August i, 1901] 



NATURE 



of a living organism is as yet interpretable in terms of 

 the formula; used by the chemist and the physicist. And 

 we find nothing in this volume to shake this disbelief. 



J. A. T. 



A PHILOSOPHER ON EVOLUTION. 

 The Limits of Evolution. By Prof. Howison. Pp. 

 x.wii + 380. (New York : The Macmillan Company ; 

 London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1901.) Price 

 7^^. bd. net. 



THE main argument of the book is clearly summarised 

 in the preface. Nothing has any real existence 

 except mind. There are a number of coexistent minds. 

 All else is but the items of their experience, which they 

 arrange in order for themselves. God is the " fulfilled 

 type of every mind," an ideal to which it is trying to 

 assimilate itself These minds are citizens of an eternal 

 republic. They have had no origm in tmie. They have 

 not been created in the sense in which the word is 

 ordinarily understood. They are free: "nothing but 

 their own light and conviction determines their action 

 towards each other and towards God." This freedom is 

 made possible by the substitution of a final for an 

 efficient cause. " Real creation means such an eternal 

 'dependence of other souls upon God that the non- 

 existence of God would involve the non-existence of all 

 souls." Evolution is the "movement of things change- 

 able towards the goal of a common ideal," and spirits 

 can " neither be the product of evolution nor in any way 

 subject to evolution,'' which can only reign in " the 

 incomplete and tentative world of experience." 



The first and last essays elaborate the theory, insisting 

 always on the freedom of the will. It is in order to 

 prove that the will is free that our author has established 

 his republic of independent minds. If the mind of an 

 individual man is merely part of the force that permeates 

 the whole universe, it can have no freedom. Pantheism, 

 therefore, must be rejected. Creation, too, in the old 

 sense must be given up ; if created, the mind can have 

 no independence. Hence the assumption that it has 

 had no beginning and will have no end. Thus war is 

 declared against the monistic philosophy, according to 

 which body and mind are but difterent aspects of what is 

 divisible only in thought, and the mind, therefore, as 

 perishable as the body. 



Prof Howison fears that philosophy is tending towards 

 determinism, and this tendency he considers fraught 

 with the gravest danger. No doubt if a man puts his 

 determinism into practice, and, when called upon to act, 

 feels that he is a mere automaton set in motion by 

 influences from without, he is not one who can fill any 

 post where energy and determination are required. We 

 must imagine that our wills are free or we are helpless. 

 Whether we are really free is unimportant. The belief 

 is strong in almost every man, at any rate in almost 

 every European. Most men are content to leave the 

 matter undiscussed, holding that they have a real freedom, 

 however inexplicable and even unthinkable it may be. 

 But Prof Howison tries to find a philosophic explanation 

 for the belief, and, interesting as his book is, we cannot 

 think that he has been successful. 

 NO. 1657, VOL. 64] 



Let us first consider his " republic of minds." They 

 exist in a world the existence of which is " incomplete 

 and tentative." Nothing but mind is really existent. 

 We start, then, each of us with our own mind. And how 

 do we become cognisant of the existence of other minds .' 

 This can only be through our bodily senses. Yet our 

 bodies are not things really existent. Moreover, we 

 cannot touch, see or hear other men's minds ; we only 

 infer their existence from their looking out upon us 

 through their bodily eyes or speaking to us with their 

 bodily vocal organs. Thus the existence of a real world 

 of minds is accepted on the evidence that is obtained for 

 us by mere phenomena. Next as to the free will that 

 Prof. Howison has to offer us. If he reduced the whole 

 universe to unreality except each man's own ego, then the 

 mind would move in vacuo, not tyrannised over by any 

 external influences. As he himself puts it, the condition 

 of freedom for man is that " the world shall be a world of 

 phenomena — states of his own conscious being, organised 

 by his spontaneous conscious life — and not a world of 

 ' things-in-themselves.'" But he does not make other 

 minds mere phenomena. 



Any individual mind must, therefore, be influenced 

 from without by the other citizens of the republic of minds. 

 No doubt even under these conditions there may be 

 autonomy : the mind may decide in accordance with its 

 own character which influence from without it will allow 

 to prevail with it. The existence of other minds need 

 not destroy autonomy in this sense. But free will, such 

 as this, is quite consistent with the monism which Prof 

 Howison condemns. It is not the freedom in which the 

 ordinary healthy man has at least a practical belief. He 

 has the feeling that he can transcend his own nature, 

 conquer his weaknesses and bad tendencies and develop 

 other and better tendencies. It may be impossible to 

 explain how he can have such a power. Certainly this 

 book leaves us dependent on our instinctive feeling of 

 freedom. 



Next as to our author's view of evolution. Evolution, 

 he insists, cannot explain the origin of life or the origin 

 of mind. But no clear-headed evolutionist holds that 

 evolution can originate. We must assume an underlying 

 force which, through evolution, is variously manipulated 

 and concentrated. As to the ultimate origin of the 

 underlying force, evolution has nothing to say. This 

 much we may concede. But Prof. Howison assumes 

 that, not only mind, but the individual mind has existed 

 from eternity, and in this he is unreasonable. The 

 development of certain bodily organs proceeds pari passu 

 with the development of mental power. We can trace 

 the gradual evolution of nerve till it culminates in the 

 human brain. We are bound to assume, then, that a 

 particular mind is the product of evolution ; like the be dy, 

 it has been elaborated out of something that preceded 

 evolution. This question is not fairly faced by Prof 

 Howison. In a footnote (p. 10) he allows that we can 

 trace the upward steps of intellectual development, and 

 there he leaves the matter, assuming as the basis of his 

 dualistic philosophy that the mind of each individual has 

 existed from eternity and has, apparently, been inserted 

 extranaturally in the body. 



Some of the contradictions involved in his system our 

 author sees and attempts to remove. If each individual 



