Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/410

VI. CEITICAL NOTICES. Scientific Theism. By FRANCIS ELLINGWOOD ABBOT, Ph.D. Lon- don : Macniillan ; Boston : Little & Brown, 1885. Pp. xxiii., 219. This book formed a contribution to a discussion in the Concord Summer School of Philosophy on the question : ' Is Pantheism the legitimate outcome of modern science ? ' The Introduction (which contains in clear and concise form the argument of the first part of the present volume) appeared originally in MIND 28, under the title " Scientific Philosophy : a Theory of Human Know- ledge ". The author informs us in the Preface that, though the book was written in "five summer weeks," "it took five times five years to think it out. It is a mere resume, of a small portion of a comprehensive philosophical system." The impression left on the mind by a perusal of the book is precisely that which might be anticipated from this notice of its history. It bears evi- dence on every page that it is the outcome of patient and indepen- dent thought ; but it also bears the mark of somewhat hurried production. There is, for example, an amount of repetition of identical phrases, which, though sometimes effective, becomes occasionally excessive ; and the generally admirable clearness and precision of statement is not seldom marred by passages of an intricacy and technicality of terminology hardly to be met with outside of Kant, The title expresses exactly the thesis of the book. It is an attempt to prove Theism by the scientific method, or rather by that method philosophised, i.e., made conscious of its own pre- suppositions. The author believes that a "revolution" of modern philosophy is necessary in view of the existence of modern science. " To show what it is, and to what it leads in the sphere of religious belief, is the special ^object of my book." Philosophy, he thinks, has all along been on the wrong track : it must now take up the standpoint of science. What is needed is the "iden- tification of philosophy and science". The " revolution " which the author desiderates is thus the reverse of the supposed Kantian revolution. This last he will not allow to have been worthy of the name. When Kant " founded the Critical Philosophy on this cardinal doctrine that ' things conform to cognition, not cognition to things,' and when he claimed thereby to have created a mighty revolution in philosophy comparable only with that of Copernicus in astronomy," he did not " really occupy a new philosophical standpoint, or really adopt a new philosophical method " (p. 3). The standpoint of Kant is really the standpoint of Nominalism. " He merely completed, organised and formulated the veritable revolution which was initiated in the latter half of the llth cen-