James Edwin Creighton

“ Each philosopher becomes in his hands "a character in a story, an attitude towards the spiritual concerns of humanity." He carries out this purpose in a manner which leaves scarcely anything to be desired, and one cannot help regretting that the plan of his work did not allow him to include Leibniz. The whole history of modern thought is illuminated and vivified by Professor Royce's brilliant and masterly exposition, from which professional teachers of philosophy may obtain many useful hints. ”

“ Spinoza's philosophy, then, is not a mere system of intellectualism which, as has been so often asserted, identifies will and intellect, but it recognizes, as the fundamental essence of each thing, the active principle whereby it perseveres in existing.
But the essence of things must not be confounded with existence in a certain time and place. "Although every single thing is determined by another individual thing to exist in a certain way, nevertheless the force by which it perseveres in existing follows from the necessity of the divine nature" (II, 45) . ”

“ In the same chapter he has also very justly called attention to the fact that the "return to reality" in our century has not been a return to the outer world of the seventeenth century, but "a return to a world pervaded with the spirit of idealism." Our age has given up the attempt to deduce reality, and has devoted itself to science, yet we must carry with us what we have learned from idealism. The business of science, like that of philosophy, is to discover the laws, the ideas, or rationality of things. ”

“ Professor Royce is no shallow or sentimental optimist, who shuts his eyes to the real evil of the world. The only optimism worthy of a brave man is that which recognizes sin and evil as a part of the real world, and yet wills that these shall be overcome, with a faith that the Infinite Spirit upon whom the world depends is rational. ”

“ It is doubtful if any greater service could be rendered to philosophy than to place before the public, in a convenient and attractive form, the classical presentations of its greatest masters. Every one interested in the advancement of philosophical knowledge in this country will admit the importance of making the works of the great thinkers more accessible to students and to the public generally. ”

“ All the arguments which can be urged as to the superiority of a first hand acquaintance with a system, over any knowledge gained through histories of philosophy, will lead us to prefer the complete text to an abridgment. Of course, it is impossible for the average student in a course on the History of Philosophy to read any large portion of the original. ”

“ The artistic way of regarding things is, according to the authors, the method of the third kind of knowledge, which Spinoza names intuition. By means of this power, whether manifested in art, in the drama, or through scientific insight, the mind grasps at once the true character, the eternal essence, of things. ”

“ It was a declaration that men must hereafter think and know for themselves, and that no knowledge is exempt from examination and criticism. The force of this protest is very much weakened, if not entirely lost, in the abridgment. ”

“ That there must be some relation between the knowing mind and the thing known, that both must somehow form parts of one cosmos, is beyond dispute, but I cannot see that this necessarily implies that they are included in a Universal Consciousness, or even that such a consciousness exists. ”

“ That there is only one world of ideas, that of the Universal Self, which is inclusive of all finite beings, Professor Royce finds implied in the relation of" meaning "anything beyond our present consciousness. " When what is meant is outside of the moment which means, only a Self inclusive of the moment and its object could complete and so confirm or refute the opinion that the moment contains" (p. 377) . If we suppose that there exists some reality beyond our consciousness, say, "a world of spirits," then the truth of any thought of mine will consist in its agreement with this reality. ”

“ This is possible only through the fulfilment of the idea or law of man's nature. The peculiarity, in man's case, is that we have "realization of self by self"; man has to "organize himself," or reduce himself to law. For in man there is a dual nature — the "attuent" and the "rational," — the man of feeling or impulse, and the man of reason or will. The former is the "real" or "nature," the "subject" or "individual"; the latter is the "formal," the "personality," or "ego," constituted by the subsuming of the attuent subject or individual. ”

“ As for the author's argument that an idealistic position impeaches the veracity of God, it could only have force if we presuppose that it is the business of our thought to copy a reality which already exists independently of it. Berkeley's famous question is here in order as to what meaning can be given to the absolute existence of unthinking things. And, further, must not one's philosophy be either an idealism or materialism with its correlate, physical necessity? ”

“ Knowledge of the second kind Spinoza names reason, and the third intuition. He has explained very clearly what he means by knowledge of the first kind. "When the mind regards external bodies through the ideas of the modifications of its own bodies we say that it imagines" (ii, xvii, note) . This must also be extended to the knowledge the mind has of itself, for we find that when we perceive things "after the common order of nature," the mind has no adequate knowledge of itself, of its own body, or of external bodies. ”

“ The mind does not influence the body, but the body is only a translation of the mind into the describable language of space. It is to be hoped that the author will work out the results which are only indicated here with more fulness. His solution of the problem of Freedom is, in the condensed form in which it is here presented, very difficult to understand. "As parts of an eternal order we do not indeed choose this thing or that in time, but help to choose out and out what world this fatal temporal world shall eternally be and have been." ”

“ This would imply that the world could only exist in its present condition if the molecules of which it is composed were once actually an infinite distance apart. But this lands us in an absurdity. It is therefore impossible the author concludes, to conceive of a continuous process in the same direction going on through infinite time. Therefore the physical world, the world in space and time where such paradoxes are inevitable, is not the truth of things. ”

“ Professor Royce frankly confesses, and one feels throughout the entire book, that he is most concerned with those problems of philosophy which deal more immediately with the spiritual interests of mankind. "There is, after all," he writes, "no beauty in a metaphysical system which does not spring from its value as a record of spiritual experience" (p. 23) . It is no doubt true that these practical questions regarding our "permanent spiritual possessions" must remain problems to which human reason can never be indifferent. ”

“ When he comes to discuss the relation of God to the universe, he maintains the older view of a creation in time, and devotes the greater part of his second chapter to a criticism of theories which regard God as the ground of the world. ”

“ These virtues tend to pass into one another, as the emotion of humanity finds in them an ever fuller expression; "the force of the human emotion is, in many, perhaps most natures, so strong, that the boundary line between strict negative justice and benevolence is always being obliterated" (p. 182) .
The discussion of the State is one of the most valuable parts of the book. The author insists upon an ethical conception of the State, as the great mechanism for the realization of personality. He combats the extreme view of it as the "social organism." ”

“ Many teachers will prefer, however, that he have the unabridged text in his hands, and read certain chapters or portions which they may direct. From turning over the complete work and reading a chapter here and there, he gains, in my opinion, a more exact knowledge of its spirit, and a juster conception of its proportions than he could from a number of selected passages. ”

“ They profess to show that, on the contrary, he is the philosopher of experience (Auschauungsphilosoph) par excellence, and that the current conception is due entirely to his method of presentation (p. ix) .
Not less striking than their interpretation is their claim that Spinoza is the philosopher of all time κατ' ἐξοχήν, and that his system furnishes the key to the true understanding of the world. The philosophy which they apply to the problems of our time seems to be that of Schopenhauer, rather than that of Spinoza as usually understood. ”

“ The State is the great "ethical teacher of its citizens." The coercion which is characteristic of State action at lower levels must of course cease in these "ideal relations." The political limit is, in general, the same as the ethical. "With the ethical State, as with the ethical person in his relation to other persons, the limitation arises out of the duty imposed on every man to realize self by self, and therefore freely" (p. 252) . Instead of acting vicariously for its citizens, the State should help the individual to help himself. ”

“ The division of the book dealing with theism is, however, interesting from a philosophical standpoint, indicating as it does, the author's theory regarding the relation of God to nature and to man. He refuses to accept such a definition as that of Dean Mansel, which defines the Infinite as "containing within itself the sum not only of all actual, but of all possible, being." ”

“ Hyslop's book is distinctively an advance upon all of the elementary text-books with which I am acquainted. In a subject like formal logic an author must of course in the main follow the traditional lines, but Dr. Hyslop's experience as a teacher is shown both by his treatment of questions over which students are often left without guidance, and by his judicious omissions of irrelevant matter which many treatises on logic still retain. ”

“ The second question is answered in the classification of concepts as Substantive, Attributive, Verbal, and Adverbal concepts. The briefness of Dr. Tausch's book allows of only the most summary treatment even of important problems. One cannot help remarking a tendency throughout the work to reason regarding states of consciousness as if they were things, a tendency which it is hard to avoid but which is to be charged with many of the mistakes and controversies of modern philosophy. ”

“ The primary object of this series is to promote the study of the history of philosophy by making it more easily possible to bring students into direct communication with the original works, and allowing them to become acquainted with the authors at first hand. Another class of readers, whose wants the editor has in view, is the large number of professional men, particularly clergymen, who desire to extend their knowledge of philosophy, but whose time for such reading is necessarily limited. ”

“ The author has very carefully and accurately distinguished Induction from other processes not properly reasoning at all, as well as from deductive inferences. "The probability of an inductive inference is the result of an inference from established facts, and so is due to going beyond the premises under the stimulus of certain general principles which may be called the Principles of Induction" (p. 315) . In treating of the Inductive Method in the last chapter Dr. Hyslop says that the whole process may be included in two general classes, Acquisition and Verification. ”

“ It rather discusses questions which (as the author claims) precede philosophy, and might better be called a Prolegomena than an Introduction. "The physicists have but poorly concealed contradictions and absurdities by using the concepts of Force, Cause, Change, and Effect. We feel bound to modify those notions which we cannot set aside and yet cannot think, and doubting the validity of all others to put them to the test of consistency. There is need of a science which shall complete all the other sciences by examination and elaboration of their concepts. ”

“ And although his system may appear one-sided and incomplete when compared with later expressions of idealism, we have still to remember that they are but fuller developments of that principle which he was the first to emphasize. Two points are dwelt upon in dealing with Kant. First, what we may perhaps call his heroic attitude towards life and the demands of the moral law. Secondly, a truth, the consequences of which Kant perceived himself only dimly; viz. that experience implies a relation to a universal or transcendental ego. ”

“ It will be seen that the author reaches an ethical position closely corresponding to the "dualism" of his metaphysic. The formal and the real, the rational and the attuent, remain apart in both spheres. In an ethical reference, reason without feeling is empty, yielding merely the form of law without its content. ”

“ In the exposition of the Phenomenology of Spirit the author shows very clearly how the position of immediate sense-perception, the stage of thinking where we use the category "thing," is found inadequate, and advance is necessitated to a higher stage of thought, where things are explained as manifestations of Force. ”

“ Yet the uncharitable strictures which the author places upon writings where this interest does not appear, sound to me suspiciously like cant, and certainly have no justification. A writer's human interests may be not less true and deep because for the time he resolutely keeps them out of sight. ”