Chapter V: Part 5

The science of language and the science of life are two important highroads to the cognition of truth. That both sciences will be consistent with each other, that their results will finally be seen to harmonise perfectly is beyond all doubt and also that their bearing upon religious ideas will contribute much to their purification. Prof. F. Max Müller and Prof. George John Romanes are two great scholars, each one is a leader in his own branch of knowledge, and where they come in conflict, it appears to us, that they rather complement than refute each other. Both are strong Monists, although emphasising different sides of Monistic truth and we feel convinced that their very differences will help us to elaborate more fully and clearly and more comprehensively the great truth of Monism—of that Monism which will more and more be recognised as the corner-stone of science and also of the religion of science.

EDITOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Compare the article _The Origin of Thought-Forms_ in the present number, under the caption “Diverse Topics.”

[11] I should prefer to speak of the oneness or inseparableness of thought and language, but since Prof. Max Müller has sufficiently explained himself, I use here his term “identity” in the sense of inseparableness as it is used by Prof. Max Müller.

[12] _The Logos Theory_, by Ludwig Noiré. Translated from the German. _The Open Court_, iii. p. 2196. English translations of Noiré’s most important articles concerning the origin of language, have appeared in Nos. 33, 137, 139, 141, 142 of _The Open Court_.

[13] That ants communicate with each other through their antennæ is an undeniable fact. But Landois believes that they communicate also through sounds. Some ants possess in their stridulation-organ a kind of a rattle the sound of which, however, is perceptible to the human ear only in the Ponera ants.

[14] See _Three Lectures on the Science of Language_, p. 47. The Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago.

[15] Prof. Lloyd Morgan introduces several new terms, which seem well coined. The mental product which is called the object of sense he calls “construct”; the most prominent feature in a composite sense-image, he calls the “predominant”; and if the predominant is named and isolated by abstraction he calls it an “isolate.”

[16] An impartial criticism of Professor Romanes’s position has been made by Prof. Lloyd Morgan in his recent work _Animal Life and Intelligence_.

[17] This quotation is requoted from Prof. Lloyd Morgan, _Animal Life and Intelligence_, p. 325.

[18] _The origin of Mind_, in _The Monist_, Vol. I. No. I.

[19] L. c., p. 281. “So much about the subject or the monon. What now about the objects or the mona?”

[20] Prof. Max Müller is a great admirer of Kant and so am I. But it appears to me that we differ greatly in what we accept as the essential teachings of the master; and I grant willingly that Prof. Max Müller has preserved the doctrines of Kant more faithfully than I. I have attempted to modernise Kant. If I am called a Kantian (and I do not object to the name, on the contrary I am proud of it) it is because I proceed from Kant and I attempt to preserve the spirit of Kant’s philosophy rather than his doctrines. For the sake of the spirit of Kantian philosophy I have seen myself urged to surrender the idea of the thing-in-itself as something unknowable. Prof. Max Müller has preserved in his philosophy (for such is the _Science of Thought_) the Ding-an-sich theory. Believing in things-in-themselves he must consistently believe in a self or monon, for this monon is nothing but the thing-in-itself of the soul.

I have limited myself in the present article to the principle of continuity in evolution as a point of divergence between Prof. Max Müller and the views defended by _The Monist_. If I attempted at present to enter into the philosophical problem of things-in-themselves, I should be obliged to tax too much the patience of my readers. But as I am convinced that the reason of our difference with Prof. Max Müller concerning the continuity of evolution lies deeper still, I intend to treat the subject of things-in-themselves in a future number.

LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE

I.

FRANCE.—THE INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING OF THE LANGUE D’OC.

I have never seen mentioned in your periodical publications the _Revue des Pyrénées_; and perhaps I should never have heard of the periodical myself if I had not been in this interesting old city, and if my eye had not chanced on the title of one of the articles of a recent number advertised in a local journal. “Un Ariégeois sénateur des Etats-Unis d’Amérique: Pierre Soulé” was the title that attracted my attention and caused me to procure a copy, which I have found interesting in more ways than one.

The publication is a well-printed quarterly of 150 pages, and has completed some time since the second year of its existence. Its full title is as follows: _Revue des Pyrénées et de la France meridionale, Organe de l’Association Pyrénéenne et de l’union des Sociétés Savantes du Midi_. The founders of the periodical are the late JULIEN SACAZE, a savant much venerated in these parts, and DR. F. GARRIGOU, its present editor.

The Association Pyrénéenne, of which, as we have just seen, the _Revue_ is the organ, is an active and significant organisation. Here are some of its aims. While it recognises the greatness of the Capital, Paris, it advocates decentralisation, by “showing that workers living in the provinces are as capable as others, though enjoying less support and funds, to aid in the building up of the great scientific edifice of France.” The importance and boldness of this declaration can scarcely be appreciated by those who have not breathed for some time the excessively monopolistic atmosphere of the French capital, which has been so baneful to so many national interests. The Association would also act as a means of union between the various learned societies of the South, the Midi, and thus render it possible to organise an annual Congress “for the discussion and defense of the grand scientific, industrial, and commercial questions which concern Southern France.”

Here we see brought out still more precisely that rivalry between the South and North, characteristic of most nations, and which presents such curious aspects in the past and present history of France.

I never weary of quietly noting, while in the South, the delightful contempt which the _méridionaux_ show for their Parisian fellow countrymen. The other day at dinner, for instance, I heard a learned professor of one of the Southern Universities defending the Southern accent and preferring it to “the Parisian accent,” as he put it. But I would need pages of your space to develop this line of thought. Suffice it to say here that the Association Pyrénéenne and its organ the _Revue des Pyrénées_ intend to prove, and have succeeded in proving, if we may judge by this number of the _Revue_ and by the account of the proceedings of the first Congress of the Association, placed at the head of the number, that there are creditable savants and sound learning outside of the walls of Victor Hugo’s “Ville Lumière.”

Another object of the Association would be dear to Castelar’s heart. I give it in full: “To remove morally the grand Pyreneean curtain and to offer the hand of friendship to a nation justly proud of its past, whose interests touch our own, and which has the right, because of the illustrious sons of Catalonia, Aragon, and Navarre, to take part in an intellectual and Pyreneean association based on science.” This is a paraphrase of Louis XIV’s famous remark concerning the Pyrenees, when he placed his grandson on the throne of Spain. Nor can one be surprised at the strong affection which binds Southern France to the Iberian peninsula. The grand mountains, the “Pyreneean curtain,” which separate the two countries, are always in sight, their snow-capped peaks glittering in the sun; the various _patois_, especially the dialect of Pau, resemble the Spanish more than they do the French tongue; Spanish money is foisted on you at the shops, and picturesque Spanish mountaineers lend a peculiar charm to the country fairs, while the nation is ever on the eve of a pronunciamento, destined to give to Spain the republican institutions of France.

But to return to PIERRE SOULÉ who is the cause and starting point of this letter. Commandant Trespaillé’s eulogistic biographical sketch is of slight interest to American readers, who can find elsewhere a fuller and more exact account of the brilliant but rather disappointing career of the once famous Franco-Louisiana statesman. M. Trespaillé’s reference to “Old Hickory” as “the immortal Jackson,” his statement that the American people is full of prejudices against the French race, his metamorphosing New Hampshire’s only President into Pierre Francklin, and some other similar slips can be overlooked, for this essay offers a striking example of the dominant idea of the _Revue_, the Association and patriotic Southerners generally,—the glorification of the great men and great actions of the sunny South, the “Midi ensoleillé.”

And I must admit, foreigner though I am, that I share much of this enthusiasm for persons and things meridional, and especially for the latter. What a land this is for historical and archæological study! Take this number of the _Revue des Pyrénées_, for instance; it is full of it. Here, for example, are the titles of three of the papers read at the first Congress of the Association Pyrénéenne, to which Congress I referred above: “The Domitian Road from Narbonne to Perpignan,” “The Third Century School of Sculpture in Southern Gaul,” and “The Roman Road from Narbonne to Carcassonne.” There are several articles in the _Revue_ about the University of Toulouse, which is stated to be the oldest in France after that of Paris, having been founded in 1229, more than two hundred and fifty years before the discovery of America. The law school even antedates 1229 and its foundation is lost in the obscurity of the early centuries of the Christian era. Another article begins the publication of a list of the professors at the law school. The first recorded name dates from 1251. When one finds such themes as these on every hand, Rome, Gaul, the Middle Ages, and feudalism become almost living realities. And how inexhaustibly rich Languedoc is in these reminders of the distant past.

And the patois or dialects of this part of France are not the least ancient and interesting subjects for study. Wonder is often expressed that the English of America differs so slightly from the English of England, with three thousand miles of ocean separating the two countries. The wonder increases when you find that here in Languedoc the same patois differs in some particulars from town to town. Let me first mention some big differences and then touch upon some minor ones. If you take the train which leaves Toulouse at about half past eleven in the morning, you will arrive at Pau at half past four. During these five hours on a pretty slow train you have passed from one patois to another. The lower classes of Toulouse cannot understand the lower classes of Pau. And if you continue in the same train, at about half past eight you reach Mauléon, in the French Basque Provinces, where the populace of neither Toulouse nor Pau could carry on a conversation with the populace of Mauléon. Thus a nine hours’ ride of about 175 miles on an accommodation train carries you through a region where French is the vernacular of the educated classes and is the official language, but where the great mass of the population is divided into three groups, each speaking a different dialect.

The modifications which the same patois undergoes in neighboring localities is not less curious though of course not so radical. Roughly speaking it may be said that the same patois is spoken from Montpellier to Bordeaux and from Toulouse well up into the centre of France, which embraces the region where prevailed the Langue d’oc from which the present patois is derived. But, while a peasant could make himself understood throughout this wide territory, his ear would often be perplexed by more than one strange word and phrase. I was once told on the Riviera that the patois of Menton differed considerably from that of Nice and that this was particularly the case before the construction of the Corniche road and the railway, when a denizen of the former place could reach the latter city only by doubling Cape Martin under sail. I do not know how true this statement is, but I believe it to be correct, after a superficial study on these same lines which I have just made in the Department of the Tarn, one of the most isolated portions of Upper Languedoc. I find that the patois of towns as near together, as are New York, Newark, Patterson, Nyack and Tarrytown, for example, differs, not, perhaps, in its construction but in its vocabulary. Let me give some examples. Thus, potato, which is _truffet_ at Cordes, becomes _truffo_ at Castres. _Patano_, the word employed in the South East end of the Department is also heard at Castres, but never at Cordes, which is in the North West end of the Department, Castres being about in the centre. Dog is _cagnot_ and _cô_ at Cordes, and _gous_ at Castres. (At Montpellier, in a contiguous Department it is _tschi_, while at Pau they say _can_, which approaches very near the Latin.) Pig is _pourcel_ at Castres and _tessou_ at Cordes. Broom _engranicro_ at Castres and _balatso_ at Cordes. I have also noted the following difference between the Tarn patois and that of Pau. The _f_ of the former always becomes an aspirated _h_ in the latter. Thus, _femo_, woman (Castres) is _henno_ at Pau; _fourco_, pitchfork (Castres) _hourco_ (Pau); _foun_ fountain (Castres) _houn_ (Pau).

A comparison of this patois with the French as regards the spelling of geographical names reveals a fact that would somewhat dampen the ardor of our friend Colonel Shephard, of New York, in his effort to force the gazeteers to give geographical names as they are written in the countries where they are found. One might have thought that such near neighbors as the Langue d’oil and the Langue d’oc would have come to some rational understanding on this point and that the Ile-de-France would have accepted the spelling of Languedoc. But not so. The towns and rivers of this part of France look as different in French and patois printed pages and sound as differently when pronounced by educated and peasant mouths, as do the towns and rivers of Italy when seen in Italian and English books or when spoken by Americans and Italians. Thus Toulouso became Toulouse; Castros, Castres; Dourgnos, Dourgne; Carcassouno, Carcassonne; Narbouno, Narbonne; Billofranco, Villefranche; Labaou, Lavaur; Bibiers, Viviers; Boou, Vour; Abrayrou, Aveyron; Cordos, Cordes, etc.

These patois, these dialects of the old Langue d’oc, are awakening just now increasing interest in the literary circles of the Midi, for it is only within recent years that the French has appeared to threaten their extinction. The spread of the railroad system and especially the wide development of the primary school since the advent of the Third Republic, are dealing deadly blows at these popular dialects. But they are still far from moribund. I have frequently been told that even to-day one stumbles now and then on old peasants living up in the isolated Black Mountain, a spur of the Cévennes, and which divides Upper from Lower Languedoc, who cling to _oc_, although _obe_ or _ope_, or the French _oui_ and _si_, are the common affirmative particles of the patois.

It has often happened to me when taking a constitutional to ask my way and discover that I am addressing a person who neither understands nor speaks French, though, as a rule, all peasants understand French and the vast majority can speak the language too, but after a rather sorry fashion. A foreigner finds at least one comfort in all this: in Languedoc he uses the national tongue more correctly than thousands of native born Frenchmen! Nor is the knowledge of patois confined to the peasantry or the working classes of the towns. The _bourgeoisie_, with exceedingly rare exceptions, are quite at home in it, and the children of the nobility often prattle with their peasant nurse more easily in patois than in the polished speech of their parents. During a political campaign, it is a very common thing for a would-be deputy to address country voters in their familiar dialect, thereby gaining the favor not alone of the _félibres_; while, during this same period of electoral excitement, the local papers publish almost daily editorials written in patois. In hundreds of rural churches the short sermon after early mass is preached in patois, and many a time I have found myself turning with surprise when I heard French spoken in the streets of Languedocian towns of considerable size.

There was a time when the government and the ruling classes of Languedoc itself strove to eradicate these dialects and to substitute French for them. The aim was a patriotic one; greater national unity, it was believed, would thus be secured. But that period has gone by, and at present there is a strong tendency to preserve from destruction these linguistic souvenirs of a rapidly fading past. What the enthusiastic _félibres_ would do for Provençal, they and their disciples and imitators in Languedoc would do for the dialects of South Western France. At the Congrès d’Etudes Languedociennes, held recently at Montpellier, one of the members proposed that the French language should be taught in the primary schools through the medium of the langue d’oc. The suggestion is not so chimerical as it appears to be at first blush, for one of the greatest and never-ending difficulties of the country schoolmaster in this part of France is to teach his scholars the three R’s by means of the French, which is a foreign tongue to ninety-nine out of a hundred of them. One is not surprised, therefore, to find that one of the resolutions passed by this same Congress takes up the plan proposed in the paper just referred to, and declares in favor of “the utilisation of the langue d’oc for teaching French in the primary schools.”

At a recent sitting of the General Council of the Bordeaux University a resolution was passed calling for the creation of a chair of “Southern languages.” In explanation of this term, the _Gironde_, the leading Bordeaux newspaper, says: “Besides giving instruction in Spanish, one of the labors of the professor would be to teach our South Western dialects in which the most important historical documents of this part of the country were drawn up during several centuries.” The editor then goes on to say: “If the State does not feel able to found this chair, will not some private individual come forward and imitate the example of James E. Clark, who recently established at Worcester, Mass., a university endowed with a capital of $12,500,000?”

Speaking of primary schools reminds me of a curious fact which has frequently attracted my attention in Languedoc this winter. In no other part of France perhaps was it so common for a town to grow up around a castle; for this region was terribly harried by the Wars of Religion, and the poor peasants were forced to seek the protection of some lord. In order to render them more impregnable, these castles were generally built on some high hill. So now one sees on every hand decaying hamlets surrounding ruined castles left almost deserted on the very crown of some pyramidal mount, while the busy town of to-day has descended to the more accessible base of the hill. But since the advent of the Third Republic and the grand impetus given to primary instruction, these abandoned castles have taken a new lease of life, and been converted into school buildings. The other day during an hour’s drive in Upper Languedoc I saw two of these old useless feudal piles consecrated to popular nineteenth century education. What a train of reflections is thus suggested! Within the very same walls where some proud ignorant seignior once lorded it over his humble vassals, the descendants of these serfs, still speaking the tongue of their oppressed ancestors, but enjoying all the liberties then usurped by their masters, are now being instructed in branches of knowledge of which the feudal knight had scarcely an inkling. What a revolution was that of ’89!

THEODORE STANTON.

II.

GERMANY.—RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN THE DOMAIN OF PATHOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY.

The science of anthropology claims, as we know, to have discovered, that the various epochs of history are marked not only by characteristic religious, political, social, and literary conditions, but not unfrequently also by particular forms of disease; and it is the opinion of eminent medical authorities that nervous and mental diseases constitute the “pathological feature” of modern civilisation. This, of course, is not to be understood as meaning that diseases of this character have not appeared in previous epochs, but simply that they occur with unusual frequency at the present day and in unusually grave forms.

A book treating of the affliction of the age ought to count on a large circle of readers, and it will be all the more deserving of such if it thoroughly and skilfully fulfils its purpose of holding up the mirror to the time and of imparting the light and advice required in this matter. This has been done in an excellent manner by the work of the Bremen alienist Dr. SCHOLZ, entitled _Die Diätetik des Geistes—Ein Führer zu praktischer Lebensweisheit_, which has just appeared in its second and enlarged edition, Leipsic, E. H. Mayer. This book is distinguished from the majority of similar recent publications intended for a greater public by its relative thoroughness. It must be characterised as thorough and comprehensive, also, in comparison with the older and more celebrated work, which its title at once suggests, FEUCHTERLEBEN’S _Diätetik der Seele_. The character of the book is not “purely psychological,” overlooking the high importance of the influence of the body, as was the case with Beneke; nor does it lean towards the moralising of a Heinroth and Ideler; nor does the author treat his subject from an exclusively medical point of view: the work, in fact, is anthropological in character. Its contents possess chiefly in two respects great interest: (1) from a universal human point of view, in that it affords us a glance into the awful abysses of life, in the company of an expert guide who tells us how these depths are to be avoided, or at least gives consolation to those whose way leads necessarily through them; and (2) from a pedagogical point of view, in that it directs attention to the heredity of the morbid constitutions and abnormalities that oppose obstacles to education or may become such if improperly treated.

It is obvious that morbid mental dispositions must be taken into account in all work of education and instruction, if we wish to avoid an egregious violation of the universally recognised requirement to regard individuality. And from this point of view the book of Dr. Scholz will awaken in readers who have anything to do at all with education, the desire to learn more about the nature of morbid mental life in the young than is presented in this treatise destined for a large public.

Such a wish would have had to remain unsatisfied six years ago, when the _Diätetik des Geistes_ first appeared. It is true, English physicians particularly, like West, Conolly, Maudsley, and others, had a long time previously directed attention to the morbid phenomena of infant psychic life, but their work, like that of their French and German professional associates, lies buried in medical magazines and volumes not easily accessible. The first to apply himself to the work needed in this condition of affairs was Professor EMMINGHAUS, who digested and collected all the material, thus supplied, in a compendious work bearing the title _Die psychischen Störungen des Kindesalters_, Tübingen, Laupp, 1887. The fact indeed is not to be left unrecognised that the book, in so far as it may be used by those who have not had a medical training, possesses two defects,—defects, however, for which the author cannot be censured. In the first place, it is intended for physicians only, and is therefore, on account of the many technical terms it uses, at times not uniformly intelligible. To the serious student, however, who possesses the previous psychological and physiological knowledge most indispensable, it presents no difficulties of too great magnitude. The second defect likewise springs from the purpose of the work. It consists in the fact that, excepting a few occasional references and hints, the pedagogical aspect of the question is not considered. Pedagogists, here, are confronted with a problem which must be solved, and of which the solution will certainly not be a thankless task. The writer of these lines has approached one aspect of this question in a treatise of his entitled _Nervosität and Mädchenerziehung_, Wiesbaden, 1890, in the course of which study he has arrived at the conviction that an important factor is lacking in modern pedagogics and the training of teachers. This conviction he has put into words in another treatise, _Geistesstörungen in der Schule_, Wiesbaden, 1891, with what success it remains for the future to say.

Two years after the appearance of Emminghaus’s work a translation was published in Germany of a French book of a similar character. _Der Irrsin im Kindesalter_, by Dr. PAUL MOREAU, authorised edition by Dr. Demetrio Galatti, Stuttgart, 1889, Ferdinand Enke, publisher. Unfortunately, Moreau, as his own preface reveals, did not know, when he wrote his book, of the existence of the German work,—a circumstance that has not been without regrettable consequences. Taken in conjunction with the work of Emminghaus, however, Moreau’s book possesses, on account of the numerous morbid cases it gives, a high value; although it cannot bear comparison with the former work in richness of material and familiarity with the literature of the subject, and much less so in the psychological treatment of the subject, where Emminghaus is incomparably subtler and more profound.

A treatise that is closely related, in point of subject-matter, on the one hand to the works of Emminghaus and Moreau, and on the other to the books of Preyer (_Die Seele des Kindes_) and Pérez (_Les trois premières années de l’enfant_ and _L’enfant de trois à sept ans_) on the development of children, has just been published by a Leipsic teacher under the title of _Die Periodicität in der Entwickelung der Kindesnatur_, _Neue Gesichtspunkte für Kinderforschung und Jugenderziehung_, by GUSTAV SIEGERT, Leipsic, 1891, R. Voigtländer. The author endeavors, in a very interesting manner we must admit, to show that, in the development of the child, lasting states in regular alternate succession occur of mental and physical buoyancy on the one hand and depression on the other, of moral exaltation, likewise, and moral subsidence. The fundamental cause of this periodical alternation, of the general existence of which numerous proofs are adduced, is supposed to lie in the alternate strengthening and relaxation of the individual’s forces of action, brought on by the expenditure and reproduction of energy; additional determinative causes, accelerative as well as retardatory, are found in intercourse with the world and with other human beings. We may call the former the individual and the latter the social cause of the phenomena of periodicity. In the application of his results to juvenile education the author arrives at some far-reaching propositions of reform, the consideration of which, however, we shall have to leave to the pedagogical press.

We shall have to preserve the same attitude with regard to a new work of the well-known Leipsic professor Dr. STRUMPELL—_Die pädogogische Pathologie oder die Lehre von den Fehlern der Kinder_, Leipsic, 1890, Verlag von Georg Böhme Nachfolger. We must refer here to this otherwise highly deserving book only in one respect, where we have occasion for censure. The author does not in his expositions sufficiently take account of the intimate connection between physical and mental phenomena, and the consequence of this is among other things that he excludes pathological mental conditions (the physical causes of which he is forced to admit) as a matter of principle from the pedagogic system and consigns them entirely into the charge of the physician. In our treatise mentioned we have explained why this is not allowable, as well as, in addition, what portion of duty devolves on the teacher in the consideration of these pathological mental conditions. Strumpell’s mistake springs from the fact that he conceives with Herbart the essential object of education to be intellectual culture. Allowing that Herbart cannot be taken to task for entertaining this conception, we may yet demand of Strumpell the recognition of the results of recent physiological psychology to the extent at least of perceiving that psychical and physical phenomena are _one_ if not the _same_. Even the opponents of Monism dare not overlook this truth,—a truth moreover that admits very well of reconciliation with the Herbartian pluralism to which Strumpell is devoted.

We might cite here numerous pathological conditions of mind that very plainly spring from physical causes and to which the instructor has to give attention just as much as the physician. Instead, however, of citing particular cases, we will refer to three little treatises that are in the highest degree instructive on this point, not only for teachers exclusively but also for all who have to do with children. Dr. MAXIMILIAN BRESGEN, specialist in diseases of the nose and throat at Frankfort on the Main, has published at the house of Leopold Voss in Hamburg (1890) a brochure entitled _Ueber die Bedeutung behinderter Nasenathmung nebst besonderer Berücksichtigung der daraus hervorgehenden Gedächtniss- und Geistesschwäche_. A treatise of like character is that of Dr. med. LENZMANN of Duisburg, entitled _Ueber den schädlichen Einfluss der behinderten Nasenathmung auf die körperliche und geistige Entwickelung des Kindes_, Bielefeld, 1890, Anders Verlag. Both treatises contain, among other things not to be considered here, instructive examples of the rise and disappearance of that morbid mental condition to which Hack first directed notice in Germany but which elsewhere became known through the researches of the Dutch physician Guye by the name of _Aprosesia nasalis_. The third treatise is by Dr. med. RALF WIECHMANN, specialist for nervous diseases at Brunswick, and bears the title _Eine sogenannte Veitstanzepidemie in Wildbad_, Leipsic, 1890, Verlag von Georg Thieme. By St. Vitus’s dance (Ger. _Veitstanz_) we understand the disease of which the well-known symptoms are involuntary muscular twitchings usually accompanied by severe or light psychical disturbances, known in medicine by the name of _chorea minor_ and _chorea rhythmica_, and sometimes occurring in epidemics. At the school in Wildbad the number of the afflicted children rose in the course of time to twenty-six. Wiechmann expatiates at length in his book on the character of the contagion, and arrives through an exhaustive use of the existing literature on the subject at the result, that there was present in the individual children attacked substantially a physical predisposition, an unstable nervous system. As the first children attacked were not removed, the convulsive motions were seen and perceptually taken up by the other children, who were just approaching the period of puberty and labored under hereditary predispositions. “Once these images had entered perceptually into the unstable brain, they became competent to operate as stimuli and to be translated into involuntary muscular motions.”

The conclusion of my letter may be taken up with the discussion of a treatise that deserves a somewhat more detailed consideration. The director of the Royal Würtembergian State Insane Asylum at Zwiefalten, Dr. F. L. A. Koch, who already possesses eminent repute in the domain of psychiatry, has just published the first part of a new work called _Die psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten—Erste; Abteilung: Einleitung, Die angeborenen andauernden psychopathischen Minderwertigkeiten_, Ravensburg, 1891, Verlag von Otto Maier. In this work the author extends the development of the ideas he some time previously outlined in his _Rudiments of Psychiatry_, second edition, 1889. In the expression “psychopathische Minderwertigkeiten” (psychopathical secondary factors) Koch embraces all those psychical irregularities, be they natural or acquired, affecting the life of the human personality, which though in the severest cases even not amounting to actual mental disorders, yet in the most favorable instances so affect the persons afflicted with them that they appear as lacking the full possession of mental normality and capacity. Primarily, of course, the treatise is intended for physicians, and the author counts on the gratitude of this profession in so far as he has undertaken to put in independent form the separate facts formerly scattered over the whole domain of psychiatry, to free them from other neuro- and psycho-pathological subjects, and to unite them into one special group of pathological states. But the author also counts on his book being used by the representatives of other professions, by pastors, tutors, teachers, jurists, sociologists, historians, and the like, and indeed with perfect justice.

The savers of souls, if they had mastered to a slight degree even the comprehension of the psychopathical secondary factors, would be astonished to see how many people there are in the case of whom medicine is more effective against “spiritual” vexations than pastoral advice, and that often such advice, being one-sided and starting from false assumptions, does harm only. They would see in the peculiarity of the religious needs and tribulations of many a man a psycho-pathological abnormality; they would come to understand how the otherwise unintelligible badness of many another has its source in a pathological basis: they would not regard and hail as absolutely good, moreover, many “good impulses”;—all this they would find out if they had learned to note and comprehend what the import is of such persons being descended from neurotic ancestors, of their exhibiting palpable indications of degeneration, and having also perhaps insane, idiotic, whimsical, and epileptical brothers and sisters. They would furthermore perfectly comprehend, that in the case of people who are descended from healthy parents, but who from being in times past happy and joyful Christians are now struggling with distractions of soul, it were often better first to inquire after the state of their organs of digestion. And they would be able to deal quite differently from formerly with many a soul entrusted to their care, perhaps also more easily to conquer, or at least to endure, some secret burden of their own lives. The import of the book for the educator is easily inferrible from the remarks made. For the jurist, who has to deal with the problems of accountability and the administering of punishment, its importance is manifest. Sociology, too, the deeper it enters into its problems, will not be able to dispense with psychopathology, and in this field it is precisely the psychopathical secondary factors that eminently demand attention. In that which concerns its connection with history we need only mention the names of Lombroso, Emminghaus (_Allgemeine Psychopathologie_) and Möbius (_Rousseaus Krankheitsgeschichte_), to point out the importance of a work like that before us. We recommend it without reserve to all whom it touches.

CHR. UFER.

Altenburg, July, 1891.

ÉMILE LITTRÉ.

Some debts there are that make the debtor proud;
So ours to him, who could philosophise
With common-sense, and sweep from starry skies
The brain-spun webs that darken like a cloud.

We loved him, for his highest thoughts avowed
Our own akin and less than ours allies;
Born of the common soil but born to rise
And light the labor of the laurel-browed.

Justice he traced to truth; morality,
Back to the brutish primal needs of man;
And stood himself for all the best might be.

He wrought in words, a faithful artisan;
And lived to shame their loutish mockery
Whose virtue ended where his own began.

LOUIS BELROSE, JR.

DIVERSE TOPICS.

THE ORIGIN OF THOUGHT-FORMS.

Dr. H. Potonié, the editor of the _Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift_, Berlin, advances in one of its recent numbers (Vol. vi. 15) the following proposition concerning the origin of the forms of thought: “All the forms of thought have originated in the struggle for life not otherwise than the forms of organisms.” This is further explained in the following sentence: “Those conceptions which are called _a priori_, are inherited; they have been necessarily used by the primitive thinking organisms and are now in their disposition immediately present. Yet they have been gained by experience. Without any knowledge, for instance, of space and time, no action is possible; accordingly their conception is perhaps the oldest and therefore it appears aprioristic.”

I. THOUGHT-FORMS AND THE FORMS OF EXISTENCE.

We agree with Dr. Potonié that thought-forms grow naturally and that they grow such as they are, of necessity. In our opinion formal thought, with its so-called _a priori_ theorems, is derived from the thought-forms by abstraction. (See “Fundamental Problems” pp. 26-60, the chapter Form and Formal Thought.) If it had been possible for other thought-forms to have originated together with those which we possess at present, and it may be parenthetically remarked that we do not consider it as possible; but _if_ it had been possible, we do not deny that all the other thought-forms would have gone to the wall, they would have perished in the struggle for existence and our present thought-forms alone would have survived. In this we agree with Dr. Potonié, and a naturalist may be satisfied with this statement, because it suffices for his purposes. The recognition of the objective validity of the laws of formal thought is all that the specialist wants for this or that branch of science. But this recognition is not sufficient for the philosopher. He has to understand the problem why the subjective laws of purely formal thought possess an absolute and an objective validity for the world of real existences. He must understand not only how thought-forms originated, but also why and on what ground the laws of formal thought are considered as necessary and universal truths. The question of their origin and growth is of secondary importance compared with the question of their rigidity and apriority.

Mr. Herbert Spencer has made the same proposition as Dr. Potonié and his view briefly expressed is this: “The laws of formal thought are _a priori_ to the individual, but _a posteriori_ to the race.” In other words apriority must be explained by heredity. A dog cannot count, because none of his ancestors have ever counted, but a child has the faculty to learn counting because innumerable ancestors of his have counted and his brain possesses a predisposition to learn counting easily. Concerning our apprehension of space-relations which expressed as mathematical theorems appear to us necessary and are called _a priori_, Mr. Spencer says:

“We cannot think otherwise because during that adjustment
between the organism and the environment which evolution has
established, the inner relations have been so moulded upon
the outer relations that they cannot by any effort be made
not to fit them. Just in the same way that an infant’s hand,
constructed so as to grasp by bending the fingers inwards,
implies ancestral hands which have thus grasped, and implies
objects in the environment to be thus grasped by this infantine
hand when it is developed, so the various structures fitting
the infant for apprehension of space-relations, imply such
apprehensions in the past by its ancestors and in the future by
itself.”

Man’s ability to learn counting is inherited, and there may be more or less of it in different people. Mathematical talent is inherited just as much as musical talent or other faculties. But the philosophical question concerning the apriority of mathematical theorems has nothing whatever to do with the origin of mathematical talent. When Mr. Spencer declares that apriority is but an inherited aposteriority, this is equivalent and is intended to be equivalent to an actual denial of all apriority. His very explanation proves that he does not see the real problem, and in the same way Dr. Potonié overlooks it entirely. The philosophical problem of the apriority is not an historical problem, it cannot be solved by tracing the evolution of thought-forms. The philosopher does not ask how did thought-forms originate, but why do we attribute to the laws of formal thought necessity and universality and on what ground can we justify our assumption?

Mr. Spencer compares our apprehension of space-relations to our inherited habit to grasp with our hands and to walk with our feet. This comparison is misleading and inappropriate. That we grasp with our hands and walk with our feet is incidental. There are animals who have developed other limbs for the same purposes. There are monkeys who grasp with their tails and the elephant grasps with his nose. There is no necessity and no universality in our predisposition of grasping with our hands. Yet there resides necessity and universality in the laws of formal thought so that wherever animals develop rational thought we are sure that to them twice two will always equal four just as much as it does to us. However they may be different in other respects: they may be winged creatures or may be somewhat like our ants, they may have developed other bodily structures than we can dream of, nevertheless their arithmetic, their logic, and their mathematics will in all essentials be exactly the same as ours. There are animals whose thought-forms are not as highly developed as in man, but there are no animals in whom they are developed differently. We must consider it as impossible even that on other stars rational creatures can be found whose reason differs from ours. To them also twice two will be four.

II. THE PROBLEM OF APRIORITY.

Kant did not call the formal laws _a priori_ in order to characterise them as innate ideas, but simply to denote that their validity is necessary and universal. If I have to walk twice a distance of two miles, I know “beforehand” (i. e. _a priori_) that I shall have to walk four miles—even before I have made the actual experience. And this wonderful quality of giving information beforehand is characteristic of all the laws of formal thought. It is certain that our ability of applying the laws of formal thought has been acquired by experience in the race as well as in the individual. But their necessity has to do with experience in so far only as its recognition is the indispensable condition of all methodical experience—i. e. of science. The laws of formal thought and our recognition of their necessity and universality (alias, “apriority”) are the organ of any and all scientific cognition. The methods of the sciences are exact measuring and counting based upon the faith that the laws of measuring and counting are unalterable and unfailingly reliable. We know beforehand that they will hold good for all possible cases.

Our experience of millenniums suffices to prove that the laws of formal thought agree with the laws of actual existence, and Kant’s view to consider them as merely subjective and not objective appears to me untenable. We may fairly consider Kant’s subjectivism as a thing of the past. And the agreement of the forms of objectivity with the forms of subjectivity is easily explained when we bear in mind that the thinking subject is a part of the objective world. It is but natural that the forms of existence are impressed upon the thinking subject as forms of thought.

Yet the question of the necessity and universality of the laws of form remains. Can we comprehend why the form of objective reality as well as of subjective thought must be such as they are, and might they not just as well be different? Is this question legitimate and can it be answered? We say Yes, the question is legitimate and can be answered.

All the laws of formal thought are products of thought-operations which are based on no other principle than that of identity (_A_ = _A_). As soon as thinking beings have developed to that degree of thought-ability in which they are able to deal with the abstract idea of pure form, they can make constructions of pure forms. So long as these constructions of pure forms are made consistently and correctly (i. e. in strict agreement with the principle of identity), they will be found to hold good in reality and we can _a priori_—before we have made the actual experience—rely on their applicability.

The laws of pure forms (forms of thought as well as forms of existence) can satisfactorily be proved to anyone who acknowledges the principle of identity. The principle of identity is not an assumption but it is the generalised statement of the simplest thought-operation, which, if employed with consistency, can serve as a rule for other and more complex thought-operations. Consistency is the condition of thought. Consistency produces order, and order is the most characteristic feature of thought. We create some pure form in some definite way, for instance in counting we posit a unit (we call it “one”). Now we create in the same definite way again a pure form, we again posit a unit (we again call it “one”). In so far as these two “ones” are the product of the same operation they will be the same and we express this truth in the sentence 1 = 1 or _A_ = _A_.

When, for the sake of assistance in the process of abstract thought, we use real objects to represent our pure forms, similarly as an abacus is employed for assisting the young mind of a child in learning arithmetic, the dissimilarity of the objects is of no account. The proposition of their identity has no reference to the material objects, but to the operation. Two operations being according to some special and definite method exactly the same, their products are also exactly the same, and the rest is not to be minded, because we have in our abstraction purposely excluded everything else.

Here is not the place to show the palpable advantages of the methods of abstract thought and especially of the abstract thought-operations with pure forms. It is sufficient to characterise its main principle of procedure. We may also parenthetically remark that from our position we are no longer in need of axioms either in mathematics or in any other formal science. The data of formal sciences are certain mental operations, viz. positing pure forms, and combining, separating, and recombining them. The subject matter of formal sciences consists in the products of these operations. To formulate some of the simplest products in axioms is a mistake which has been pointed out by Hermann Grassmann in his _Ausdehnungslehre_.

We are struck and overawed with the cosmic order of all natural phenomena which, as science teaches, is produced through the rigidity of the formal laws of existence. The planetary system with its regularity of motion which in spite of its many complications has been formulated by Kepler in most simple laws is an object of wonder to us. This order of nature is the same order as the grand harmony that prevails in mathematics and all the other formal sciences. The most complicated laws of both, forms of nature and forms of thought, are nothing but generalisations of special applications of the principle of identity in some kind of action that takes place. While the order of the objective world excites our wonder we can understand the order of the subjective world of thought-forms and know that, being the product of certain mental operations according to the principle of identity, it must be a matter of course. Thus the intrinsic necessity of the laws of our thought-forms gives us a clue to the intrinsic necessity of the laws of nature.

III. CONSERVATION OF MATTER AND ENERGY, AND CAUSATION.

The law of the conservation of matter and energy is nothing but an application of the principle of identity to nature as a whole. And the law of cause and effect is again a corollary only of the law of the conservation of matter and energy. The law of causation is a formula which maintains that there is identity in difference. Some motion produces a change of form. There is accordingly a different state after the motion than before. Yet the total amount of matter and energy remains the same. This is the identity in the change. David Hume and with him John Stuart Mill and the empiricists misunderstood the problem of causation. Instead of considering cause and effect as one continuous process that should be analysed, they considered cause and effect separately and attempted a synthesis. In addition to this mistake, causes as well as effects were defined to be objects. Hume says cause and effect are objects following one another. Cause however is a process; it is a motion, a change that takes place, an event that happens; it is not a thing. And effect is the product of such a process. Effect is a special form, a special state of things, a special configuration, but not the material of which this configuration consists. A certain poison introduced into the stomach of a living being produces certain motions in the bowels, called cramps, which may finally prove fatal. One change produces other changes and their product is a new state of things which is accompanied with pain and ends in death. It is wrong to call strychnine the cause and a dead mouse the effect. But if we call strychnine the cause and a dead mouse the effect, we must forever despair of solving the problem of causation by a reduction to the principle of identity, for strychnine is not at all identical with a dead mouse. No cause is the same thing as its effect, and we can by no means identify cause and effect. And yet the principle of identity holds good. The identity in causation is the conservation of matter and energy in a change of form.

It has been maintained that the law of cause and effect could never be proved; it is either an innate idea prior to experience (Schopenhauer and Schopenhauer’s interpretation of Kant) or it is an assumption derived from experience of which (since experience is not as yet exhausted) we cannot know whether it will hold good forever (J. S. Mill). In contradistinction to these views we maintain, that the law of cause and effect can satisfactorily be proved to anyone who accepts the principle of identity. So far as the principle of identity is recognised, all the formal laws are unequivocally determined, or popularly expressed they are as they are, they will remain so and cannot be otherwise, they are necessary. All the determining factors and also the procedure of an operation are set forth, no unforeseen events are possible, for the non-formal elements are excluded, and therefore the result will be in one case just as it is in any other. Thus it can _a priori_ be stated that formal laws will always hold good.

The question has been raised: Whether or not our knowledge of the apriority of formal laws is independent of experience. We answer: In a certain sense it is dependent upon experience, in another it is not. Historically and evolutionarily it is dependent upon experience. A store of innumerable experiences has to be gained before a rational creature will be able to make the abstraction of pure forms. As soon as this stage is attained, man possesses a world in himself. He can now experiment within himself with mental images, for instance with numbers: he can calculate. His mental operations with pure form are called “pure thought” and “pure thought” is now opposed to “experience through the senses.” The word “experience” accordingly is used in two ways; it has a broad and a narrow meaning. In its broad sense it means any acquisition of knowledge generally, in its narrow sense it means knowledge acquired through the sense-activity alone. Our knowledge of the apriority of formal laws rests upon experience in its broad sense, but not upon experience in its narrow sense. We can never derive the idea of necessity from sense-impressions. John Stuart Mill in rejecting innate ideas saw no other way than to derive the formal laws from experience (taking here experience in the broad sense). Yet he did not make a distinction between formal thought and sense-experience. He considered the nature of sense-experience as typical for all experience. And thus, again, taking experience in the narrow sense of the term, he was from his premises perfectly justified in rejecting the idea of necessity. If the process of cause and effect is really a synthesis of two things represented in two different sense-impressions following each other, then indeed we have no guarantee that the same sequences will always be observed; and there may be worlds in which the law of causality does not operate. Mill saw all the consequences of his mistake, he conceded freely that we are not justified in assuming that twice two will always be four: many thousands of experiences are in its favor, but we cannot be at all sure that no case will ever happen in which twice two makes five.