Maech 20, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



465 



a marked tendency towards pantheism. 

 Though Johnson's books were used as tests 

 in King's College and the Academy in Phila- 

 delphia, his theories were born out of due 

 time and soon perished of general neglect. 

 Again, one hundred years ago Philadelphia 

 and the south seemed — much more than New 

 England — to be full of promise of great and 

 rapid intellectual progress. As a result of the 

 impetus given in the one ease by Franklin and 

 in the other by Jefferson, the universities and 

 medical schools in these communities abound- 

 ed in bold speculations, in openness of mind 

 towards new hypotheses, in enthusiasm for 

 experimental investigation, in liberal educa- 

 tional policies, in an especial alertness to 

 psycho-physical problems, and in materialistic 

 tendencies which, however open to objection 

 on metaphysical grounds, created an atmos- 

 phere favorable to the physical and biological 

 sciences. So we find Joseph Buchanan, in 

 Kentucky, approximating the theory of con- 

 tinuous evolution from the inorganic to man, 

 arguing for epiphenomenalism, and investi- 

 gating the physiological antecedents of men- 

 tal processes; we find Cooper, at the Univer- 

 sity of Virginia, elaborating a " psychology 

 without a soul," propounding the hypothesis of 

 the electrical character of the transmission of 

 the nerve-impulse, and anticipating positiv- 

 ism; we find Benjamin Eush, at the Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania, lecturing systematically 

 on the relations of mind and body, experi- 

 mental psychology, abnormal psychology and 

 psychological esthetics. Crude and one-sided 

 these developments often were; but the spirit, 

 and the conceptions of scientific method, that 

 lay behind them, if they had continued to 

 rule in American universities, would have put 

 science and education in this country, and 

 especially in the south, thirty or forty years 

 ahead of their present position. These possi- 

 bilities, however, soon came to naught — partly 

 because the public mind was not ready for 

 such ideas, partly because of the clerical power 

 in the colleges, and largely, Dr. Riley seems to 

 think, because of the intellectually deadening 

 influence of the " common-sense " system of 

 the Scotch school, which, established at 

 Princeton early in the nineteenth century. 



gradually became the ruling American philos- 

 ophy, as that college rose to dominance in the 

 middle and southern states. 



There are (naturally enough in so extensive 

 a study) several minor slips that should be 

 corrected in a subsequent edition. By an odd 

 anachronism, Thomas Cooper (1759-1840), the 

 son-in-law of Priestley and first professor of 

 natural science in the University of Virginia, 

 is confused (pp. 294, 408) with the celebrated 

 chartist of the same name (1805-1892). It 

 would have been a matter of some meta- 

 physical difficulty to have been a " former 

 chartist " in 1819. Less explicably, Priestley 

 himself is referred to as " the great chartist." 

 The Bridgewater Treatises can not (p. lY) 

 have been " relegated to the back shelves " in 

 " the latter part of the 18th century," since 

 the earliest of them came out in 1833. The 

 year 1797 should not be placed (p. 318) in the 

 " era of good feeling " ; the period tradition- 

 ally so called came twenty years later, while 

 the beginning of the first Adams's adminis- 

 tration was an era of uncommonly bad feeling. 

 Channing was in no sense a pantheist; and 

 his Dudleian lecture of 1821 has exactly the 

 opposite purport to that ascribed to it (pp. 

 207, 208). It tends to confusion to call the 

 philosophy of Wolff (p. 320) and that of the 

 enlightenment generally, " illuminism " ; that 

 term already has two fairly definite (and in- 

 congruous) meanings and it is not desirable 

 that it should acquire a third. Jefiferson, in 

 the argument outlined (p. 276), so far from 

 " desiring to give gain de cause to the dis- 

 ciples of Ocellus, Timseus, Spinoza, Diderot 

 and D'Holbach," is engaged in refuting the 

 atheistic philosophy which he conceives to be 

 represented by those names. The chapter on 

 Jefferson, in general, seems a little confused 

 and ill-arranged; the precise character of his 

 eventual metaphysical opinions does not alto- 

 gether plainly appear. Jefferson inclined 

 (with some agnostic hesitancy about adopting 

 any metaphysical opinion at all) to (a) the 

 doctrine that all substance is corporeal and 

 that thought is somehow an attribute or func- 

 tion of body — i. e., a materialistic monism; 

 and at the same time (6) to the rejection of 

 a purely mechanistic philosophy of nature. 



