Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/568

 554 CRITICAL NOTICES : The Metaphysics of Nature. By CABVETH BEAD, M.A., Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic in University College, London. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1905. Pp. viii., 354. NOTHING has been more unedifying in the course of philosophy than its neglect of Nature, unless it has been the arbitrary manipulation of the concept of Nature to suit the ends of some system. Prof. Bead will have nothing to do with "conceptual systems used to discourage sense-perception as an illusion and a deceit, where data and verification are supposed to be sublated by an hypothesis that derives from them its whole validity". In the present volume, which deals with the Metaphysics of Nature as Nature is presented in science and experience leaving for future consideration the human ideals expressed in Polity, Religion, Art, and Virtue there is a sturdy effort to re-establish a sound Empiricism along with the recognition of, Transcendent Reality. The Categories take their rise in human experience, and their abstract deduction is impossible. " We must begin with experience, since otherwise there is no prob- lem ; and return to experience, since otherwise no solution is made good ; and proceed on the analogy of experience, since other- wise there is a failure of that continuity and resemblance in which explanation consists. ..." As regards the Transcendent World, we are limited to some fair, but imperfect, because un verifiable inferences to it from things more distinctly known. The chief concepts of the Transcendent World Substance and Idea are not .so much concepts of Science and Knowledge as of that background of Belief out of which Knowledge has been differentiated, as Science has been out of Knowledge. Belief, Prof. Read defines as the subjective acceptance of Reality : whatever we believe in is regarded as grounded in or corresponding "with Reality ; and whatever we take to be real is thereby an object of Belief. He considers that the difficulty of accepting Hume's doctrine of Belief disappears if Reality is based upon what we all feel with "force," " firmness," " steadiness " ; and his whole super- structure is based upon common-sense assumptions : for is not criticism as well as belief antecedent to philosophy? (p. 14). As to how far Belief is, or may be co-extensive with Reason : If we suppose Knowledge and Belief completely organised into sciences attaining the precision and coherence of Physics (especially if they should have become branches of Physics) this body of know- ledge, starting from Empirical Reality, coherent and harmonious in all its judgments and verified in Empirical Reality would con- stitute Positive Philosophy and would be felt to be necessary truth. Pragmatism is, indeed, the natural remedy for Scepticism, but must avoid any expression seeming to imply that the survival of a belief merely connected with successful action, without clear and coherent cognitions concerning it, is a guarantee of its truth (p. -92). Reality is that of which Truth is a more or less adequate re-