Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/396

382 application." "The whole process, the entire proof, consists in rising from the finite to the infinite by the negation of the limits of the finite, and in proceeding thus from everything to God, because, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, everything exists in God infinitely, or God is everything eminently. We apply to the finite this process of elimination, which gives us the idea of the infinite; that is, the idea of God, which, so soon as it is obtained, of itself proves that God exists. This process has the precision of geometrical processes, since the infinitesimal process of geometry is itself but a special application of it to the geometrical finite or infinite" (pp. 343-4). (2) In the language of Saint Thomas, "there are two degrees of truth in the divine intelligible: one attainable by the search of reason, and the other which transcends its efforts. . . this distinction relates only to the human understanding, which has two modes of knowing God. This distinction may be otherwise stated as the distinction between Faith and Reason." Whatever in the history of philosophy refuses to fit into this schematism, is condemned as being not philosophy but "sophistry."

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In the present volume the author undertakes a discussion of man's place in nature. This is a problem that is forced upon us anew by modern biology, in particular by the theory of evolution. The central thought of the book is that man has a dual nature. As far as the physical organism is concerned, all is to be explained by evolution: but from this source we obtain no explanation at all of the rational and spiritual life of man. Again, those who represent body and mind as only two sides of the same thing, see only what biology presents to view, — organism, its laws and functions. This view does not allow for the governing power of intelligence, the grand distinction of humanity. The author endeavors, first, to explain clearly the theory of evolution in its present highly developed condition; second, to show the limits of its application, and to vindicate the rational and spiritual life of man as he understands it. (A review will follow.)

E. A.

This little pamphlet is simply a sermon, which takes the growth of social democracy in Germany for its text and preaches. It obtains a certain amount of interest from the fact that it seems more or less to reproduce the ideas of the present régime in Germany, to which its panacea for the present ills, viz., 'more state-interference,' will doubtless commend itself