are such things as mind, intellect, understanding, and reason. All the various shades or developments of sensation from the first to the last were doubtless distinguished and named for some very useful purpose, and each may have served its purpose for a time. The mischief began when they became too numerous, each thinker contributing his own share, while later thinkers seemed to consider themselves in honour bound, whenever there were different names, to assign to each its own small province. Because in German there are two words, Verstand and Vernunft, originally meant for exactly the same thing, the greatest efforts have been made to show that there is something to be called Vernunft, totally different from what is called Verstand, till at last Vernunft was changed into a mere name for Unverstand, or the power of suggesting insoluble problems'. And as there is a Vernunft by the side of a Verstand in German, English philosophers have been most anxious to introduce the same distinction between understanding and reason into English. Nothing varies so much as the meaning of philosophical terms, for everybody thinks he has a right to define them, or even to use them without any definition. Thus, as Paulsen has shown, the German word Begriff, which now means concept only, meant not very long ago a percept or a Vorstellung. In a Manual of Logic by Meier, which was used by Kant, we read: Ein Begriff, conceptus, ist eine Vorstellung einer Sache in einem Dinge, welches das Vermögen des Denkens besitzt. Es sind darnach alle unsere Vorstellungen Begriffe.' And in Reimarus' . 1 See T. H. Green, Works, vol. ii. p. 88. Vernunftlehre, paragraph 30, we read: 'Begriff gleich Denkbild oder Idee, ist jede einzelne Vorstellung, (also vor allem auch die Sensation).' No word has changed more in its meaning than Idea, and none is answerable for greater confusion of thought'. It is impossible to understand Locke, Berkeley, or Hume, unless we know that idea with them means a percept, fresh or faded, and that Berkeley's crusade against abstract general ideas is really directed against percepts supposed to be general and abstract. Jacobi called Berkeley a Nihilist, others called him an Egoist, he is now called an Idealist, a name which the contemporaries and opponents of Kant seem to have considered quite as offensive as that of Nihilist is now. At last there arises a complete psychological mythology. Because the Monon could reason or because it became rationalis, it was said to possess reason, and this reason, after being spelt with a capital R, was accepted as something real, though invisible, was praised as divine in rapturous rhapsodies, till at last it was worshipped as the Goddess o Reason in the streets of Paris. What would the French mob have said, if they had been told that in worshipping the Goddess of Reason they were worshipping Addition and Subtraction'? Yet so it was, and possibly addition and subtraction were something far more perfect and wonderful than the Goddess of Reason before which they knelt and burnt incense. Even Kant when he speaks of reason as a separate thing seems to me guilty of mythology. It is 1 See Stoddart, Glossology, pp. 332, 343. sheer philosophical polytheism to speak of sense, mind, reason, intellect, understanding, as so many independent powers, with limits not very sharply defined; and however orthodox that polytheism has become, it is never too late to protest against it. In religious mythology too, names which were at first intended as cognomina only, have been changed into nomina, and at last into independent Numina. A man is not, however, to be called an heretic because he does not believe in Hekatebolos as a being different from Apollo, or in Charis as a goddess different from Aphrodite, nor an Atheist because he believes in one God only. Nor is a philosopher to be called hard names because he does not believe in mind, reason, understanding, or intellect, as so many independent substances, powers, faculties, or goddesses, or because he sees in all of these but the different manifestations of one and the same being, the conscious Monon. a Let it not be supposed that I am so bigoted Monist as to wish to see all these names banished from our philosophical dictionaries. I do not wish to see them banished, I only wish to see them purified, or restored to their original meaning. I myself use sense, when speaking of the Monon, so far as it may be conceived as simply receiving; I use imagination, for want of a better name, when I speak of the Monon, so far as it can be conceived as forming percepts; I use intellect rather than reason, when I speak of the Monon, so far as it can be conceived as simply conceiving; and I use language, when I speak of the Monon, so far as it can be conceived as simply speaking. I do not object to the use of the word memory, if we want to speak of the permanence of the work done by sensation, perception, conception and naming, and if some philosophers prefer to speak of the faculty of memory, I cannot consider it as high treason. It seems to me mere pedantry to rave against such a word as faculty, a term which is extremely useful and perfectly harmless, if only we bear in mind that facultas, the opposite of difficultas, is no more than facilitas, a modus faciendi, as agility is a modus agendi, and in that sense quite as good a word as function, which has found more favour of late in the eyes of philosophical purists. We may safely enjoy the wealth of language, accumulated by our fathers, if only we take care not to accept a coin for more or less than it is really worth. We must weigh our words as the ancients often weighed their coins, and not be deceived by their current value. It is very easy to coin new terms, but they often make confusion but worse confounded. Philosophers now speak of different forms of realisation, different aspects and different modalities of psychic force, but all these terms will require the protection of a definition, and will no more escape abuse than the old faculties of the mind. As rain and sunshine were changed into gods and demons, the faculties of the mind also have sometimes been treated like greeneyed monsters seated in the dark recesses of our Self. But they only frighten those who do not know what names are made of. To the true etymologist they are no more than what they are meant to be. There is one word which I should like to see reintroduced into our philosophical phrase- Logos. ology, and that is Logos. It meant originally gathering and combining, and so became the proper |