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 260 CRITICAL NOTICES: meaning of a System of Ideas." This is called the Synthetic con- ception (p. 61). The remainder of the second lecture is taken up with an exposi- tion of Eealism and Mysticism which is admirable both as meta- physics and as literature. The contrast, as Dr. Eoyce draws it, is decidedly to the disadvantage of Realism, which, we are told, "has never been held wholly clear and apart from other conceptions of reality by any first-rate thinker " (p. 70). Space permits only of one quotation, "The realist loves to talk of 'wholesome' belief in reality and to hurl pathological epithets at opponents. It is thus often amusing to find the same thinker who declares that reality is quite independent of all merely human or mental inter- ests, in the next breath offering as proof of his thesis the practical and interesting ' wholesomeness ' of this very conviction " (p. 75). Mysticism gets inuch more favourable treatment. Its essence is defined as follows : " The true historical importance of Mysti- cism lies not in the subject to which it applied the predicate real, but in the view it holds of the fundamental nature of that very ontological predicate itself. No matter what subject the mystic seems to call real. That might be from your point of view any subject you please ; yourself, or God, or the wall. The interest of Mysticism lies wholly in the predicate. Mysticism consists in asserting that to be means, simply and wholly, to be immediate, as what we call pure colour, pure sound, pure emotion, are already in us partly and imperfectly immediate. . . . That. . . the mystic is a very abstract sort of person, I will admit. But he is usually a keen thinker. Only he uses his thinking sceptically, to make naught of other thinkers. He gets his reality not by thinking, but by consulting the data of experience. He is not stupid. And he is trying very skilfully to be a pure empiricist. Indeed, I should maintain that the mystics are the only thorough-going empiricists in the history of philosophy" (pp. 80, 81). In the third lecture Dr. Boyce discusses Eealism, and rejects it on grounds not substantially different from those which have been put forward by other idealists. In the fourth lecture Mys- ticism is further discussed. The example selected for illustration of the principle is the Mysticism of the Upanisheds. Dr. Eoyce also quotes Browning's " Last Eide Together," in which he finds an " ontology in essence one with " that of the mediaeval and Hindoo mystics. This seems scarcely fair. Browning's ideal here, as else- where, is no doubt something that transcends finite experience. In this respect he is a mystic, in the company of Hegel, and also, I imagine, of Dr. Eoyce. But his ideal is never in a merely nega- tive relation to the finite. And it is in this merely negative relation to the finite that Dr. Eoyce finds the fatal defect of the Mysticism which he discusses here. Both Eealism and Mysticism he says " define in the end nothing whatever. Only the realist does not intend this result, while the mystic oft-en seems to glory in it. He thus glories, as