OF THE SOUL. 



209 



this country, 1 where, up to the present day, it has pre- 

 served its fundamental characteristics, exhibiting an 

 unbroken historical continuity. This is the genuinely ie. 



J J British 



introspective school of psychology. Its greatest repre- ^ nt e r c t ' ive 

 sentatives during the first two-thirds of the century are P s y chol gy- 

 James Mill and Alexander Bain. Before entering on an 





1 Beneke differed from Kant inas- 

 much as he did not admit that 

 knowledge of mental phenomena or 

 states revealed to us by the inner 

 sense was merely phenomenal, as is 

 the case with our knowledge of ex- 

 ternal things through the outer 

 senses. On the contrary, he re- 

 duces all knowledge to that afforded 

 by introspection and dealt with in 

 empirical psychology. He there- 

 fore agrees to a large extent with 

 English thinkers of the Associa- 

 tional school " on two fundamental 

 points (1) the dependence of all 

 other branches of philosophy on 

 psychology ; (2) the dependence of 

 psychology on introspection and, in 

 the last resort, on introspection 

 only. These capital points of agree- 

 ment with English thinkers are at 

 the same time capital points of dis- 

 agreement between him and Her- 

 bart. Further traces of English 

 influence in Beneke are perhaps to 

 be found in his assiduous study of 

 all facts likely to throw light on 

 psychological problems, and at times 

 also in his treatment of special 

 questions. It must, however, be 

 confessed that there was one lesson 

 which he failed to learn from his 

 favourite English writers. He did 

 not learn from them to be cautious. 

 . . . He claimed with reason the 

 right of framing hypotheses to ex- 

 plain observed facts. But he pushed 

 his hypotheses far beyond what the 

 exigencies of psychological explana- 

 tion required. . . . Nevertheless, it 

 is right to treat him as a kind of 

 link between English associational 

 psychology on the one hand, and 



VOL. III. 



the psychology of Herbart on the 

 other" (Stout, 'Mind,' vol. xiv. p. 

 25, &c.) The fact that Beneke did 

 not accept the older view which 

 considered the soul or mind as pos- 

 sessed of different faculties, but 

 reduced the latter to mere disposi- 

 tions which had to be developed by 

 external stimuli, made his teaching 

 even more acceptable than that 

 of Herbart to educationalists ; for 

 the task of education as well as its 

 value was clearly defined and em- 

 phasised. He had, accordingly, a 

 considerable following among educa- 

 tionalists in Germany. On the 

 other hand, von Hartmann empha- 

 sises the fact that ' ' Beneke did not 

 content himself with pointing to 

 introspective phenomena as afford- 

 ing a secure and certain starting- 

 point for psychology and philosophy, 

 but that he went behind the phe- 

 nomenal in search of unconscious 

 origins and dispositions for the 

 existence of which he could offer no 

 empirical or metaphysical proof " 

 ('Die Moderne Psychologic,' 1901, 

 p. 11). There is, however, no 

 doubt that Beneke's acceptance of 

 psychical experience as ultimate 

 and self-evident giving the only 

 knowledge of reality accessible to 

 the human mind is akin to a view 

 which has found expression in quite 

 recent times, though it can only be 

 upheld by an altered conception of 

 reality. Fr. Ueberweg (1826-71), 

 the well-known historian of phil- 

 osophy, was much influenced by 

 Beneke, as notably in his ' System 

 of Logic' (English translation by 

 J. M. Lindsay, 1871). 



O 



