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LEWES, CHARLES LEE (17401803) , English actor, was the son of a hosier in London. After attending a school at Ambleside
See John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage (Bath, 1832). LEWES, GEORGE HENRY (18171878), British philosopher and literary critic, was born in London in 1817. He was a grandson of Charles Lee Lewes, the actor. He was educated in London. Jersey
Blanche and Violetwhich, though displaying considerable skill both in plot, construction and in characterization, have taken no permanent place in literature. The same is to be said of an ingenious attempt to rehabilitate Robespierre (1849). In 185o he collaborated with Thornton Leigh Hunt in the foundation of the Leader, of which he was the literary editor. In 1853 he republished under the title of Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences a series of papers which had appeared in that journal. In 1851 he became acquainted with Miss Evans (George Eliot) and in 1854 left his wife. Subsequently he lived with Miss Evans as her husband (see ELIOT, GEORGE).The culmination of Lewes's work in prose literature is the Life of Goethe (1855), probably the best known of his writings. Lewes's many-sidedness of mind, and his combination of scientific with literary tastes, eminently fitted him to appreciate the large nature and the wide-ranging activity of the German poet. The high position this work has taken in Germany itself, notwithstanding the boldness of its criticism and the unpopularity of some of its views (e.g. on the relation of the second to the first part of Faust), is a sufficient testimony to its general excellence. From about 1853 Lewes's writings show that he was occupying himself with scientific and more particularly biological work. He may be said to have always manifested a distinctly scientific bent in his writings, and his closer devotion to science was but the following out of early impulses. Considering that he had not had the usual course of technical training, these studies are a remarkable testimony to the penetration of his intellect. The most important of these essays are collected in the volumes Seaside Studies (1858), Physiology of Common Life (1859), Studies in Animal Life (1862), and Aristotle, a 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 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 doctrine of the functional indifference of the nervesthat what are known as the specific energies of the optic, auditory and other nerves are simply differences in their mode of action due to the differences of the peripheral structures or sense-organs with which they are connected. This idea was subsequently arrived at independently by Wundt (Physiologische Psychologie, 2nd ed., p. 321). In 1865, on the starting of the Fortnightly Review, Lewes became its editor, but he retained the post for less than two years, when he was succeeded by John 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 Hegel 's Aesthetics. Coming under the influence of positivism as unfolded both in Comte's own works and in J. S. Mill's System of Logic, he abandoned all faith in the possibility of metaphysic, and recorded this abandonment in the above-mentioned History of Philosophy. Yet he did not at any time give an unqualified adhesion to Comte's teachings, and with wider reading and reflection his mind moved away further from the positivist standpoint. In the preface to the third edition of his History of Philosophy he avowed a change in this direction, and this movement
Hampstead
Philosophy.The first two volumes on The Foundations of a Creed lay down what Lewes regarded as the true principles of philosophizing. He here seeks to effect a rapprochement between metaphysic and science. Ile is still so far a positivist as to pronounce all inquiry into the ultimate nature of things fruitless. What matter, form, spirit are in themselves is a futile question that belongs to the sterile region of " metempirics." But philosophical questions may be so stated as to be susceptible of a precise solution by scientific method. Thus, since the relation of subject to object falls within our experience, it is a proper matter for philosophic investigation. It may be questioned whether Lewes is right in thus identifying the methods of science and philosophy. Philosophy is not a mere extension of scientific knowledge; it is an investigation of the nature and validity of the knowing process itself. In any case Lewes cannot be said to have done much to aid in the 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 body
series ). He discusses the method of psychology with much insight. He claims against Comte and his followers a place for introspection in psychological research. In addition to this subjective method there must be an objective, which consists partly in a reference to nervous conditions and partly in the employment of sociological and historical data. Biological know-ledge, or a 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 faculty as manifested in different races and stages of human development. The organic conditions of these differences will probably for ever 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 state is regarded as compounded of three factors in different proportionsnamely, a process of sensible 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 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 instinct or " the logic of feeling." The whole of the last volume of the Problems may be said to be an illustration
drawn
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