268 



NATURE 



[Sei'tkmber I, 1 910 



that was committed was the definition of a frontier 

 by a meridian line, and what makes the error the 

 more regrettable is that this unscientific boundary 

 was a gratuitous importation, which was substituted 

 for the perfectly precise and scientific frontier laid 

 down in the original act constituting the Congo State. 

 This frontier was the watershed line dividing the 

 Congo basin from the surrounding river basins, of all 

 natural geographical frontiers the most satisfactory. 



It was defined, with ideal precision, in the " Berlin 

 Act " of February 26, 1885, in the following words : — 



" All the regions forming the basin of the Congo and 

 its outlets. This basin is boundfd by the watersheds (or 

 mountain ridges) of the adjacent basins, namely, in par- 

 ticular, those of the Niari, the Ogow(5, the Schari and 

 the Nile on the north. ... It therefore comprises all the 

 regions watered by the Congo and its affluents." 



Apart therefore from the actual method of frontier 

 definition, we cannot avoid the conclusion that to have 

 allowed the Congo .State to acquire claims to any 

 territory outside the actual Congo basin was a sur- 

 render of our clear rights. We may remind those of 

 our readers who have not got a map in front of them 

 that both the Lakes Albert and Edward and the Sem- 

 liki river, which connects the two, lie wholly within 

 the Nile basin. 



Our knowledge of the interior of Africa has so prcv- 

 gressed since 1894 that there is no locality where a 

 mistake, at all comparable in magnitude, could be 

 made at the present time. We mav further be per- 

 mitted to hope that the spirit in which our great 

 departments of Sta^e approach this and similar ques- 

 tions has undergone such a change in the last few 

 years that a total setting aside of all expert opinion, 

 on which alone the agreement of 1894 is explicable, 

 is no longer probable. E. H. H. 



^XILLIAM JAMES. 



THE announcement of the death, at the compara- 

 tivelv earlv age of sixty-eight, of William James, 

 emeritus professor of philosophy in Harvard Univer- 

 sitv. will have been received with regret by an un- 

 usuallv wide circle of readers of philosophic literature, 

 and with deep sorrow by an unusually large circle of 

 friends, who knew from experience how much greater 

 was the charm of his personality than the charm even 

 of his writings. But few even of his friends can have 

 suspected under what physical disabilities were pro- 

 duced the utterances of which the sunny geniality, irre- 

 pressible vitalitv, coruscating vividness, and brave 

 optimism, unstained by any shadow of insincerity or 

 cowardice in facing the ills of life, so deeply fascinated 

 them, or realised that thev were listening to a martyr 

 to a grave cardiac affection, whose life for the last 

 ten vears had hung by a thread. 



This is not the place for an estimate of James's 

 achievements as a philosopher, but it will not be amiss 

 to signalise the intimacy of his relations to science. 

 It is not often that a philosopher of the first rank 

 has had the good fortune to receive a scientific educa- 

 tion or the literary genius to gain by losing a literary 

 education. But \\'illiam James is a shining example 

 of how stimulus and freshness may be imparted even 

 to philosophic subjects by one who is allowed to 

 approach the real problems direct, and without wander- 

 ing through a thick fog of historic errors. Origin- 

 allv trained for the medical profession, he became 

 interested in "pure" science; accompanied Agassiz on 

 .ni expedition to Brazil; was appointed to teach 

 anatomy at H.'irvard ; proceeded to the teaching of 

 phvsiologv ; approached psychology from the physio- 

 logical side ; became a peerless master in the art of 

 psychological description ; applied his psychology with 



NO. 2 13 I, VOL. 84] 



revolutiojiising and revivifying effect to the study of 

 religion, superstition, logic, and to that chamber of 

 horrors for unsolved puzzles which is called meta- 

 physics ; and, finally, before he could formulate his 

 conclusions, was taken from the world he had studied 

 so variously and with ^uch eager liuman svmpathy. 

 But at heart perhaps his attitude towards life always 

 remained psychological. He was more interested in 

 discovering and describing facts than in dogmatising 

 and system-building with them, and almost as dis- 

 regardful of formality as of technicality and pedantry. 



To scientific psychology his services are admittedly 

 immense. His work on "The Principles of 

 Psychology" (1890) at once became a classic, and is 

 likely to remain so. He found the science entangled 

 in metaphysical obscurities and based on false de- 

 scriptions. He insisted that it should be made a 

 natural science, descriptive, and, wherever possible, 

 experimental, and described its facts anew. His 

 fundamental innovation was to perceive that the 

 " facts " of consciousness form a continuous flow and 

 not a succession or series of separate facts, as, since 

 Hume, psychologists and their metaphysical opponents 

 had alike assumed. The consequence was that the 

 problem of syntlicsis disappeared, and that, the 

 function of scientific knowing became the analysis of 

 a continuum. When the meaning of this has been 

 fully grasped, it will be seen that a number of meta- 

 physical puzzles (e.g. about "the one" and "the 

 many ") answer themselves. 



But James also saw that if psychology was to pro- 

 gress further on the road to an exact science, it must 

 not be only descriptive, but must devise applications 

 of its theories suflicientlv precise to discriminate be- 

 tween alternative interpretations by their differential 

 values. This probably was one of the main motives 

 that led him to make the great generalisation of 

 scientific method which is known as pragmatism, 

 though he also conceived it in another aspect as an 

 extension to psvchology and logic of the biological 

 conception of survival and the Darwinian principle of 

 selection. - Of pragmatism he was practically the 

 founder, though he took a hint and the name (which 

 is a bad one) from his friend C. S. Peirce, and it 

 was to the explanation and advocacv of this method 

 that the last dozen years of his life were devoted. 

 The controversv which was thereby started is still 

 unfinished, and, indeed, is only just beginning to bear 

 fruit. 



But it is a psychological curiosity how few of the 

 manv who denounced James as a dangerous revolu- 

 tionary perceived that the doctrine that the meaning 

 of an assertion depends on the value of its conse- 

 quences enunciated merelv the scientific postulate that 

 all assertions must be tested, and that any doctrine 

 which could" not be applied to anv problem was un- 

 meaning. One can only suppose that this philosophic 

 generalisation of scientific practice was propounded to 

 persons who, as a matter of psychological fact, were 

 not in the habit of subjecting their pet convictions to 

 any test, and therefore aroused so great an emotional 

 disturbance that the actual doctrine was hardly 

 attended to. .\ similar reception was accorded to 

 James's account of the will and the right to believe. 

 James, after pointing out that, as a matter of psycho- 

 logical fact, there existed a strong- bias in men to 

 believe what thev desired, had restricted the right to 

 believe to cases where ,a choice between a number of 

 intellectuallv possible alternatives was practically neces- 

 sitated, and asserted that in such cases the empirical 

 consequences of the belief, favourable or otherwise, 

 formed the test of its truth. Whereupon he was, in 

 spite of repeated disclaimers, universally credited by 

 his critics with exhorting men to believe whatever 

 thev pleased without regard to the consequences! 



