UN DOCUMENT INEDIT SUR LES MANUSCRITS DE DESCARTES. By V. Egger.
NOTICES BIBLIOGRAPHIQUES.
REVUE DES PERIODIQUES ETRANGERS.
The principle of causality belongs only to the world of sense, that of children and of the commonality of mankind who neither reflect nor analyse their knowledge. It represents confusedly the continuity and inertia which are proper to the scientific stage, as colors represent imperfectly the undulations of the ether, and sound the vibrations of ponderable matter. To make of causality a scientific property of things, a law of the phenomenal and mechanical world, is to affirm that bodies preserve their color in the absence of an eye to perceive it, or their sonorousness when no one hears them. Moreover, from a scientific standpoint, the words sound and color lose all proper meaning; while the principle of causality retains a sense, but then expresses a false proposition, and one which leads us incessantly into error. Several consequences flow from M. Lalande's conception of causality. The first is that this law is not a rational principle, but is an empirical formula, in the mathematical sense of that word. The second is that we are thereby led to see in the idea of efficiency an artificial concept, and, as would be said by philologists, a disease of language, instead of a mysterious "power" that emanates from one phenomenon in order to create its effect. A third consequence is the great simplification it leads to in the problem of induction, which requires us merely to believe in the stability of the laws of nature, which are only mathematical laws proved by experience. The true foundation of induction is the universal value of mathematics, which rests finally on the principle of identity. The degree of perfection of a science can be measured by the quantity of mathematics it employs; and it is this preconceived idea which has given birth to all the psycho-physical measures that have been recently introduced into psychology.
M. Guardia's paper gives a sketch of the philosophical system laid down in the work of the Spanish writer J. Huarte, The Trial of the Spirits, with an introductory account of the author and his book, which first appeared in 1575. Huarte is described as unique among Spanish thinkers, and as a leading figure among natural philosophers on account of the daring novelty of his original views and the excellence of his method, which is that of the inductive philosophy. His doctrine is founded on that of Galen, and he proclaims the principle that the physical determines the moral. All his metaphysics reduce themselves to the recognition of the action of exterior causes, which are of inorganic nature, and of the organism which reacts to them. He thus explains all the manifestations of life, heredity intervening as a factor in its evolution. Huarte was less concerned, however, with physiology and psychology, than with the amelioration of the social state. He worked for the future by creating of psychology an organic science of observation and experience, founded on the knowledge of human nature, and by basing on it the art of education.
In concluding his valuable study of the Origin of Technology, M. Espinas, after giving numerous examples drawn from ancient Greek life, says: "All the technical arts of this epoch have the same characters. They are religious, traditional, local. The myths referred to are at first the faithful as well as the symbolic expression of them." This mythological symbolism is "the product of a psychological and sociological projection, that is to say, the things of art are conceived as benevolent or angered feelings, as intelligent inventions or combinations that are attributed to fictitious idealised men, as exchanges that are made with them, as gifts or precepts that are received from them, or as orders imposed by their will. They are thus psychical operations or social products drawn from human consciousness unknown to it which, personified, find themselves invoked by it in order to explain to itself its own creations."
The unpublished matter referring to the manuscripts of Descartes is contained in a copy of the 1659 edition of the Principes of the French philosopher, and consists of numerous notes in the handwriting of its former owner Joseph de Beaumont. (Paris: Félix Alcan.)
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE. No. 178. October, 1890.
CONTENTS:
LE DELIT POLITIQUE. By G. Tarde.