290 



NA TURE 



[January 25, 1906 



AN ESSAY TOWARD THE "PRIMA 

 PHILOSOPHIA." 

 The Metaphysics of Nature. By Carveth Read. Pp. 

 viii + 354. (London : A. and C. Black, 1905.) Price 

 7.S. 6d. net. 



CRITICAL philosophy or metaphysics Mr. Read 

 divides into two branches, the metaphysics of 

 nature and science and the metaphysics of ideals. 

 In this work he deals only with the former branch, 

 and only with the most general principles of science. 

 He makes it a rule " not to attempt to solve a priori 

 any problem that can only be effectually treated by 

 inductive methods." He discusses in the introduc- 

 tion the meaning of terms like belief and knowledge, 

 reality and truth. Then in Book L, entitled " Canonic," 

 he considers various tests of truth, different forms 

 of scepticism, and the great problem of the 

 relativity of knowledge. Book ii. — " Cosmology " — 

 deals with the doctrine of substance. Book iii. — 

 " Psychology " — deals on the same lines with the sub- 

 ject of experience; while the last book — "The Cate- 

 gories " — discusses relation, the physical categories, 

 and the categories of subjective activity. 



The author's beliefs on two of the most general oi 

 metaphysical problems may be most concisely stated in 

 his own words. Thus on p. 240 he writes : — 



" I am recommending as the most coherent and 

 natural way of thinking, on the whole, this hypo- 

 thesis that the world is essentially a conscious thing; 

 that in consciousness we have immediate knowledge 

 of Reality, but not of the whole of Being; that the 

 rest of Being is made known to us by phenomena ; 

 that it is everywhere conscious, but in various degrees, 

 and that the higher degrees are known to us by the 

 phenomena of organisation."' 



Again, in dealing with the teleological problem on 

 I 1 - 34 8: — 



" Frankly, I wish it were possible to prove or make 

 credible the teleology of Nature, because we might 

 then follow Aristotle in identifying the End of Nature 

 wilh the End of Humanity; but I cannot help feeling 

 that the weight of argument is against the doctrine 

 of Final Causation. Like transcendent Being, it re- 

 mains a merely indicative, orectic category." 



The influences to which Mr. Read most readily 

 responds are Hume, Spinoza, to some extent Spencer, 

 and, of course, modern science. The defences of 

 Hume often bring out points too apt to pass un- 

 noticed. Thus Hume's " custom " is described as 

 "intuitive reason in the making." Mr. Read, who 

 has a lurking affection for the sceptical — e.g. he 

 thinks that the scepticism of the new academy was 

 superior, even as philosophy, " to the fanatical dog- 

 matism of the Stoics and to the gaseous hypotheses 

 of the Epicureans " — points out the elements of 

 Hume's philosophy which were clearly sceptical, but 

 lays over against them the facts that scepticism was 

 partly a disguise with Hume, and that even Hume 

 puts forward pragmatism as the natural remedy for 

 scepticism. 



Hume's great follower or controverter, Kant, 



receives interesting treatment. Mr. Read refuses to 



join in the " hysterical outcry " against the thing-in- 



itself; but he finds abundant cause for complaint in 



NO. 1891, VOL. 73] 



Kant's mythological method of arguing from the 

 unity of consciousness to a substance, a " thing " 

 that "forms an idea." Kant's famous statement is 

 quoted : — " If there is no Urwesen distinct from the 

 world, if the world is without a beginning and there- 

 fore without a Creator, if the will is not free, then 

 moral ideals and principles lose all their validity"; 

 and Mr. Read adds, " It is impossible to find in 

 literature a more desperate sentence than this, or a 

 more false. " 



One welcomes the clear distinctions drawn in the 

 introduction, chapter ii., between empirical, physicaL 

 transcendent, and noumenal reality; the defence, too, 

 of much-abused eclecticism on the ground that after 

 all the great systems in philosophy are themselves 

 patchworks. And unless one is wedded to the theory 

 that philosophy must be dull if it is to be sound, one 

 rejoices in the good sayings — often as sensible as they 

 are pungent — with which the book abounds, such as — 

 " Iuiture generations may have reason to thank those 

 who left them something to do, more than those who- 

 anticipated everything," or the description of Hegel's 

 rationalism as only an unintelligent empiricism. But 

 no short notice like this can do justice to the close- 

 ness of the argument, the soundness and compre- 

 hensiveness of a book which must be ranked among 

 the most important of recent years. 



There are one or two animalcules in the ointment. 

 Locke's great work is referred to as " Essays of 

 Human Understanding " ; and in talking of Hume's 

 " Treatise " the author gives references to the parts 

 only, forgetting that there are in it books divided into 

 parts. Words like verbile, questionnaire, glissaded, 

 do not find favour with all readers. An index might 

 well have been provided, but its absence finds much 

 compensation in an excellent table of contents. 



MATHEMATICS FOR THE LABORATORY. 

 Higher Mathematics for Students of Chemistry and 

 Physics, with Special Reference to Practical Work. 

 By Dr. J. W. Mellor. Second edition, enlarged. 

 Pp. xxi + 631. (London: Longmans, Green and 

 Co., 1905.) Price 155. net. 



THIS is the second edition of a book which from 

 the first was recognised as filling a place of its 

 own in our mathematical literature. It is essentially a 

 book for the student of chemistry, for whom a smatter- 

 ing of mathematics used to be supposed to be sufficient. 

 The result was that our college curricula made no 

 provision for training chemists in the mysteries of 

 the calculus, at least no compulsory provision. When 

 at length the eager student came in touch with 

 modern work, say, on the velocities of reactions, or 

 on thermodynamic developments in general, he 

 encountered mathematical methods and even nota- 

 tions quite unfamiliar to him. What was he to do? 

 Go and quaff the heavenly nectar provided by 

 Williamson or Lamb ? But this, we learn from Dr. 

 Mellor's preface, brought perplexity rather than clear- 

 ness of vision. What the student of chemistry 

 wanted was a working knowledge of the methods of 

 the differential and integral calculus, with a minimum 



