3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



this simply going back to that old anthropomorphism of primitive phi 

 losophy, according to which imagination was childishly led to con- 

 ceive, behind any phenomenon inexplicable by ignorance, a will, a 

 force, like that we are conscious of within ourselves ? This illusion 

 has gradually lost ground, for two reasons : first, because the sphere 

 of the unknown has gone on diminishing, as the conquests of science 

 have continually revealed new natural explanations of phenomena ; and, 

 next, because we are brought more and more nearly to the conviction 

 that the human intellect, the will, instead of being principles of a 

 transcendent order, are themselves only results of material conditions. 

 We can maintain such a doctrine, and yet repel the charge of material- 

 ism ; for matter, in our view, is far from being a principle ; we regard 

 it only as a fact which is capable of being analyzed in its turn, and of 

 being reduced to yet simpler elements, to forces, which are not in 

 themselves substances, but merely phenomena. 



One of the most characteristic traits of the spiritualist tempera- 

 ment is this that in the explanation of facts it always prefers meta- 

 physical hypotheses to purely physical ones ; that it clings to the 

 former as long as it is possible to do so without too violent a contra- 

 diction of irresistible truths ; that it never yields to such truths, ex- 

 cept in the last extremity, nor ever until they have been established 

 by proofs beyond refutation. This is the mental bent of which we 

 find the signs in Hartmann's theories. There are, in fact, a certain num- 

 ber of phenomena, of which the physical and physiological sciences 

 have succeeded in giving probable explanations, without going beyond 

 their own domain; but these explanations are as yet in the state of 

 conjectures, or at least have not been verified by experiences so deci- 

 sive as to compel the most hardened metaphysicians to accept them. 

 Instead of these solutions, Hartmann, in conformity so far with spirit- 

 ualistic traditions, prefers to hold to the hypothesis of an intelligent 

 principle, yet an unconscious one. Let us examine the principal facts 

 of this kind in order. 



Hartmann contends that any voluntary movement must be impos- 

 sible, without an idea of the extremity of the nerve that serves to 

 produce it ; and, as this idea does not exist in consciousness, it must 

 exist, as he holds, in an unconscious intelligence, of which my con- 

 scious intelligence is doubtless only a mode, a manifestation. I will 

 to move my arm, and it moves. How can that effect be produced, 

 Hartmann asks, without the knowledge of the intermediate organs, 

 which must be set at work to effect the intended act ? How otherwise 

 .can we explain the action of the will on some one particular muscle, 

 rather than on some other one? We may well be astonished to find 

 ;such a theory held by a philosopher who admits that acts of the con- 

 scious will are phenomena of the brain. Is it not a more natural and 

 .probable sequence to suppose an organic adaptation between the cere- 

 bral phenomenon and the modification of the motor nerve? But, it 



