Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/230

214

The real subject of this dissertation is broader than that indicated by the title. It may be described as an investigation of one of the main points at issue between Rationalists and Empiricists, the two schools which divide modern philosophy. The author has kept well before him the object of the work, which is historical rather than critical. The treatment is systematic and thorough, and he displays throughout an intimate acquaintance with the works of the authors under consideration. The manner of presentation, too, is delightfully clear and vigorous, and one feels that the author has in a large measure caught the spirit of his teacher, Kuno Fischer.

The first two chapters are occupied with discussions of Locke's relations to Bacon, and to Descartes. Under the first heading the author finds that Locke was greatly influenced by Bacon. His assertion that all knowledge must begin with experience is taken almost verbatim from the latter. Dr. Thilly also discovers a parallel between Bacon's demand that the mind be cleared of idola, and Locke's polemic against innate ideas. On the other hand, Locke's relation to Descartes is a purely negative one, and it is mainly against him that the arguments of the first book of the essay are directed. The author contends (p. 23) that Locke did not misunderstand Descartes as has been so often asserted, but the view of innate ideas which he so vigorously assails was just that maintained by the latter.

Locke's arguments and Leibniz's reply are very neatly summarized in a number of parallel propositions (p. 45). The latter urges against Locke that the mind is not a mere tabula rasa, but has before all experience certain predispositions. These first become explicit on the occasion of sense excitation, but they are the contribution not of sense, but of the understanding.

.

This work, published anonymously in 1885, like its predecessor, the Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta, at once attracted, in an unusual degree, the attention of the philosophical world, and won for its author, who has since acknowledged his identity as Professor Laurie of Edinburgh, a leading place among living philosophical thinkers. The Ethica now