Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/103

Rh descending scale is composed of mind, soul, and the corporeal. 4. The elements of the created world are form and matter. This distinction applies to mind and soul, as well as to the corporeal. 5. The force which binds together these two opposing principles and gives to everything its being is the Unity peculiar to every individual thing. 6. This Unity has its origin in the supreme absolute Unity. 7. In everything there is an inherent striving for the greatest possible degree of being and accordingly for the greatest possible degree of Unity. 8. The ground for the inferiority of the created world to the creator is in the inferior degree of Unity. 9. The cause of this inferior degree of Unity lies in the nature of matter. The Neoplatonic character of these doctrines is on the surface; one will also mark at once the Aristotelian distinction between form and matter. Mediaeval philosophers derived their knowledge of Neoplatonism from two sources, viz., from the early Christian writers, especially Boethius and Augustine; on the other side from the Arabico-Jewish philosophy. Gundisalvi derived his knowledge of Arabic Neoplatonism from Ibn Gabirol (Avencebrol). In brief but clear fashion Correns has explained the historical position of this work in mediæval philosophy, besides giving us a good serviceable text with apparatus criticus. The series of "Beiträge" to the history of mediæval thought, of which this forms the first section of vol. i, promises under the general editorship of the learned Baeumker to be of great importance for the investigation of this neglected period of philosophy.

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If Dr. Kellogg has by his earlier publications challenged the respect of scholars, his fame has not been lessened by the publication of the present series of Lectures. Rigidly conservative in tenor, they are the deliberate conclusions of one who deserves, by his previous studies in the "Origins," our thanks and appreciation.

It requires, however, intellectual fortitude to affirm that the development of religion from lower to higher conceptions derives no solid evidence from the sciences of Language, Prehistoric archaeology, and Comparative Religions. There is a fundamental difference between the view of the history of Religion given by Professor Kellogg and that of Max Müller, D'Alviella, Réville, and many others who bring to the study of the origin and development of Religion the vast mass of evidence gained from Biology, Anthropology, Linguistic Palæontology, Ethnology, and Biblical Criticism.