Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/576

560 necessary emotional reflex of intellectual scepticism is 'Pessimism,' which is the subject of the concluding chapter of this Book. It is "essentially the theory of the inherent perversity of things, rendering all the aims of life illusory." It denies that anything can be made of life, because life is hopelessly irrational and its conflicting aspects are insuperable. "It takes the main activities of life, the main aims of life which are capable of being desired for their own sake, and shows how in each case: (1) their attainment is impossible; (2) their imperfection is inherent and ineradicable; and (3) the aggravation of these defects is to be looked for in the course of time rather than their amelioration" (p. 97). Happiness, Goodness, Beauty, and Knowledge are each presented as ideals of life and the pessimist's arguments for their impossibility given. Particularly interesting in contrast with the optimism of Spencer's Data of Ethics are the pessimistic conclusions here drawn from the doctrine of Evolution.

Book II discusses the proper methods and data of philosophy in the light of modern science. The one indisputable fact and basis of philosophy is the reality of the Self. Rejecting epistemological and psychological methods because they fail to take account of the historical development of the mind, we find three methods left: (1) the physical or pseudo-metaphysical, which attempts to extend the method of the physical sciences to the solution of ultimate questions; (2) the abstract metaphysical, which attempts to state the whole truth of all reality in terms of thought abstractions; and (3) the true method, the concrete metaphysical, which combines the advantages and avoids the defects of the other two. This agrees with the second in explaining the lower by the higher and with the first in admitting the intrinsic likeness and continuity of all existence (p. 450). We must proceed from the phenomenally real to the ultimately real, thus basing our metaphysics on science and making it concrete. The last two chapters of this Book — "The Metaphysics of Evolution" and "Formulas of the Law of Evolution" — are highly interesting and will repay careful study. In the former the author reaches the conclusion that if the scientific theories of evolution are true, "the prothyle or pure potentiality of the whole phenomenal world implies a prior actuality, i.e. a non-phenomenal cause of its evolution and so a transcendent Deity becomes necessary, of whose purpose the world-process is the working out." The true significance of things lies in their end, and all explanation is ultimately teleological. A process is necessarily finite and so the world, if it is in process, must have a beginning and ending in time. In the latter chapter he proposes as a substitute for the evolutionary formulas of Spencer and von Hartmann: "All real progress concurrently develops both the individual and the social medium. It is a development of the individual in society, and of society through