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NEW BOOKS. 267 The Problems of Philosophy. By HAROLD HOFFDING. Translated by Galen M. Fisher, with a Preface by William James. New York and London : Macrmllans, 1905. Pp. xvi, 201. In this interesting little volume the well-known Danish philosopher ranges himself decisively among the champions of that forward move- ment in science and philosophy which is now making its force felt throughout the world. The significance of this accession is pointed out in the short preface to the English translation (presumably from the German, though this is not stated) of Prof. Hoffding's work, in which Prof. James summarises its aim and extracts its pith with masterly luci- dity and precision. Prof. James's preface indeed so admirably performs the function of the appreciative criticism which Prof. Hoffding's work so well deserves as really to render superfluous any further review from a standpoint so nearly identical with his own, and so much in sympathy with Prof. Hoffding's as mine is bound to be. I feel myself therefore reduced to the seemingly ungracious procedure of discovering spots in the sun and of touching (lightly) on the points where Prof. Hoffding's treatment seems to fall short of perfection. The contention which guides Prof. Hoffding's whole survey of the philosophic field and is perseveringly worked out in his discussion alike of the problems of consciousness, of knowledge, of being, and of values, ethical and religious, is that in no case do our problems admit of com- plete unification, does the antithesis between the claims of continuity and discontinuity admit of being resolved into a stable harmony. This contention, as Prof. James points out, suffices to stamp Prof. Hoffding as an empiricist and a pluralist and an adherent of the ' ever not quite ' view of reality and thought, even though he may still prefer to describe himself for academic purposes as a 'critical monist'. Certainly the criticism must be admitted to preponderate over the ' monism in a philosophy which adopts the pragmatic conception of truth (pp. 81-84) and unreservedly acknowledges the reality of time (pp. 107, 136, 195, etc.) and the incompleteness of reality (p. 120) and of knowledge (p. 137). Indeed, if anything, Prof. Hoffding, like Prof. James, carries too far the recognition of the 'irrational remainder ' (p. 85), which all rationalisms are so desperately anxious to ignore. At heart few irrationalisms are as un- reasonable as a thorough-paced rationalism, and it is only when ' reason ' has been degraded into the merest catchword that the evidences of the in- adequacy of rationalism can be interpreted as proofs of cosmic irration- ality. Nay, I venture to suggest that even ' discontinuity ' is not as such a token of irrationality, and that it may betoken the joyous exuberance of health when a universe takes to jumping instead of crawling. The ' discontinuities ' which torment us and are what Prof. Hoffding really means to refer to, are of a very different kind. They are the painful jolts and crushing catastrophes of the course of nature, and it is only by a very euphemistic and intellectualistic meiosis that they are described as ' dis- continuities ' at all. In plain English they are evils, and they are in- tellectual problems only because they are first of all moral problems. If then there really is something wrong about the universe of our experi- ence, it is folly to attempt to conceal the fact under a veil of intellectual- istic phrases, and a ' monism ' which attempts this is not ' critical ' so much as hypocritical. Prof. Hoffding, however, is far too honest to stain his conscience with such subterfuges ; he admits quite frankly that something is wrong, and consequently his selection of the antithesis be- tween continuity and discontinuity as the deepest in the universe strikes one as a little incongruous and inadequate. Surely it is the distinctions