Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/293

PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. 279 REVUE DE METAPHYSIQUE ET DE MORALE. No. 6. Novembre, 1901. A. Fouillee. ' Les deux directions possibles dans 1'enseignernent de la philosophic et de son histoire.' [The ' two directions' are (1) 'deterministic monism,' (2) ' indeterministic pluralism ' ; but M. Fouillee' s classification seems extremely vague and arbitrary. He is himself a partisan of (1) T which, he tells us, (a) is ' synthetic and conciliatory,' believing that reality has more ' sides ' than can be exhausted by any system of ' con- cepts ' ; (6) believes that the laws of ' identity ' and ' causality ' have no exceptions : yet (c) to deny ' that there are intelligible reasons for a choice' is to deny ' the law of causality,' and (d) to believe in 'causality ' is not to believe in ' fatal laws ' or ' mechanical necessity ' ; on the con- trary, ' the final question ' is not between ' determinism ' and ' contingence, ' but between the true ' idealistic ' and the false ' mechanical ' determinism, the former holding tnat ' the internal foundation of all things is an ever- active will, intelligent or capable of becoming so, which tends to inde- pendence and liberty': indeed, M. Fouillee himself insists that by 'law of causality ' he only means ' the principle of intelligibility, under whatever form it be represented,' (2) on the other hand, is identified with ' French criticism' and 'the so-called new " critique," ' to which M. Fouillee objects, (a) that 'it believes it can measure everything with its standard, which is the principle of contradiction,' and hence is ' narrow and exclusive ' ; (6) that it assigns 'primacy ' to 'activity,' which is 'a confused and bastard notion ' ; (c) that hence ' it puts at the basis of knowledge ' ' contingence,' which is ' another pseudo-idea, without any possible definition,' and is purely ' negative,' but of which the ' positive and true ' part consists in the truth that there are ' infinitely more causes than we can see and conceive,' and that hence reality is ' determined ' in other ways as well as ' by mathematical and mechanical necessities ' ; (d) that its ' irrationalism ' leads to the immoral doctrines of Nietzsche.] V. Brochard. ' L'e"ternite des ames dans la philosophic de Spinoza.' [Quotes passages from Spinoza tending to show that, although only the ' essence ' of our souls is eternal, yet these essences are (a) distinct ' individuals ' or ' persons ' (M. Brochard identifies these terms) ; (6) ' conscious ' and ' self-conscious ' (M. Brochard scarcely distinguishes these points from () or from one another) ; (c) 'actual,' 'true' and 'real' : in short, that the 'we,' whom Spinoza asserts to be eternal, differ from our present selves only by the absence of ' memory and imagination ' and of ' existence in relation to a particular time '. This doctrine was influenced by Aristotle's, but differs from it, in that Aristotle's vovs TroirjrtKos, which is alone immortal, is not the 'form' of any particular body and hence is not the ' individual soul ' ; and this difference is due to the influence of Plotinus (through the 'Arabian scholastics'), who holds that each man differs 'specifically' (KCIT* <?iSos) from every other, and hence attributes to each individual soul the eternity which belongs to each of Plato's ' ideas ' : this view of Plotinus involves his conceiving the universal ' soul ' and ' intelligence/ in which, respectively, all these distinct ' souls ' and ' ideas ' are eternally contained, as ' infinite ' a conception of the Deity which neither Plato nor Aristotle thought possible, and which is of Jewish origin. Finally, Spinoza differs both from the Greeks and from Plotinus, under Cartesian influence, in that he denies soul to be a 'moving cause' of matter. There is reason to think that even Spinoza's God is ' a consciousness and personality '.] C. Dunan. ' Les principes moraux du droit.' [An article the utter worthlessness of which is sufficiently illustrated by its first section. I. begins by quoting from Leibniz a definition of ' droit ' = 'rights' as distinguished from 'duty'; immediately tells us that this definition only expresses the distinction between ' what ought to be ' and