CONTENTS:

The conclusion of Prof. P. Natorp's article on Quantity and Quality in Concept, Judgment, and Objective Cognition appears to be the most important part of the essay. Professor Natorp is a transcendentalist. He understands Kant in a dualistic sense where the latter says that "the unity of apperception (Einheit der Apperception) is the radical faculty of all our cognition" (Radical-Vermögen aller unserer Erkentniss). Cognition is defined as "limitation of that which is per se infinite." It is natural that for a transcendentalist the greatest difficulty arises when he attempts to let his a priori face the facts of reality. Professor Natorp shows great skill and ingenuity in this respect. It is but consistent with his premisses to arrive at an "invincible dualism," yet he adapts his transcendentalism sufficiently to fulfil the demands of experience. Thus he does not come to a real solution but to a modus vivendi, which is after all the purpose of philosophy.

Professor Natorp considers the synthetic unity not as given, but as to be realised; a concept is created through definition. The data of experience on the other hand are not the defined, but the definable. They are to be defined by the forms of the concepts, and their fundamental forms are quantity and quality. He says: "The definition as this and as that (as something identical) is a function of the concept, but the concept presupposes sensation as the material to be defined. To consider sensation as given in this its absolute identity which is demanded by the concept, is after all an illusion. Therefore positivism and not idealism confounds the demands of cognition with the given reality, thus adjusting facts to our wants of knowledge. Sensation conceived as a datum and not as a postulate is and remains the infinitely definable and never absolutely defined…. It appears easy thus to reduce the dualism of form and matter, concept and sensation, the defined and the definable to one ultimate unity. In one respect positivism succeeds, attributing full definedness, and not mere definableness, to the data; and then, it finds no difficulty in letting the defining function of the concept in its peculiarity disappear by reducing it to a quality of the data."

We do not know to what kind of positivism Professor Natorp refers; yet it seems that it cannot be applied either to Comte's or to Littré's views. Nor does it dispose of the positivism editorially set forth in The Monist. Positivism, according to Professor Natorp, is at fault in dropping the definite function of the concept. But he endeavors to avoid the opposite mistake also, viz. "to entirely drop the definable, which might be supposed to be a mere X, scarcely representable in clear concepts, or to deduce it from the defining function. This other exaggeration is that of idealism which has found its purest expression in Fichte's philosophy." Professor Natorp by keeping aloof from both errors declares dualism to be insuperable; "dualism," he says, "'is a hard fact'—eine starre Thatsache."

The trouble with transcendentalists, it seems to us, originates in their method of starting with cognition, with the synthetic unity of apperception, with the forms of concepts. Experience means to them the sense-element of sensation, the contents of concepts without their form. They start with a dualism. When they have completed their system of transcendental forms, they find it hard to explain how to change their rigid laws into the constant flux of reality as presented to us by experience. Should the philosopher not rather start from the function of cognising, which in itself is a unity? He will find that cognition, concept, the synthetic unity of apperception, and all the complex laws of transcendental thought are products of the cognising function. If these laws are rigid, we have made them so. We have made them stable, we have fixed them for a certain purpose. Their rigidity is a legitimate fiction for that purpose, but beyond it it finds no application. Pure logic draws distinctions which do not exist in reality; pure mathematics operates with lines which considered as real things are mere nonentities. The dualism between concept and sensation, between the a priori and the a posteriori, between thought and thing, between form and matter, is not given in experience, for in experience the formal and the material are one inseparable whole; it is the product of cognition. The cognising function differentiates the data of experience into formal and material aspects; the formal being always of a general character serves as a help for systematising and classifying the material. This appears to us the only way of realising a monistic positivism, and no philosophy can be considered as satisfactory until it represents the data of experience or positive facts in a unitary view, i. e. a harmonious conception free of contradictions.

Professor Natorp has still to battle with the Eleatic question. He begins the conclusion of his article with the following words: "Let us consider only the most important results of our deduction. An explanation of 'becoming,' of 'change' has in this way become possible; the solution of the Eleatic problem how 'change' can be at all, since being means unchangeable definedness; or, how becoming can be, since it includes not-being, for being means the transition from not-being into being, or from being into not-being. How can we think this combination of position and negation without contradiction, a combination of position and negation being a contradiction"? This is rather a late flower of Hegelian thought: but, being presented so vigorously and unequivocally, it illustrates clearly the mistake of transcendentalism in starting from abstract concepts or pure thought, thence coming down to the facts of reality. There transcendentalists have to fit their ideas about being and not-being to experience, and finding insuperable difficulties must consistently become dualists. Professor Natorp's solution of the Eleatic question is "to find a method of thought which overcomes the absolute contradiction of position and negation…. This is done by the comprehensive unity, which means identity and at the same time difference, viz. that one is the same as the other and yet not the same."

We should say that the Eleatic question will best be understood by a clear comprehension of the function, the purpose, and the products of cognition.

Says Professor Natorp: "Since Kant has restored in its purity the distinction made by the ancients between αἰσθητά and νοητά, φαινόμενον and νοούμενον, the authors of this distinction, the philosophers of Elea are almost nearer to us than Aristotle." The distinction between thought and sensation is indeed of extraordinary importance. Ideas (thoughts) and sensations are different, but the recognition of this difference is no reason to declare dualism as permanently established. Is not the reason of their difference the difference of abstraction made in each case.

By noumena, i. e. thoughts or ideas, we understand all mental symbols representing things. The ideas "man," "manhood," "virtue," etc., are not sensations, but symbols representing some qualities abstracted from sensations. In making the abstraction "idea" we confine the term, i. e. the symbol "idea," to its representative element alone. We leave out of sight that real ideas vibrating through our brain are at the same time nervous structures in actions; we leave also out of sight that they possess the state of awareness in common with sensations. We do it because their representative nature is of paramount importance. However, in making the abstraction "sensation" we do not exclude the state of awareness, we think first of all of the feeling of a sensation and then also of its form, viz. the special sense-impression. "I have a sensation" is almost equivalent to the phrase "I have a feeling"; a sensation of light means a feeling of the effect of ether-waves upon the retina; a sensation of sound is a feeling of the effect of air-waves upon the drum of the ear; etc. Just as much as ether-waves are not light, and air-waves not sound, (the latter being the effect of the former upon specially adapted feeling substance), so also the sensations light and sound are not the ideas we have of light and sound. The ideas of light and sound are symbols representing in feeling substance the sensations light and sound. These symbols, we suppose, have developed from the memory-images of sensations. They must in their turn also be considered as effects. They are the effects of sense-impressions upon specially adapted feeling substance, viz. upon a higher system of nervous structures, not in direct contact with the periphery, but growing upon and from the peripheral sensory reflex centres. The physiological activity of thoughts is accompanied also with the feeling element; or in other words, thoughts are, as much as sensations, states of awareness. Yet they differ from sensations in that they do not contain anything of sense-impressions; the latter being an exclusive characteristic of the action of sensory organs. The memory-picture of blackness is not a sensation and the idea of blackness still less.

The distinction between noumena or things of thought and æstheta or sensations is by no means so distinct as is often assumed; for, as we have seen, the most prominent feature of the noumenon is its representative character. Isolated sense-impressions possess no representative character, but sensations do possess it. Sensations are the connecting link between sense-impressions and thoughts, between meaningless feeling and mental states or mind, i. e. representative states of awareness. Ideas are, as it were, an extract of the representative value contained in sensations. This is my conception of the distinction to be made between αἰσθητά and νοητά, between sense-activity and thought-activity, between the phenomenon and noumenon. It is set forth at length in the discussion with Professor E. Mach in this number. It has been here again set forth at such length, because I am convinced that a final solution of the problem is of great importance. (Heidelberg: George Weiss.)

κ.

MINERVA. Rassegna Internazionale. January, 1891.

Minerva will represent the first Italian venture in the direction of a comprehensive magazine of international reference and literary record. The editors, in stating the aims of their new publication, acknowledge that Italy keenly feels the lack of an international intellectual magazine. In Italy the reading public, and persons of an average culture, still seem to be cut off from all stimulating intellectual contact with the outside civilised world; while beyond the Alps, on the contrary, and across the seas, any book, or a simple magazine-article even, be it written in German, English, or French, and legitimately claim from any point of view a certain importance, is at once read by innumerable persons from San Francisco all the way to St. Petersburg. Through the intellectual medium of their international reviews, these nations seem actually to have realised one of Goethe's most ardent aspirations,—the dream of a noble and humanising "world-literature." Nearly all of the articles contained in the present issue of Minerva are ably condensed translations and epitomes of articles that have recently appeared in leading English, American, and German reviews and magazines. La Minerva is under the direction of Prof. Federico Garlanda of the University of Rome. (Rome: La Società Laziale. Tip Editrice.)

RECENSIONEN.

LITTERATURBERICHT.