BOOKS.

SOME BOOKS ON PHILOSOPHY.* " Fon many years," writes Professor Wildon Carr in his preface,

" it seemed to me that philosophy was paralysed by the inability to offer any escape from the solipsistic dilemma, and in the theory of the monads this difficulty has always seemed to assume its most intractable form."

The theory of the monads was first elaborated by Leibniz, and in the present book' Professor Carr sets out, by a more careful interpretation of some of Leibniz's statements on the subject and with the help of discoveries made by later philosophers, to develop the theory of the monads and show its relation to the principle of relativity.

Philosophy, religion, science are attempts to effect a recon- ciliation among the diverse facts of experience. A new philo- sophy provides such a reconciliation until it is discredited by new knowledge, then out of the new knowledge and the old a new synthesis, a new reconciliation, is formed, and so the process continues. The Cartesian philosophy of the seventeenth century discovered a distinction between thought and extension, or, as Professor Carr states it in modern terminology, between " pure, contemplative intellect " and " the independent object of contemplation, Nature." Where that philosophy failed was in the atterpt to discover a principle on which to found the relation between 'these two substances " which is presupposed in the concept of them." The reconciler was Leibniz. In place of these two substances, one inert, the other contemplative,

" Leibniz formulated the concept of substance as essentially active and dynamic. Reality was constituted, he said, of simple substances, but these were the monads, active subjects of experi- ence, each having the universe mirrored in its acting centre. These monads were not conceived as independent minds dotted about in an alien matter, in an independent universe, which they behold in their own manner and make the best of ; they were conceived as centres of activity, an activity consisting in the perceptions of which the objective world or nature consists."

The essence of this reconciliation is the substitution of concrete experience for abstract mind and abstract matter.

Let us try to obtain a clear view of the nature of a monad, for it is out of Leibniz's monad that Professor Carr builds up his theory. We are confronted, in our experience of life, with two orders : the atomic order, which is the order of nature, and the monadic order, which is the order of mind. Professor Carr explains by a practical example. Consider, he suggests, a railway carriage

• (1) A Theory of Monads. By H. Wildon Can. London : Macmillan. [15s. net.]—(2) The Philosophy of Humanism. By Viscount Haldane. London : Murray. [12s. net.]—=(3) The New Idealism. By May Sinclair. London: Macmillan. [13e. net.] with myself and other passengers in it. In the atomic order, the passengers and I are physical objects juxtaposed within the space of the carriage with the power of free movement within certain limits of space and time, " also there is a time common to all events, and the events are in a fixed relation of before and after."

In the monadic order each passenger is a mind :—

" Each mind is a universe, a universe reflected into a centre, as though into a mirror, and every centre is an individual point of view. Between one mind and another there is absolutely nothing in common, neither space nor time, neither object nor event. To a mind all reality is experience, and to each mind its own experience. All experience is personal experience. Thus I and my fellow passengers each know only a private space and a private time, and the objects and events which for each of us occupy this space and time are private and incommunicable. I look then at my fellow-passengers, and I know that for each of them, as for me, there is_ a centre of attentive interest, and I know that everything which I find it convenient to say is common to all of us, is really for each mind an abstraction of some part or aspect of its own absolutely self-centred system. The order into which, for each mind, every new experience enters is not atomic but monadic. Everything to which I attend becomes part of my experience, and an organic part of it. It qualifies the whole, and it receives its character from the whole, which it qualifies."

The physical and biological sciences deal with compounds and their components ; but the mind is not a compound, it is simple and complete. Philosophy, then, is the science of the monad. " The monads," said Leibniz, " are the true atoms of nature," by which he meant that it is possible to view the universe as consisting of monads and nothing else, but not of atoms and nothing else.

Unfortunately, we have not space to follow Professor Carr through the many phases of his argument, but it will be evident, from what we lave said of the theory of the monad, that it contains in it the germ of relativism, and that relativism was precisely what was needed to give value and precision to its many implications. " The work of Einstein," says Professor Carr in his final chapter,

" has been to turn the principle of relativity to general scientific account. This meant the abandonment of any independent objective absolute as the basis of physical science. It was at once seen to involve much more than this. It implied the change to a monadic concept of reality, a concept which had been treated hitherto, not only by the scientific world but also by philosophers, as the antithesis of a scientific concept."

Professor Carr's book is not easy reading, but it is very lucidly written (as one would expect of the author of, among other things, an excellent book on Croce), and it is full of suggestions of the greatest interest and value.

In The Reign of Relativity, which Lord Haldane published last year, he was for the most part concerned, as he explains in the Introduction to the present work, " with the fashion in which knowledge enters into and fashions reality." In The Philosophy of Humanism and Other Subjects2 he applies the principles laid down in his former book to such details as art, physics, biology and psychology. " My purpose," he says, " is to bring to light the characters of the standpoints assumed in various sciences to be adequate for the explanation of the aspects of reality with which they deal. What the standpoints are depends on the conceptions which define and limit them. In so far as reality is relative to knowledge, reality therefore presents itself as belonging to various orders which have to be distinguished. Into an individual phenomenon the categories of more than one of these orders may enter."

Science aims at the discovery of truth, but the truth it dis- covers is always relative, in accordance with the standpoint it assumes in examining its subject. Thus the biologist takes into account the physical and chemical facts in his subject, but his observations in these fields are of little ultimate value unless they are regarded merely as details to be brought into a larger whole which constitutes the physiology of the living organism. So, too, the living body is a unity in itself, and no interpretation of one of its aspects is sufficient to explain it :- " In nervous responses, and especially in conscious responses, the whole nervous system and indirectly the whole organism with its environment are involved. The response is the response of the living body as an entirety, and not merely that of the brain or any other special organ. It is their fulfilment of an organic unity, their contribution to the maintenance of the normal life of the organism, that makes inappropriate as an explanation the otherwise indefinable and inexhaustible com- plexity of what we are confronted with in the endeavour after interpretation as physical and chemical reactions."

Science starts from experience and " comes back to experience interpreted in the new rendering given " ; philosophy, as Lord Haldane conceives it, does not claim finality or completeness,

its chief function is to reveal the relativity of knlvdedge and act as the critic of the various aspects of knowledge. His view of the essential in philosophy is, infect, the Kantian view :—

" The function of philosophy must always be at least to provide a searching criticism of categories, for without such criticism entanglements in untested assumptions are apt to prevail."

The first three chapters of the book which, under the title of The Philosophy of Humanism, comprise Part I. contain the substance of three lectures delivered recently at Trinity College, Dublin. " Under Humanism," says Lord Haldane, " I include what conforms to the standards of value in domains such as those of Literature, of Music, of Art, and of Religion."

These standard% as opposed to the standards applied to science and metaphysics, " imply on their faces reference to self- conscious personality, and they are less abstract." Lord Haldane's treatment of the subject is of great interest, and con- tains valuable suggestions with regard to literary criticism. " Our criticism," he says, " must be based on reflection if it is not to miss what is greatest and to fail to recognize that in its very relativity to the stand- point of its time has lain its truth and reality. For such rela- tivity applies in the case of the standards of beauty just as it does in those of science. Knowledge never stands still in any form. Its accuracy depends on its power of adjustment in form and outcome. Its scope is so wide that it reaches not merely what is general and abstract, but not less that in which it is expressed imaginatively in the symbols of feeling and emotion."

We are left wondering half regretfully if our gain of a philosopher in Lord Haldane is not our loss of a first-rate literary critic.

As in the case of Professor Wildon Carr's book, so in the case of Lord Haldane's, it has been impossible in so limited a space to give more than a hint of the detail into which the subject is followed. We can only add that as a thoughtful and thought- provoking study of some of the applications of the principle of relativity the book is to be strongly recommended.

Miss May Sinclair's studya is divided into two parts : Book L, entitled The Critical Preparations, consists largely of a critical discussion of the work of such philosophers as Professors Alexander, Whitehead and Broad, and of the Critical Realists. Book XL is called Reconstruction, of Idealism. " Since 1917," says Miss Sinclair,

" the issue has been narrowed down to the field of Space and Time, and it is there that the battle between realism and idealism must be fought."

On that ground accordingly she proceeds to fight. It is a little surprising to find in a book dealing with modern idealism no discussion of the work of Croce or Gentile, but Miss Sinclair warns us at the outset :-

" If I betray ignorance of many contemporary idealists, it is because for years I was satisfied with Kant and Hegel relieved by Schopenhauer and Mr. Bradley, and because, lately, my chief interest has been in seeing what can be said against idealism. It is the realists who have made me look to its defences and who have most helped to show me the possible lines of reconstruction."

Miss Sinclair is first and foremost a novelist, and one can hardly find fault with her because in the limited time she is able to devote to philosophy she follows the method of studying chiefly the opposite side. It is an unusual virtue.

Miss Sinclair has an acute mind and the battle is a spirited display, but a warning is due to those who imagine that Miss Sinclair, being a novelist, has produced a nice, simple, popular disquisition for amateurs. Her book is far from being any such thing ; it presupposes a considerable knowledge of philosophical method and terminology. Where the influence of the novelist does appear is in the style, which has a sharp conversational precision and a strong mixture of refreshing humour which is never allowed to intrude upon the argument.