Page:Philosophical Review Volume 30.djvu/642

626 after all there is another side to the matter. May not a sense of disillusionment with systematic philosophy be the result of having cherished excessive or wrong expectations? One cannot legitimately demand the same type of demonstration in philosophy that one finds, for example, in mathematics or in biology. Is it not true that those who emphasize the failures of philosophers and the unconvincing character of philosophical arguments usually have in mind the demands of the logic of the special sciences? Taking this type of comprehensibility as their standard, they inevitably find that philosophy falls short. I believe that this explains to some extent at least Professor Baillie's judgments of the achievements of both historical and contemporary philosophy. And, closely connected with this point, his conception of philosophy as a construction of the abstract intellect leads him to describe it as an interest and activity that has no special prerogative but is coordinate with the activity of "any other special instinct." Since reason is a specialized function that comparatively few possess, philosophy must give itself no airs. As we shall see later, the doctrine of intellect or reason as "a specific activity of mind coördinate with others" is one of the central doctrines of the whole volume.

Another main point of emphasis that runs throughout the book is the conception of the individuality of the mind as "a global entirety." "Differentiation of its functions arises through its action and reaction on the world, but the integrity of the whole remains a reality, the primary reality, from first to last. ... In actual fact we never lose sight of or ignore this solid integrity of the mind's life" (p. 18). I am not sure that I understand how this unity in specialization is conceived by the author, although I have tried to collate his statements on this point. The difficulty is in reconciling statements such as I have quoted with the frequently recurring insistence on the independence of logic exhibited by various non-logical aspects of the mind. "They require no assistance from intellectual procedure as such, and are not affected or governed by its peculiar laws" (p. 17). The clearest explanation of Professor Baillie's position is given on pages 34 ff., where referring to his own former difficulties, he says: "It seemed impossible to understand how the intellect could at once be taken as the only avenue to the intelligible, i.e., mentally satisfying, apprehension of the real, and yet to hold that it was compelled to leave over a residium of the real as beyond its grasp. ... When, however, one observes that the intellect is