note that which on Hegel's side ended the correspondence. It promises Schelling a copy of the Phänomenologie, which had just appeared. The editor tells us that Schelling did not reply till November, and had then only read the preface. I do not, however, feel sure from Hegel's letter how soon Schelling may have received his copy of the book. This letter of Hegel's and the previous one to Schelling (No. 30, from Jena, February, 1807) contain references to experiments about "Siderismus," apparently some sympathy or rapport between human instinct and inanimate matter (cp. Philosophie des Geistes, § 392). Hegel could himself make little or nothing of the pendulum-experiments (swinging a ring by a thread against a glass to tell the time, &c.), but ascribed this, with unfortunate humility, to his unsteadiness of hand. Probably he was more cautious than the other experimenters in not allowing his expectation to influence him. I extract a few lines which contain the germ of the long passage Philosophie des Geistes, § 406 (see especially on pendulum and divining rod, ib., p. 171); his view in the treatise is more definitely rational than in the letter, although touched with superstition :-"The relation which we have in Animal Magnetism in its most marvellous form, the fusion of personalities whereby the one is depressed into an accident of the other, in the sphere of nature-for in the sphere of mind this phenomenon is familiar enough-this relation descends in 'Siderismus to the so-called inorganic world, and particularises itself as a magical union and sympathy of higher and lower natures" (i. 102). No. 12 (a note to Schelling) is amusing. Goethe could not come to Jena "because of a moon-rainbow and other marvellous things that had to be put on the stage in William Tell".

On Hegel and Schelling there is an interesting note in Appendix 2, with a letter of Cousin's to Schelling dated 1829, the most important of Cousin's letters in this collection, in which, as a common friend, he points out to Schelling with a pleasant courtesy that he cannot permit unkind expressions about Hegel to be addressed to him. This letter is from Schelling's Nachlass. I infer from the mode of its introduction that it has not been published before. The editor's note brings down the curious history of the change in Cousin's opinion of Hegel to a later point than Rosenkranz (370 ff.) by quoting Cousin's article in the Revue des deux Mondes, 1866, in which Cousin refers with disapproval to a saying of Hegel's on their return from Paris together in 1827. When they saw the sellers of consecrated medals and images before the door of Cologne Cathedral, Hegel exclaimed angrily: "There is your Catholic religion with its scandals: Shall I die before I have seen an end of all that!" Cousin contrasts this with the "loftier" views of Schelling's later

years.

But the

2. Hegel's relation with Van Ghert, an official under the government of the Netherlands, is mentioned, and the letter from Van Ghert (No. 74 in this collection) is printed in Rosenkranz's biography. editor has prefixed to the letter, here republished, a succinct statement of the fortunes and fall of Van Ghert's attempt to provide a liberal education for the clergy. (I speak simply from the statement as here given, which I have not the historical knowledge to criticise.) A letter to Hegel from Seber, a professor at the philosophical college established by Van Ghert at Louvain (No. 220), seems of value as giving a definite account of this short-lived institution.

3. The correspondence with Niethammer, who was officially concerned in the reorganisation of education in Bavaria while Hegel was head of a school at Nuremberg, deals with Hegel's private difficulties, and also with the interests of liberal education generally. It contains

some of Hegel's most humorous and some of his finest writing. I give two extracts. Niethammer had announced to Hegel a mortifying repulse which he had received on a matter essential, in his opinion, to liberal education. (I am obliged to paraphrase and omit, as some allusions and puns would be unintelligible without explanations, which I have not space to give.) When these incidents which touch one so nearly are pressing upon him, replies Hegel, he sometimes turns his thoughts to the more general march of events. "I abide by this, that the world-spirit has issued to the age the order to advance and the word of command is being obeyed. The great being marches onward, like a mail-clad, close-locked phalanx, irresistibly and imperceptibly as the sun-onward through thick and thin: innumerable light troops skirmish round it, fighting for the movement, and against. The most part have no idea what is at stake, and merely get shot through the head as if by an invisible hand. All dilatory nonsense and deceptive manoeuvring are in vain. . . the safest course (for the opponents) is to approach the giant and smear cobbler's wax on his shoes to arrest his progress, to the edification of their busy and zealous confraternity... The reaction must have its rights. . 'la verité en la repoussant on l'embrasse' is a deep saying... Its intention comes to no more (though it fancies just the reverse) than, in the main, to the interest of vanity in impressing its own seal on what has been achieved, and on what it fancies that it hates, in order to read upon it the legend, 'We did this'" (No. 146). And in another letter, "Our Palladium, therefore, is not an assemblage of decrees of councils, nor a clergy entrusted with their keeping, but is the collective culture of the community; and so our more tangible Palladium consists in the universities and the public educational institutions; to these all Protestants look as their Rome and their episcopal seats" (No. 162).

4. Among isolated points of interest I may just mention the following. No. 182 (to Creuzer) gives an estimate of the importance of Proclus, rather heightening what is said in the History of Philosophy. In No. 185 (to his wife) there is a comparison of the Berlin (now the Darmstadt) Holbein (?) Madonna with the corresponding Dresden picture, which shows Hegel's care and interest, but in which he merely follows the opinion of the time. No. 209 (to his wife, on the Vienna tour) mentions his hearing one of Holberg's comedies read at Tieck's house: he did not sit it out, he says, because he had business. (In the Introduction to the Esthetic he speaks of Holberg's comedies as overrated by the Schlegels and their friends.) No. 4, written at the age of 25, alludes to Schiller's Letters on Esthetic Education as "a masterpiece". (The same Introduction shows how deeply this work affected his philosophy.) There is an exceedingly comic account of the billeting of the allied troops in Nuremberg in 1813 (No. 121). And I should have mentioned before No. 222, letter from Gans, with the editor's remarks on the founding of the Jährbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik at Berlin; and the criticisms on Kemble's acting, in the Paris visit.

The editorial work seems careful and judicious, and the book should contribute to making Hegel a less mysterious personage in this country. BERNARD BOSANQUET.

THE VALUE OF AUTHORITY TESTED BY EXPERIMENT.

The function of Authority, as described in my little treatise on the Art of Measurement, which was noticed in MIND No. 47, p. 466, may be illustrated by the following experiment. Ten gentlemen, whom the business

of the British Association lately brought together, ignorant for the most part of each other's antecedents, agreed each to guess the ages of all the others and to state his own. The figures thus obtained show that estimates of age are amenable to the Theory of Errors which governs observations made by the senses. The mean of several estimates forms a better approximation to the real age than the single guess. The 'probable error,' or error as likely as not to be committed in guessing the age of a person, is for the single shot about 3.5 or 4; for the mean of ten estimates, about 2.5. It is possible by averaging to get rid of at least a third part of the error incident to the individual judgment. There can be no doubt that more complicated estimates are subject to the same theory. Moreover, the Doctrine of Errors supplies the rationale of the common-sense practice of deferring to authority, even in those cases where the answer sought is rather a degree than a number; e.g., What is the probability that nations could be induced to make and keep a Bimetallic Treaty? The principle extends also to those cases where there is an estimate of utility as well as probability; e.g., Assuming that Bimetallism is to be established, what ratio of gold to silver should be legalised?

Most platform speakers on such topics proceed just like one who, having to guess the age of another, should dwell on one set of characteristics, such as grey hairs or bald head. He might frame syllogisms, perhaps adduce statistics, proving that grey hair indicated advanced age. And no doubt such arguments might be usefully addressed to one who had not noticed the fact, or who was ignorant of the import, of grey hair. But, for the intelligent, the real difficulty is to combine the indications given by grey hair and bald head with other symptoms, such as bright eye and elastic step. The balance is struck by a sort of intuition most resembling the unconscious inference which enters into sense-perception, such as the judgment of distance by the eye. The faculty which some butchers have of conjecturing the weight of a beast from its appearance might be mentioned as an operation intermediate in point of complexity between a sense-observation and an age-estimate. In all such cases there is (in the absence of additional information) no corrective but the Method of Errors, the principle of Authority.

The experiment referred to illustrates the limits of the principle. The result of averaging guesses is not so much a man's real age as what he looks. The difference between the real and the apparent age appears to be on an average two or three years either in excess or defect. This 'constant error' does not tend to be reduced by multiplying the estimates of a person's age. All that Authority can do is-what, according to Horace, is all that philosophy can do-to "get rid of a large portion of error".

One

Again, the experiment illustrates the degrees of Authority. gentleman, assigning infantile ages to his colleagues, made manifest that he was quizzing. The combination-weight' of those observations was evidently zero. On the other hand, special weight attached to a conjecture when the guesser had known the guessee for years. In combining these specially good estimates with those made about a stranger we should take, not the simple average, but a weighted mean. Commonsense and intuitive tact are required to discriminate the weight of Authority.

The present writer does not pretend to improve upon the practice of common-sense, but only to assign the rationale thereof. The theory of the matter seems hardly to have received justice at the hands of those English philosophers who, from Locke to Jevons, have dilated on the

noxious influence of Authority. Even Cornewall Lewis, though he thinks it worth while to write a book about Authority, yet regards it only as the resource of those who have not leisure or ability to form an opinion first-hand. But, if the views here presented are correct, when the methods of Induction and the Syllogism have done their best, the generalised Method of Errors can carry us one step further.

F. Y. EDGEWORTH.

PROF. DELBOEUF ON THE CURATIVE EFFECTS OF HYPNOTISM.1 Prof. Delboeuf's memoirs on hypnotism (for notice of the last see MIND Xii. 304) have first of all the interest of verifications of the ordinary phenomena by an independent and cautious observer who has occupied himself with the study of them for a very long period. In the next place, there is much that is new in his methods of experiment and in his detailed observations. His most important contribution to the scientific treatment of the subject, however, is perhaps the theoretical explanation of the curative effects of hypnotism (which would carry with it an explanation of other phenomena also) briefly and clearly stated at the end of the present memoir. Before this explanation can be indicated, the author's mode of procedure must be described. The first difficulty that occurred to him was, how to prove that a cure is really due to hypnotism. In order to be perfectly certain, it would be necessary, he concluded, to have "two identical patients treated in different manners" (p. 9). The condition seems at first unrealisable, but it has been obtained by taking advantage of the symmetry of the opposite sides of the body. Two lesions, as like as possible, are made, say, on the two arms of the patient, and hypnotism is applied to one while the other is left to nature (p. 23). The experimental difficulties in the way of this method were surmounted, and exact verifications were obtained of what had been inferred from less systematic experiment. The special point the author set himself to decide was whether, since by hypnotic suggestion' of the pain of a burn, for example, the organic effects that usually follow such a pain can be produced, it is not also possible, by suggesting absence of the pain, to prevent the organic effects that would otherwise follow, for example, from actual cauterisation. Experimentally it was found that not only can the organic consequences of pain be prevented by suggesting, at the beginning of an operation, that no pain will be felt, but also the actual organic effects of the operation (or of an accident, or even of disease) can be arrested in their course. The mode of action of hypnotism, the author concludes, is like that of pain. Pain, in fact, 'hypnotises' by compelling attention to itself; whence a whole series of organic effects. Hypnotic suggestion prevents or cuts short these effects by withdrawing attention from the pain. The mode of action of hypnotism having been determined, it remains to discover its mechanism and its origin. The author's theory is "that the hypnotised subject, in his extreme desire to obey his hypnotiser, whom he identifies in a manner with himself, ends by doing with his body and his mind almost what the hypnotiser wishes" (pp. 33-4); "that, for him, the magnetiser, who murmurs in his ear, appears as a creation of his own mind that speaks to him in his dream; so that, at bottom, he obeys his own will "

1 De l'Origine des Effets Curatifs de l'Hypnotisme. Étude de Psychologie Expérimentale. Par J. DELBOEUF, Professeur à l'Université de Liège. Paris F. Alcan, 1887. Pp. 42.

(p. 35). Now the experiments show that organic processes and reflex actions can be inhibited and commanded by hypnotic suggestion. The action of the hypnotiser, then, is explicable by the aid of the above supposition, if it can be shown that the organic life of the subject' is in any way accessible to his own will. The final explanation (pp. 40-2), offered by the author as a "speculative synthesis," and not as an experimentally verified theory, is as follows. The means by which the processes of vegetative life are carried on are not entirely unknown to us. In normal life, indeed, the organs that depend on the sympathetic nervous system are withdrawn from the control of the will; but it has not always been so. The body has been constructed, in all its parts, under the impulse transmitted by ancestors; and, in former stages of evolution, the will was coincident with organic processes which now go on apart from it. Ordinarily, of course, it is to our advantage that they should so go on. When, however, the organic life ceases to be normal, when some function is deranged, it would be to our advantage if the will could be brought to bear directly on the affected point. Hypnotism makes this possible by setting free the attention from the life of relation' with which, in the normal working state, it is preoccupied. Consciousness reassumes a knowledge that it has not entirely lost; and, now that the vegetative processes vaguely felt in ordinary life are again directly known, the will resumes direct control over them. [T. W.]

6

In the usual list of contents of foreign exchanges at the end of the No., two journals, announced some months ago, now figure for the first time. The American Journal of Psychology, edited by G. Stanley Hall, Professor of Psychology and Pedagogics in the Johns Hopkins University, hails from Baltimore (N. Murray, publisher), the seat of that university, under date November, 1887, and will be continued quarterly. The first No. (including many figures and three plates) runs to 206 pp.-a length much greater than was promised and doubtless betokening a large reserve of other experimental work waiting for publication. It begins more and more to appear what a stimulus to psychophysical research Prof. Stanley Hall has been able, alike by example and precept, to communicate, during the years that he has spent in organising the department of psychological instruction in the young and lusty university at Baltimore. The general character of the work which he now begins to bring before the world as a specifically American product may be gathered from the contents given below-in default of a more detailed appreciation, due to all or most of the chief articles, but unfortunately excluded by present circumstances. It may only be added that the "Articles" occupy 127 pp. of the whole No.; that in the second Section, "Psychological Literature," the main piece (pp. 128-46) is a searching—and not favourable-review of the work of the English Society for Psychical Research, more especially as summed up in Phantasms of the Living. The third Section, "Notes" (pp. 197-206), contains a very large number of short statements of fact (culled from journals, &c.), most of them with some psychological import, but mixed with others of a rather promiscuous character. The permanent usefulness (for reference) of this section will depend upon the goodness of the Index that may ultimately be supplied to its contents.

The other new journal is the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, edited by Dr. Ludwig Stein of Zürich (published by G. Reimer of Berlin). This is of the promised length, 160 pp. All the four German professors (Diels, Dilthey, B. Erdmann, and the veteran Zeller) associated with the editor