Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/77



The third volume of the important international Library of Philosophy, under the editorship of Mr. J. H. Muirehead, should, for many reasons, be of a character to command attention. It is the first volume in the series by an Englishman; it represents a branch of philosophy within which English philosophical literature is most deficient, and it comes at a time when reflection is awakening to the profound importance of art as a subject-matter for philosophy — when, indeed, it seems likely to divide with psychology the interest of the immediate future. We may congratulate ourselves upon having a volume so nearly adequate to its occasion. Mr. Bosanquet has written neither a history of aesthetic speculation in its most technical sense, nor has he fallen into the opposite mistake and given us a history of the details of the concrete arts. The plan of writing the history of "the aesthetic consciousness in its intellectual form of aesthetic theory, but never forgetting that the central matter to be elucidated is the value of beauty for human life, no less as implied in practice than as explicitly recognized in reflection," Mr. Bosanquet has carried out in such a way that his volume unites a philosophic continuity of thought with something of the wealth of actual art. I mention this point at the outset, for the characteristic trait of the work before us seems to me the successful way in which Mr. Bosanquet has combined the use of certain philosophic ideas as tools to bring unity and orderly development into the discrete and tangled mass of aesthetic speculation with a certain maturity of judgment about concrete facts. The book carries with itself as its atmosphere ripeness and soundness of incidental remark. Although, for example, Mr. Bosanquet in his preface especially denies any large firsthand acquaintance with mediæval thought, I cannot but think that the student of general history as well as of aesthetic theory, will find what is said upon this subject lingering fruitfully in memory.

Mr. Bosanquet's definition of art is so important as controlling his whole treatment of the historic development of aesthetics that it must be fully reported. He gets his definition by comparing the Greek conception of beauty with that most characteristic of modern thought. Among Rh