Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/228

212 for the formation of a system. From such an impulse a colorless, lifeless eclecticism might indeed have proceeded, but never the system of Kant.

For the most part, in this brief notice of an important and long-awaited metaphysical essay, one must undertake the business of a very inadequate report, reserving until other opportunities the more fascinating task of criticism. The volume before us is divided into two books: Book I, "Appearance"; Book II, "Reality." By metaphysics one understands "an attempt to know reality as against experience, or again, the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole" (p. 1). In the first book various aspects of the world as it appears are taken up and disposed of so far as a negative criticism is needed to show their self-contradictions and their consequent inadequacy to express the real nature of reality. In the second book a more positive and constructive undertaking is set forth. The general result, as repeatedly stated, is that: "There is but one Reality, and its being consists in experience. In this one whole all appearances come together, and in coming together they in various degrees lose their distinctive natures. The essence of reality lies in the union and agreement of existence and content, and, on the other side, appearance consists in the discrepancy between these two aspects. And reality in the end belongs to nothing but the single Real. For take anything, no matter what it is, which is less than the Absolute, and the inner discrepancy at once proclaims that what you have taken is appearance. The alleged reality divides itself and falls apart into two jarring factors. . . . As long as the content stands for something other than its own intent and meaning, as long as the existence actually is less or more than what it essentially must imply, so long we are concerned with mere appearance, and not with genuine reality. And we have found in every region that this discrepancy of aspects prevails. . . . The internal being of everything finite depends on that which is beyond it. . . . And this self-contradiction, this unrest and ideality of all things existing, is a clear proof