Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/534

 512 BEN EKE. to light in the formation of judgments, comparisons, witti- cisms, of collective images, collective feelings, and collect- ive desires. The innate differences among men depend on the greater or lesser " powerfulness, vivacity, and recep- tivity " of their elementary faculties ; all further differences arise gradually and are due to the external stimuli ; even the distinction between the human and the animal soul, which consists in the spiritual nature of the former, is not original. Of the five constructive forms of the soul, which result from the varying relation between stimulus and faculty, four are emotional products or products of moods. If the stimulus is too small pain (dissatisfaction, longing) arises, while pleasure springs from a marked, but not too great, fullness of stimulus. If the stimulus gradually increases to the point of excess, blunted appetite and satiety come in ; when the excess is sudden it results in pain. A clear representation, a sensation arises when the stimulus is exactly proportioned to the faculty ; it is in this case only that the soul assumes a theoretical attitude, that it merely perceives without any admixture of agreeable or disagreeable feelings. Desire is pleasure remembered, the ego the complex of all the representations which have ever arisen in the soul, the totality of the manifold given within me. For the immortality of the immaterial soul Beneke advances an original and attractive argument based on the principle that, in consequence of the constantly increasing traces, through which the substance of the soul is continually growing, consciousness turns more and more from the outer to the inner, until finally perception dies entirely away. At death the connection with the outer world ceases, it is true, but not the inner being of the soul, for which that which has hitherto been highest now becomes the foundation for new and still higher developments. Like Herbart, on whom he was in many ways dependent, Beneke discussed psychology and pedagogics with greater success than logic, metaphysics, practical philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He combats the apriorism of Kant in ethics as elsewhere. The moral law does not arise until the end of a long development. First in order are the immediately felt values of things, which we estimate accon!-