characters of the female sex which they have analysed with patience and firmly established, although often running counter to our prejudices.

*

*

M. H. BERGSON, in his Matière et mémoire, essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit, never intended for a moment to advance the study of a psychological phenomenon, but has sought to formulate a doctrine in philosophy. He does not abide by the facts, endeav oring to explain them by the aid of reason and of experience, but he seeks beyond the facts a "virtual" being or entity which has no existence save in his own sportive imagination. Neither his theory of bodies, which are said to be simple "instruments of action,' incapable of preparing or explaining "representation," nor his theory of "pure perception, of "pure memory, and of "stages of consciousness," are presented to the reader with sufficient lucidity, ingenious though they are, and despite the grammatical precision of the author's language. No one, I am afraid, will understand them but himself. The object of his subtle analysis is apparently to reverse the accepted thesis-"memory is a function of the brain and there is nothing but a difference of degree between perception and memory"—and to substitute for it the following: "memory is not a function of the brain but something else, and there is not a difference of degree but a difference of nature between perception and memory," so as to establish by this thesis the existence of liberty in some absolutely mysterious region of the ego. But how is this liberty to be understood which "plunges its roots deep into necessity and is organically connected with necessity," these states, so "profound" that one can never reach them, and so "pure" that they vanish before the grasp? How can we be led by such methods to comprehend more clearly the relations of body and mind? How, finally, can inquiries concerning the "intermediary stages between dreams and action" furnish to-day the solution of that ancient and illusive problem?

The peculiar idealism of M. Bergson has found its adversary in the idealism of M. Fouillée. Let us not abandon the solid ground

of experience, or philosophy will soon be nothing more than the science of facts which do not exist.

*

M. E. RÉCÉJAC offers in his Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance mystique a curious study of what he calls "mystical experience." This has, according to him, a value comparable to the other methods of knowledge. It would even have a higher value if its position in philosophy were really such as M. Récéjac asserts, for then the mystical act, that is to say, "the union of freedom with imagination," would be the only possible expression of the absolute in human consciousness.

What, then, is the mechanism of the mystical act? It consists, according to the author, in producing, under a definite moral influence, analogical representations and symbols, to which reason which never loses its rights, applies itself, in order to render apparent by their means the relations, "sensible to the heart alone,' of our inmost personality with the infinite. The representative action of symbols is thus tantamount to a "moral presence" of the absolute: "it strengthens incomparably the natural powers and intrinsic qualities of the subject." The creations of faith, further, have no empirical objectivity; in that their value does not consist; they are not products of intellection.

M. Récéjac attacks with great freedom all the difficulties of his subject. He does not hesitate, for example, to examine mystical alienation in its relations to pathological accidents and concludes as to the harmlessness of that state, which is normal, he says, although subject to aberrations. His book is interesting on several sides; it is a new witness of the sentimental reaction which is now overrunning our schools. For my part, I accept with M. Récéjac no more than with M. Bergson, the real existence of a thing "which has been created by us but which yet abides outside us.' If we assume, to-day, the practical point of view, I do not think that the mystical act has even a genuine religious importance; it remains a subjective state, a privilege of certain souls, or of certain physiological temperaments, a luxury of the religious life. A scientific

conception of the world alone will give us the rule of life and the moral teachings necessary to society.

M. VICTOR HENRY transports us to a different field with his Antinomies linguistiques. I recommend the perusal of his little book which forms the second number of the Bibliothèque de la Faculté des lettres de Paris. M. Victor Henry is in several respects an innovator. He takes his stand upon exact psychological facts, he has the merit of not allowing himself to depart from the dictates of common sense in treating either of nature, of the origin of language, or of the relations between language and thought. He criticises, for example, with great acuteness, the current phrase "less words than thoughts" as applied to infant speech, and concludes to the contrary that children have fewer ideas than words, a new formula whose value depends on the nature of the psychical facts which the word "ideas" cover.

I quite approve of the distinction which M. Victor Henry establishes between transmitted language, that which we speak from infancy, and which is our thought itself, and acquired language (in its various forms). The dominating thought of his work is that, taking only transmitted language-the only true language, the only speech that really lives in us and merits the attention of the linguist as such-if language is a conscious fact, that is to say, if we speak, knowing what we speak, then the processes of language are unconscious, or, as I should prefer to say, are unperceived by the person speaking. It follows that the special science of language should reject a priori "every explanation of linguistic phenomena which in any way presupposes the exercise of the conscious activity of the speaking subject." Each of us wants to say what he says, and knows that he says it; but he introduces in his speech unwittingly continual modifications which most frequently are lost but sometimes are propagated by imitation. Hence the great permanence

of language and its mobility at all moments.

*

From M. ÉMILE FERRIÈRE, a scholarly author, and one who is never commonplace, we have La Cause première d'après les données

expérimentales. The unity of the laws of matter and energy throughout the whole universe, the substantial identity of matter and energy, the unity of life in animals and vegetables, the soul a function of the brain, such were the conclusions of his two preceding works La Matière et l'énergie and La Vie et l'âme. These conclusions are repeated in the present book and rounded off by a consideration of the first cause. The solution of the problem is based on a distinction between the true and the real (e. g., true triangles and real triangles), comprised as two aspects of the same fact. M. Ferrière does not establish his conclusions dialectically but deduces them from a résumé of scientific facts, a résumé which is his own work. He has a clear and happy way of reattacking the great problems of physics and natural history. Let it be noted that he rejects the theory of evolution (he limits it to the explanation of derived forms and denies its explaining types) with no less energy than he does the theory of successive creations. He justly reminds us that we must say "I do not know." The very impossibility, according to him, of explaining life, that is to say, the necessity of accepting as irreducible facts the principle and the plan (forms) of living beings, leads us to the affirmation of a first cause. But that cause is not transcendent with respect to the world. There are no two substances. In sum, M. Ferrière limits the definition of first cause to metaphysical attributes; he has imported into it neither moral attributes nor intellectual. His metaphysics appears as a necessity of human reason. I have certain reservations with regard to his doctrine, and certain corrections. In any event it is presented with freedom and a positive character in which certain recent systems of philosophy are too often lacking.

There remains to be mentioned, from the pen of M. PAUL JANET, who always remains a master, Principes de métaphysique et de psychologie (Delagrave, publisher); from the late L'ABBÉ DE Broglie a posthumous work, Religion et critique, (Lecoffre, publisher); from PAUL DUPROIX Kant et Fichte et le problème de l'éducation (F. Alcan, publisher); and from L'ABBÉ V. CHARBONNEL, Le Congrès universei des religions en 1900, Histoire d'une idée (A. Colin, publisher). LUCIEN ARRÉAT.

PARIS.

CRITICISMS AND DISCUSSIONS.

THE CONFLICT OF RACES: A REPLY TO CRITICISMS.

In the course of my later studies for a Theory of the Origin, History, and Future of Civilisation, the Conflict of Races has appeared to me to be a fact of fundamental importance. So general a phrase, however, may cover very different theories. So far as I am aware, the theory I have set forth under this name stands alone as a Theory of the Origins of Civilisation. But I read with great interest Professor Fiamingo's paper in your last issue adversely criticising the whole conception of a "Conflict of Races, Classes, and Societies." And I would now beg to be allowed to criticise his criticisms from the point of view of my own theory.1

To know the nature, and hence the history and future of any set of phenomena we must, as Aristotle insisted with profound insight, endeavor to ascertain its origin. And theories of civilisation can have little, if any, value without knowledge of the conditions under which it originated. Now the chief theories as to the origin of civilisation may be classified and characterised as (1) the Family-Origin Theory of Plato and Aristotle; then after the long night of the Christian Dark Ages, (2) the Sixteenth Century Conquest-Origin Theory of Bodin; (3) the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Century Contract-Origin Theories of Hooker, Grotius, Hobbes and Locke, etc., to Rousseau; and (4) the Savage-Origin Theories now set forth as, for instance, by Dr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. Spencer. In these current theories civilisation is more or less explicitly regarded as having originated spontaneously and sporadically somewhere, somehow, and somewhen at, it may be,

1 This theory I first fully stated in 1887 in papers read at the April meeting of the Royal His torical Society, and the September meeting of the British Association, and afterwards published in full or in abstract in their respective Transactions. I had, however, partially stated the theory in previous publications,-only a development, as it is, of my New Philosophy of History, published in 1873. In exposition of this theory I have also, since 1887, both written papers published in abstract or otherwise in the Transactions of the International Congresses of Orientalists, the Transactions of the International Folklore Congress, the Archæological Review, Folklore, and other periodicals, and delivered lectures ("The Conflict of Races: A New Theory of the Origins of Civilisation") at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, reported in the Scotsman from November 1893 to January 1894. And I may refer likewise to the essays in my editions of The Women of Turkey and their Folklore, Vol. I., 1890, Vol. II., 1891; Greek Folksongs, 1885 and 1888; and Greek Folkpoesy, 1896.