Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/226

212 forms of being are regarded merely as modes of a single Reality. It is quite true that man has no existence out of relation to the whole, but his relation to the whole does not annihilate his free activity, but implies it. He cannot be conscious of his own nature apart from his consciousness of the whole, but neither can he be conscious of the whole apart from his consciousness of himself. (4) The ultimate Unity to which all existence is reduced is admittedly "without content" for us. This abstraction of I-know-not-what may as well be called Devil as God. If we know nothing of it, how do we know that its true nature is manifested in what seems to us the end of existence? To speak of personality, thought, will, as "symbols" of the unknowable nature of this "X-to-the-nᵗʰ-power" is mere assumption; for a symbol which for us is symbolical of nothing, may be symbolical of anything. With the author's desire to affirm at once the immanence and the transcendence of God I thoroughly sympathize, but I am certain that the solution is not to be found in a dead and meaningless abstraction.

.

Perhaps no first-rate philosophic writer, with a strongly articulated system of doctrine, has ever taken as much pains as M. Renouvier to explain it to his generation by turning over and applying all its aspects in a would-be popular way. I say "would-be" popular, for it is to be feared that the strenuous abstractness of Renouvier's terms and the length and complexity of his sentences have kept him from ever becoming a writer easily read. He has, however, accomplished his main purpose; and over the younger generation of university men in France no one can be named who has his influence, or who is habitually spoken of with such respect. Nevertheless, in foreign countries, in our own for instance, much to the disadvantage of our philosophic culture, he seems almost unknown. The present work is not the best one by which to make acquaintance with his quality. Far better would it be to take that wonderful and masterly book called Esquisse d'une Classification Systématique des Doctrines Philosophiques (M. Renouvier is seldom happy with his titles), which ought long since to have been translated into English, or simply to turn over the leaves of the periodical Critique Philosophique, and to