ENGLISH AND AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE 1800. By Arthur Kenyon Rogers.
(Macmillan. 16s. net.) — Of many of our philosophers we can say with some measure of truth that the value of their researches varies inversely with their ability to express themselves in good English. Therefore it is not unreasonable to demand of those writers who make it their business to expound the philosophies of others, some particular ability in the art of expression. Mr. Arthur Kenyon Rogers amply fulfils this demand. His survey of English and American philosophy, in all its meanderings from the days of the Scottish intuitionists to Mr. George Santayana and Mr. Bertrand Russell, has all the clearness and distinction that could be asked of a critical study. The author's opinions are never obtrusive, and although " more empirical than the empiricists " his attitude even towards the rationalists is intensely judicial.
Mr. Rogers' book, though accurate In detail, is by no means a history, but rather an estimate of all important philosophic ideas during the last century and a quarter. Nevertheless, philosophers, of consequence in their own day, but now of purely historical interest, are not neglected. We may instance Thomas Brown, the precocious young philosopher, who at the age of twenty published a capable criticism of Darwin's Zoonomia, who succeeded Dugald Stewart in the chair of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, and who, on the threshold of a career of immense possibilities, suddenly faded away into a poet.
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