The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
Such are the materials out of which chiefly a philosophical theory
ought to be built, in order to represent the state of knowledge to
which the nineteenth century has brought us. Without going into other
important questions of philosophical architectonic, we can readily
foresee what sort of a metaphysics would appropriately be constructed
from those conceptions. Like some of the most ancient and some of the
most recent speculations it would be a Cosmogonic Philosophy. It
would suppose that in the beginning,—infinitely remote,—there was
a chaos of unpersonalised feeling, which being without connection or
regularity would properly be without existence. This feeling, sporting
here and there in pure arbitrariness, would have started the germ of
a generalising tendency. Its other sportings would be evanescent, but
this would have a growing virtue. Thus, the tendency to habit would be
started; and from this with the other principles of evolution all the
regularities of the universe would be evolved. At any time, however, an
element of pure chance survives and will remain until the world becomes
an absolutely perfect, rational, and symmetrical system, in which mind
is at last crystallised in the infinitely distant future.
That idea has been worked out by me with elaboration. It accounts for
the main features of the universe as we know it,—the characters of
time, space, matter, force, gravitation, electricity, etc. It predicts
many more things which new observations can alone bring to the test.
May some future student go over this ground again, and have the leisure
to give his results to the world.
CHARLES S. PEIRCE.
ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES IN CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.
I.
"LA BÊTE HUMAINE" AND CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY.
If I had to be the judge of M. Zola I could be only a very partial
judge. To me the books of Zola are, with those of Dostoyewski and
Tolstoï, the only ones which have struck a fresh tone in the literary
monotony of this quarter of a century, in which it is said the
political levelling and the general abasement of character extend
even to the republic of letters. Thus I am partial to Zola, for, as
the chief of a school which pushes the science of psychiatry far into
the field of psychology and of sociology, I find in Zola an ally
the more valuable that he has not been sought and that he reigns in
a very different empire. To the scientific charlatans who deny, as
does M. Colajanni, the importance and the gravity of alcoholism, its
associations with crime and degeneracy, "L'Assommoir" is perhaps the
best of refutations. "Germinal" and "La Fortune des Rougon" give us the
demonstration of that cruelty which is born for the crowd and in the
crowd, and both prove the influence that criminals and lunatics have
in rebellions. Zola is the only one of the Latin race who endeavors to
introduce the scientific method into literary work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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