Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/585

NEW BOOKS. 571 relation to it. Professing no finished system, his intention is nur anregen, nicht ausfiihren ; and he writes with so remarkable vividness of style, from a knowledge so evidently profound, "all-round" and balanced, that he can hardly fail in his object. Whether his conclusion will stand the only tests which can be applied to a philosophical hypo- thesis, those of inner self-consistency and of practical "workableness," is another question. It is not certain that even the postulates on which his thought is based would be admitted by all, viz. : (1) That the universe is a closed system, and (2) that knowledge consists only in the comprehension of the particular under a general law ; each of these it is said (p. 9) implies the other they are the fundamental laws alike of nature and of thought. It is on this idea of the universe as a system Zusammenhang that the whole philosophy of Count Keyserling turns (of. p. 171). He is imbued with the spirit of Kant as voiced by H. S. Chamberlain, it is true and much of the present work consists in the application of Kant's fundamental ideas, those of the Categories, the Antinomies, the Transcendental Unity of Apperception, Spontaneity and Receptivity, Freedom and Necessity, etc., to modern problems. Matter and force are shown to be mutually independent categories of thought ; the reduction of one to the other which scientists attempt is therefore an impossible task ; but the philosophic search for unity finds what it seeks in Life. Life also is an independent category, which can neither be exhausted nor replaced by Matter or Force or both ; it is a unity not in the conceptual sense merely, but in the actual, it is given as such "the whole of life in its milliards of incorporations forms one single organic whole ". It is in Life again that the antinomy of matter and force, or of continuity and discontinuity the correlatives or " pro- jections " of the former is solved ; for while continuous as a whole, Life is discontinuous in its individuals. But we are impelled to seek a still higher unity, which shall embrace Life itself along with Matter, Force, and the rest : of Nature, matter, force, however, we know nothing but the 'projections' upon life, i.e. upon the inner experienced Life, the laws of which- the forms of knowledge transform all other laws which are brought within them (p. 60). This difficulty is solved by the Kantian view of Objectivity as a differentiation or form of consciousness itself, not something outside of it ; i.e. consciousness not only has the forms of thought and knowledge, but is them. Hence the idea of a higher Law from which derive not only life, and bodily forms, but the forms of thought also. In other words, the forms of knowledge are merely one of the innumerable expressions of the single Law or Ideal, which holds the Universe itself together. It is true that we have in our- selves only a "projection" of the universe, but as in Protective Geometry, the analogy of which plays a great part in Count Keyserling's thought the laws of the thing itself, which perhaps is too complex for finite comprehension, may be known from its simpler projection (pp. 66 f.). Projection does not alter the relations between the parts, but merely the form of their appearance. The dominating thought of the volume may perhaps be expressed thus : " The same law or laws by which all natural events, in the diverse forms of existence, are directed, govern also human ideation and thought ; thus our human concepts of order, beauty and harmony represent a consequence of the same law as has formed the universe into a Cosmos a consequence or effect, not a cause and not the law itself " (p. 70). Mathematics, accordingly, as the most purely formal science, for it deals not with concepts, but with relations between any possible con- cepts and therefore between any possible realities, becomes that science which gives philosophy its direction. " Mathematics does not give us