Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

where by "moment is meant a hic et nunc (of consciousness).

The author's discussion of this distinction between the abstract and the concrete, which lies at the basis of his work, is very suggestive; and the solution he offers will be apparent when we reflect that it is nothing more nor less than the purpose of abstraction to pick out and fix the invariable aspects of the fleeting world of phenomena.

[blocks in formation]

μικρά.

By Lucien Arréat. Paris: Félix Alcan. 1895. Pages,

A more appropriate title for this book, the author says, would have been La vie des images. M. Arréat seeks to reduce the life and phenomena of imagination, first to images, and then to the organic base of images, memory. We all have memory, in some degree, but we have not all of us the same memory. We have all imagination, but not all of us the same imagination. As our images are,—that is, as our temperament, heredity, and physiological memory and environment are, so is our imagination. This is the rule which M. Arréat seeks to establish by examining four intimately related professional types-painters, musicians, poets, and orators. He has divided this large group into sub-types, according as their memories are motor, visual, or auditive, and woven into his researches many attractive and instructive considerations. We have had occasion before to admire M. Arréat's wide acquaintance with letters, and we must praise here again the concise and skilful use which he has made of his bibliographical and literary knowledge in this extensive field. The reader will find the book replete with apt instances and anecdotes. Both on the literary and psychological side, the volume has high merits.

μ.

IDEALE WELTEN in Wort unD BILD. Reisen auf der vorder-indischen Halbinsel im Jahre 1890. Für ethnologische Studien und Sammlungszwecke. By A. Bastian. Berlin: Emil Felber. 1892. Pp. 289.

ZUR MYTHOLOGIE UND PSYCHOLOGIE DER NIGRITIER IN GUINEA MIT BEZUGNAHME AUF SOCIALISTISCHE ElementarGEDANKEN. By A. Bastian. Berlin: Hoefer & Vohsen. 1894. Pp. 162.

DIE SAMOANISCHE SCHÖPFUNGS-SAGE UND ANSCHLIEssendes aus deR SÜDSEE. BY Adolf Bastian. Berlin: Emil Felber. 1894. Pp. 50.

ETHNOLOGISCHES NOTIZBLATT. Herausgegeben von der Direktion des königlichen Museums für Völkerkunde in Berlin. By A. Bastian. Berlin: Emil Felber, 1894. Pp. 19.

There is perhaps no ethnologist living who can compare in breadth of knowl edge or power of production with Prof. A. Bastian, the venerable and world-famous Director of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde. The four works listed above represent a tithe only of his recent activity, but show it in its best and in its worst features. It would be difficult to conceive a work containing more facts and really valuable ideas than that entitled "Ideal Worlds in Word and Picture," and it is to

be regretted therefore that it exhibits such a sore lack of methodical arrangement. There is absolutely no clue to the author's intentions, and the whole is one tremendous mass of interesting but unorganised facts. Added to this is an asperity and intricacy of style which renders the work almost inaccessible to readers who are not thoroughly familiar with the anfractuosities of the German syntax. In this respect Bastian is unequalled even by the worst of German writers. We shall quote merely one sentence taken at random, where, it is safe to say, the author is in his most elegant and lightest stylistic mood. There are plenty such in the work. He is speaking of the Buddhistic world-conception, and of the iron concatenation of cause and effect. The sentence is found at page 205 of the Proceedings of the Berlin Anthropological Society, April, 1894. It reads:

[ocr errors]

"Je nach den periodischen Zerstörungen,—durch Wasser (in vorübergehenden "Sinthfluthen und ihren in rechtzeitig gebauter Arche geschützten Coxcox oder "Noah), durch Feuer (in stoischer 'Ekpurosis'), durch Erdbeben (auf der Quichés 'volcanischem Boden), durch Sturm (im antillischen Huracan)—, reicht nun die "Vernichtung weiter hinauf in die Rupaloka, so dass für die (nicht mehr by Stock "und Stein als Fetischismus stockenden, und auch) durch den Aufblick zu (side"rischen) eoì oparo (in des Inca's Zweifel) noch unbefriedigten Gedankenreihen, "[wenn über die Thronsessel (in Chlorus' 'sede caelesti ') hinüber oder neben apo"stolisch drittem, zweistöckigem Himmel (bei Severian) bis zu dem orthodox sieben"ten (auch im Islam) reichend] ein Nichts entgegengähnt (in Immaterialität der, "ihrer Meditation geweihten, Terrassen), -ein Nichtsein, das (auf den Grenzen von "Sat und Asat, das Regen vedischen Tad's erwartend) in Sein umzuschlagen hätte, "nach philosophisch schönrednerischen Phrasen (bei Actualisirung des Poten"tiellen)."

Compulsory courses in such rhetorical antics would set at rest forever the debates on the relative merits of language and science study. But with all these drawbacks the works of Professor Bastian are indispensable to ethnologists, constituting the sources of the subject as gathered by a man of sure perceptions and uncommon scientific abilities. The historical student and general reader, however, will have to wait until most of it is elaborated in a different and more intelligible form.

T. J. MCC.

SYSTEMATISCHE PHYLOGENIE DER PROTISTEN UND PFLANZEN. By Ernst Haeckel,

Berlin Georg Reimer. 1894. Pages, 400. Price, M. 10.

The fundamental idea of a general phylogeny of the world of organic forms was broached by Professor Haeckel in 1866 in his General Morphology, and shortly afterwards developed in a more popular form in his Natural History of Creation. As the phylogenetic materials were scanty at that period, the author's researches were limited to the merest outlines of a history of the race; in the necessity of the case a rigorous scientific demonstration was impossible. The author now attempts such a demonstration, in the light of the materials recently furnished by palæon

tology, ontogeny, and morphology.

Thus, the reader will find incorporated here

the results of thirty years of fruitful research.

Professor Haeckel's point of view has remained practically the same as when he first promulgated the idea. It is his aim to reach a scientific knowledge of the organic forms and of the causes that produce them by a study of the causal relations obtaining between phylogeny and ontogeny, the history of the race and the history of the individual. As is well known, he vigorously opposes the new theories of embryology and heredity, upholding in contradistinction to the latter the doctrine of progressive inheritance. There is much philosophical discussion and speculation in the work, as must be, for phylogeny, like historical biology, is a hypothetical science and can never hope to gain access to all the materials that would verify its conjectures. The tables of descent and the genealogical trees which Professor Haeckel has traced out are for this reason not put forward as perfected and rigid plans, but are to be taken simply as attempts at a reconstruction of ancestral history, and as indicating the way in which, according to our present knowledge, future phylogenetic research is perhaps to be best conducted. In cases of doubt, parallel hypotheses have been suggested.

The present work is not a text-book, but presupposes considerable knowledge of natural history on the part of its readers. Nevertheless, Professor Haeckel's style is delightfully lucid, and what with his explicit explanations of new terms and his profuse use of diagrams and counter-references, the intelligent reader who has access to a good compendium of natural history will not only have no difficulty, but will experience considerable pleasure, in the perusal of portions of this work. The volume before us treats of Protists and Plants, and is to be followed before the close of the year by the two other parts on vertebrate and invertebrate animals. A number of the most important sections of the present volume have been translated and are appearing in the current numbers of The Open Court.

μ.

PSYCHO-THÉRAPIE. By Doctors A. W. Van Renterghem and F. Van Eeden. Paris: Société d'éditions scientifiques, 4 Rue Antoine Dubois. 1894. Pages, 291. Price, frs. 7.50.

By psychotherapy the authors understand not exclusively hypnotism, but the art of curing by psychical means generally. They claim that their work, as contained in this report of the Suggestive Clinic of Amsterdam, has yielded satisfactory results, notwithstanding the brief period of the existence of this branch of methodical medicine, and the opposition which it has met with in professional quarters. They point, it is said, to a fundamental revision of the principles of therapeutics. The book, which is addressed mainly to the medical public, consists of a complete statistical record of clinical observations made in the Clinic of Amsterdam from 1889 to 1893. The authors discuss in the introduction the general principles of therapeutics and some important fundamental biological problems.

μ.

VERBRECHEN UND WAHNSINN BEIM WEIBE. Mit Ausblicken auf die Criminal-Anthropologie überhaupt. Klinisch-statistische, anthropologisch-biologische und craniologische Untersuchungen. By Dr. Med. Paul Näcke. Vienna and Leipsic Wilhelm Braumüller. 1894. Pp. 257.

This work appeals primarily to psychiatrists and physicians only; but the questions which it touches are of grave import, affecting every profession and stratum of society. Amid all the intellectual and material advances of our epoch, crime and animality, instead of giving way before the general progress, have only increased in violence and intensity. The conditions of this deplorable state of things lie deep in the structure of the modern social organism, and it is the purpose of this book to contribute something towards the discovery of those conditions by the scientific method, as that has been applied in the asylums, prisons, hospitals, and schools. All this work is beginning to have its effect on legislation, which will be more effective the surer the foundations which criminology and psychiatry supply it. Dr. Näcke's book is devoted, as its title states, to crime and insanity in woman, discussing the subject under all forms and as developed by all the new anthropological and criminological methods. As Dr. Näcke has attained a recognised place in this department of research as a careful and trusty investigator, his researches will have high value and usefulness for the specialists of this department, and for all writers who now and then find it necessary to consult sources.

μ.

UNSERE GEWISSHEIT VON DER AUSSENWELT. Ein Wort an die Gebildeten unserer Zeit. By Dr. Johannes Rehmke, o. ö. Professor der Philosophie in Greifswald. Heilbronn Eugen Salzer. 1894. Pp., 47.

Prof. Johannes Rehmke's lecture on "Our Certainty of the Outer World," which has already reached its third edition, is a thoughtful investigation of one of the most fascinating of philosophical problems. The Professor argues: The problem whether the outer world exists or not is puzzling, for it strikes unsophisticated thinkers as being no genuine problem; we are inclined to add that they are perhaps after all right. We deem the pamphlet worthy of a synopsis of its arguments.

The outer world is to those untrained in philosophical questions identical with the space-given data of our experience, which are contrasted with our self, the soul, or the ego. Our body forms a middle position, but has consistently to be classed together with the outer world. To the thinkers of classical antiquity this problem of the reality of the outer world did not as yet exist; it was first produced by the emphasis which the Christian world-conception places upon the soul. The selfassurance of the soul makes it difficult for us to find our way to the reality of the space-given objectivity, and in this sense St. Augustine prepares the way for Descartes's universal doubt of reality. The cogito ergo sum is the result of the Christian idea of the all-importance of the soul. The thinkers of antiquity looked outward to observe nature. The Christian looks inward and finds in the soul the starting-point of all philosophy.

Shall we consider reality as a product of the soul, and the self-made spook of our thoughts, which is the ultimate consequence of the Cartesian doubt? Or, shall we, after a purely theoretical skepsis, return to our belief in reality on the crooked way of a fallacy? There are many thinkers who merely play with their doubts, and are in the end satisfied to justify their belief with sham arguments. The trouble with the problem is, that the source of the quandary lies in the premises. If we consider the soul alone as given, we cannot from its purely psychical nature deduce reality. We move in a circle, and Kant drew the last conclusion by showing the ideality of space. According to his Critique we must distinguish between the outer world and space, for he deprived the outer world of spatial extension, which he regarded as a pure product of the representation of the soul. Thus no one can get out of himself, indeed, nothing out of itself. And the idea of the outer world would only be due to our imagination. It would be like the processus vermiformis, a rudiment of former periods of our evolution. Modern thinkers, men like Helmholtz and Zeller, appreciate the futility of proving the existence of the outer world and regain it indirectly. They maintain that sensations must have a cause which does not lie within us, and must be sought without. But is not this a petitio principii? For the very notion of them is assumed, and this indirect way of recuperating reality is inadmissible. The sense of resistance becomes possible only through a consciousness of the outer world.

[ocr errors]

Professor Rehmke solves the problem by declaring that the idealistic psychological standpoint is suicidal. Every one must recognise "the fact that even the keenest thinker cannot get rid of the outer world." "The outer world is as much immediately given as our own self, and we are immediately conscious of it" (p. 33). This conclusion is corroborated by the statement that "the outer world, being im mediately certain, has this in common with the soul that its reality cannot be proved" (p. 34), and it is emphasised by repeated affirmations such as selbstver ständlich (pp. 34 and 37) and zweifellos klar (p. 36). The cause of the trouble, the Professor says, lies in the wrong conceptions of the soul as something that exists in itself. Soul is neither a spatial being animating the body, nor a function of the brain. It is immaterial, and we must be consistent in thinking the idea of the immateriality of the soul. Soul is unspatial; it is nowhere. If it had its seat in the body or somewhere in space, it could not be soul. Outer world and inner world are two abstract pieces of the one world which the soul has in its possession.

It is possible that we should upon the whole agree with Professor Rehmke's arguments and solution, if we could make sure that we understand his terms as he means to use them; but we should express and present them in a different way. There are, however, a few points which make us doubt whether the disagreement is purely verbal.

We would indeed join the unsophisticated in saying that the question as to the reality of the outer world is indeed a wrongly formulated problem, which to show its futility might be formulated in the words, "Is reality real?" The term "real

« AnteriorContinuar »