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 264 NEW BOOKS. quarter it comes, light is welcomed if it is found to be light, and new truths have their bearings scrupulously canvassed, and their importance estimated with reference to the lecturer's fundamental position. It will here be seen, perhaps for the first time, precisely how far experientialism has advanced within the present generation, and what power it still possesses of meeting and adapting itself to the ever-altering circum- stances of progressive thought. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the exposition of the place and importance of Muscular Sense, or Active Touch, in the building up of our knowledge of an external world. Robert- son is a doughty champion here with a due appreciation of all that is freshest and best in recent writers on Psychology. This presentation of the case will have to be specially reckoned with by assailants of the general standpoint. Further than this there is no need for specializing. All the processes connected with knowledge (Sensation, Perception, etc.), are passed under review, and care is taken to keep distinct things that differ (seen conspicuously in the handling of Sensation) ; and Feeling and Will (or, as Robertson prefers to call it, Conation) are also handled, though much less fully. The last lecture in the book (the thirty-sixth in number) is on " Attention and the Ego ". Here alone does the treatment seem to be inadequate. The vast importance of the subject of Attention demands a fuller, and perhaps an earlier, exposition. In this place, however, as elsewhere, the thought is fresh and the expression of it pointed ; and of the whole work it may be said that it is essentially modern and thoroughly well adapted to the requirements of the young students of psychology of to-day. The Elements of General Philosophy is, speaking broadly, a sustained attempt (all the more welcome as it has scarcely before been done in Britain) to keep Epistemology separate from Psychology, and to treat the problems of Knowledge on the lines marked out by Kant. Indeed, the work may be regarded as a kind of critical exposition of Kant ; show- ing much appreciation of the Copernicus of philosophy, yet fully alive to his weak points. Part i. consists of seventeen lectures on Philosophy and Theory of Knowledge, to which are added two lectures, dealing re- spectively with "Regulative Philosophical Doctrine" and "The Basis and the End of Ethics " ; and Part ii. consists of ten lectures of a special historical character dealing with Plato's Epistemology, Aris- totle's Psychology, Descartes' Cartesianism, and Kant's Critical Philo- sophy. But, in both parts alike, Kant is the leading and dominant figure ; and all the questions are argued with an ultimate reference to him. The result is that this second book comes as a kind of eirenicon an attempt (wonderfully successful) at reconciling the views of opposing schools in particular at reconciling Kantism and Experientialism. Tak- ing experientialism in its latest and highest form, Robertson emphasizes the two facts of Heredity and Language, and maintains that in these we find the explanation of the a priori element in knowledge, which it was Kant's great merit (as against Hume and the earlier Experientialists) to accentu- ate ; yet not here alone. Let us see how the reconciling is done. Take, for example, our knowledge of Space. Granting to the Association- ists, especially to J. S. Mill and Prof. Bain, the important part that Association plays here, Robertson will not allow that the connexion between Extension and Colour is a case of "inseparable association". Association gives only what is practically, not theoretically, inseparable. In the connexion in question there is a "necessity" involved, which Association does not account for. But, on the other hand, this " neces- sity " is not mental or intellectual (as Kant maintains) but " organic " a necessity of our constitution, and not of acquired experience. " If, con-