Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/444

 NEW BOOKS. 443 The result of a series of experiments the author has made on his power of reproducing spatial images perceived under varied conditions, is con- firmation of the doctrine of the a posteriori origin of the sense of space, and establishment of the preponderance, among its factors, of experiences of the muscular sense. He finds analogies throughout between his own results with regard to space and those of Buccola and others with regard to time. There is, for example, a tendency to augment small and to diminish large spaces ; there is a " point of indifference " ; and with larger spaces the errors become greater according to a formula identical with that which applies to intervals of time. La Religione come Scienza. Saggio di ABELARDIUS. Cremona : Tipografia sociale, 1885. Pp. 111. Since the phenomena of religion are of subjective order, religion is " a psychological science ". By introspective analysis of the religious conscious- ness, therefore, the "scientific religion" may be arrived at, viz., "Neo- Christianity ". Vorlesungen iiber Metaphysik mit besonderer Beziehung auf Kant. Von Dr. JULIUS BERGMANN, ord. Prof, der Philosophic an der Universitat zu Marburg. Berlin : Mittler, 1886. Pp. viii., 490. The author (whose Reine Logik i. was critically noticed in MIND, Vol. v. 139) defines metaphysics, after Aristotle, as " the science of being as being ". Everything that is represented is represented not only as existing, but also as a thing ; hence metaphysics deals not only with being as being, but also with things as things. It is not more than other sciences in need of a pre- liminary criticism that shall inquire into the limits of reason ; and the merit of Kant is really that of having made a reform in metaphysics, not that of introducing the new idea of a " criticism of knowledge ". Meta- physics is the science (not " criticism ") of reason, as well as the science of things ; the science of knowing as well as the science of being. For " being " is a content of intuition, a determination of things that is present in all perception. When we think of an object as existing and we do this even when we know that actually it does not exist we think at the same time a thought, or more accurately a perception, of which it is the object. This thought is identical with the being of the thing. " Perceptibility " and being perceived (by a consciousness) are the same. When we try to think of things as independently existing, inconsistencies reveal themselves : so that ultimately we arrive at the proposition, " Being is consciousness per- ceiving itself". " The general notion of thinking or consciousness is there- fore identical with the general notion of being." The notion of being, it is found, requires a plurality of beings (i.e., of Egos), and further a concep- tion of these as part of an intelligible whole. Thus from the science of mere being, metaphysics passes into general philosophy. Philosophy, while remaining always knowledge of things from concepts, but not (as Kant incorrectly asserted of all metaphysical systems previous to the Kritik] in independence of intuition and perception, passes from the general to the particular, or from the lower to the higher, arriving at length at the " con- crete whole " that includes all existing things in its self-conscious unity. Carried out in detail, it does not remain merely theoretical, but considers man not only as knowing, but also as feeling and desiring. The direction of metaphysics was for a long time cosmological, starting from the being of things rather than from the being of the Ego. Kant made it psychological, but without changing its essential character as dealing with being ; for in the psychological mode of consideration the Ego is viewed as existent, and may be made the starting-point of a complete ontological doctrine. In the