Philosophy as such has as yet paid little or no attention to Freudianism. But Freudians and others have paid a good deal of attention to philosophy and philosophers. In this connec tion the analysis of systems and system-builders brings additional confirmation of William James' description of the non-logical motives in system-building. Hans Sachs and Otto Rank have divided philosophies into three types according to the instinctive motives in play: (1) that of the intuitive spectator or artistic metaphysician like Plato; (2) that of the syn thetic thinkers like Comte, Spencer and Locke; (3) that of the analytical thinker like Kant, Spinoza, Hume. Their classification and ex amples are not convincing, but the line of in vestigation is promising.
To the persistent problems of philosophy the Freudian hypothesis contributes another confirmation of determinism in the controversy over the freedom of the will, and perhaps a mitigation and even an abolition of the prob lems by exhibiting the wishes and conflicts that make persistent such difficulties as 'the many and the one,' °the immortality of the soul,' 'the existence of God,' 'the free dom of the will' °eternity and time.° Whether it can add anything positive to metaphysics is extremely doubtful. Because of its conception of memory, forgetting and the subconscious, it hks been claimed In confirma tion of the Bergsonian philosophy (9.v.), but
its treatment of these facts is diametrically op posed to that of Bergson. So far it has been most fruitful and original in the social sciences — in ethics and its derivatives. E. B. Holt's The Freudian Wish' is an essay in this field, in which a rapprochement is established be tween Freud and Aristotle. The ethical and social conclusions derive from the clear and distinct apprehension of the causal pattern of mental life, of the importance of conflict, of the constant oppositions of such fundamental in stincts as that of sex and gregariousness, self preservation and the groupings of individuals according to class, family, nation and so on. Once the detail of causal pattern of conscious life is fixed, it is bound to be a clarifying con ception in education, ethics and religion rather more than in the purely technical philosophic disciplines like logic and metaphysics.
Bibliography.—• Hart, (The Psychoanalytic Review, Oc tober .1915, January, April, July 1916) ;