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The author aims at nothing less than completely reconciling scientific determinism with the freedom of the will. The relation between consciousness and brain action is first investigated, and the epiphenomenon and double aspect theories, etc., passed in review and found wanting. Thought, he concludes, is something real and active, but transcending space and time. The question then arises, How is its effect upon phenomena manifested? The view that the world has still a slight element of chance is examined and rejected; likewise the metaphysical systems of Malebranche and Leibnitz, and the various mathematical theories. Examining now the doctrine of conservation, he finds that it refers to quantities only. But there is a qualitative element bound up with all forces, namely, direction, and it is here that thought acts. Quantity is the efficient cause, but cannot become active, is not in fact fully real till given direction by quality. But further, the quality does not, like the quantity, lose itself in the effect, and it alone therefore is truly creative, is alone a true cause. But if the thought or quality element is always determined by preceding thoughts, we have not yet real freedom, and therefore not yet the truest cause. For this we must find a final cause, something not determined by the preceding conditions. The possible forms of final cause, conceived as acting in time, are examined and found contradictory; the decision being given in favor of a transcendental thought, one in which there is no becoming, but which eternally chooses the whole universe. The book is provided with an excellent analytical table of contents, and is well summed up in the concluding chapter.

The prefatory note informs us that this monograph is issued as the first installment of Princeton Contributions to Philosophy. Other parts will follow at irregular intervals. On general principles, one is inclined to look somewhat askance at the multiplication of such series of publications, the manifest object of which is to serve as the organ of some department of a particular university; but the present monograph, at any rate, was well worth printing. The ground covered is, of course, by no means exactly new; and Dr. Urban makes no extreme claims to originality; but this is not, by any means, in the bad sense of the words 'second-hand' work. The writer has his subject well in hand, and treats it all the more clearly because he does not attempt to avoid necessary technicalities. The