REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
Apart from the influence which Professor Fraser has exerted upon a multitude of his own students during a long period of service in the University of Edinburgh, he has won the gratitude of a still larger circle through his contributions to the history of English philosophy. At a time when it has been the prevailing fashion to look to Germany for philosophic inspiration, his scholarly and sympathetic expositions of Locke and Berkeley have reminded the English-speaking world of the richness of their own heritage. It is mainly through the labors of Professor Fraser that we have come to do justice to Berkeley's philosophy, and have become convinced that 'the system of immaterialism' is no "manifest absurdity," to be refuted by the rough-and-ready methods of last century. And he has now supplemented his treatment of Locke in the Britannica article, and the volume in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, by this magnificent edition of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
The author's words give the best possible description of the plan and content of the work: "The present work is meant partly as homage to its author's historical importance as a chief factor in the development of modern philosophy during the last two centuries. It is also intended to recall to a study of Locke those who, interested in the philosophical and theological problems of this age, are apt to be dominated too exclusively by its spirit and maxims. They may thus study the problems in a fresher, although cruder, form than they have now assumed through the controversies of the intervening period. The text has been prepared after collation with the four editions published when Locke was alive, and also with the French version of Coste, done under Locke's supervision. The successive changes are bracketed, many of them significant, especially those which express his oscillation of opinion about
