Mat 31, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



855 



pelled, meantime, to reply in a decided nega- 

 tive. I can not find ttat Lucretius's address 

 to Epicurus applies : 



O tenebris tantis tarn clarum extollere lumen 

 Qui primus potuisti, illustrans commoda vitse; 

 and nothing short of this would befit the plea 

 Bet forth. Well equipped with wide and care- 

 ful reading as Dr. Abbot evidently was, he 

 seems to have fallen upon an arid formalism 

 which forces him to serve up afresh, and with 

 reiterated emphasis, many of the contingent 

 features peculiar to idealistic absolutism in 

 the nineteenth century. In short his scholas- 

 ticism is such that he is unfitted by sheer 

 mental constitution for the leadership of that 

 new and transitive school for which he longed. 

 Indeed, it is plain, and to be deplored pos- 

 sibly, that his ' Syllogistic Philosophy ' must 

 remain a sealed book to all except a few curi- 

 ous specialists. And, even for this select com- 

 pany, its interest, I apprehend, is already 

 largely historical. For it furnishes what 

 might be termed a species of epilogue to 

 transcendentalism, as understood in America. 

 I should judge it typical of certain tendencies 

 of New England unitarianism, rather than 

 eymptomatic of the fresh philosophical 

 Bynthesis which, as many admit, may emerge 

 during the present generation. True, propin- 

 quity may have made me myopic; but I can 

 not see the conclusion otherwise. For, de- 

 spite Dr. Abbot's blindness to his historical 

 position and obligations — a blindness which, 

 paradoxically, lends his work its chief in- 

 terest — he is little more than another of the 

 many derivants from Hegel, but, as so often, 

 from Hegel with his concrete thinking 

 omitted. 



The crux of Dr. Abbot's position resides in 

 his criticism of Hegel. Here he has failed 

 to appreciate the Hegelian distinction between 

 Verstandes-Allgemeinheit and AUgemeivkeit 

 des Begriffes. He would reduce Hegel to the 

 level of a mere continuator of Aristotle, nay, 

 of Aristotle taken at his worst. It- is surely 

 a piece of extraordinary perversity to find 

 Hegel's characteristic doctrine of universals 

 in the Niirnberg Propddeutih (cf. i., 265 f.), 

 even if one may forgive the oversight whereby, 

 at this late date, a writer omits to notice that 



Aristotle's metaphysical teaching implies a 

 principle by which the ' Paradox ' of his logic 

 can be overpassed. And it is still more 

 astonishing to discover that the criticism of 

 Hegel proceeds from a standpoint already 

 made abtmdantly plain by Hegel himself. No 

 doubt, the Hegelian exploitation of the evolu- 

 tion of the categories may be regarded now 

 as insufficient, or even inapplicable, thanks 

 to those very historical investigations which 

 originated in the impetus exerted by the 

 Hegelian system. But, then. Dr. Abbot offers 

 no concrete Darstellung of his own categories. 

 No doubt, evolution is a problem to-day as it 

 could never be to Hegel. But, then, the mere 

 statement that Darwin, by his discovery of 

 ' advantageous variations,' set this new prob- 

 lem, by no means solves it philosophically. 

 If the problem is to be attacked from the 

 logical side, a reconsideration of the entire 

 office and operation of disjunction becomes 

 inevitable, and of this Dr. Abbot betrays no 

 consciousness. From first to last he remains 

 curiously impatient of doubt as a test of his 

 own position — he is too sure of it for this, 

 and so he fails to reap the results which follow 

 only from the ' labor of the notion.' The one 

 possible conclusion is that he was so much 

 of an intellectual recluse, even an ascetic, as 

 to injure his perspective. 



What quarrel with Hegel has the man who 

 can write as follows ? And what obligation 

 does he not owe him ? " The only possible 

 modes, functions, or faculties of knowledge 

 are, from the sheer necessity of the case, in 

 the uncreated ' nature of things,' those two 

 forms of activity of the one knowing-faculty 

 which, on the side of the unit, we call sen- 

 sibility, or perception, or experience, and, on 

 the side of the universal, understanding or 

 conception or reason" (i., 20Y). Obviously, 

 Dr. Abbot belongs with the monistic idealists; 

 but is so obsessed of abiding a priest con- 

 tinually that he confesses to being without 

 father, without mother, without descent. One 

 does not accuse him of mere apprenticeship 

 to the Berlin master. But, in spirit, general 

 outlook, and necessary consequence, where do 

 we find, if not in Hegel, the kinship of the 

 following, which is Dr. Abbot's conclusion of 



