Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/118

104 CEITICAL NOTICES: views on all the main questions of philosophy and religion ' a large subject to cover in about fifty pages. The Confessio Fidei (34 pp.) is an earlier treatise on a number of fundamental problems. The last and longest of the fragments (about 80 pp.) is entitled 1 Moral Philosophy : on the Method and Scope of Ethics '. It is hardly necessary to state that all these writings are characterised by lucid and incisive exposition, and are often lighted up by illuminating (and, not infrequently, humorous) illustrations. Prof. Ritchie was certainly one of the most brilliant of Green's disciples ; and his defence of the general idealistic position gained peculiar force from the special qualities of his mind. His interest in the particular sciences especially biology was genuine and keen ; and this fact helped him to define his philosophical position, in relation to the sciences, with unusual clearness. The practical and, one might almost say, matter-of-fact tendency of his thought added a certain piquancy to his support of idealism. And few have shown greater keenness in discovering the weak points in an opponent's (and perhaps even in a friend's) case. In his more constructive work, however, one has a feeling that he often breaks off just when he comes in sight of an interesting problem. Of course this fact is, in the main, accounted for by the circumstance that so many of his writings are only fragments. The following may be given as a good illustration of the illu- minating remarks that one often finds in the course of Ritchie's discussions. It is from the Exploratio Metaphysica, page 105. ' The Aristotelian formal cause is usually supposed, by scientific men who have read Mill's Logic, to be out of date. But the formal cause is exactly what we mean by a " law of nature ". It is the universal or conceptual formula which is manifested in a number of particulars. And the very common habit of hypostatising " Energy," " Gravitation," " Evolution," etc., is only a recurrence to the mythological interpretation to which the Platonic doctrine of " ideas " or universal " forms " was exposed. The habit, again, of speaking of these abstractions with capital letters as efficient causes is the result of "animism " ; it is so difficult to eliminate anthropomorphic interpretations even in scientific thinking." The defence of the Aristotelian syllogism in the paper on ' Logic and Psychology ' is another part of the work that seems to me to be remarkably well done. So also is the discussion of Equality in the fragment on ' Moral Philosophy ' and the distinction between Illu- sion and Appearance in the paper on ' The One and the Many '. The general attack on Pragmatism in the latter paper is perhaps a little more of the nature of literary fireworks ; but it is certainly bright and effective ; and, in view of the pyrotechnical displays of some of our leading pluralists, it may at least claim the relative justification of ' answering a fool according to his folly ' if to be witty is folly. And it would be easy to point to many other pas- sages of conspicuous power, both literary and philosophical. On the other hand, it would not be easy to point to any actual