special nervous process is involved, consisting of a double and divergent stream of innervation, each branch of which has to be kept going in certain relations of time, as also of proportionate strength, with the other branch.

The process of synthetic or relating activity just described may take the direction of consciously grasping the relations immediately presented along with presentation, and more particularly the co-existence of attributes in the same object, and the space and time relations of presentations. To note the juxtaposition of yellow and white in a daisy or the co-existence of its form and color, or the spatial inclusion of its yellow centre in an extended whole, is evidently to discern relations and so to carry out a process of conscious synthesis.

It is however in discerning the most comprehensive relations of likeness and unlikeness that thought shows itself most clearly to be a synthetic process. Thinking has in a special manner to do with the detection of similarity and dissimilarity or difference. Such relating by way of difference or agreement is what we ordinarily understand by comparison.

The relations of similarity and dissimilarity as comprehensive relations connecting presentations remote as well as proximate in time are spoken of as internal and thus marked off from the external relations of time and place. It is true as we have just seen that they are involved along with the latter. Thus in discerning the relations of the parts of an object, we must differentiate them. Yet the two modes of relating are distinct. I discriminate two colors in local juxtaposition not _quâ_ juxtaposed but _quâ_ different in their quality. The juxtaposition may greatly assist the discriminative process, but this circumstance does not make the juxtaposition and the qualitative difference one whit less distinct as relations.