off through channels (Schutzformen) specially organised for the purpose. In so doing it sacrifices energy, not for the sake of increasing its resources, but merely in order, as far as possible, to preserve itself unchanged in this hostile environment. Similarly, when the mind meets with facts which conflict with its dominant concepts, it invents Beibegriffe, that is to say, modifies its concepts in such a way as to neutralise the conflict in the simplest possible manner and with the least possible change in its accustomed attitude.[1] The concepts, or attitudes of mind, with which the facts of experience conflict are, according to Avenarius, in all cases ultimately due to that process of introjection which has given rise to the animism of primitive man. The spiritualism which results from the animistic conceptions of the soul and of God leads by its own disintegration, as these conceptions are progressively modified to fit the facts of experience, through agnosticism back to naturalism.[2] But further consideration of this view of animism, the understanding of which, and of Avenarius’ view of its relation to introjection, is absolutely essential for a clear conception of his philosophy, I must defer until the next article. Some preliminary criticisms may now, however, be passed upon Avenarius’ general position.
Most readers of Avenarius’ Menschliche Weltbegriff will probably agree that, however convincing as criticism, it is tantalisingly illusive in its positive teaching. So long as we seek to interpret his theory of experience in the form in which it is avowedly presented, namely, as genuinely realistic, it eludes all clear comprehension: its whole meaning seems to be exhausted in negation of the subjectivism which it overthrows. It is only when we translate Avenarius’ technical terms into more familiar language that we discover where the real source of the mystification lies. Avenarius
- ↑ Avenarius’ test of truth is the immanent idealist criterion, viz., the degree to which a suggested idea harmonises with the rest of our experience. The statics and dynamics in which this criterion results are described with remarkable subtlety in what is one of the most interesting parts of the Kritik (vol. ii., pp. 258-297).
- ↑ The following concrete instance may be quoted as illustrating Avenarius’ view of the transition from spiritualism to agnosticism: “A single inconceivability—as, for instance, in philosophy the relation of divine omniscience to freedom of the human will, or in daily life an undeserved affliction or an unusually terrible death-agony—is ‘solved’ by reference to the universal ‘incomprehensibility of God’s essence and will’ or to the universal ‘unknowableness’ of his providence . . . the same result is attained by substitution of the ‘insufficiency and incompetence of the human faculty of reason’“ (Kritik, vol. ii., p. 281. Cf. pp. 296-297).
