LE MONDE COMME VOLONTÉ ET COMME REPRESENTATION. Par Arthur Schopenhauer. Traduit en Français par A. Burdeau. Tome troisième. Paris: Félix Alcan.
M. Burdeau's translation of the chief work of the renowned philosopher of pessimism is the only perfect translation into the French language. It is made with a scrupulous exactness, and its style is said to be as clear as that of Schopenhauer himself, "by which he is distinguished from all other German philosophers and is recognised as a disciple of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Chamfort." The present volume contains important appendices in which Schopenhauer recapitulated and developed various points treated of in the first edition of his work. We may refer particularly to the chapters on Instinct, Genius, Insanity, the Metaphysic of Music, and the Metaphysic of Love.
DIE HYPNOSE UND DIE DAMIT VERWANDTEN NORMALEN ZUSTAENDE. Vorlesungen gehalten an der Universität Kopenhagen im Herbste 1889. By Alfred Lehmann, Ph. D. Leipsic: O. R. Reisland.
This little book will in one respect be of special interest to psychologists. The author confesses in the preface that when he commenced his hypnotic investigations, he attempted to explain the facts under consideration by the Cartesian theory which hitherto, he says, had proved perfectly sufficient to explain the data of normal soul-life. What the author understands by the Cartesian theory appears from the following passage:
"The popular conception of the relation between soul and body is, that the soul is a being distinct from the body and endowed with certain faculties. This conception is still defended by a certain, not very numerous school of philosophers whom we may briefly call Cartesians from the fact that their theory can be traced back to Descartes, although in the lapse of time it has been considerably modified."
In a word the Cartesian theory is the theory that still accepts the existence of a mythical or metaphysical soul-unity called the ego. Dr. Lehmann says:
"It was argued since 'I' in spite of a constant change of my consciousness, am in possession of the certainty that it is the same identical 'I' that has all these states, sensations, feelings, this 'I' or the soul must be a unity. And this unity must stand in a causal connection with the outside world, with the domain of nature in the widest sense of the word," etc.
It is perhaps exceptional that a teacher at a University of Protestant Northern Europe has been under the influence of Cartesianism, but it is highly commendable that he openly confesses his change of opinion because the facts under observation demonstrate its erroneousness. Dr. Lehmann no doubt will find that the normal phenomena of psychic life are by no means in accord with the Cartesian doctrine. Indeed by showing how the abnormal and normal states agree, he implicitly confesses that the theory that proves untenable for the former ought to be regarded as untenable for the latter. We have instances of men who believe in the Cartesian doctrine, or at least by a natural predisposition have a tendency to believe in it, wavering in their belief, because the data of the normal states of psychic life so little favor the dualism of the great French philosopher. Now it almost seems as if the discoveries and the strangeness of hypnotic phenomena had contributed a great deal towards turning the tendency toward a monistic solution of the psychological problems back to the almost abandoned dualistic solution. We are fully confident that this reaction will not last, because in spite of all the strange mysteries that surround modern hypnotism, it will after all only find a satisfactory interpretation in some monistic conception.
Dr. Lehmann in abandoning the Cartesian theory, says: "The bodily and psychical states are as a matter of experience given as two series intimately connected the one with the other. Their connection can be explained in two different ways: Either the phenomena of the one are effects of the other, or both series are effects of one and the same unknown cause."
Dr. Lehmann considers either solution as a priori equally acceptable, yet he favors the latter, which might briefly be called (although the author does not use the expression) "the agnostic solution." Dr. Lehmann characterises it as "die Spinozistische Annahme" and calls it Psycho-physical Materialism.