Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/434

 420 NEW BOOKS. (pp. 61-67) as to whether Thought and Extension are parallel on Spinoza's view (the interpretation which the author finally adopts), or whether they are simply two names for a unique series of Modes. The digression (pp. 95-123), containing the " System of all discoverable Ethical Regulatives," comes to the conclusion that no ethical theory can furnish us with demonstrable rules of action. The book would gain by its omission. The second part of the book (pp. 167-212) contains an exposition of (what the author considers) the final Philosophy. Section 1 (pp. 167-183), on "the Realm of the true Products," would have led if the author had been consistent to Solipsism of the ex- tremest type, i.e., to a view for which my feeling of the instant is the only reality '/' myself being unreal, But the author, by an amazing inconsistency, arrives at certain ultimate realities to which he ascribes ' Resistance ' : a quality guaranteed apparently by our observation of the interaction of bodies (c/. eg., pp. 171, 205). The general conclusions of Section 2 (pp. 183-212), on " the Realm of the true Causes," may be indicated by a quotation from p. 211 : " In earlier times, a new metaphysical theory might have been based on views like those we have advanced. But we have no inclination to do so: for us there remains the infinite 'know-nothingness' (die wtendliche unwissenheit) : there is left for us only the indestructible truth that we must not regard knowledge as an activity of a peculiar subject-factor standing over against other factors : nothing is left to us but the cer- tainty that so-called Knowledge, Pictures, Occurrences are simply pro- ducts of Original Factors". Our author, indeed, becomes excited and obscure, if any one mentions ' Knowledge ' to him (cf. ei/., pp. 175 ff., 204 ff.) : and he insists that we are ""and must remain) in complete igno- rance as to the ' ultimate Factors'. Strange that he should be able to say so much about their positive character ! H. H. J. Philospphische Forschungen. (Am dan i-nxxixi-ln'ii ilbe.rsetzt. .Vit einem Vorwort des Verf asters.) Von B. TSCHITSCHERIN. London : Williams & Norgate, 1899. Pp. 536. In a brief foreword to this German translation of his work the author admits that, in the century now expiring, philosophic thought in Russia has been dominated by German science and philosophy ; but believes that, with the recent removal of many barriers to thought, the European revival of philosophy may find characteristic expression in his own country. Seeking above all things to be constructive and synthetic, he devotes the first half of his book to a review of the synthetic thought of Comte. Herein he claims to have " tested the content of all the principal sciences, both of nature and of mind, in their modern form, and to have brought together their philosophic results ". And his conclusion is that ' without a scientific elaboration of metaphysic no unity in scientific in- vestigation is conceivable ". In the second part he proceeds to set out what in his view constitutes the principles of metaphysic and also of logic. For, he holds, " metaphysic is nothing else than the deducing of the categories of logic and the application of them to being (das Sfiin) ". Whether he herein has greatly emancipated his own from German thought let readers judge. In intention the work is worthily ambitious. The English reader will find interest in seeing British experientialism, in so far as it rejects all a priori elements, termed " a theory of stupidity," i.e., of unreason.