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JOHN S. MACKENZIE, Outlines of Metaphysics. 541 tions to Philosophy which are usually of foreign extraction do not seem to meet the needs of ordinary English readers. The present volume will, we feel sure, receive a warm welcome both from teachers and students. The writer well remembers a period in his own studies when this book would have been a very great help, and when the want of such a book was a serious hindrance. Prof. Mackenzie has carried through an extremely difficult task with care and skill ; for a good general survey of the problems of Metaphysics, showing the student the significance of the various, questions and their mutual relations, and suggesting methods of solution without laying down a complete metaphysical theory, is an extremely difficult task to accomplish : but it is just what the beginner needs to have done for him. We may give a brief indication of the course of treatment which Prof. Mackenzie adopts. Metaphysics deals with Experience as a whole, as a systematic unity, and inquires into its Meaning. Special sciences deal with particular aspects of Experience. " The term Experience suggests at once our point of departure the consciousness of some individual mind and so provides us with something of the nature of a guiding principle " (p. 13). But Ex- perience has very different levels and very different degrees of significance for us. My experience is emphatically mine, but I am aware that there is presented to me a world somehow independent of my individual apprehension of it. Hence the most fundamental aspect of Experience is the duality of Subject and Object. The author shows skilfully how this duality becomes transformed inta a dualism of Mind and Matter, and how this gives rise to the Metaphysical theories of Dualism, Monism (so-called), Materialism, Agnosticism, Idealism (chap, iii.) ; and again how reflexion on the difficulties of these theories leads to the Transcendental and Critical attitudes. "Transcendentalism comes to mean that the whole system of reality and not merely the world as we know it is constituted by thought-determinations. This phrase, however, ' constituted by thought-determinations,' is -a some- what vague one, and is capable of very various interpretations. ... To interpret it satisfactorily, we must understand precisely what is meant by a thought-determination; and this throws us- back upon the consideration of the general nature of thought, and in fact upon all those problems, the discussion of which is generally included under the term Epistemology. ... In the meantime our attitude towards metaphysical theories must, at any rate in some sense of the word, be a critical one. We see that they all present serious difficulties, and force us back upon previous questions " (pp. 34, 35). The critical attitude consists essentially of an inquiry into methods. After reviewing the early Dialectical, the Dogmatic, the Psycho- logical, the Critical (Kantian) and the later Dialectical (Hegelian) methods, the author arrives at the following statement : " Given an objective experience [in other words, starting from the Duality