MR. LEWES'S " PROBLEMS OF LIFE AND MIND." WE confess

to having lived in some trepidation lest the second volume of Mr. Lewes's " Problems" should appear before we had mastered the first. Dr. Johnson once assured Mrs. Thrale, in some doggrel verses, that she could not " make the tea so fast as he could gulp it down." But the reverse is, we fear, the case with Mr. Lewes. We are intimately persuaded that be can write out his solutions of "the problems of life and mind" much faster than we can gulp them down. To tell the truth, a good part of this book is extremely hard to read, and still harder to "assimilate," as Mr. Lewes would say, and nothing, by the bye, stands in the way of the mastering of the book so much as the dense mass of physiological and biological metaphors through which the reader has to push his way to the solutions offered him of the problems " of Mind." Moreover, to a certain extent, Mr. Lewes is to blame for the alarming character of the book. The first part, or Introduction, and the last part, or the Problems,' are readable enough, and though they want a good deal of rereading to master, they are written in that lucid English which no one knows how to write better than Mr. Lewes. The second part, especially that portion of it containing what Mr. Lewes calls "psychological principles,"—principles which appear to us to, have many more biological than psychological conceptions in them,--bristles with a pedantic terminology for which no excuse is even assigned, and is the heaviest and most unremunerative piece of reading the present writer has waded through for many a day. After a very fatiguing study of it, he can only say that it appears to him to be a sadly misplaced bit of writing. It is a kind of elaborate index of reasonings and analogies not explained to the reader, of which, indeed, one has, for the most part, to guess the drift, and which have little or no bearing on the remainder of the book. It serves to puzzle, not to explain, and so far as we at least understand it, the parade of scientific terms it introduces is wholly unjustified by the state of knowledge on the subjects to which it refers. Of Psychostatics, Psychodynamics, and their so- called laws, all that we can remark is, that not nearly enough 'is said to justify their mention at all. The intention is, we suppose, to show that the psychical laws have their roots in the laws of the organism ; but instead of giving us his complete con- -ception of the process of evolution, which might be instructive, Mr. Lewes casts down his results in a mere dry table of con- -tents—accompanied, at most, by hints of his philosophical plan, and not nearly always by that—as if by way of warning how impossible it is for any psychologist to appreciate his point of view who has not followed him into his physiological researches ; —and then straight he grows intelligible again, and proceeds to give his solutions of the ' problems,' without any substantial reference to this " land of sand and thorns " through which one has so wearily plodded one's way. A greater sin against time method than Mr. Lewes's procedure we cannot imagine. Whether the so-called ' psychological principles' could or could not be established by elaborate exposition, illustration, and defence, we cannot express an opinion. But we will say that where they are and as they are, they are simply deterrent, that they are not led up to by what comes before them, and do not lead up to what comes after them. So much of the general method of Mr. Lewes's thought as they embody is for the most part sufficiently expounded in other chapters where the need occurs, and expounded very much better. A drearier strip of literary desert than the hundred pages or so on psychological principles, we have never travelled. They might perhaps have been expanded into a very interesting volume on the relations between biological and psychological prin- ciples. As it is, neither the biology nor the psychology in them is decently expounded, and the only effect on the reader is to raise a strong prejudice against what is intended, we suppose, to serve for purposes of elucidation.

But to leave this unsatisfactory part of Mr. Lewes's book, our main criticism on his Problems is that, while from beginning to end his work is a protest against unverified hypotheses, his ' solu- tions ' of the problems stated are constantly dependent on hypoth- eses which appear to us not only unverified, but unverifiable. Take, first, for example, a doctrine of which he makes frequent use, namely, that experience' depends not on mere feeli❑g, but on feeling which is 4 registered' in the organism,—registration being explained to mean 'registration by the modification of structure.' Now, is this hypothesis as to what constitutes ' experience' either verified or verifiable ? Is it possible that we should be able to show that one feeling which, after affecting us, teaches us some- thing, leaves its mark permanently on the nervous system, while • Problems of Life and Mind. By George Henry Lewes. First Series: "The Foundations of a Creed." London : Trilbner and Co. 1874.

another, which does not teach us anything, if it leaves a mark at all, leaves one that is obliterated by subsequent experiences? Yet by this doctrine Mr. Lewes evidently lays great store, and refers to it again and again with satisfaction as a psychological law. A. more completely a priori assumption, not only unverified, but as we believe hardly capable of verification, we never met with in a philosopher who is so severe as is Mr. Lewes on unverified a priori assumptions. It is the very ideal of a mere a priori assumption.

We shall next select for discussion from this miscellaneous volume the central problem of the latter portion of it, that on "Necessary and Universal Truths," for here Mr. Lewes takes unique ground of his own, ground which may be made intelligible within moderate limits, and restricts himself, more- over, to a strictly psychological discussion, his object being to show that there is no peculiarity at all in this class of truths, certainly none implying an origin more independent of the laws of the organism than any other class of truths, for in- stance, truths of simple perception, or what are commonly called contingent truths. The drift of Mr. Lewes's teaching is to demon- strate the ' evolution' of the mind out of the organism in the peculiar sense he attaches to the word evolution,'—namely, that there is nothing in the higher stage (for example, in consciousness), of which you cannot find the germ in a lower stage (in animal sensibility). It has always been maintained by what is called the a priori school, that this is false, and especially that in the power of the mind to assert necessary and universal truths transcending not only its own experience, but the range of all its possible experi- ence, you find something clearly not capable of evolution, in Mr. Lewes's sense, out of laws of organic sensibility. This position has been defended recently with great ability against Mr. Mill's philo- sophy, by Dr. Ward in a series of papers in the Dublin Review, of which the last, and one of the moat masterly, appeared only two or three weeks ago, in the January number of the Dublin. Mr. Lewes's line of argument differs in some remarkable points from Mr. Mill's. Still anyone who will read the essays in the Dublin in connection with Mr. Lewes's elaborate discussion, will have a comprehensive view of a question, with only one or two critical points of which we can attempt now to deal.

Mr. Lewes's view of ' a priori,' and necessary,' truth is somewhat peculiar. He admits fully that there are such things as a priori conditions of knowledge,—that is, as Mr. Spencer has so long and ably maintained, conditions of knowledge stored up in the hereditary organism, and representing ancestral ex- perience, like 'the pointer's disposition to point at game or the chicken's to pounce accurately, within a minute or two of break- ing the shell, on insects suitable for food, — inherited con- ditions of nerve, which when brought into play by stimuli from outside, lead to knowledge by a much shorter and more certain path than would be otherwise accessible to the crea- tures which possess this organisation but for that transmission of ancestral experience. In this sense, and only in this sense, Mr. Lewes admits and maintains a priori conditions of know- ledge. What is a priori to us now, i.e., no mere result of the experience of the individual, represents, in his view, the experience of former generations ; and the mode in which it is handed down to us, is through the modification of the struc- ture of our nervous system caused by that experience,—which modified structure we inherit, and with it the capacity of rapidly acquiring, apprehending, and utilising special kinds of experience. We may note, by the way, an appearance of un- certainty in Mr. Lewes's view on this head. He regards the marvellous instincts' of the lower animals as the organised ex- perience of their ancestors, and accounts for the comparative help- lessness of the human infant,—its comparative inability, for instance, to discern distance and understand space-relations,—as the result of its being born at a relatively much less mature stage of animal life than that at which the chicken, for example, breaks the shell. We gather that if the infant were born in the same degree of maturity as the chicken, Mr. Lewes supposes that it would, without the discipline of much individual experience, display, as early as the chicken, much more developed intuitions as to space. But if we carry out this line of thought rigorously, we should in time evidently push all such instincts back to ancestors without sufficient capa- city for experience—(i.e., -without sufficiently highly-organised nervous structures)—to keep their owners alive, jest as infants would be if their parents had no highly organised parental instincts. And you could not fall back, in such a case, on parental instincts, since these, too, must be referred, on the same line of thought, back to a period of inchoate development, when they would have been in- adequate to their purpose of protecting and feeding the offspring. In order to meet this difficulty by the theory of evolution interpreted in Mr. Lewes's sense, you must find some other source for some instincts at least, than organised experience ; and unless we mis- read certain hints in Mr. Lewes, he would solve the difficulty by

the assertion that the higher logic of experience is only evolved out of a certain obscure logic of sensibility, which in the shape of certain laws of discrimination, assimilation, and nutrition, has its germs even in the vegetable world. The point is important, as

showing that even Mr. Lewes has to assume an instinct imbued with a logic of its own antecedent to experience, not much

less mysterious than that which he explains as the result of ex-

perience. But the general teaching of the volume is that instincts arc, for the most part, like all other a priori conditions of know-

ledge, mere forms of organised experience, inherited as a conse- quence of the transmission of structures of the nervous system which that experience has modified. And hence proceeds the innate aptitude in man for knowledge of geometry, arithmetic, and other such subjects on which our ancestors, perhaps, for millions of generations, have been slowly acquiring instructive experiences registered in our inherited nervous systems.

But this theory of the origin of a priori aptitudes, even if it were pushed to its furthest limit by Mr. Lewes, which we do not

think it is, would not answer Mr. Lewes's purpose. It is clear

enough, as Dr. Ward has pointed out in the last Dublin Review, that there are many other much more completely organised ex-

periences than those which affect our geometrical and arithmetical aptitudes. As Mr. Lewes himself points out, the experience that air and food are needful to life must have been ' organised' long before the more delicate experiences of space, and yet no one has ever regarded it as a ' necessary' truth that all life requires air and food. If there be such things as ' necessary' truths, perceived by man, yet transcending all real and possible experience, it would

be very difficult to refer them back merely to a priori conditions of knowledge representing accumulations of ancestral experience.

Mr. Lewes sees this, and he proceeds, by the most extraordinary feat of psychological conjuring we ever remember to have seen, to get rid of the distinction between particular and contingent truths on the one hand, and universal and necessary truths on the

other. He holds that all truth is necessary, and that all truth of -which you can safely universalise the conditions, is universal. The

first is an astounding assertion. It is really made, however. Mr.

Lewes says again and again that all things true at all are neces- sarily true, and explicitly accepts the inference that "every truth is an identical proposition, or is capable of being reduced to one" !

" No one can conceive the thing now existing to be not now existing. He can state this verbally. He cannot realise the

symbols. He can indeed conceive that, under other conditions, what

is now existing might not exist ; but this change of terms substi- tutes in f he place of one proposition,—' the thing exists,'—another wholly different proposition, 'the thing no longer existe.'" And again :—" A. truth is the assertion that something is, and being

what it is, cannot be different, unless the conditions of its exist- ence change." " Every proposition is contingent which admits

the possibility of a variation in its terms ; every proposition is necessary which excludes such variation." Now take the proposi- tion John Smith has a cold in the head at the present moment."

There is no room for the variation of those terms to those who know who John Smith is, and what a cold in the head means. Is it a necessary' proposition ? It is true, of course, that to imagine the non-existence of John Smith's cold in the head, when you yourself know that it exists, is to imagine other conditions than the real ones,—which conditions, knowing them to be imaginary, we can never believe to be real. But to use necessary' in this sense, is to confound two totally different things. Seeing John

Smith suffering from a cold in the bead, it is no doubt necessary for me, so long as I continue to see it, to believe in it, and in that sense; the existence of John Smith's cold is to me a necessary truth,—i.e., one I am obliged by my own perceptions to affirm.

But this evades the whole asserted peculiarity of necessary truths,—the peculiarity, namely, that when you have mastered the significance of a certain number of ideas, you are carried on by the intellectual constitution of your mind into connecting them with

certain other ideas not included in them, and yet flowing from them by the mere law of thought itself. So, if I grasp the idea of a triangle of equal aides, the intellectual constitution of my mind compels me to connect with it the notion of a triangle with equal angles opposite the equal aides, an idea not implied in the former,

but inseparably connected with it by an intellectual necessity I cannot evade. That is a' necessary' truth in the only sense in which it presents a difficulty to the psychologist who wants to trace back all the laws of mind to the laws of the external universe and the laws of organic sensibility. But

Mr. Lewes confounds this with a totally different thing,—ew truth which is forced upon me in perception, not one to- which my intellectual constitution alone leads me, by a distinct step that goes beyond the fact perceived. Can any con-

ceivable manipulation make John Smith's cold in the head flows. out of the very idea of John Smith ? Mr. Lewes might, perhaps,.

reply, if we rightly interpret what seems to us a very confused. argument, an argument that altogether confounds the necessities- of external laws of cause with the necessities of internal laws of thought,—" Yes, most surely, if we knew what John Smith' really meant,—i.e.,, the whole series of events, influences, and conditions which are embodied in John Smith's life ; we- should then know everything that led to his taking cold, and therefore ' John Smith' properly understood as the whole man,.

from birth to the instant on which the cold manifested itself, could not help including the idea of the cold in the head at that moment.

Hence the proposition' John Smith has a cold in the head' would then be just as necessary as ' parallel lines cannot enclose a space.'"" If that is really what Mr. Lewes would answer, he is confusing two totally distinct things,—the psychical necessity which compels us to connect certain subjects with certain predicates by the consti- tution of our own mind, for this is what we mean when we call a.

proposition " necessary,"—and the tenet of a particular school of philosophy that everything whatever, which is at all, is by a cer- tain law of external cosmical necessity which would not permit

to be otherwise. Now that this is Mr. Lewes's deliberate view, we- infer from the very astounding statement that " every truth is an

identical proposition, or is capable of being reduced to one." For- how are you to reduce the proposition " John Smith has a cold in• the bead" to an identical proposition, without including in 'John.

Smith' either the series of causes which led to his cold in the- head, or his cold in the head itself. Mr. Lewes can scarcely mean that "John Smith has a cold in the head" is always equivalent to- the proposition "John Smith's cold in the head exists," which would) be surely a very unusual mode of divulging that fact to a world that did not know it. And therefore we suppose that he must mean that the name ' John Smith' ought to include—though it does not—all the causes which produced the cold in the head, especially as Mr. Lewes tells us that contingency and necessity are qualities depending' on the "transparency" or " opacity " of its terms. Now how " John Smith "is to be made " transparent" enough to yield up the " cold in the head " is, in any case whatever, a great difficulty. But we can

only suppose Mr. Lewes to mean what he explains himself to mean, in relation to the vegetable blues being reddened by acid, that• under the particular conditions every fact is as it is, and could not be otherwise,—clearly an assertion of cosmical necessity, and nob, in any way of the necessity of thought.

The fact is, then, that Mr. Lewes, being disinclined to admit that laws of thought alone yield us any necessary and universal truths, confounds in the most extraordinary manner truths which we are obliged to admit as a result of the mere teaching of ex.-

perience, with truths which laws of thought derive for us from a. fact of experience that does not include them. Study the nature-

of vegetable blues' as long as you please, and the mind will never draw from that study the necessity of their being reddened by. acid. Study John Smith as long as you please, and the mind will never draw from the conception of him the truth that, on a par- ticular date, he must have had a cold in the head. But study an isosceles triangle, and the mind does draw from it necessarily the- notion that the angles at the base must be equal.

Again, as to ' universality.' Mr. Lewes admits, of course, the universality of mathematical truths, but he says that it arises only from the fact that the conditions are universal. Yes, but how does he explain the fact that we at once know the conditions to he universal? He does not explain it at all. We have read and re-read his chapters without finding an attempt at an explanation. Ile says again and again, that if we enumerate the conditions under which fire really burns, the proposition " fire burns" is, under those con- ditions, perfectly universal. That ignores the critical fact that our knowledge of fire being purely experimental, we can always at least imagine some new condition introduced which would pre- vent fire from burning,—whereas, our knowledge of the triangle is so complete, that we cannot conceive Omnipotence itself intro- ducing new conditions which would prevent the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle from being equal. But to adapt our ob- jection more closely to Mr. Lewes's own language,—how is it we do not and canaot know how to enumerate exhaustively the abso- lute conditions under which fire burns, whereas we do know, without any examination of any part of space except one,.that. those conditions of space on which the properties of the triangle, for example, depend, are as universal as space itself? This is the very knot to be untied. This is the very key of the assertion that laws of thought lead us,—in certain instances, and especially in the case of all instances coming within the range of geometrical and arithmetical science,---by a short cut to invariable and absolute laws of things. But Mr. Lewes, instead of explaining this remark- able fact consistently with his own theory, marches round it, and leaves it an unreduced fortress in his rear.

We say, then, that after a careful study of this often acute and suggestive book, it seems to us entirely to fail of solving the most critical problems it examines ; and, but for our very great impression of Mr. Lewes's ability, we should say that he had utterly ignored the chief problem, and hot even adequately attacked it. We know that this is a presumptuous statement to make. But we make it, though with a certain hesitation and dispo- sition to believe that the fault must be with our own intelligence, not in his acumen, after a most deliberate and reiterated study of his book. At any rate, an author must be very careless, or very audacious, who makes an assertion which on the surface seems so absurd as Mr. Lewes's that every truth is either identical, or admits of being thrown into an identical form, without more defence of so wonderful a statement against the obvious objections, than Mr.

• Lewes gives us. Either his ' problems' are, as we believe, not really solved at all, or he feels so much contempt for the intellect of ordinary thinkers as to cast down his solutions before them in a state in which it is utterly impossible for the majority to enter into his meaning. Of this we are quite sure,—either Mr. Lewes has no adequate notion what a " necessary" truth means, and what an " identical " proposition means, or else we have none ;—so com- pletely does he fail, not merely to reconcile his view with the one he attacks, but even to expound clearly what is the fundamental difference between them.