Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/694

678 splendid material to the student of method, who is interested in the history and fate of axioms.

The preface and table of contents of this volume give so clear an indication of its purpose, that they may well be quoted. "Philosophy," we are told, "is the methodical reflection of the spirit upon itself." It therefore "demands only the inner witness of the thinking being," and "is accessible to every man who brings to it attention, so that an exposition of it suffices" (il suffit qu'elle soit exposée). In pursuance of this plan, Professor Brunschvigg briefly outlines what is virtually a system of idealistic philosophy.

The first chapter on "The Conscious Life" is a compact and able little summary of psychological doctrine, upon a somewhat shifting basis. Many assertions, like the definition of spirit (pp. 37, 46) as a "totalité des idées," indicate a Humian foundation of Braunschvigg's psychology; but the underlying tendency of the discussion is toward the treatment of psychology as a doctrine of the activity of spirit, whose distinguishing functions are analysis and synthesis.

The second chapter, treating of "The Scientific Life," is the least satisfactory of the book, but this is not surprising when one remembers that the idealist is usually, though not necessarily, least successful in his discussion of nature philosophy. The total lack of any consideration of causality is the most curious feature of the book; the definition of space as "relation of exteriority " is a mere tautology; the doctrine of time as succession lacks any reference to the connection between time and causality; and, finally, the teaching that time, like space, is a form of the outer world is in obvious opposition to the assertions of the book itself that the conscious life is a succession of ideas.

The latter chapters are the best of the book, direct, graceful, and often effective in style, and alive with what the author calls "la fécondité morale." The æsthetic life is defined, after the manner of Schopenhauer, as "the unity of the spirit with the object of its contemplation," and a consequent "interruption of the individuality." This loss of individuality in the æsthetic experience is, however, distinguished, with fine discrimination, from personal sympathy in which "we preserve all our will and subordinate it to that of another"; whereas in the æsthetic appreciation of the characters of fiction "we are Hamlet, Bérénice, Eugénie Grandet—we disappear to become other selves." It is through this interruption of the individuality, the author teaches, that " beauty transforms the soul which has created it" and that "sympathy is born within us." "Without doubt," he adds, "the sympathy born of beauty is … a platonic and inactive admiration, almost a form of egotism, yet it is none the less a necessary