Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/310

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
294
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. VI.

ing Gerhardt's own introduction, five short papers relating to Locke's Essay written by Leibnitz between the years 1696 and 1701, the entire Nouveaux Essais, and twelve short pieces by Leibnitz treating of important points in philosophy. The work contains, therefore, all of Leibnitz's writings relating directly to Locke and the doctrines of his famous Essay, with the exception of those which treat of Locke's examination of Malebranche, and those which relate to Locke's controversy with Stillingfleet.

It is nearly two centuries since Leibnitz wrote his great critique of Locke, and now for the first time the work appears in an English rendering. It is one of the world's great books—a book filled with the pregnant thoughts of one of the world's very greatest thinkers. In this accurate translation, by one who has made himself the first Leibnitzian scholar of America, and enriched by his valuable annotations, it is a book to rejoice the heart of the scholar. It should receive a hearty welcome, not from philosophers and psychologists alone, but from all who can appreciate the best that has been thought and said by the world's great thinkers.

Mr. Langley is to be heartily congratulated on the successful termination of his long and arduous labor of a decade, for long and arduous it has been, although it has been on his part, as he says, a labor of love. His work as translator and editor has been performed in a most painstaking manner, and the result is a work which is a distinct credit to American scholarship.

Mr. Langley's notes deserve the especial attention of the reader. They are the result of laborious research, and contain much curious and valuable information. No allusion, however obscure, in Leibnitz's text (and how numerous his allusions are to all branches of human learning and to the workers in them, all know who are at all familiar with his writings) has been allowed to pass without a determined effort to explain it, even when to do so entailed upon the translator extensive researches in many libraries and lengthy correspondence with American and European scholars.

In spite of Mr. Langley's great pains with the notes, we have detected a couple of errors. In note 5, page 633, on Regius, he writes: "Dr. James Martineau, A Study of Spinoza, London, Macmillan & Co., 1882, page 75, line 7, and footnote i, in translating 'Regis' instead of 'Regius,' has misunderstood Leibnitz's reference, and wrongly attributed to him a lapsus memoriae" This mistake Dr. Martineau corrected in his second edition. Again in note 1, on page 502, we are told that Spinoza relied exclusively on the ontologi-