Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/280

266 NEW BOOKS. to the Prolegomena by Dr. Carus is extensive, but perhaps not as judiciously put together as it might have been. Some account of the transpositions detected by recent criticism in the text of the first edition might well have replaced the page given to discussion of the trifling question of Kant's relation to Swedenborg. A. E. TAYLOR. Le Fonctionnisme Universel : Essai de Synthese Philosophique : Monde Sensible. Par HENRY LAGRESILLE. Paris : Fischbacher, 1902. Pp. 580. This work attempts a synthesis of the visible world, considered purely as characterised by intelligible function, from the infinitely small functions of atoms to the supreme function of the " star Solis ". The idea of " f unctionism " is capable of extension from mathematics to morals. As variable numbers are bound in a constant relation, so the acts of real individuals are reciprocally connected in a vital function. Confined by abstraction to the category of extension it is mechanical ; but all functions are in origin creations of the free activity of spirit, latent in atoms, explicit in social forms, where being determines itself. All functions are ideas, laws. Under phenomenal activities subsist living ideas, monads exercising persuasive force, eWpytia aKivrja-ias, which, as one visible influence opposing another, assumes for us the character of coercive force. A Metaphysic aiming at completeness must go on to de- velop in idea the psychical and moral aspects of the active development of Being, and this the author intends to do, undertaking, when he finds tune, a trancher par des solutions assez nettes tons les grands problemes philosophiques. No lack of confidence, you will observe. The author bases his system on the primary intuition of voluntary activity, reveal- ing, so he claims, the notion of reason, in the three immediate ideas of cause, good, voluntary power of action, united in one concrete relation. He develops it by means of his three supreme and immutable laws : the law of universal reason, the internal law of the act ; the law of movement, its external law, and the transcendental law of universal analogy. He considers philosophy as at present cultivated, almost as an effete literary pursuit ; but perhaps his knowledge of it might be extended with advan- tage. He can scarcely hope to return to the doctrine of innate ideas, contenting himself with a bare enumeration of the principles of reason, without offering any deduction of them, or imagine that to define Meta- physics as simply a universal Psychology (p. 41) is satisfactory at this- time of day. In fact, as a philosopher he is old-fashioned, holding of Leibniz, and developing a view of the world that had already been sketched by Kant in the Nova Dilucidatio, to say nothing of Lotze. Space is the possibility of action among bodies, an immanent divine continuum, penetrating and supporting all beings. "When the last form has been suppressed, matter disappears with spatial limit, leaving im- material substance. Matter consisting in nothing but a constant pro- portion among the variable actions of immaterial forces. M. Lagre'sille is impatient to be done with abstract discussions in order to shed the illumination of mystic insight over the sciences of external nature ; or, as it might seem, to take refuge in myth. I have read with curiosity and interest the amazing mixture of science and mysticism which follows his a grandi Merely to mention the points exceed my remaining space ; radiant matter, the elements of liquids and solids, gravitation, explained by a law of interception of ether impulsions,