reply to our criticism, which, however, are neither convincing nor satisfactory. Mr. Ward seeks his explanation of mind in complexity. He identifies complexity and instability and is satisfied that greater motility implies that psychic property which may fittingly be called awareness. Mr. Ward says:

"It is safe to predict higher properties from higher degrees of aggregation. . . To the complexity of protoplasm is due its motility which is that property which makes it alive, . . . . and bound up with this principle of life is this property of awareness."-The Monist, Vol. IV, pp. 198-199.

Complexity in my opinion, naturally results frequently in an increase of instability, but there are cases1 in which very complex bodies are more stable than simpler substances. While I freely grant that upon the whole greater complexity will produce greater instability I cannot consider complexity as anything that ever so remotely implies an explanation of mind. If complexity, and with it. instability, could explain the origin of feeling, a card house might be suspected of sentiency. Mr. Ward replies in the article of the present number that "the only complexity contemplated is organic complexity." But does he not see that by limiting complexity to organic complexity he assumes what he intends to explain? Organised substance is only another name for protoplasm. What then do we gain by explaining the same thing under one name by referring it to the same thing under another name? What is the difference between "protoplasmic" and "organic" complexity? We have no objection to Mr. Ward's proposition that less active things may be superior to more active things, as (to use his own words) "a noisy person is often more important than a quiet one;" but this very proposition of Mr. Ward's is in our, not in his, favor, and should make him doubt his method of looking for an explanation of mind in complexity and instability, for there is no question that there may

1I quoted in the same number of The Monist, on page 234, an instance from Lothar Meyer, and have only to add that hexachloride and anoxygenised nitrates are not, as Mr. Ward seems to think, mere mixtures (see pages 258, 259), but chemical combinations.

2 Here we follow Mr. Ward's usage of the term "organic." Otherwise we should say "organised." For a discrimination of the two terms see The Soul of Man, p. 48.

be substances in this world of higher complexity, greater activity, and more instability than protoplasm. Yet protoplasm is more important, and we repeat that the origin of feeling in protoplasm cannot be explained by the intricacy of its structure.

Mr. Ward seeks the explanation of the characteristic features of evolution in the realm of dynamics. He says:

"Every substance is a sort of battery capable of making effective the otherwise ineffective forces of its elements. . . . The power of substances to produce effects is great in proportion to the degree of organisation.

"The course of evolution has been toward the organised and efficacious through the process of storing energy in appropriate forms. It is the power of doing work that increases with organisation."

The essential feature of animal evolution has nothing to do with the process of storing energy.1 But Mr. Ward seems to think that every science is but a branch of dynamics. He says in The Psychic Factors of Civilisation, page 91:

"All the sciences of the hierarchy deal with forces. . . . There is in all cases a dynamic agent determining the phenomena of every subdivision of knowledge which is entitled to be called a science. The sterility of the old psychology, so long known as metaphysics, was due to the fact that it was without any such dynamic agent." Mr. Ward, fully conscious of the importance of sentiency, attempts to account for its origin. He says on page 252 of the present number:

"The explanation of the origin of sensibility is that protoplasm is of such an unstable and delicate nature that to secure its permanence it must possess some protecting quality, and sensibility is such a quality."

This, of course, is no explanation of the origin of sensibility, even when we grant that protoplasm could not secure permanence without it. We might as well say that the existence of pure spirit is explained (not demonstrated) by the idea of angels, as in order to produce angels nature would have to produce first pure spirit. It is obvious that nature is under no obligation to produce either protoplasm or angels. Mr. Ward has felt this objection, for he says:

"To some it may seem that this [proposition] makes it necessary to invoke design in order to endow it [protoplasm] with such a property, but the leading spirit

1 For our view of the essential feature of evolution see The Test of Progress," pp. 36-42, in Homilies of Science.

of modern biology obviates this. It teaches that protoplasm could not have come into existence at all without this property. If there had been no such property there would have been no protoplasm, no life, no organic world."

In addition to the futility of Mr. Ward's argument, we call his attention to the fact which, in this connexion, he has strangely overlooked, that there is a whole realm of protoplasmic or organised life devoid of sensibility. Nature secures the permanence of the protoplasm of the vegetal kingdom without sensibility. Plants attain even a very high degree of organisation, and the organisations of the highest plants are, aside (possibly, but not necessarily) from their molecular constitution, more complex than that of the lowest animals.

It is not our intention here either to present a detailed exposition of our own views or to repeat what we have stated in our article "Monism and Henism." Many points of minor interest in Mr. Ward's article to which we take exception, for instance the theory of pleasure and pain,1 we are unwilling to discuss now, as we wish only in a general way to call Mr. Ward's and our readers' attention to the difference between his and our monism. We are satisfied to state that the problem of mind is the same as the problem of the development of meaning in sentiency, for the nature of mind consists in meaning or representativeness, and conclude with a few remarks on causation. 2

It appears that our view of causation differs from that of Mr. Ward. According to his view the cause of all lower activity is "the efficient cause, the vis a tergo" (present number of The Monist, page 253); to which we object that if chemicals which possess sufficient affinity to combine were indeed combined by a vis a tergo, by a force which pushes them together, and not by qualities inherent in them,

1 Mr. Ward declares that "the supply of tissue is attended with pleasure," and "the destruction of tissue results in pain." Our view is set forth in The Soul of Man, pp. 338-345, and The Ethical Problem, pp. 70-71. We shall be much obliged to Mr. Ward for refuting our criticism of the traditional theory of pleasure and pain.

2 For a detailed explanation of our view, see The Soul of Man, the chapter on 'The Origin of Mind," especially pp. 27-29, "How feelings acquire meaning."

3 See our Primer of Philosophy, pp. 137 et seq., and compare Fundamental Problems, pp. 79 et seqq., 105 et seqq., and passim.

we are led to a strange dualism of inert material atoms that are pushed, and an outside force that is pushing them from behind. Our view of causation recognises the presence of spontaneity, a vis insita, a force or power within, in the very lowest stage of natural phenomena, and we have at the same time repeatedly called attention to the mistake of considering cause and effect as equal. According to Mr. Ward, the inequality of cause and effect develops by degrees. While in our opinion it is one of the most salient features of causation that cause and effect are never equal; otherwise there would be no change. Causation is transformation; it is the preservation of matter and energy in a change of form which takes place according to the laws of motion. The avalanche that buries a huge forest may have been caused by a slight fall of temperature in one little sunny spot of the snow. The inequality between cause and effect may be as enormous in the lowest stage of purely mechanical causation as in the highest stage of mental development. The essential difference between inorganic causation and purposive acts of living beings is not dynamical, but mental. The causative raison d'être of lower phenomena, such as gravity or affinity, are marked by an absence of representative feelings; while the causation of human activity possesses the adjustive faculty of representative feelings, or ideas, which determine the direction of the expenditure of energy and make purpose possible by a prognostication of the eventual results of certain actions. The meaning that resides in the sentiency of brain structures plays the rôle of chemical affinity in the realm of mind, and the meanings attached to the various modes of feeling, not any "increments of stored energy" which are “su peradded at each evolutionary step," constitute the characteristic feature of mentality.

Mind, in our opinion, is not comparable to a storage-battery, but to a light. The dynamical aspect and an increase of energy, if there is any, are of no consequence in the consideration of mental progress. Mind does not accumulate more and more energies within, but by making feelings representative illumines the world round about, so that we can marshal its forces according to our needs.

EDITOR.

BOOK REVIEWS.

DIE RELIGION DES VEDA. By Hermann Oldenberg. Berlin: W. Hertz. 1894. Pages, 620.

At this time of wide-spread and popular interest in the religions of India, Prof. Hermann Oldenberg's comprehensive work on the Religion of the Veda, is highly opportune, for we have here a sober presentation of the Vedic world-conception. The author, well known for his excellent work on Buddha, His Life, His Doctrine, His Order, is one of those rare scholars who hold the mirror up to history, reflecting the distant past with the least possible addition of enthusiasm or prejudice. And it is a grand picture which he unrolls before our eyes, one of the most important pages of the history of mankind: the evolution of religion in its sacrificial and sacerdotal phase.

It goes without saying that Oldenberg's book will be indispensable to every one who is working in the field of Brahmanical lore, and in the interest of English readers it is to be hoped that an English translation will soon appear. At the same time we advise students to study Oldenberg's Religion of the Veda with constant reference to his translation of the Hymns of the Rigveda;1 for the present work, the Religion of the Veda, rests upon Vedic hymns, which are the main and (aside from comparative references to the Zend Avesta and other sacred books) almost the sole source of our knowledge of the religion of the Vedic age. Oldenberg now presents us with what might be called the Isagogics into or a Handbook of the religious notions of the authors of the Veda concerning their gods and demons, and the magic efficacy of worship, of ritual, sacrifice, and prayer, explaining as far as possible their original meaning.

The study of Oldenberg's work will prove a help in two lines of inquiry, in Indology or Hinduism, and in anthropology. We now know that all people on earth travel in their evolution on the same path, they pass through the same phases of totemism, animism, and sacerdotalism to the purer religion of salvation from evil

1 So far as we know the first volume only has appeared under the title Die Hymnen des Rigda, metrische und textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. Wilhelm Hertz. Berlin. 1888. See also Max Müller's translation of the Rig-veda-Sanhita, and the literature on this subject in The Sacred Books of the East, especially Vol. XXIX, XXX, and XXXII.