serious doubter. They consist, for the most part, in simply affirming the perplexity which the agnostic points out. A single illustration will suffice to show the way in which this part of the work is done: We cannot be debarred from ever pronouncing the last word in regard to the nature of things because of the fact that "that nature appears to us under the doubtful forms of a truth that is relative in so far as it is truth for man. For we men cannot imagine any other kind of truth, yet that does not hinder us from dividing truths into absolute and relative truths" (p. 68).
The explanation of the failures of philosophy in the past is found in the fact that all sound philosophy must rest upon science, whereas, prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century, science had not reached the point where it was capable of furnishing solid support to the metaphysical superstructure. The "new philosophy" aims at answering these amongst other questions: Is the nature which appears to the senses sufficient unto itself, or does it call for some ultimate principle whence it is derived in order to be intelligible? In the latter case, is that principle to be conceived after the type of matter, or of consciousness, or of neither? Is the world to be thought as limited in time and space, or not ? Is there any room in nature for contingency? Is there any real progress in nature? What is our own nature, origin, and destiny? Has morality simply a human and social foundation, or does it also correspond to "some profound aspiration of all nature?" Is the universe good, or is it bad, or is it simply indifferent to such distinctions? (pp. 61-62).
The aim of the work is, indeed, ambitious, but the great development of modern science gives our author courage. So he turns to the several sciences to find their latest deliverances—to cosmogony, celestial mechanics, physics, chemistry, general mechanics, paleontology, biology, sociology, the history of civilization, the history of religion, and psychology. This quest takes us through the bulk of the book. Here we find a popularized summary of the more important results of all the sciences. It is the most uninteresting and least suggestive part of the book, and is full of inflated commonplaces, such as: "The visible universe, regarded in the light of science, appears in its general structure like a prodigious archipelago whose islands, sown broadcast with profusion, people the solitudes of immensity with a dust of worlds," etc. (p. 62).
M. Ribert then passes in review the various philosophical systems of the past, which he thinks may all be reduced to three: Deism, Materialism, and Pantheism. All of these philosophies, having been pretty well shaken up by inner contradictions, and battered on the rocks of science, at length suffer shipwreck—the first and third on the existence of evil, and the second on the existence of good.
Thus the way is finally prepared for our author's hypothesis. It is, we are told, a "rejuvenating of the dualistic conception." And here, forsooth, is the metaphysical definition of the universe to which we are led: "The universe, unveiled by science and fathomed by philosophic thought,
