reference." This chapter, which is only thirty pages in all, contains also a characterization of the Renaissance and accounts of Nicolas of Cusa, Giordano Bruno, the Development of Mysticism, Jacob Boehme, Francis Bacon, and Hobbes. Then follow in successive chapters good and concise, though somewhat uneven, expositions of "Continental Rationalism," "Locke and His Influence," "Berkeley and Hume," "Immanuel Kant," and "The German Transcendentalists." The last chapter is concerned with recent phases of philosophical speculation, "while the last few pages suggest an interpretation of the present tendencies" towards a monistic point of view.
The most serious defect of the book is its total lack of bibliographical reference to other introductions, histories, or expositions. This omission is a matter of particular regret in works of an introductory nature. Certainly one purpose of an introduction should be to encourage further reading, and to stimulate critical insight by suggesting other philosophical works for comparative study.
Albert Lefevre.
Tulane University.
"This volume," we are told, "has been prepared with the aim of bringing together within a small compass some of the leading positions in the philosophy of religion." The editors refer in the preface to the increasing importance of the philosophy of religion in university curricula of the present time. It is imperative that the intelligent student of the subject should consult the original text in the case of classic arguments and expositions. These originals are often inaccessible to the beginner on account of difficulties both of language and of position in extended and complicated treatises. Consequently, a collection has been made of classic passages from the literature of theism, with translation into English where such translation is necessary. In some cases the translation is the work of the editors, and, in addition, they have provided each selection with a brief explanatory introduction.
The book has a wide scope and includes selections from the works of celebrated theologians and philosophers from Anselm to Ritschl. The first selection,—the ontological argument of Anselm, in a new translation,—is calculated to allay, in a degree, the doubts of one who is impressed by the necessarily scrappy and unsystematic character of such a collection. The argument of Anselm is more cogent and convincing in its original form than in the conventional abstract of the historian. Thirty pages are given to Thomas Aquinas, and the editor, in his introduction, dwells upon the importance of mediæval thought, and emphasizes the debt which modern philosophy owes to these mediæval thinkers. Descartes and Spinoza come next in order. It is interesting to find Cambridge Platonism
