Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/143

 130 CRITICAL NOTICES I J. VOLKELT, ETC. such an identification that we find ourselves driven to such crude imaginations of the process of knowing as seem to have weighed upon Prof. Volkelt. If knowing be conceived only as a fact or series of facts occurring, then truly we may puzzle ourselves by trying to depict it as involving " ein Hinausgreifen iiber das Bewusstsein, eine Beriihrung mit dem Trans-sub jektiven," and, after deciding that its contact with the trans-subjective cannot be mechanical (!), venture to say that it must be "so to speak, dynamical," and finally wind up by declaring it altogether mystical (see pp. 136-7). In all this there seems to me deep-rooted confusion. I do not say that the difficulties alluded to are all of them unreal, but only that their character is altogether rendered inconceivable by the point of view from which they are described. I am unable to see the connexion, which to Prof. Volkelt appears evident, between the two main ideas of his work, the principle of experience as he calls it, and the principle of necessity of thought ; or, at least, I fail to see how the two as here stated form parts of one consistent doc- trine. But the whole question of the Cartesian method in the explanation of knowledge deserves and will repay a more ela- borate discussion, to which I hope to return. EOBEET ADAMSON.