Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/573

No. 5.] for hypotheses and immature generalizations, for the cautious judicial preference of this view or that, for the dogmatic rushing in of the less experienced where the wiser fear to tread.

To a helpful and interesting selection of types of problems, and an illuminating point of view, Professor Stratton adds the advantage of a presentation that is forcible and original, but most of all is realistic. There is no touch of the weary pedagogue tired of treading worn paths with new groups of charges; no showing, peddler-like, of novel wares with exaggerated encomiums of their value; but a keen and alert zest in handling problems that the author feels to be real and vital, breathing realities that walk and move, and not the conventional flat representations thereof, too familiar in text-books. Professor Stratton's volume makes no pretence to be a magnum opus; it is frankly eclectic; it is designed to meet a distinct, and, in some senses, a limited need. But because it meets that need with more than usual success, and because the service that it is likely to perform is one of peculiar timeliness, does the volume deserve a more than usual welcome.

If one undertook to collect evidence of the continued interest in metaphysical questions at the present time, the occupation of philosophical scholars with Spinoza would be a fact of much significance. For Spinoza takes us directly to the great fundamental problems regarding the nature and relations of God, man, and the world, and shows in a most convincing manner that upon the solution of these problems depend in a very real sense the practical issues of life. In spite of the somewhat pedantic and forbidding form in which he expressed his thought, the breadth and profundity of his insight and the clearness with which he perceived the vital and practical importance of fundamental problems, give a perennial interest to his philosophy. It is true that at the present time we cannot begin as Spinoza began, and that we are able to see that the method that he tried to employ is an impossible one. But if we follow Spinoza's spirit, refraining from passing judgments of censure and seeking simply to understand, we shall be able to see that the defects of his system are to a large extent