have been created after the higher forms on which they prey, the presence of destructive diseases are used to establish this. We cannot, then, ascribe to the first cause moral attributes such as wisdom, goodness, and justice.
In the fifth book entitled "The Deductions" we reach the strictly metaphysical part of the work. Substance is defined as the permanent ground whence eminates the indefinite variety of transitory and changing phenomena (p. 418). Historical systems are classified according to their doctrine of substance as follows: dualism, two substances, matter and spirit (Plato, Descartes); materialism, one substance, matter, of which force is a property (spirit is identified with force); dynamism, one substance, force, of which matter is a property (Leibnitz); "experimental Spinozism," one substance, which manifests itself to the human spirit under the two aspects of matter and energy. This last is our author's system, and he goes on to argue that, since matter-energy is the twofold manifestation of the one substance, the attributes of matter-energy are the attributes of the first cause; e.g., matter-energy not having been created, it is absolute, and hence the first cause is absolute (p. 429). In an equally simple (and convincing?) way it is shown that the first cause is also necessary, eternal, infinite and universal. These are the metaphysical attributes of the first cause. The moral attributes are again considered and found wanting. Intelligent power, wisdom, and love for creatures and for the beautiful are separately discussed. Intelligence and thought are quickly passed over as presenting an insoluble problem. The organic plan of types, and the reign of law in the universe, imply intelligence in the first cause, but then there is no intelligence except in the brain, and no brain without a skull—an insoluble dilemma. Prudence therefore compels us to limit the definition of the first cause to the metaphysical attributes. Finally, from these metaphysical attributes it follows that the first cause is immanent in the world. If it were distinct from the world it would not comprehend all and would not then be universal, etc., etc. The first cause is related to the world as the true to the real. This distinction is illustrated by the relation of the geometrical triangle, the true, to the material triangle, the real. The first cause is the one substance as immanent truth, matter-energy is the real world manifesting the one substance in the form of individual phenomena. Such in outline is "Experimental Spinozism." Except as a straw to show which way the metaphysical winds are blowing the only value of the work to the philosophical student lies in the somewhat detailed discussion of the "plan of creation" on the basis of which the moral attributes are denied to the first cause. However firm may be one's conviction of the falsity of this conclusion, no philosophical treatment of the problem of evil can afford to neglect the class of facts here presented.
F. C. French.
