SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 



105 



the cosmic conceptions and categories of 

 the sixteenth, seventeenth and eight- 

 eenth centuries. In the same way gen- 

 erous consideration is accorded to think- 

 ers who are passed over with scant cere- 

 mony in the ordinary text-books. Bruno, 

 Bacon and Kepler are instances of this. 

 The same appreciation of the immense 

 importance of science for philosophical 

 inquiry marks the perspective in which 

 nineteenth century workers are placed. 

 Kant, who is more influential for science 

 than any other thinker, receives very 

 full discussion — a discussion, too, which 

 however one may dissent from it, as the 

 present writer dissents, bears every- 

 where the traits of prolonged study and 

 of first-hand acquaintance with the 

 principal primary sources. Similarly, 

 the English school of Positivists, 

 elbowed out in the country of its birth 

 as it has been by a metaphysicising 

 Hegelianism, is restored to its true im- 



portance, and the post-Kantian ration- 

 alism, that has ousted it, is bidden 

 come down lower. In a work so ex- 

 tensive there are, of course, many points 

 on which one can not agree with the dis- 

 tinguished author. For example, his con- 

 ception of the relation between Des- 

 cartes and Spinoza requires revision; he 

 makes too much of Bruno; he has not 

 reasoned the standpoint of Copernicus 

 out to its logical conclusion; Hobbes 

 and Rousseau get more than their due, 

 and Hume less; the peculiar genius of 

 the English school, particularly as rep- 

 resented by Locke, does not seem to have 

 been caught. But, after all, these are 

 defects which appear to the expert and 

 do not seriously mar the book as a 

 whole. For the scientific man, it is the 

 best presentation of the constructive de- 

 velopment of philosophical theory from 

 the Renaissance till within the last 

 twenty-five years. 



