Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/559

545 Again, in regard to the apparent opposition between the extensive and intensive culture of the mind, philosophy teaches that it is an error to suppose that one can know any one thing, without discovering its relation to others. When we turn to psychology, there are two points of considerable importance; apperception, and suggestion. There is a real relation and unity of principle between the views which these terms express, and the doctrine emphasized by philosophy of the organic unity and concreteness of life and knowledge. Apperception points out the fact that the significance of what enters into our intellectual life cannot be properly understood without considering it in relation to the whole within which it is brought. "What anything is for us, depends not simply on what it is in itself, but on the way in which we grasp it. What suggestion teaches, is that what we learn has value for us only if it becomes a force in our lives. It must possess us, and carry us forward.—The main philosophical ideas (which are all closely related), whose application to education the author emphasizes, are, that the life of society is a living whole, that knowledge is a living whole, and that the mind is a living whole. Further, if the mind is a living whole, it may be expected to grow.

J. E. C.

The legal complications that arose over the will Comte left, dragged on for thirteen years, in the course of which, and in order to influence the final decision, Littré produced his Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive. It was written in behalf of Madame Comte who had a powerful motive for wishing to prove Comte's insanity. Her attorney drew most of his arguments from Littré's book. In 1826 Comte did suffer from a brief attack of mania of which there were recurrences, especially in 1838 and 1845. Each attack was preceded by intellectual overwork complicated by extreme emotional disturbance. The one of 1826 was more severe than any subsequent one. His mother had exhibited a frenzied piety and certain eccentricities, but beyond that no mental peculiarities are known in his family. In 1845 he was forty-eight years old; mania seldom appears after fifty. After 1845, we find no mention in any of his writings of a recurrence of the disease; there is nothing to indicate it in any of his works or actions. Nine physicians of highest reputation, who had known Comte intimately from 1850 to 1857, certified to the court that his mental state in those, his last, years had been perfectly lucid and sound. He ordered his life systematically to ward off further attacks. This explains the changes in his diet, so unjustly criticised. He carefully avoided another coincidence of mental excitement with overwork. He succeeded in conquering the disease, and was free from it after 1845. But of the attacks prior to that time, his works show no trace. After that of 1826, he took up the Cours de philosophie positive just where he had left off, and completed it in every detail