end Avenarius’ own theory breaks down because of its irreconcilability with these physiological facts. As I have tried to prove in the previous article, he only escapes them by inconsistently accepting the extreme subjectivism involved in the parallelist position.
To revert, however, to my previous line of argument. Avenarius seems to have confused two quite different mental attitudes, the attitude of animism which in its full and unchecked development is found only in the primitive and savage mind but which in a modified form is still the attitude of the child-mind, and that subjective idealism which was first definitely formulated in the time of Descartes. As these two attitudes are fundamentally different, he was bound to fail in any attempt to trace them both to a common root in introjection. Being, however, profoundly impressed by Tylor’s treatment of animism in Primitive Culture, and following Tylor in his exaggerated view of the part which animism plays in the development of theological and philosophical thought,[1] he very naturally tried to connect the Cartesian dualism, which is the stumbling-block of all naturalistic systems, and which is therefore in a very especial sense the bête noire of his own philosophising, with the animistic theories of primitive man. That dualism had previously compelled Avenarius to develop his naturalistic system on idealist lines.[2] The relief which he felt in escaping both idealism and dualism by readoption of the realistic attitude of natural science and physiology he has described in his introduction to the Menschlicher Weltbegriff.[3]
I may now turn to Avenarius’ earlier statement of the introjectionist argument in the Menschlicher Weltbegriff. His articles in the Vierteljahrsschrift enter upon the problem of introjection only in so far as that is necessary in order to refute the current conception of the data of psychology, and to vindicate that view of its province which has been advocated in this country by Ward and Stout. As the current
- ↑ Cf. previous article in Mind (January, 1906), No. 57, p. 27.
- ↑ The stages in the gradual development of Avenarius’ philosophy are clearly marked in his published works. The above interpretation of animism, together with a somewhat immature statement of his later doctrine of pure experience, is presented in Philosophie als Denken der Welt, but from a point of view indistinguishable from subjective idealism (cf. § 115 ff.). In the Kritik this subjectivism is rejected in favour of realism. His doctrine of introjection, as the explanation both of animism and of subjectivism, appears, however, only in the Menschlicher Weltbegriff. Finally, in the Bemerkungen, Avenarius restates the introjectionist argument, and also develops more explicitly certain aspects of his naturalistic system.
- ↑ Pp. ix.-x.
