of the conservation of energy, many psychologists—Wundt, Paulsen, Riehl, Jodl, Ebbinghaus, Münsterberg, and in England Lewes, Clifford, Romanes, Stout have accepted Fechner’s psychophysical parallelism, as far at least as men and animals are concerned. Most stop here, but some go with Fechner to the full length of his metaphysical parallelism of the physical and psychical, as psychophysical, throughout the whole world. This influence extended from Germany to Denmark, where it was embraced by Hoffding, and to England, where it was accepted by Romanes, and in a more qualified manner as “a working hypothesis” by Stout. But the most thorough and most eloquent of Fechner’s metaphysical disciples was F. Paulsen (q.v.), who spread panpsychism far and wide in his Einleitung in die Philosophie.
Here reappear all the characteristic points of Fechner’s “world-view”—the panpsychism, the universal parallelism with the identification of physical and psychical, the inclusion of spirit in spirit, the synechological view of spirit, and the final “day-view” that all reality is spirit, and body the appearance of spirit to spirit. But Paulsen tries to supply something wanting in Paulsen. Fechner. The originality of Paulsen consists in trying to supply an epistemological explanation of the metaphysics of Fechner, by reconciling him with Kant and Schopenhauer. He borrows from Kant’s “rationalism” the hypothesis of a spontaneous activity of the subject with the deduction that knowledge begins from sense, but arises from understanding; and he accepts from Kant’s metaphysical idealism the consequence that everything we perceive, experience and know about physical nature, and the bodies of which it consists, is phenomena, and not bodily things in themselves. But he has a different theory of human nature and soul, and so does not accept the Kantian conclusion that things in themselves, in the sense of things beyond phenomena, are all unknowable. On the contrary, his contention is that of Fechner that all knowable things are inner psychical realities beneath outer physical appearances the invisible symbolized by the visible. Kant, however, had no epistemology for such a contention, because according to him both outer and inner senses give mere appearance, from which we could not know either body in itself, or soul in itself. Parting, then, from Kant, Paulsen resorts to a paradox which he shares with Fechner and Wundt. He admits, indeed, Kant’s hypothesis that by inner sense we are conscious only of mental states, but he contends that this very consciousness is a knowledge of a thing in itself. He agrees with Fechner and Wundt that there is no substantial soul, and that soul is nothing but the mental states, or rather their unity—thus identifying it with Kant’s synthetic unity. On this assumption he deduces that in being conscious of our mental states we are conscious of soul not merely as it appears, but as it is in itself, and therefore can infer similar souls, other psychical unities, which are also things in themselves.
But what is the essence of this psychical reality which we thus immediately and mediately know? Here he appeals to Schopenhauer’s doctrine that will of some sort is the fundamental fact of mental life. Taking, then, will to be the essential thing in itself of which we are conscious, he deduces that we can infer that the psychical things in themselves beyond ourselves are also essentially “wills.” Combining with this the central dogma of Fechner that spirit extends throughout the world of bodily appearance, he concludes that the realities of the world are “wills,” that bodies are mere appearances of “wills,” and that there is one universal and all-embracing spirit which is “will.” His ultimate metaphysics, then, is this: Everything is spirit, and spirit is “will.” Lastly, by “will” he does not mean “rational desire,” which is its proper meaning, but inapplicable to Nature; nor unconscious irrational will, which is Schopenhauer’s forced meaning; nor unconscious intelligent will, which is Hartmann’s more correct meaning, though inapplicable to Nature. His “will” is instinct, impulsive feeling, a “will to live,” not indeed unconscious, but often subconscious, without idea, without reasoning about ends and means, yet pursuing ends—in short, what he calls, after K. E. von Baer, Zielstrebigkeit. How persistent is ancient animism! Empedocles, Plato and Aristotle; Telesio, Bruno and Campanella; Leibnitz; the idealists, Schopenhauer and Hartmann, Fechner and Paulsen; and the materialist, Haeckel all have agreed in according some sort of appetition to Nature. So prone are men to exaggerate adaptation into aim! So prone are they to transfer to Nature the part played by the providence of God! (see Bacon, De augmentis, iii. 4, sub fin.).
Noumenal idealism is not dead in Germany. It died down for a time in the decline of Hegelianism and the rise of materialism. It has since revived. The pure idealism of Fichte is at the bottom of it all. The panlogism of Schelling and Hegel survives in its influence. So still more does the pantheism of Schopenhauer. The three most vital idealisms of this kind at the moment are the panpneumatism of Hartmann, combining Hegel with Schopenhauer; the panteleologism of Lotze, reviving Leibnitz; and the panpsychism of Paulsen, continuing Fechner, but with the addition of an epistemology combining Kant with Schopenhauer. All these systems of metaphysics, differ as they may, agree that things are known to exist beyond sensible phenomena, but yet are mental realities of some kind. Meanwhile, the natural substances of Aristotelian realism are regarded with common aversion.
5.—Phenomenal Idealism in Germany
Phenomenal idealism is the metaphysics which deduces that, as we begin by perceiving nothing but mental phenomena of sense, so all we know at last from these data is also phenomena of sense, actual or possible. So far it is in general agreement not only with Hume, but also with Kant in his first two positions. But it follows Fichte in his revolt against the unknown thing in itself. On the other hand, as the speculative systems of noumenal idealism, starting from Fichte, succeeded one another, like ghosts who “come like shadows, so depart,” without producing conviction, and often in flagrant opposition to the truths of natural science, and when, in consequence, a wave of materialism threatened to submerge mind altogether by reducing it to a function of matter, many philosophers began to despair of the ambitious attempts which had been made to prove that there is a whole world of mind beyond phenomena, as the noumenalists had supposed. Thus they were thrown back on the limits of human knowledge prescribed by Kant, but purged of the unknown thing in itself by Fichte. Phenomenal idealism is the Kantian contention that Nature, as known to science, is phenomena of experience. Unfortunately, the word “phenomenon” is equivocal (see Mind, xiv. 309). Sometimes it is used for any positive fact, as distinguished from its cause. But sometimes also it means what appears, or can appear, to the senses, as distinguished from what does not appear, but can be inferred to exist. Now, Kant and his followers start from this second and narrower meaning, and usually narrow it still more by assuming that what appears to the senses is as mental as the sensation, being undistinguishable from it or from the idea of it, and that an appearance is a mental idea (Vorstellung) of sense; and then they conclude that we can know by inference nothing but such mental appearances, actual and possible, and therefore nothing beyond sensory experience. When, on the other hand, the objects of science are properly described as phenomena, what is meant is not this pittance of sensible appearances, but positive facts of all kinds, whether perceptible or imperceptible, whether capable of being experienced or of being inferred from, but beyond, experience, e.g. the farther side of the moon, which is known to exist only by inference. Hence the doctrine of Kant, that Nature as known to science is phenomena, means one thing in Kantism and another thing in science. In the former it means that Nature is mental phenomena, actual and possible, of sensory experience; in the latter it means that Nature is positive facts, either experienced or inferred. It is most important also to notice that Kantism denies, but science asserts, the logical power of reason to infer actual things beyond experience. But the phenomenal idealists have not, any more than Kant, noticed the ambiguity of the term “phenomenon”; they fancy that, in saying that all we know is phenomena in the Kantian sense of mental appearances, they are describing all the positive facts that science knows; and they follow Kant in supposing that there is no logical inference of actual things beyond experience.
1. The Reaction to Kant.—The reaction to Kant (“Zurück zu Kant!”) was begun by O. Liebmann in Kant und die Epigonen (1865). Immediately afterwards, in 1866, appeared Lange’s Geschichte des Materialismus. In 1870 J. B. Meyer published his Kants Psychologie, and in 1871 H. Cohen his more important Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, which led Lange to modify his interpretation of Kant in the second edition of his own book. Lange (q.v.) by his History of Materialism has exercised a profound influence, which is due partly to its apparent success in answering materialism by Kantian arguments, and partly to
