OF THE SOOL. 



283 



of psychology and philosophy to an analysis of experience, 

 but with the fundamental difference that what is aimed at 

 is not an analysis of individual experience, as with Ward, 

 but an analysis of pure experience. The title of his 

 great work as a ' Critique of Pure Experience ' reminds 

 one of Kant's ' Critique of Pure Eeason.' As Kant set 

 himself the task of finding out the innate forms of the 

 reasoning intellect, so Avenarius tries to arrive at a de- 

 scription of pure experience, i.e., of such experience as 

 is not contaminated and mixed up with a whole host 

 of conceptions, images, and ideas, which are imported 

 through tradition and habit and elaborated by fanciful 

 analogies. Unfortunately the style of Avenarius' writings 

 is no less peculiar than that of Kant's Critique, and it 

 remains to be seen whether his disciples will succeed in 

 extricating an intelligible and useful set of important and 



analysis towards which we approach, 

 but which is, after all, only a 

 distant ideal. There seems no doubt 

 that Avenarius was much influenced 

 by the success attained in the abs- 

 tract sciences of nature through re- 

 duction of qualitative to quantitative 

 differences. Prof. Hoffding in his in- 

 dependent statement of Avenarius' 

 speculation (' Moderne Philoso- 

 phen,' pp. 117-27) characterises it 

 as the natural history of problems ; 

 the attempt to show how, through 

 the want of equilibrium between 

 the external (physical) and the 

 internal (psychical) series of events 

 or processes, the desire and need for 

 equalisation is produced. Through 

 a repeated study of Avenarius' 

 works, as also through personal 

 intercourse with him, Hoffding has 

 come to the conclusion (against 

 Wundt) that Avenarius cannot be 

 stigmatised as a materialist, inas- 

 much as he himself declared that he 



knew neither the " physical " nor the 

 " psychical," but only a third some- 

 thing. Nevertheless it has to be 

 admitted that the attempt to pene- 

 trate from outside, from the brain 

 processes to the mind processes, 

 gives the whole the appearance of 

 a purely physiological treatment. 

 " This relation between psychology 

 and physiology is characteristic, 

 and contains a significant warning 

 against the view that it would be 

 more scientific in questions of this 

 kind to proclaim the ' biological ' as 

 the only correct method " (Hoffding, 

 loc. cit.,p. 122). A very interest- 

 ing though somewhat acrid criticism 

 of modern psychology in Germany, 

 from the position indicated by 

 Avenarius, will be found in Rudolf 

 Willy, ' Die Krisis in der Psycho- 

 logic' (1899). Hardly any notice 

 is taken of modern English or 

 French psychological work. 



