CONTENTS:

Johannes Volkelt criticises in a long article Wundt's System der Philosophie. We do not have the work under discussion at hand, but judging simply from the quotations made in the present article, we can confidently say that Volkelt has misunderstood Wundt's position. We shall here confine ourselves to one point only which is of paramount importance, and Johannes Volkelt fully appreciates its importance. This point is the problem, "Can we have any objective knowledge at all?" This is the way we should formulate the question. Volkelt, however, asks whether the trans-subjective can successfully be made object of our cognition. It is maintained that there is a trace of naïve Realism left in Wundt, because his trans-subjectivism remains unproven, and subject and object are treated as inseparably connected. Wundt says: "As soon as we make the erroneous proposition that the object of our perception is only a perception, we shall in vain try to get somehow out from our subjective perception and to regain in some way the lost object." This idea is objected to. Also the following passages are quoted from Wundt: "Reality once destroyed cannot be restored merely through pure thought," and "the theory of cognition has not to create reality from elements that do not as yet contain it." We agree perfectly with Wundt and have expressed similar ideas in the article "The Origin of Mind," No. 1 of The Monist. Perception is a relation between object and subject. It is an error of idealism to consider the subject alone as given. The data of experience are states of subject-object-ness. The idea of mere subjectivity is as much an abstraction as the idea of things in themselves. Accordingly the term "trans-subjective" is a misnomer. All perceptions being impressions of objects and serving as symbols for their correspondent objects contain an objective element. As soon as we disregard this truth, we shut ourselves up in the hollow globe of pure ideality; objectivity becomes an unwarrantable assumption and there is no way out of our own subjectivism.

Knud Ipsen sketches the history of the Danish philosophy during the last ten years. He mentions five philosophers, Höffding, Kroman, Wilkens, Lehmann, and Starcke, among whom Höffding is by far the most prominent. All the Danish philosophers have one feature in common. Kroman made a distinction between philosophy and world-conception; philosophy should make such propositions only as can be logically proven, not otherwise than theories have to be proven in the sciences. Yet a world-conception is the work mainly of our emotion and imagination. Accordingly philosophy and world-conception are two distinct things which have nothing in common. This position seems to be generally accepted by the Danish philosophers, and as a natural consequence Ipsen says, we can speak no more of "philosophy," but only of philosophical disciplines. The unity of philosophy, its ideal of system is lost. Metaphysics is dead in Denmark and the search for the universal laws of existence is also given up. Philosophy has ceased to be the science of the sciences and has become an aggregate of scientific disciplines. On this point there is a tacit agreement so that there is no "useless struggle about great and insolvable problems," and since Höffding wrote on the relation between faith and science, our Danish philosophers also shun all theological interference. A division of labor has taken place so that psychology has been treated by Höffding, Kroman, and Lehmann, Ethics by Höffding and Starcke, Logic by Höffding and Kroman, Sociology by Wilkens and Starcke, and Æsthetics by Wilkens.

Professor Höffding and Kroman in spite of their consensus in rejecting the unity of philosophy represent a very strong contrast, which is best characterised by their method of treating the law of causation. Kroman rejects all the former evidences employed to prove the law of cause and effect. Empiricism is wrong because it can at best show the temporal succession of two phenomena, and apriorism is wrong because a priori knowledge lies in the subject alone and not in the object. In causation, however, the objects play an important part, and we can never know whether the objects will always conform to the subjective and a priori laws. Kroman's view of the subject is that the causal law is the sole condition by which we can acquire any knowledge at all, accordingly for the sake of self-preservation we hope that this condition will be fulfilled. The causal law accordingly is not only the condition of all knowledge, it is also the postulate with which we have to start.

Höffding attacks the problem in a different way. He asks first: "How do we come at all to a reality supposed to be independent of the subject?" and "What is the import of this reality?" Reality according to Höffding is not yet given in sense-perception, we arrive at the idea of reality not until our sense-perceptions are arranged in a coherent system. If I see a picture at the wall, this may be an hallucination, but if my sense of touch corroborates the perception of sight, I consider it as a reality. Thus the idea of reality originates and this reality is not distinguishable from a coherent and self-consistent dream. To the dreamer his dream is reality. Now the question of causality is not legitimate, whether things conform to the law of causation, for indeed we know things only by their being causes or effects. The main function of our consciousness is to recognise similarities and dissimilarities, it searches for unity and this search is performed through the application of the causal law. Höffding accordingly considers both ideas, the causal nexus and reality, as being of the same value. His causal law is more than a postulate, it is in part a result. Our organ of cognition would die of atrophy if it were not constantly nourished, and we should share the fate of Tantalus were we condemned to investigate and always unable to discover.

Kroman looks upon the law of inertia as a special application of the causal law. To him the conservation of matter and energy is an hypothesis. Höffding looks upon the law of inertia as a material principle. Where Kroman speaks of energy, Höffding speaks of corporeal energy. (It may be that here the German translation körperliche Kraft is at fault.) As a material principle the law of inertia is something more than a mere corollary of the causal law, for in its present form it has made science possible. The conservation of matter and energy is conceived in an analogous manner, but considered as natural laws both propositions possess a mere hypothetical value.

It appears to us that the law of cause and effect lies deeper still, and there can be no doubt that the law of the conservation of matter and energy is the same thing only formulated for different purposes. Hume's merit was exceedingly great when he laid his finger on the sore spot of philosophical thought, pointing out the prevailing confusion about the law of causation. But when investigating the subject, he led us on a wrong track. Cause and effect are not two objects following one another, and not even two phenomena following one another. It is not a synthesis of two events. It is on the contrary an analysis of one event. Cause and effect is a change. In this change the same amount of matter and energy is preserved, yet the form is altered. Hume broke the process of cause and energy into pieces, he lost sight of their interconnection and was astonished that one piece was not exactly the same as the other. Hence his skepticism.

The law of cause and effect can be proved, except to him who would obstinately refuse to acknowledge the law of identity that A=A. There may be some one who thinks that something can come out of nothing, or that something can suddenly disappear into nothing. If there is, the weight of the argument rests with him, yet we shall not listen to him until he presents an unequivocal case in which we can observe a transition from being into not-being or vice versa. Until then we consider the law of identity and also its practical application and corollary, the conservation of matter and energy as unrefuted.

The law of cause and effect and its corollary the conservation of matter and energy rest ultimately upon our recognition of the Gesetzmässigkeit of formal laws. He who acknowledges the correctness of the statement "2×2=4" as universal and necessary, implicitly accepts also the law of causation and of the conservation of matter and energy. The law of the conservation of matter and energy contains no other proposition than this that 2×2 will always be 2×2 or its product, i. e. 4; it will never be less, it will never be more.

The ultimate basis of the law of causation lies in the laws of form. We may call causality and the law of inertia and the conservation of matter and energy hypotheses, but in that case the meaning of the term hypothesis would have to be changed, for if these laws are hypotheses, the statement 2×2=4 would be just as much an hypothesis.

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In psychology Kroman and Höffding are more antagonistic than in any other subject. Both consider the soul as an x, but Kroman attributes to this x, unity and the faculty of feeling, willing and thinking; Höffding however looks upon feeling and motion as two sides of the same unknown object. Kroman in spite of his formal opposition to metaphysicism still believes in a subject underlying the acts of consciousness. After all, the name only of metaphysicism seems to be dead in Denmark, not metaphysicism itself. Höffding has shown how Kroman's psychological theory has led him into a highly mythical conception of the activity of the soul.

We may add that the proposition of non-interference with theological views may be excellent in preserving peace, but we cannot help considering this kind of peace as a mistaken policy. If there are conflicts between theology and philosophy, they should be settled, for there cannot be two contradictory truths, and it is wrong also to leave errors alone simply for the sake of peace. Yet it is objected that religion is a matter of the heart and philosophy a matter of the brain. Certainly, but the heart should have its emotion regulated by the brain. If our world-conception is the product mainly of our emotions and of our imagination, it would be simply foolish to let the heart build its world-conception just as it pleases without consulting the head. Wherever philosophy and religion or our world-conception (the latter considered as the product of our emotion) have nothing to say to each other, wherever they are kept distinct, it will lead to confusion in all the departments of our existence, it will put our philosophy, our scientific thought, and our ethics out of joint. A rent will go through the world of our life producing disharmony in every spot and the end will be a dreary pessimism. Our emotions are not a separate chamber of our being which should be kept private and unaffected by scientific knowledge, our emotions are springs of action, and it is of paramount importance to keep them in harmony with our knowledge of facts. The policy of theological non-interference may do for some time, but certainly not long. It is a mere armistice but no peace, and honest war is better than a sham-truce which is an ill-concealed state of intolerable hostility. (Heidelberg: G. Weiss.)

κρς.

VOPROSUI FILOSOFII I PSICHOLOGII. Vol. II. No. 3. March, 1891.

RECENSIONEN.

LITTERATURBERICHT.