Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/99

] brain." Here, then, is reality which is on one side material or dynamic, on the other side conscious. Chapter IV finds the origin of pleasurable feeling, the æsthetic included, in an integration of variety with unity which harmonizes with the basal rhythm of the conscious life. Chapter V infers from the intelligibility of nature that the categories of the mind must be also categories of reality, and that the dynamical processes of nature must be at the same time determinations of thought. Chapter VI clinches this argument by claiming that in our own volition we have direct consciousness of the union of thought and energy. Chapter VII finds the genesis of art in the play-impulse. Chapter VIII interprets morality in essential agreement with Dr. Martineau. Chapter IX discovers the origin of religion in the wonder and sense of dependence experienced by primitive men in contemplating the imposing phenomena of nature. Its objective basis is the truth proved in preceding chapters that the reality of the universe is will. Chapter X affirms that the culmination of science is recognition of the "real unity of mind and matter" in will. But, as will and reason go together, the reality of the universe is dynamic reason.

Nothing new is discoverable in these views taken separately, but taken together they are odd companions. Traditional theism, for instance, will scarcely know itself in company with the doctrine of the real unity of mind and matter, brain and thought. Science too, we fancy, will be shocked to find how much it knows about the Supreme Being. We surmise that the less speculative parts of President Hill's work will prove the more valuable. The chapters on Life and Art, in particular, contain not a little information that will be useful to students who must draw from secondary sources. That what is distinctly philosophical, however, does not accomplish the desired rehabilitation of philosophy, is a necessary consequence of the defective method already mentioned. An attempt to determine the nature of the Supreme Being in the entire absence of a theory of knowledge is an anachronism. Whether we go "back to Kant" or not, we must at least face the sphinx of epistemology and guess her riddle. The author's failure to do this involves him in inevitable inconsistencies. Thus, on page 10 he says that science "does not assume any theory of knowledge." "It adopts no principle whatever, but simply credits an indisputable fact, namely, that we see with our eyes and that things seen are to us objects." On the very next page we are told that "every natural law is simply a universal fact stated generally." Now, if a 'fact' is the same as