The Doctrine of Energy : a Theory of Reality. By
B. L. L. (Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co. 2s. 6d.)—The author of this able and suggestive little work holds that the conception of energy supersedes the old conception of matter,—that is to say, that we must express the facts of the material world in terms of energy rather than in terms of matter, for matter, when analysed, appears to resolve itself into absolute and indestructible energy. It is this boundless energy which is pulsating through the universe, taking on this and that form, ever changing, never destroyed. What we call Nature is the laws of these constant transmutations. Knowledge is the experience of this ultimate reality of energy. All that we directly experience are the passing phenomena of sensations and ideas, but we can only assert that by reasoning, which is thus admitted as a valid force. But reason is compelled to predicate an intelligence and a sub- stratum on which its actions are exerted and from which its perceptions are derived. Therefore, the world of sense-phenomena is the resultant of this intellectual energy and the physical energy into which we resolve the movements of matter. The work is somewhat too compressed, many of its ideas needing greater elaboration. But it is a very able statement of an idealist position in philosophy consistent with modern science. Roughly speaking, it tracks the tendency of science into an idealist philosophy, the seeming solid facts of the physical world being all ultimately stated in terms of the ideal world.
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