FOOTNOTES
[1] La parole is here, and subsequently, translated by speech; le mot by words, or language,—verbal language being throughout understood.—Trans.
[2] Schmidkunz, Ueber die Abstraction. Halle: Stricker, 1889. This little work of forty-three pages contains a good historical and theoretical exposition of the question.
[3] Schmidkunz, loc. cit. This author, who rightly insists upon the positive character of abstraction (which is too frequently considered as a negation) observes that no concept, not even that of infinity, is in its psychological genesis the result of negation, for, “in order to deduce from the idea of a finite thing the idea of infinity, it is first necessary to abstract from that thing its quality of finality, which is certainly a positive act; subsequently, in order to reach infinity, it is sufficient either constantly to increase the time, magnitude, and intensity of the finite, which is a positive process; or to deny the limits of the finite, which is tantamount to denying the negation.”
[4] Psychology of Attention. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co.
[5] See especially Hoeffding, Psychologie. German translation. Second Edition, pp. 223 et seq.
[6] W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., p. 459.
[7] Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology. Vol. I., Part 2, Chapter II.—Bain (in the last chapter of Emotions and Will) says that nothing more fundamental can possibly be assigned as a mark of intelligence than the feeling of difference between consecutive or co-existing impressions. “There are cases, however, where agreement imparts the shock requisite for rousing the intellectual wave; but it is agreement so qualified as to be really a mode of difference.” For a review and ample discussion of this problem see Ladd’s Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, Chapter XIV. The earlier psychologists, in considering the “faculty of comparison” which acts by resemblance and difference, as primordial, had observed the same fact, although they described it in different terms.
[8] W. James, Psychology. Vol. I., pp. 502 and 506.
[9] This term is borrowed from the well-known works of Galton on composite photographs, which are scarcely more than twenty years old. Huxley in his book on Hume (Chapter IV.) appears to be the first who introduced it into psychology, as shown by the following passage: “This mental operation may be rendered comprehensible by considering what takes place in the formation of compound photographs—when the images of the faces of six sitters, for example, are each received on the same photographic plate, for a sixth of the time requisite to take one portrait. The final result is that all those points in which the six faces agree are brought out strongly, while all those in which they differ are left vague; and thus what may be termed a generic portrait of the six is produced. Thus our ideas of single complex impressions are incomplete in one way, and those of numerous, more or less similar, complex impressions are incomplete in another way; that is to say, they are generic.... And hence it follows that our ideas of the impressions in question are not, in the strict sense of the word, copies of those impressions; while at the same time they may exist in the mind independently of language.” Romanes employs the word “recept” for “generic images,” as marking their intermediate place between the “percept” which is below, and the “concept” which is above them.
[10] For details see Romanes, Animal Intelligence, Chapters III. and V. As to the probability of their possessing means of communication for assistance in their co-operative labors see below, [Chapter II].
[11] Romanes. Animal Intelligence, Chapter III.
[12] C. Lloyd Morgan. Animal Life and Intelligence, Chapter IX., p. 364.
[13] Houzeau, Etudes sur les facultés mentales des animaux, Vol. II., p. 264 et seq. The same author gives an example of generalisation in bees.
[14] Darwin, The Descent of Man, Vol. I., Chapter III.
[15] Romanes, loc. cit., Chapter XVII.
[16] At the end of the passage in question there is an extraordinary account of the arithmetical powers of a dog which Lubbock explains by “thought reading.” I omit this instance, since we are deliberately rejecting all rare or doubtful cases.
[17] Mental Evolution in Man, Chapter III., p. 58.
[18] J. Sully, The Human Mind, I., 460. The author gives excellent diagrams to represent the difference in the two cases. For reasoning from particular to particular, cf. also J. S. Mill, Logic, II., Chapter III., p. 3; Bradley, Logic, II., Chapter II., p. 2.
[19] In re analogy, consult Stern’s monograph, Die Analogie im volksthümlichen Denken, Berlin, 1894.
[20] Three Introductory Lectures on the Science of Thought, delivered at the Royal Institution, appendix, p. 6, letter 4; Chicago, 1888. It should, however, be remembered that the writer who thus uses the logic of images has a mind preformed by the logic of signs: which is not the case with animals.
[21] Psychology, II., 348 et seq. James, however, recalls the case of another dog accustomed to find and carry wedges for splitting wood. One day he did not return. After half an hour they looked for him; he was biting and tearing at the handle of a hatchet stuck in a block (the wedge was not forthcoming). Had this animal clear perception of the common character of the two instruments used for splitting? “This interpretation is possible, but it seems to me far to transcend the limits of ordinary canine abstraction.” (Loc. cit., p. 352.) James attempts another explanation. It is singular that he does not invoke training, and association with man: that this is an influential factor in the intellectual development of animals cannot be doubted. It is advisable to adduce exclusively their spontaneous inventions, with no possible suggestion: such facts alone are clear and convincing.
[22] Lloyd Morgan, whose tendencies have already been indicated, distinguishes three sorts of inferences: (1) unconscious inference on immediate construction (perceptual); (2) intelligent inference (conceded to animals), dealing with constructs and reconstructs (perceptual); and (3) rational inference, implying analysis and isolation (conceptual). (Op. cit., p. 362.)
[23] Nouveaux Essais, Book III., Chapter I.
[24] Cf. Taine, L’Intelligence, Vol. I., Book I., Chapter II., Part 2, Note 1. Preyer, Die Seele des Kindes, Chapter XVI.
[25] Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 283.
[26] B. Pérez, op. cit., 210.
[27] Houzeau, op. cit., II., 202.
[28] Cf. Revue Philosophique, July, 1890.
[29] Max Müller, however, is an exception. He has not made the smallest concession on this point in any of his works, including the last (Three Lectures, etc., cited above). He even maintains that a society of deaf-mutes would hardly rise above the intellectual level of a chimpanzee. “A man born dumb, notwithstanding his great cerebral mass and his inheritance of strong intellectual instincts, would be capable of few higher intellectual manifestations than an orang or a chimpanzee, if he were confined to the society of dumb associates” (p. 92). This thesis was attacked by thirteen critics, including Romanes, Galton, the Duke of Argyle, etc., but Max Müller meets them all and replies to them without flinching. It must be confessed that the arguments invoked by his correspondents are very unequal in merit. Some are convincing, others not. The Duke of Argyle says happily that “words are necessary to the progress of thought, but not at all to the act of thinking.” Ebbels (p. 13, appendix) shows that Max Müller has unduly limited the question by excluding all processes anterior to the formation of concepts; we think in images; the transition from one form to another is imperceptible, and the faculty of abstraction does not appear suddenly along with the signs. On the other hand, we cannot admit as evidence the facts invoked by other correspondents, e. g., chess-players who combine and calculate solely by the aid of visual images; answers to letters, conceived in the first place as a general plan before they are developed in words, etc. It is forgotten that the persons capable of these operations have had long practice in verbal analysis, thereby attaining a high intellectual level. So, in the physical order, the practical gymnast, even when not executing any particular feat, possesses a suppleness and agility of body, due to exercise, which translates itself into all his movements.
[30] De l’Education des sourds-muets, 2 vol., 1827. Notwithstanding its somewhat remote date, the book has lost none of its interest in this particular. It must also be remembered that institutions for deaf-mutes are far more numerous now than at the beginning of the century, and that the children are placed in them much earlier. Formerly they were abandoned to themselves or instructed very late; in proportion to their age, they presented better material for the study of their development.
[31] Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 80. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, Chapter VI.
[32] Kussmaul, Die Störungen der Sprache, Chapter xxx.
[33] Cf. as proof, the story related by Kussmaul (op. cit., VII.): A young deaf-mute was arrested by the police of Prague as a vagabond. He was placed in an institution and questioned by suitable methods, when he made known that his father had a mill with a house and surroundings which he described exactly; that his mother and sister were dead, and his father had re-married; that his step-mother had ill-treated him, and that he had planned an escape which had succeeded. He indicated the direction of the mill to the east of Prague. Inquiries were made, and all these statements were verified.
[34] Romanes, Mental Evolution, etc., p. 150.
[35] W. James, Psychology, I., 266, for the second observation; Philosophical Review, I., No. 6, p. 613 et seq. for the first.
[36] Sign-Language Among the North American Indians, 1881. Published in Report of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington. Cf. also: Tylor, op. cit.; Romanes, op. cit., VI.; Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, Chapter VI.; Kleinpaul, Zeitschrift für Völkerpsych., VI., 353.
[37] Lubbock. The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man, p. 417.
[38] Gérando, op. cit., II., note K, p. 203. Among the gestures that are identical under their double form may be noted stone, water, large, tall, to see, finished, man, house, good, pretty, now, etc.
[39] Philosophy of the Human Mind, Ch. I., sect. 2.
[40] Kleinpaul, loc. cit.
[41] Writing, ideography, originated in an analytical process analogous with the language of gestures. Like the latter, it (1) isolates terms, (2) arranges them in a certain order, (3) translates thought in a crude and somewhat vague form. Curious examples of this may be found in Max Müller’s Chips from a German Workshop, XIV. The aborigines of the Caroline Islands sent a letter to a Spanish captain, as follows: Above, a man with extended arms, sign of greeting. Below, to the left, the objects he has to offer; five big shells, seven little ones, three others of different forms. To the right and centre, drawing of the objects wanted in exchange: three large fish hooks, four small ones, two axes, and two pieces of iron.
[42] Ants, Bees, and Wasps, VII.—Romanes, Animal Intelligence, IV.
[43] Animal Intelligence, XVI., p. 445.
[44] The most interesting of the many observations on this subject are those of Dr. Wilks, F. R. S., published in the Journal of Mental Science, July, 1879.
[45] Mental Evolution in Man, p. 137.
[46] Der Ursprung der Sprache (1877). Fr. Müller maintained a similar view.
[47] A. Lefèvre, Les races et les langues (Bibliothèque scientifique internationale), pp. 5-6.
[48] Loc. cit., 372.
[49] Heinicke, Beobachtungen über Stumme, 75, 137.
[50] Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 377-379.
[51] For documents, consult especially Tylor, Primitive Culture, V; Sayce Principles of Comparative Philology, I., § 17.
[52] This list may be found in The Science of Thought, p. 406.
[53] How were primitive terms (roots or words) formed? A much-debated and still unsolved question. Man had at his disposal one primary element, the interjection. By all accounts this remained sterile, unfertile; it did not give birth to words; it remained in articulate language as a mark of its emotional origin. A second proceeding was that of imitation with the aid of sound, onomatopœia. From antiquity to the present time, it has been regarded as the parent, par excellence. This was accepted by Renan, Whitney, Tylor, H. Paul, etc.; rejected by M. Müller, Bréal, P. Regnaud, etc. No one disputes the formation of many words by onomatopœia, but those who question its value as a universal process say that “if in certain sounds of our idioms we seem to hear an imitation of the sounds of nature, we must recollect that the same noises are represented by quite different sounds in other languages, which are also held by those who utter them to be onomatopœia. Thus it would be more just to say that we hear the sounds of nature through the words to which our ear has been accustomed from infancy” (Bréal). I have observed that those who study the spontaneous formation of language in children, claim for them but little onomatopœism. On the other hand, a word created by undoubted onomatopœia is sometimes by means of association, or of strange analogies, transferred successively to so many objects that all trace of the transformations of meaning may be lost, and the imitative origin actually denied. Such was Darwin’s case, cited above, where the onomatopœia of the duck finally served to designate all liquids, all that flies, all pieces of money. If the successive extensions of the term had not been observed, who could have recovered its origin?
[54] Sayce, loc. cit., IV., §§ 3-5.
[55] We cannot doubt, however, that there is in the child (and so too for primitive man) a period of pure and simple denomination, when, in the face of perceived objects, he utters a word, as a spontaneous action, a reflex, with no understood affirmation. But this act is rather the prelude, and attempt at speech, an advance towards language proper.
[56] There is in Iroquois a word that signifies, “I demand money from those who have come to buy garments from me.” Esquimaux is equally rich in terms of this sort. Yet we must recognise that these immense composite words, themselves formed from abbreviated and fused words, virtually imply the beginning of decomposition.
[57] Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, ed. 1891, p. 196.
[58] Whitney, The Life and Growth of Language, Chap. X. Sayce, op. cit., VI., 28, rejects them absolutely.
[59] Renan, Histoire générale des langues sémitiques, pp. 128 and 363.
[60] We can see how little the real order of evolution resembles the theoretical order of the XVIII. century, evolved from pure reasoning: “The complex notions of substances were the first known, since they came from the senses, and must therefore have been the first to have names” (Condillac). “With regard to adjectives, the notion must have developed with exceeding difficulty, since every adjective is an abstract term, and abstraction is a painful, or unnatural operation” (J. J. Rousseau).
[61] P. Regnaud, Origine et philosophie du langage, p. 317.
[62] On this point, consult especially Sayce, op. cit., II., § 9, and P. Regnaud, op. cit., pp. 296-299.
[63] “The word être is irreducible, indecomposable, primitive, and wholly intellectual. I know no language in which the French word être is expressed by a corresponding word representing a sensible idea. Hence it is not true that all the roots of the language are in last resort signs of sensory ideas.” (V. Cousin, Histoire de la phil. au XIII siècle, 1841, II., p. 274.)
[64] For the psychology of relation consult Herbert Spencer, Psychology, I., p. 65, II., pp., 360 et seq.; James, Psychology, I., pp., 203 et seq. The latter gives the history of the subject, which is very brief, and remarks that the idealogues form an honorable exception to the general abstention. Thus Destutt de Tracy established a distinction between feelings of sensation and feelings of relation.
[65] Regnaud, op. cit., pp. 304 et seq.
[66] It is superfluous to give examples of such a well-known fact. See Darmesteter, The Life of Words.
[67] Intelligence is taken here in its restricted sense, as the synonym of abstracting, generalising, judging, reasoning.
[68] De l’intelligence, Vol. I., Bk. IV., Chap. I., p. 254, first edition.
[69] De l’intelligence, I., Bk. IV., Chap. I., p. 254, first ed.
[70] Mental Evolution in Man, pp. 74 and 75.
[71] As Paulhan remarks, “L’abstraction et les idées abstraites” (Revue Philosophique, Jan., 1889, p. 26 et seq.), these two processes are initially linked one with the other, so that we find analytical syntheses, and synthetical analyses.
[72] Op. cit., VIII., 158-165.
[73] We have touched on this subject incidentally in La psychologie des sentiments (Part II, IX, § 2, pp. 305 et seq.). Many tribes do not get beyond polydemonism, peopling the universe with innumerable genii; this is the reign of the concrete. A certain progress is marked by subordinating the genius of each tree to the god of the forest, the different genii of a river to the god of the river, etc. At a degree higher, the intellect constitutes a single god for water, one for fire, one for the earth, etc. Thus there come to be genii of individual, specific, and generic origin.
[74] Tylor, Primitive Culture, I., gives abundant data on this question. Chap. VII. is entirely devoted to it.
[75] In the account of his travels among the Damaras (in his Tropical South Africa, p. 133) Galton says: “In practice, whatever they may possess in their language, they certainly use no numeral greater than three. When they wish to express four, they take to their fingers, which are to them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding-rule is to our English schoolboy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for ‘units,’—yet they seldom lose oxen: the way in which they discover the loss of one, is not by the number of the herd being diminished, but by the absence of a face they know.” [This tallies with what we said above, [Chap. I.], as to so-called numeration in animals and children.] “When bartering is going on, each sheep must be paid for separately. Thus suppose two sticks of tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, it would sorely puzzle a Damara to take two sheep and give him four sticks. I have done so and seen a man first put two of the sticks apart and take a sight over them at one of the sheep he was about to sell. Having satisfied himself that one was honestly paid for, and finding to his surprise that exactly two sticks remained in hand to settle the account for the other sheep, he would be afflicted with doubts; the transaction seemed to come out too pat to be correct, and he would refer back to the first couple of sticks, and then his mind got hazy and confused, and wandered from one sheep to the other, and he broke off the transaction until two sticks were put into his hand and one sheep driven away, and then the other two sticks given him and the second sheep driven away.” Galton relates many other similar facts which he had himself witnessed.
[76] And the barley-corn of English measure.—Tr.
[77] Wundt (Logik, I., pp. 113 et seq.) gives what he regards as a complete classification of concepts, but it does not correspond with our design. It may be summarised as follows. Four classes: I. Identical or equivalent concepts; Aristotle = Alexander’s tutor. II. Subordinate or superordinate concepts; mammals and vertebrates, etc. III. Co-ordinated concepts, comprising five species: i. Disjunctive concepts; sound and noise, French and German, etc. They are subordinate to a larger concept. ii. Correlative concepts, with reciprocal relations; men and women, mountain and valley. iii. Contrary concepts; high and low, good and bad. iv. Contingent concepts; such, i. e., as touch, with very minute, perceptible differences; this highly important category comprises numbers. v. Interferent concepts, which coincide or partially cross; negro and slave, rectangle and parallelogram. IV. Concepts which are interdependent; etc., space and movement, crime and punishment, demand and supply, labor and wages. This table may suit the logician but not the psychologist, because it presents the concepts under what may be termed the static order, i. e., ready formed: we, on the other hand, are considering them as dynamic, i. e., in their becoming and order of genesis.
[78] For details, with quotations in point, consult Agassiz: De l’espèce, Chap. III., and E. Perrier, La Philosophie zoologique avant Darwin, Chap. II.
[79] Agassiz, op. cit., gives a summary of the successive improvements. They are of interest not merely to the zoölogist, but also from our own point of view, as showing the increasing preponderance of analysis, and search for fundamental characteristics, to the exclusion of the external resemblances which served as basis for the more primitive classifications.
[80] Under the heading “Observations on General Terms” the American Journal of Psychology, III. i, p. 144 (Jan., 1890) gives the results of an investigation conducted upon 113 school children aged 13 to 18. The words being, the infinite, literature, abstraction, number, play, coldness, horror, etc., were written down, and a few moments were given the pupils to transcribe their impressions in each case.
The summarised answers are not devoid of interest, but the object of the inquiry is evidently very different from our own.
[81] The word “law” was purposely chosen for its ambiguity; physical laws, moral or social laws. The immense majority of answers were in the juristic sense. Ex., Code, Law of the Twelve Tables, a judge, woman with scales, etc.
[82] For the word infinity, those who fall under this type see the printed word, or the mathematical sign ∞.
[83] It should be noted that he lived among these animals and experimented with them almost daily.
[84] The results of the investigation were published, partly in the Revue Philosophique, October, 1891, partly at the International Congress of Psychology, second session, London, 1892 (International Congress of Experimental Psychology. London: Williams & Norgate, pp. 20, et seq.).
[85] Thus Taine, who is usually regarded as a Nominalist, tells us that, “A general idea is a name, nothing more than a name, a name which signifies and comprehends a sequence of similar facts, or class of similar individuals, accompanied usually by the sensory but vague representation of some of these facts or individuals.” (The words italicised for emphasis are not so distinguished in the text.)
[86] We are dealing only with comprehension, and not with invention (discovery of a law, or of general features in nature). Invention requires quite different mental processes.
[87] Cournot, Essai sur les fondements de nos connaissances. I., § 109, p. 231.
[88] Dugas. Du Psittacisme et de la pensée symbolique, pp. 121 et seq.
[89] Paulhan. Revue philosophique. July, 1889, pp. 77 et seq.
[90] Höffding. Psychologie. Eng. tr., p. 168.
[91] Maclellan & Dewey (Psychology of Number and Its Application to Methods of Teaching Arithmetic, New York, 1895) made pedagogical deductions from this fact. They ask, for beginners, that the examples should be borrowed from continuous quantity, and that number be considered as a particular species of measure.—In his book Our Notions of Number and Space (Boston, 1894) Nichols, taking a theory of James about judgments of number as the basis of his experiments, tries to show that the simultaneous sensation of two points applied to the skin originates in the successive sensation of a distinct contact upon two separate tactile circles.
[92] I do not insist on any such rash thesis. A discussion of it will be found in the Report of the Int. Congress of Exp. Psychol. in London (cit., pp. 35-41).
[93] Psychology, II., p. 653.
[94] Liard, La science positive et la métaphysique, p. 226. It should be remarked that the process by subtraction is met with even among uncivilised people, though very rarely. The plan of making numerals by subtraction, says Tylor (op. cit., I., p. 264), is known in North America, and is well shown in the Aino language of Yesso, where the words for 8 and 9 obviously mean “two from ten,” “one from ten.”
[95] “The childish and savage practice of counting on the fingers and toes lies at the foundation of our arithmetical science. Ten seems the most convenient arithmetical basis offered by systems founded on hand-counting, but twelve would have been better, and duodecimal arithmetic is in fact a protest against the less convenient decimal arithmetic in ordinary use. The case is the not uncommon one of high civilisation bearing evident traces of the rudeness of its origin in ancient barbaric life.” (Tylor, loc. cit., I. p. 272)
[96] For the most recent view of this discussion, with the arguments on either side, see Couturat: De l’Infini mathématique (1896). 2nd part. Bk. III.
[97] Cournot, op. cit., I., p. 331 et seq. Renouvier, Logique, I., pp. 377-394. Poinsot, Théorie nouvelle de la rotation des corps, p. 78.
[98] For a summary of these investigations, see the chapter “Sensations of Orientation” in Prof. E. Mach’s Popular Scientific Lectures, 3rd ed., Chicago, 1898; and for original discussions of the whole subject of space-sensations, see the same author’s Analysis of the Sensations, Chicago, 1897.—Trans.
[99] Münsterberg, Beiträge zur experimen. Psychologie, pp. 182 et seq. Wundt, Physiol. Psychologie, 4th ed., II. pp. 95-96.
[100] This is not the place to enter into the well-known discussion between the “nativists” and the “empiricists.” To the former all sensation, visual or tactile, contains from its outset a quantum of extension which is the primitive element, and the foundation for our spatial constructions. For the others there are only local signs, tactile or visual, and movements whose synthesis suffices to constitute all the modalities of existence. Whichever hypothesis be adopted, the extension in point is always that given by concrete data (not that of space conceived in the abstract)—directly cognised according to some, a genetic construction according to others. This discussion has no direct relation with our subject: for the full debate see Ribot’s Psychologie allemande contemporaine, Ch. V. James (Psychology, II. Ch. XX.) has recently taken up the nativistic theory, giving new arguments in its favor.
[101] Extracted from Spencer’s Psychology, Vol. I. § 90.
[102] Lotze, Mikrokosmus, II. p. 47.
[103] Stallo, Concepts of Modern Physics, Chap. XIII., p. 225, Int. Sc. Ser., third ed. He also gives a very concise criticism of Mill’s theory of induction in geology.
[104] System of Logic, I. Bk. II., Chap. 15, § 1.
[105] The complete history of this question, from its first beginnings to contemporaneous work, may be studied in Nichols’s “Psychology of Time,” Am. J. of Psychol., III. pp. 453-530.
[106] For these and the following experiments, cf. Wundt, Physiologische Psychologie, 4th ed., I. pp. 408 et seq.
[107] Psychol., I. 642.
[108] M. Janet has studied this subject, under the title “Une illusion d’optique interne” (Rev. Phil., 1877, III. pp. 497 et seq.) and explains the illusion by supposing that the apparent duration of a certain portion of time, in the life of each individual, is proportional to the total duration of his life.
[109] Nichols, op. cit., p. 502.
[110] Analysis of the Sensations, Chicago, 1897, pp. 110 et seq.
[111] H. Spencer, Psychology, I., § 91, p. 215.
[112] Horwicz, Psychologische Analysen, III., 145. Guyau, Genèse de l’idée du temps, pp. 35 et seq.
[113] Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie, II., 1889.
[114] Van Ende cites a large number of facts in point, but they are not all equally convincing. Histoire naturelle de la croyance, pp. 208-212.
[115] Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 314. It should be remarked that the author only reports the fact from another witness—that the narrator said it had occurred “thirty years before,” and “that he did not pretend to remember under what precise circumstances the habit of coming into the street was acquired.”
[116] According to Delambre, the Chaldæans could only discover the cycle which the Greek mathematicians called saros by studying their commemorative notes; i. e., from a considerable mass of observations, they extracted or abstracted a constant recurrence.
[117] For details see, in addition to Nichols’s article as previously cited, Sully, The Human Mind, II., Appendix E, and James, Psychology, I., pp. 632 et seq.
[118] Fouillée, Psychologie des Idées-forces, II., 81-204.
[119] Mach, Analysis of the Sensations, English translation (Chicago, 1897), pp. 111-112.
[120] Ward, article “Psychology,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XX., pp., 65 et seq.—On the metaphysics of time considered as pure heterogeneity, see the recent work of Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, pp. 76 et seq.
[121] Lewes, Problems of Life and Mind, II. p. 375.
[122] For the discussion of this point, see Renouvier, Logique, II. 324.
[123] Romanes gives some examples of what he terms appreciation of causality in animals, including that of a setter that was frightened at thunder. “On one occasion a number of apples were being shot out of bags upon the wooden floor of an apple room, the sound in the house as each bag was shot closely resembled that of distant thunder. The setter therefore became terribly alarmed; but when I took him to the apple-room and showed him the real cause of the noise, his dread entirely forsook him, and on again returning to the house he listened to the rumbling with all cheerfulness.” Other analogous cases are to be found in his Mental Evolution in Animals, Chap. X.
[124] For the study of Chance, see Cournot, op. cit., I., Chap. iii. [Also J. Venn “The Logic of Chance,” etc.—Tr.]
[125] Under the title Zur Entwickelung von Kant’s Theorie der Naturcausalität, (Philosophische Studien, IX, 3 and 4), Wundt gives us a rapid historical sketch. He holds that speculation, in antiquity, is characterised by the method of contraries: the opposition of being and becoming, etc. It is wholly qualitative. The ancients progressed by definition. Elaboration of the concept of mechanical causation was impossible, by reason of the absence of any quantitative determination. This began with Galileo. The progress of mathematics, and the introduction of fractional and irrational numbers made it possible to search out, not merely measure, but also the relation between magnitudes—i. e., function. This became the type, and at the same time the goal of all intellectual elaboration, as applied to natural phenomena. This method culminated in the seventeenth century, with the predominance of the logical type. In consequence of the old concept of substance, forces were taken as cause, phenomena as effect. The latter is more frequently derived from cause by deduction, not by intuition. The cause of a determined event might either be the total of its conditions, or one antecedent event. This last conception prevailed, as being the more favorable to the application of mathematics. The eighteenth century marks the genesis of the biological sciences. The growing importance of observation and experimental research made against the preponderance of mathematics. The facts of experience were held more solid than the conclusions of reason. The type of causality is placed no longer in deduction, but in sensory intuition; it is the residuum of experience. This tendency found its exponent in Hume. Kant endeavored to reconcile the two theses; that which models object upon subject (seventeenth century) and that which models subject upon object (eighteenth century).
[126] The question is sometimes raised as to whether psychical (and consequently moral, social) facts ought to be included under the formula of conservation of energy and correlation of forces. Since the only evidence produced has been of the nature of theoretical affirmations, or vague and partial experiences, without quantitative determination, the question so far remains open. The concept of natural causality was in the same way considered above in its positive sense, i. e., as a relation of invariable sequence, without inquiring whether it extends to all forms of experience,—or whether it is limited.
[127] W. James, Psychology, II., p. 671.
[128] Sigwart in his Logik, Book II. (English translation by Helen Dendy) has made a profound study of the classification of the psychological laws in psychology, and their relative value. He divides them into three categories, according to the nature of the relations which they express: 1. Psychophysical laws which formulate constant relations between states of consciousness and the cerebral states. Ex. the relation between the sensation directly received, and the image that is reproduced in consciousness. 2. Psychological laws properly so-called; these express the internal relations of the states of consciousness. Ex. Law of conservation of impressions, law of association, law of systematisation by volition. 3. Laws expressive of the reciprocal action that human thoughts and volitions exert one upon the other: they presuppose the intervention of social causes, and are to this day vague and ill-determined; hence there are no fixed rules for the government of humanity, or the bringing up of children.
[129] “Fundamental laws are, or should be, only the simplest, most abridged, and most economical mode of expressing facts, within the limits of precision possible to our observations and experiences. The laws of nature are simple, essentially because—among all the possible modes of expression—we choose the simplest” (see Mach, Mechanics, Chicago, 1893, and Popular Scientific Lectures, 23d ed., Chicago, 1898, under the headings “Economy of Thought,” “Law,” etc.). “In formulating a general, simple, precise law, based upon relatively few experiences, which, moreover, present certain divergencies, we only obey a necessity from which the human mind cannot free itself.” (Poincaré.)
[130] Since our subject is the tracing out of the concept of law in its different degrees, starting from the generic image, we have no need to study the nature of the laws proper to each science (logic, mathematics, mechanics, physico-chemistry, biology, etc.), nor to discuss their value. For this point, see Boutroux, L’idée de loi naturelle dans la science et la philosophie contemporaine. Paris, 1895.
[131] Brown, quoted by Quatrefages (Précurseurs de Darwin, p. 218), who adds, “If this were the case, one would not find many species denoted by particular names among savages, and our own illiterate population. The general notion of species is on the contrary one of those that are forced upon us, directly we look round. The difficulty is to formulate it clearly, to give it scientific precision, and this is a very real problem.”
[132] Quatrefages (op. cit., pp. 219-222) gives a great number of definitions of species. A few may be quoted: “Species should be defined as a succession of wholly similar individuals, perpetuated by means of generation” (De Jussieu).—“Species is a constant succession of like individuals, which reproduce themselves” (Buffon).—“By species we mean any collection of similar individuals, that have been produced by individuals like unto themselves” (Lamarck).—“Species is the individual repeated and continued in time and space” (Blainville).—“Species is the totality of all individuals that have the same origin, and of those that are as like them, as they are among themselves” (Brown), etc., etc.
[133] For the transformists, as is well known, variety, race, and species are not fixed concepts. “From variety to race, from race to species, there is a continuous insensible passage. Individual modifications, at first slight, give rise to a variety or to a race. Continuing to augment, and extending to a constantly increasing number of individuals, they may come to constitute specific characters. Pursuing its evolution, the species then finally reaches the rank of the genus, family, etc.”
[134] De l’Espèce, Ch. II., §§ 6 and 7.
[135] Nouveaux Essais, III, § 6, 23.
[136] Psychology of Attention, Ch. I. (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co.)
[137] For a study of the function and practical value of symbolism consult Ferrero, Les lois psychologiques du symbolisme; Paris, F. Alcan.
[138] The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, Ch. IX., p. 137, 3rd ed.