The method of sensible signs is the logical method of arithmetic. In the solution of a problem, the thought from which we proceed is first translated into signs, we operate with these signs according to the laws governing the system, and then translate the resulting signs back again into ideas. Hence, the task of arithmetic is to find general rules for the reduction of different forms to certain normal forms. Arithmetical operations will then signify no more than the methods of performing this reduction. With an examination of the processes of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division the volume closes.
Frank Thilly.
A marked characteristic of the present time is the widespread and increasing dissatisfaction with the individualism of the last hundred years. While, on the practical side, this dissatisfaction manifests itself in efforts to centralize the power and enlarge the functions of the state, the same thing is seen even more clearly on the theoretical side in the growing influence of idealism in metaphysics, and in the ethical system of such writers as Wundt, Ihering, and Leslie Stephen. So completely have philosophers of this class sunk the individual in society, that many who are most alive to both the theoretical and the practical defects of the old individualism fear that a reaction may be excited against this new-found sense of solidarity by the very extravagances of its advocates. We are, therefore, glad to welcome every earnest attempt to determine an adequate theory of the relations between individuals and institutions. The aim of the present work is to show that in Christianity we have a solution of the problem which gives at once due value to social organizations and full weight to the intrinsic worth of individual personality. While protesting against the 'sacrifice of individuality to the exigencies of Dialectic,' the writer acknowledges his indebtedness to Hegel, and, indeed, we may say that the book is written from a decidedly Hegelian standpoint.
The first chapter is devoted to epistemology. After a criticism of Locke, Spencer, Hume, Berkeley, and T. H. Green, the conclusion is reached that Knowledge and Reality are related as different aspects of one concrete identity of Truth. The second chapter is entitled "The Nature of Man and the Work of Christ." As is the universe, so also is man, a concrete identity yielding differences of aspect. The different aspects of man's nature are body and the rational soul or mind. "Spirit is the comprehensive unity in which mind and body, thought and feeling
