Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/416

402 CRITICAL NOTICES : bent of thought and its individual manifestations. To all these merits we must add Prof. Hoffding's large conception of philo- sophy, a breadth of view which gives a just place in the history of thought to such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin. To pass to particulars, first should be mentioned the interesting description of the Renaissance Philosophers, especially of Giordano Bruno. But the main purpose of the first volume is concerned with what are here called " the great systems," i.e., the systems of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibniz. Amongst these espe- cially to be praised is the capital account of Hobbes. Indeed throughout the book full justice is generally done to English Philosophy, especially to the English tendency, often noted, to recognise the actual conditions of life and the problem of competi- tion a tendency which Prof. Hoffding sees well illustrated in Hobbes' 'war of all against all,' Mandeville's Fable of the Been, Malthus' work on population, and above all in Darwin's great discoveries. There is, however, a case in which an English writer does not get his due. Prof. Hoffding, misled perhaps by biographical considerations and attention to ' motivation,' displays a very hostile attitude to Bacon, and openly rebukes our " adula- tion " of his genius. Bacon "possessed, it is true, a certain pro- phetic insight, and gave inspired utterance to thoughts," but his originality and importance are warmly disputed ; and it seems that Bacon's brilliant and pregnant sayings, and his bequests both to the conceptions and language of science, mnnia (as regards Prof. Hoffding) perflnxere atqtie ingrata interfere. To return to ' the great systems,' the account of Spinoza contains many admirable points. Indeed this appreciation is one of the best things in Prof. Hoffding's work. It may, however, be ques- tioned (though these are minor points) whether the antithesis between ' epistemological ' and ' psychophysical ' can fairly be applied to criticise Spinoza's monism, and also whether Prof. Hoffding's view of the scientia intuitiva is not, to say the least, rather one-sided. In the very good criticism (which here follows) of the Leibnizian system, it is much to be regretted that Prof. Hoffding has not shown more in detail Leibniz's undoubted though unacknowledged debt to Spinoza. It is not possible to discuss here Prof. Hoffding's remarks on Locke, Berkeley and Hume, although the account of the last is particularly excellent. The great feature of the second volume is Prof. Hoffding's view of the Kantian system. And here we find numberless interesting points, among which may be mentioned a clever exposition of what is meant by the ' Leibnizianism ' of Kant. In spite, how- ever, of all its brilliance, Prof. Hoffding's account of Kant shows two great weaknesses. The first of these is the excessive pre- ponderance given to the negative result of Kant's doctrine ; and it is here that Prof. Hoffding labours most heavily under the ' law of relativity,' a law which has, we must hope, less tiresome and truistic associations and meanings for Prof. Hoffding than it has