3 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



accept, with the fullest faith, a certain number of extraordinary facts 

 which stand much in need of confirmation, such as the facts of second 

 sight and of artificial somnambulism. He admits the truth of dreams, 

 visions, and presentiments ; he cites cases of warnings given by mys- 

 terious revelations of coming dangers, of the death of one absent, or 

 of other occurrences taking place at a distance, as in the well-known 

 story of Swedenborg. Nothing is wanting but spiritism and turning 

 tables. It is clear that such facts would justify and even compel the 

 hypothesis of a supernatural principle. If the existence of a superior 

 intelligence in the world can be demonstrated by physical proofs (we 

 are not now speaking of metaphysical proofs), it is not by the spec- 

 tacle of order and regularity which indicate, on the contrary, the ab- 

 sence of any disturbing or interposing force, but really by abnormal 

 and contradictory facts ; in a word, by miracles. Only, it is necessary 

 that the authenticity of such facts should be above all question. 



As to what concerns thought itself, we share Hartmann's views on 

 almost all the points of psychological analysis, and only when his 

 transcendental explanations begin do we feel obliged to part company 

 with him. Thus we think, as he does, that the Xdoes not make the 

 greater part of its ideas, that its ideas come to it without its volition, 

 and without its consciousness of the causes producing them. But 

 what must be concluded from this, except that intelligence in general 

 is a resultant and not a principle, and that it is simply, as Taine and 

 the t later English psychologists have so well shown, the series, the 

 grouping, the ensemble, of a multitude of phenomena, the greater part of 

 which have their cause outside of the me. Hartmann sets out on quite 

 a different path, and supposes behind my consciousness another intelli- 

 gence, which elaborates these ideas for me, and imparts them to me 

 ready made ; and in support of this theory he invokes the mysticism for 

 which he betrays sympathies that recall the romantic school ; he in- 

 vokes the inspiration of genius, which he holds to be only the revela- 

 tion ofluminous thoughts to certain privileged natures. But is genius 

 any other thing than the combination of those cerebral conditions 

 which permit new relations of ideas to manifest themselves in an in- 

 telligence, under the mere stimulus of life, of the organic functions, 

 and of the perceptions ? 



"We remark the production, in history, of a great number of facts 

 which are independent of human volitions. Men set an end before 

 them, and yet the result is quite different from the one they had fore- 

 seen and willed. How could it be otherwise, since individual volitions 

 are but elements in the midst of an immense complexity, and all the 

 elements are thwarting, checking, neutralizing each other ? More- 

 over, the struggles for existence and selection explain historic progress 

 as clearly as they do physiological development. But Hartmann pre- 

 fers, in this instance, as in others, to resort to a metaphysical principle, 

 and imitates Joseph de Maistre, in calling for the interposition of a 



