"mere practical compromises," he is inconsistent with the importance which he ascribes to them as "working ideas." As a matter of fact according to his conception every finite experience, i. e. every experience which it is possible for us to have, is a working idea. And, according to Bradley's own principles, that which he calls "the Absolute" must be present in all our working ideas, like Spinoza's Substance in all the Attributes and in all the Modes.
2. In France Alfred Fouillée (born 1838, professor at Bordeaux, afterwards in Paris, now (1906) living in southern France[1]) assumes a position which may justly be described as idealism on a realistic basis. Greek philosophy, especially Plato, forms the subject-matter of his earliest studies; later on he regarded it his peculiar task "to bring back the ideas of Plato from heaven to earth and thus reconcile idealism and naturalism." His fundamental principle is the original and natural relation of thought and motion (idée-force). His precursor in this view is Taine, whose De l'intelligence (1870) attaches great importance to the motive tendencies primarily combined with all ideas which only assume the purely theoretical character of ideas through increasing mental development. Fouillée constructs his concept of idée-force from a physiologico-psychological fact, which he then in turn discovers by the method of analogy in the lower stages of nature. His chief work, La psychologie des idées-forces (1893), is a classic in voluntaristic psychology. Psychical phenomena always consist of the manifestations of an impulse or desire (appetition) which is attended by pleasure or pain according as it is fostered or inhibited. Discernment and preference are primarily one and the same thing, as e. g. the discernment of an animal between
- ↑ Died 1912
