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BEN spent there the last four years of his life. He was so well versed in the fathers and schoolmen, that there was not his equal in the university. Strongly attached to the predestination of Calvin, he was sometimes branded with the character of a schismatic. He was remarkable for strictness of life. He published several works, among which were eight sermons preached in the university of Oxford; twenty-one sermons by way of commentary on the first chapter of Amos; twenty-one sermons on the second chapter of Amos; lectures on the Perseverance of the Saints, and other scholarlike treatises, which have been long consigned to oblivion. He died in his parsonage, August 24, 1630, and was buried in the chancel of his parish church.—T. J.  BENEKE,, was born at Berlin on the 17th of February, 1798. He received his early education at the gymnasium of his native town; and in the year 1815, nearly at the conclusion of the French war, joined a volunteer corps destined to enter into active operation for the liberties of Germany. On the termination of the war in 1816, he entered the university of Halle as a student of theology, but returned the next year to Berlin, where he became a pupil of Schleiermacher, and devoted himself mainly to philosophical studies. Even at this early period he conceived a great admiration for the English philosophical writers; and entered upon that course of determined opposition to the more abstract system of German philosophy, which formed the chief occupation of his whole future life. In the year 1820 he established himself as privat-docent at the university of Berlin, and commenced a course of philosophical lectures, in which he followed closely the psychological and inductive method of research. Even with Hegel himself for his rival, he succeeded in forming a very considerable class of auditors, and threatened so formidable an opposition to the Hegelian philosophy, then basking in the sunshine of court favour, that he was silenced by the prime minister, von Altenstein, and compelled to relinquish his post. Two works, published in 1820, record the philosophical views which he then entertained and propounded—the one entitled "Erfahrungs-seelen-lehre," the other entitled "Erkenntnisslehre nach dem Bewusstsein der reinen Vernunft." In 1824 he removed to Göttingen, where he lectured for three years successively, and published two volumes of "Psychologische Skizzen," in which the principal doctrines of his new psychology are laid down in their earlier and less mature form. In 1827 he returned to Berlin, and received permission to reopen his class; and in 1832, on the death of Hegel, was created professor of philosophy in that university. A series of works now appeared in rapid succession, in which he advocated his philosophical principles from many different points of view. In 1833 appeared the "Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Naturwissenschaft," and in 1835 the "Erziehungs und Unterrichts-lehre," in which he applied his view's practically to the subject of education. During the next ten years he published his "System der Metaphysik und Religions-lehre," his "System der Logik als Kunstlehre des Denkens," and a number of treatises which were afterwards combined under the title of "Die Neue Psychologie." In 1850 he still further carried on his views by the publication of the "Pragmatische Psychologie oder Seelenlehre in ihrer Anwendung auf das Leben," and in 1851 he commenced a quarterly journal called the "Archiv für die Pragmatische Psychologie." In the midst of these labours his life was cut short in the most painful manner. In a fit of nervous depression he suddenly disappeared (March 1st, 1854) from his friends and family, and was never seen again alive. His body was discovered in one of the canals near the city, and there is every reason to believe that he had committed suicide.

Beneke's whole philosophy, like that of Locke, rests upon the analysis of ideas as presented by the phenomena of man's inward experience. Our sensations, perceptions, ideas, feelings, impulses, and resolutions, present a mass of fact, which it is the business of the philosopher not merely to classify, but so to investigate as to find out their origin, the course of their development, their mutual connections, and finally the laws of their operation. To do this, Beneke goes first of all to the more primitive phenomena presented by the mind when brought into contact with external nature, and shows how all our subsequent mental history is evolved out of them. 1. Man is an organized being, placed in the midst of a world perfectly adapted to his nature and constitution. The world affects him variously through the senses, and the impulses thus produced from without are received and appropriated by means of certain inward powers and susceptibilities, which act in harmony with them. These are the two great primitive facts of all mental philosophy,—impulses coming to us from without, and the power of reducing such impulses to phenomena of consciousness. All our mental life begins with this primordial process, and out of it all our further mental development flows by fixed principles or laws of mental action.—2. The second fundamental process is the power which the soul has to retain every single impression it experiences, to lay it up in a state of unconsciousness, as an inward trace or substratum, which may be revived by circumstances at any future period. Endless numbers of such experiences are forming within us every day; and an infinite number of traces or substrata are consequently being constantly treasured up in the soul. It is the combination and consolidation of these numberless processes in which our mental development consists, and by means of them that the faculties are created, which we term perception and memory. In the same way the consolidation of our experiences of pleasure and pain give rise to our determinate desires and instincts.—3. The next process arises out of the fact that similar impulses and impressions have a tendency to unite and flow together, so as to form new mental developments. Thus, by the union of like perceptions, ideas are formed, and by the combination of similar feelings and impulses certain determinate mental tendencies are generated, which we call affections and passions.—Lastly, dissimilar traces, which are left in the mind after the consolidation of the similar ones has taken place, are combined into groups and series. Thus the different attributes of an external object, though wholly dissimilar, are mentally combined, so as to form the complex idea of that object; and phenomena, which succeed each other in time, are combined, so as to form the notions of cause, purpose, &c. In this way, from the two original elements of outward impulse and inward receptivity, the whole of our mental constitution is built up, by means of the retention, consolidation, comparison, and combination of our numberless experiences.

Beneke gets a still further insight into the machinery of our mental development, by a comparison of the outward impulses acting upon us, and our inward power of reaction upon them in their varied relation to one another. Five different relations between the two are possible in regard to their intensity.—1. The impulse is less powerful than the appropriating faculty; in this case there is a surplus of inward energy, so that dissatisfaction and desire are the natural results.—2. If the impulse and the power are exactly balanced, then we have the phenomena of perception.—3. The impulse may be just superior to the inward appropriating power, and no more; in this case we have a feeling of pleasure.—4. If the impulse becomes too great, it produces vexation; and, lastly, if excessive, actual pain.

From these few explanations, it will be evident that Beneke proposes a far more thorough-going investigation into the origin and genesis of our mental phenomena than had been instituted by most, if indeed by any, of the former advocates of the empirical system of mental philosophy. Taking his start from a few simple physiological facts, he builds up an entire system, in which the whole machinery of our impulses, feelings, desires, perceptions, and ideas, are most ingeniously analysed and accounted for. Nor can we hesitate to affirm that in many respects Beneke has been before his age, in his insight into mental phenomena. In Germany, at the present moment(1857), philosophy, as a whole, has left its former abstract and à priori principles, and has turned almost entirely to the inductive method of research. The ontological method has begun to give way to the psychological; and the very views which Beneke advocated, even in the height of the Hegelian ascendancy, have now come into general repute. Beneke has been remarkable for the practical way in which he has viewed all the questions of philosophy. He is far from being a mere psychologist, but has applied his principles to elucidate the most knotty questions of metaphysics, the laws of our moral nature, and the practical work of education. It is especially as an educationist that his reputation has been extended throughout Germany; inasmuch as his views have found acceptance in this particular point, even amongst those who take little interest in them as abstract philosophical questions. And if the psychological system propounded by Beneke be true, its influence on educational processes ought certainly to be most extensive. If there is nothing original in the human mind but a primitive power of receptivity, and if all our mental faculties, feelings, dispositions, moral principles, and character, be but the gradual structure which is formed by the accumulation and consolidation 