More Books of the Week
Theistic Monism, by Mr. Joseph Evans (Macmillan, 12s. 6d.); is a thoughtful book, and the chapters on Phenomenalism, 61A Consciousness, on Mind, are worthy of study. Mr. Evan., dissatisfied with the solutions of the problems of existence offered by the Church of which he was a minister, thre4 up his ministry and began to investigate matters for himself, Like many others, he craved for a rounded system of philo. sophy which should account for everything, and, undeterred by the fact that the search for such a system seems age-loni, and the secret of its quest inviolable, he finds rest where Spinoza found it, in an Absolute Determinism, in Monism. The body of his book is far more persuasive than the rather weak close. 14Ir. Evans ends in assertion, and, really, Spinoza has done the whole feat of uncompromising metaphysics better beforehand. That puzzle of Consciousness—does Mr. Evans ever solve it ? Grant his Pantheism ; the individual consciousness is either only an infinitesimal part of the Whole, in which case it cannot comprehend its universe or envisage its system, or else it. does comprehend, and is instantly some- thing that transcends and is greater than its God. Mr.
.Evans denies the possibility of " a future life," but the terlit is not philosophical, and involves us anyhow in the problems of Time and Space. And we miss au adequate treatment 1.4 the dilemma of Evil. Confusion of moral values is the spectie that always haunts Pantheism. Still, the book, so far as it goes, pursues its argument unflinchingly, and in its up-to-data knowledge of science is an interesting piece of work.
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