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Immanuel Kant. A Study and a Comparison with Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, 

 Bruno, Plato and Descartes. By HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN. 

 Authorised translation from the German by LORD REDESDALE, G.C.V. O., 

 K.C.B. With an introduction by the Translator. 2 vols. (London : 

 John Lane. Price 25^. net.) 



Whatever virtues the German nationality may possess, that of conciseness does 

 not appear to be one. In a land where' laborious industry is the rule, and 

 reverence for authority universal, it is perhaps not unnatural that an author 

 should be estimated, not according to the novelty of his ideas, but according to 

 the magnitude of the tome in which he embodies them. The high-class reader 

 of this country will probably consider that a work of very nearly a thousand 

 pages of German metaphysics is a book that he may safely leave alone. Previous 

 experience will perhaps have taught him the futility of the general run of such 

 works : and (in many cases, but not in this) the strange marvel that any one can 

 be found to write so lengthy a disquisition on so slender a basis, is only exceeded 

 by the further marvel that others can be found to read it when it has been written. 



Lord Redesdale opens his introduction with a defence of German metaphysics 

 against its depreciation by " a man of acknowledged ability and great public 

 worth." It is very true that German metaphysics requires defence, and a more 

 strenuous one than Lord Redesdale has been able to give it. At present German 

 metaphysics calls up a jumble of more or less unintelligible verbiage : which, 

 when it momentarily becomes comprehensible, is found to contain attacks upon 

 science ; strange, contradictory and absurd statements l ; no general results what- 

 ever. The incomparable confusion of ideas is rivalled only by the confusion and 

 prolixity of the style of expressing them. 



The work of Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain is well above the ordinary 

 level of German metaphysical treatises. I do not mean that it has any greater 

 scientific value than the others : for, having no scientific value whatsoever, it is 

 in this respect precisely on a level with the rest of contemporary metaphysical 

 literature. But it does have a literary value, not commonly found among the 

 lights of German philosophy : and these literary qualities have been admirably 

 preserved and reproduced in the excellent translation of Lord Redesdale. The 

 book is palpably the product of the studio rather than the laboratory. It is 

 written in a gorgeous highly coloured style, and deals in the usual intellectual 

 subtleties, which may certainly charm and interest, though they cannot enlighten. 

 The only people who need be disappointed in this book are those who imagine 

 that metaphysics is a science ; and therefore that its purpose is the pursuit of truth. 

 Metaphysics is not a science : it is a cross between a religion and a fine art : 



1 Such as that everything is the contrary of that which it is : or that the whole need not 

 be greater than the part. 



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