Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/436

 422 NEW BOOKS. a primary confirmation of the hypothesis that anything is real. Apart from logical reference to experience which is not purely intellectual, the assertion of existence, or reality, is sheer dogma devoid of any possible verification ' (p. 82). Further ' marks ' of reality are singularity and con- creteness (ibid.). The obvious criticism on all this is, that it is the mere statement of the problem, not, as the author seems to think, its solution. Thus, to take merely the doctrine of the ' correspondence ' or ' symbolic reference ' of thought to the object, how can we ever know when this reference is ' true ' or ' scientific ' ? In fact, the very distinction between thought and object is, surely, itself an act of thought, and contains within itself the same dualism, capable of being drawn out by yet another act of re- flexion, and so on in infinitum. Nor does it help us to fall back on the ' non-intellectual ' element in experience. Apparently the author means sense-experience, but as he himself adopts the Lockian distinction between primary qualities which are 'objective' and secondary qualities which 'do not belong to objects, as such ' (p. 107), and admits (p. 106) that our 'passing perceptions' symbolise objects no less than our 're- flective thoughts,' it is hard to see how we touch reality here. In fact, the argument appears to involve a circle. For we are said to ' infer ' the objective world from our non -intellectual experience, and inference un- doubtedly involves thought. It appears then, that our sense-perception is symbolical of the objects which we infer from it, but in turn this inference, as involving thought, is itself symbolical of what? Incidentally the author deals with certain logical problems, but does not seem to be acquainted with the best modern thought on these sub- jects, unless he ignores such works as Mr. Bradley's and Prof. Bosanquet's purposely. The second half of the book, containing an elaborate attempt at a classification and systematisation of the sciences, is in some ways most interesting. It certainly is exhaustive to such a degree, that the author has had to invent quite a number of new names for sciences demanded by his scheme, but not yet existing, at least as independent sciences. Thus we hear of Peri-biology ; Peri-anthropology ; Ego-an- thropology ; Ethereology ; Neo-history, etc. This whole attempt at classi- fication, though it leads to some interesting remarks and side-lights in detail, yet is, like the analogy between knowledge and an animal organism, much of the nature of a clever intellectual ' spielerei ' without much theoretical value. This applies more particularly to the elaborate diagrams (concentric circles with numberless sectors) by means of which the author tries to 'symbolise' the relations of the sciences. The attempt to label and pigeon-hole the efforts of the intellect in the appre- hension of reality under its various aspects, must always be arbitrary and artificial, if only because it is bound to make the distinctions and boundary-lines far more definite than they really are. In conclusion, the author promises another work on the ' tissues ' or 'uniting principles' of knowledge, for he claims to possess 'certain genuine clues for exploring the anatomy of knowledge in these, its final, aspects ' (p. 226). His present work does not incline one to look forward with much hopeful expectation to the fulfilment of that promise. R. F. ALFRED HOERXLE.