Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/464

448

The contents and general character of the grammar are too well known from its first edition to require recapitulation. An important addition is made to the treatment of evolution. The application of the statistical method, used by the author in his own researches, to a problem not usually subjected to such treatment, serves to exemplify an advance toward the "quantitative ideal" (p. 373).

The critical treatment of a method should furnish us with an analysis of its nature, of the material to which it is applied, and of the possible limits to its achievement. "The classification of facts and the formation of judgments independent of the idiosyncracies of the individual mind essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science." These judgments express our "recognition of the sequence and relative significance" of the facts classified (p. 6). The facts themselves turn out to be sense impressions, either immediate or recalled (pp. 39 ff.). Out of these we construct our perceptual world of objects among which the self is one (pp. 66).

The author follows the steps of this construction along familiar empirical lines. He sees, however, and attempts to remove a difficulty that is often enough overlooked in this connection. Sensations seem to have some right to stand for peculiarly individual experiences: how then can they serve as material for a construction whose very nature is to be "independent of the idiosyncracies of the individual mind?" Further, the observed routine of experience, that we formulate in scientific laws, may be shown in various ways to depend upon the "perceptive and reasoning faculties" of the observer. How then can we hope to frame an objective science? The author appeals from the individual to the normal human being. Remarking that departure from the normal perception is closely allied to divergence from the normal organism, the question, why should there be a normal human being, receives an answer suggested by the doctrine of survival. The many advantages of agreement among perceiving subjects would lead to the elimination of the organism whose abnormalities were responsible for its exceptional perceptions (pp. 47, 100-107, 157, etc.).

This appeal to the normal experience to explain the universality of scientific law, and men's common possession of the facts it refers to, may serve to illustrate the ease with which the author passes over difficulties that might well "gravel a philosopher." One is supposed to construct one's neighbors and one's own self out of one's sensory experience with its observed routine. Then, in order to make sure that this construct does not reflect