Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/551

 HENRY R. MARSHALL, Instinct and Reason. 537 " dependence " of the former on the latter) ; and approaches the highest manifestations of human spontaneity from the standpoint of the " logical determinist ". He brings human society into line with the primordial cell by maintaining the doctrine of the " social organism ". He proclaims " the relativity of ethical codes " with needless asseveration, considering his other principles. For the rest, he pins his faith on the evolutionary, or " genetic," method, which he opposes to that of " rationalistic philosophy ". Throughout, however, there appears to be lacking a sense of the assumptive character, of the purely methodological significance, of these fundamental postulates. In an isolated passage, indeed, he says : " I have no quarrel with metaphysical doctrines of the Absolute, which may be true without at all interfering with the conclusions which we as psychologists here reach ". He is truer to himself, however, when in his opening chapter he rejoices over "' the curbing of rationalistic confidence " that the present century has witnessed, and associates the charge of committing " meta- physical excesses " with the name of Kant. The fact is that he seems to have no notion how ' excessively metaphysical ' his own system is, though after the fashion not of Kant but of Mr. Spencer. Just as Mr. Spencer, after the parade of an absolute Unknowable, proceeds to invest with seeming absoluteness a series of materialis- tic hypotheses affiliated by means of a loose deductive process that ior the most part begs its preliminary inductions and shirks its verifications, so Mr. Marshall, despite his professions of distant regard for the Absolute, succumbs to the fascinations of final syn- thesis, and adopts an order of would-be explanation that effectually sacrifices the authority of his psychological facts to the pretensions of his biological fancies. Surely his duty ' as a psychologist ' was to keep biology and " rationalistic philosophy," if not at arm's length, at any rate at one and the same convenient distance. Should these be found to supply him with incompatible assump- tions, his metaphysical insight, nay, his knowledge of the logic of his special subject, ought to inform him that this was no bar to the discovery of the purely relative truths which every science, and notably a science of ' bridge-work ' like psychology, sets forth to seek. I would that I had space wherein I might expose the one-sided nature of the conclusions which biological proclivities and the striving after impossible consistency and finality have forced upon the writer, and yet do justice to the cleverness, the brightness, and the originality of his argument. As it is, I must trust readers of MIND who are acquainted with Mr. Marshall's previous record to accept my summary exposition and criticism of his views with the necessary reservations. His psychology begins and ends with the cell. Organisms are either cells or systems of cells. The typical modes in which an organism responds to the normal stimuli of the environment are its " instincts ". In the case of a system of cells (whether polype