Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/313

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297
REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
[Vol. VI.

independent meditation, there emerged in his own mind the fundamental principles of his own system. These principles he then allowed to act as solvents of the old systems, and also as centres of attraction about which all that was good in previous systems grouped itself naturally. Hence his system is eclectic, in the better sense of that term, and complemental. We are not surprised, therefore, to find him declaring that "in the writings of distinguished men, ancient and modern, there is wont to be very much that is true and good, which deserves to be rescued and to be distributed into the public treasury. And would that men preferred to do this rather than spend their time in censures by which they only appease their own vanity" (p. 672). His system he himself describes as one which "appears to unite Plato and Democritus, Aristotle and Descartes, the scholastics with the moderns, theology and ethics with the reason. It seems to take the best from all sides, and then it goes much farther than any has yet gone" (p. 66).

We commend, then, this book to the attention of all not already familiar with this broad and profound thinker, confident that one who masters the thought of Leibnitz will say with Philalethes: "Since then I believe I see a new aspect of the interior of things" (p. 66).

We cannot leave this volume without again expressing our sense of obligation to the translator for the service he has rendered the cause of philosophy by translating this work, and expressing also the earnest hope that one who by such long and thorough and sympathetic study of Leibnitz and the literature dealing with the philosopher has made himself one of the first of Leibnitzian scholars, will give to the world the work on the philosophy of Leibnitz mentioned in the preface to this volume.

George M. Duncan.

Yale University.

L'immanence de la raison dans la connaissance sensible. Par Gédéon Gory. Paris, Alcan, 1896.—pp. 344.

By the "Immanence of the Reason," the author means that "the Ideas of the Reason, which have their origin in sensuous knowledge, and are disengaged from it by a natural and logical operation, can serve neither to know scientifically nor to conceive in any fashion metaphysical realities or possibilities; but, on the other hand, are far from being in irreconcilable contradiction with sense presentations, and rather find in experience their just and legitimate use." The starting-point is thus suggested by Kant's Transcendental Dialectic,