Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/581

567 of our interests: ... even if nothing can exist except on condition that it is known: even then our knowing is not in any ordinary sense an act of construction or creation" (p. 8). Yet mere sense is declared inarticulate (pp. 64, 109); we never find in any presentation-continuum "all that might be there" (p. 22), and the idealistic inference is at hand that the reality which enters into sensation is likewise inarticulate, and thus unable to make good its claim to be the real. For the author "reality in the general sense is simply what does in any way present itself to us" (p. 69). As against pragmatism, reality "does not lie in wait for our thinking to make it," although "the discovery of reality does."

Naturally the same attitude appears in the investigation of the nature of error. "The most that we can say is that error means the failure of the real world to appear to us in a normal way" (p. 116), but why this account should invalidate other modes of description is not made clear.

The realistic position is maintained not without apparent contradictions, and the prophetic nature of the introductory warning that "throughout this essay we shall be on controversial ground" becomes apparent as we read. But each one of the chapters is full of interest for the special student of epistemology, presenting some problem that is of vital interest for a constructive metaphysical theory.

It is sometimes unfortunate that a scientific book should be judged by its pretensions. Mr. McCabe's book is well written, both from the standpoint of style and facility and clearness of expression. It would be a great gain to the scientific public if men qualified to write such books had the ease in writing and clearness of expression possessed by this author.

The author tells us that the issue of his work is quite distinct from that of modern psychology and from the work of Romanes and Lloyd Morgan. "My aim is, in short, to bring together whatever facts may be found to bear on the subject in a dozen sciences—chiefly, physics, organic chemistry, geology, paleontology, zoölogy, physiology, psychology, and anthropology"—surely a worthy, if colossal undertaking! Had the author claimed a modest knowledge, and had he admitted the reading of only a few well chosen works in comparative and human psychology, his criticism upon psychology and animal behavior might be allowed to pass unnoticed. But when in the introduction he says that he has "sought aid in the whole relevant literature of Europe and America," one feels disposed to make a few comments. In his chapter, "Mind in the Bird," he gives but a single reference to the bird literature of America and none to that of Germany, and there is no experimental literature on bird work in England except that of Morgan, which he cites. The single exception in the case of American literature is the reference to Thorndike's study of the chick. The work of Porter, Herrick, Scott, Conradi,