III.

As the ganglion which we have just described contains some structural difficulties not easy of comprehension, let us proceed with our description under another form, following the order of our illustrations.

Figure 1 is the first horizontal section, cut through the ventral region of the ganglion; the knife has here met the lower ventral lobule, which at this point shows itself double; the two halves being joined by a double transversal commissure. Section 2, made at a point a little higher than the preceding one, shows us at the centre the lower ventral lobule as increased in size; and in the lateral part of the figure appears a new organ, the crural lobule, which is here entirely merged into the lower ventral lobule. The crural lobule is traversed by fibres from the crural nerve, which instead of being entirely lost in its substance, proceed still further, passing into the lower ventral lobule. Section 3 merely brings into prominence an important transversal commissure. In Section 4, the inferior ventral lobule is replaced by the ventral column, which appears double, is symmetrical, and united by a transversal commissure; this commissure being formed of fibrillar substance. The ventral column is closely connected on each side with the crural lobule; it is besides crossed by the ventral connective fibres, which can be seen emerging from its anterior and posterior extremities. Section 5 allows us to examine thoroughly the disposition of those ventral connective fibres; we see that while they penetrate the ganglion, they also pass through two symmetrical masses of fibrillar substance; these two masses, which we name the anterior ventral lobules, are joined together by a transversal commissure. After having traversed the anterior ventral lobules, to which it appears they give a portion of their fibres, the ventral connective filaments pass through the ganglion in an antero-posterior direction, and we see them penetrating the two posterior ventral lobules. The last named lobules, which remind us by their position and appearance of the anterior lobules, receive in addition fibres issuing from the crural lobules; but they do not receive them all, because we notice quite a number of these fibres advancing directly into the second thoracic ganglion. After emerging from the posterior ventral lobules, the ventral connective filaments pass into the second thoracic ganglion, where we see them penetrate into the anterior ventral lobules.

With Figure 6, we leave the ventral lobe of the ganglion and come to the lower portions of the dorsal lobule. The important filaments crossing this section from the front to the back are called lower dorsal connective filaments. We notice as they proceed some small masses of dotted substance, and, in addition to these, dark colored dots which are the result of the knife having cut crosswise through several fascicles of ascending fibres. We shall find out by means of the sections taken from different parts and placed so as to allow of our better observation, what these ascending fibres are. The crural lobule, always exhibits the same characteristics. We have given it a homogeneous aspect in our drawing. As a fact it presents in its sections a vast number of structural details. But these details being very difficult to understand, we prefer not to dwell upon them.

Section 7 passes through the very midst of the lower dorsal connective filaments; these filaments being in two pairs, one external and the other internal. The external pair, situated somewhat lower, has here disappeared, and the inner pair is the only one to be seen. Some transversal fibres, whose direction appears to me difficult to follow, divide the inside dorsal connective filaments at two different points, and assume the figure of a square; this square has two black dots, produced by the section of the ascending fibres.

A little higher, in Figure 8, the lower connective filaments have disappeared and the fibrillar substance of the ganglion is furrowed by long transversal fibres, of which a part seems to serve the function of joining the two crural lobules, whilst the remainder, proceeding towards the black dots before mentioned, continue their progress with the fasciculi of ascending fibres. These are no other than ascending fibres which, having changed their direction at the plane of the section, proceed almost in a horizontal plane. In Section 9 we follow the course of the medial dorsal connective filaments, separated from the lower connective filaments by the fibres having a transverse direction, seen in Figure 8. The medial dorsal connective filaments are four in number, an outer pair and an inner pair. At the moment when they leave the prothoracic ganglion, they cross a region where the fibrillar substance is both thicker and darker. In Figure 10 the medial connective filaments are on the point of disappearing; they receive certain fibres coming from the crural lobules, which are now reduced in dimensions. Section 11 shows us the lower dorsal connective filaments, which are the slenderest of all and of which there are but one pair; the crural lobule now disappears. In the middle of the figure, we observe a small collection of conjunctival cells which, as we have supposed, indicates the point where in the course of development the two symmetrical portions of the ganglion have not been perfectly fused together. Finally Section 12 shows two lateral masses of fibrillar substance, separated by a strip of conjunctival membrane.

We will now take up the series of longitudinal sections, the study of which will demand very special attention. We shall there meet again with the organs which we have already examined in the horizontal sections; and we shall perceive that the alterations and modifications presented to us by the difference in our point of observation, bring out very important changes in the appearance of those organs. The sectional method of examination is also one of analysis. In order to reconstruct an organ in its complete form and to conceive of it in space, our mind must bring into a single focus what the sections have represented in a fragmentary manner: we must, in short, substitute synthesis for analysis.

Figure 13 represents the first and exterior longitudinal section; it hardly touches the ganglion; in the front we see the starting point of the crural nerve, and also a portion of the periphery of the crural lobule. The crural nerve exhibits several roots, the most important of which occupy the ventral region. Figure 14, though very elementary, brings out many important points; we see here the crural lobule, which has increased in size and extends from the ventral to the dorsal region; a fact which has already been indicated in the horizontal sections, the crural lobule having been shown in them at all points. This lobule is almost circular in form. Along its ventral region, we perceive some of the fibres of the crural nerve which do not penetrate into the lobule; these are the ones we met with in the figures 2 and 3: they are the fibres which pass directly into the lower ventral lobule. With Section 15, we leave the lateral regions of the ganglion and come to the dorsal and ventral regions; we must notice that the crural lobule is continuous with the central fibrillar mass and has no precise limits. In Section 15 the ventral column appears, reduced in size. In the front of it we observe an incisure through which certain nerve-cells send their prolongations into the fibrillar substance.

Figure 16 shows us the complete junction of all the connective filaments traversing the ganglion; first the ventral column, with the connective ventral filaments starting from both its extremities; and then the three dorsal connective filaments, which preserve their individuality distinct, while they cross the dorsal lobe of the ganglion. The lower dorsal connective filament is distinguished from the others by a small compact mass of fibrillar substance through which it passes. We must note that the fibrillar substance becomes thicker at the point where the whole series of connective filaments enter the ganglion, and the same thing is repeated at the place where they leave the first thoracic ganglion to enter into the second. The ventral column is distinguished from the other parts of the ganglion by the dark color which it assumes through the action of the osmic acid; it presents black granules which, examined with a strong lens, show small fasciculi of fibres running in a parallel direction. The cells which line the lower surface of the ventral column do not throw out any prolongations; they are exceedingly small, but do not otherwise present any special feature.

Figure 17 is but very slightly different from the preceding one: the ventral column is simply strengthened on its lower surface by the lower ventral lobule. The position of this lobule is interesting to note. We have already mentioned that each ganglion is divided into two halves by a column of conjunctival tissue, one anterior and the other posterior. In Section 17 we see the granulated projection of the ventral portion of this conjunctival column. In order to simplify it we have shown no conjunctival tissue in our illustration. We may nevertheless notice, that the nerve-cells at the point marked _c. c._ seem to separate one from the other, and show a triangular space between them, filled with conjunctival cells. If the segment had not been cut so obliquely, (and this obliqueness in the sections is almost unavoidable when dealing with such very small organs,) we should also perceive on the dorsal line of the section the projection of the dorsal part of the conjunctival column; in fact we shall see this projection in the figure which follows. The presence of the conjunctival column separates, as we have said, each ganglion into two parts, one anterior the other posterior. These portions are not at all symmetrical. We see in Section 17 that the lower ventral lobule is found only in the anterior part. Finally from the ventral column rises an important fasciculus of ascending fibres, which we have already seen in the horizontal diagrams; it is difficult for us to ascertain what these fibres are. In the 18th and last section we approach nearer the median line. The ventral column at this level has the appearance of being divided into two trunks. The ventral connective filaments are clearly seen upon its upper surface. Among the dorsal connective filaments the middle one alone remains visible and receives a certain number of fibres from the ascending fasciculus.

To complete our description let us glance at the series of transverse sections. In Figure 19 the two crural lobules have not yet united and are not yet merged into the dorsal-ventral lobe. This junction does not take place until we come to Figure 20. Here, at this level, we see in addition the circular segment of the two ventral columns, which by their dark color are sharply outlined against the remainder of the fibrillar substance. To the right and left of these two columns we perceive small masses of dotted substance; we merely call attention to them and shall not describe them. Figure 21 furnishes no noteworthy modifications of the preceding. We simply see a few cells of the periphery sending out their prolongations into the fibrillar substance. The point at which they thus penetrate it has already been indicated in Figure 15. In Figure 22 we have a section of several dorsal connective filaments; among others a lower root of the crural nerve is here seen to pass along the ventral surface of the fibrillar substance without penetrating into the crural lobule. Does there exist an upper root of the same nerve, which follows the upper surface of the dotted substance? We do not dare to decide the question. One thing is certain, and that is that if the nerve does exist it is accompanied along its path by a great number of widely ramified tracheæ, of which we see a drawing in _tr._ In the three figures which follow (23, 24, 25) the ventral column presents an interesting series of modifications. First of all, in Figure 23, it is surrounded by the lower ventral lobule, of which the two masses are in a lateral position, and whose commissures pass underneath the column. We see in the same Figure 23 the two lower roots of the crural nerve, advancing towards the column. In the 24th section the two roots have reached the column, and two other nerves cross the crural lobule; doubtless their destination is the lower dorsal connective filaments, but of this we have no clear indication. In the 24th section two other crural roots also enter the lower ventral lobule. This section is very favorable for the examination of the ascending fasciculus which we have already noticed in the longitudinal sections. It seems to us certain that this fasciculus terminates in the middle dorsal connective filament. Its origin is more uncertain. It seems to spring from the ventral column, or else to come from crural roots which, after having traversed the crural lobule, reascend towards the dorsal lobe of the ganglion, describing a curve exteriorily concave. It is possible that this ascending fasciculus has both these origins. The 26th and last section shows us the ventral column on a larger scale; the two columns being distinct from each other, though united at the lower extremity by a commissure. The _ensemble_ of the figure strikingly reminds one of a section of the abdominal ganglion.

Here our description ends. We have not sought to follow up every fibre in all its details, nor to describe completely the anatomy of each organ. Our intention has merely been to give a synthetic notion of a nervous ganglion. Subsequent studies made on other ganglia will demonstrate the general application of this idea.

ALFRED BINET.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] For the cuts, see the plates in the Appendix of this number.

HINDU MONISM.

WHO WERE ITS AUTHORS, PRIESTS OR WARRIORS?

Among all the forms of government class government is the worst. Carthage was governed by merchants, and the mercantile spirit of its policy led finally to the destruction of the city. Sparta was governed by warriors, and in spite of the glory of Thermopylæ it was doomed to stagnation. India was governed by priests, and the weal of the nation was sacrificed with reckless indifference to their interests. It appears that for the welfare of the community the harmonious co-operation of all classes is not only desirable but also indispensable.

Yet it is often claimed that mankind is greatly indebted to nations or states ruled by class government, for having worked out the particular occupation of the ruling class to a perfection which otherwise it would not have reached. This is at least doubtful.

Carthage was eager to establish monopolies, but she contributed little to the higher development of commerce and trade among mankind.

Sparta raised brave men, but was not progressive, even in the science of war, and was worsted by so weak an adversary as Thebes. Modern strategists could learn something from Epaminondas, but little, if anything, from the Lacedæmonians.

Priestcraft has attained to a power in India unparalleled in the history of other nations, and it is no exaggeration to say that priest-rule was the ruin of the country. Yet the wisdom of the Brahmans has become proverbial. Their philosophy is praised as original and profound, and it is well known that the first monistic world-conception was thought out in ancient India. But we shall see later on what the real share of the Brahmans in this great work has been.

In the very earliest ages of Hindu antiquity, revealed to us in the songs of the Rig-veda, we meet with priests who claimed the power of making sacrifices to the gods in a manner especially acceptable to them, and who thus rose to great power, influence, and wealth. To this ancient period of Hindu history we can trace the origin of the Hindu castes, essentially a result of priestly egotism, and which up to this day has weighed down the Indian people like a nightmare. The organisation of the priestly class into an exclusive, privileged body, as well as the final development of the castes, did not, however, take place until the time represented by the second period of the ancient Hindu literature; by the literature, that is to say, of the Yajur-vedas or the Vedas of the sacrificial formulæ, and the Brâhmanas and Sûtras, both of which describe the sacrificial ceremonies, the former with, the latter without theological comments. The contents of these works illustrate the origin of the Hindu hierarchy and castes; but it is often necessary to read between the lines. The greatest authority on this rich literature, Prof. A. Weber, of Berlin, in the tenth volume of the series “Hindu Studies” which he edits, has published his inquiries concerning this subject in a very learned treatise, entitled “Collectanea über die Kastenverhältnisse in der Brâhmana und Sûtra,” of which I have made considerable use in the following pages.

In these books the Brahmans assert their claims with startling candor. In several passages—to begin with the most striking feature—they announce themselves as real gods wandering on earth. “There are two kinds of gods,” it is said, “the true gods and the learned Brahmans, who recite the Veda.” “The Brahman represents all gods.” “He is the god of gods.” This is perhaps the most remarkable instance of priestly arrogance in all history. Thus it cannot at all surprise us that the Brahmans, as earthly gods, placed themselves above king and nobility; but it appears rather strange that the kings and warriors should have allowed to them the first place in the government. But as a matter of fact, they did do so and were compelled to do so. From mysterious legends in the great Hindu epic poem we infer, that bloody wars have been waged for supremacy, in which the nobility was defeated.

The legends of this epos are thus important additions to the sources with which we are concerned. This struggle, which the Brahmans in all likelihood caused to be fought out for them by the great masses of the people, has been ascribed to the warriors having robbed the priests of the treasures which the latter had acquired by the performance of the sacrifices; and this part of the legend is so highly probable that we cannot treat it as a pure myth, especially if we take into consideration the circumstances of those times. It was the first attempt at secularisation in the history of the world, and the results were very disastrous to those who were then in secular power.

The Brahmans did not establish a social hierarchy or ecclesiastical ranks, nor did they participate in the government, except that the king was bound to employ a Brahman as Purohita or house-priest, who occupied as such the position of prime minister. If, however, they succeeded in dominating the nobility and the whole people, it was principally on account of their greater knowledge, of which they boasted, and especially on account of the sacrificial arts, by the proper exercise of which in those times, all favors could be obtained from the gods. For a duly performed sacrifice, which would last weeks, months, nay, years, the Brahmans charged of course a high fee. A fee of ten thousand oxen was prescribed for a certain ceremony, a hundred thousand for another one, and a later teacher of ritualism charged 240,000 for the same service. And this was not yet the climax of priestly avarice, which—to use an expression of Professor Weber—indulges in veritable orgies in these books. After one has gone through the endless description of a ceremony, one finds at the end the remark that the whole sacrifice has no effect, unless the proper fee be paid to the priest. And—to use a term of modern life—lest competition should reduce the prices or spoil the business, a rule was established, that no one should take a fee which another one had refused. (Weber, p. 54.)

The sacrificial rituals, so trying and tedious for us, are the only literary production of these dull centuries before the rising of philosophical speculation, and the great historical importance they possess is simply due to the light they throw on the moral depravity of the Brahmans as a class.

The following fact will fully show to what extent sexual debaucheries were indulged in. The priest was enjoined, by a special rule, not to commit adultery with the wife of another during a particularly holy ceremony. But he who could not practice continence, was allowed to expiate his sin by an offering of milk to Varuna and Mitra.

Numerous passages in the books on ritualism furnish us interesting illustrations of the great indulgence which the Brahmans had for each other’s weaknesses. The officiating priest is taught how to proceed during the sacrifice, if he wants to wrong the man who employs and pays him, or how to deviate from the prescribed rules, if he wants to rob his employer of his seeing, hearing, children, property, or position. The lack of confidence that resulted is best illustrated by a ceremony, the introduction of which, at the beginning of the sacrifice, became gradually necessary. By a solemn oath the officiating minister and the client bound themselves not to injure each other during the performance of the holy act. Consequently, the strange notions of right, which the Brahmans had in those times, will not surprise us. “Murder of any one but a Brahman is no murder.” “An arbitrator must decide in favor of the Brahman and not in favor of his opponent, if the latter is not a Brahman.” Such maxims are laid down in the texts with shameless insolence.

It is plain that the caste system greatly contributed to increase the power and influence of the priests, because in a country where the people are divided into classes, the priest always succeeds in inciting at his wish the one against the other.

After the Brahmans came as second caste the Kshattriyas (literally: the ruling class, i. e., king, nobility, soldiers); and as third caste the Vaisyas (the bulk of the people: farmers, merchants, etc.). The conquered non-Aryan aborigines were foreordained by the gods to serve the Aryan castes and especially the Brahmans. They were called Súdras (serfs) and had neither civil nor religious rights. “The Súdra is the servant of others; he can be cast out or killed.” By this humane maxim were the Brahmans guided in their conduct towards the aborigines.

With such a state of things, as it appears in the old books, the priesthood ought to have been well pleased. But the Brahmans were not; they desired still greater advantages and carried out the caste system to a most absurd extent. The result is embodied in the famous law-book of Manu, the exact date of which we do not yet know, but which must be placed at the beginning of our era. The condition of things of which I shall now speak, was accordingly developed during the last centuries before Christ. Though we may suppose that some rules of this code have remained a mere theory and have never been carried out, there remains enough to show the social life of those times in a poor light. Köppen, in the first chapters of his book on Buddhism, has severely but justly judged the social organisation, as it appears in Manu’s law-book; but as the age of this code was overrated at his time, he was led to one erroneous conclusion: he attributes the historical process, of which we speak, to the period before Buddha, while it really took place after Buddha: L. von Schröder, in his work “Indian Literature and History,” in the twenty-ninth lecture, gives us a good view of those times.

Different passages in Manu’s code show us that the claim of the Brahmans to divinity had not decreased in the course of the centuries. “The Brahmans are to be venerated at all times, as they are the highest divinity.” “By his very origin the Brahman is a god, even to the gods.”

The many practical privileges they enjoyed were of still greater value. They were exempt from taxation under all circumstances, “even if the king should starve.” For the greatest crimes they could not be executed or chastised, nor was their property liable to confiscation, while at the same time the criminal law was very harsh towards the other castes and especially towards the Súdras. The penalties increased proportionately: the lower the caste to which the criminal belonged, the higher the punishment; and the fines also increased in proportion to the rank of the caste to which the injured man belonged. The money-lender was allowed to exact (monthly) two per cent. of a Brahman, three of a Kshattriya, four of a Vaisya, five of a Súdra. All these laws show how the Brahmans understood the art of advancing their interests. The Súdra was by the code deprived of all rights. “The Brahman may consider him as a slave and is therefore entitled to take his property, as the property of the slave belongs to the master.” “The Súdra shall not acquire wealth, even if he be in a position to do so, as such conduct gives offense to the Brahman.”

But all these things are harmless when compared with the principles by which the Brahmans reduced to the most miserable of lives numberless human creatures who had committed no wrong except that their origin did not agree with the political scheme of the priests. Formerly it had been lawful for the members of the three Aryan castes, after having married a girl of the same caste, to take other wives of a lower caste besides, and no disgrace attached to their children. The son of a Brahman and a Vaisya—or even of a Súdra woman—was therefore a Brahman. But this was no longer the case under the code of Manu.

If the parents belonged to different castes, the children did not follow either father or mother, but they formed a mixed caste and the law distinctly regulates their occupations and trades. This theory gave birth to a great number of mixed castes, who were more or less despised. And the social standing of many of them grew still worse on account of an absurd maxim which degraded the Indian people to the level of grass and plants. Good seed in a bad soil gives of course a poorer return than in good soil; still the crop is endurable. But weed introduced into good soil produces weed abundantly. According to this theory of the Brahmans the children were below the father, if he had married a wife of a higher caste. The lowest and most execrable creature therefore is the son of a Súdra and a Brahman woman. The destiny of a Súdra was of course hard and unhappy, but the misery of the offspring of such a marriage, of the Chandâla, defies all description. “He shall live far from the abodes of other men and bear signs by which everybody can recognise and avoid him, as his contact pollutes. Only in daytime shall he be admitted into the villages, as then people can avoid him. He shall possess but common animals like dogs and donkeys, eat out of broken plates, put on the dresses of the dead, etc. They were compelled to serve as executioners. To the utmost degree of contempt and misery has the proud Brahman reduced these poor creatures.” (Schröder, pp. 423-424.)

But the Chandâla was not the last in the Brahmanic scale, which suppressed all dignity in human nature; his offspring, though he had only a wife of the Súdra caste, was necessarily still below him. Thus originated a great number of mixed castes, one more despised than the other, and despising one another. Most of these outcasts take their names from the Indian aborigines and are thus placed on the same level with the most contemptible tribes. Some of the things I have cited about the mixed castes, may have been merely a theory of the Brahmans; however, the actual existence of classes of people reduced by the clergy to a sort of animal life, has been sufficiently verified by foreign travellers.

In modern times the separation of the people has been going on very rapidly; so much so, that nearly every trade or profession now forms a caste of its own, having no social intercourse with, nor patriotic feelings for the other castes. This condition of things is due to the influence of the Brahmans, for it has grown out of the social order they have founded.

It is not my task to arraign the Brahmans for the sins they have committed; but simply to illustrate to my readers, how little they cared for and had at heart the interests of their people. One will, upon the whole, feel inclined to denounce the selfishness and immorality of the Brahmans, but on the other hand will acknowledge with admiration the intellectual work they have done, and forgive them much for the profound thoughts with which they have enriched their country and the whole world. Is it not the wisdom of the Brahmans that has given to the word India a sound that stirs the hearts of all to whom the struggle for the highest truth appears as the highest phenomenon in the history of civilisation? But suppose it can be shown that the greatest of all the wisdom of the Brahman, the monistic doctrine of the All-in-One, which has had the greatest influence on the intellectual life of modern times, was not discovered by them?

Before I enter on this question, of the greatest importance from an historical point of view, I will give a short sketch of the period of Indian history in which this doctrine was established.

For centuries the Brahmans had heaped sacrifice on sacrifice and multiplied symbolical explanations without end. All this distinctly bore the stamp of priestly sophistry. Suddenly higher thoughts arise. The learning handed down by tradition and the sacrificial system are, it is true, not altogether abandoned; the mind, however, is no longer satisfied with the mysteries of the sacrifices, but aims at higher and more sublime truth. The age of intellectual darkness is followed by a new era, the characteristic of which is the ambition to solve the problems of life and to understand the relation of the individual to the absolute. All the efforts of the human mind are now bent on solving the question of the eternal Unity, from which all phenomena have emanated and which every one perceives within his own self. It is the age of the Upanishads, those famous books, which, as soon as they were known in Europe, filled all scholars with wild enthusiasm and admiration. I refer only to the old Upanishads, that date from the eighth to the sixth century B. C., not to the great number of books of the same name, but not of the same value—there are over 200 of them—which appeared after the Christian era. The Upanishads reveal the struggle of the mind to reach the highest truth. Though they indulge occasionally in strange speculations, still the idea of Brahma, of the universal soul, of the absolute, of the thing in itself, is the ever-recurring subject of their thoughts, which culminate in the idea that the Atman, the inner self of man, is naught but the eternal and endless Brahma. A wonderful pathos animates the language of the Upanishads and testifies to the sublime feelings in which the thinkers of those times sought the great mystery of existence. They look for all kinds of expressions, metaphors and figures, in order to couch in words what cannot be described by words. We read for instance in the venerable Brihadâranyaka Upanishad: “That which lives on the earth, but is different from the earth, that which is the moving power of the earth, that is your Self, the inner immortal ruler.” The same is predicated of water, fire, ether, wind, sun, moon, and stars; and then the chapter ends as follows: “Unseen, he sees; unheard, he hears; unminded, he minds; unknown, he knows. There is none that sees but he; there is none that hears but he; there is none that minds but he; there is none that knows but he. He is thy soul, the inner ruler. Whatever is different from him, is perishable.”

In the same celebrated Upanishad appears a woman, named Gârgî, and moved by thirst of knowledge she inquires of the wise Yâjnavalkya: “That which is beyond the sky and beneath the earth, and between sky and earth, that which is, was, and shall be, in what and with what is it interwoven (that is: in what does it live and move)?” Yâjnavalkya, in order to try the intellectual power of the woman, gives an evasive answer: “In the ether.” But Gârgî, perceiving that this answer did not contain the final truth, asks: “In what is the ether woven?” And Yâjnavalkya replied: “O Gârgî, that is what the Brahman calls the Eternal; it is neither big, nor small, nor large, nor short, without connection, without contact; by the Eternal are ruled heaven and earth, sun and moon, days and nights; the power of the Eternal directs the rivers south or west or to any other point of the compass. Whoever parts from this world without having understood the Eternal, is miserable.”

In the Chândogya Upanishad, a book of no less importance, the same wisdom is taught by a man named Uddâlaka to his son Shvetaketu in the form of several parables. We see them standing in front of a Nyagrodha tree, that kind of fig-tree that everywhere sends roots from the branches down to the ground, thus producing new trunks, until in the course of time _one_ tree resembles a green pillared hall. And in front of such a tree, the most beautiful symbol of ever-youthful nature, the following conversation takes place between father and son: “Get me a fruit of this tree.”—“Here it is.”—“Break it.”—“It is broken.”—“What do you see in it?”—“I see quite small kernels.”—“Break one of them.”—“It is broken.”—“What do you see in it?”—“Nothing.”—Then the father said: “The fine matter that you cannot see has produced this big tree, and believe me, my dear son, this same matter, of which the earth is composed, is the Absolute, the Universal Soul,—it is you.”

The eternal ground of all existence which every one carries in himself, Being as it is in itself, and as it is immediately perceived in thinking, was, accordingly recognised as the sole reality, and all the manifold changes of the phenomenal world were called Maya, a sham, a delusion, a mockery of the senses. We see, it is a consistent monism which is taught in the Upanishads.

I do not intend here either to criticise the Brahman conception of monism or to contrast it with modern forms of monism. All monisms have at least one thing in common, viz. they all recognise the paramount importance of consistency of thought as a basic principle in philosophy. And to have propounded a monism for the first time is a feat which cannot be overestimated. What remains of this essay will be devoted to the investigation of the question, whether this feat is duly or unduly credited to the Brahmans.

It may first be mentioned, that a few scholars like Weber, Max Müller, Regnaud, Deussen, and Bhandarkar, pointed out, a long time ago, certain facts which show that another class of the Hindu nation founded the monistic doctrine of the old Upanishads. But the attention of the great public has never been called to this subject, which deserves to be known by all interested in Indian history.

In the second book of the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, of which I have already cited two passages, is found the following story, of which also the fourth book of Kaushîtaki Upanishad gives a slightly different version.

The proud and learned Brahman Bâlâki Gârgya comes on his journey to Ajâtashatru, prince of Benares, and says to him: “I will announce you the Brahma.” The king, highly pleased, promises him a great reward, a thousand cows. The Brahman begins to expound his wisdom: “The Spirit (that is the power) in the sun I venerate as the Brahma.” But the king interrupted him, saying that he knew that already. Then the Brahman speaks about the Spirit in the moon, in lightning, ether, wind, fire, water, but the king knows all that. And whatsoever the Gârgya might say, is not new to the king. The Brahman became silent. But Ajâtashatru asked him: “Is that all?” and Gârgya answered: “Yes, that is all.” Then the king said: “Your little knowledge is not the Brahma;” whereupon Gârgya declared that he should like to be one of the king’s pupils. Ajâtashatru replied: “It is against nature, that a Brahman should learn from a warrior and depend on him for the understanding of the Brahma, but I will show it you nevertheless.” The king took him to a sleeping man and spoke to the latter; but he did not get up. When the king touched him with his hand, he arose. The king then asked the Brahman: “While this man was sleeping where was his mind, and whence did it return now?” Gârgya could not give an answer. Then the king explained to him, that the mind or the Self of the sleeping man was wandering around in dream, that all places were open to him, that he could be a great king or a great Brahman; but that there was still a higher condition of felicity, that is, absorption in dreamless sleep, without consciousness. In this condition the Self of man, not affected by the outside world, reposes in his true essence and knows no difference between Atman and Brahma.

Another story, reported in the fifth book of Chândogya Upanishad and in the sixth book of Brihadâranyaka Upanishad, is perhaps of still greater importance.

The young Brahman Shvetaketu comes to a convention, where the King Pravâhana Jaivâli asks him: “Has your father instructed you?”—“Yes, sir.”—“Do you know to what place the dead go?” And three more questions he put to the young Brahman, who was compelled to admit that he knew nothing about them. Discouraged, he returned to his father and reproached him: “Although you have not imparted any knowledge to me, you claim that you have instructed me. A _simple king_ has asked me three questions and I could not answer a single one.” The father replied: “You have known me sufficiently to understand that I taught you all I knew. Come, let us go to the king and learn from him.” The king received the Brahman with great honors and requested him to select a present. But Gautama refuses all earthly gifts, gold, cows, horses, female slaves, and asks the king to answer the questions he had put to his son. At first the king was unwilling, but after a while he agreed to it and said, that no one on earth could give information on those subjects, except a warrior. And the following words of the king’s are very significant: “Would that neither you nor your ancestors had trespassed on us, that this truth might never have set up her residence among Brahmans. But to you, since you are so inquiring, I will communicate our wisdom.”

Substantially the same story is found at the beginning of the Kaushîtaki Upanishad, except that the king appears under the name Chitra.

Omitting points of less importance, I shall only give in a brief form the contents of the eleventh and the following chapters of the fifth book of the Chândogya Upanishad, where again a man of the warrior caste, Ashvapati, prince of the Kekaya, is shown in possession of the highest wisdom. A number of highly learned Brahmans were speculating on the following problems: “What is our Self? What is the Brahma?” and they decided to go to Uddâlaka Aruni, who, as they knew, was investigating the “Omnipresent Self.” But Aruni said to himself: “Now, they will ask me and I am not able to answer all their questions”; consequently he requested his visitors to go with him to Ashvapati. The latter receives them with great honors, invites them to stay with him, promising them presents as high as their fees for sacrifices. But they replied: “A man must communicate what he knows. You are just now seeking the ‘Omnipresent Self’; disclose to us what it is?” The king, said: “I will answer you to-morrow.” The following day, without having received them among his pupils, that is, without a ceremonial reception as was usual, he asked them: “What do you venerate as the Self?” They replied: “Heaven, sun, wind, ether, water, earth.” The king reminded them that they were all mistaken in considering the Omnipresent Self as a finite and limited being; it was the infinite, the infinitely small and the infinitely great.

The weight of these stories is very plain. Whether they refer to real facts or merely reflect the views of those times in the form of legends, cannot be decided. However, the question of the historical truth of these stories has no bearing whatever. The fact that they are to be found in genuine Brahmanic writings, in books which are considered in India as the basis of the Brahman caste, speaks a plain language. It shows, that the thought of claiming the monistic doctrine of the Brahma-Atman as the inheritance of their caste, did not occur to the authors of the old Upanishads, or that they dared not claim it; it may be that they did not yet realise the great importance of the same. Of course in the following ages this science became the exclusive property of the Brahmans and was cultivated and developed by them during twenty centuries—but this does not do away with the fact that it originated among the warrior caste. The men of this caste recognised at once the hollowness of the sacrificial system and its absurd symbolical character; and to them is due the credit of having disclosed a new world of thought and of having accomplished a revolution in the intellectual life of Ancient India. When we learn that the Brahmans continued the sacrificial system, even after having adopted the new creed, and by representing religious ceremonials as the first step to knowledge, thus combined two wholly heterogeneous elements; we may justly conclude that things have taken the same course in Ancient India as in other countries. Progressive ideas are first opposed by the priesthood, their born enemy, until they have become so powerful that they cannot be opposed any longer, whereupon the priest adopts them and tries to harmonise them with his superstitions.

But the ideas mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, the substance of what is commonly called “Hindu wisdom,” are not all that the warriors have done for the religion and philosophy of the people. The noble Gautama of Kapilavastu, the best known of all Hindus, who established Buddhism about 500 years before Christ, was also a Kshattriya, and according to the more recent tradition, which alone was formerly known, the son of a king; but according to the earlier sources, disclosed by Oldenberg, he was the son of a landed proprietor. Buddha, “the Enlightened,” under which name he is known all over the world, most strenuously opposed the sacrificial system and the superstitions of the Brahmans. The ceremonies and the science of the priesthood seemed to him a perfect fraud, and the caste system an absurd institution; he taught that the final beatitude is within the reach of the lowest man, as well as of the Brahman and the king; that every one, without distinction of birth, can attain to “salvation” by contempt of the world, self-denial, and devotion to the welfare of his fellow beings.

Oldenberg’s excellent book on Buddha, the newest standard work on this subject, makes it unnecessary for me to dwell at length on the doctrine of the greatest of all Hindus; only in regard to one important point, which has a direct bearing on the subject under consideration, do I differ from his opinion. According to the oldest sources, Buddha’s method of teaching is, to a great extent, beyond the understanding of the bulk of the people; not a popular, but an abstract philosophical one. For intrinsic reasons, I believe that the old sources do not give a correct report of this matter, and we must not forget that centuries separate them from Buddha. Oldenberg himself raises the point, whether the dry and tedious ecclesiastical style, in which Buddha’s thoughts are clothed by those sources, truly reflects the spoken word. He says on page 181: “Whoever reads the words which the sacred books attribute to Buddha will doubt that the form in which Buddha taught his precepts is to be identified with that abstract and sometimes abstruse metaphysical language. A youthful, invigorating spirit, pervading alike teacher and disciples, is the true picture of those times, admitting of no unnatural or artificial features.”

In spite of this, he comes to the conclusion that “the solemn and stern way of speaking, peculiar to Buddha, has been better expressed by tradition than by what we would feel tempted to substitute.” I am not of this opinion. In India a great success could not have been obtained but by overpowering eloquence and a popular method, intelligible to all, and proceeding by parables and metaphors.

If Buddha had only appealed to the intellect of his nearest surroundings, consisting merely of aristocratic elements, if he had not found his way to the heart of the people, his monastery would very likely have shared the destiny of the other religious congregations of his age, which have all disappeared, except one. As the doctrines of these monasteries or their founders do not substantially differ from each other, and as it cannot be ascribed to mere chance that Buddha’s doctrine has developed into a universal religion, having the greatest number of adherents, there remains but one hypothesis to account for this fact, and that is the superiority of Buddha’s way of teaching. The erroneousness of the generally prevailing opinion that Buddha was in his time the only founder of a new religion, and that he suddenly revolutionised the social organisation of the Indian people, has been clearly established by recent investigations. In fact, he was a “primus inter pares,” one of those numerous ascetics who were striving for and preaching “liberation” from the eternal transmigration.

Besides Buddha’s, only one congregation has survived: the Jaina, having numerous members in the western part of India. The principles of the Jaina are very similar to those of Buddha; so much so that until recently it was considered merely as a sect of Buddhism, while it is really a religion of its own, founded by a contemporary or a predecessor of Buddha, named Vardhamâna Jnâtaputra—in the language of the people, Vaddhamâna Nâtaputta—in the same part of the country where Buddha rose. The only difference between the two religions is this: Vardhamâna lays great stress on castigation; while the more progressive Buddha declares it useless—nay, pernicious. The important point in regard to the object of our essay is this: that the founder of Jaina, which occupies a high place in the history of Hindu culture, was also a member of the Warrior Caste.

We shall now have to consider another production of the Indian mind, the very name of which is unknown to most of our readers, although it offers the most interesting religious problems. I refer to the doctrine of the Bhâgavatas or Pâncharâtras. These names, of which the former is the earlier and original one, designate a religious sect in North India, whose existence in the fourth century B. C. is authentically proved, but which can be placed with great probability in the time before Buddha. They professed a common-sense monotheism, independent of the traditions of the old Brahmans, and venerated God under different names: Bhagavant, “The Sublime,” whence their name is derived; Nârâyana, “Son of Man;” Purashottamma, “The Supreme Being”; but generally under the name Krishna Vâsudeva, “Son of Vâsudeva”. The character of their worship produced feelings identical with the Christian love and devotion to God. The Hindu word for this feeling is Chakti, and for him who was penetrated by the same, Chakta. As the word Chakti cannot be found or has not been found in the Hindu literature earlier than the era of Christ, several scholars are inclined to attribute the Chakti to the influence of Christianity, especially Professor Weber, who deserves the highest praise for his researches concerning Krishna worship. Weber has proved in several of his books, especially in a highly interesting treatise on Krishna’s birth, that numerous Christian notions have entered into the later Krishna legends (the similarity of the names, Krishna and Christ, accounts for it): for instance, the birth of Christ among the shepherds, the story about the stable, and others of the same kind. In spite of this, I cannot embrace the opinion that the Chakti has been brought from a foreign country, because its first appearance belongs to a period in which Christian influences cannot be found. As I cannot go into details without discussing very difficult points, requiring a great deal of erudition, I will only say that whoever is familiar with the old Hindu civilisation will easily understand that the Chakti is of genuine Hindu origin. Monotheistic notions can be traced to the oldest periods of Hindu antiquity, and the Hindu mind has always been animated by a high aspiration towards God; so that it should not surprise us that this feature of the Hindu character has produced a religion popular and independent of philosophical speculation, consisting in love and devotion to God. The founder of this religion was Krishna Vâsudeva, afterwards raised to divine dignity, or rather identified with the deity; from his name and from the legends attached to his name, he was a member of the Warrior Caste. As early as the epoch of the Mahâbhârata, the great Indian epic poem, the Brahmans appropriated to themselves the name and work of Krishna, and transformed the venerated hero into the God Vishnu; thus increasing their strength by adopting a doctrine not of Brahmanic origin.

We have thus found that the profound philosophical monism of the Upanishads, the highly moral religions of Buddha and Jaina, and last, not least, the creed of the Bhâgavatas, based on pure devotion to God, did not originate among the Brahmans.

However favorably we may judge of the achievements of the Brahmans in all branches of science, and I am far from vilifying their merits, still it is certain that the greatest intellectual performances of India, nay, all such in India that have been beneficial to mankind, were accomplished by men of the Warrior Caste.

RICHARD GARBE.

THE IDEA OF NECESSITY, ITS BASIS AND ITS SCOPE.

The idea of necessity, although a fundamental concept in philosophy and science, has not as yet been so clearly defined that all thinkers would agree as to its meaning and significance. Necessity is frequently identified with compulsion, and thus it is supposed to be incompatible with freedom of will. It is also identified with fate, as if it were a destiny that existed above the will of man and the powers of nature, similar to the Moira of the ancients. It is said to exclude chance in every possible conception of the term and to cause the evolution of the world to proceed by a predetermined arrangement, like the mechanism of a clock.

We cannot endorse Mr. Charles S. Peirce’s objection to the doctrine of necessity, but we side with him when he denounces the mechanical philosophy for considering minds as “part of the physical world in such a sense that the laws of mechanics determine everything that happens.” Mr. Peirce is right when he rebukes the mechanical philosopher for “entering consciousness under the head of sundries as a forgotten trifle.” In some sense minds are parts of the physical, i. e. the natural, world, but they are not parts of that province of nature which constitutes the special domain of physics and mechanics. Ideas are not motions and cannot be explained by mechanical laws.

Having criticised in a former article of ours Mr. Peirce’s position, and having rejected the indeterminism proposed by him, we shall discuss in the following pages the basis and scope of the idea of necessity.

The idea of necessity is based upon the conception of sameness, and we find that the existence of samenesses is a feature of the world in which we live. The existence of samenesses is a fact of experience, and upon the presence of this fact depends the possibility of the origin, the being, and the development of the thinking mind itself.

Necessity, as we understand it, must be carefully distinguished from the idea of fate. Although we accept without reserve the doctrine of determinism, we do not mean to deny the important part that chance plays in the world—not absolute chance, which according to Mr. Peirce is exempt from law, but that same chance of which the throw of a die is a typical instance. And bearing in mind that necessity is not a power outside of nature and above the will of man, but that it resides in them as the quality of sameness, we abandon the view that identifies necessity with compulsion; recognising thus, that freedom of the will is not incompatible with our view of necessitarianism.

I. THE BASIS OF NECESSITY.

The standpoint from which we shall treat this subject is that of monistic positivism,—the method which accepts no doctrine, theory, or law unless it be a formulation of facts. Facts are the bottom-rock to which we can and must dig down. At the same time, wherever facts appear contradictory to one another, we should not be satisfied, but continue to investigate until they are systematised so as to form a unitary entirety.

Before we begin our inquiry into the existence or non-existence of necessity, it is advisable to define the meaning of the term.

The Latin word _necesse_ is most probably a compound of the negative _ne_ and the supine _cessum_ from _cedere_ to yield, to move. “Necessary,” according to this etymology, would mean that which does not yield but abides. Thus it is the inevitable; it is that which is or will be.

It is in this sense that the word is still used, or at least ought to be used, and in this sense we shall also use it.

Every word naturally acquires by a more or less appropriate application a series of meanings. So “necessary” means also that which is needful, that which is essential, that which is indispensable and requisite; it also means that which is done under compulsion. It is understood that we exclude all the other meanings of necessary except the original one, which is its properly philosophical meaning.

The idea of necessity is closely allied to the idea of sameness. In order to understand the former we must be clear concerning the meaning of the latter.

THE IDEA OF SAMENESS.

There exist a number of synonyms often used indiscriminately; they are: identity, sameness, equality, congruity, similarity, and likeness. By “identity” we generally understand a sameness in every respect, absolute sameness; by “equality”, a sameness that can be expressed in figures. Equality is always a measurable sameness, and refers to quantity, mass, size, length, height, age, etc. Likeness and similitude are samenesses of form or of proportion, albeit not of size. It is often used as a partial sameness of impressions, not so much as they are in themselves, but as they appear to the mind. Congruity is a synonym of sameness in the province of geometry, denoting the coincidence of figures when laid upon one another.[10]

The logical principle of identity, so-called, it appears to me, ought to be named the principle of sameness, for it has not reference to the absolute sameness of a thing with itself.[11] The statement _A_ = _A_ does not mean that this particular thing _A_ is itself and that therefore the one _A_ is one and the same thing. It is a general statement and means that all _A_, in so far as they are _A_, are the same. The statement _A_ = _A_, as I take it, presupposes the existence of a number of _A’s_; otherwise it would have no sense, and it would not only be empty, (as we know from Kant that all formal statements are,) but meaningless and useless. It would be of no avail either in logic or in science.

In consideration of the fact that the idea of sameness is a fundamental concept in our scientific, logical, and philosophical reasoning, it is astonishing that no satisfactory definition of it is to be found. To define “same” as “one in substance; not other, ... of one nature or general character, of one kind, degree, or amount,” as is done in the “Century Dictionary,” is no improvement upon “Webster,” who defines it as “not different or other; identical. Of like kind, species, sort, dimensions or the like; not different in character or in the quality or qualities compared; ... like.” However, dictionaries are not encyclopædias; and they have perhaps a right to define same as identical, and identical as same.

Mr. James Ward, in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” (XVI, 81, in his excellent article on “Psychology,”) incidentally complains about the ambiguity of the word “same”; he proposes a distinction between “material identity” and “individual identity,” but this does not solve the difficulty. Flemming’s “Vocabulary of Philosophy” (4th ed. edited by Calderwood) contains several articles on “identical” and on “identity” without discussing in any one of them the meaning of “same” or of “identical.”

What then is the meaning of same?

Let us first consider the etymology of the word. The root of “same” is found in almost all Indo-European languages; it is preserved in the first syllable of the Latin “similis” and “simul,” in the second syllable of the German “Zu_samm_en”; in the Greek “ἅμα” and “ὅμοιος,” and the Sanskrit “sama,” all of which denote a togetherness. Thus the etymological meaning seems to signify what is classed in one category. Accordingly, the present meaning as defined by the dictionaries, as being that which is “of one nature or not different in character,” has not changed; at any rate if there is any change, it is slight. Yet it is desirable to bring out and set in a clear light the purport of the word and its essence.

What, then, is the economic service and function of the idea of “sameness” in the household of thought?

“Sameness” is that feature in two things or states of things, in two processes or modes of action, which brings it to pass that the one may be replaced by the other without altering for a certain purpose the state of things or affecting the result of the entire process. Popularly expressed, sameness is the capability of one thing’s being substituted for another.

There is no need of discussing or proving the truism, that, properly speaking, there is no absolute sameness, no identity in the strict sense of the term. This was the meaning of Heraclitus’s idea of the perpetual flux of things, expressed in his πάντα ῥεῖ. There are no two moments in time, no two points in space, no two atoms of matter actually identical, and we cannot enter into the identical river twice.

Cratylus tried to outdo Heraclitus, by saying that we cannot even enter once into the identical river, for while entering, not only the river changes but also we ourselves; and Cratylus is perfectly right.

We have purposely substituted in Heraclitus’s proposition “identical” for “same,” because this change is needed to bring out the truth of the idea. Heraclitus and Cratylus cease to be right if we use the word same as above defined. We enter indeed the same river twice. The river of to-day is, for a certain purpose, quite the same as the river of yesterday, in so far namely as the river of to-day and the river of yesterday serve a certain and the same purpose: for other purposes this same river will perhaps not be the same. The geographer and historian speak of the Rhine as that stream of water which since time immemorial has flowed down from the St. Gotthardt to the North Sea. Accordingly, if we stand on the bank of the Rhine, it is quite correct to say that this is the same river that was crossed by Cæsar. Let the purpose of our thoughts be changed, and we shall no longer be permitted to speak of sameness. Suppose we had seen the Rhine for the first time in its beautiful emerald coloring, and had come again after a rainy day to admire its beauty, should we not be justified in exclaiming: This is not the same river!

Sameness, accordingly, depends upon a special purpose. If in a chemical combination a metal is wanted, it may be all the same whether we use iron, zinc, lead, or gold. That is to say, it is all the same for bringing about a special result; yet it is not all the same in other respects. The weight and certain other qualities of the metals are different, and also the cost.

SAMENESS AND MIND.

Sameness depending upon a special purpose, the question arises, Is there any objective sameness in the world, or is sameness a mere subjective addition to things? Is sameness something “real” or is it purely mental?

This is the old quarrel between the Nominalists and Realists among the Schoolmen. It lies at the bottom of the problem of universals and particulars, and we should say, it is only a special form of the question, “Are relations objective qualities of existence or are they products of the mind?” which was discussed in a former number (_The Monist_, II, 2, pp. 240-42). The idea of sameness represents the most important relation that exists; and if any relation is real, the relation of sameness must be real also.

If sameness depends upon a special purpose, it appears that there can be no sameness without that purpose; and the purpose being purely mental, the sameness also would seem to be purely mental. But this is not so. Sameness is an idea, and it is no exception to other ideas. All ideas are mental symbols formed for a special purpose; but, being symbols of something, ideas are representative of some reality, or of some feature of a reality, or of some relation between two or several things. Every idea stands for something; and this quality of the significance of ideas is called their meaning or their import.

The question now is, How does the idea of sameness originate in the world where, as we stated above, there is no absolute sameness, no identity? Our answer is that sameness, not identity, is a general feature of this world of reality, which impresses itself upon every mind from the very beginning of the mind’s origin.

We can go farther in our statement and make it more emphatic: Mind originates and grows only on the ground of the fact that sameness is a feature of the world, and is recognised as such by feeling substance.

Two points or two congruent geometrical figures being in different places are not identical. But they are of such a nature that, so far as regards the purposes of geometry, one serves the purposes in question just as well as the other, or one can be replaced by the other; and this quality is called their sameness.

Now as a matter of fact there are no two concrete things in the world in which there cannot be found some sameness. Both somehow affect sentiency; we say they consist of matter. Both can be measured in size, breadth, and height: we say, they are extended. Both are at any given moment in a certain relation to other things: we say, they are in space. Both have a definite form and consist of one or several special structures (i. e., so to say, inside-forms). All things can in some way or other be classed together under one heading. These samenesses of things go along with differences, and the degree of sameness in the different things varies greatly. Whether there is any sameness and difference at all in the world, cannot be decided _a priori_, but is a problem which can be solved only on the ground of, first, an _a posteriori_ statement of the facts, second, a systematical arrangement of the facts. If this is accomplished we can venture into a methodical investigation as to the nature of the samenesses as well as the differences that obtain in the universe, and having arranged them in a system, we can apply _a priori_ this system to facts with which we are not as yet acquainted.

The many samenesses which are experienced are not purely mental additions; they are not mere subjective imputations transferred upon objective existence. They are real; i. e. there are in the objective things actual features which allow of certain substitutions. A ray of light awakens in some feeling substance the traces left by former rays of light; and this reawakening is called memory. The perception of sameness is the beginning of mind, and it involves the perception of difference as a natural consequence.

Suppose that the stuff of which the world consists were capable of acquiring feeling, but there were no samenesses whatever; which would mean that every smallest piece of the world-stuff were a particular thing by itself and in every respect unlike every other piece, of a different material or of no material at all, of different size or of no size at all, and also possessed of a different number of space dimensions. In such a world all the impacts made upon a sentient being would be different; not one would be like the other, and all feelings would present a chaos without uniformities, worse than the most complex crazy-quilt. Under such circumstances mind would be impossible: it would neither originate nor could it develop.

On the other hand suppose again that the stuff of which the world consists were capable of acquiring feeling in some certain formation, and that there were samenesses in the world and in the events of the world. Would not mind necessarily originate in such a world? Given feeling substance in a world of samenesses and differences, these samenesses will produce analogous samenesses of impression upon the feeling substance, which will be perceived as samenesses of feeling. The preservation of the traces left in the feeling substance (supposing this substance to live on indefinitely) will in the long run result in the formation of special sense-organs. It will later on, with the aid of word-symbolism, lead to the formation of universals, for universals are nothing but samenesses perceived. It will then create with the assistance of abstraction the realm of scientific thought, representing the uniformities of the events of the world in exact formulas.

THE EXISTENCE OF SAMENESSES A FACT.

The question whether there are samenesses at all in the world, is in our opinion settled. It is a fact that there are samenesses. The uniformities of the world are a matter of indubitable experience—indubitable because our very existence as thinking beings, as minds, is conditioned by this fact. We see the mind of every child develop out of his perception of samenesses. Our scientists teach us that the race-soul, like a great immortal individual, is the product of the accumulated experience of samenesses; and all future progress, in science as well as in civilisation, in mechanical invention as well as in ethics, depends upon the trustworthiness of the samenesses stated to exist in the objective world.

The question of the ultimate _raison d’être_ of the samenesses and differences, is another question; and it would lead us too far here to discuss it. In several details the problem is not as yet ripe for solution. A full solution of the problem would be tantamount to the exposition of a complete knowledge of the world. Suffice it here to say that we have reasons to think of the world-stuff as being of the same nature throughout. The chemical elements seem to be different configurations of one and the same substance. In this way all difference would have to be explained as a difference of form.

The form of reality possesses sameness and difference in all its parts. Space in its sameness is by experience found to be tri-dimensional, which means, it is determinable throughout by three coördinates; while its differences are due to the position of the points considered. For the purpose of the geometrician space is uniform, but for the purpose, say of the architect, it is not uniform. To the geometrician two congruent triangles, whether they are in the cellar or in the garret, are the same. However, to the architect the position of two congruent triangles in his design of a house is by no means the same. Every single point of space has its special and individual qualities.

The whole business of science is to systematise the samenesses of experience, and to present them in such convenient formulas that they can be used for guidance in our actions.

The most comprehensive formulation of the sameness of the universe as a whole has found its expression in the law of the conservation of matter and energy. This law rests upon the experience, corroborated by experiments, that causation is transformation. It states that the total amount of matter and the total amount of energy remain constant. There is no creation out of nothing and no conversion of something into nothing.

EINDEUTIG BESTIMMT.

After this sketch of the importance of sameness, (a subject which we have by no means exhausted,) we return to the idea of necessity. The ideas of sameness and necessity are closely related. A world of sameness is a world in which necessity rules, and necessity means regularity and order.

German scientists have a very good expression to denote the formulation of events in a manner which describes them in their necessary course. If they have succeeded in finding the sameness in the instances of a certain class of events, they say that it is _eindeutig bestimmt_, which means, the sameness is determined in a way that admits of no equivocation; it is complete, representing solely and purely that feature upon the presence of which the result depends. Whatever is thus _eindeutig bestimmt_, is recognised in its necessity. The presence of that feature which makes it _eindeutig bestimmt_, determines the event to take place; and this being determined, its inevitableness, the _it will be_ of the process, is all there is to necessity.

All natural phenomena that can be _eindeutig bestimmt_ are necessary in their happening. A world which with regard to the total amount of its matter and energy is the same to-day and yesterday and will be the same to-morrow, a world whose laws of form possess a sameness throughout, so that it allows of formulating and applying them in their rigidity to all facts present, past, and future, a world in which all the changes are transformations determinable with the assistance of formal laws, can be relied upon and the course of its events can be computed.

Such _is_ the world in which we live; and taking this ground I say, the world is a cosmos, it is no chaos; and noticing that being possessed of sameness is an intrinsic and inalienable feature of the world, I am inclined to add the world never was and never will be a chaos. And this, if it be true at all, is true not only in general and as it were wholesale, but in its minutest details. If there were deficiencies of this order in the unobservable details, they would not be diminished by being summed up in large and ever larger amounts; on the contrary, they would increase; they would grow in proportion. This not being the case, we have not the slightest reason to doubt that in those realms of minutest existence into which, from the grossness and the lack of precision of our organs and instruments of observation, we cannot penetrate, the same order and regularity obtains as in those regions which lie open to our investigation. In other words: From this standpoint, existence is, so to say, permeated by law throughout; every event is determined and any kind of absolute chance is excluded.

Following Kant’s etymology we understand by _a posteriori_ the sensory elements, and by _a priori_ the formal elements of our experience. The queer expression “a priori” is in so far justified as formal truths (such as geometrical, arithmetical, logical rules) are formulas expressing the universal samenesses of the form of existence. They contain the laws of form in a shape that is _eindeutig bestimmt_, so that an experimenter will know them _a priori_ to be so. _A priori_ means beforehand. An experimenter knows certain things even before he makes his experiments. The _a priori_ elements of experience are by no means innate truths; nor are they the historical beginning of experience. On the contrary. In their abstract purity they appear as a very late product of man’s mental evolution.

The _a priori_ systems of thought are not arbitrary constructions; they are constructions raised out of the recognition of the formal, i. e. the relational, samenesses that appear in experience. All possibilities of a certain class of relations can be exhausted and formulated in theorems. As such they can be used as references to assist in the explanation and determination of new experiences. We know some part of any new experience with which we are confronted even before we have investigated it. We know certain laws of its form, and by reference to these known laws we are enabled to reduce the unknown to the known, to analyse the process and set forth that feature of it which makes _eindeutig bestimmt_.

II. THE SCOPE OF NECESSITY.

Mr. Peirce objects to necessitarianism, and classes it together with materialism and the mechanical philosophy, speaking of the latter as the most logical form of necessitarianism. In consonance with the dictionary-definitions of these words, he contrasts them to the doctrine of the freedom of the will and also to miracles—the latter, we must confess, being a dangerous concession to certain theological conceptions.

The “Century Dictionary” defines “necessitarianism” as

“The theory that the will is subject to the general mechanical law of cause and effect.”

And “necessitarian” as

“One who maintains the doctrine of philosophical necessity, in opposition to that of the freedom of the will: opposed to libertarian.”

The word “determinism” is regarded as a synonym of necessitarianism. Its first definition in the “Century Dictionary” reads as follows:

“A term invented by Sir William Hamilton to denote the doctrine of the necessitarian philosophers, who hold that man’s actions are uniformly determined by motives acting upon his character, and that he has not the power to choose to act in one way so long as he prefers on the whole to act in another way.”

Hamilton’s definition as here presented is puzzling. If the words “choose” and “prefer on the whole” are _not_ meant to be tautological, there is no sense in it; for no determinist denies that a man might “upon the whole” prefer to act this way, while he has the power to choose, and for special considerations perhaps does choose, to act in another way. However, if the words “choose” and “prefer on the whole” are meant to be tautological, the self-contradictoriness of the statement is too palpable for a Hamilton. Is there anybody who would maintain that a man who chooses to act in one way can at the same time, under the very same circumstances, and he remaining the very same man of the same character and intentions, choose to act in another way?

While we accept determinism and also necessitarianism in the sense that all events (the actions of willing beings included) are determined, we cannot accept either the mechanical philosophy or materialism as the terms are commonly understood.

We find materialism defined as

“The metaphysical doctrine that matter is the only substance, and that matter and its motions constitute the universe.” (“Century Dictionary,” 2d sense.)

The mechanical philosophy is explained _sub voce_ “atomic” as

“[The view that] from the diverse combination and motions of ... atoms all things, including the soul, were supposed to arise.” _Ibid._

Determinism is simply the negation of absolute chance. It does not exclude chance in the original sense of the word as an unexpected event, as something that befalls one without his seeking it or making the event—chance being derived from ML. _cadentia_, i. e. the falling, as in a throw of dice.

The “Century Dictionary” defines “chance” in sense 9, as

“Fortuity; especially the absence of a cause necessitating an event.”

This is absolute chance, the existence of which we deny. The “Century Dictionary” adds the following little note:

“Absolute chance, the (supposed) spontaneous occurrence of events undetermined by any general law or by any free volition. According to Aristotle, events may come about in three ways: first, by necessity or an external compulsion; second, by nature or the development of an inward germinal tendency; and third, by chance, without any determining cause or principle whatever, by lawless, sporadic originality.”[12]

We understand chance as being, from certain premisses, an incalculable coincidence, either not intended to be calculated, or, for certain reasons, from a given standpoint with a limited and definite amount of knowledge, not capable of calculation. Determinism, as we understand the term, does not imply as the “Century Dictionary” has it in its definition of necessitarianism, that “the law of cause and effect” is “mechanical.” It simply asserts that the law of cause and effect holds good universally, and that there is no effect that is not definitely determined, according to the nature of the things in action, by causes and all their circumstances.

NECESSITY AND CHANCE.

Mr. Peirce says:

“_All_ the diversity and specificalness of events is attributable to chance—diversification, specificalness, and irregularity of things, I suppose is chance—and this diversity cannot be due to laws that are immutable.” (P. 332.)

Our world-view leads us to other conclusions; we say:

Every specificalness or particularity is such by possessing a certain form and standing in a definite relation (in time as well as space) to all other things of the universe. Of every concrete thing we can say it is now and here, or it was then and there. It is or was made up in this special way, and it stands or it stood in these special relations to its surroundings. Proportions, relations, forms—these are what account for the diversification and specificalness of all things in the universe; they are what explain the irregularities of individual cases and of all those events which appear as chance to him who, although he may be well informed about the nature of a thing, does not know the relation of its complex surroundings, exercising according to law their disturbing influence upon its actions which otherwise would be uniform.

And since no two spots of space and no two instances of time are the same, since the relations of every atom are different in every position and at every moment of its existence, we need not be astonished to find diversity and specificalness in this world of samenesses.

We do not believe in absolute chance, but we believe in chance.

What is chance?

Chance is any event not especially intended, either not calculated, or, with a given and limited stock of knowledge, incalculable.

Gunpowder was, according to the legend, invented by chance. Berthold Schwartz intended to make gold, yet when the mixture was ignited, he began to understand that it was an explosive. When I say that I met a friend by chance, I mean that the meeting was unintentional. I had not foreseen it and perhaps could not foresee it. When we call a throw of dice pure chance, we mean that the incidents which condition the turning up of these or those special faces of the dice have not been or cannot be calculated. We do not mean that the law of cause and effect is suspended; we mean that we are unable to determine the effect. That which would make this or that throw _eindeutig bestimmt_ is either not known to us, or, if it were known, is of such a nature that we cannot produce the desired effect with any certainty. Matters are so arranged in the game of dice that the slightest incident changes the result, and these incidents are either not within our ken or not within the range of our power. Chance, accordingly, as we understand it, is no exception to necessity; it does not happen contrary to law, and is in each case the strict result of a definite cause under definite circumstances.

Absolute chance is something quite different. Absolute chance is that which is incalculable because of the absence of law. Mr. Peirce says:

“Another argument, or convenient commonplace, is that absolute chance is _inconceivable_. This word has eight current significations. The ‘Century Dictionary’ enumerates six. Those who talk like this will hardly be persuaded to say in what sense they mean that chance is inconceivable.”

Absolute chance is “inconceivable” as the word is defined by the “Century Dictionary” in the second sense: It is

“unacceptable to the mind because involving a violation of laws believed to be well established by positive evidence.”

Absolute chance is not unthinkable in the sense of unimaginable. We can very well depict a case of absolute chance in our imagination, just as we can tell and describe in minutest details the fairy tale of Alladin’s lamp; just as we can in our imagination depict a creation out of nothing. But he who accepts that the world is in its innermost nature a cosmos, that its events are strictly and throughout regulated by law, cannot at the same time think that there are nooks and crevices in which the law does not operate. Absolute chance actually involves the idea of a creation out of nothing; and thus it stands in contradiction to the law of the preservation of matter and energy. Absolute chance which means that the very same thing under the very same conditions can act in this or in some other way, that it need not act in exactly the same way, involves a belief in either the creation of a not existing quality out of nothing, or the disappearance of existing qualities into nothing.

Mr. Peirce says:

“It seems to me that every throw of sixes with a pair of dice is a manifest instance of chance.”

Yes, of chance; but not of that chance the existence of which Mr. Peirce maintains—not of absolute chance. Every throw of dice, every toss of head or tail, are exactly determined by circumstances. We call it chance only in so far as we cannot calculate and predetermine the result.

Suppose you take two large silver coins between your thumb and the first two fingers, one coin parallel to and a little above the other. Suppose tails are up in both. Drop the lower coin without an effort just as it would fall, about twenty inches, and you may be sure that, in spite of yourself, it will turn up head. Then drop the upper one and it will not turn, but plump right down showing tail. There are certain mechanical reasons for the one case as well as for the other. As soon as we know the law and can apply it, the case ceases to be an instance of chance.

Dice, the roulette, and other games of chance are so arranged, that the determinating circumstances are too numerous and also too complex, one interfering with and being disturbed by the others, to admit of any adequate calculation or predetermination. An arrangement of conditions which in this way eludes the calculation of a definite set of possibilities, is called by Professor Kries _gleiche Spielräume_ or equal chances. And the province of equal chances is and will remain the proper sphere of the calculus of probabilities.

Professor Nitsche objects to Kries’s proposition, saying that absolutely equal chances are impossible and an equal chance (_ein gleicher Spielräume_) is nothing but the objectification of a judgment of equal value.[13] We find no fault with Nitsche’s objection; there are no absolutely equal chances; and what is called “equal chance” means that the strength of two or several anticipations is of the same degree; that our belief and doubt as to the turning up of one, two, three, four, five, or six spots of a die are equally justified. The objective conditions which justify such equality of several expectations is what Kries (if we understand him correctly) calls _gleiche Spielräume_. But _gleiche Spielräume_ do not imply absolute chance. We might as well expect that all the six faces of a die should turn up simultaneously in one throw, as that any one of them should turn up by absolute chance.

While absolute chance cannot be admitted, partly because we are not in need of it, (since the irregularities of nature can be sufficiently explained otherwise,) and partly because the idea of absolute chance if it were needed, is incompatible with our world-conception, we shall, nevertheless, have to concede to chance, as we understand the term, a very important rôle in the evolution of life. The formation of worlds and the history of mankind depend to a great extent upon chances similar to the throws of dice. There are many possibilities, and now this, now that, will, according to the circumstances, be realised—of course in each case with strict necessity.

Let us illustrate this idea by an example.

The formation of about seventy elements out of the original world-substance, which may be supposed to be homogeneous, does not appear to depend upon chance. Their universal appearance in all parts of the universe suggests the hypothesis that their formation is the inevitable result of a gradual condensation of nebular substances. We find everywhere, according to the stage of condensation, a gradual appearance, first of the lighter, then of the heavier elements. There seems to be no possibility of the formation of other elements than those known to us (including here the hypothetical elements which are still missing in the Mendeljeff series and at the same time, at least, not excluding a further continuance of the series). These elements or none, it appears, must be formed out of the original substance of our world. Let us here assume, for argument’s sake, that it were so beyond question, and that we knew the nature of the world-substance to be such as to condense, if it condenses at all, into no other but these forms, which we call chemical elements. This would be a limitation of possibilities. Exactly so the throws Of dice are limited. With the dice commonly in use we cannot throw fractions; nor can we throw either zero, or seven, or any other higher number. We can throw only whole numbers, integrals from one up to six. But while we thus assume that the formation of the elements is limited to those actually existing, the proportion in which the elements may be distributed in the different nebulæ and solar systems, is apparently very different. Suppose we had a full knowledge of the intrinsic nature of the world-substance and were standing outside the universe observing the process of world-formations; we could not from this knowledge alone predict all that would happen. We should on our assumption be able to predict _a priori_ that such elements would be formed. But whether the different elements would be generated in these or in other proportions appears to depend upon the presence of certain conditions, perhaps the rapidity of motion, the heat produced by friction, the temperature of the surrounding cosmic space, any knowledge of which is not included in our knowledge of the nature of the world-substance. These conditions may vary, nay, so far as we can judge they actually do vary; and any apparently slight variation of them, or even one of them, will result in different effects of great consequence. Without a detailed knowledge of all these special conditions, simply from a supposed _a priori_ knowledge of the world-substance, the idiosyncrasy of this or that particular solar system could not be _a priori_ determined. Here it will be such, and there, under perhaps slightly different circumstances, it will be entirely other. Here the centre of gravity may be in one great mass, there again it may be divided in two, so that the planets circle around two suns.

From this point of view we have to call these results products of chance.

To a being who not only might be supposed to know the intrinsic nature of existence, but could have present before his mind every event of the great interacting cosmos in its entire complexity, this kind of chance would, of course, also disappear. To him all states of things would appear throughout as _eindeutig bestimmt_. Yet, although in this way necessity permeates all events that take place, we do not intend to deny the irregularity of detail,[14] the specificalness of the particulars, the diversity of individual incidents and existences. According to our conception of nature they must remain, and we need not attribute them to absolute chance. To attribute irregularities to absolute chance (as Mr. Peirce does) is actually an abandonment of explaining them. The specificalness and particularity of nature can be said to be due to chance in so far only as they do not depend upon and are not determinable by the nature of the things under consideration, but result (with strict necessity of course) from the ever-changing conformations of surrounding circumstances.

Thus the fate of a man depends mainly upon his character,—the proverb says, “Every man is the architect of his own fortune”—but not entirely. There are sometimes coincidences determining the fates of men, and through them the fates of whole nations. And these coincidences do not result from their character.

Let everybody think of his own fate. Part of his life has been what it was because he is such a man as he is; and we can, within certain limits, predict the fate of a youth with whose character we are familiar. But how much of our lives depends upon circumstances which could be foreseen only by an omniscient being, and which, as we might properly say, if we do not misunderstand the term, is due to chance!

FREE WILL.

Compulsion is generally considered as a synonym of necessity. But the usage of the term necessity in the sense of compulsion is, in our opinion, very inappropriate, because misleading. Necessity and compulsion should not be confounded; for compulsion excludes free will and “necessity” does not.

A government compels its citizens to obey certain unpopular laws; the victorious army compels the enemy to surrender. The obedience of the citizens and the surrender of the enemy are acts done under compulsion; they are not acts of free will. But a man of a certain character wills, under given circumstances and in the absence of compulsion, _necessarily_ in the way in which he does. The determination of a free will is not a matter of chance but of necessity. Yet the determining factors are not outside but inside; they are not due to compulsion, not to the pressure of a foreign power, but to the nature of the willing being himself.

This, then, is the definition of “free”: A being is free if it is unrestrained, so that it acts according to its own nature. As is its nature, so it wills; as it wills, so it acts. If we know the character of a man and the situation in which he is placed, we can predict his choice as the necessary result of his nature. His decision, although it is free and not under compulsion, is not an outcome of chance which might under the same conditions be different, but is the inevitable result of necessity.

If by free will we had to understand that the decisions of the will are the result either of chance or of absolute chance, the foremost duty of the educator would be to make man unfree, to insert certain dominant ideas into his mind, destined to determine his will. The free man according to this definition of free will as being due to chance, would be a person whose actions are more whimsical than the fancies of lunatics. We reject this conception of the freedom of the will.

In our opinion a will is free if it is unrestrained so that it can act according to its nature. Our conception of free will does not stand in contradiction to the doctrine of “determinism” as defined by the “Century Dictionary” in its second sense:

“In general, the doctrine that whatever is or happens is entirely determined by antecedent causes.”

THE MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY.

We distinguish between (1) mechanical, (2) physical, (3) chemical, (4) physiological, and (5) psychical events.

A mechanical phenomenon is a change of place which does not involve a change of the constitution of the parts moved. E. g., a stone is pushed; its position is altered, but the stone remains the same.

A physical phenomenon is an event in which the molecular state of the bodies in action is altered. Water heated becomes steam, frozen it becomes ice. The three states have different molecular configurations.

Chemical phenomena are such in which the constitution of the atoms is altered. The characteristic qualities of hydrogen, for example, are different when combined with different elements or when isolated. Each combination is a peculiar substance with peculiar qualities and not a mixture or combination of the qualities of the isolated elements.

Physiological processes are all those changes that take place in the living irritable substance of plants and animals, such as nutrition, growth, and propagation. Its characteristic features are (1) hunger or thirst, i. e. the want of certain materials (food), (2) the reception of the wanted materials by suction or other means, which in some cases are a quite mechanical or physical process, not unlike the afflux of oxygen caused by a burning candle or the suction of water by a sponge, and (3) the assimilation of food. The materials received are distributed in the places wanted, thus adding to the building up of the living substance according to the nature of its structure. This produces as a natural result (4) the phenomenon of growth with a preservation of form. (5) Propagation is a special kind of growth; it is the growth of a part that at some stage of its development becomes an independent individual.

Psychical phenomena are such in which feelings and the meanings of feelings are the determinant factors.

It is apparent that all these terms, mechanical, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychical, are mere abstracts. In describing a mechanical phenomenon, we limit our attention to the mechanical change. We do not mean to say that the body moved does not possess chemical, physical, perhaps physiological, or even psychical qualities. The calculation of the curve of a jump is a mechanical problem, although the jumping body may be a human being. However, the question why did the man jump, is a psychical question. The motive of the jump is an idea in that class of mental activity characterised as purpose. The man had an end in view. And this idea of an end to be realised is the combined result of special conditions and of the character of the man.

The different spheres of mechanical, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychical actions being abstractions, it is obvious that science when dealing with so-called purely mechanical phenomena, has to do with a fiction. There are no purely mechanical phenomena. There are features of reality which are purely mechanical; and these we call motions. But the world does not consist of motions only. It also possesses other qualities.

The mechanical philosopher assumes that the world consists of matter and motion only, and so he feels warranted in the hope that every event that takes place, the actions of man included, can be explained by the laws of motion. Yet the premiss is wrong, and we may anticipate that the conclusion also will prove erroneous. And so it is.

The laws of motion are applicable to and will explain all motions; but they are not applicable to that which is not motion.

It is inconceivable how we can hope to explain a feeling by the laws of motion; and so the fond hope of explaining the problems of the nature of the soul by mechanics is preposterous. No objection can be made to the possibility of explaining the delicate motions in the nervous substance of the brain by the laws of molar or molecular mechanics. But these explanations would throw no light upon the causation that takes place in the mind. The properly psychical phenomena, the properly intelligent action of thought, could not be explained in this way. For the world of mentality introduces quite a new factor into the sphere of being.

What is this new factor?

The nature of mental activity consists in the symbolism of feelings. Feelings, being different under different conditions and the same under same conditions, become representative of their corresponding causes, and thus the objects of experience are depicted in feeling symbols.

Representativeness, accordingly, is the nature of mind.

The question, How certain brain-structures operate, is a question of the mechanics of nervous substance, and further, the question, How thought-operations take place, is a question, so to say, of logical mechanics. But the question, Why a certain idea responds to certain stimuli and not to others, does not admit of a mechanical explanation or formulation. The answer to this question will be a description of the nature of the idea; and the nature of the idea is not a motion: it is the meaning of which the idea is possessed.

The action of a mind depends upon the meaning of certain symbols. A written or spoken word has a special meaning, and this meaning becomes the determinant factor of mind action. The meaning of a word is not a piece of matter, neither is it a motion. It is something _sui generis_. I do not say that there is any inexplicable mystery connected with it. On the contrary, wonderful as the fact is, it is not mysterious; it does not stand in contradiction to any other fact of nature. Symbols stand for something; they indicate, denote, or signify something. This significance is called their meaning; and mind is a system of symbols in states of awareness.

Now, neither states of awareness are mechanical, nor is the meaning of words anything mechanical. How can we hope for a mechanical explanation either of the soul or the mind or of any mental action?

Suppose, for instance, a general receives a message containing a few words. He opens the paper, he reads it, and all on a sudden, his mind is in a tumult of excitement. What is it that produces the excitement? Is it any motion? Yes! In a certain sense, it is a motion: it is the reading of the paper. This is the cause. Yet not the reading as such excites his consternation. He might read other messages all the day long without any such an effect. Plainly, the causative element of the cause is not the reading, not the motions of which the reading consists, not the shape of the written characters and their combinations in groups, called words. It is something more subtle even than that. It is the significance of the writing. It is the meaning of the written characters. It is the purport that is attached to the word-symbols.

The origin of mind accordingly introduces a factor which has nothing to do with mechanics; and the simplest psychical reflexes, including those physiological reflexes which we must suppose to have originated by conscious adaptation and then been submerged into unconsciousness, cannot be explained from mechanical or physical laws alone.

SPONTANEITY.

While we thus reject the conception of the mechanical philosophy and also of materialism, we do not say that there are motions either in the brain or anywhere else which form exceptions to the laws of mechanics. The laws of mechanics hold good for all motions. The laws of mechanics are formal laws: they do not explain why bodies gravitate; but they describe how they gravitate; and the latter is much more useful to know than the former. There is (as we conceive it) no deep secret in the problem why bodies gravitate; they gravitate because they possess a quality which attracts them to each other with a force directly as their masses and inversely as the squares of their distances. In a word, gravity is the intrinsic nature of masses, it is an inalienable part of their existence. Thus whenever bodies gravitate, we are confronted with an act of spontaneity.

Attempts have been made to explain gravitation without the assumption of spontaneity, by the pressure of an atom-surrounding ether. But that only defers the question; for the spontaneity, in that case, would have to be placed in the ether. Whatever be the merits of the explanations of gravitation by a _vis a tergo_, we must recognise the fact that no motion can take place in the world, no pressure can be exercised, without there being somewhere some spontaneous something that moves or presses. Spontaneity is a universal feature of nature.

Mr. Peirce uses the term “spontaneity” in a different sense from ours. He identifies spontaneity with absolute chance. He means by it the irregularities that arise without cause, thus producing departures from law. We call that action spontaneous which is not due to external influence but springs from the nature of the things in action.

Spontaneous is derived from the Latin _spons_, “will,” which as a noun was obsolete at the classical period of Roman literature and occurred only in such forms as _sponte_, “of one’s own will, of one’s own accord.” If a man acts of his own will, free from and not biassed by the influence of other men, his action is spontaneous. A free man’s action is not arbitrary, unless arbitrariness[15] be the character of the man; it is not an exception to law; it is, if the character of the man is known, calculable in advance, for every free action is spontaneous: it springs immediately from the character of the man; it is the direct expression of his will; it reveals the nature of his very being, thus showing the man himself, and not something beyond or outside of him.

Taking the word spontaneity in this sense, we say: Masses gravitate spontaneously; they are self-moving; their motion is due to their gravity, and gravity is their intrinsic nature.

Exactly as the laws of mechanics explain the “how” of motions but not why there is motion at all, the “why” depending upon the nature of each moving body, so the “how” of the brain-motions is explicable by mechanical laws, but the “why” depends upon the nature of the moving material. The brain-atoms are possessed of the same spontaneity as the atoms of a gravitating stone. Yet there is present an additional feature; there are present states of awareness, and these states of awareness possess meaning, both of which are items which the chemist cannot find by chemical analysis. Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can be weighed on any scales, be they ever so delicate, nor are they determinable in foot-pounds.

Yet while mechanics is not applicable to mental facts, the realm of mentality is by no means to be surrendered to indeterminism. Mr. Peirce describes the domain of mind as the absence of law and the prevalence of absolute chance, of an indetermined and indeterminable sporting. This is not so. While the fact must be recognised that the nature of the mind is not something mechanical, its action is nevertheless determined by laws—not by mechanical laws, but by psychical and mental laws. These psychical and mental laws are in one respect of exactly the same nature as mechanical laws; they describe the samenesses of certain facts of reality. And the facts of the ideal domain of thought, the facts of subjectivity, are no less real than the grosser facts of mechanical motion, which are the facts of objectivity.

The term mechanical is often used in the sense of “lacking life or spirit” (“Century Dictionary,” p. 3679). This is justifiable in so far only as when we speak of mechanical phenomena we do not mean psychical or any other phenomena. It is true that that which makes this or that idea respond to a certain stimulus is not a mechanical but a mental quality, but the action itself, in so far as it is a motion, is and remains mechanical. Thus it happens that the laws of mechanics, far from being anti-spiritual, are the means by which we learn to understand and objectively to represent the action of mental phenomena.

In this connection attention may be called to the efforts of modern logicians to construct thinking machines which will perform the work of mental operations in a purely mechanical way. You propose the problem by adjusting certain indicators; then you turn the crank, and the machine does the rest. The results will come out with unfailing exactness.

The attempt made to construct thinking machines cannot as yet be called successful. Nevertheless they are not impossibilities. Calculating machines of various constructions are in practical use and doing satisfactory work, not only in addition and subtraction but also in multiplication and division, and even in extracting roots and in raising numbers to higher powers. Calculations are undoubtedly one kind of thought, and if calculations can be performed by machines, there is no theoretical reason why we should not be able to construct logical machines, which shall perform the operations of deductive and even of inductive thought with perfect accuracy.

CONCLUSION.

Determinism does not make freedom impossible and natural laws do not suppress the spontaneity of nature.

Natural laws are not a power forcing a certain mode of action upon things; they are not an oppression of nature. Natural laws are simply a description of nature as nature is. There is no “must” in nature in the sense of compulsion, as if there were two things, (1) a master (i. e. the law) giving a command, and (2) a slave (i. e. the single facts) obeying the command. The situation is not dualistic, but monistic. There is an “is” in nature, and this “is” is constant. There is a certain sameness in nature. In spite of all changes it remains the same; and thus even the apparent irregularities preserve throughout an unvarying consistency. The facts of nature express the character of nature; they are nature herself. Briefly, the “is” of nature (if we are permitted to personify her) does not describe that which nature must do, but that which nature wills to do; it describes how she acts spontaneously, of her own free will, in conformity with her innermost being and consistently with her permanent character.

The main difference that obtains between the actions of inanimate nature so-called and rational beings is not the absence and presence of spontaneity, (for spontaneity is in both,) but the absence and presence of mind: and mind is not only the subjectivity of existence; mind is not merely sentiency, i. e. the awareness of feelings; mind is the representative symbolism of subjectivity.

There are sufficient reasons to assume that all objective existence, which appears to us as matter in motion, possesses a subjectivity, the nature of which depends upon the mode of the interaction of its elements. This subjectivity appears in organised substance as feeling and develops naturally into mind.

The essence of nature, accordingly, is not materiality, but spirituality. Materiality is the character of nature as it affects sentient beings; but its innermost self, as it were, its subjectivity, its psychical aspect is revealed in the appearance of the spirit-life of rational beings—of minds.

While we fully recognise the spirituality of nature as nature’s innermost essence and as an ineradicable feature of reality, we cannot with Mr. Peirce place mind at the beginning of the world. There is a great difference between spirituality and mind. One is the source and condition of the other. One is permanent, the other is transient. One is the abstract view of a universal quality of the world, eternal and everlasting, as much indestructible as matter and energy; the other is an individual formation that originates, grows, and develops; that can be broken and built again; that dies with the body and rises again in new generations; that decays, as the foliage of the trees falls in winter, yet reappears, as the verdure reappears in spring; for the life of nature is immortal.

Mr. Peirce, regarding determinism as that view which does not recognise the freedom of will, has an original and in our conception a wrong view on the one hand of natural laws, which are to him mere habits acquired by the world, and on the other hand of chance, or arbitrary sportiveness, (i. e. that which is not determinable by law,) which he identifies with mind and with the spontaneity of freedom. Mind is to him the beginning of all. Mind remains mind, according to his view, so long as it is irregular, producing out of its own undetermined being sporadic effects without order or consistency. As soon as mind takes to habits, it grows mechanical; by creating regularity it disappears; and the result is matter in motion according to mechanical laws. Matter, accordingly, is said to be “effete mind.” Law in our view is the divinity of nature; according to Mr. Peirce it is the termination of nature’s irregularities: it comes to suppress her freedom and to supplant her mentality by mechanicalism. An element of pure chance, however, survives, which, appears in the free will of man, in miracles, and in nature’s irregularities, and this element of pure chance will remain until in the infinitely distant future, mind becomes crystallised into an absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system. Such is in brief Mr. Peirce’s view of the rôle played by mind in the world-process.

Mr. Peirce’s views of chance and law seem to come to the rescue of certain theological dogmas, which represent the world-order as the product of a divine mind. We doubt very much whether Mr. Peirce’s position be tenable even from the standpoint of the scientific theologian. For the order of the world, as it appears in natural laws, must be, and is recognised even by the theist, as part and parcel of God’s eternal being. The scientist who formulates _sub specie aeternitatis_ certain facts of nature, say the “how” of gravitating bodies, describes a certain quality of God himself; he describes something that is immutable, eternal, everlasting; it is not the whole of God, but it is certainly one feature of Jahveh, of that which is, was, and will be as it is.

In contradistinction to Mr. Peirce, we recognise, that the regularity of the whole is preserved in the specificalness of its individual particulars, that there are samenesses in this world of changes and diversities, and that if all reality is regarded as being essentially the same throughout, all the diversities and apparent irregularities can very well be explained as resulting from peculiar forms, combinations, and relations. Furthermore, we recognise that natural laws are compatible with the spontaneity of nature and that the necessity with which a free man acts according to his character, does not reverse his freedom of will.

Nature is self-acting throughout; nature is free; even inanimate nature is spontaneous. But a higher freedom rises with the appearance of mind. And there are degrees of this higher freedom which can be determined with great exactness, for they correspond to the range of the mentality of each creature. Mentality develops by the observation of samenesses, and it reaches rationality by the recognition of natural laws. The recognition of natural laws is a view of some natural phenomena in their eternal aspect, and we call them truths. So much is natural law and freedom interconnected that the recognition of natural laws widens the range of freedom; and obedience to them raises man out of his dependence upon his surroundings to a state of dominion over the creation in which he becomes the master of natural forces.

What a deep significance lies in the saying of the apostle: “The truth shall make you free!”

EDITOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The adjective “like” is an abbreviation of “alike”; and “a-like” (M.E. _alyke_, A.S. _gelic_, O.H.G. _galih_, M.H.G. _gelich_, M.G. _gleich_) is a compound of the prefix a with _lic_ body, shape, figure.

[11] I am satisfied that logical identity is intended to mean sameness. I suppose that the word identity, being Latin and a kind of international term, appeared to logicians preferable to the Saxon word “sameness” or the German “Gleichheit.” We need not look for any deeper reason for the adoption of the term.

[12] Knowing that Mr. Peirce is one of the most prominent contributors to the _Century Dictionary_, I may be pardoned for surmising that, perhaps with the exception of the parenthesised word “(supposed)” he is the author of this passage and very likely of most of the other quotations of philosophical terms we have adduced from the same source.

[13] _Die Principien der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung_ by Johannes von Kries. See also Meinong’s review of the book (in _Gött. gel Anz._, No. 2, p. 56 et seqq.) and Ad. Nitsche’s article on the subject (in _Vierteljahrsschrift für wiss. Phil._ of 1892. XVI. 1, p. 26).

[14] By irregularity of detail we understand simply a lack of uniformity, but not exceptions to law. If irregularity be defined as exception to law, we should say, There is no irregularity in the world, while at the same time nothing is uniform: for every particle of the world is in its time and space relations and otherwise different from every other particle.

[15] Arbitrary, as used here, means capricious, uncertain, unreasonable. A man’s action is capricious if he is biassed by the present motive alone, without considering other motives which he would have under other circumstances. A deliberate man equalises, as it were, his actions by forming rules of conduct. An arbitrary man does not recognise rules or laws, made either by himself or by others.

LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE