Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/821

 F K I F 11 I 785 ticulars thereof to tlic registrar in a prescribed form. The object of such valuation is to ascertain as far as can be estimated the financial position of a society, in other words, whether the future contributions receivable, plus the money or funds in hand, will, according to the best estimate that can be formed, prove sufficient to enable the society to meet its engagements hereafter; and the valuation balance sheet, therefore, takes the following form : Valuation Balance Sheet of Friendly Society, as at (say) 31st December 1878. Dr. To estimated present value of future benefits to ex isting members,. Balance (being surplus) Cr. By estimated present value } of future contributions / of existing members, j ,, funds invested and j in hand, By balance (being deficiency) It is confidently expected that this provision will, after it has been in operation some time, prove of enormous value, as it will in many cases have the effect of warning the members of societies, before it is too late, that certain steps are necessary to place the society in a sound financial condition, and in other cases to indicate unmistakably to the members that the society to which they belong cannot be trusted to meet its engagements in the future. (E. w. B.) FRIENDS, SOCIETY OF. See QUAKERS. FRIES, ELIAS MAGNUS (1794-1878), an eminent Swedish botanist, was born at Sm&land, August 15, 1794. As his father, the pastor of the church at Femsjo, was a zealous and accomplished botanist, Fries during his walks with him early acquired an extensive knowledge of flower ing plants ; and about the age of twelve he was led by the discovery of a remarkably brilliant Hydnum to commence the study of the Agarics and other fungi. After attending school at Wexio, he in 1811 entered the university of Lund, where in 1814 he was elected decent of botany, and in 1824 professor. In 1834 he became professor of practical economy at Upsala, and in 1844 and 1848 he re presented the university of that city at the Rigsdag. In 1851 he succeeded Wahlenberg as emeritus professor of botany at Upsala, and there, on the 8th February 1878, he died, having only by a few days outlived the centenary of his illustrious predecessor Linnaeus. Fries was admitted a member of the Swedish Royal Academy in 1847, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in ] 875. As an author on the Cryptogamia Fries occupies the first rank. He wrote JNovitice Florae. Succiccc (1814 and 1823) ; Observationea Mycologicx (1815); Flora Hollandica (1817-18); Systema Mycolo- (licum (1821-29); Systcma Orbis Vegetabilis, not completed (1825); Elenchus Fungorum (1828); Lichenographia Europcca(1831); Epri- cisis Systematic Mycologici (1838 ; 2d ed., or Hymenomycetcs Etiroposi, 1874) ; Summa Vegctabilium Scandinavia (1846) ; Sveriges dtliga och giftiga Svampar, with coloured plates (1860); Monographia Hyincnomycctum Succicce (1863), with the Iconcs Hynicnomycetum, vol. i. (1867), and pt. i. vol. ii. (1877). FRIES, JACOB FRIEDRICH (1773-1843), a distinguished post-Kantian writer on philosophy, was born at Barby, Saxony, August 23, 1773. He was educated in a com munity of the Moravian brethren, and in their seminary was trained for theology. In 1795 he entered at the university of Leipsic, and for some years studied philosophy there and at Jena. In 1801, after having acted for a time as private tutor, he began to deliver courses of philosophical lectures at Jena. These he continued, with an interval of two years spent in travels in Germany, France, and Italy, till 1806, when he was called to Heidelberg as professor of philosophy and elementary mathematics. His philosophical position with regard to his contemporaries he had already made clear in the critical work Reinhold, Fichte, Schilling (1803), and in the more systematic treatises System der Philosophic als evidenter Wissenschaft (1804), Wissen, Glauben, Ahnung (1805). Fries was an unusually prolific and somewhat hurried writer, and during the ten years he passed at Heidelberg he poured forth a variety of volumes, differing widely in value, on philosophy and theoretical physics. The most important treatise, and that by which he will always be remembered in the history of philosophy, was the Neue Kritik der Vernunft, 3 vols., 1807, an attempt to give a new foundation to the critical theory of Kant, In 1811 ap peared his System der Logik, a very instructive work, and in 1814i7u/tuj and Evagoras, a philosophical romance. In 1816 he was invited to Jena to fill the chair of theoretical philosophy, under which appear to have been included mathematics and physics, along with philosophy proper. In 1824 Fries was accused of democratic tendencies, and form ally deprived of the right to deliver lectures on philosophical subjects, although he still retained his chair. He seerns, however, towards the end of his life, to have resumed his philosophical teaching. He died on 10th August 1843. The most important of the many works written during his Jena professorate are the Handbuch der praktischen Philo- sophie (vol. i.,1818, and vol. ii., 1832), the Handbuch der psychischen Anthrojwlogie, 2 vols., 1820; Malhemutische Naturphilosophie, 1S22; System der Metaphysik, 1824; Geschichte der Philosophic, 1837 and 1840. Fries s point of view in philosophy may be described as a modified Kanti anism. With Kant he regarded Kritik, or the critical in vestigation of the faculty of knowledge, as the essential preliminary to philosophy. But he differed from Kant both as regards the foundation for this criticism and as regards the metaphysical results yielded by it. Kant s analysis of knowledge had disclosed the a priori element as the neces sary complement of the isolated a posteriori facts of experi ence. But it did not seem to Fries that Kant had with sufficient accuracy examined the mode in which we arrive at knowledge of this a priori element. According to him we only know these a priori principles through inner or psychical experience ; they are not then to be regarded as transcendental factors of all experience, but as the necessary, constant elements discovered by us in our inner experience. They are, in fact, to Fries, as to the Scotch school, the re siduum which resists analysis. Accordingly Fries, like the Scotch school, places psychology or analysis of conscious ness at the foundation of philosophy, and called his criticism of knowledge an anthropological critique. It requires very little consideration to see that Fries s proposed amendment of Kantianism rests upon an altogether mistaken view of the transcendental element in knowledge. It is absurd to make the demand that what is a priori in cognition should be known by an a priori method. There is no such method. A second point in which Fries differed from Kant is the view taken as to the relation between immediate and mediate cognitions. According to Fries, the understanding is purely the faculty of proof; it is in itself void ; immediate certitude is the only source of knowledge. Reason contains principles which we cannot demonstrate, but which can be deduced, and are the proper objects of belief. In this view of reason Fries approximates to Jacobi rather than to Kant. The Neue Kritik and the Psychische Anthropologie contain much that is admirable in the way of psychological analysis, but it cannot be thought that Fries has effected any real advance on the Kantian position. See Henke, J. F. Fries, 1867. FRIESLAND, or VRIESLAND, sometimes called West Friesland, to distinguish it from East Friesland in Hanover, is the most northerly province of the Netherlands. It is bounded on the S.W., W., and N. by the Zuyder Zee and the North Sea, on the E. by the provinces of Groningen and Drenthe, and on the S.E. by that of Overyssel. The area is 1281 English square miles; and the population in 1875 was calculated at 317,405, being an increase since 1853 of 57,897. The chief town is Leeuwarden, a place IX. 99