The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Mackenzie - An Introduction to Social Philosophy

by Walter Francis Willcox

An Introduction to Social Philosophy. By John S. Mackenzie, M.A. Glas., B.A. Cantab.; Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Assistant Lecturer on Philosophy in Owens College, Manchester; formerly Examiner in Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. New York: Macmillan & Co. — pp. xii, 390.

The object of this book is perhaps most clearly stated at the close of the second chapter (p. 126), "What is wanted ... is some principle which will enable us to bring about a more perfect connection between the parts of our society, to form new links and ties. . . . We have to overcome individualism on the one hand and the power of material conditions on the other." This Mr. Mackenzie terms "the practical problem" with which we are confronted; he attempts to deal with it by the aid of two ideas, "those of the organic nature of society and the spiritual nature of man," and he continues, "If we can succeed in showing what is their true significance, and in indicating, even in a slight degree, what is their bearing on the practical life of society, we shall have accomplished all that can reasonably be expected from the present inquiry."

The very terms in which Mr. Mackenzie states his problem and the direction in which he looks for light upon it will give an experienced reader the clue to his general position. He is of the neo-Hegelian school, largely indebted to Professor Edward Caird in his metaphysics, to Green in his ethics, and to numerous writers of that school in his political economy. He even goes so far as to identify his neo-Hegelianism with philosophy itself when he asserts that England "begins now for the first time to have a Metaphysic" (p. 365).

The book itself is an expansion of the Shaw Fellowship Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh in January, 1889, and published some eighteen months later. This serves in some degree to explain the character of a production of which the author says in his preface, "Little, if anything, of what is now published can be claimed as original"; and again, "It is, indeed, not so much a book as an indication of the lines on which a book might be written." It gives evidence of very wide reading in many fields and the results are brought together with much labor and patience. But they have not been fused or even welded into a whole, and therefore the claim, "that it has brought into close relation to each other a number of questions which are usually, at least in England, treated in a more disconnected way " (p. viii) may be open to dispute. To bring topics within the same covers is not necessarily to bring them into close relation, or to make them illuminate one another.

What, then, is the Social Philosophy to which the reader is introduced? It is defined "as concerned with the relations of men to each other, with their relations to the material world, and with the development of individual character in so far as that is affected by these relations" (p. 62). From this definition we may see what the author goes on to state, that its "three main departments" are "Political Philosophy, Economic Philosophy, and Philosophy of Education." Economic Philosophy or political economy (I understand the two to be used as synonyms) he analyzes into "two sciences and at least five arts" (p. 5 6), and says that "Social Philosophy ought to play the part of a kind of Platonic justice among them, setting each in its proper sphere, and teaching it to recognize what it can really accomplish and what lies beyond its limits" (p. 57). This definition is elaborately developed in the first chapter; the second states the problem with which Social Philosophy is confronted; the third analyzes the conception of an organism and shows the sense in which society may be called an organic unity; the fourth is devoted to the social aim and largely occupied with a criticism of hedonism; the fifth is an attempt to determine the ideal of society and includes an elaborate examination of socialism; the sixth is an effort to apply the ideal to the actual problems of society; the seventh and last is a brief chapter summarizing the whole.

Mr. Mackenzie attempts to defend himself against the objection that he has "gone entirely beyond the limits of such an investigation as is suggested in chapter I" (p. 369), but I cannot think he is successful in the effort. He holds "the special good that Social Philosophy yields us" to be that "it teaches us to place the various ends of life in their right relations to each other" (p. 375).

It is a fair inquiry whether such a branch of knowledge as Social Philosophy exists, and the proof of it given is hardly convincing. When two writers in such general sympathy in their views of political economy as Mr. Mackenzie and the author of the article on Political Economy in the last edition of the Encyclopœdia Britannica attempt to base their harmonious conclusions the one largely on Hegel's philosophy, the other largely on Comte's, the question naturally arises, has either one made out a necessary connection between his metaphysics and his economics?

But even if social philosophy be given a place in the hierarchy of the sciences, we cannot repress the doubt whether Mr. Mackenzie was wise in taking upon himself to introduce the public to its mysteries. Such a task requires in any case the maturest powers and the most thorough familiarity with all phases of the subject; above all is this true of so vast and complicated and unsystematized a study as that of society or "sociology."

Since the centre of the book is found in the familiar conception of the organic nature of society, it may be noted that Mr. Mackenzie seems to fail entirely in his effort to set up the notion of a social organism as a tertium quid between the old and well-worn antitheses, monism and monadism. No monist would demur to a view of the world or of society as "a unity which expresses itself through difference" (p. 129), but in the two words "unity" and "difference" the old antithesis still lurks.

The book has an advantage resulting from the author's wide reading and frequent citations. By their aid it becomes a representative and exponent of a large and able school. One who wishes to know the books, especially the English books of recent years, that are valuable in the lines of the theory of the social sciences might find much help and guidance in the frequent references in foot-notes to the literature of the subject.

W. F. Willcox.