Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/548

VI. CKITICAL NOTICES. Some Dogmas of Religion. By JOHN MCTAQGABT ELLIS McTAG- GABT, Doctor in Letters, Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity- College in Cambridge. Author of Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic and Studies in Hegelian Cosmology. London : Edward Arnold, 1906. Pp. xx., 299. THE present work may be said to be, a restatement, defence and development of those parts of the Author's philosophical system which bear upon questions of Eeligion, in so far as such a task can be accomplished without discussing over again the metaphysical problems dealt with in his previous books. He has apparently attempted in the present volume to place his views about Eeligion before the public with a minimum of metaphysical technicality. Dr. McTaggart is lucid even in the most abstruse and difficult of metaphysical discussions ; in the present work lucidity is carried to a point which will probably ruin his reputation as a philosopher in certain circles circles in which it passes almost as an axiom, that lucidity or "apparent lucidity" is the unfailing note of " popular Philosophy," and should be left to the " metaphysical incompetent" victims of the "fallacies of the abstract under- standing ". Indeed, if Dr. McTaggart chanced to be theologically orthodox, he would be in great danger of being set down as a mere "Theologian," or, worse still, a mere " Apologist ". From this last degradation he is saved by the fact that he is one- of the few Metaphysicians whose rejection of Theism, even in its most pantheistic form, is absolutely undisguised and uncompromis- ing. The fact is that, remote as he is from the position of ortho- dox Theology, Dr. McTaggart shares some of the mental habits and views of life which distinguish the typical Theologian I will not say from the typical Philosopher, but from a type of mind fre- quently found among present-day Philosophers, especially in Eng- land, most of all in Oxford. He believes in the close connexion of theory with life ; he believes in the necessity of a creed, a creed that can be lived by, and a creed which, if its ultimate grounds- can be judged only by trained Metaphysicians, consists of proposi- tions intelligible to the ordinary mind. He has none of that extreme unwillingness to make definite and unambiguous state- uents which characterises so much of the treatment of theological id religious topics by professed Philosophers.