Page:Philosophical Review Volume 30.djvu/318

304 When it comes to settling the account between the inner and the outer, the self and the world, the course of the discussion leaves at one point a certain perplexity. This concerns the process by which the individual becomes possessor of the "soul-states" that are of supreme worth. The self is made to appear as an absolute centre, as somehow full panoplied for the business of life. "The individual," we are told, "must find the truth of his existence in himself alone" (p. 333). It is true that Professor Shaw makes it quite clear that the individual can not live an isolated life nor find his goal in himself alone. "Isolated selfhood, however rich its inner content," is not the ideal which he sets before us. But how does any such self come to have a rich content? In the criticism of the social order the individual no longer appears as its offspring either by heredity, environment or education. The world, both natural and social, seems at times to stand as a thing apart. Perhaps the difficulty which I feel arises from the fact that Professor Shaw is not here concerned with the genetic problem of the self but rather with its significance. Certainly his own doctrine of individualism as finally developed would place the self in the world-whole, there to find its joy and worth and truth. The value of the individual as against the external order has received classical expression, in the familiar question, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" But when we consider the processes by which any soul comes to have a content that makes it worth saving, we may well invert the question and ask, What shall it profit a man to gain his own soul and lose the whole world? Professor Shaw would perhaps recognize the significance of this question, and a recognition of all its implications would remove the perplexity to which I have referred.

The reader who follows the entire discussion from cover to cover will be impressed by the painstaking care with which the exposition is conducted, as well as by the wide acquaintance with the literature which is canvassed. But he will also find that the circumstances of its origin have left their impress in certain outstanding features of the work. It is unfortunate that repetitions appropriate to the classroom, and justified on pedagogical grounds, were not eliminated from the published result of these studies. A more universal vocabulary, a simpler structure, and a more rapid progress of the argument would have greatly enhanced its appeal. Because the book contains so much that is pertinent to the present fortunes of civilization, one would