ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON". 



537 



erate confession, has admitted the inadequacy of 

 his former views, and I can do no better than to 

 quote his last words, which dispose of our com- 

 mon phantasmagoria once and forever : ' But the 

 whole subject of the diiferehces of the sounds 

 produced under different states of the mind is so 

 obscure, that I have succeeded in throwing hard- 

 ly any light on it ; and the remarks which I have 

 made have but little significance.' " ' 



We cannot sufficiently honor the noble spirit 

 that dictated these words, particularly if we com- 

 pare it with the manner of other philosophers 

 who seem to consider the suggestion that they 

 could ever grow wiser as the greatest insult. 



To watch the struggles of a mind impelled 

 by a strong love of truth, and following up his 

 prey in the right direction, though not without 

 occasional swervings to the right and to the left, 

 is certainly far more interesting and far more 

 useful than to have results set before us with- 

 out our knowing how they have been obtained. 

 Prof. Noire has evidently been for a long time 

 under the influence of Schopenhauer and Geiger, 

 the former by this time well known in England 

 also ; the latter, a man of high promise and full 

 of original thought, who died in 1870, after hav- 

 ing published two books : one " On the Origin of 

 Human Language and Reason," 1868 ; the other 

 " On the Origin of Language," 1809. After a 

 time, however, Noire went beyond Schopenhauer 

 and Geiger ; and though he continues to express 

 for both of them the warmest admiration, he 

 now differs from them on some very essential 

 points. He differs from Schopenhauer because 

 he, Noire, is a thorough-going evolutionist in body 

 and mind ; he differs from Geiger, because he no 

 longer recognizes the first beginnings of lan- 

 guage in involuntary interjectional sounds, but in 

 sounds naturally accompanying the earliest acts 

 of man. Where Noire agrees with Geiger, I am 

 generally at one with both of them ; and I say 

 this, not in order to establish any claims of pri- 

 ority, which are utterly out of place in a disin- 

 terested searcli after truth, but simply in order 

 to define my own position in this decisive battle 

 of thought. Whatever others have done before 

 him, to Noire belongs the merit of having rallied 

 the scattered forces and led them to victory. 

 When a student of the science of language points 

 to the supreme importance of a right understand- 

 ing of language for the solution of the most in- 

 tricate problems in psychology or logic — when 



1 Darwin, " Expression of the Emotions," p. 93. I 

 feel bound to add that I do not see in the words of 

 Mr. Darwin so complete a retractation of his former 

 philosophy of language as Prof. Noire imagines. 



he tries to show, for instance, that the formation 

 of species is a question belonging in the first 

 instance to subjective philosophy, and inseparable 

 from the question of the formation of concepts 

 — when he represents the whole history of phi- 

 losophy as in truth an uninterrupted struggle 

 between language and thought, and maintains 

 that all philosophy must in the end become a 

 philosophy of language — he is apt to be taken for 

 an enthusiast. But, when a philosopher by profes- 

 sion subscribes to every one of these positions, the 

 case becomes different. In Germany Prof. Noire's 

 reputation as an original thinker is by this time 

 firmly established ; and if less has been heard of 

 him and his system in journals and newspapers, 

 this is said to be due to the fact that, like Scho- 

 penhauer, he is not a university professor, and 

 therefore without colleagues to support him, and 

 without a large train of clientes, which originally 

 meant cluenies or hearers, to swear by their mas- 

 ter. It has also been said that the age of abstract 

 philosophy in Germany has passed away, and that 

 physical science now occupies the throne which 

 formerly belonged to Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and 

 Hegel. This is not so. There is no lack of phi- 

 losophical productiveness, but there is certainly a 

 lack of philosophical receptivity in Germany, so 

 that books which thirty or forty years ago would 

 have excited general attention, now pass unheed- 

 ed, except by the smaller circle of working phi- 

 losophers. Books which in England would sell 

 by thousands, and be reviewed in all the leading 

 journals, sell in Germany by hundreds hardly, and 

 are generally discussed in the correspondence only 

 that passes between the author and his friends. 



There are exceptions. Some philosophical 

 books have made a stir in Germany even in these 

 days of iron and blood. But there is generally a 

 reason for these exceptional successes. The same 

 taste which finds a satisfaction in the more or less 

 Turkish atrocities of sensational novels, is grati- 

 fied, it seems, by a class of philosophical writers 

 who try to outbid each other in startling asser- 

 tions and unblushing negations, and who, if they 

 speak but loud enough, and have some friends to 

 speak still louder, attract, at least for a time, a 

 crowd of idle listeners. The following specimens 

 of this kind of popular, or rather vulgar, philoso- 

 phy are taken from Noire's books, and elsewhere : 



" Man possesses many internal qualities, such 

 as imagination and the milt." 



" An external quality is seeing, an internal one 

 is digestion." 



" Thought is a secretion of the brain, as other 

 secretions come from the kidneys." 



" Man is what he eats. Homo est quod est." 



