Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/582

566 evidently intended to be expository rather than critical. The author regards Fouillée's system as a union of the tendencies represented by Platonic idealism and English evolutionism, but insists that such a synthesis is in no sense eclectic. It brings together types rather than individuals. Fouillée himself calls it the method of mediation. Since every system rests upon something positive, and different schools merely show different ways of looking at the world, all systems are limited, and in need of completion. One must not stop with the contractions that necessarily arise, but through dialectic multiplicity must become unity. Of course, the resulting reconciliation is itself a system, and so in its turn in need of completion.

An objective sociology is not concerned with ideas or ideals; for these M. Coste provides a new science, la science de l'idéologie, and Comte's classification of the sciences is modified so that ideology stands above sociology, at the head of the list. This change the author attempts to justify by arguing that the great men who have modified the current of ideas are in great measure independent of social conditions. Sociology is concerned with the purely objective phenomena of population and social institutions. In general the position of M. Coste resembles, e.g., that of Earth, in that sociology is made to cover almost the same ground as the philosophy of history. The outline of sociological principles is little more than a schematic view of history, in which five typical states take the place of Comte's three states. The fundamental motive power in progress, as well as the measure of progress attained, is found in the density and unification of population. From the standpoint of the five states the author undertakes to interpret the past, to criticise the present, especially the present condition of France, and to determine how far the future may be modified by conscious effort. The remarks on the present state of France as compared with England and Germany are just, and in some instances acute.

It is only by a stretch of meaning that this book can be called philosophical. It is little better than a mass of platitudes, partly true and partly false, and is characterized by both shallowness and vagary. The author is an advocate of what he calls the "New Thought," the uncertain character of which is apparent from his book, but which he tells us is nearly related