is dragged in, we can say that, as a matter of history, man when developed out of lower forms of life "created" religion and made gods in his own image, changing his conception of Deity with the growing consciousness of himself, and yet we may hold that nature cannot be explained without that unifying principle, which we may surely call by the term Spinoza used as the equivalent of Substance, but which we consider more adequately expressed by the conception of Self-consciousness. As Prof. Seth himself says (p. 89): If self-consciousness is the highest fact we know, then we are justified in using the conception of self-consciousness as our best key to the ultimate nature of existence as a whole ". And if the theologian insists that God existed before the world, we can only remind him that even St. Augustine himself said : Non est mundus factus in tempore, sed cum tempore".

66

Apparently the reason of this shrinking from what can be called Pantheism is a fear that the immortality of the soul will thereby become untenable. Certainly the dogma of "absolutely and for ever exclusive individual selves" would carry with it the immortality of these selves in some sense, though it would seem to imply pre-existence as well as futurity; so that personal immortality is not proved any more than on the "Pantheistic" basis (cp. Teichmüller, Ueber die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, pp. 147 ff.). Now Prof. Seth says (p. 228): I do not think that immortality can be demonstrated by philosophy," and his only argument is the moral one. But does not the possibility of a future life remain equally open to the system here called Pantheistic? (See Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, § 185.) We have no right to assert dogmatically that individual selves are necessarily eternal, but neither can we dogmatically deny that all or some of them may persist in some way after the dissolution of this or that bodily organism, though we may feel bound to assert that individual existence is only intelligible to us in connexion with some sort of organism and in a society of similar individuals.

On the subject of free-will it is said (pp. 217, 218): "I have a centre of my own--a will of my own-which no one shares with me or can share-a centre which I maintain even in my dealings with God Himself," &c. Does not this" dangerously resemble some of the cruder dicta" of Libertarians? and, if we again lapse into theology, does it not savour of the Pelagian and the Arminian heresies?

With regard to the main contention of the whole book, that Thought and Reality are distinct, we think a fair answer may be given on behalf either of Hegel or of Green. "Nature is really," says Green (quoted on p. 77), "or for the eternal thinking subject, for God, what it is for our reason." Prof. Seth seems to deny this. "A full statement of all the thought-relations that constitute our knowledge of the thing" (the italics are not Prof. Seth's) would certainly not be "equivalent to the existent thing itself" (p. 126). But it may very well be held that a complete knowledge

of anything in the whole infinity of its relations would mean the making of that thing. Can we really think omniscience apart from omnipotence? If I knew another individual person through and through, I should be that person; but 'What heart knows another? Ah! who knows his own?' And just because we do not fully know our own selves, we never fully are our own selves. Complete knowledge of anything is to us only an ideal that we can never attain; but so far as we approximate to it, is it not admitted that knowledge is power'? The difficulty raised by a small child: How does God know that ginger pudding is hot when He has never tasted it?' could only be met by a recognition that the "reality" of the feeling of pungency is not the feeling as such but the conception of it in relation to the rest of the universe. The scientific man may thus be truly said to be "thinking the thoughts of God after Him".

With regard to Hegel, Prof. Seth has done most important service in pointing out that Hegel has created a justifiable prejudice against his philosophy by his method of exposition. He requires to be read backwards. "The order of exposition always reverses the real order of thought by which the results were arrived at" (p. 95). Hegel's great merit lies in his appreciation of historical evolution. Is it not his great mistake to have assimilated his exposition of a thought-process to the exposition of a time-process? As to the details of his philosophy of nature, Hegel's warmest admirers might sometimes wish we were well rid of them. Perhaps it is best to leave nature to the scientific men. Unless they are possessed by some very obstinate metaphysics, which Hegel's name would hardly conjure out of them, they may be trusted of themselves to turn nature into a system of thought-relations. Here is Prof. Karl Pearson, after many hard words about Kant and Hegel, in a lecture entitled "Matter and Soul" (The Ethic of Freethought, p. 74), coming to the conclusion that "the laws of the physical universe follow the logical processes of the human mind". Here is Prof. Huxley, in the Nineteenth Century for February of this year, admitting that the course of nature may be described as "a materialised logical process' Of course the mere specialist might not say anything like this, but the mere specialist is not the person we have here to reckon with.

That particular stumbling-block, "the Contingent," must be regarded as a survival in Hegel of the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of Matter. Hegel is really false to Idealism in allowing that anything in Nature is irrational: he was probably carried into exaggeration by the wish to protest against the false fashion of exalting Nature in contrast with Man. Prof. Seth strangely agrees in this view of nature, though he regards it as an inconsistency in Hegel. "What logical connexion," he asks, "is there between the different qualities of things-between the smell of a rose, for example, and its shape; or between the taste

of an orange and its colour?" (Pp. 133, 134.) Well, we do not know; but need we despair of finding out? The smell and shape of the rose must both have some connexion with its attractiveness to particular insects, and, therefore, are connected with one another in some way. Cats and red clover abounding in proximity might seem to be very disconnected phenomena; but Darwin found a connexion between them. It is as well to be modest about what we do know, but not to give up hard problems too hastily. In his view of Nature, Hegel errs in both respects.

We

With the protest against Hegel's claims to finality (pp. 187, 196, 207, 213) we feel most complete sympathy. But is he not here also false to the spirit of his own philosophy in the attempt to satisfy the promise of the term 'Absolute'? The principle of dialectic movement, the perpetual self-criticism of thought, cannot be arbitrarily arrested anywhere. The Prussian State of 1820 and the Hegelian synthesis as then expounded must, according to his own principles, be superseded in the fulness of time and taken up into some higher form of themselves. can, of course, only attempt to read off the meaning of what is already fully written down, but we must not dogmatically assume that no one will ever have anything more to read. Finality has been a temptation to statesmen, theologians and philosophers in all ages, and the most eager initiators are themselves apt to fall into it. "Der Initiator stirbt, oder er wird abtrünnig," says Heine. And Hegel is no exception; for his temperament and surroundings made him conservative.

The

The famous dictum, "What is rational is real, and what is real is rational" (see pp. 199 ff.), is double-edged; but Hegel himself has been so much occupied looking for the rationality of the existent, that he has been apt to forget the claims of the rational to make itself real. It is, however, just the polemic against Fichte's Sollen which we should regard as one of his exaggerations. distinction between the merely existent and the truly real is no "quibble," but expresses the most important distinction which everyone must seek to discover in practical life. All sorts of institutions and customs assert their reality, though they may be dying or dead-delusions and shams. And the "truly real," the growing and living, may need the prophet to discern it among them, though time alone proves his wisdom. What is dead exists in a sense; but the most important thing about it is that it was once real and rational.

In his last page Prof. Seth says: "Nothing can be more unphilosophical than the attempt to crush man's spirit by thrusting upon it the immensities of the material universe". In the light of this sentence it is strange to find Lotze's contemptuous treatment of Hegel's philosophy of history regarded with approval. "Is it not effrontery to narrow down the Spirit of the universe to a series of events upon this planet?" (P. 195; cp. what follows.) If there are a few inscribed stones which we can decipher more or

less, are we to neglect them because there are myriads buried in the sands of the desert? Since it is admitted that self-consciousness is "our best key to the nature of existence as a whole," will not any one great epoch of human history, which we can fairly grasp and comprehend, or any one great human character, teach us more about the " Spirit of the universe than a wilderness of stars, respecting which we know nothing save a few scraps gathered by spectrum-analysis?

To conclude: those who find themselves compelled to disagree with many of Prof. Seth's views may the most readily testify to the value and suggestiveness of every page. As we understand that Prof. Seth's next enterprise will be to expound and criticise the Individualists and Realists from Leibniz to Lotze, we have some hope that it may then be the turn of Hegel and the NeoKantians to receive rehabilitation.

D. G. RITCHIE.

The Nervous System and the Mind: A Treatise on the Dynamics of the Human Organism. By CHARLES MERCIER, M.B. London: Macmillan & Co., 1888. Pp. xi., 374.

Mr. Mercier's book is very accurately described as a "Treatise on the Dynamics of the Human Organism"; the common feature of the three parts into which it is divided being the consideration of the facts of nervous function under their aspect as movement. "The Nervous System" is dealt with in part i. (cc. 1-6, pp. 17145), "Mind in part iii. (cc. 9-14, pp. 207-363). The intermediate part (cc. 7, 8, "The Functions of the Nervous System") deals with "Conduct" and its "Nervous Mechanism". An Introduction and Conclusion set forth general principles and results. Part i. gives a view of the nervous system, combining Mr. Spencer's theory of the origin of nerves with the theory of Dr. Hughlings Jackson (to whom the book is dedicated) as to the structure of the nervous system as a whole. Part ii. is an attempt at a purely "objective" theory of the various kinds of "intelligence" as manifested in "conduct," that is, in adjustments of physiological relations to relations in the environment. Part iii. is concerned with the classification of psychological phenomena, now viewed as "mental states" and no longer under their purely objective aspect, but still compared with one another simply as regards their objective conditions. With this part are incorporated the author's contribution to MIND No. 30, on "The Classification of Cognitions," and his series of articles on "The Classification of the Feelings," in Nos. 35-7. The chapter on Cognition (c. 10), to the previous appearance of which, though not of the chapters on Feeling, he makes reference (p. 237), is much modified from its original form. The articles on the Classification of the Feelings (incorporated as cc. 12-14) appear almost without modification. The

remaining chapters of this part (cc. 9, 11) are on "The Constitution of Mind" and on "Feeling". All his psychology the author regards as a construction according to Spencerian principles, though not always in agreement with Mr. Spencer's particular conclusions.

The present work is intended, Mr. Mercier tells us, to prepare the way, by a statement of the laws of the normal mind in relation to physiological conditions, for a more satisfactory "science of Alienism" than yet exists. Alienists have hitherto disregarded "the study of the normal mind". The main reason of this neglect has been that "the classical works on Mind ignore altogether its association with body, and study it from a standpoint so purely introspective as to offer no obvious advantage to the alienist, to whom the concomitant disorders of body are so conspicuous and so important". No "appreciable advance in the science of insanity" can be made until a statement of psychological doctrines has been prepared "in which the phenomena of mind are associated with the phenomena of nervous action and of conduct ". Such a statement it has been the author's aim to supply. At the same time, "new principles and new aspects of old principles have come into view, which will," he trusts, "render the statement of them not only important to the alienist, but interesting also to the general student of psychology".

It is probably "the general student of psychology," and not the alienist, who will find the book most interesting. The physiological conditions of mental phenomena are, no doubt, of special importance to "the student of insanity"; and study of the normal phenomena of mind ought, of course, to be preliminary to the study of abnormal phenomena. The particular way of study that Mr. Mercier has chosen, however, does not seem very well fitted to lead up to the abnormal phenomena that constitute insanity. In the most distinctly psychological part of the book he treats especially of those nameable cognitions and feelings which, in the normal mind, accompany differences of adjustment of relations in the organism to relations in the environment. Insanity, then, has to be defined in terms of this "correspondence". It is found to consist essentially in "non-adjustment of the mental relation to the relation in the environment". When the establishment of the mental relation is the process that is primarily in error, and when this process can be rectified if the objective conditions are present, there is only "mistake"; when the process of adjusting the mental relation to the environmental relation with which it corresponds is at fault, there is "insanity" (pp. 247-51). In treating intelligence from a still more "objective" point of view, as a character simply of "conduct," that is, of certain combinations of movements that correspond to movements in the environment, Mr. Mercier arrives at the conclusion that insanity is essentially a disorder of the form of intelligence manifested as "conservation by adjustment" or "skill in con