2 AUGUST 1890, Page 25

General Metaphysics. By John Rickaby, S.J. (Longmans.)— This volume is

one of the series of "Catholic Manuals of Philo- sophy." From the nature of its subject, it is a book which a reviewer must either treat at great length, or very briefly indeed. Father Rickaby is a thinker who has been thoroughly trained in the school of St. Thomas Aquinas. Starting, so to speak, from this, he has traversed with satisfactory completeness the range of metaphysical philosophy from Plato and Aristotle down to writers so recent as Hamilton, Mansel, Green, and Bosanquet. He is lucid in expression, and moderate in tone,—even in metaphysics it is only too easy to transgress the bounds of moderate speech.