Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/863

 PHASGA

791

PHENOMENALISM

to Simon Macliabeus and the Jews (I Maeh., xv, 23). Only two of its bishops are known: Fronto at Chalce- don (451); and Aristodemus, who in 458 signed the letter from the bishops of Lycia to the Emperor Leo. At the Council of Nicaea (787), the absent bishop was represented by the deacon John. The see is mentioned in the "Notitia; episcopatuum " until the thirteenth century. The ruins of Phaselis are at Tekir Ova in the vilayet of Koniah; they belong to the Roman period, the most important being a theatre. There are also numerous sarcophagi.

Lb Quien, Orienit christianus, I, 985; Beaufort, Karamania, 53-63; Fellows, Asia Minor, 211 aqq.; Leake, Asia Minor, 190; Texier, Asie mineure, 697-99; Hill, Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum: Lycia, p. Uvii.

S. PetridJ:s.

Phasga (A. V. Pisgah). — Whether the word in Hebrew is a proper or a common noun is not clear; certain it is at any rate that it designates a mountain of the Abarim range (Deut., xx.xii, 49), east of the Jordan (Deut., iv, 49), in the laud of Moab (Num., xxi, 20), "over against Jericho" (Deut., xx.\iv, 1), above Yeshimon [Num., xxi, 20; D. V. "which look- eth towards the desert" ('Ain Suweimeh)], east of the north end of the Dead Sea (Deut., iv, 49; Jos., xii, 3), in connexion with Mount Nebo, and commanding an extensive view of the Holy Land (Deut., xxxii, 49; xxxiv, 1-4), on the south-east border of which it stood (Deut., iv, 49). From all these indications it appears that Phasga is no other than Mount Nebo itself (Jebel Neba, south-west of Hesban or Hesebon), or, better still, the western peak of the mountain, Ras gi&gha. On its slopes the Israelites pitched their camp (Num., xxi, 20); in the "field of Sophim" (D. V. "a high place") on the mountain Bal;\am uttered his second oracle about lsr:irl (Num., xxiii, 11-241; lastly from the top of Phasga, Mu.ses surveyed the Promised Land.

Birch, The Prosiicct from Pisnah in Pal. Eiplor. Fund Quart. Stat. (London, 1S98); Co.vder, Heth and Moab (London, 18S9); Smith, Historical Oeography of the Holij Land (Lon Ion. 1894); Tristram, The Land of Moab (London, 1874) ; Lagrange, Itintraire des Israelites: De la Frontitre de Moab auz Riaes du Jourd.tin in Revue Biblique (1900), 443-149.

Charles L. Sodvay.

Phenomenalism (0aii'6aei'oi') literally means any systi'Mi (if thiiunht th:it has to do with appearances. The term is, however, usually restricted to the desig- nation of certain theories by which it is asserted: (1) that there is no knowledge other than that of phenom- ena — denial of the knowledge of substance in the metaphysical sense; or (2) that all knowledge is phenomenal — denial of the thing-in-itself and asser- tion that all reality is reality directly or reflectively present to consciousness.

(1) The first form of Phenomenalism reaches its full statement in Hume, though its logical develop- ment can be traced back through Berkeley and Locke to Descartes. It consists in the theory that substance is merely a relation between ideas; that its existence, as a reality, is incapable of intuitive or demonstrative certainty. The origin of the idea of substance can be explained on the basis of the imagination (Hume). The transient mental, or world, phenomena are re- lated in the imagination to a supposed substrate — a fictitious ground, permanent and inert. — which ac- counts for their appearance. The theory destroys metaphysics and replaces it with epistemology. This is quite in keejiing with Hume's Associationisra in psychology. The "Treatise on Human Nature" ad- mits ideas" and impressions, together with the associa- tion of these elements according to the well-known laws (see Association; Psychology); and nothing more than this is given or is necessary to explain what- ever is found in consciousness. For substance (as well as causality, etc.) can be explained adequately as the result (>(' ideas that have been frequently present in cDiijuiHticin. Hume restricted these views to exact experiuK-ntal science, and safeguarded the

ordinary experience of life by asserting that the con- cepts of substance, etc., are accompanied by a natural belief, or conviction, of their reality arising from feel- ing. His doctrine was widely accepted in France, and in Germany became the ideological forerunner of Kant's "Kritik". Though at once labelled Scepti- cism in England, on account of its consequences in natural theology, it is a frankly consistent Em- piricism (q. V.) quite in place in the evolution of the school of English thought. Where Locke, criticizing the ideogeny of Descartes, and admit- ting the part of empirical experience in the for- mation of ideas, left the metaphysical material substance and the metaphysical soul, as realities, un- criticized, Berkeley, developing his position further, taught that the supposed existence of the material world was not only indemonstrable, but false. Only spirits, with their ideas and volitions, exist. Esse of the material is percipi: and the regularity of nature is no more than the order of ideas as produced in us by anotlier spirit, namely, God. Hume's position is but a step further than this. Soul, or mind, as sub- stance, is no more real than body. Here the Phenom- enalism of Berkeley becomes logically complete.

Quite consistent with this conception is the state- ment of Huxley that mind is only the collection of perceptions united by certain relations between them (see Huxley, "Hume, a Biography", II, ii, p. 64), or that of Taine, the Positivist, that the Ego is no more than a luminous sheaf, having no other reality than the lights that compose it (see Taine, "Dc I'inlelU- gence", I, pref., p. 11). As we shall show, the opposi- tion of Hume to the concept of substance seems to rest upon a misunderstanding: for he admits (Treatise I, part 4, sect. 1) "something" that is accountable for impressions and "something" that is impressed (body, mind). Huxley seems but to popularize by his simile the conception of the Scotch philosopher, that there is no mind or soul (as substance) apart from its acts. Huxley compares the soul to a republic in which the members are united by their manifold ties and mutual relationships as citizens. This leaves the im- oressions and ideas substantial and makes of the mind what Scholastics would call an "accidental" unity, and of the substance (soul) a "permanent possibility of sensations", as Mill expresses it. Max Miiller has dealt with this notion in his "Science of Thought" (248) where he observes that such terms as possibility express a common quality that is always of some- thing, from which we have abstracted them. To call mind a "possibility" is at the same time to deny that it is a substance and to assert of it a quality tjelonging to substance, which would seem to be con- tradictory.

The idealistic standpoint of Hume, together with the doctrine of Positivism (q. v.), has had so great an influence upon modern thought that it will be well to show in what the misunderstanding, aln^ady re- ferred to, consists. As Cardinal Merrier points out ("Ontologie", 1902. p. 263), it is incredible that such thinkers as Hume and Kant, Mill, Spencer, Wundt, Paulsen, Comte, Renouvier, Bergson, and others, should have so totally misunderstood the substan- tiality of things and of the Ego as to profess a Phe- nomenalism contradictory to thedoctrineof tht School. On the other hand, it is no less incredible that phi- losophers like Aristotle, St. Thomas, and the School- MK-n, should have "been at fault in their interpretation of an elementary truth of common sense". On the face of it, a misunderstanding seems probable. To what was this due? First, to the doubt cast by Descartes upon the truth and validity of our notions of substance; second, to the observation of Ijocke, that we are incapable of directly attaining to sub- stance. If thought could immediately conceive the substance of a thing, we ought to be able to deduce all its properties from that-conception Third, to the