Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/116

C. EENOUVIEE, .DES DOCTRINES PHILOSOPHIQUES. 103 of {< intellectualism " and of the " practical reason " removes these and other inconsequences, and makes the constituent pro- positions of the two systems arrange themselves at last in per- fectly logical order. Eegarded metaphysically, M. Kenouvier's doctrine is a pheno- menism like that of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson. The difference between the two doctrines consists chiefly in this, that Mr. Hodg- son follows more the tradition of the English experiential school, M. Eenouvier that of the school of Continental rationalism. At the same time Hume, as represented by the 'Treatise, has had an influence on M. Eenouvier comparable to the influence of Kant on Mr. Hodgson. In their practical outcome the two doctrines are not unlike, both philosophers having accepted from Kant the distinction of the "practical" and the "speculative" reason. Neglecting minor differences, then, let us ask : What is pheno- menism as distinguished from other doctrines that also claim to be idealistic ? According to M. Eenouvier, the ancient idealistic doctrines, such as that of Pythagoras, which tried to account for experience by the limiting mind, as opposed to unlimited matter, which was in various forms the principle of the lonians, failed for this reason, that they took one particular formal element in mind and "hypo- stasised "it. " Number," the principle of the Pythagoreans, although a formal mental principle, became, when viewed in isola- tion, a " thing," just as much as the atom of Democritus, the most purely material of all the "physical" principles. On the other hand, the atom, although regarded from the first as an element in things, was not a datum of sense, but the result of an abstraction, and thus had a sort of mental character of its own. The two concep- tions, therefore, opposite as they seem, differed little in effect. And instead of giving their ultimate explanation of things in terms of personality, the Pythagoreans, and the idealist schools of anti- quity generally, fell back into a system of pantheism. With the Pythagoreans, for example, all phenomena became parts of a "mathematical evolution of the multiple and the one". In modern times the doctrine of Hegel described by M. Eenouvier as " a Platonism with Eleatic basis, joined to an attempt to trace the history of the Idea confounded with the history of the world of phenomena illustrates the same tendency. The " thought of Hegel is an element in mind hypostasised ; and, when the bias of the more orthodox disciples of Hegel is got rid of, thought becomes a " thing " figured as evolving itself necessarily and as having personality for a mere temporary phase. Hegelianism thus comes not to differ intrinsically from a materialistic doctrine of evolution. From these criticisms of other forms of idealism, it appears that what distinguishes the phenomenist doctrine is the refusal to re- gard any one element in mind, however capable of distinction by analysis, as having a real existence by itself apart from the rest.