Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/578

 564 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. activity. Attention leads us to apprehension. Apprehension of ideas means their relation and characterisation by aid of other known ideas ; it may arise by way of comparison or of association, or both. Interest is centred in the ideas themselves. Apprehension of stimuli means infer- ence from ideas to their external conditions ; interest centres in outside reality, and in ideas only so far as is necessary to their interpretation. We pass next to analysis. This requires attention, and is best performed by aid of a fancy-image of the constituent to be analysed-out. Further conditions are intensity of stimuli and subjective receptivity (practice, etc.). It follows that fusion is, originally, the normal mode of manifestation of ideational contents, disappearing gradually with the growth of the faculty of attention. Analysis rather than fusion is the fact to be explained. Difficulties of analysis are distribution of attention ; weakness, quickness, etc., of stimuli ; lack of practical interest, etc. General comparison of sight with taste and hearing in these regards.] E. M. Weyer. ' Die Zeitschwellen gleichartiger und disparater Sinneseindruecke.' n. [Results. (1) Sight. Temporal limina for the discrimination in daylight of two sparks as against one ; for flicker, in dark and daylight ; for separation, in dark and daylight. (2) Hearing. (3) Disparate impres- sions. Touch and hearing, touch and sight, sight and hearing, in both orders, with attention both on the first and on the second stimulus. An exhaustive study.] C. D. Pflaum. ' Neue Untersuchungen ueber die Zeitverhaeltnisse der Apperception einfacher Sinneseindruecke am Com- plicationspendel.' [Experiments with the complication pendulum. (The author says nothing of the defects of the instrument, unless the words " unguenstige aeussere Umstaende " refer to them : the present writer has never seen an instrument in which the pendulum did not kick at the moment of complication.) Negative time-displacement prevails, but the presence of positive (Wundt) is confirmed (three new observers), as against von Tschisch. A Table gives the extreme values for all five subjects. Unfortunately, the question of Wundt's interpretation and James' criticism is left untouched.] ZBITSCHKIFT FUK PHILOSOPHIE UND PHILOSOPHISCHE KRITIK. Band cxiii., Heft 1. November. Eduard von Hartmann. ' Zur Auseinander- setzung mit Herrn Professor D. Dr. A. Dorner in Koenigsberg.' [As the title indicates, this article is a statement of the points at issue between the great pessimist and his Koenigsberg critic. There are some nine headings ranging over ethics, psychology and metaphysics. Von Hart- mann aims at giving rather a clear statement of the differences than an argument offensive or defensive.] Dr. Raoul Richter. ' Die Methode Spinozas.' [Spinoza's philosophy never loses its attractiveness; its matter keeps in touch with the most modern speculation, and its method suggests more ideas to our present critical epoch than that of any other great thinker. That method cannot be fairly described as ontological, we must put it more explicitly as consciously ontological. The constantly recurring transition from logical processes to real, from ratio to causa, expresses no mere fallacy of ignorance but the metaphysical foundation of the system, the equation on which the Ethics is based, the logical = the real. To him " who has once tasted Kritik " the system appears as one in which certain abstract ideas receive carefully constructed defini- tions, and the bulk of the subsequent development consists in unfolding the elements thus wrapped up, and smuggling in the predicate of real existence. But Spinoza more than once expresses his contempt for abstract ideas ; he censures the Stoics for thus corrupting their system, and asserts the uselessness of all notiones universales et transcendentales. Truth comes not from abstraction but from the notiones communes.