in themselves is a futile question that belongs to the sterile region
of “metempirics.” But philosophical questions may be so stated
as to be susceptible of a precise solution by scientific method. Thus,
since the relation of subject to object falls within our experience,
it is a proper matter for philosophic investigation. It may be
questioned whether Lewes is right in thus identifying the methods of
science and philosophy. Philosophy is not a mere extension of
scientific knowledge; it is an investigation of the nature and validity
of the knowing process itself. In any case Lewes cannot be said to
have done much to aid in the settlement of properly philosophical
questions. His whole treatment of the question of the relation of
subject to object is vitiated by a confusion between the scientific
truth that mind and body coexist in the living organism and the
philosophic truth that all knowledge of objects implies a knowing
subject. In other words, to use Shadworth Hodgson’s phrase, he
mixes up the question of the genesis of mental forms with the question
of their nature (see Philosophy of Reflexion, ii. 40–58). Thus he
reaches the “monistic” doctrine that mind and matter are two
aspects of the same existence by attending simply to the parallelism
between psychical and physical processes given as a fact (or a probable
fact) of our experience, and by leaving out of account their
relation as subject and object in the cognitive act. His identification
of the two as phases of one existence is open to criticism, not only
from the point of view of philosophy, but from that of science. In
his treatment of such ideas as “sensibility,” “sentience” and the
like, he does not always show whether he is speaking of physical or
of psychical phenomena. Among the other properly philosophic
questions discussed in these two volumes the nature of the casual
relation is perhaps the one which is handled with most freshness and
suggestiveness. The third volume, The Physical Basis of Mind,
further develops the writer’s views on organic activities as a whole.
He insists strongly on the radical distinction between organic and
inorganic processes, and on the impossibility of ever explaining the
former by purely mechanical principles. With respect to the nervous
system, he holds that all its parts have one and the same elementary
property, namely, sensibility. Thus sensibility belongs as much to
the lower centres of the spinal cord as to the brain, contributing in
this more elementary form elements to the “subconscious” region
of mental life. The higher functions of the nervous system, which
make up our conscious mental life, are merely more complex modifications
of this fundamental property of nerve substance. Closely
related to this doctrine is the view that the nervous organism acts
as a whole, that particular mental operations cannot be referred to
definitely circumscribed regions of the brain, and that the hypothesis
of nervous activity passing in the centre by an isolated pathway
from one nerve-cell to another is altogether illusory. By insisting
on the complete coincidence between the regions of nerve-action and
sentience, and by holding that these are but different aspects of one
thing, he is able to attack the doctrine of animal and human automatism,
which affirms that feeling or consciousness is merely an
incidental concomitant of nerve-action and in no way essential to the
chain of physical events. Lewes’s views in psychology, partly opened
up in the earlier volumes of the Problems, are more fully worked out
in the last two volumes (3rd series). He discusses the method of
psychology with much insight. He claims against Comte and his
followers a place for introspection in psychological research. In
addition to this subjective method there must be an objective, which
consists partly in a reference to nervous conditions and partly in the
employment of sociological and historical data. Biological knowledge,
or a consideration of the organic conditions, would only help
us to explain mental functions, as feeling and thinking; it would
not assist us to understand differences of mental faculty as manifested
in different races and stages of human development. The
organic conditions of these differences will probably for ever escape
detection. Hence they can be explained only as the products of the
social environment. This idea of dealing with mental phenomena in
their relation to social and historical conditions is probably Lewes’s
most important contribution to psychology. Among other points
which he emphasizes is the complexity of mental phenomena. Every
mental state is regarded as compounded of three factors in different
proportions—namely, a process of sensible affection, of logical
grouping and of motor impulse. But Lewes’s work in psychology
consists less in any definite discoveries than in the inculcation of a
sound and just method. His biological training prepared him to
view mind as a complex unity, in which the various functions
interact one on the other, and of which the highest processes are
identical with and evolved out of the lower. Thus the operations of
thought, “or the logic of signs,” are merely a more complicated
form of the elementary operations of sensation and instinct or “the
logic of feeling.” The whole of the last volume of the Problems may
be said to be an illustration of this position. It is a valuable
repository of psychological facts, many of them drawn from the more
obscure regions of mental life and from abnormal experience, and
is throughout suggestive and stimulating. To suggest and to
stimulate the mind, rather than to supply it with any complete
system of knowledge, may be said to be Lewes’s service in philosophy.
The exceptional rapidity and versatility of his intelligence seems to
account at once for the freshness in his way of envisaging the subject-matter
of philosophy and psychology, and for the want of satisfactory
elaboration and of systematic co-ordination. (J. S.; X.)
LEWES, a market-town and municipal borough and the
county town of Sussex, England, in the Lewes parliamentary
division, 50 m. S. from London by the London, Brighton &
South Coast railway. Pop. (1901) 11,249. It is picturesquely
situated on the slope of a chalk down falling to the river Ouse.
Ruins of the old castle, supposed to have been founded by King
Alfred and rebuilt by William de Warenne shortly after the
Conquest, rise from the height. There are two mounds which
bore keeps, an uncommon feature. The castle guarded the pass
through the downs formed by the valley of the Ouse. In one of
the towers is the collection of the Sussex Archaeological Society.
St Michael’s church is without architectural merit, but contains
old brasses and monuments; St Anne’s church is a transitional
Norman structure; St Thomas-at-Cliffe is Perpendicular; St
John’s, Southover, of mixed architecture, preserves some early
Norman portions, and has some relics of the Warenne family.
In the grounds of the Cluniac priory of St Pancras, founded in
1078, the leaden coffins of William de Warenne and Gundrada
his wife were dug up during an excavation for the railway in 1845.
There is a free grammar school dating from 1512, and among the
other public buildings are the town hall and corn exchange,
county hall, prison, and the Fitzroy memorial library. The
industries include the manufacture of agricultural implements,
brewing, tanning, and iron and brass founding. The municipal
borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area,
1042 acres.
The many neolithic and bronze implements that have been discovered, and the numerous tumuli and earthworks which surround Lewes, indicate its remote origin. The town Lewes (Loewas, Loewen, Leswa, Laquis, Latisaquensis) was in the royal demesne of the Saxon kings, from whom it received the privilege of a market. Æthelstan established two royal mints there, and by the reign of Edward the Confessor, and probably before, Lewes was certainly a borough. William I. granted the whole barony of Lewes, including the revenue arising from the town, to William de Warenne, who converted an already existing fortification into a place of residence. His descendants continued to hold the barony until the beginning of the 14th century. In default of male issue, it then passed to the earl of Arundel, with whose descendants it remained until 1439, when it was divided between the Norfolks, Dorsets and Abergavennys. By 1086 the borough had increased 30% in value since the beginning of the reign, and its importance as a port and market-town is evident from Domesday. A gild merchant seems to have existed at an early date. The first mention of it is in a charter of Reginald de Warenne, about 1148, by which he restored to the burgesses the privileges they had enjoyed in the time of his grandfather and father, but of which they had been deprived. In 1595 a “Fellowship” took the place of the old gild and in conjunction with two constables governed the town until the beginning of the 18th century. The borough seal probably dates from the 14th century. Lewes was incorporated by royal charter in 1881. The town returned two representatives to parliament from 1295 until deprived of one member in 1867. It was disfranchised in 1885. Earl Warenne and his descendants held the fairs and markets from 1066. In 1792 the fair-days were the 6th of May, Whit-Tuesday, the 26th of July (for wool), and the 2nd of October. The market-day was Saturday. Fairs are now held on the 6th of May for horses and cattle, the 20th of July for wool, and the 21st and 28th of September for Southdown sheep. A corn-market is held every Tuesday, and a stock-market every alternate Monday. The trade in wool has been important since the 14th century.
Lewes was the scene of the battle fought on the 14th of May 1264 between Henry III. and Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester. Led by the king and by his son, the future king Edward I., the royalists left Oxford, took Northampton and drove Montfort from Rochester into London. Then, harassed on the route by their foes, they marched through Kent into Sussex and took up their quarters at Lewes, a stronghold of the royalist Earl Warenne. Meanwhile, reinforced by a number of Londoners, Earl Simon left London and reached Fletching, about 9 m. north of Lewes,
