the courts of the free city of Bremen, Germany, has made the study of
ethnological jurisprudence the scientific work of his life. His idea
and purpose are to establish a positive science of jurisprudence in
the widest and most comprehensive sense of the word, on the basis of
an investigation of all the forms of law, available to research, that
have ever appeared. A universal science of jurisprudence, according to
this conception, would have for its subject-matter the contents of the
jural sense or consciousness of the entire human race,—the jural facts
of the totality of human society. In other words, this science must
be, not only historical, but _ethnological_. It must include the jural
life not only of the civilised, but also of the uncivilised races of
mankind: it must comprehend _all_. It thus constitutes a step beyond
that great movement of the beginning of this century which gave us
the science of the history of law. It extends the latter, supplements
it, and aims to find in the juro-social existence of undeveloped and
uncivilised races the germs of legal practices and institutions that
the literary history and traditions of civilised peoples would never
supply.
The matter of the present work of Dr. Post takes up some 215 pages. It
treats of the available sources of such a universal science of law, of
the elaboration of these sources; it gives a concise and illustrative
epitome of the most important parallel phenomena met with in the
jural life of the human race,—e. g. in the departments of the Law of
Inheritance, of Property, of Marriage, etc., etc.,—and a survey of the
separate ethnic divisions of law over the whole earth.
It is a grand task—the realisation of this conception. And its
execution in its enormous magnitude is only possible through the
speedy and intelligent co-operation of scientists and travellers as
well as jurists. It will make of jurisprudence a _natural science_,
as distinguished from the _a priori_ character this study has up till
now assumed; and its prosecution will impart into the science a light
and freshness which it sadly needs. Next to theology, the science of
law is least pervaded with the spirit of modern research. And this is
eminently so in our country, where hardly the history, let alone the
ethnology of law, is studied.
We are tempted to give a much more thorough and detailed exposition of
Dr. Post's ideas. But an original article will appear from his pen in a
future number of _The Monist_, and therefore we are brief.
μκρκ.
PERIODICALS.
MIND. January, 1891. No. LXI.
CONTENTS:
ON PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPRESSION IN PSYCHOLOGY. By Prof. _A. Bain_.
APPERCEPTION AND THE MOVEMENT OF ATTENTION. By _G. F. Stout_.
HELMHOLTZ'S THEORY OF SPACE-PERCEPTION. By _J. H. Hyslop_.
THE PRINCIPLE OF INDUCTION. By _L. T. Hobhouse_.
THE UNDYING GERM-PLASM AND THE IMMORTAL SOUL. By _R. von
Lendenfeld_.
CRITICAL NOTICES: Pikler's "The Psychology of the Belief in
Objective Existence"; Ferrier's "The Croonian Lectures on
Cerebral Localisation"; Jevons's "Pure Logic and other
Minor Works"; Marshall's "Principles of Economics, I";
Mackenzie's "An Introduction to Social Philosophy"; Fouillée's
"L'Evolutionnisme des Idées-Forces"; Koenig's "Die Entwicklung
des Causalproblems."
_On Physiological Expression in Psychology._ In opposition to the
"subjective purism" in psychology advocated by Mr. Stout and Mr.
Bradley. The mixture of the psychical with the physical is such as to
prove that mental processes, however distinct from bodily processes,
have never owned even a vocabulary of their own. Pleasure and pain
are psychical states, but we cannot theorise fully upon them without
adverting to their physical causes or conditions. The action of
drugs proves that the physical constitution of the nerve-substance
is a paramount condition of our sensibility, pleasurable or painful.
By taking the organs of special sense in separation we can exhaust
the modes of sensibility under each, and when we look minutely into
the anatomy of the several organs, we obtain further helps to the
subdivision and distinction of the individual sensations. Connected
with the physics of the brain, apart from the nervous substance and
its conditions, is the important state known as excitement, with
its opposites quiescence, languor, repose, drowsiness, sleep, and
insensibility. The theory of the Will must rely, in the first instance,
upon subjective sequences, but the physical consequences of pleasure
and pain are a two-fold activity—Expression and Volition, and for
verification of any hypothesis as to priority between these two forms
of the physical outcome of feeling, the sequence must be taken on the
physical side alone. As regards the emotions, taken in themselves, the
tracing of physical concomitance is unavoidable. In Psycho-physics
the experiments are made upon the physical side, though not to the
exclusion of subjective reference. A law relating to the seat of
ideas obtained in the first instance through the senses, declares the
nervous tracts to be the same in both, thus connecting Sense with
Intellect. It has always been impossible to avoid describing ideas as
modified repetitions of sensation, and employing for that purpose the
materialism of the sense-organs. While eminently applicable to all the
phenomena of mind at their elementary stage—Sensation, Intellect,
Emotion, Will—physiological conditions cease to have the like bearing
in the higher complications. In all that part of Association that
states the order of recurrence of our ideas in Memory, subjective
investigation is paramount and exclusive. But the state described as
conscious intensity, excitement, mental concentration, attention,
interest, is expressible both subjectively and physiologically. The
constant application of spiritual remedies to bodily ailments is an
important aspect of the union of mind and body, and their interaction
in those instances is of great significance.
_Apperception and the Movement of Attention._ Thinking is action
directed towards intellectual ends. Intellectual ends are attained
by an appropriate combination of movements of attention. Attention
and apperception, as this word is applied by Steinthal, reciprocally
determine each other. The nature of attention is explained in
accordance with the monoideism of M. Ribot, but contrary to his view it
is declared to be a constant character of our mental life, although the
monoideism is not always complete. Apperception is the process by which
a mental system incorporates or tends to incorporate a new element.
The effect of attention is largely dependent on the apperception which
accompanies it, and of which it is an auxiliary process. The movement
of attention fastening upon the presentation to be apperceived, fixes
it in the focus of consciousness, until the appercipient system has
finally succeeded or failed in assimilating it. The reason why one
ideal group becomes appercipient in preference to the others lies
mainly in its greater affinity with the presentation to be apperceived.
The conditions determining the strength of apperceptive systems may
be either extrinsic or intrinsic. The extrinsic consist in passing
circumstances which from time to time favor its activity. The intrinsic
conditions are inherent in the constitution of the system itself.
Among the former are the co-operation of another system; the recovery
or the intensity of its own previous action; the influence of organic
sensation; its own freshness arising from previous repose. Of these
the organic sensation is of fundamental importance. The influence of
the cœnæsthesis pervades the whole mental life. Every specific kind of
emotion is accompanied by a characteristic mode of organic reaction.
The intrinsic conditions are the comprehensiveness of the system; its
internal organisation, of which the philosophy of Hegel is cited as an
example; the strength of the cohesion between its parts; the nature of
the sensory material which enters predominantly into its composition,
that is, the comparative excitability of ideas derived from different
senses. The normal working of competition, co-operation, and conflict,
may be illustrated by contrasting it with the pathological state
called _suggestibility_, in which those processes are more or less
completely in abeyance. The conditions which determine the train of
ideas arise from the fact that attention, being a motor process,
depends on feeling, which dependence cannot be separated from that on
apperception. Feeling gives unity to mental process, and is a simple
mode of consciousness resulting from the excitement of a multiplicity
of elements, and it causes attention to be concentrated on the central
presentation from which the wave of excitement is radiated. The
essential characteristic of a train of _thought_, as distinguished
from a mere train of ideas, is that the relation linking each idea to
its predecessor forms also a source of the interest through which it
attracts attention. The ground of the distinction is that thinking
involves the activity of a proportional system as such, that is "a
system adapted to apperceive objects in other respects most diverse
from each other, merely because they agree in being capable of entering
into certain relations." The modified working of the principle of
association through the apperceptive activity of a proportional system,
is _proportional_ or _analogical production_, which may possibly
operate in every instance of the suggestion of one idea by another.
A reversion of attention to a previous link in a chain of ideas,
giving rise to a modified repetition of it, is a distinctive feature
of _thinking_. In a separate article will be dealt with the special
part played by language, which from a psychological point of view
is "a peculiar movement of attention having a peculiar influence on
apperceptive process."
_Helmholtz's Theory of Space-Perception._ The doctrine of "unconscious
inference" is explicitly founded upon the general theory of knowledge
formed by Helmholtz, which is identical with that of Kant, and
Helmholtz's investigation into the genesis of space-perception applied
to the problem which Kant did not consider, namely, the perception
of particular or concrete spaces. The distinction made by the former
between the inference from the data of sense and that in which the
data are consciously known to be signs, by calling the inductive
inferences of the sciences _conscious_, and those involved in external
perception of world _unconscious_, is open to the charge of involving a
contradiction. On the one hand, the theory of "unconscious inference"
supports the empirical doctrine of perception only in consequence
of calling the process an inference. On the other hand, to call the
process "unconscious" is to restore the conception of immediacy which
the idea of inference is supposed to exclude. This contradiction may
not be insisted on, but, as the phenomena of binocular adjustment
discussed in a previous article showed in the visual consciousness a
_quale_ which, with or without its relation to tactual and muscular
extension, was other than plane dimension, Helmholtz must, unless
this _quale_ can be proved to be result of inference, limit the
application of his theory to the synthetic connection between touch
and sight. _Parallax of motion_, which consists of the different
afferent movements or velocities of bodies in horizontal meridians,
and situated at different distances from the observer, seems to do
the same for monocular vision that adjustment and fusion do for
binocular vision. The phenomena attending certain experiments in
which the parallax of motion was observed "correspond exactly to
the conception of those who hold that the representative of plane
dimension in the retinal image decides the nature of all perceptions
whose character is not presented in the image except as a visual
sign, and hence that aught beyond magnitude must be the result of
influence." An examination of Helmholtz's fundamental principle,
"the denial of all pre-established harmony between the nature of
impressions and the nature of the external world," confirms the view
that the conception of space may be properly a visual one, requiring
the superior constancy of touch to correct illusions growing out of the
complexities of vision. If we limit visual phenomena as data to mere
variations of kind and distinctness in color, we cannot account for
such cases as the appearance and inversion of mathematical perspective,
binocular localisation and translocation, and the distinct effect of
the monocular parallax of motion, qualities which are dimensional in
their nature. "While the complexities of space-perception make the
co-operation of inferential agencies very probable, yet the spacial
quality must be originally given somewhere in consciousness either
as an object of perception or as a mental construction, in order to
furnish a basis for inferences to its existence or its relations where
they are not immediately cognised. This makes the developed conceptions
of abstract and synthetic space a complex of inferences and intuitions."
_The Principle of Induction._ The ultimate major premiss of Induction
according to Mill is the Law of Causation which, as he treats it, is
a wide generalisation true of sequences just as other generalisations
are true of the facts of space. Hence it is itself an induction like
other inductions. What is wanted is "an axiom expressing in general
terms what we do when we make a particular statement universal, which
makes explicit the truth implied by the making of any generalisation
whatever." The Law of Causation will be found to be a particular
application of this wider axiom, and the axiom itself must be sought
from the analysis of ordinary simple generalisations. When we connect
truths together, or reason, we _support_ an inferred judgment by some
other assertion. That we should be able to reason at all involves that
any fact, as _B_, should have some other fact, as _C_, to which it
is always related; that is, "any fact precisely resembling this _B_,
whatever its other attributes and concomitants may be, will be found in
a precisely similar relation to a precisely similar _C_." A relation
exists between two facts whenever the mind can at once distinguish the
facts as two, and at the same time attend to them together and assert
something of them considered together. We may speak of a relation
between different aspects of the same existing thing. The three
alternatives afforded by the axiom as ultimately stated correspond to
the three cases in which _A_ is the "sum of the conditions of _B_," or
in any way a universal correlate of _B_; in which it is the cause of
_B_ in the popular sense of the term; and in which its connection with
_B_ is merely 'causal,' that is, "the Law of Causation is the Axiom
of Reasoning as applied to the sequences of phenomena." Every fact
observed stands in universal relation to some other fact. The judgment
of that relation "is implied in the rudimentary inference which states
only the particular fact observed and the particular fact now expected.
It is explicit in the reason that is conscious of its own grounds and
methods, and takes there the form of the universal judgment, or major
premiss."
_The Undying Germ-Plasm and the Immortal Soul._ All unicellular beings
such as the Protozoa and the simpler Algæ, Fungi, etc., reproduce
themselves by means of simple fission, and consequently they are
immortal. All the single individuals of a family of unicellular beings
belong to each other, although they be isolated. Amongst certain
infusoria they do, in fact, remain together and build up branching
colonies. Later on, division of labor made its appearance and increased
the dependence of the individuals upon one another, so that their
individuality was to a great extent lost. By the development of this
process, multicellular Metazoa arose from colonies of similar Protozoa,
and at length culminated in the higher animals and man. All the
cell-series are immortal, but they all must die because the structure
which is built up by them collectively is mortal. The reproductive
cells are the only kind adapted for existence outside the body, and
from time to time some of the human reproductive cells succeed in
conjugating, and from them a new individual arises. The whole structure
of man is acquired with the one object in view of maintaining the
series of reproductive cells, of which he is, so to speak, the slave.
They are the most important and essential and also the undying parts
of the organism. The series of reproductive cells thus possess the
essential attributes of the human soul. If we compare the conception
of the soul as held by various related religions, and take the
characteristics invariably ascribed to the soul, we find that they hold
also for the series of reproductive cells continually developing within
the body. The ordinary conception of the fate of the soul after death
agrees fundamentally with the result of observation on the prosperity
of the series of germ-cells. That fate depends on conduct in the body,
and the only possible definition of a good deed, that is approved by
conscience, is one which will benefit the series of germ-cells arising
from one individual, that is ourselves and our family, and further
which will be of use to others with their own series of germ-cells, and
that in proportion to the degree of connection or relationship. Thus,
"the apparently enigmatical conception of the eternal soul is founded
on the actual immortality and continuity of the germ-plasma." (London:
Williams & Norgate.)
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS. January, 1891. Vol. I. No. 2.
CONTENTS:
THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES. By _D. G. Ritchie_.
A NEW STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. By _Prof. Josiah Royce_.
THE INNER LIFE IN RELATION TO MORALITY. By _J. H. Muirhead_.
MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE. By _Prof. John Dewey_.
MORALS IN HISTORY. By _Prof. Fr. Jodl_.
THE ETHICS OF DOUBT—CARDINAL NEWMAN. By _W. L. Sheldon_.
THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM. Steinthal—The Social Utopia;
Paulsen—Socialism and Social Reform. By _Prof. Franklin H.
Giddings_.
ETHICAL AND KINDRED SOCIETIES IN GREAT BRITAIN. By _Mrs. M.
McCallum_.
_A New Study of Psychology._ There are three fairly distinct types
of treatment in text-books of psychology. The first type, is the
science of the "mind" considered as an entity, of whose nature we
might otherwise know much or little, but of which we at all events
knew that it had a certain substantial unity. This was supplemented,
or succeeded, by the theory of the 'ideas,' and their 'associations.'
A third method confines its investigations to the facts and laws of
the nervous system, with only such use of introspection as was found
absolutely indispensable. Professor James, in his "Principles of
Psychology," does not accept primarily any one of these views. The
unit he adopts in mental analysis might be defined as "so much of the
mental process as may be supposed to run parallel to a relatively
simple nervous function in the cortex of the living brain, in so
far as this cortex functions with a certain unity." Professor James
rejects the unconscious in every form, and above all the unconscious
mind-atom. He says, "the special natural science of psychology must
stop with the mere functional formula. If the passing be the directly
verifiable existent, which no school has hitherto doubted it to be,
then that thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need not look
beyond." This life of passing thoughts needs only the fundamental
hypothesis that the moments as they pass really know one another, that
the present is actually acquainted with the past, in order to give as
a resultant of the whole life such unity as we need for purposes of
psychological science. In relation to volition and freedom, Professor
James holds that the idea of the end tends more and more to make itself
all-sufficient, and that "motives," so-called, are "ideas of ends"
which owing to their conflict, are unable to pass over into acts so
long as they remain mere motives. The experience of deciding a conflict
of motives is "the experience of the triumph of one idea of the end
over other ideas." The act of voluntary decision is experienced as an
act of "conscious attention to an idea," and nothing else. Volition is
primarily a relation, "not between ourself and extra-mental matter,
but between ourself and our own states of mind." Professor James's
own belief is that the question of freewill is insolvable on strictly
psychological grounds, although on ethical grounds he ascribes to the
alternative of freedom. In relation to the question of pleasure and
pain as motives, he points out that the 'idea-motor' acts, even on
a very high plane, express the presence of the 'idea of an end,' and
this end may itself be very painful, yet it tends to carry itself out.
It wins because we attend to it, and whether or no attention is free,
certain it is that attention often rather determines pleasure and
pain themselves, than is determined by them. In conclusion Professor
Royce says in relation to Professor James's book: "His 'passing
moments,' which can 'know' and which can freely 'attend,' which
are 'self-related,' and which have 'unity,' and which are still so
intimately bound to the 'neural process,' have just the paradoxical and
hypothetical character which requires one, in one's philosophy, to go
beyond them, and to declare them but illusory expressions in phenomenal
form of an infinitely deeper truth."