Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/255



"The object of this work is a metaphysic, which stalking, naked but not ashamed, among current iconoclasms, shall proffer a definite, though tentative, solution of the world-riddle. Circumstances favoring, it is proposed to expand this solution . . . in a series of works." The present installment derives considerable interest from the fact that the author began his thinking as a pupil of modern "Theosophy," and its influence persists in the frequent adornment of his pages with uncouth Indian names. He has, however, learnt not a little since those crude days, and has now discovered that the readers of Esoteric Buddhism and The Secret Doctrine "will confront a loose syncretism," and that "Germany, not India, is the hierophant." It is to be hoped that his more sympathetic treatment of their views will do something to bring home this fact to his former co-religionists, whom technical philosophy has, perhaps too contemptuously, neglected. As to the contents of the book, it is significant of the times that such frankly metaphysical solutions of the world-problem should now be essayed in England, and that its critical centre should be found to lie in the possibility of an answer to Pessimism, and I should on these grounds welcome such attempts even if they contributed nothing of great novelty or importance. It is a pity, however, that Mr. Fawcett should have seen fit to compete with the histories of philosophy by devoting half his book to a survey of modern philosophy which fails from attempting too much and is not required by his purpose. When (p. 263 seq.) he comes to grapple with his problem, we find him maintaining the following positions. Pure phenomenalism, the initial flux of states of consciousness, must admit the reality of the individual subject or Ego. This is the logical subject or unifying principle of knowledge, and given by experience as a plurality of conscious centres—subjective idealism, though metaphysically tenable, being practically impossible (p. 307). This leads on to a monadology, a multitude of interacting monads constituting the world, which in its turn implies the unity of the "universal metaconscious subject." The latter is the potentiality of all consciousness, "the abysmal black night whence individuals uprise" (p. 367). Beginning thus as a spontaneous, spiritual Prius, and developing into actuality in countless monads, it will reach its consummation (entelechy) as a complex of fully unfolded individuals. This "republic of interpenetrative individuals"