ENGLISH PSYCHOLOGY.*
IT may be doubted whether the stimulus supplied by the late M. Cousin to the study of philosophy in France has not proved prejudicial rather than otherwise. The criticism of M. Cousin, quoted in the volume before us from Mr. G. H. Lewes, seems to us as unjust as it is rhetorically exaggerated. Still, it cannot be denied that the genial and accomplished founder of the Eclectic School, who presented, in a neat and thoroughly French dress, the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers of both ancient times and modern, and for a short period made philosophy the fashion of the hour in Paris, contributed not a little to excuse its subsequent neglect. He made philosophical systems seem to the French mind only so many intellectual puzzles and curiosities, which might be lightly taken up and as lightly thrown aside. The faithful work of some of his predecessors and contemporaries in the Scotch school was cast into the shade by the more showy, but less trustworthy criticism of Cousin. He flitted from system to system, gathering intellectual honey from each, but rather in a spirit of dilettantism than with the patient fidelity of a searcher after truth. Since Cousin, so little philosophical work has been done in France, that one is tempted to apply to him the condem- nation unjustly addressed by Sir William Hamilton to Dr. Thomas Brown, that while he greatly helped to excite temporary interest in philosophy, he did yet more to render inevitable the neg- lect of the study which followed his death. France has had acute and powerful critics in philosophy since Cousin, but she has not produced many whose names will be remembered in its history. There are few more interesting essays on philo- sophical subjects than those, for instance, of Paul Janet, and in M. Ravaisson, France has a philosophical critic of rare insight and comprehensiveness. But there is no French philosophy worthy of the country of Des Cartes, or which in the nineteenth century can be compared with the work of the great philosophical theorists of the eighteenth.
In these circumstances, we welcome as a happy symptom of intellectual life and sympathy this series of studies of the English psychologists by M. Ribot. In France, little is known regard- ing the greatest philosophical writers produced by England in the present day. M. Ribot rebukes his countrymen for their com- parative ignorance of Mr. John Stuart Mill, whom they are con- tent to classify as a Positivist and a disciple of M. Comte, and having done that, suppose they know all they require to learn regarding him. The volume he has prepared on "English Psychology" is intended to remedy this state of things. It is a careful and laborious work, the result of much patient reading and honest research. The author is not, indeed, always to be trusted. But his blunders are in his illustrations and incidental references, not in the exposition of the views of the writers whose principles and positions be seeks to explain. M. Ribot's object is • English Prychology. Translated from the French of Th. Itibot. London: Henry B. Sing and Co. 1873. to exhibit to his countrymen the leading lines of thought of the most recent English psychologists of the Association school of thought He begins with Hartley and James Mill, because these are fairly entitled to be regarded as the founders of the school. But his main purpose is to explain the principles and ideas of the English Associationist philosophers, as represented by Mr. John Stuart Mill, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. A. Bain, and Mr. G. H. Lewes. He adds Mr. Samuel Bailey, but that is an almost gratuitous addi- tion. M. Ribot is careful to inform us that though he has singled out the Association psychologists, he does not mean to suggest that they are the only English writers on the subject worthy of note. He admits there is another school, which had among its apostles Sir William Hamilton, Dr. Manse, Mr. Ferrier, and Professor Wrhewell. But the representatives of the Association philosophy may fairly claim to be discussed by themselves, as a separate and independent school of thought. "As it is unknown, or very nearly unknown, in France," says M. Ribot, "and as it seems to hold the first rank, in virtue of the celebrity of the names which represent it, of its harmony with the general tendencies of the age, and the most recent discoveries of the natural and physical sciences, and of the originality of its researches and results, we believe that it must be useful to make known its doctrines, and that this work of pure exposition cannot be displeasing, either to those who accept or to those who repel them."
No one will question M. Ribot's discretion in treating hie subject in this way, or after reading his volume, will deny that he has fulfilled his object. The division of philosophy into ontology and psychology, in order to make of the latter a special and independent science, is now generally acquiesced in. Even the late Professor Ferrier, with all his scorn for the psycho- logists, did not quarrel with their inquiries into the human mind. He denounced them strongly, and even passionately, for intruding upon a field which was not theirs ; but if they would only keep to what he regarded as the humble though useful task of observing the facts and laws of mind, he had no wish to disturb them in their labours. It was because they intruded upon the sphere of ontology that he was so unphilosophically irate against them. Happily, it is not necessary, in order to do service in psychology, to settle first of all the difficult question of the province or possibility of metaphysic as ontology. To M. Ribot the pure metaphysician is a poet, and he claims that the author of a "great cosmogonic epopee " has his place and function in the world, even though it be admitted that his speculations can never be verified. " Philosophy," be says, " must ever remain an eternal attempt upon the Unknown ;" but the making of the attempt is a symptom of intellectual life, and the " death of human intelligence " would follow upon the dogmatic solution of all the ultimate questions regarding God, nature, and ourselves which have occupied men from the beginning. Whether we agree with M. Ribot or not, psychology has been defi- nitely separated from these purely metaphysical inquiries. It has been constituted an independent science of the phenomena and laws of the human mind. The great service of the Association philosophers mainly consists in giving it this character and position. The best of them do not discard the subjective method—the examination of the individual conscious- ness—but they have superadded the objective method to the sub- jective. The Scotch school did good work by employing the method of introspection, but psychology cannot be completed through internal observation alone. Psychological facts must be studied from both sides,—from the outside as well as from the inside, by comparison of the external results of internal processes with each other, and by tracing the successive phases of the development of mental phenomena, as well as by reflection on individual experi- ence. Both these methods have been employed by Mr. J. S. Mill and Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the result of supplementing the one by the other has been to build up a body of psychological doctrine, which is to be seen in its most complete form in the works of Mr. Spencer, though it has been contributed to by Mr. Alexander Bain, as well as long before by Hartley and Mr. James Mill.
Yet that it is impossible altogether to isolate Psychology is de- monstratively proved by the procedure of Mr. Spencer himself. M.
Ribot justly observes that the fundamental idea of Mr. Spencer, which he applies to everything and finds everywhere, is that of evo- lution or of progress. His whole system is coloured by and receives its character from that idea, which enables him to explain the facts and laws of the human mind in accordance with the principle
he lays down as fundamental. It is true Mt. Spencer begins by drawing a broad line of demarcation between the Unknowable and the Knowable, and confines his researches in science to the latter ; but that is merely to say he has solved the fundamental
problems of philosophy, or provisionally put them aside, in his own manner. Psychology, while found to be an independent branch of knowledge, nevertheless receives a place in the universal scheme of human knowledge, which it is the object of philosophy to attain. Nobody will dispute the distinguished services rendered by Mr. Herbert Spencer in the use he has made of the hypothesis of development. But it is scarcely exact to say he is the first who has " produced " the hypothesis "objectively." It may be true, as M. Ribot says, that Leibnitz's anticipation of the idea was "only a view of the future by a genius," without being verified by facts ; and that Hegel's theory of progress " is an entirely metaphysical conception, completely subjective ;" but Hegel's predecessor, Schelling, though he may not have freed the hypothesis from metaphysics, certainly did more than either Leibnitz or Hegel to verify it by " objective" means. This does not detract from the value of Mr. Spencer's services, but it is a point which ought not to be overlooked by a writer on philosophy.
The question whether the Associationist philosophy is or will be adequate to account for all the facts with which psychology deals is not discussed by M. Ribot. It is plain, however, that that may very well be questioned by those who are ready to admit the important services rendered by Messrs. Mill and Spencer and their fellows. We may allow " organised experience " to have accomplished much, without believing that it has done everything. We may gladly admit Mr. J. S. Mill's eminent services in logic and psychology, without accepting his ultimate analysis of mind and matter into " permanent possi- bilities." And we can signalise the good work done by Mr. Bain, who is always careful and laborious, though often rather physio- logical than philosophical, without subscribing to the exhaustive- ness of the principle of association. It is satisfactory to find the labours of the leading English psychologists so fairly appreciated by a French writer as they are in this work of M. Ribot. We have said he is not free from mistakes, as when he speaks of Hume as not a Scotch philosopher, writes of Dr. Thomas Brown, who died before Sir William Hamilton began to be known, as " a recent philosopher," and so entirely misapprehends Dugald Stewart's tendency as to come to the conclusion that if now alive he would have been another Bain. The translation of the work into English is excel- lent. The translator has seemingly taken the trouble to supply the passages quoted from the English writers from the English ver- sions of their works, instead of retranslating them from French into English. At least, we have found it to be so in the case of Mr. John Stuart Mill. The translator might have done this to a still larger extent, for there are many passages not in inverted commas which, in a slightly abridged form, are merely extracts from Mr. Mill, but which the translator has
retranslated, instead of taking them from the original. The references to the pages of the volumes quoted are either incorrect, or different editions of the same work are meant to be referred to. The reference on p. 117 to p. 227 of Mill's Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy correctly applies to the third edition ; but sdven other passages are quoted, in the space of a few pages, from the same work, in which the figures given are wrong,—pp. 509 and 510, for example, ought to be pp. 573 and 576, of the third edition. Such mistakes may be corrected in another edition ; and the work is so excellent a handbook of contemporary English psychology, that we trust it will attain to that distinction.
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