Febeuarv 21, 1902.] 



SCIENCE. 



303 



and by experts, a work, for example, like Schon- 

 berg's 'Handbuch der politischen Oekonomie' 

 or Conrad's ' Handworterbuch der Staats- 

 wissenschaften,' will be disappointed. There 

 are, indeed, 'special' articles on certain topics, 

 and these are of 'encyclopedic character,' but 

 they are in the minority. The Dictionary is 

 meant primarily for the student, not for 'the 

 practised man of research' — a fact which 

 should be kept constantly in view. This will 

 also help to explain the great scope of the en- 

 terprise, as set forth in the subtitle: 'includ- 

 ing many of the principal conceptions of 

 ethics, logic, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, 

 mental pathology, anthropology, biology, neu- 

 rology, physiology, economics, political and 

 social philosophy, philology, physical science 

 and education.' The editor justifies himself 

 for attempting to cover such an enormous 

 field with the statement that 'the introduction 

 to a large subject — philosophy, indeed, is the 

 largest subject — must needs include various 

 details of knowledge of other branches of sci- 

 ence and information, and of methods, pre- 

 liminary to its proper task.' The wide inclu- 

 sion of science receives further justification 

 from the editor's conception of philosophy and 

 of its relation to science. Philosophy is for 

 him 'the attempt to reach statements, in what- 

 ever form, about mind and nature, about the 

 universe of things, most widely conceived, 

 which serve to supplement and unify the re- 

 sult? of science and criticism.' "It is," he 

 says, "one of the safest sayings of philosophy, 

 at the close of the outgoing century, that what- 

 ever we may become to end with, we must be 

 naturalists to begin with — men furnished with 

 the breastplate of natural knowledge. We 

 must know the methods as well as the results 

 of science; we must know the limitations of 

 ■experiment, the theory of probability, the sci- 

 entific modes of weighing evidence and treat- 

 ing cases. Lack of these things is the weak- 

 ness of many a contemporary writer on phi- 

 losophy. Such a one criticises a science which 

 he does not understand, and fails to see the 

 significance of the inroads science is making 

 into the territory which has so long seemed 

 to be exempt. Note the application of biolog- 

 ical principles, in however modified form, to 



psychological facts; the treatment of moral 

 phenomena by statistical methods; and the 

 gradual retreat of the notion of purpose be- 

 fore the naturalist, with the revised concep- 

 tion of teleology which this makes necessary." 

 The prominent place given to psychology is 

 another necessary consequence of the editor's 

 standpoint, and will receive the approval of 

 all who agree with him as to the fundamental 

 importance of this discipline for science on 

 the one hand, and philosophy on the other. 

 "In biology, in sociology, in anthropology, in 

 ethics, in economics, in law, even in physics," 

 he declares, " the demand is for sound psychol- 

 ogy; and the criticism that is making itself 

 felt is psychological criticism. How could it 

 be otherwise when once it is recognized that 

 science is the work of mind, and that the ex- 

 plaining principles by which any science ad- 

 vances beyond the mere cataloguing of facts 

 are abstract conceptions made by processes of 

 thought?" All this is very good, and most 

 modern thinkers will have no difficulty in ac- 

 cepting it. The philosopher cannot ignore 

 science, nor can either he or the scientist do 

 without psychology. 



Taking the Dictionary, or rather the first 

 volume of it, as a whole, and judging it by 

 what it sets out to do, we cannot withhold 

 from it our full measure of praise. It is be- 

 yond question the best production of its kind 

 in the field, and will doubtless prove a valua- 

 ble aid to those for whom it was made; in- 

 deed, there are few, if any, interested in the 

 general philosophical branches who will not 

 find it a useful vade mecum. Professor Bald- 

 win and his collaborators certainly deserve the 

 gratitude of all students and teachers of phi- 

 losophy and psychology in the English-speaking 

 world for the arduous task which they have so 

 successfully performed. 



And now a word or two with respect to par- 

 ticular points. One of the objects of the Dic- 

 tionary is to do something in the way of defi- 

 nition and terminology. This is, of course, a 

 highly commendable aim. But there seems to 

 us to be some danger of overdoing the thing, 

 of attempting to define what cannot be de- 

 fined, or at any rate cannot be defined satis- 

 factorily within the narrow limits of a sentence 



