March 6, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



355 



' reified the void,' well, from the point of view 

 of the student of the history of philosophy such 

 a way of assailing Hegel is in its accuracy similar 

 to a way of assailing Luther's theological views 

 which should hold the reformer up to scorn as 

 a defender of the wicked doctrine of 'justifica- 

 tion by works,' and as a blasphemous opponent 

 of 'justification by faith.' One might want to 

 condemn Luther's views; but it would hardly 

 be accurate to talk of ' Luther and the other 

 Papists.' And even so, one is welcome to re- 

 gard Hegel as a mischievous thinker ; but one 

 must not give as a reason that one classes him 

 with those other believers in ' an occult, un- 

 known and unknowable substrate.' 



As a fact, by no means all, but certainly a 

 number of Major Powell's own assertions in 

 this valuable paper are theses which every stu- 

 dent of Hegel knows to be defended with great 

 energy by the latter thinker. Major Powell 

 well says : ' ' What is the meaning of the word 

 this? It may be applied to any constituent 

 of matter, to matter itself, to any body or to 

 any property, and to any idea in the mental 

 world, and its meaning is derived from the 

 context ; it has no definite meaning in itself. ' ' 

 This is a part of the thesis of Hegel's famous 

 opening chapter of the ' Phanomenologie des 

 Geistes.' And of this thesis in the sequel 

 Hegel makes a use closely analogous to Major 

 Powell's. That to make essence an abstract 

 ' property ' of ' the substrate of matter, ' is to 

 make essence a ' nonentity of a nonentity ' is a 

 thesis so repeatedly maintained by Hegel, in 

 his ' Phanomenologie ' (in the third chapter on 

 ' Kraft und Verstand '), in his larger Logic in 

 the second volume, where this ' Bewegung von 

 Nichts durch Nichts zu Nichts ' is elaborately 

 discussed, and elsewhere, that Major Powell's 

 failure to recognize the relation of Hegel to 

 this thesis can only be due to a failure to study 

 the habits of Hegel, as our anthropologist 

 would prefer to study those of Chuar, namely, 

 in the ' native wilds ' of the thinker himself. 

 The Hegel of whom Major Powell speaks is a 

 product of somebody's 'inner consciousness' 

 and, whoever may be responsible for the dream, 

 all the ' eloquence of the dreamer ' cannot 

 make this Hegel an historical person. 



Of course, one must beg pardon for laying so 



much stress upon the mere accidental fact of 

 history in a case like this. Major Powell's 

 general philosophical construction in this paper 

 seems to the present writer despite some minor 

 doubts, essentially sound, and admirably stated. 

 But, as Major Powell himself obviously holds, 

 the history of philosophy is, at least in one as- 

 pect, an anthropological study. It is undesira- 

 ble that even a minor error should, through a 

 chance misstatement, stand upon record as re- 

 ceiving the support of so eminent an anthropo- 

 logical authority as Major Powell. 



JOSIAH ROYCE. 



Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1896. 



PEOF. C. LLOYD MORGAN ON INSTINCT. 



Editor Science: In an account of a discus- 

 sion on instinct given in Science of February 

 14th, Prof. Morgan is reported thus: " He de- 

 scribed his own interesting experiments with 

 chicks and ducklings, and held that these and 

 other evidence tend to show that instincts are 

 not perfected under the guidance of intelligence 

 and then inherited. A chick will peck instinc- 

 tively at food, but must be taught to drink. 

 [Italics mine.] Chicks have learned to drink 

 for countless generations, but the acquired action 

 has not become instinctive." 



In one of a series of papers now in the press 

 on ' The Psychic Development of Young Ani- 

 mals and its Physical Correlation,' I have given 

 in detail an account of a study of the pigeon 

 and the chick. It so happens that this very 

 question of drinking by chicks has been especi- 

 ally noted, and I find a record of one observa- 

 tion to the effect that a newly hatched chick 

 pecking at the drops on rim of a vessel contain- 

 ing water accidentally got its beak into the liquid, 

 whereupon it at once raised its head and drank 

 perfectly well in the usual fashion for fowls. 

 Was this by teaching or by instinct ? 



Later the chicks seem to peck and drink, 

 sometimes on seeing the mother do so. The 

 act seems to be in such a case a sort of imita- 

 tion so far as its inception is concerned. But 

 will any one contend that that first act of 

 drinking referred to above was other than in- 

 stinctive? Again, when a chick first drinks 

 on its beak being put into water, can the act be 

 considered as the result of teaching? Is the 



