JAMES WARD, Naturalism and Agnosticism. 247 tion neither body nor mind, but a tertium quid, or (c) the world is in its ultimate nature mind or spirit and nothing else. In the two concluding divisions of the work Prof. Ward ex- amines these residual alternatives. He first of all sets aside dualism as a philosophical system by the simple but conclusive method of pointing out the intellectual confusion in which it has its origin. Having thus led up to the recognition of monism as the only really satisfactory philosophy, he is now able, in his concluding section, by eliminating the neutral or agnostic monism so often professed by the more subtly minded of our men of science, to conduct us to an idealist or spiritualist interpretation of the world as the only one which does full justice to the con- crete facts of experience. It will now be proper to say something more in detail of Prof. Ward's treatment of each of these sections of his task. It is probable that the part of his work which will command the most general admiration among those who, without being in everything disciples of the Leibnitz cum Lotze school, accept the general principles of idealism, is the criticism of natu- ralist assumptions. Certain metaphysical tenets with respect to activity and freedom which largely colour the argumentation of the last two sections and tend to separate Prof. Ward from thinkers of the type of Mr. Bradley, are much less prominent in the earlier lectures where the common cause of a non-materialistic interpretation of the world is being argued against the common enemy. In this division of his treatise Prof. Ward has, as we have seen, a threefold task to accomplish. He has to show that even the physical world, as it exists for actual experience, is something more than mass-particles in motion, that the life and order of the world is not accounted for upon the theory of evo- lution in the absence of intelligent guidance, and that the events of the mental series cannot be thought of as merely concomitant with those of the physical. In all three departments of his task Prof. Ward appears to the present writer to have proved sin- gularly successful. His criticism of the mechanical theory of physical processes, from the large body of facts brought together and the abundant use made of the work of specialists in physics, is exceptionally useful to the student of metaphysics who is debarred by the want of special training and equipment from first-hand knowledge in such matters. In dealing with the me- chanical theory two main questions have of course to be raised. There is the general question of the nature of kinetic con- ceptions and their relation to the actual world of experienced fact, and there is also the special question of the bearing of the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy on the problem of self- determination and human freedom. Dr. Ward's attitude towards the former of these questions is in the main that already adopted in Germany by Kirchhoff and Mach, and in England by clear- headed men of science like Clifford and Karl Pearson, an attitude which seems to be absolutely forced on us by any serious attempt
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