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324 adumbration of that Reality which is to be to comprehensive and inclusive that nothing is left out. The reader who looks for the solution of philosophical problems is likely to feel that this is the least satisfactory. How far has one gotten in the understanding of Idealism, even as a philosophical doctrine, if one entirely omits all reference to the task of social reconstruction and the vision of social redemption? And what is it at bottom that distinguishes a mysticism based upon the search for life and the will to live and make live from a heathenism which Mr. Santayana has somewhere defined as the religion of will, the faith which life has in itself because it is life, and in its aims because it is pursuing them? Something of the mystic's vision and quest and experience does indeed enter into the historic synthesis of Idealism. But there has entered also the task of social salvation based upon a belief in the autonomy of certain values and ideals. We may be thankful to Miss Sinclair for this fresh statement of the unquenchable impulse to unity and life which so many current philosophies are content to ignore, and we shall not blame her for attempting more. But it remains true that the book is a defence of mysticism rather than a defence of idealism.

The ethical theory on which the argument of this book is based is that virtue is intelligence because intelligence gives foresight and makes possible the coordination of human desires. This is a well-known and perfectly respectable view, as old as Socrates, whom the author accepts as the fount of all wisdom in matters ethical. A good deal may be said for this view and the author says it with vigor and pungency. It is perhaps a pity that he accompanies his excellent defense of the Socratic principle with so much self-conscious swagger of extreme modernity and the inevitable contemptuous flings at benighted mid-Victorians.

The proper business of philosophy, according to the author, is social reconstruction: it should act as the mediator between pure science and social and political administration, formulating in the light of scientific discoveries, new ends and purposes which shall guide the process of social and political reconstructions. He selects for exposition five philosophers whose ideas seem to him to agree as a whole or in part with this conception of philosophy's mission, considering in succession "the Socratic plea for intelligence, the Platonic hope for philosopher-Kings, Bacon's dream of knowledge organized and ruling the world, Spinoza's gentle insistence on democracy as the avenue of development, and Nietzche's passionate defense of aristocracy and power." This thesis also has its merits and the author argues them with spirit and vivacity, giving many an interesting turn to his discussion of familiar philosophical systems. But here again it is regrettable that he spoils the effect of his own argumentation by much foolish ranting against the philosophies and philosophers of the