Essays in Philosophical Criticism. Edited by Andrew Seth and R.
B. Haldane, with a Preface by Edward Caird. (Longmans.)—That this collection is not unworthy of the memory to which it is dedicated, would probably be felt by its contributors to be the best thing they could wish thought of it. It has been said with truth that the late Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford neither founded nor sought to found a school, But "a certain community of opinion in relation to the general prirciples and methods a philosophy," such as Pro- fessor Caird's preface acknowledges in the writers of these essays, was a more or less recognised outcome of his teaching, and individual essays in this volume show a more special indebtedness. Four of the nine are by Oxford men, and, dealing as they do with Logic as the Science of Knowledge, the Rationality of History, the Philosophy of Art, and the Struggle for Existence (as "an economical fact that reaches far beyond economy, and is a crucial problem for the philo- sophy of man"), may give a fair idea of the intellectual interest of Oxford. In three of these four cases, the writers have Scotch ante- cedents, and the remaining five contributors are representatives of Scotch academic training, so that the book has a unity besides that alluded to above. The strictly scientific side of philosophic study is represented in Messrs. Bosanquet's, Seth's, and Haldane's papers, the latter two treating of Philosophy as Criticism of Categories, and in its Relation to Science ; while on the political and religious side, we have essays by Messrs. Jones, Boner, and Kilpatrick ; and history and art fall to the share of Messrs. Sorley, Ritchie, and Ker. For almost every one who may be said to "take an interest in philosophy," some reading is thus supplied ; in one or two instances, notably in the essay on Philosophy as criticism of categories, and in that on Logic as the Science of knowledge, the position of those who hold Meta- physics to be something other than "the elaboration of transcendent entities, like an extraneous Deity, or Mr. Spencer's unknowable, or the Comtiau noumena" (the words are Mr. Seth's, he is saying that most men of science take this view of metaphysics), and who, as Mr. Bosanquet says, "cannot conceive any difficulties to be so formidable- as those which attend the method of a direct or uncritical meta- physic," is stated in a clear and serious manner that is very valuable. Seriousness, indeed-a quite different thing from the moral earnest- ness (that is, "gush") of much pseudo-philosophical utterance—marke all these papers ; there is now and then some irony, and (as in Mr. Boluses work) a quaint Scotch humour, but the academic offence of fine-writing is hardly half-a-dozen times committed (Mt. Bosanquet. goes so far the other way as to use the word " scientist "), and the- impression cannot but be left on the reader that " &est icy nu livre de bonne fey," and the editors have done well to choose the book form rather than venture in a new philosophical serial. They may not again get a preface of such content in matter and manner as Professor Caird's memorial of Professor Green, but it is to be hoped that the "agreement as to the direction in which inquiry may be- most fruitfully prosecuted" among their contributors, and among- others, perhaps, who share the same beliefs, may give us from time to' time a volume hie this first.
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