Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/512

 492 L E W L E W philosophy, but from that of science. In his treatment of such ideas as &quot; sensibility,&quot; &quot; sentience,&quot; and the like, he does not always show whether he is speaking of physical or of psychical phenomena. Among the other properly philosophic questions discussed in these two volumes the nature of the causal relation is perhaps the one which is handled with most freshness and suggestiveuess. The third volume, TJic Physical Basis of Mind, further develops the writer s views on organic activities as a whole. He insists strongly on the radical distinction between organic and inorganic processes, and on the impossibility of ever explaining the former by purely mechanical principles. With respect to the nervous system, he holds that all its parts have one and the same elementary property, namely, sensibility. Thus sensibility belongs as much to the lower centres of the spinal cord as to the brain, contributing in this more elementary form elements to the &quot;subconscious&quot; region of mental life. The higher functions of the nervous system, which make up our conscious mental life, are merely more complex modifications of this fundamental property of nerve substance. Closely related to this doctrine is che view that the nervous organ ism acts as a whole, that particular mental operations cannot be referred to definitely circumscribed regions of the brain, and that the hypothesis of nervous activity passing in the centre by an iso lated pathway from one nerve-cell to another is altogether illusory. By insisting on the complete coincidence between the regions of nerve-action and sentience, and by holding that these are but differ- ent aspects of one thing, he is able to attack the doctrine of ani mal and human automatism, which affirms that feeling or con sciousness is merely an incidental concomitant of nerve-action, and in no way essential to the chain of physical events. Lewes s views in psychology, partly opened up in the earlier volumes of the Problems, are more fully worked out in the last two volumes (3d series). He discusses the method of psychology with much insight. He claims against Comte and his followers a place for introspection in psychological research. In addition to this subjective method there must be an objective, which consists partly in a reference to nervous conditions, and partly in the employment of sociological and historical data. Biological knowledge, or a consideration of the organic conditions, would only help us to explain mental functions, as feeling and thinking ; it would not assist us to under stand differences of mental faculty as manifested in different races and stages of human development. The organic conditions of these differences will probably for ever escape detection. Hence they can be explained only as the products of the social environment. This idea of dealing with mental phenomena iu their relation to social and historical conditions is probably Lewes s most important con tribution to psychology. Among other points which he emphasizes is the complexity of mental phenomena. Every mental state is regarded as compounded of three factors in different proportions namely, a process of sensible affection, of logical grouping, and of motor impulse. But Lewes s work in psychology consists less in any definite discoveries than in the inculcation of a sound and just method. His biological training prepared him to view mind as a complex unity, in which the various functions interact one on the other, and of which the highest processes are identical with and evolved out of the lower. Thus the operations of thought, or &quot; the logic of signs,&quot; are merely a more complicated form of the elemen tary operations of sensation and instinct, or &quot;the logic of feeling.&quot; The whole of the last volume of the Problems may be said to be an illustration of this position. It is a valuable repository of psycho logical facts, many of them drawn from the more obscure regions of mental life and from abnormal experience, and is throughout sug gestive and stimulating. To suggest, and to stimulate the mind, rather than to supply it with any complete system of knowledge, may be said to be Lewes s service in philosophy. The exceptional rapidity and versatility of his intelligence seems to account at once for the freshness in his way of envisaging the subject-matter of philosophy and psychology, and for the want of satisfactory elabo ration and of systematic co-ordination. (J. S.) LEWIS AND HARRIS form together an island of the Outer Hebrides, nearly separated into two parts by the inlets of Loch Reasort and Seaforth, the northern part, Lewis or the Lews, being in Ross-shire, and the southern part, Harris, in Inverness. The island is situated about 30 miles from the mainland, between 57 40 and 58 32 K lat., and 6 and 7 W. long. Its length is 60 miles, the average breadth 15, and the extreme breadth 30. The area is 770 square miles, of which 575 are comprised in Lewis. The greater part of the surface is composed of gneiss rocks, which in Ben More attain a height of 1750 feet, but there is also a large breadth of peat and swamp, with remains of an ancient forest. The coast is much indented by bays. The climate is very moist and un suitable for tillage. Agriculture is in a backward condi tion, but much has been done in draining, reclamation, and planting of trees by the late proprietor of Lewis, Sir James Matheson. Barley and potatoes are the principal crops, and a large number of black cattle are reared. Kelp making is also carried on, but one of the chief supports of the inhabitants is fishing, Stornoway being the largest station for the herring fishing in Scotland, and employing over 1000 boats with nearly 4000 men and boys. The town was made a burgh of barony by James VI. It has a commodious harbour with a patent slip suitable for vessels of 1000 tons. On a height overlooking the bay is the beautiful residence of the proprietor of the island. The most remarkable archaeological remains in Lewis are the druidical stones of the temple of Callernish. There are also a large number of old obelisks, and at Mealista in Uig the remains of an old monastery. Six miles from Stornoway there is a huge cave covered with stalactites. See HEBRIDES. LEWIS, SIR GEORGE COENEWALL, BAET. (180G-1863), statesman and man of letters, was born in London on 21st April 1806. His father, Thomas F. Lewis of Harpton Court, Radnorshire, after holding subordinate office in various administrations became a poor-law commissioner. He was made a baronet in 1846. Lewis was educated at Eton, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where in 1828 he took a first-class in classics and a second-class in mathe matics. He then entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1831. In the year before he had, with John Romilly and John Stuart Mill, attended the celebrated lectures on jurisprudence delivered by John Austin at London University. In 1832 he undertook his first public work as one of the commissioners to inquire into the condition of the poor Irish residents in the United Kingdom. 1 Again, in 1834, Lord Althorp included him in the commission to inquire into the state of church property and church affairs generally in Ireland. To this fact we owe his work on Local Disturbances in Ireland, and the Irish Church Question (London, 1836), in which he condemned the existing connexion between church and state, proposed a state provision for the Catholic clergy, and maintained the necessity of an efficient workhouse organization. During this period of appren ticeship to politics Lewis s mind was much occupied with the phenomena of language. Before leaving college he had published some observations on Whately s doctrine of the predicables, and soon afterwards he assisted Thirlwall and Hare in starting the Philological Museum. Its suc cessor, the Classical Museum, he also supported by occasional contributions. In 1835 he published an Essay en the Origin and Formation of the Romance Languages (re-edited in 1862), which, though anticipated by Schlegel, may be taken as the first effective criticism in England of Raynouard s theory of a uniform romance tongue, represented by the poetry of the troubadours. He also set an excellent example to county gentlemen by compiling a glossary of provincial words used in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties. But the most important work of this earlier period was one to which his logical and philo logical tastes both contributed. The Jtemar/cs on the Use and Abuse of some Political Terms (London, 1832) may have been suggested by Bentham s Look of Parliamentary Fallacies, but it shows all that power of clear sober original thinking which marks his larger and later political works. And yet this original mind did more than most scholars in the humbler walk of useful translation. He translated Boeckh s Public Economy of Athens and Miiller s History of Greek Literature, and he assisted Tufnell in the trans- 1 See the Abstract of Final Report of Commissioners of Irish Poor Enquiry, &c. , by G. C. Lewis and N. Senior, 1837.