Page:Philosophical Review Volume 22.djvu/81

No. 1] biological philosopher. It would seem as if no one who cares to deal conscientiously with the philosophical implications of biology can afford to neglect this very keen analysis of the pertinent facts. Mr. Pitkin regards consciousness as a projection field of a projectorial system of which the reagent is the projectorial referent and the environment is the projected complex. Hallucinations and errors are treated on the principle that "entities in certain relations are real indiscernibles, and that their identity in such complexes as are determined only by those relations is just as genuine as their differences in complexes otherwise determined" (p. 465).

The volume so inadequately sampled in the preceding review is one that may fairly be called epoch-making, so far as anything can be so called when it is of such recent appearance. If the realism of the type that has sprung up in so many different quarters in the English speaking world is going to be something more than a passing fad, then this volume in all likelihood is going to stand in the same relation to the development of this realism as Locke's Essay stands to English empiricism. But even should realism not succeed in outliving the day of its lusty birth, at least the painstaking work here represented should be for some time to come a point of departure for a more thorough and detailed study of the problems which have so far been attacked only wholesale by both pragmatists and idealists. Nothing more stimulating and more promising and more 'like business' has appeared in philosophical literature for many a day.

It is a pity that the publishers did not do their part in the production of such a notable work so well as the authors. The stinginess of the page margins makes it almost impossible to annotate while reading. And misprints are not infrequent.

Dr. Mercier says that while many departments of conduct have been exhaustively studied, there has never been any comprehensive study of conduct as a whole. His aim is to supply this deficiency in our knowledge by an investigation of conduct in all its phases for the purpose of showing how every mode of conduct can be accounted for on biological grounds and what its value is in securing the survival of man in the struggle for existence. I should have thought it rather