course a sense in which anybody may allow that the muscles, interposed as they naturally are between the peripheral ends of the fibres that run from and the fibres that run to the brain, are a part of the organ of mind. But so long as there is a meaning in speaking of the brain and nerves as composing one 'system' implicated with the mental life, it is idle to speak of the muscles which lie external to it as having a closer organic relation to mind than the whole motor side of the system has. "The division of the nervous system into brain, spinal cord and sympathetic system," Dr. Bastian urges with another purpose (p. 151), "is one which, though justifiable enough on anatomical grounds, is much less so from a physiological point of viewthe nervous system is really one and indivisible". It is odd then to read immediately afterwards of "certain reservations" that must be made, so that only "almost the whole nervous system" can be regarded as (in the widest sense) the organ of mind. There is peril in attempting to limit and distinguish thus without the semblance of a principle.

As to Mind, Dr. Bastian is mainly concerned in dealing with its "Scope," to find an expression which shall represent it as not limited to conscious experience without the awkwardness (or worse) of resorting to the use of contradictory compounds like unconscious sensation,' &c. First, however, he begins by dwelling upon the peculiarity of our knowledge of mind-that it starts from and always involves the data of direct subjective consciousness, and he is so little disposed to make light of these as to declare (in a truly philosophical spirit) that, "strictly speaking, all knowledge whatsoever of any other natural phenomena is still but the expression and the summation of our own conscious states". At the same time he vehemently protests against the notion that Mind is the name of "something having an actual independent existence-an entity". "The term Mind," he says, "no more corresponds to a definite self-existing principle than the word Magnetism"; and apparently he finds nothing in his philosophical interpretation of "natural phenomena," cited in the last sentence but one, to keep him from adding that "conscious states are dependent upon the properties and molecular activities of nerve-tissues, just as (!) magnetic phenomena are dependent upon the properties and molecular actions of certain kinds or states of iron". It is this notion of an independent entity, he declares, that entails the error of supposing Mind and Consciousness to be commensurate, and though the grounds of the consequence are not made very clear, let it be noted as Dr. Bastian's conviction, in passing. As said before, his main concern then becomes to fix the notion of mind or mental phenomena as more extensive than conscious experience and to do this in a less contradictory way than by speaking of unconscious feeling and the like; and the aim is distinctly meritorious, even though, elsewhere in his book, he may be as ready as another to use the very compounds he condemns.

In point of fact the difficulty is solved by being, as Hamilton would have said, 'eviscerated'. The question presents itself to Dr. Bastian more especially in this form : Mind as we are subjectively conscious of

it appears as "a mere imperfect, disjointed, serial agglomeration of feelings &c., while the nervous processes upon which we have reason to believe these disconnected feelings &c. are dependent are parts of one great continuous complex; must we not then suppose that mind is more than the broken series of feelings &c. that we are conscious of, and should we not suppose the unconscious states to be something else than "feelings" or the like, which are conscious states? The answer is that the name Mind should and must be enlarged so as to cover along with conscious states, dependent as these are on nerve-actions, "other mere unconscious nerve-actions which are contributory to rather than directly associated with conscious states" (p. 150)-provided always (pp. 148, 9) these be not outgoing currents. Sometimes Dr. Bastian's expression is so far different that instead of "nerve-actions he says "results" of nerve-actions; but that he means nothing but objective nerve-processes or "bodily conditions" is proved by his arguing (pp. 149-50) that the objection to coupling such with conscious states under the one head of Mind is based upon our ignorance of the true relation between subjective states and nerve-processes. Are not motions, he goes on to say (recurring at this pinch to the philosophical point of view), after all known to us only in terms of feeling? And who is to declare that there is (as he puts the point more plainly on p. 608) "no kinship between states of consciousness and nerve-actions"? All which appears to come to one or other of two things-either that in dealing with Mind there must be no reference to the nervous system or brain at all but only to certain different kinds of feeling; or that we may assume nerve-processes (always excepting outgoing currents) to be mental occurrences as much and in exactly the same sense as any state of which we are subjectively conscious. The one alternative cannot suit Dr. Bastian desiring to write about Brain as an Organ of Mind from the point of view of the positive sciences. The other can hardly seem to anybody a step towards clearness of scientific vision. Leaving aside his philosophical considerations as irrelevant to the question in hand, we get from Dr. Bastian a solution which simply confuses that distinction of subjective and objective occurrences upon which the phenomenal treatment of Mind is based.

Why too does Dr. Bastian, from the ground whereon he places himself, make in the closing words of his treatise (p. 690) that protest against the doctrine of so-called Automatism-that it is "one in which all notions of Free-Will, Duty and Moral Obligation would seem to be alike consigned to a common grave, together with the underlying powers of self-education and self-control"? If he is sure of one thing, first or last, it is that while conscious states may be "a mere imperfect, disjointed, serial agglomeration," there is throughout life an unbroken continuity of nervous processes. The very purpose of his book is to show that whatever may be included under Mind (which with him is no more an independent entity than Magnetism), it can all be expressed as function of a material organism. Nay, on the very last page but one, when he is leading up to his solemn conclusion, he has it that "just as it is the very material motions on

which Heat depends which do the work ascribed to Heat, so do the very material motions on which Consciousness or Feeling depends do the work which we ascribe to Feeling". How then does his own position differ from so-called (miscalled) Automatism? Let him show us how he more than the 'Automatists' can rescue "Free Will" from the tomb. As for "Duty and Moral Obligation," it is somewhat late in the day to speak of them as kept alive by any particular theory of mind.

On the whole Dr. Bastian cannot be said to have written a satisfying book. Still he has written one that is full of the most varied information, collected with unwearied diligence and no common earnestness of purpose; he has propounded a general theory of brain-action which displays a much juster appreciation of the complexity of the facts than some other theories in vogue; and his psychological observations, while always based upon solid study, not seldom give evidence of remarkable insight. Psychologists would do well to have the book by them for reference on many subjects.

EDITOR.

Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy. By FREDERICK POLLOCK, Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Honorary Doctor of Laws of the University of Edinburgh. With portrait of Spinoza. London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1880. Pp. xlii., 467.

Mr. Pollock's book aims not only at being understood by those to whom Spinoza is little more than a name, but also at contributing towards the work of his critical interpreters. To any reader interested in the life and doctrine of the great thinker, it will strongly recommend itself by literary merits of no common order, as well as the evidence of large-minded love of truth and thorough mastery of its subject. Such as are specially concerned with its topics will hail it as one of the best monographs ever written of a philosopher by one of his warm admirers.

The Introduction contains a careful survey of editions and other publications relating to Spinoza and his teaching. It may be worth mentioning, in addition, that there were at least two different editions of the Tract. Theol.-Polit. in 16701; that Dr. Stern recovered in 1872 an interesting fragment from a lost letter; that the Wolfenbüttel library possesses a fourth portrait with some claims to authenticity; and that Prof. Windelband, then of Zürich, delivered a fine

1 Cp. Ueberweg-Heinze, Grundr. der Gesch. der Phil., 5te Aufl., III., p. 66. As to a first edition of the Opp. Posth., which Stolle reports to have been published at the Hague, there are strong reasons for believing that the German traveller misunderstood the oral statement of his Dutch witness and that such an edition never existed.

2 Ueberweg, ib., p. 67. It came out of a letter from Oldenburg to Boyle, printed in the latter's Works.

Supplementa, ed. Van Vloten, p. 360.

address on the anniversary in 1877. The book had left the press just before the Spinoza Committee at the Hague resolved to prepare a trustworthy edition of the philosopher's works, and Mr. Nijhoff published his fine reprint of the original Dutch Colerus.

In the first two chapters we have a substantial account of the life and correspondence of Spinoza. Here again Mr. Pollock has taken full, advantage of his acquaintance with Dutch scholars and their language. We may however observe that the Collegiant communities (pp. 17, 22), amongst whom the outcast Jew found a refuge, were but an offshoot from the Remonstrants (the party driven out of the State Church by the Synod of Dordt), whereas in Amsterdam the Remonstrants had their ministry and theological seminary as early as 1629 and 1634.2

It

Chapter iii. deals with the ideas and sources of Spinozism. begins with a just discrimination between the ideas, which are the living and really momentous part of philosophy, and their technical embodiment, which is always more or less of an artificial kind and destined to decay. The leading idea with Spinoza is the unity and uniformity of the world, and this is conceived as a principle at once of transcendent speculation and of scientific research. The system is an altogether original attempt to unite, and even identify, two distinct currents of thought; one derived from an early study of Jewish and Renaissance thinkers, the other from later meditations on Descartes and the mathematical physics of the time. Mr. Pollock enters into some details in order to show that Spinoza was an attentive reader in both those departments of learning, but one who reserved his own judgment, and, while haunted through life by certain traditions of ontology and of mathematical demonstration, knew where to lay his hand on ideas of vital importance, which he built up into a grand construction entirely his own.

The reader having thus been made acquainted with the man, the surroundings in which he moved and the studies that set him thinking, the ground is prepared for a searching analysis of the works he left to the world. Such is our author's penetration, that one will not find it easy to raise an objection which he has not thought of meeting beforehand. Of his contributions to exegesis we may just mention his remarks on res aeternae, facies totius universi, and the double meaning of idea.

The key to the right understanding of Spinoza's works is the knowledge of their final object. Unlike Descartes, who was content to see his way clearly as a man of the world in peace with its established

1 Printed in Vierteljahrsschrift für wiss. Phil., I., pp. 419-440.

Also, the Cartesian professor to whom Albert Burgh had written (p. 75) was called Cranen or Kranen, and not Craane; and the Lange Boogaard was not at Amsterdam (p. 447) but a country seat near Schiedam (Suppl., p. 298). One feels half obliged to apologise for remarks like these at a time when a writer like Prof. Fowler (Locke, p. 13) makes Cleve the capital of Brandenburg.

powers, and by his own confession' treated metaphysics as of minor account, Spinoza yearned in his heart of hearts for perfect happiness as a rational being in full communion with his fellow-men. In the modern conception of the universe, as a consistent whole accessible to reason in all its parts, he found satisfaction for the deep aspirations awakened by his early masters; and for the religious significance and powerful attraction of his doctrine we are certainly indebted to its affinity, notwithstanding its modern tendencies, with ancient and mediaval contemplations of the highest order. The dominance of his rational. conception of the world he rightly saw to depend, not so much on great wealth of experience or much exercise of discursive reasoning, as on a firm grasp of the ultimate data of sense and thought. Reliance of the mind on its own competence involves a corresponding belief in the nature of things; and this is at the same time the necessary condition of all true science and sound practice, and of an adequate notion of the all-ruling Deity. Particular discoveries cannot increase the belief, but they serve to specify the actual order of nature, and by those very means add to our knowledge of God himself. Spinoza expressly wants to understand the order of given reality. He takes care to exclude the offspring of mere imagination, a passive condition of the mind, subject to special natural laws. But he so utterly disdains the abstractions in which the degenerate Aristotelians whom he knew of appeared to find the object of their wisdom, as to earn from Mr. Pollock the appellation of a thorough-going nominalist.

Nevertheless he expects to derive a proper understanding of things from their true definitions. Of course he must have admitted real kinds of some sort as a consequence of the uniformity of nature; but then he insists upon definitions that contain the immediate cause of the thing, and account for its properties, so far as it is considered by itself. Now this postulate embraces a precise indication of the kind of thing meant, together with the conditions to which its existence is invariably linked in the order of nature: the 7 together with the doti. Only, the to understood by Spinoza is profoundly distinguished from that of Aristotle by his resolute rejection of all final causes. Not that he claimed to possess many definitions answering his demand; but such he took to be necessary for science proper, and he could afford to wait for the progress of rational research, because the happiness which he sought as the chief good was brought about by keeping true to its principle.

Like other reformers, Spinoza himself has greatly added to the perplexities of his interpreters by an extensive borrowing of forms of thought and speech designed by others in a different spirit from his own. He too was obliged in a measure to speak the language familiar to his public, and, moreover, there was a real connexion between his speculations and those of the past, that was apt to go counter to the free development of ideas in his own mind. In such cases critics can hardly expect ever to agree upon the exact distance that separates a

1

1 Lettres, Paris 1657, I., p. 117; ed. Cousin, IX. p. 131.