REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
In a treatise with the above title, Professor Ormond discusses certain ontological conceptions. He seeks to establish his conclusions dialectically, and then shows how they may be applied in Nature, Psychology, Ethics, History and Religion. Like Dr. McCosh, his predecessor in the chair of philosophy at Princeton, Dr. Ormond is an outspoken dualist. Unlike Dr. McCosh, he is evidently in sympathy with much of the German philosophy since Kant. He has made a very fair and serious attempt to reach a self-explanatory principle, upon which he may found or from which he may deduce a system of Metaphysics. It would be unfair to say that he was a follower of any master, although his own modest acknowledgment of indebtedness to others is sufficiently comprehensive. He begins with a doctrine of the Absolute, which he regards as explanatory of both thought and being. Hegel appealed to the reflection of the Reason for the psychological genesis of the idea of the Absolute. Dr. Ormond is less explicit, although he often refers to "spiritual insight," and "intuition," in support of his basal concepts. His aim is to find a self-explanatory principle; and if a principle be self-explanatory, it is of little metaphysical importance to inquire how such a principle is apprehended. According to the author, a self-active principle is a self-explanatory principle. The first of all concepts is that of the Absolute God—the ground and source of all that is. The Absolute is manifest as a self-conscious person in the Logos—the self-conscious and rational absolute principle. The Absolute is also manifest in the Holy Spirit, the principle of light and love. The Logos is the creative as well as the energizing principle of the universe. The Absolute is thus different from that of the earlier philosophy after Kant. There is a unity of principle; but the principle is a trinity. It is distinct from nature, but it is objective, and not simply absolute ego. It is doubtless ego, but it is more than this. It is God, absolute, objective and immanent.
