Endnotes

¹

North American Review, 106, p. 286, notice of Peabody’s Positive Philosophy, January, 1868.

²

In his recently published work, entitled “Lessons from Nature as manifested in Mind and Matter,” Mr. Mivart reprints his reply to Mr. Wright’s criticisms, but fails to notice Mr. Wright’s rejoinder.

³

From the North American Review, July, 1864.

⁴

Grant’s History of Physical Astronomy.

⁵

The laws or archetypes of nature are properly the laws of invariable or unconditional frequence in natural operations. And it is only with the objective relations of these laws,

as constituting the order of nature, that natural science is concerned. Their subjective relations, origin, and essential being belong to the province of transcendental metaphysics, and to a philosophy of faith. According to this division, there can never arise any conflict between science and faith; for what the one is competent to declare, the other is incompetent to dispute. Science should be free to determine what the order of nature is, and faith equally free to declare the essential nature of causation or creation.

⁶

This argument for physical causes is apparently the reverse of that which Laplace derived from the regularities of the solar system and the theory of probabilities; but in reality the objects of the two arguments are distinct. For the legitimate conclusion from Laplace’s computation is, not that the solar system is simply a physical product, but that the causes of its production could not have been irregular. The result of this computation was a probability of two hundred thousand billions to one that the regularities of the solar system are not the effects of chance or irregular causes.

The gist of this argument is to prove simplicity in the antecedents of the solar system; and, had the proportion been still greater, or infinity to one, the argument might have proved a primitive or archetypal character in the movements of this system. It is therefore in the limitations, and not in the magnitude, of this proportion, that there is any tendency to show physical antecedence. Hence it is not from the regularities of the solar system, but from its complexity, that its physical origin is justly inferred.

Regarding the law of causation as universal, since, if not implied in the very search for causes, it is at least the broadest and the best established induction from natural phenomena, we conclude that the appearance of accident among the manifestations of law is proof of the existence of complex antecedent conditions and of physical causation, and that the absence of this appearance is proof of simple and primitive law.

⁷

Appendix to Lecture XII. p. 455.

⁸

Most of the materials which fall to the earth are probably in the form of very small bodies, which must be disintegrated by heat in their passage through the atmosphere, and must consequently reach the earth’s surface in the form of fine dust. At the rate of accumulation estimated above, this dust, when reduced to the mean density of the earth’s materials, would add one foot to the thickness of its crust in about three thousand years. In the loose form of dust or mud this accumulation would amount to about a hundredth of an inch in a year. The materials which have accumulated within historical periods over the ruins of ancient cities may thus in great part have been collected from the sky. The agencies of the winds and of flowing water in transporting and depositing the loose materials of the earth’s surface would distribute this star-dust in deposits at the bottom of the sea, and in hills and mounds on the land.

⁹

The rare occurrence of spots on the sun beyond thirty degrees either side of its equator may indicate some connection between these spots and the fall of meteors and serve to determine the limits of the meteoric system.

¹⁰

There is a period of about eleven years in the numbers of spots that appear on the surface of the sun, a period coincident with that of the amount of diurnal variations in terrestrial magnetism,—an amount undoubtedly due to the influence of the sun. This period also coincides nearly with the period of the revolution of Jupiter, the largest planet in our system. If, then, we may suppose that the sun’s spots are occasioned by the fall of large meteors, the courses of which lie near to the orbit of Jupiter, the attractions of this planet, alternately turning such a stream of bodies upon and away from the surface of the sun, would connect these three nearly coincident periods by a common physical cause.

The phenomena of magnetism and electricity, as subordinate manifestations of motion and conditions of motion, have not been included in our speculations on the commutations of “power,” on account of their insignificant values as compared with the three principal forms of “power.” For the same reason, we omit any consideration of the numerous but minute modifications of “power” which are manifested by the forces of vital phenomena on the surface of the earth.

¹¹

From the North American Review, for January, 1865.

¹²

From the North American Review, April, 1865.

¹³

See Essay on Utilitarianism.

¹⁴

By Professor William Thomson.

¹⁵

From the North American Review, October, 1870.

¹⁶

Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection. A Series of Essays. By Alfred Russell Wallace, London, 1870.

¹⁷

It is remarkable that our author should be so willing to attribute such a slight and unimportant character as the hair of animals, and even the lay of it, to Natural Selection, and, at the same time, should regard the absence of it from the human back as beyond the resources of natural explanations. We credit him, nevertheless, with the clearest appreciation, through his studies and reflections, of the extent of the action of the law which he independently discovered; which comprises in its scope, not merely the stem necessities of mere existence, but the gentlest amenities of the most favored life. Sexual Selection, with all its obscure and subtle influences, is a type of this gentler action, which ranges all the way in its command of fitnesses from the hard necessities of utility and warfare to the apparently useless superfluities of beauty and affection. Nay, more, a defect which, without subtracting from the attractions or any other important external advantage in an animal, should simply be the source of private discomfort to it, is certain to come under the judgments of this all-searching principle.

It is a fair objection, however, sometimes made against the theory of Natural Selection, that it abounds in loopholes of ingenious escape from the puzzling problems of nature; and that, instead of giving real explanations of many phenomena, it simply refers them in general terms to obscure and little known, perhaps wholly inadequate causes, of which it holds omne ignotum pro magnifico. But this objection, though good, so far as it goes, against the theory, is not in favor of any rival hypothesis, least of all of that greatest of unknown causes, the supernatural, which is magnificent indeed in adequacy, if it be only real, but whose reality must rest forever on the negative evidence of the insufficiency, not only of the known, but of all possible natural explanations, and whose sufficiency even is, after all, only the counterpart or reflection of their apparent insufficiencies. Hence the objection is a fair one only against certain phases of this theory, and against the tendency to rest satisfied with its imperfect explanations, or to regard them lightly as trivial defects. But to such criticisms the progress of the theory itself, in the study of nature, is a sufficient answer in general, and is a triumphant vindication of the mode of inquiry, against which such criticisms are sometimes unjustly made.

¹⁸

Though very limited in extent, this class is marked out only by the single character, that the efficient causes (of whatever nature, whether the forces of simple growth and reproduction, or the agency of the human will), are yet of such a nature as to act through the principles of utility and choice. It includes in its range, therefore, developments of the simplest adaptive organic characters on one hand, and the growths of language and other human customs on the other. It has been objected that Natural Selection does not apply to the origin of languages, because language is an invention, and the work of the human will; and it is clear, indeed, that Natural, as distinguished from Artificial, Selection is not properly the cause of language, or of the custom of speech. But to this it is sufficient to reply, that the contrast of Natural and Artificial Selections is not a contrast of principles, but only of illustrations, and that the common principle of “the survival of the fittest” is named by Synecdoche from the broader though more obscure illustration of it. If it can be shown that the choice of a word from among many words as the name of an object or idea, or the choice of a dialect from among many varieties of speech, as the language of literature, is a universal process in the developments of speech and is determined by real, though special grounds of fitness, then this choice is a proper illustration of the principle of Natural Selection; and is the more so, with reference to the name of the principle, in proportion as the process and the grounds of fitness in this choice differ from the common volitions and motives of men, or are obscured by the imperfections of the records of the past, or by the subtleties of the associations which have determined it in the minds of the inventors and adopters of language. It is important, however, to distinguish between the origins of languages or linguistic customs, which are questions of philology, and the psychological question of the origin of language in general, or the origin in human nature of the inventions and uses of speech. Whether Natural Selection will serve to solve the latter question remains to be seen. In connection, however, with the resemblance, here noted, between the primitive, but regularly determined inventions of the mind and Natural Selection in its narrower sense, it is interesting to observe a corresponding resemblance between the theories of Free-Will and Creation, which are opposed to them. The objection that the origin of languages does not belong to the inquiries of Natural Selection, because language is an invention, and the work of Free-Will, thus appears to be parallel to the objection to Natural Selection, that it attempts to explain the work of Creation; and both objections obviously beg the questions at issue. But both objections have force with reference to the real and proper limitations of Natural Selection, and to the antecedent conditions of ts action.

¹⁹

In further illustration of the range of the explanations afforded by the principle of Natural Selection, to which we referred in our note, page 108, we may instance an application of it to the more special psychological problem of the development of the individual mind by its own experiences, which presupposes, of course, the innate powers and mental faculties derived (whether naturally or supernaturally) from the development of the race. Among these native faculties of the individual mind is the power of reproducing its own past experiences in memory and belief; and this is, at least, analogous, as we have said, to the reproductive powers of physical organisms, and like these is in itself an unlimited, expansive power of repetition. Human beliefs, like human desires, are naturally illimitable. The generalizing instinct is native to the mind. It is not the result of habitual experiences, as is commonly supposed, but acts as well on single experiences, which are capable of producing, when unchecked, the most unbounded beliefs and expectations of the future. The only checks to such unconditional natural beliefs are other and equally unconditional and natural beliefs, or the contradictions and limiting conditions of experience. Here, then, is a close analogy, at least, to those fundamental facts

of the organic world on which the law of Natural Selection is based; the facts, namely, of the “rapid increase of organisms,” limited only by “the conditions of existence,” and by competition in that “struggle for existence” which results in the “survival of the fittest” As the tendency to an unlimited increase in existing organisms is held in check only by those conditions of their existence which are chiefly comprised in the like tendencies of other organisms to unlimited increase, and is thus maintained (so long as external conditions remain unchanged) in an unvarying balance of life; and as this balance adjusts itself to slowly changing external conditions, so, in the history of the individual mind, beliefs which spring spontaneously from simple and single experiences, and from a naturally unlimited tendency to generalization, are held mutually in check, and in their harmony represent the properly balanced experiences and knowledges of the mind, and by adaptive changes are kept in accordance with changing external conditions, or with the varying total results in the memory of special experiences. This mutual limitation of belief by belief, in which consists so large a part of their proper evidence, is so prominent a feature in the beliefs of the rational mind, that philosophers had failed to discover their true nature, as elementary facts, until this was pointed out by the greatest of living psychologists, Professor Alexander Bain. The mutual tests and checks of belief have, indeed, always appeared to a great majority of philosophers as their only proper evidence; and beliefs themselves have appeared as purely intellectual phases of the mind. But Bain has defined them, in respect to their ultimate natures, as phases of the will; or as the tendencies we have to act on mere experience, or to act on our simplest, most limited experiences. They are tendencies, however, which become so involved in intellectual developments, and in their mutual limitations, that their ultimate results in rational beliefs have very naturally appeared to most philosophers as purely intellectual facts; and their real genesis in experience has been generally discredited, with the exception of what are designated specially as “empirical beliefs.”

It may be objected that the generative process we have here described bears only a remote and fanciful analogy, and not an essential resemblance, to Natural Selection in the organic world. But to this it is, perhaps, sufficient to reply (as in the case of the origin of language), that if “the survival of the fittest” is a true expression of the law,—it is to Mr. Herbert Spencer we owe this most precise definition,—then the development of the individual mind presents a true example of it; for our knowledges and rational beliefs result, truly and literally, from the survival of the fittest among our original and spontaneous beliefs. It is only by a figure of speech, it is true, that this “survival of the fittest” can be described as the result of a “struggle for existence” among our primitive beliefs; but this description is equally figurative as applied to Natural Selection in the organic world.

The application of the principle to mental development takes for granted, as we have said, the faculties with which the individual is born, and in the human mind these include that most efficient auxiliary, the faculty of using and inventing language. How Natural Selection could have originated this is not so easy to trace, and is an almost wholly speculative question; but if the faculty consists essentially, as we have supposed, in a preponderance of the active and spontaneous over the passive powers of the brain, effecting the turning-back or reflective action of the mind, while the latter simply result in the following-out or sagacious habit, we see at least that the contrast need not depend on the absolute size of the brain, but only on the proportion of the powers that depend on its quantity to those that depend on its quality. We should naturally suppose, therefore, that the earliest men were probably not very sagacious creatures, perhaps much less so than the present uncivilized races. But they were, most likely, very social; even more so, perhaps, than the sagacious savage; for there was needed a strong motive to call this complicated and difficult mental action into exercise; and it is even now to be observed that sagacity and

sociability are not commonly united in high degrees even among civilized men. Growths both in the quantity and quality of the brain are, therefore, equally probable in the history of human development, with always a preponderance of the advantages which depend upon quantity. But the present superiority of the most civilized races, so far as it is independent of any external inheritance of arts, knowledges, and institutions, would appear to depend chiefly upon the quality of their brains, and upon characteristics belonging to their moral and emotional natures rather than the intellectual, since the intellectual acquisitions of civilization are more easily communicated by education to the savage than the refinements of its moral and emotional characteristics. Though all records and traces of this development are gone, and a wide gulf separates the lowest man from the highest brute animal, yet elements exist by which we may trace the succession of utilities and advantages that have determined the transition. The most essential are those of the social nature of man, involving mutual assistance in the struggle for existence. Instrumental to these are his mental powers, developed by his social nature, and by the reflective character of his brain’s action into a general and common intelligence, instead of the specialized instincts and sagacities characteristic of other animals; and from these came language, and thence all the arts, knowledges, governments, traditions, all the external inheritances, which, reacting on his social nature, have induced the sentiments of morality, worship, and refinement; at which gazing as in a mirror he sees his past, and thinks it his future.

²⁰

From the North American Review, July, 1872.

²¹

This is a real condition of mind in the subject of it; a condition in which interest or emotion gives to an idea such fixity and power that it takes possession at a fatal moment of the will and acts itself out; as in the fascination of the precipice. It is not, however, to be regarded as a natural contrivance in the mental acquisitions of the victims for the benefit of the serpent any more than the serpent’s warnings are for their benefit; but as a consequence of ultimate mental laws in general, of which the serpent's faculties and habits take advantage.

²²

From the North American Review, July, 1872.

²³

See the number of the North American Review for April, 1872. Mr. Mivart has reprinted his reply, without notice of the present essay, in his volume entitled, “Lessons from Nature,” London, 1876.

²⁴

The fortuity or chance is here, as in all other cases, a relative fact. The strictest use of the word applies to events which could not be anticipated except by omniscience.

To speak, therefore, of an event as strictly accidental is not equivalent to regarding it as undetermined, but only as determined in a manner which cannot be anticipated by a finite intelligence (see Mr. Mivart’s Reply, p. 458). There are degrees in the intelligibility of things, according to human means and standards. Events like eclipses which are the most normal and predictable of all events to the astronomer, are to the savage pure accidents; and with still lower forms of intelligence events are unforeseen which are familiar anticipations in the intelligence of the savage. To believe events to be designed or not, according as they are or are not predictable by us, is to assume for ourselves a complete and absolute knowledge of nature which we do not possess. Hence faith in a designing intelligence, supreme in nature, is not the result of any capacity in our own intelligence to comprehend the design, and is quite independent of any distinctions we may make, relative to our own powers of prediction, between orderly and accidental events.

²⁵

See ante p. 141

²⁶

From the North American Review, April, 1873.

²⁷

For an intellect complete without appendages of sense or locomotion, see Plato’s Timæus, 33, 34.

²⁸

It appears, at first sight, a rash hypothesis to imagine so extensive an action of illusion as I have supposed in the revivals of memory,—a self-vouching faculty of which, in general, the testimony cannot be questioned,—since each recall asserts for itself an identity with what is recalled by it, either in past outward experiences or in previous revivals of them. But the hypothesis of uniform, or frequent, illusions in individual judgments of memory is not made in contradiction of experiences in general, including those remembered, when reduced to rational consistency. The familiar fact that no memory, even of an immediately past experience, is an adequate reproduction of everything that must have been present in it in actual consciousness, and must have received more or less attention, is familiarly verified by repeating the remembered experiences. Memory itself thus testifies to its own fallibility. But this is not all. Illusion in an opposite direction, the more than adequate revival of some experiences, so far as vividness and apparently remembered details are concerned, affects our memories of dreams, demonstrably in some, presumably in many. What is commonly called a dream is not what is present to the imagination in sleep, but what is believed, often illusively, to have been present; and is, doubtless, in general, more vivid in memory and furnished with more numerous details, owing to the livelier action of imagination in waking moments. The liveliness of an actual dream is rather in its dominant feeling or interest than in its images.

The order of internal events, or the order of suggestion in actual dreams, is often reversed in the waking memories of them. A dream very long and full of details, as it appears in memory, and taking many words to relate, is sometimes recalled from the

suggestions and trains of thought in sleep which are comprised in the impressions of a few moments. Such a dream usually ends in some startling or interesting event, which was a misinterpretation in sleep of some real outward impression, as a loud or unusual noise, or some inward sensation, like one of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, or numbness, which really stood in sleep at the beginning of the misremembered train of thought, instead of constituting its dénouement in a remembered series of real incidents. The remembered dream seems to have been an isolated series of such incidents, succeeding each other in the natural order of experience; but this appearance may well arise from the absence of any remembered indications of a contrary order; or from the absence, on one hand, of a consciousness in sleep of anything more vivid than the actual dream, and the real feebleness, on the other hand, of the dream itself in respect to everything in it except the salient incident, or the dominant interest, which caused it to be remembered along with the feeble sketch of suggested incidents. Surprise at incongruities in parts of trains often constitutes this interest.

If the waking imagination really fills out this sketch, and avouches the whole without check from anything really remembered, the phenomenon would be perfectly accordant with what is known of the dealings of imagination with real experiences, and with what is to be presumed of the comparative feebleness of its powers in sleep. A remembered dream would thus be, in some cases, a twofold illusion,—an illusion in sleep arising from misinterpreted sensations, and an illusion in memory concerning what was actually the train of thoughts excited by the mistake, the train being in fact often inverted in such an apparent recollection. Savages and the insane believe their dreams to be real experiences. The civilized and sane man believes them to be true memories of illusions in sleep. A step farther in the application of the general tests of true experience would reduce some dreams to illusive memories of the illusions of sleep.

There does not appear on analysis, made in conformity to the reality of experiences in general, that there is any intrinsic difference between a memory and an imagination, the reality of the former being dependent on extrinsic relations, and the outward checks of other memories. Memory, as a whole, vouches for itself, and for all its mutually consistent details, and banishes mere imaginations from its province, not as foreigners, but on account of their lawlessness, or incoherence with the rest of its subjects, and it does so through the exercise of what is called the judgments of experience, which are in fact mnemonic summaries of experiences (including instinctive tendencies). The imaginations of the insane are in insurrection against this authority of memory in general experience, or against what is familiarly called “reason.” When sufficiently vivid, or powerful, and numerous, they usurp the powers of state, or the authority of memory and free intelligent volition. “Reason” is then said to be “dethroned.”

The unreality of some dreams would thus appear to be more complete than they are in general discovered to be by mature, sane, and reflective thought, and by indirect observations upon their conditions and phenomena. The supposition of a similar illusion in the phenomena of reflection on the immediately past, or passing, impressions of the mind affords an explanation of a curious phenomenon, not uncommon in waking moments, which is referred to by many writers on psychology, namely, the phenomenon of experiencing in minute detail what appears also to be recalled as a past experience. Some writers have attempted to explain this as a veritable revival, by a passing experience, of a really past and very remote one, either in our progenitors, as some evolutionists suppose; or in a previous life, or in some state of individual existence, otherwise unremembered, as the mystic prefers to believe; a revival affected by an actual coincidence, in many minute particulars, of a present real experience with a really past one. But if a passing real experience could be supposed to be divided, so to speak, or to make a double impression in memory,—one the ordinary impression of what is immediately

past, and the other a dream-like impression filled out on its immediate revival in reflection with the same details,—the supposition would be in accordance with what is really known of some dreams, and would, therefore, be more probable than the above explanations. It is possible to trust individual memories too far, even in respect to what is immediately past, as it is to trust too far a single sense in respect to what is immediately present Rational consistency, in all experiences, or in experience on the whole, is the ultimate test of reality or truth in our judgments, whether these are “intuitive” or consciously derived.

²⁹

Images in dogs are supposed to depend largely on the sense of smell.

³⁰

Dr. McCosh, On the Intuitions of the Mind, etc.

³¹

See Mill's Logic, Book II., chapter iii.

³²

See Mill's Examination of Hamilton, chapter xi.

³³

See Mill's Examination of Hamilton, chapter v.

³⁴

See Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals. Theory of Blushing, chapter xiii.

³⁵

In the origin of the languages of civilized peoples, the distinction between powers of tradition, or external inheritance, and proper invention in art becomes a very important one, as will be shown farther on.

³⁶

See Darwin’s Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

³⁷

See article on Schleicher and the Physical Theory of Language, in Professor W. D. Whitney’s Oriental and Linguistic Studies.

³⁸

From the North American Review, July, 1875.

³⁹

Suggestions on Academical Organization, with especial Reference to Oxford. By Mark Pattison, B. D. 1868.

⁴⁰

The Conflict of Studies, and other Essays on Subjects connected with Education By I. Todhunter, M. A., F. R. S. London, 1873.

⁴¹

The recognized political value to English rule in India of studies in these sciences by European scholars preclude, however, the supposition of even such an exception.

⁴²

From the Memoirs of the American Academy of Aits and Sciences. Communicated October 10, 1871.

⁴³

There is a remarkable analogy between this relation and that of the two theories of the structure of the honey-cell. The work of the bees suggests to the geometrician a perfectly definite and regular form, which he finds to be the most economical form of compartments into which space can be divided; or he finds that the honeycomb would be the lightest, or be composed of the least material for the same capacity and number of compartments, if partitioned into such figures as the typical cell. From the definition of this figure he is able to compute its angles and proportions with a degree of precision to which the bees’ work only roughly approximates at its best, and from which it often deviates widely. The theory of types regards this ideal figure as a determining cause of the structure, or as the pattern which guides the bees’ instinct towards an ideally perfect economy. But a plainer order of economy, a simple housewifely one, saving at every turn, together with the conveniences and utilities which govern the work of social nest-building insects in general, would result, if carried out to perfection, in the very same form. Hence the theory of adaptation regards the honey-cells as modifications of similar but rougher structures of the same sort, determined by the further utility of simple saving in working with a costly material; and whatever evidence there is that the bees’ instinct is determined toward the ideally perfect type of the honey-cell is directly convertible into proofs that it is so determined by these simple conveniences and utilities.

⁴⁴

From The Nation, Nov. 16, 1865.

⁴⁵

“The Intuitions of the Mind Inductively Investigated. By the Rev. James Mc- Cosh, LL.D., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in Queen’s College, Belfast.” New and revised edition. 8vo. pp. 444.

⁴⁶

From The Nation, November 15, 1866.

⁴⁷

“Recent British Philosophy: A Review, with criticisms: including some comments on Mr. Mill's answer to Sir William Hamilton. By David Masson.” New York: 1866.

⁴⁸

From The Nation, January 10, 1867.

⁴⁹

“The Philosophy of the Conditioned; comprising some Remarks on Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and on Mr. J. S. Mill's Examination of that Philosophy. By H. L. Mansel, B.D.” 1866. Pp. vii. and 189. Reprinted, with additions, from the “Contemporary Review.”

⁵⁰

But such quantities may still be compared by their ratios when, as in the higher mathematics, they are “the greatest possible” under certain conditions which do not, however, determine or limit their values as numbers, or as definite sums of units.

In a foot-note (p. 115), Mr. Mansel breaks a lance with Professor De Morgan, “one of the ablest mathematicians and the most persevering Hamiltono-mastix of the day.” De Morgan maintains the applicability of a valid notion of infinity to mathematical magnitudes; but unfortunately assumes besides, or appears to assume, that such phrases as “points at an infinite distance,” “the extremities of infinite lines,” etc., are literally valid in mathematics. This assumption Mr. Mansel easily refutes. But the main position remains untouched. With the mathematician such phrases are really technical abbreviated expressions of a complex conception. Having shown validly and consistently that lines of unlimited length tend to approach continually to a given state of things, or to a given relation to one another, but in a manner which makes it impossible for them as lines, continuously drawn, ever to reach this state of things, the mathematician then changes the object of his contemplation. He dismisses the infinite line, and turns his attention to the state of things (the point of tangency, for example) to which his infinite lines, though always approaching, could never attain. Instead of spanning the infinite in his thought, he simply abbreviates in his language that substitution of one object for another which conducts him to the end of his research.

⁵¹

The latter portion of this essay was published in The Nation, June 11, 1874; the introductory part is now first printed from the author's manuscript.

⁵²

“Problems of Life and Mind. By George Henry Lewes. First series. The Foundations of a Creed. Vol. I.” 1874. 8vo, pp. 434.

⁵³

He may even be such with respect to the more abstruse portions of his own science or to portions in which he is a learner or disciple rather than an investigator. The disposition to give a unity in thought to the meaning of a single name whose connotation is not fully known or is a vague and complex set of attributes or relations, is an always present temptation to speculate a priori or on transcendental grounds of naming: or to suppose that the empirical attributes connoted by the name are collected around a central and essential, but transcendental, condition of their co-existence, that brings them all together. The metaphysical effort is to “seize” upon this condition; but the definiteness in thought thus gained is rather in the emphasis of the seizure than in the palpable nature of its object, and the metaphysical grasp, though often vigorous, is too often empty. Aristotle was, for instance, in Logic a positivist, and was opposed to transcendentalism in philosophy, though not free, as we have said, from realism.

⁵⁴

While a naturalist or a chemist would be ready in conformity to widening knowledge of facts to remodel or revolutionize his divisions or even his nomenclature, metaphysical systems aim at the same end by allowing unlimited expansions to the meanings of terms. Vagueness in them is even claimed as a merit when it is perceived.

⁵⁵

From The Nation, April 22, 1875.

⁵⁶

“Ideas in Nature overlooked by Dr. Tyndall: being an Examination of Dr. Tyndall's Belfast Address. By James McCosh, D. D., LL. D.” 1875.

“The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton. By James McCosh, LL. D., D. D.” 1875.

⁵⁷

From The Nation, June 3, 1875.

⁵⁸

“The Mechanism of the Universe and its Primary Effort-exerting Powers. By Augustus Fendler.” Wilmington, Del.: Printed by the “Commercial Printing Company,” 1874.

⁵⁹

We follow Professors Thomson and Tait in using “dynamics” in a wide sense, including Statics, in place of “mechanics,” which, though commonly used in this sense, is more properly the theory of machines and mechanical constructions than that of the abstract principles of motion and equilibrium.

⁶⁰

From the Nation, February 18, 1875.

⁶¹

Speculative philosophy is properly metaphysics, and proceeds deductively from axioms, like Plato’s or Kant’s, or Mr. Spencer’s later form of a priori philosophy, which he professes to found, in part, on the empirical facts of heredity, and thus give it a scientific basis.

⁶²

From the Nation, September 9, 1875.

⁶³

“The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism. By Oscar Schmidt, Professor in the University of Strasburg,” 1875.

“Outline of the Evolution-Philosophy. By Dr. M. E. Cazelles. Translated from the Trench by the Rev. O. B. Frothingham. With an Appendix by E. L. Youmans, M D.,” 1875.

⁶⁴

From the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1873-74.