He wrought in words, a faithful artisan; And lived to shame their loutish mockery Whose virtue ended where his own began. LOUIS BELROSE, JR. DIVERSE TOPICS. THE ORIGIN OF THOUGHT-FORMS. Dr. H. Potonié, the editor of the _Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift_, Berlin, advances in one of its recent numbers (Vol. vi. 15) the following proposition concerning the origin of the forms of thought: “All the forms of thought have originated in the struggle for life not otherwise than the forms of organisms.” This is further explained in the following sentence: “Those conceptions which are called _a priori_, are inherited; they have been necessarily used by the primitive thinking organisms and are now in their disposition immediately present. Yet they have been gained by experience. Without any knowledge, for instance, of space and time, no action is possible; accordingly their conception is perhaps the oldest and therefore it appears aprioristic.” I. THOUGHT-FORMS AND THE FORMS OF EXISTENCE. We agree with Dr. Potonié that thought-forms grow naturally and that they grow such as they are, of necessity. In our opinion formal thought, with its so-called _a priori_ theorems, is derived from the thought-forms by abstraction. (See “Fundamental Problems” pp. 26-60, the chapter Form and Formal Thought.) If it had been possible for other thought-forms to have originated together with those which we possess at present, and it may be parenthetically remarked that we do not consider it as possible; but _if_ it had been possible, we do not deny that all the other thought-forms would have gone to the wall, they would have perished in the struggle for existence and our present thought-forms alone would have survived. In this we agree with Dr. Potonié, and a naturalist may be satisfied with this statement, because it suffices for his purposes. The recognition of the objective validity of the laws of formal thought is all that the specialist wants for this or that branch of science. But this recognition is not sufficient for the philosopher. He has to understand the problem why the subjective laws of purely formal thought possess an absolute and an objective validity for the world of real existences. He must understand not only how thought-forms originated, but also why and on what ground the laws of formal thought are considered as necessary and universal truths. The question of their origin and growth is of secondary importance compared with the question of their rigidity and apriority.