Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/446

 NEW BOOKS. 445 (cc. ix.-xvi., pp. 242-471) with the period from Kant to the present time. Then follow Indices of philosophical terms used (pp. 472-86), of philosophers treated (487-91), and of historians, critics, &c., cited (pp. 491-3). The author accepts, as an important point of view defi- nitively gained for the study of history of philosophy, the Hegelian doctrine of a progressive bringing to light of different sides and aspects of truth ; but he insists also on the necessity of recognising personality, individual circumstances, national genius, &c., as factors in the formation of systems. The two dangers to avoid in writing the history of philosophy are " lawless individualism " and " abstract logical schematism ". Of these the second is the greater : and accordingly he tries to exclude as much as possible from his exposition the influence of his own conclusions as to the true direction of thought ; merely indicating them in the Introduction and at the end. Modern philosophy has hitherto been predominantly "intellectual," as ancient philosophy was "aesthetic" and mediaeval philosophy "religious". This character is associated with its character as " anti-scholastic ". To the specifically modern tendency of thought Kant stands opposed and superior, as Plato did to the specifically Greek tendency. Kant has assigned its limitations to the naturalistic and mechanical explanation of things and has opposed " moralism " to " intellectualism," by showing that " nature must be conceived from the point of view of spirit (as its product, for all law has its origin from spirit) and spirit from the point of view of will". Fichte's " Ethelismus" and Hegel's "Historismus" have their roots in the Kantian doctrine of the practical reason. The problem of the future seems to the author to be the renovation of the Idealism of Fichte and Hegel by a method that shall keep closer than theirs did to experience, that shall know how to estimate in all their bearings the results of the sciences of nature and man, and that shall proceed by severe and cautious demonstration (p. 471). Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit. Von Dr. RUDOLF EUCKEN, Professor in Jena. Halle a. S. : C. E. M. Pfeffer (E. Strieker), 1886. Pp. 54. In view of the modern Neo-Scliolastic movement, the author has set himself to show what was the historical position of Thomas Aquinas and the actual result of his philosophical activity. He contends that only from the unhistorical point of view of the Middle Age could it seem possible to reconcile Christianity with the philosophy of Aristotle, the most remote of all ancient philosophies from Christian modes of thought, as was judged more correctly by an earlier Christian age. Although philosophy is sub- ordinated to revelation in a way that is impossible for modern thinkers, who, even when they submit to authority, feel the necessity, as mediaeval thinkers did not, of first justifying it ; yet in the Thomistic system the ancient thinker often conquers the Christian. More is conceded to ration- alism than agrees with the spirit of Christianity. And in content as well as in method, elements of thought that are foreign to Christianity gain ad- mittance. There is, for example, in the system of Thomas as in that of Aristotle, " the hegemony of the intellect," the placing of the contem- plative above the active virtues, of the theoretical above the practical reason. Thomas himself was not, as a thinker, distinctively Christian ; being of the type of Aristotle and Leibniz rather than of Plato and Kant. On the points where Aristotle and Medieval Christianity are in absolute agreement, they are in opposition to the modern spirit, and, in face of the changed condition of things by which changes of thought have been caused, it is hopeless to seek in the Thomistic system solutions of philosophical and social problems of which it was constructed in complete unconsciousness.