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BY J. KODIS.
Chicago.
to read his books. This was, perhaps, the chief reason why
his theory did not have at once a great success. His philoso-
phy is not to be read, but to be studied like a treatise on mathe-
matics or physics. But any one who undertakes this hard work
will be sufficiently recompensed by the enormous wealth of
ideas, new perspectives and methods, which are contained in
this work.
The first philosophical paper that Avenarius published was
in 1868. It was an investigation of Spinoza's system : ' Uber
die beiden ersten Phasen des Spinosischen Pantheismus.' From
the time of his study of the system of this philosopher he main-
tained the tendency to seek for one single principle in the mul-
tiplicity of our experiences. This principle Avenarius believed
was to be found in the laws of knowledge. Therefore, it was
not an objective but a subjective principle on which he based
his monism. Philosophy became for him a means to obtain
' a central position toward the world.' Therefore one strong
and closed system of ideas, subordinate one to another, must
necessarily result from this point of view.
His next paper, which was published in 1876, ' Philosophic
als Denken der Welt, gemass dem principe des kleinsten
Kraftmasses,' shows three most important developments :
1. Being brought up in the psychological theories of Her-
bart, he endeavors to give to the facts discovered in psychical
life by Herbart a biological basis. He explains the laws of as-
similation of the new groups of representations by the older
ones, the laws of subordination of notions one to another, etc.,
by the vital processes of the organism, which processes consist
in the preservation, as far as possible, of the state of equilibrium,
or, in other words, in the economy of the organism.
2. The general notions being formed, according to Aven-
arius on the same biological principle, he considers them not as
entities, but rather as means directed toward the formation of
our knowledge of the world. In so far as they fulfill this pur-
pose, they are good; when they do not serve this end, they
have to be transformed to correspond to our experiences. He
undertakes the analyses of some of the notions considered as
most fundamental in modern philosophy, such for example, as
RICHARD AVENARIUS. 605