December 9, 1897] 



NATURE 



125 



We will on these topics make only two quotations, 

 though the exposition of the doctrines occupies several 

 chapters. 



" Nobody will question that at a certain distance 

 between sun and earth a body will be more strongly 

 attracted by the latter than by the former, or by the 

 former than by the latter, as the body may happen to 

 be nearer the one or the other. In other words, nobody 

 will question that the earth has its own field of attraction 

 as against the sun ; hence all that is within that field of 

 attraction would form part and parcel of the mass. 

 Now, the distance between earth and sun is at all times 

 determined by their relative states of excitation, as before 

 explained. Hence the earth may be regarded at any 

 one moment as being kept at a certain definite distance 

 from the sun, as if held there by ropes or bars. But the 

 earth revolves, and in revolving meets with a greater 

 resistance on the side nearest the sun than on the 

 opposite side ; hence there is greater retardation on the 

 one side than on the other : from which follows the 

 translation in orbit. The laws of rigid mechanics find, 

 therefore, here application. The earth is drawn towards 

 the sun, but cannot pass a certain line ; and this line is 

 the rigid surface against which it presses. To the eye 

 nothing may be there impenetrable ; but to the earth 

 this invisible circle is like a hoop of adamant, against 

 which it presses and along which it is rolling in space." 



And this brief note : — 



" Prof. Helmholtz estimated the depth of the luminous 

 envelope at 500 (I) miles. This estimate ... is 

 ludicrous." 



Thus at length the lofty position appropriate to superior 

 knowledge is fully assumed ; and from pitying and apol- 

 ogising for Newton, rebuking and correcting Thomson 

 and Tait for their fundamental errors, the authors pro- 

 ceed to laugh at an estimate by von Helmholtz. 



Behold, a greater than these men has arisen ; another 

 still larger volume already in manuscript is threatened ; 

 and the natural philosopher of the twentieth century is 

 to be Ignatius Singer ! O. J. L. 



PHILOSOPHY OF KNOWLEDGE. 

 Philosophy of Knowledge. By Prof. G. T. Ladd. Pp. 

 XV -I- 614. (London : Longmans and Co., 1897.) 



PROF. LADD, of Yale, is well known as an industrious 

 writer on psychology, and upon philosophy regarded 

 mainly from a psychologist's point of view. The present 

 volume gives his Theory of Knowledge, and with some 

 naivetS he claims for it " the treatment due to a pioneer 

 work," and avows a " quite unusual interest " in its 

 success. His method he characterises as a constant 

 striving " to make epistemology vital — a thing of moment, 

 because indissolubly and most intimatel y connected with 

 the ethical and religious life of the age." 



Most modern psychologists of note have definitely 

 broken with that abstract and detached view of their 

 science which would argue the question of the " origin " 

 of knowledge within the limits of a narrow subjectivism, 

 and which would assume that thereby the questions of 

 nature growth and validity had received adequate solu- 

 tion. The present tendency of psychology is rather to 

 offer itself as that specialist training which makes general I 

 NO. 1467, VOL. 57] 



metaphysic profitable, or, at any rate, to endeavour to 

 set itself right with metaphysic, by an alliance based, 

 perhaps, upon a compromise. 



Of such a tendency Prof. Ladd is a representative- 

 He puts forward a strenuous plea for an ultimate view 

 of knowledge and reality which shall neither be subjec- 

 tive idealism nor crude realism, neither wholly dualism 

 in one sense of that word, nor wholly monism in one 

 sense of that word. He insists on the implication in the 

 act of knowledge of what he not very happily calls 

 " extra-mental " or " trans-subjective " reality, meaning 

 that we apprehend that which is manifestly independent 

 on our individual consciousness, and does not emerge 

 in it as a a matter of course as the result of its own 

 laws. He urges the claims of our feelings and our will 

 to be satisfied equally as well as our thinking taken 

 abstractly. He demands as a sort of postulate of faith 

 that we take it that things are known in some sense as 

 they are. The self, he holds, is known as it really is, 

 thinking, feeling, and willing. And things are known 

 as what will not always as we will, and by an analogical 

 saltus as other will. 



This is interesting speculation, but it is rather eclectic 

 than original. Prof Ladd would seem to be a pioneer 

 only in the sense that we are at present fortunately free 

 from Erkenntnisstheorie as it is too often understood in 

 Germany. For he is something too well read in theories 

 of knowledge which pass with undue freedom from 

 psychology to metaphysic, and often approach perilously 

 near to ignoratio elenchi. 



It is in his criticisms that this influence, which con- 

 stitutes, as we venture to think, the weakness of his work, 

 makes itself apparent. Interlined with positive views 

 as to the relation of faith to knowledge, of aesthetic and 

 ethical value to reality, where Prof. Ladd obviously owes 

 much to Lotze, or as to the relation of thought and 

 reality to will, where Wundt's influence is manifest, there 

 are offered an erudite though inconclusive history of 

 opinion and a running fire of uncomplimentary comment 

 upon Kant, Mr. Spencer, Mr. F. H. Bradley, and others. 

 And the sympathetic insight of the successful critic is 

 wanting to the Yale professor. The results, as well as 

 the methods, of certain thinkers are agnostic or sceptical, 

 and that must not be. And so a discursive appreciation 

 of various points of their doctrine is put forth, which, 

 e.g. in the case of Kant, ranges, with the exception of a 

 suggestion as to the implication of will in the treatment 

 of the second analogy of experience, entirely within 

 the circle of commonplaces on the subject, and is 

 altogether unconvincing to believers in the results of 

 sympathetic interpretation. Again, in dealing with post- 

 Kantian idealism, it is not its alleged panlogism which 

 he criticises, as he might well have done from his 

 Wundtian standpoint, but rather its general tone or 

 points so truistic that any theory of knowledge must, and 

 if not explicitly yet tacitly does, meet them. 



The discursive and rhetorical style of the book would 

 of itself tend to ineffectiveness in matters of criticism. 

 It is often picturesque, and has many happy phrases ; 

 it sometimes rises to eloquence, and is always eminently 

 readable. But it is singularly vague and elusive. And 

 the volume needs condensation. H. W. B. 



