BUCHANAN'S. JOURNAL OF MAN
Many Authors


BUCHANAN'S
                           JOURNAL OF MAN.

            VOL. I.        SEPTEMBER, 1887.        NO. 8.




CONTENTS OF JOURNAL OF MAN.


  Concord Symposium
  Rectification of Cerebral Science
  Human Longevity
  MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE--An important Discovery; Jennie
    Collins; Greek Philosophy; Symposiums; Literature of the Past;
    The Concord School; New Books; Solar Biology; Dr. Franz
    Hartmann; Progress of Chemistry; Astronomy; Geology Illustrated;
    A Mathematical Prodigy; Astrology in England; Primogeniture
    Abolished; Medical Intolerance and Cunning; Negro Turning White;
    The Cure of Hydrophobia; John Swinton's Paper; Women's Rights
    and Progress; Co-Education; Spirit writing; Progress of the
    Marvellous
  Chapter VII.--Practical Utility of Anthropology (Concluded)
  Chapter VIII.--The Origin and Foundation of the New Anthropology




THE CONCORD SYMPOSIUM AND THEIR GREATEST CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY.


Let no one accuse the critic of irreverence, who doubts the wisdom of
universities, and of pedantic scholars who burrow like moles in the
mouldering remnants of antiquity, but see nothing of the glorious sky
overhead. While I have no reverence for barren or wasted intellect, I
have the profoundest respect for the fruitful intellect which produces
valuable results--for the vast energy of the lower class of
intellectual powers, which have developed our immense wealth of the
physical sciences and their useful applications. Indescribably grand
they are. The mathematicians, chemists, geologists, astronomers,
botanists, zoologists, anatomists, and the numerous masters of dynamic
sciences and arts, have lifted the world out of the ruder elements of
barbarism and suffering.

But, as for the class of speculative talkers, whose self-sufficiency
prompts them to assume the name of philosophers, to which they have no
right, what have they ever done either to promote human welfare, or to
assist human enlightenment and reveal the mysteries of life? Have they
not always been as blind as owls, bats, and moles, to daylight
progress? Are they not at this time utterly and _unconsciously_ blind
to the progress of spiritual sciences, to the revelations of
psychometry and anthropology--placing themselves, indeed, in that
hopeless class who are too ignorant to know their ignorance, too far
in the dark to know or suspect that there is any light?

A remnant of these worshippers of antiquity still holds its seances at
Concord, Mass., and publishes its amazingly dry _Journal of Speculative
Philosophy_. With the unconscious solemnity of earnestness, it still
digs into Aristotle's logic and speculations--the dryest material that
was ever used to benumb the brains of young collegians, and teach them
how _not to reason_, for Aristotle never had a glimmering conception
of what the process of reasoning is. Yet all Concordians are not
Aristotelians; some of them have more modern ideas, and a vigorous,
though misdirected, mentality.

Prof. W. T. Harris, the leader of the Concordians, to whose
lucubrations the newspapers give ample space, as those of the
representative man, made a second attempt to explore the Aristotelian
darkness, in which his first essay was totally lost.

If there is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, it is not
even a step from the absurd to the ludicrous and amusing. The
professional wit or joker is never so richly amusing as the man who is
utterly unconscious that he is in the least funny, while heroically in
earnest. The professed comedian never furnishes so much amusement as
the would-be heroic tragedian, who, like the Count Joannes, furnishes
uproarious merriment for the whole evening.

I have seen nothing in our Boston newspapers quite so amusing as the
very friendly and sympathetic report of Prof. Harris' most elaborate
and laborious comments on the SYLLOGISMS, which reminds one of
Hopkinson's metaphysical and elaborate disquisition on the nature,
properties, relations, and essential entity of a salt-box. We do not
laugh at the professor as we did at Daniel Pratt, the "Great American
Traveller," whose travels are now ended; for, aside from his
metaphysical follies, Prof. Harris is a man of real merit and great
intellectual industry, whose services in education will entitle him to
be remembered; but when the metaphysical impulse seizes him,

  "Who would not laugh if such a fool there be,
  Who would not weep if Atticus were he."

The lecture of Prof. Harris was reported in the _Boston Herald_, in
the style of a gushing girl with her first lover, as a "NEW STEP IN
THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY," attended by a full audience as "a rare
treat" "_like buckwheat-cakes fresh from the griddle_," for "Prof.
Harris took a decidedly _new step in Philosophy_," giving "an insight
which _no philosopher, ancient or modern, has attained_." Again,
speaking of it privately, Prof. Harris said, "I got hold of the idea
three or four years ago, and I have been trying to work it out since.
I regard it as my _best contribution to philosophy_." "_Montes
parturiunt_," What do they bring forth? Is it a mouse of respectable
size? The _Boston Herald_, which is generally smart, though never
profound, says of the symposium, "It has set up Aristotle this year as
its golden calf to be worshipped." "But when you ask the question,
what does all this talk amount to, it is difficult to give an
affirmative answer." "It is simply threshing straw over, again and
again." But it is not aware that the Concord straw is merely the dried
weeds that Lord Bacon cut up and threw out of the field of respectable
literature over two hundred and sixty years ago. "What man (says the
_Herald_), with any serious purpose in life, has any time to waste
over what somebody thinks Aristotle ought to have thought or said."
And my readers may ask, why give the valuable space of the JOURNAL OF
MAN to examining such trash? Precisely because _it is trash_, and yet
occupies a place of honor, standing in the way of progress and
representing the tendencies of education for centuries, which still
survive, though they may be said to have gone to seed. Concord
represents University philosophy, as a dude represents fashion, and as
University philosophy is a haughty antagonist of all genuine
philosophy, it is important to illustrate its worthlessness.

The subject of Prof. Harris' lecture was "Aristotle's Theory of the
Syllogism, Compared with that of Hegel." As these two were the great
masters of obscurantism, the lecture should have been, of course, as
perfect a specimen as either of darkness and emptiness. Omitting the
definitions of syllogisms, which are familiar to all collegians, but
too intolerably tedious to be inflicted on my readers, we find a very
unexpected specimen of common sense following the talk about
syllogisms, which embodied Aristotle's ideas of Reason. Here it is:
"Logic is often called the art of reasoning, and many people study it
with a view to mastering an art of correct thinking, hoping thereby to
get an instrument useful in the acquirement of truth. It may be
doubted, however, whether the mind gets much aid in the pursuit of
truth by studying logic." There is no doubt at all about it,--not one
rational individual out of a hundred thousand collegians will confess
that he ever got any benefit in reasoning or in pursuing truth from
Aristotle's syllogistic formula. "All men are mortal--Socrates is a
man, and therefore Socrates is mortal."

Why, then, such a flourish of trumpets over some new trick in playing
with syllogism, when the whole thing is utterly worthless? And the
Professor upsets himself in his own lecture, thus: "If the middle tub
is contained in the big tub, and the little tub is contained in the
middle tub, then the little tub is contained in the big tub." Hegel
says: "Common sense in its reaction against such logical formality and
artificiality turned away in disgust, and was of the opinion that it
could do without such a science as logic." Most true, Philosopher
Hegel, you have absurdities of your own on a gigantic scale, but you
do well to reject the petty absurdities of Aristotle.

How does Prof. Harris rise up from Hegel's fatal blow? He rises like
Antжus from touching the earth, and triumphantly shows that syllogisms
are the most necessary of all things to humanity in its mundane
existence; that, in fact, we have all been syllogizing ever since we
left the maternal bosom to look at the cradle, the cat, and the dog.
In fact we never could have grown up to manhood, much less to be
Concordian philosophers, if we had not been syllogizing all the days
of our life, and, indeed, it is probable we shall continue syllogizing
to all eternity, in the next life, if we have any growth in knowledge
at all. Blessed be the memory of Aristotle, the great original and
unrivalled discoverer of the syllogism, by means of which all human
knowledge has been built up, and "blessed be the man (as Sancho Panza
said) who first invented sleep," by which we are relieved, to rest
after the mighty labors of the syllogism.

And lo! we have been syllogizing all these years, alike when we listen
to the nocturnal yowl of the tomcat, and to the morning song of the
lark; alike, when we smell the rose, seize the orange, or devour the
tempting oyster. In syllogism do we live and move, and have our being.
This is the grand discovery--the last great contribution to philosophy
from Concord's greatest philosopher. We suddenly discover that we have
been syllogizing like philosophers, as Mrs. Malaprop discovered that
her children had been speaking English. The illustration of this
overwhelming discovery is peculiarly happy, for he applies it to the
discovery of a red flannel rag in the back yard or garden, and, after
detecting the red flannel by syllogism, he advances to the grander
problem of showing how, by philosophic methods, we can actually
distinguish an old tin can from an elephant. To enjoy this fully, the
reader must take it himself from the reported lecture.

    "The act of recognition is an unconscious syllogistic process in
    the second figure of the syllogism. I perceive something scarlet
    in the garden. So far I recognize a host of attributes; it is a
    real object; the place, surroundings and color are recognized.
    The sensations were so familiar that the recognition was
    inconceivably rapid. Then comes a slower process. The scarlet is
    an attribute. What can the object be? I think it is a piece of
    red flannel. The inference comes almost to the surface of
    consciousness, but I have reasoned unconsciously: This object is
    red. A piece of flannel is red; therefore this may be a piece of
    red flannel. The middle term is predicate in both premises. The
    unknown object is red. A familiar object (flannel) is red.
    Hence, I recognize this as flannel. I identify the unknown
    object with what is familiar in my mind. But the logician will
    say that this reasoning is on the invalid mode of the second
    figure, from which you can never draw an affirmative conclusion.
    Precisely so, if you mean a necessary conclusion. But
    sense-perception uses affirmative modes of the second figure and
    derives probable knowledge therefrom. I make probable knowledge
    more certain by verifying the inference or correcting it. I go
    to the garden and pick up the object, and see the threads and
    fiber of the wool. Or perhaps I find it was a piece of red
    paper. But whatever it was, at the end I can say what I have
    seen, only in so far as I have recognized or identified it.
    Recognition proceeds by the second figure, and has chiefly the
    non-valid modes. But it may use the valid modes, though in a
    still less conscious manner. For instance, I recognized that the
    object was not an elephant by this valid form; every elephant is
    larger than a tin can; this object is not larger than a tin can;
    therefore, this object is necessarily not an elephant; or, by
    this other valid form, no elephant is as small as a tomato can;
    this object is just the size of a tomato can; hence this object
    is not an elephant. Had some one told me to look out and see an
    elephant, my perception would unconsciously have taken one of
    these forms. The scarlet is recognized as such only as it is
    identified with a previous impression of scarlet. Here is our
    third surprise in psychology. Unless there were a priori idea,
    sense-perception could never begin. More, unless there were a
    priori idea, it could not begin. For there must be two
    recognitions before there can be a first new idea from
    sense-perception. The fourth surprise is that directly with the
    first activity of perception in the second figure of the
    syllogism is joined a second activity which takes place in the
    form of the first figure of the syllogism. As soon as I
    perceived the red object to