L'ART ET LA LOGIQUE. (1st Art.) By G. Tarde.
MORALE ET MÉTAPHYSIQUE. By J. J. Gourd.
ANALYSES ET COMPTES RENDUS.
REVUE DES PERIODIQUES ETRANGERS.
SOCIÉTÉ DE PSYCHOLOGIE PHYSIOLOGIQUE.
M. Janet remarks, in his article on Realism and Idealism, that since Kant philosophy has concentrated all its efforts on the problem of the objectivity of knowledge. The agreement of reality and thought is a truth of which no one doubts, although many centuries were necessary for its observation. Not only is there agreement between nature and mind, but there is analogy, resemblance, affinity, between these two terms. Not only does nature obey the laws of our mind, implying that there is in it a logical and rational element, but it seems to act with the art which intelligence would employ, if it wished to create the products of nature. How is this union of nature and the mind to be explained? Two solutions present themselves: in which thought can be explained by nature, or nature by thought. The first of these solutions is that called realism; the second is idealism. Each of these systems has strong reasons in its favor. As to the first, thought and nature are not commensurate and opposed. Thought makes itself part of nature, and the only thought we know directly is our own. For human intelligence is bound to the organisation, and appears to follow all its vicissitudes. The basis of idealism is not less firm. External things exist for us only on the condition of passing through our consciousness. Further, the psychological and physiological analysis of sensations reclaims them all as being only states of the ego. But there are serious objections to both hypotheses. Realism is susceptible of two forms. If thought, considered in relation to the origin of ideas, is explained by sensation, it becomes empiricism; if considered in relation to the substratum of thought, this is explained by organisation, it becomes materialism. As against empiricism, may be objected with Kant that sensation does not explain the necessity and universality of scientific judgments. Against materialism, Fichte showed that a thing which is only a thing could never attain to thought. Thus empiricism is overthrown by the impossibility of explaining science; materialism by the impossibility of explaining thought. In order to meet the objection of Kant, and to explain the appearance of a priori, the new empiricists have invoked: (1) the principle of inseparable associations; (2) the principle of hereditary associations. On the other side, the new defenders of materialism in order to explain the transformation of motion into thought, have invoked the great principle of the correlation and transformation of forces in nature. But as to inseparable associations, it may be said, that they give us rather a necessity of fact, than a necessity of law. What science requires is absolute and not relative necessity. The same may be said of the principle of hereditary associations, which merely prolong the chain of experiences. But, further, association itself requires explanation, which shows that it cannot account for the principle of causality. As to the use of the principle of transformation of forces to explain the passage of motion into thought, if the objective and physical cause of our sensations is meant, there is merely transformation of motion into motion. If it is said that sensations are only transformed motions, this affirms what is in question, how motion can transform itself into thought. There are no less serious objections against idealism. The principal one is: all our reasonings about nature are established only on condition that we take nature as our basis. We thus reach the double conclusion: neither nature has produced thought, nor thought has produced nature. The ego is, however, in nature, and nature is a representation of the ego, but, while admitting the reciprocal penetration of the two principles, we are obliged to recognise their mutual independence. There is harmony, not identity. But is there not some being in which the real of nature and the real of thought coexist, and who, according to the formula of Schelling, is the absolute subject-object? Idealism, to be consequent, ought to go as far as the absolute consciousness, to the union of the subjective and objective thought. If the two inferior terms are identified in the absolute mind, this will find in nature and in the mind a double expression of itself. Nothing prevents us then, says our author, from understanding nature, with Schelling, as the drowsy mind seeking to arouse itself, and the ego on the contrary as a nature which awakens itself.
M. Tarde in Art and Logic remarks that the word art has two senses. In its wide conception, it includes all the exercises of the imagination and of human ingenuity, invention in a thousand forms. But in another sense of the word, it answers to the æsthetic needs of society. If we had regard only to the art of the most advanced epochs, we should perhaps say that it serves to satisfy the need of inventive expression or of expressive invention. It seems then, in effect, to be before all expressive or inventive, and the second of these traits appears the most essential. The property of art and also of morality is to seek and to believe to find a divine end in life, a great end worthy of individual sacrifice. When art presents itself separated from morality, when it is an agent not of harmony but of social dissolution, it is a sign that it is imported from abroad. Art is then immoral and dissolvent. In all ages truly logical art has been only the translator and the illuminator of morality.
The work of art is not like a product of industry, an artificial organ added to the individual, it is an artificial, imaginary mistress. The privilege of art is to arouse in us sentiments which play in the social life and logic, precisely the rôle of love in the individual life and logic. The sentiment of art is a collective love and rejoices to be such. Art is social joy, as love is individual joy.
Morality and Metaphysics. Between practical philosophy and theoretical philosophy there is a real difference of nature. The former concerns the action and the latter the perception, and as we cannot do what yet is not, nor see what is already done, the one has relation to the future, the other to the present or the past. With this difference, they resemble each other, in that both consist in a putting in order, a co-ordination of their objects. Experience is sufficient to furnish all that is necessary for the explanation of practical co-ordination. This requires a fundamental notion of practical order, which metaphysicians see in the notion of the good, but, as the reality of the good cannot be established, it is a chimerical and arbitrary conception. We must seek in the co-ordinated objects themselves the fundamental element around which they will be disposed according to their proper nature. This cannot be the good, since this is the result of practical co-ordination. It is pleasure, not a particular kind of pleasure, but that which is possessed in common by all that pleases, all that satisfies. Volition can never go beyond pleasure. If we desire before having really been sensible of pleasure, it is because we have been ideally sensible of it. Pleasure is inherent in every practical function, it is practically constant, it is practically categorical. We cannot go beyond pleasure of some kind. It cannot be said that pleasure is preceded by function, life. These are only results, groups which have components, and therefore they cannot be the last principle of action. Thus one problem is resolved without recourse to metaphysics.—After the principle of simple co-ordination, must be sought that of the co-ordination which subordinates, which marks a sort of hierarchy. For this the idea of pleasure is not sufficient. It is necessary to limit the point of view, and in the difference of quantity of pleasure will be found the rule of co-ordination. The distinction of more or less offers itself at once, and gives place naturally to degrees, then to a subordination. The rule of the good is: the amplitude of the co-ordination, the degree of intelligibility, the number of facts which compose the object of volition. It is necessary to distinguish between urgency and superiority in proper value. Things which are the most urgent have not necessarily the most value in themselves. Thus the practical subordination ought to dispose its objects inversely, according to whether it is occupied with their urgency or their proper value. Here also practical philosophy is not obliged to have recourse to metaphysics. Practical philosophy not only ought to regulate its objects on the basis that it has previously fixed, but still ought to assure this regulation for the future. This requires that its coördinations should be made objects of commandment, obligation. The conception of the future pleasure enters into the present; and to each volition is bound by anticipation, ideally, but positively, the future benefit of the practical co-ordination. Thus obligation has its source in a volition imposing practical co-ordination on future volitions. Obligation is in reality causal determination, and as there is a volition more or less marked in each act, and the causal chain is never interrupted, we can be said to be always under the influence of obligation, the power of which increases with life. Determination is uniformisation; and nothing else is asked for the moral imperative. Causal determination is opposed directly to the unconditionment of liberty; but obligation, as well as causal determination in general, remains, moreover, in every partial state, limited by its opposite, liberty, which ever recoils before the continual encroachments of obligation, but without ceasing to be. There is no difficulty in admitting a sanction for the good, although it does not constitute a distinct and new element. The sanction is the consequences of actions from the point of view of pleasures. By the side of moral happiness or unhappiness, should be reserved a place for a happiness or unhappiness in some sort "amoral." The moral good does not exhaust all the good. It is necessary to distinguish between the moral good and the unrestrained good (bien libre). There is an immoralisable element which represents the veritable autonomy of the will. As in all coördinations, by reason of all bending under the rule, the moral hierarchy will sometimes injure the reality. Here the notion of the unrestrained good happily intervenes. The reality always reserves its rights in the face of co-ordinations, whatever be their nature. When it asserts itself it is sublime, it is, so to say, raised above every rule, majestic in its sovereign liberty. (Paris: Félix Alcan.)
ZEITSCHRIFT FÜR PSYCHOLOGIE UND PHYSIOLOGIE DER SINNESORGANE. Vol. II.
Nos. 1 and 2.