Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/436

 NEW BOOKS. 435 impressed more vividly by agreeing than by opposing instances is the most powerful ; after these, the errors due to feelings, such as wonder and desire, are considered ; finally, errors due to the unrestrained exercise of the imagination. Imagination is described as " the latest and highest out- come of the generative or productive energy or nisus of organic nature ". Differing from the processes of observation and reasoning in being " quick, easy and pleasant" instead of "slow, toilsome and difficult," it is the source of fictions that take the place of facts and of theories that anticipate obser- vation. Most of its products perish without result ; some grow into artistic works or into portions of the structure of science ; some take the form of unverifiable beliefs about the supernatural. Part ii. treats not only of the " mania and delusion" of actual insanity, but also of the " hallucina- tions and illusions," whether originating in the sensory or the higher cen- tres, which form a sort of "penumbral region" between sanity and insanity. In part iii. are discussed the various kinds of " intuition" by which it has been supposed that insight is attained into the supernatural. These include " the intuition of the heart," " theological illumination" and "metaphysical illumination" (the "ecstasy" of the Neo-Platonists, &c.). As the physical basis of the creative imagination is conjectured to be the formation of "new nerve-junctions," the physical basis of ecstasy is found in the exaggerated activity of nerve-centres disconnected temporarily from the rest. Certain nervous tracts " stand out" as is indicated by the word itself, "fKo-rao-is" "in their special activity rapt into a delirium of function" (p. 331.) From this striking explanation of certain patho- logical states, it is inferred that " theologian and philosopher alike exhibit the strained functions of a sort of psycholepsy " (p. 351). All " specula- tive philosophy" is condemned as the straining of a mental function " beyond the reach and need of a correlate in external nature". " Genuine knowledge . . . represents the formation of a complete and fit circuit between the individual and nature. . . . There is an incompleteness or break of circuit when the mutual adaptation is inadequate or interrupted, which is probably the condition of the occurrence of consciousness. . . . What else, then, is transcendent metaphysical thought and feeling" being an exaggeration of consciousness " but the designed and methodical culture of a break of circuit and the pernicious negation of the true method of knowledge?" Here, and especially in the parenthetical remark that " if the circuit were complete and fit in every particular, there would be full unity of man and nature, and no consciousness," the author seems, by force of reaction from " metaphysics," to suggest as an ideal a state not so much unlike the mystical " absorption," which, although the product of "isolation" instead of "complete circuit," equally had unconsciousness for its term. In this whole passage (pp. 351-3) as well as others, Dr. Maudsley appears, not for the first time, in the character of the Metaphysicien malgre lui. Constructive Ethics. A Review of Modern Moral Philosophy in its Three Stages of Interpretation, Criticism and Reconstruction. By W. L. COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D., Fellow of New College, Oxford, Author of " The Metaphysics of John Stuart Mill " and " Studies in Philosophy ". London : Chapman & Hall, 1886. Pp. xvi., 318. This book is " intended as an Introduction to a systematic effort to work out a System of Ethics " which at " some time in the future " the author hopes to be able to accomplish. In his "theoretical" part (L, pp. 1-52) he sets out to show that in ethics as in metaphysics there can be no "properly constructed system" except "on the foundation of Absolute Idealism ". Three kinds of ethical systems, the " interpretative," the