Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/560

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. VII.

ing to the plan told to Blainville two months before his illness. Nor can any trace be found in the fourth volume on which he was engaged when attacked in 1838. Littré, however, attached chief importance to that of 1845, claiming that the previous objective observation of facts was replaced henceforth by subjective, imaginative constructions. Littré did not understand the new subjective method. Comte held that the social and human point of view must be made to predominate in scientific research. The extravagances in his later works, noted by Mill and others as symptoms of insanity, were the outcome of mystical tendencies arising from Comte's love for Clotilde. This reacted on his individual life, and then on his system. He could not conquer mysticism as he had conquered insanity, and he tried in vain to harmonize it with his social philosophy. But his reason remained logical and synthetic.

Arthur Nutt.

Was soll Wundt für uns sein? A. Thiery. Rev. Néo-Scolastique, No. 17, pp. 60-66.

Under this title the writer discusses, first, the psychology of Wundt. Conscious phenomena are for Wundt the exclusive object of psychology. The traditional doctrine of animism seems to conform to the facts of experience more closely than any other. The influence of the agnosticism of Wundt is then discussed. If he hesitates to rest in the doctrine of animism, it is because of an agnostic ideology. It is in the name of such an ideology that Wundt rejects both spiritualism a priori, and materialism. Internal experience has the priority, not external experience; internal experience alone gives certainty. In criticising Wundt's system as a whole, the author maintains that Wundt's hope that the doctrine of animism and his ideology may yet be reconciled, is a false one. By his inexact analysis of conscious experience, he is driven to the idealism of Berkeley.

Vida F. Moore.

La philosophie de Herbert Spencer. D. Mercier. Rev. Néo-Scolastique, No. 17, pp. 1-29.

Herbert Spencer is remarkable for the depth as well as for the breadth of his knowledge. He is not, however, a scholar in the special sense of the word; he has never attached his name to any discovery. He has assimilated scientific knowledge with a marvellous facility, and has sought to systematize the isolated groups of facts into one architectural whole—a new "synthetic philosophy." His philosophy is the coördination of all the ideas of the nineteenth century, from the idealism of Hume and Kant to the pantheism of Hegel, with the mechanical conception of Descartes, the positivism of Comte, and the evolutionism of Darwin. When Spencer began his labors, idealism was represented by two masters, Hume and Kant. Both are right, and both wrong, says Spencer. The given elements of knowledge are a priori for each individual, but a posteriori for the entire series of in-