[1] _Kritik d. reinen Vernunft_, p. 197 (ed. Hartenstein).
[2] _Institutes of Metaphysics_ (1854); _Works_ (1866).
[3] _Secret of Hegel_ (1865).
[4] _Dialogues of Plato_ (1871).
[5] _Journal of Spec. Phil._ (1867).
[6] Hume's _Phil. Works_ (1875).
[7] _Critical account of the Phil. of Kant_ (1877).
[8] _Knowledge and Reality_ (1885); Logic (1888).
[9] _Appearance and Reality_ (1893).
[10] _Studies in Hegelian Cosmology_ (1901).
[11] _Elements of Metaphysics_ (1903).
[12] _The World and the individual_ (1901).
[13] See _Mind_, New Series, xii. p. 433 sqq.
[14] _Proceedings_ of the Aristotelian Society (1900-1901), p. 110.
[15] _Mind_, New Series, xiii. p. 523; cf. 204, 350.
[16] The most striking statement of this argument is to be found in
Boutroux's treatise _De la contingence des lois de la nature_, first
published in 1874 and reprinted without alteration in 1905. The same
general line of thought underlies James Ward's _Naturalism and
Agnosticism_ (2nd ed., 1903), and A. J. Balfour's _Foundations of
Belief_ (8th ed., 1901). H. Bergson's works on the other hand contain
the elements of a reconstruction similar in spirit to the suggestions
of the present article.
IDELER, CHRISTIAN LUDWIG (1766-1846), German chronologist and
astronomer, was born near Perleberg on the 21st of September 1766. After
holding various official posts under the Prussian government he became
professor at the university of Berlin in 1821, and eighteen years later
foreign member of the Institute of France. From 1816 to 1822 he was
tutor to the young princes William Frederick and Charles. He died in
Berlin on the 10th of August 1846. He devoted his life chiefly to the
examination of ancient systems of chronology. In 1825-1826 he published
his great work, _Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen
Chronologie_ (2 vols.; 2nd ed., 1883), re-edited as _Lehrbuch der
Chronologie_ (1831); a supplementary volume, _Die Zeitrechnung der
Chinesen_, appeared in 1839. Beside these important works he wrote also
_Untersuchungen über d. Ursprung und d. Bedeutung d. Sternnamen_ (1809)
and _Über d. Ursprung d. Thierkreises_ (1838). With Nolte he published
handbooks on English and French language and literature. His son, JULIUS
LUDWIG IDELER (1809-1842), wrote _Meteorologia veterum Graecorum et
Romanorum_ (1832).
IDENTIFICATION (Lat. _idem_, the same), the process of proving any one's
identity, i.e. that he is the man he purports to be, or--if he is
pretending to be some one else--the man he really is; or in case of
dispute, that he is the man he is alleged to be. As more strenuous
efforts have been made for the pursuit of criminals, and more and more
severe penalties are inflicted on old offenders, means of identification
have become essential, and various processes have been tried to secure
that desirable end. For a long time they continued to be most imperfect;
nothing better was devised than rough and ready methods of recognition
depending upon the memories of officers of the law or the personal
impressions of witnesses concerned in the case, supplemented in more
recent years by photographs, not always a safe and unerring guide. The
machinery employed was cumbrous, wasteful of time and costly. Detective
policemen were marched in a body to inspect arrested prisoners in the
exercising yards of the prison. Accused persons were placed in the midst
of a number of others of approximately like figure and appearance, and
the prosecutor and witnesses were called in one by one to pick out the
offender. Inquiries, with a detailed description of distinctive marks,
and photographs were circulated far and wide to local police forces.
Officers, police and prison wardens were despatched in person to give
evidence of identity at distant courts. Mis-identification was by no
means rare. Many remarkable cases may be quoted. One of the most notable
was that of the Frenchman Lesurques, in the days of the Directory, who
was positively identified as having robbed the Lyons mail and suffered
death, protesting his innocence of the crime, which was afterwards
brought home to another man, Duboscq, and this terrible judicial error
proved to be the result of the extraordinary likeness between the two
men. Another curious case is to be found in American records, when a man
was indicted for bigamy as James Hoag, who averred that he was really
Thomas Parker. There was a marvellous conflict of testimony, even wives
and families and personal friends being misled, and there was a narrow
escape of mis-identification. The leading modern case in England is that
of Adolf Beck (1905). Beck (who eventually died at the end of 1909) was
arrested on the complaint of a number of women who positively swore to
his identity as Smith, a man who had defrauded them. An ex-policeman who
had originally arrested Smith also swore that Beck was the same man.
There was a grave miscarriage of justice. Beck was sentenced to penal
servitude, and although a closer examination of the personal marks
showed that Beck could not possibly be Smith, it was only after a
scandalous delay, due to the obstinacy of responsible officials, that
relief was afforded. It has to be admitted that evidence as to identity
based on personal impressions is perhaps of all classes of evidence the
least to be relied upon.
Such elements of uncertainty cannot easily be eliminated from any system
of jurisprudence, but some improvements in the methods of identification
have been introduced in recent years. The first was in the adoption of
anthropometry (q.v.), which was invented by the French savant, A.
Bertillon. The reasons that led to its general supersession may be
summed up in its costliness, the demand for superior skill in
subordinate agents and the liability to errors not easy to trace and
correct. A still more potent reason remained, the comparative failure of
results. It was found in the first four years of its use in England and
Wales that an almost inappreciable number of identifications were
effected by the anthropometric system; namely, 152 in 1898, 243 in 1899,
462 in 1900, and 503 in 1901, the year in which it was supplemented by
the use of "finger prints" (q.v.). The figures soon increased by leaps
and bounds. In 1902 the total number of searches among the records were
6826 and the identifications 1722 for London and the provinces; in 1903
the searches were 11,919, the identifications 3642; for the first half
of 1904 the searches were 6697 and the identifications 2335. In India
and some of the colonies the results were still more remarkable; the
recognitions in 1903 were 9512, and 17,289 in 1904. Were returns
available from other countries very similar figures would no doubt be
shown. Among these countries are Ireland, Australasia, Ceylon, South
Africa, and many great cities of the United States; and the system is
extending to Germany, Austria-Hungary and other parts of Europe.
The record of finger prints in England and Wales is kept by the
Metropolitan police at New Scotland Yard. They were at first limited to
persons convicted at courts at quarter sessions and assizes and to all
persons sentenced at minor courts to more than a month without option of
fine for serious offences. The finger prints when taken by prison
warders are forwarded to London for registration and reference on
demand. The total number of finger-print slips was 70,000 in 1904, and
weekly additions were being made at the rate of 350 slips. The
advantages of the record system need not be emphasized. By its means
identification is prompt, inevitable and absolutely accurate. By
forwarding the finger prints of all remanded prisoners to New Scotland
Yard, their antecedents are established beyond all hesitation.
In past times identification of criminals who had passed through the
hands of the law was compassed by branding, imprinting by a hot iron, or
tattooing with an indelible sign, such as a crown, fleur de lys or
initials upon the shoulder or other part of the body. This practice,
long since abandoned, was in a measure continued in the British army,
when offenders against military law were ordered by sentence of
court-martial to be marked with "D" for deserter and "B.C." bad
character; this ensured their recognition and prevented re-enlistment;
but all such penalties have now disappeared. (A. G.)
IDEOGRAPH (Gr. [Greek: idea], idea, and [Greek: graphein], to write), a
symbol or character painted, written or inscribed, representing ideas
and not sounds; such a form of writing is found in Chinese and in most
of the Egyptian hieroglyphs (see WRITING).
IDIOBLAST (Gr. [Greek: idios], peculiar, and [Greek: blastos], a shoot),
a botanical term for an individual cell which is distinguished by its
shape, size or contents, such as the stone-cells in the soft tissue of a
pear.
IDIOM (Gr. [Greek: idiôma], something peculiar and personal; [Greek:
idios], one's own, personal), a form of expression whether in words,
grammatical construction, phraseology, &c., which is peculiar to a
language; sometimes also a special variety of a particular language, a
dialect.
IDIOSYNCRASY (Gr. [Greek: idiosynkrasia], peculiar habit of body or
temperament; [Greek: idios], one's own, and [Greek: synkrasis],
blending, tempering, from [Greek: sygkerannusthai], to put together,
compound, mix), a physical or mental condition peculiar to an individual
usually taking the form of a special susceptibility to particular
stimuli; thus it is an idiosyncrasy of one individual that abnormal
sensations of discomfort should be excited by certain odours or colours,
by the presence in the room of a cat, &c.; similarly certain persons are
found to be peculiarly responsive or irresponsive to the action of
particular drugs. The word is also used, generally, of any eccentricity
or peculiarity of character, appearance, &c.
IDOLATRY, the worship (Gr. [Greek: latreia]) of idols (Gr. [Greek:
eidôlon]), i.e. images or other objects, believed to represent or be the
abode of a superhuman personality. The term is often used generically to
include such varied, forms as litholatry, dendrolatry, pyrolatry,
zoolatry and even necrolatry. In an age when the study of religion was
practically confined to Judaism and Christianity, idolatry was regarded
as a degeneration from an uncorrupt primeval faith, but the comparative
and historical investigation of religion has shown it to be rather a
stage of an upward movement, and that by no means the earliest. It is
not found, for instance, among Bushmen, Fuegians, Eskimos, while it
reached a high development among the great civilizations of the ancient
world in both hemispheres.[1] Its earliest stages are to be sought in
naturism and animism. To give concreteness to the vague ideas thus
worshipped the idol, at first rough and crude, comes to the help of the
savage, and in course of time through inability to distinguish
subjective and objective, comes to be identified with the idea it
originally symbolized. The degraded form of animism known as fetichism
is usually the direct antecedent of idolatry. A fetich is adored, not
for itself, but for the spirit who dwells in it and works through it.
Fetiches of stone or wood were at a very early age shaped and polished
or coloured and ornamented. A new step was taken when the top of the log
or stone was shaped like a human head; the rest of the body soon
followed. The process can be followed with some distinctness in Greece.
Sometimes, as in Babylonia and India, the representation combined human
and animal forms, but the human figure is the predominant model; man
makes God after his own image.
Idols may be private and personal like the teraphim of the Hebrews or
the little figures found in early Egyptian tombs, or--a late
development, public and tribal or national. Some, like the ancestral
images among the Maoris, are the intermittent abodes of the spirits of
the dead.
As the earlier stages in the development of the religious consciousness
persist and are often manifest in idolatry, so in the higher stages,
when men have attained loftier spiritual ideas, idolatry itself survives
and is abundantly visible as a reactionary tendency. The history of the
Jewish people whom the prophets sought, for long in vain, to wean from
worshipping images is an illustration: so too the vulgarities of modern
popular Hinduism contrasted with the lofty teaching of the Indian sacred
books.
In the New Testament the word [Greek: eidôlolatreia] (_idololatria_,
afterwards shortened occasionally to [Greek: eidolatreia], _idolatria_)
occurs in all four times, viz. in 1 Cor. x. 14; Gal. v. 20; 1 Peter iv.
3; Col. iii. 5. In the last of these passages it is used to describe the
sin of covetousness or "mammon-worship." In the other places it
indicates with the utmost generality all the rites and practices of
those special forms of paganism with which Christianity first came into
collision. It can only be understood by reference to the LXX., where
[Greek: eidôlon] (like the word "idol" in A.V.) occasionally translates
indifferently no fewer than sixteen words by which in the Old Testament
the objects of what the later Jews called "strange worship" (Hebrew:
avoda zara) are denoted (see _Encyclopaedia Biblica_). In the widest
acceptation of the word, idolatry in any form is absolutely forbidden in
the second commandment, which runs "Thou shalt not make unto thee a
graven image; [and] to no visible shape in heaven above, or in the earth
beneath, or in the water under the earth, shalt thou bow down or render
service" (see DECALOGUE). For some account of the questions connected
with the breaches of this law which are recorded in the history of the
Israelites see the article JEWS; those differences as to the
interpretation of the prohibition which have so seriously divided
Christendom are discussed under the head of ICONOCLASTS.
In the ancient church, idolatry was naturally reckoned among those
_magna crimina_ or great crimes against the first and second
commandments which involved the highest ecclesiastical censures. Not
only were those who had gone openly to heathen temples and partaken in
the sacrifices (_sacrificati_) or burnt incense (_thurificati_) held
guilty of this crime; the same charge, in various degrees, was incurred
by those whose renunciation of idolatry had been private merely, or who
otherwise had used unworthy means to evade persecution, by those also
who had feigned themselves mad to avoid sacrificing, by all promoters
and encouragers of idolatrous rites, and by idol makers, incense sellers
and architects or builders of structures connected with idol worship.
Idolatry was made a crime against the state by the laws of Constantius
(_Cod. Theod._ xvi. 10. 4, 6), forbidding all sacrifices on pain of
death, and still more by the statutes of Theodosius (_Cod. Theod._ xvi.
10. 12) enacted in 392, in which sacrifice and divination were declared
treasonable and punishable with death; the use of lights, incense,
garlands and libations was to involve the forfeiture of house and land
where they were used; and all who entered heathen temples were to be
fined. See Bingham, _Antiqq._ bk. xvi. c. 4.
See also IMAGE-WORSHIP; and on the whole question, RELIGION.