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VII. NEW BOOKS. On s/,iin,-.ixtic Iiiiniortfi/i/ii. By GEOROE STUART FULLERTON, Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the I'niversity of Pennsyl- vania. Publications of the University of Pennsylvania; No. 2 of the ' Series in Philosophy '. Philadelphia, 1899. Pp. v., 154. Price 4s. THE main object of this monograph is to examine the " Eternity " which Spinoza ascribes to the human mind. " I have endeavoured," the author says, " to set forth as clearly as possible Spinoza's doctrine of existences and essences and of the passage of the soul from the world of perishable things to that of things imperishable and eternal " (Preface). Part iv. contains a discussion of " the religious element in Spinoza ". In spite of much that is interesting e.g., the careful analysis in part iii. of Spinoza's use of the terms " Essence " and " Eternity I cannot think that Prof. Fullerton is very successful in his interpretation. The fundamental mistake of the book, as it seems to me, is that Spinoza is not taken literally enough. Thus, when Spinoza (in the Tractatus de Intellect ii x riiii'ni/iitioiii' describes the infinite being as "omne esse, prteter quod nullum datur esse," our author understands this as " the sum-total of being " (p. 37), " the sum of being " (p. 41), " the sum-total of existing things " p. 128). Consequently, one is not surprised to find him assum- ing that for Spinoza) the " concrete reality " is the world of actually existent finite things the everyday world of the uncritical consciousness : that for Spinoza (cf. t.y. p. 23) "the corporeal world consists of a limit- less congeries of finite individual things, and that " each thing in the corporeal world has its corresponding idea in the world of thought ". In other words, the ' bodies ' and ' minds,' the "things " and "individuals " of the uncritical (" Imaginative") consciousness, are supposed to be for Spinoza's Metaph/yrict self-dependent realities. Starting from such an assumption, Prof. Fullerton naturally regards Spinoza's "God," "Extension " and "Thought " as abstracted from the concrete things, bodies and ideas. They are " abstract universals," which Spinoza thorough-paced " Realist " that he is (p. 33) incon-istently individualises, treats as real or concrete (cf. e.g. pp. 38 ff., 52). It is not worth while to labour this point, For Spinoza as I understand him. ' God,' the ' Universe,' the ' Absolute ' or whatever term may be preferred is the only completely real thing, the only concrete, individual and self-dependent reality. Finite things so-called 'individual' men, bodies and minds are, qu/i finite and qua distinct things, in varying degrees unreal : whilst, so far as they are real, they are states or modes of the one Individual, God. For Spinoza as Prof. Fulbrton understands him these ' finite things ' are " concrete realities," all equally and fully real. And the Attributes and Substance are universal concepts abstracted from these real things, which yet by a confusion characteristic of Real- ists Spinoza regards as somehow ' real ' and therefore ' individual '. A critic who approaches Spinoza in this spirit however careful hit