"Good-night Materne, Jerome, Pivrette, Dives," cried the brave sabot-maker cheerily.
His old friends turned and waved their hats, and said among themselves:
"There are indeed days when it is a joy to be in this fair world. Ah! if there were no pestilence, nor war, nor famine; if men understood, loved, and helped one another; if wrongs and distrust were unknown—what a paradise would be ours!"
Porter's Human Intellect.
[Footnote 281]
[Footnote 281: The Human Intellect; with an Introduction upon Psychology and the Soul. By Noah Porter, D.D., Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy and Metaphysics in Yale College. New York: Scribner & Co. 1868. 8vo, pp. 673.]
In returning to consider this elaborate volume more in detail, we would remark that its author has designed it as a text-book for college students in the class of philosophy, and has proceeded, in writing, on the presumption that they for whom he writes have not the slightest knowledge of the subject. Hence his pages are filled with matters which those who have made some proficiency in the science of the human understanding, and are not wholly ignorant of philosophy, properly so called, are already masters of, and which they cannot even read without great weariness of the body, and do not deem it worth their while to read at all. They feel that to be able to understand the author, it is enough to consult his principles and method, and his definitions of the several topics he takes up and discusses. They have neither the patience to read carefully through a huge volume which is, nine-tenths of it, filled with what is for them mere baby-talk. But the author does not, in composing his work, begin by stating and defining his theses, and then proceeding to elucidate and prove them; but attempts to begin where he supposes the infant begins, and proceeds as a learner, not as a master. Consequently, we are compelled to read his book from the beginning to the end, or not be sure of his doctrine on any one point.
It is true, the author sometimes attempts definitions, but they are seldom scientific, rarely embrace his whole thesis, and nothing else, and are pretty sure to mislead the unfortunate reviewer who relies on them. He seldom abides by his own definitions. In one place he defines consciousness a power, and in another he makes it an act. Sense-perception is defined to be the power by which the intellect gains the knowledge of material objects; then we are told that the object perceived is not the material existence, but "a joint product of the material agent and the sentient organism," a psychical transcript of the material object; while in another part of his work we find him denying that what the mind perceives is such transcript, and refuting, by plain and solid reasons, those who maintain that it is. A really scientific definition is a definition per genus et per differentiam; Dr. Porter sometimes gives the genus and forgets the differentia, and sometimes gives the differentia without giving the genus. He also adopts a terminology in many respects not familiar to us, though it may be to others, without the necessary explanation of the terms he uses: and even when the terms he uses are such as we are familiar with, they are used in a sense to which we are not accustomed. We cannot tolerate subject-object, for subject and object are distinct, and stand the one over against the other. The subject in thought is never the object, and the object is never the subject. Grammar teaches so much. Object-object says no more than simply object. Every object is object, and no object is more or less than object. The object is always real; for it is causative, since in the act of thought it resists the subject, and becomes a counter-pressure. We dislike percepts and concepts; for they are intended to imply that they exist, as it were, independent of the subject and the object, and that the product of subject and object may itself be object. We protest earnestly, in the name both of philology and philosophy, against calling existences, which are nothing except by the creative act of God, beings, and still more earnestly against so calling the products of second or third causes. This might pass with the Gentiles, who substituted generation for creation, but is inexcusable in a Christian philosopher. We know the schoolmen did so, but they are not to be commended for it. They speak of ens simpliciter, ens secundum quid, ens reale, and ens possibile, and even of ens rationis, as if being, the creations of being, mental abstractions, and the creations of fancy and imagination could be all of the same genus or placed in the same category! There is a philosophy in language which can never be disregarded without more or less injury to the philosophy of things.
The professor's method and technology render his work exceedingly difficult to be understood without as much study as would be necessary to construct the philosophy of the human mind without it; and therefore if we should happen at times to miss his meaning, he must blame himself. He is far more intent on explaining the processes of the mind in knowing than on setting forth what it knows. These processes have no interest for us; for they really throw no light on the power or fact of knowledge. We want to know what the author means by philosophy, and what is its value, and we therefore want him to speak as the professor, not as the pupil. We have no disposition to waste our time and weary the flesh, even, in reading the mass of stuff which he writes and which tells us nothing we want to know. But enough of this.