274 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



mental research in psychology was pushed into the 

 region of pathology. In France, within the last thirty 

 years, a whole literature has sprung up, cultivating the 

 large region of nervous affections and mental maladies, 

 constituting what may be called abnormal psychology, to 

 which would also belong the psychology of criminality, 

 of degeneration, and of such exceptional conditions as 

 the hypnotic state, &c. M. Eibot himself has published 

 valuable and original treatises on ' The Diseases of 

 Memory' (1881), 'The Diseases of the Will' (1883), 

 and 'The Diseases of Personality' (1885). As is well 

 known, these writings have opened out quite a new 

 field of research on the Continent, and have influenced 

 many neighbouring provinces which belong to the 

 borderland of psychology, law, and economics.^ 



chology,' &c., Eng. trans., by 

 Baldwin, 1899, p. 12). But M. 

 Ribot does not omit to mention 

 that the German method of ex- 

 periment touches only a certain 

 limited region of facts, and does 

 not touch the central group of psy- 

 chical states. This has become 

 more evident since that time. 

 (See above, vol. ii. p. 523.) 



* It must not, however, be in- 

 ferred that M. Ribot takes a narrow 

 view of the problems of philosophy, 

 or that he, so far as we know, 

 belongs to the school represented 

 in Germany by Fries, Beneke, and, 

 in more recent times, by Prof. 

 Theodor Lipps, who desire to found 

 all philosophy upon psychology. 

 The large and comprehensive view 

 which he takes of philosophy in 

 general is shown by the fact that 

 he started in 1876 the monthly 

 ' Revue Philosophique de la France 

 et de I'Etranger,' which although, 

 especially in the beginning, favour- 

 ing the new psychology, opens its 



pages to every philosophical opinion, 

 and contains very important con- 

 tributions by writers of very differ- 

 ent schools ; also by the article he 

 contributed to ' Mind ' in the year 

 1877 on "Philosophy in France," 

 in which he gives a most lucid 

 analysis of the then existing schools 

 of philosophical thought and their 

 leaders. He there also refers to a 

 thinker who since that time has 

 gained increasing influence and, in 

 a different way from M. Ribot liim- 

 . self, has brought some lines of 

 French thought into closer contact 

 with that of other European coun- 

 tries, notably with the movement 

 which centres in Kant's ' Criticism.' 

 This thinker is Charles Renouvier, 

 who may be said to occupy in 

 French thought a position similar 

 to that of Lotze in Germany. In 

 his ' Essais de Critique Generale ' 

 (1st ed. 1854-64), notably in the 

 2nd edition (1875-96, 8 vols.), he, 

 by a careful and circumspect criti- 

 cism of the different ways in which 



