CHAPTER XVI. GEORGE HENRY LEWES (CONCLUDED). The Relation of Universal to Organic Activities-Lewes' Theory of Perception. To the reader who may have followed thus far the argument here presented, perhaps it will not be too much to say that Metaphysics is a completed study. The problem of the Ultimate Reality, which has puzzled thoughtful humanity from Aristotle to the present day, has, owing to the vast logical movement of this age of Evolution, at last achieved its own solution, and we stand emancipated from the mys teries of idealism and the discouragements of skepticism, with naught to fear for the integrity of human knowledge. The logical position which an ultimate analysis occupies is invulnerable. There is, perhaps, no keener pleasure than to observe the resistance which it offers to the attacks of trained men of science. If they reason from a statical basis, postulating matter as an ultimate fact, "a substance which remains after all properties have been accounted for," they fall into the error of neglecting the very property by which we appreciate facts, namely, their activity. If they postulate this activity and deny to it extension or position, they again involve themselves by first employing a symbol and then withdrawing its meaning; for no fact can be expressed without conceding to it extension or position. The course to be pursued in such a controversy is to watch carefully for terms. having the same meaning as Space, such as Infinite, Coexistence, Matter, Substance, Status, Position, etc.; or the equivalents of Time, such as Absolute, Abstract Sequence, Force considered as the cause of motion, or Motion consid ered apart from its space aspect; or the equivalents of Motion, such as Life, God, Power, First Cause; and, when these terms are used, to insist upon giving them their full significance. Nothing can withstand the force of such an analysis. It is soon perceived that by employing abstractions, we recede from the particulars of life to the first or simplest fact, the initial relation of personal and general existence. It is therefore with feelings of the utmost relief that we take leave of the abstractions of metaphysics and take up the remaining three volumes of Lewes' philosophic writings purely as a scientific study, neglecting any thing we may find in them pertaining to ontological questions. Indeed Lewes seems to have written these last volumes in much the same spirit as that in which we would review them, for we find in them, after all, but little that is strictly metaphysical. The first of these is entitled the "Physical Basis of Mind," and deals with the following problems: "The Nature of Life"; "The Nervous Mechanism"; "Animal Automatism," and "The Reflex Theory." The second contains the problems: "Mind as a Function of the Organism"; "The Sphere of Sense and the Logic of Feeling"; "The Sphere of Intellect and the Logic of Signs." The last is the brief work entitled "The Study of Psychology." It is our purpose merely to select from the above problems the most striking lessons, so as to convey a general idea of the results to which Lewes has attained, and to define their relations to what has already been indicated as a complete philosophy. A minute study of the procedures of organic growth shows how difficult it is to avoid the theory of a design in nature. All human efforts are so intimately connected with design, that it is difficult for us to look upon natural sequences in any other light. The great masters in biological research have felt this difficulty, and, for the most part, yielded to it. Thus "Von Baer, in his great work, has a section entitled The Nature of the Animal Determines its Development'; and he thus explains himself: 'Although every stage in development is only made possible by its pre-existing condition, nevertheless the entire development is ruled and guided by the nature of the animal which is about to be; and it is not the momentary condition which alone absolutely determines the future, but more general and higher relations.'" The form that this superstition generally takes is the belief that an organism is determined by its type, or, "as the Germans say, its Idea." "All its parts take shape according to this ruling plan; consequently, when any part is removed, it is reproduced according to the Idea of the whole of which it forms a part. Milne Edwards, in a very interesting and suggestive work, concludes his survey of organic phenomena in these words: In the organism every thing seems calculated with a view to a determinate result, and the harmony of the parts does not result from any influence which they can exert upon one another, but from their co-ordination under the empire of a common power, a preconceived plan, a preexisting force.'" "This," continues Lewes, "is eminently metaphysiological (superstitious). It refuses to acknowledge the operation of immanent properties, refuses to admit that the harmony of a complex structure results from the mutual relation of its parts, and seeks outside the organism for some mysterious force, some plan, not otherwise specified, which regulates and shapes the parts. Let us note the logical inconsistencies of a position which, while assuming that every separate stage in development is the necessary sequence of its predecessor, declares the whole of the stages independent of such relations! Such a position is indeed reconcilable on the assumption that animal forms are moulded 'like clay in the hands of the potter.' But this is a theological dogma which leads to very preposterous and impious conclusions; and whether it leads to these conclusions or to others, positive Biology declines theological explanations altogether. ✶✶✶ The type does not dominate the conditions, it emerges from them; the animal organism is not cast in a mould, but the imaginary mould is the form which the polarities of the organic substance assume. It would seem very absurd to suppose that crystals assumed their definite shapes (when the liquid which held their molecules in solution is evaporated) under the determining influence of phantom crystals or Ideas; yet it has not been thought absurd to assume phantom forms of organisms. The conception of Type as a determining influence arises from that fallacy of taking a resultant for a principle, which has played so conspicuous a part in the history of philosophy. *** At first, the Type or Idea was regarded as an objective reality, external to the organism it was supposed to rule. Then this notion was replaced by an approach to the more rational interpretation, the Idea was made an internal, not an external, force, and was incorporated with the material elements of the organism, which were said to ' endeavor' to arrange themselves according to the Type. Thus Treveranus declares that the seed 'dreams of the future flower'; and 'Henle, when he declares that hair and nails. grow in virtue of the Idea, is forced to add that the parts endeavor to arrange themselves according to this Idea.' Even Lotze, who has argued so victoriously against the vitalists, and has made it clear that an organism is a vital mechanism, cannot relinquish this conception of legislative Ideas, though he significantly adds: These have no power in themselves, but only in as far as they are grounded in mechanical conditions.' Why, then, superfluously add them to the conditions?"1 The imposing analysis which Lewes makes of organic existence stops not at the latest biological discoveries, but presses on to what, by comparison with the very best previous work on the subject, is a new and vastly extended view of the origins of individual life. Not content with attacking the "superstition of the nerve-cell," upon which is built the theory of peculiar vital forces "wholly unallied with the primary energy of motion," which is in itself an important physiological reform, he addresses himself assiduously 1 "Physical Basis of Mind," pp. 104-107. to the task of widening the scientific understanding of the whole subject of organic life. Beginning with the analysis of Protoplasm, which discloses the exceedingly high molecular complexity of this basic substance of organisms, he identifies the complex but definite activities which this substance exhibits with the less complex but no less definite activities displayed by what we know as chemical substances, the difference in the activities of the two classes of substances being purely one of degree of complexity, corresponding with their respective degrees of molecular (or structural) complexity. This generalization, the importance of which is not easily appreciated, so far-reaching are its consequences, is made to serve as a basis for the extension of Mr. Darwin's theory of the origin of species by Natural Selection. "The survival of the fittest" is shown to be a very anthropomorphic way of expressing the great truth which Darwin brought to light. The struggle for existence, or the competition and antagonism of organisms, is shown to extend to the "competition and antagonism" of tissues and organs for existence; and for fear that the inconsistency implied in the application of such exclusively mental terms as competition and antagonism to the energies of organic substances (which can only be thought of as contributing to consciousness as remote factors) should be overlooked, he follows up the interdependencies of tissues and organs with such remorseless vigor, that nothing is left but to acknowledge that their potentialities are inherent in their chemical composition. "When a crystalline solution takes shape, it always takes a definite shape, which represents what may be called the direction of its forces, the polarity of its constituent molecules. In like manner, when an organic plasmode takes shape-crystallizes, so to speak-it always assumes a specific shape dependent on the polarity of its molecules. Crystallographers have determined the several forms possible to crystals; histologists have recorded the several forms of Organites, Tissues, and Organs. Owing to the greater variety in elementary composition, there is in organic sub |