G. j. STOKES' s OBJECTIVITY OF TRUTH. 443 among modern thinkers, who supplied the idea the want of which was the "inherent defect" of the Leibnizian teaching (p. 210). And Schelliug is regarded as the centre of a new movement because he infused the element of poetic feeling into the purely logical development of previous systems. If Mr. Merz would do for Schelling what he has in the present volume done for Leibniz, and perhaps, thereafter, follow up these two different lines of thought by an estimate of the position held by Lotze to both of them and to the philosophy of our own time, it would not only contribute to the completeness of the series of " Philosophical Classics," but would be of peculiar value as representing a school of thought which, as many indications prove, has a future before it in this country. W. R. SORLEY. Tin? Oljd>r!tij of Truth. By GEORGE J. STOKES, B.A., Senior Moderator and Gold Medallist, Trinity College, Dublin, late Hibbert Travelling Scholar. London : Williams & Norgate, 1884. Pp. 118. Mr. Stokes's book is not always easy reading. His German studies have beguiled him into sentences that sometimes grow to portentous dimensions. There is one, for example, on p. 4 which runs to 14 lines with nothing but commas to help the struggling reader ; and there is another of 21 lines on p. 36 in which the semi-colon and parenthesis extended to him are somewhat of the nature of straws to a drowning man. But it is right to say that these are exceptions, and that Mr. Stokes's occasional disregard of externals is generally due to the intentness of the thinker upon his thought, or to his desire, by multiform, presentment, to drive it home to his reader. The book is written throughout both with force and acuteness. The author cannot be accused of misappre- hending the views which he criticises ; hence his criticisms, even when they might be rebutted, help to light up the real meaning of philosophic doctrines. The thesis which the Essay defends is, at the same time, sufficiently in line with questions at present in dispute to make it a real contribution to the debate. Stated shortly, Mr. Stokes's central position is the necessity of an object of thought in order that thought may have a real reference, i.e., be thought or cognition. He argues, therefore, for a philosophic Dualism or Natural Realism as against a system like Hegel's ; but as against a Natural Realism like Reid's, or even Sir W. Hamilton's, he has, on the other hand, so much to say that he often relapses into something very like the Hegelianism which he set out by condemning. A short survey of the argument will best show Mr. Stokes's attitude towards the two theories between which he attempts to mediate. It will also serve to make plain the genex-al standpoint from which he looks at the history of modern philosophy.
