author, thanks would seem to be more in place than fault-finding. Only the general feeling of unsatisfactoriness remains, and it is the critic's duty to give expression to it.[1]E. B. T.
Queen's College, Kingston, Canada. Glasgow, James MacLehose and
Sons; New York, Macmillan & Co., 1895.—pp. vii, 302."By the use of a double title I have tried to indicate that my aim in this little work has been at once critical and constructive. The philosophical creed which commends itself to my mind is what in the text I have called Intellectual Idealism, by which I mean the doctrine that we are capable of knowing Reality as it actually is, and that Reality when so known is absolutely rational.… The general proof of Idealism must consist in showing that, while the determination of Reality by such categories as coexistence, succession, and causality, is capable of vindication so long as it is not regarded as ultimate, it becomes false when affirmed to be final, and that we are compelled at last to characterize existence as purposive and rational. There are various ways of enforcing this view. The method which I have followed here is to attempt to show that the ideas which lie at the basis of Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Psychology and Ethics, Religion and Art, are related to each other as developing forms or phases of one idea—the idea of self-conscious Reason. But, partly out of respect for their eminence, and partly as a means of orientation both for myself and the students under my charge (for whom this Outline was originally prepared), I have examined certain views of Comte, Mill, and Spencer—and also, I may add, of Darwin and Kant—which appear to me inadequate" (from the author's Preface). After discussing in Chapters I and II, respectively, the Problem of Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Professor Watson devotes five chapters to the Philosophy of Nature. Under this heading he treats in order, Geometry, Arithmetic and Algebra, the Physical Sciences, Biological Science, and the Relations of Biology to Philosophy. A single chapter is devoted to the Philosophy of Mind, or Psychology, followed by three on Moral Philosophy—dealing again with the Idea of Duty, the Idea of Freedom, the Summum Bonum, and the Philosophy of Rights. The concluding chapter, entitled "Philosophy of the Absolute," is occupied with the highest products of the self-conscious Reason—Religion and Art.
Review will follow. J. E. C.
- ↑ The ranges, which the author marks with a note of interrogation on p. 164 (note 2, citation from Fénelon), would now be written rangés.—So A. Döring, Zeitschr. f. Psych, u. Phys. d. Sinnesorg., viii, p. 115. Döring's judgment of the whole work is very similar to that given above, and is supported by much illustrative detail. The present notice was written before the number of the Zeitschr. containing Döring's review had reached me.
