Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/460

 446 PHILOSOPHY of the infinite, making a positive theism the condition of our knowledge of the finite, and denying the opposition of faith to knowl- edge. James F. Terrier, disclaiming idealism, adopted idealistic positions, asserting that the only material world which truly exists is one along with which intelligence also exists,' so that the mere material would have no real and absolute existence ; at the same time it is not a mere entity, since there is no non-entity, any more than entity, out of relation to intel- ligence. The associational psychology, which in some of its elements may be traced back to Hartley, received a new impulse from Thomas Brown. It was adopted in part by Alison, and more fully by James Mill, who confounded the doctrines of Hartley and Hume, making sensation a kind of feeling, and the idea its permanent residuum. By means of associa- tion, memory, voluntary states of mind and the moral sentiments are explained. John Stuart Mill extended this principle of inseparable as- sociation, announced by his father, to the solu- tion of many philosophical problems, although admitting that it was inadequate to account for belief. The idea of causation is indispensable in analyzing our conceptions of matter and mind. The axioms of mathematical and phys- ical science are the results of induction, and in other worlds, or to other minds than ours, might cease to be valid. Matter is defined as "a permanent possibility of sensation," and mind is resolved into " a series of feelings with a background of possibilities of feeling." The real existence of the external world cannot be philosophically proved. As to human free- dom, the law of causality applies in the same strict sense to human actions as to other phe- nomena. Alexander Bain, in treating of the senses and the intellect, the emotions, will, &c., follows in the line of Hartley and James Mill, but makes use of the results of modern physi- ology, and applies them with much acuteness to mental phenomena. In his view of the close relations of matter and mind, he seems to ap- proach the doctrine of their identity in a single substance. Herbert Spencer, like J. S. Mill, agreeing with Hamilton as to the relativity of knowledge, admits that by the necessities of finite and conditioned thinking we are com- pelled to assume an infinite and absolute, and also to form approximately definite notions of the same, although these notions must be pro- gressively modified. The object of religious sentiment is, and will ever continue to be, the unknown source of things. The ethical senti- ment in man is explained as the consolidated experience of generations, transmitted and ac- cumulated. By his scheme of a general sys- tem of philosophy, in which he rivals the com- prehensiveness of Oomte, Spencer has com- manded for his speculations the attention of both admirers and critics in England and this country. His starting point is the doctrine of evolution. Progress in organic development is from homogeneity to heterogeneity. Many of his conclusions are the results of this princi- ple. As to matter and mind, they are some- times presented as simple series of phenomena, and sometimes as permanently real, since per- sistence in consciousness supposes correspon- dence in permanent forces. Science and reli- gion alike agree in assuming a permanent all- pervading force ; but revealed religion or scien- tific theology is impossible, because, under the law of development or evolution, there must be endless modification in human conceptions of that force. Herbert Spencer's able French translator, Dr. E. Gazelles, sums up his philo- sophical method thus : " Starting from positive science, the different branches whereof he traces in their concentric progress up to their widest generalizations, he attaches these gen-, eralizations to the loftiest abstract conceptions that they all suggest, and brings them back to- gether to the principle which officiates in the double capacity of supporting all the truths, and expressing an intuition of consciousness. He thus welds the most advanced results of experience to the legitimate and inevitable re- sults of a priori speculation. Finally, by way of reduction, he derives from this first princi- ple the laws which sum up the movement of things, and founds on an undeniable truth a theory of development which he afterward verifies by the different orders of knowledge, and by the history of the cosmos." As the predominant characteristic of Mr. Spencer's method is the coordination and synthesis of hitherto disunited branches of thought, he des- ignates his system a synthetic philosophy. In regard to the great conflict between the intu- itionalists and the experientialists regarding the origin of ideas, Mr. Spencer maintains that each school holds a partial truth. All knowl- edge is derived from experience, but all knowl- edge of the individual is by no means derived from his own experience. From this point of view of evolution the mental faculties are the products of the intercourse of the organism with its environment under the operation of the principle of heredity. The experiences of the race become organized and transmitted by inheritance, and thus have the effect of intu- itions or a priori elements in the hereditary intellect and conscience of mankind. Among many recent English philosophical writers, the influence of Coleridge and of German andFrench philosophers, as well as of physiologists and scientists, may be distinctly traced. The course of speculation has been modified largely by the publications of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall. Antagonistic in tendency to these, in many points, are the writings of a considerable class of thinkers who were trained under the spirit- ualistic philosophy of Coleridge, and who be- long rather to the sphere of literature than of philosophy. Some of these, however, are mem- orable as ethical or metaphysical thinkers. "Whewell traced the history not only of the sci- ences but of moral philosophy in England ; and Maurice, who like him rejected the philosophy