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 134 PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS. natural, they only tried to ' define the ideal,' without asking the ' critical ' question, ' How does there come to be an ideal at all ? ' This true philosophical method, which consists in investigating ' form ' before its objects, was at first applied, even by the moderns, to ' theoretical ' questions only : Shaftesbury and Hutcheson began that application of it to morality which was successfully carried out by Kant. II. Kant's real meaning (confusedly expressed and much misunderstood) is that to act on universal principles is to act reasonably : hence his moral law is ' a datum or act of reason,' not the action of a ' mysterious (theological) and arbitrary authority ' : he proves it, too, by showing that it alone ' makes possible ' the admitted fact that we judge things to be good and evil. It is an ' authority ' merely because ' reason ' cannot deny that what is 'reasonable' should be done. A very poor article.] J. Wilbois. 'L'esprit positif.' [Continued from March number. II., Facts. (1) Mill's four rules of induction only apply to facts of the kind observed by ' common sense,' i.e., definite given individuals; hence they are too ' infallible ' (!) : he and Comte did not understand the nature of the ' facts ' with which modern physics deals. (2) The success of this science depends upon ex- actness of measurement, and, in proportion as our instruments are more exact, we have both (a) to make our experiments under extremely com- plicated conditions, and (b) to 'correct' our numerical results; but we cannot define either the conditions or the method of correction, which we actually choose, and our choice is only one of infinite possible alterna- tives : hence a 'scientific fact' is both 'indeterminate' and 'created by us '. Our choice is (and ought to be) guided by (3) the beauty of an experiment or formula ('analogy ' and 'simplicity ' are only ambiguous expressions for certain forms of beauty) ; and by (4) ' the sense of pro- gress ' or ' of principles ' = the desire to generalise a law, which is itself ' never universal or infinitely precise/ but is felt as a ' tendency '. (5) Of Cornte's ' three stages,' the first two are marked by ' a refusal to act upon nature ' : the ' positive stage ' (exemplified by nineteenth century physics) contains in itself more ' variety ' than the other two put together ; ' the positive spirit in physics ' may be ' defined ' as ' a spirit of invention which seizes, in a fact, the evolution of a principle, which is itself a means of possessing and unifying the given under a mathematical form '. (6) Both the ' Idealism of Liberty ' and ' Mechanical Realism ' are mistaken, the former because ' matter has certain habits,' the latter because its habits may change from time to time. Matter is (a) a mere ' potentiality,' its 'determinism' at any one time being the result of our ancestors' ' liberty/ but (6) it has a 'final cause,' which is ' the activity of the man of science,' and the final cause of this, again, is ' virtue '. Thus ' scientific induction ' is ' a durable act of the human race ' : it consists in ' ob- taining the intuition of matter,' which can only be done by escaping from ' the illusion of space and time ' and ' replacing ourselves in pure duration'. (7) Summary.] Enseignement. Questions Pratiques. Supplement. L'ANNEE PHILOSOPHIQUE (lime annee), 1900. Redact, general, F. Pillon. Bibliotheque de philos. contenap. Paris: Felix Alcan. Pp. 1-131, Articles; pp. 133-314, Reviews. This number of M. Pillon's magazine contains four articles of a general nature : one by M. Brochard on ' The Myths in Plato's Philosophy,' another by M. Hamelin on ' One of the Sources of Spinozism,' a third by M. Dauriac, 'An Essay on the Categories,' and the fourth by M. Pillon on ' Bayle's Criticism of Car- tesianism '. M. Brochard, in a short paper, points out that the myth is not alien to the spirit of Plato's philosophy, does not lessen its dialectical value, but is merely a garb which it can conveniently assume to clothe