RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE 



PHILOSOPHY. By Hugh Elliot. 



The recent tendencies of philosophical speculation have been 

 strongly in the direction of spiritualistic, as opposed to scientific, 

 explanations. Philosophy is a general name for a wide range 

 of different topics, which have little in common beyond the 

 quality of being very obscure and inaccessible to the ordinary 

 weapons of logic. It thus comprises within its purview some 

 subjects on which so much knowledge has already been accu- 

 mulated as almost to justify their incorporation into the body 

 of natural science. It comprises some other subjects which are 

 condemned by increasing knowledge and are passing into the 

 sphere of acknowledged superstition. It is upon this less 

 reputable department of philosophy that public attention has 

 lately centred ; and we shall be obliged to devote the greater 

 part of this Review to the subject of Spiritualism. 



Not that philosophy has been wholly stagnant during the 

 war. Notable advances have been made in Psychology, owing 

 to the great wealth of new material furnished by the study of 

 shell-shock. This peculiar manifestation of hysteria has pro- 

 vided abundant opportunities for hypnotic experimentation, 

 and for testing the theories of Freud and Jung, which had so 

 great a vogue before the war. The doctrines of psycho-analysis 

 and suppressed consciousness have passed with exceptional 

 rapidity through the ordinary stages of a new sphere of thought. 

 A period of incubation and neglect was succeeded by a hail of 

 applause, a sudden leap of the new ideas into fashion. This 

 was followed by intensive criticism, which, fastening upon the 

 most vulnerable features of the theory, seemed at first to 

 discredit the whole. And finally there has supervened a calmer 

 atmosphere, which, while totally rejecting much of the new 

 psychology, accepts a large part as constituting real and im- 

 portant progress. It has now come to be generally held that 

 Freud enormously over-estimated the influence of sexuality in 

 determining hysterical manifestations. When once we cut out 

 this preoccupation with sex, we find much of the highest value 



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