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LEWES, CHARLES LEE (1740–1803)
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See also:LEWES, See also: He was educated in London. See also:Jersey, See also:Brittany, and finally at Dr See also:Burney's school in See also:Greenwich. Having abandoned successively a commercial and a medical career, he seriously thought of becoming an actor, and between 1841 and 185o appeared several times on the stage. Finally he devoted himself to literature, See also:science and See also:philosophy. As See also:early as 1836 he belonged to a See also:club formed for the study of philosophy, and had sketched out a physiological treatment of the philosophy of the Scottish school. Two years later he went to See also:Germany, probably with the intention of studyingphilosophy. In 184o he married a daughter of Swynfen See also:Stevens Jervis (1793-1867), and during the next ten years supported himself by contributing to the quarterly and other reviews. These articles discuss a wide variety of subject, and, though often characterized by hasty impulse and imperfect study, betray a singularly acute See also:critical See also:judgment, enlightened by philosophic study. The most valuable are those on the See also:drama, afterwards republished under the See also:title Actors and Acting (1875). With this may be taken the See also:volume on The See also:Spanish Drama (1846). The See also:combination of wide scholarship, philosophic culture and See also:practical acquaintance with the theatre gives these essays a high See also:place among the best efforts in English dramatic See also:criticism. In 1845–1846 he published The See also:Biographical See also:History of Philosophy, an See also:attempt to depict the See also:life of philosophers as an ever-renewed fruitless labour to attain the unattainable. In 1847–1848 he made two attempts in the See also: The most important of these essays are collected in the volumes Seaside Studies (1858), See also:Physiology of See also:Common Life (1859), Studies in See also:Animal Life (1862), and See also:Aristotle, a See also:Chapter from the History of Science (1864). They are much more than popular expositions of accepted scientific truths. They contain able criticisms of authorized ideas, and embody the results of individual See also:research and individual reflection. He made a number of impressive suggestions, some of which have since been accepted by physiologists. Of these the most valuable is that now known as the See also:doctrine of the functional indifference of the nerves—that what are known as the specific energies of the optic, auditory and other nerves are simply See also:differences in their mode of See also:action due to the differences of the peripheral structures or sense-See also:organs with which they are connected. This See also:idea was subsequently arrived at independently by See also:Wundt (Physiologische Psychologie, 2nd ed., p. 321). In 1865, on the starting of the Fortnightly See also:Review, Lewes became its editor, but he retained the See also:post for less than two years, when he was succeeded by John See also:Morley. This date marks the transition from more strictly scientific to philosophic work. He had from early youth cherished a strong liking for philosophic studies; one of his earliest essays was an appreciative account of See also:Hegel's See also:Aesthetics. Coming under the See also:influence of See also:positivism as unfolded both in Comte's own See also:works and in J. S. See also: Philosophy is not a See also:mere extension of scientific knowledge; it is an investigation of the nature and validity of the knowing See also:process itself. In any See also:case Lewes cannot be said to have done much to aid in the See also:settlement of properly philosophical questions. His whole treatment of the question of the relation of subject to object is vitiated by a confusion between the scientific truth that mind and See also:body coexist in the living organism and the philosophic truth that all knowledge of See also:objects implies a knowing subject. In other words, to use Shadworth See also:Hodgson's phrase, he mixes up the question of the See also:genesis of See also:mental forms with the question of their nature (see Philosophy of Reflexion, ii. 40-58). Thus he reaches the " monistic " doctrine that mind and matter are two aspects of the same existence by attending simply to the See also:parallelism between psychical and See also:physical processes given as a fact (or a probable fact) of our experience, and by leaving out of account their relation as subject and object in the cognitive See also:act. His See also:identification of the two as phases of one existence is open to criticism, not only from the point of view of philosophy, but from that of science. In his treatment of such ideas as " sensibility," " sentience " and the like, he does not always show whether he is speaking of physical or of psychical phenomena. Among the other properly philosophic questions discussed in these two volumes the nature of the casual relation is perhaps the one which is handled with most freshness and suggestiveness. The third volume, The Physical Basis of Mind, further develops the writer's views on organic activities as a whole. He insists strongly on the See also:radical distinction between organic and inorganic processes, and on the impossibility of ever explaining the fonner by purely See also:mechanical principles. With respect to the See also:nervous system, he holds that all its parts have one and the same elementary See also:property, namely, sensibility. Thus sensibility belongs as much to the See also:lower centres of the See also:spinal See also:cord as to the See also:brain, contributing in this more elementary form elements to the " subconscious " region of mental life. The higher functions of the nervous system, which make up our conscious mental life, are merely more complex modifications of this fundamental property of See also:nerve substance. Closely related to this doctrine is the view that the nervous organism acts as a whole, that particular mental operations cannot be referred to definitely circumscribed regions of the brain, and that the See also:hypothesis of nervous activity passing in the centre by an isolated pathway from one nerve-See also:cell to another is altogether illusory. By insisting on the complete coincidence between the regions of nerve-action and sentience, and by holding that these are but different aspects of one thing, he is able to attack the doctrine of animal and human See also:automatism, which affirms that feeling or consciousness is merely an incidental concomitant of nerve-action and in no way essential to the See also:chain of physical events. Lewes's views in See also:psychology, partly opened up in the earlier volumes of the Problems, are more fully worked out in the last two volumes (3rd series). He discusses the method of psychology with much insight. He claims against Comte and his followers a place for See also:introspection in psychological research. In addition to this subjective method there must be an See also:objective, which consists partly in a reference to nervous conditions and partly in the employment of sociological and See also:historical data. Biological know-ledge, or a See also:consideration of the organic conditions, would only help us to explain mental functions, as feeling and thinking; it would not assist us to understand differences of mental See also:faculty as manifested in different races and stages of human development. The organic conditions of these differences will probably for ever See also:escape detection. Hence they can he explained only as the products of the social environment. This idea of dealing with mental phenomena in their relation to social and historical conditions is probably Lewes's most important contribution to psychology. Among other points w: hich he emphasizes is the complexity of mental phenomena. Every mental See also:state is regarded as compounded of three factors in different proportions—namely, a process of sensible See also:affection, of logical grouping and of motor impulse. But Lewes's work in psychology consists less in any definite discoveries than in the inculcation of a See also:sound and just method. His biological training prepared him to view mind as a complex unity, in which the various functions interact one on the other, and of which the highest processes are identical with and evolved out of the lower. Thus the operations of thought, " or the logic of signs," are merely a more complicated form of the elementary operations of sensation and See also:instinct or " the logic of feeling." The whole of the last volume of the Problems may be said to be an See also:illustration of this position. It is a valuable repository of psychological farts, many of them See also:drawn from the more obscure regions of mental life and from abnormal experience, and is throughout suggestive and stimulating. To suggest and to stimulate the mind, rather than to See also:supply it with any complete system of knowledge, may be said to be Lewes's service in philosophy. The exceptional rapidity and versatility of his intelligence seems to account at once for the freshness in his way of envisaging the subject-matter of philosophy and psychology, and for the want of satisfactory elaboration and of systematic co-ordination. (J. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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