Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/687

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
673
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
[Vol. XX.

defect is more than usually injurious. He must make a laborious and not altogether clear transition from Hobbes to Locke, instead of connecting both men with contemporary Continental thought. And similarly he is forced to connect T. H. Green with Hamilton through Ferrier and John Grote without reference to the overwhelming influence of Kant and German Idealism. Moreover, the notion that English philosophy is illustrative of philosophy in general, is responsible for the extreme generality, not to say vagueness, of Dr. Forsyth's results. As he himself practically says (p. 4), almost any other period of philosophy might have been used to illustrate the same principles. Serious historical study seems almost superfluous when it learns no more from a period than it might have got from any other. Finally, it is to be feared that Dr. Forsyth has not wholly escaped the most serious danger of using history for illustrative purposes, that of deciding in advance what history illustrates. It is hard to believe that Dr. Forsyth's 'voyage of discovery' was not more accurately charted before it began than he himself knew. To mention only one important example, it is not clear on historical grounds why Mr. Bradley's conception of the primacy of feeling should be taken as the mature conclusion of English philosophy without reference to Professor Bosanquet's criticism of the theory of judgment on which it is mainly based.

George H. Sabine.

Leland Stanford Jr. University.

Das Erkenntnisproblem in der Philosophie und Wissenschaft der neueren Zeit. I Band. Von Ernst Cassirer. Zweite durchgesehene Auflage. Berlin, Verlag Bruno Cassirer, 1911.—pp. xviii, 601.

The first edition of this work was reviewed at length in this Review, Vol. XIX, pp. 647 ff. As the author states in his preface to the new edition, the three years which have elapsed since the publication of the first edition have been spent by him mainly in systematic researches, the results of which have recently been published in his Substanzbegriff und Functionsbegriff. But Dr. Cassirer had already stated in the first edition of his historical work that, in his conception, the systematic study of the problem of knowledge and the study of its history are inseparable. He now returns, therefore, to the examination of the historical sources in order to embody more perfectly in his presentation of the evolution of the problem of knowledge the results of his systematic study. The result is a pretty complete revision of the earlier edition of his work. The revisions, he states, are mainly in the first volume (all that has yet appeared of the new edition), though the section dealing with Gassendi in the second is to be rewritten. The length of the first volume is not increased, but a number of changes of arrangement have been made. The notes, which were originally printed together at the end of the volume, have been placed below the text. The introductory section on Greek philosophy has been omitted and this space has been used to make additions to many sections. The discussion of Bruno, which formed a separate chapter in the first edition, is now made a part of the chapter on "Naturphilosophie." Though no very long additions have been made at any single point, numberless