Page:Some New Philosophical Views.djvu/8

4 to be able to detect new psychical and physiological affirmations favourable to them (for the book purports, as I will show directly, to make a number of these), even if they are presented in the terms which the physicists employ. But a further remark requires to be made in order to state fully the explanation which is suggested to my own mind of the attitude which most of the writers in the theological reviews have taken up as to the volume. It is easy to see that all who hold orthodox views will be certain to be honestly dissatisfied by what will appear to them the altogether too large admissions it makes of the scientists' explanations of the physiological process of human consciousness, and of the reign of physical law in the world. That is a fair controversy, which the author must wage for himself. I am not, in this paper, going to intermeddle in it. I limit myself to repeating, that, in my own opinion, something which is the opposite of acuteness has been shown by the critics on that side in not recognizing a series of new reasonings available for their ends, because they were not couched in doctrinal shibboleths. The writer of one of the reviews of the book which I happened to read in a denominational publication made it a first objection to it, that, in an early chapter of this psycho-physiological Inquiry, the author has stated that a nervous system acting specifically, with adequate blood supply, &c., is needed for human consciousness. This is rather depressing when looked at as marking the mental level at which in those quarters philosophical criticism stands at this moment. It is tantamount to accusing Mr. Cyples of having wilfully and heretically invented such things as swoon, sleep, and death. I think he may fairly plead that he did not do so, but that he has only reasoned about them long after they were in existence.

I have turned to this aspect of the book first of all, but I scarcely expect the writer of "The Process of Human Experience" will feel that he owes anybody many thanks who does so. I infer that he would like what he would call the scientific element in the work to be first put forward. His treatment of the complicated problem of "Attention;" his tracking out of the working rules of the Association of Ideas; his more detailed appreciation of the use in intellectual operation of the Language-faculty; these would be, I suppose, the parts of the book he would wish to be earliest looked at. He has a passion for framing formulas, generalizing laws, and coining fresh and very unattractive words and phrases; doing this with what seems to me a very droll obtuseness to the fact that the ordinary reader wishes to have, not as much as possible, but as little as may be of this sort of thing. Even the most favourable critics—at least, all whose notices I have perused—agree that the book is very hard reading. Mr. Cyples has made his own defence on this score, in a paper published in Mind, entitled, "Four New Philosophical Terms;" but I am sure that he has underestimated the obstacles in the way of getting a new nomenclature accepted.