Philosophy, Historical and Critical. By Andr6 Lefbvre. Translated by A.
IL Keane, B.A. (Chapman and Hall.)—This is a survey of the various philosophical systems, from Thales to Comte, Mill, and Spencer, from the point of view of an advanced Materialist, who, it is hardly needless to say, finds abundant matter for ridicule in Plato and all his intellectual kith and kin, down to his own countryman, Victor Cousin, whom he regards as already hopelessly out of date and forgotten. Socrates founded not philosophy, but metaphysical anthro- morphism, and was, in fact, altogether on a wrong tack. Aristotle, as we might have anticipated, was a stupendous, as well as a most laborious genius, his chief glory having been that ho was an observer and an experimentalist. But his logic must bo held responsible for the development, with all its baneful consequences, of that terrible illusion of the human mind, anthropomorphism. M. Lefbvre often reminds us of Mr. G. II. Lewes, and, on the whole, ho treats philosophy from the same stand-point. Ho accepts Comtism in its earlier stage, but will have nothing to do with Cotnte's Humanity, and his worship of this" metaphysical entity." Ho would contemplate tho universe with Democritue and Epicurus among the ancients, and with Diderot, Condorcet, and Laplace among the moderns. Like many of his school, ho sings the praises of his Materialistic philosophy too incessantly, and has a profound contempt for the foolish aberrations in their later years of Comte and Mill, and for all, indeed, who " rebuild, on the pretended postulates of reason, the old (metaphysical) beliefs which their logic has overthrown. Materialism, however, spite of all, has an assured triumph before it." However, M. Lefbvro's assur- ance is not contagious, and seems to us rather ignorant. The book scorns to be well translated ; it is very clear and readable.
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