The Philosophy of Biology. By James Johnatone. (Cam- bridge University
Press. 9s. net)—The point of view and the methods of treatment adopted in this learned and thoughtful essay are those suggested by Driesch and Bergson. Science, says Driesch, is the attempt to describe Givenness, and philosophy is the attempt to understand it. Our Given- nese is constituted by the knowledge that we attain in investigating the phenomena of Nature—" our perceptions, thinned out, so to speak, modified by our mental organiza- tion, related to each other, classified and remembered." But this knowledge is, at the best, merely description, and to all thoughtful minds there is an irresistible impulse to attempt to go beyond it—" to seek for the reality that we feel is behind the shadows." Mr. Johnstone has made this attempt in connexion with the phenomena of life, and his book is well deserving of careful study.
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