Knowing and Being. By John Veitch, LL.D. (Blackwood.)— Professor Veitch,
of Glasgow University, who is almost equally well known as a Hamiltonian in philosophy and a Wordsworthian in poetry—both, of course, with variations—publishes here in book form certain lectures which he delivered to his advanced classes in logic and metaphysics, during the session 1888-1889. To a,
large extent this volume is a review from the standpoint of clarified metaphysical orthodoxy of certain tolerably well-known theories of the late Mr. T. H. Green and his school. Its author seeks to expose the two main fallacies which run all through the reasoning of this school. The one lies, according to Professor Veitch, in sup- posing that in what is termed the transcendental proof or deduc- tion of the elements of knowledge, we can deal with any knowledge other than the human, with knowledge in general, or that we can have any higher guarantee for any assertion whatever than the necessity which lies in the thought of each individual testing it for himself. "No man," says Professor Veitch, "can do more than analyse his own conscious knowledge, which exists as a fact, into its elements ; and he can have no other or higher guarantee for the nexus or connection of these elements than the neces- sity he feels of thinking it, either directly or indirectly, through the necessity of foregoing principles." The other fallacy in the thought, or rather the method of thought, which Professor
Veitch controverts, appears to him to consist in making the universal ego necessary to knowledge as a reality or power capable
of manifesting itself, even creating things, while it is a simple
abstraction from the fact that in all our knowledge there is an ego. This, Professor Veitch contends, is wholly to mistake the nature of an abstraction or abstract idea. The universal ego as
an idea has no power or reality in time whatever. It is on the same level as any concept which we hold and can realise, by thinking it as exemplified in an instance. Finally, Professor Veitch does not see how even the term " God " or " Deity " can be retained on such a theory as that of the Neo-Kantians. Professor Veitch rises almost into eloquence in his chapter on "The Philo- sophy of Religion." "We are no longer," he says, "to worship an anthropomorphic Deity. No; we are only to worship the absolute, which is the self-conscious synthesis of all contradic- tions. For my part, though not restricted to that, I prefer the anthropomorphic Deity. If he is not divine, he is at least human." Professor Veitch is not a very profound metaphysician or brilliant expositor ; but his book is the outcome of much good solid, patient, Scotch thought, -and ought to be found of great value by students.
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