566 NEW BOOKS. he attempts to remedy this by the exceptionally mystifying device of printing such familiar words as knowledge, experience, etc., throughout the book in quotation marks! It is in his discussion of the nature of Reality, however, that we find at once most to approve and most to- censure. Those of us who regard the controversy between materialism and spiritualism as closed for ever will be a little disappointed to find that this is for Dr. Hyslop the burning question of metaphysics, and that in his opinion the only issue of importance is that of personal im- mortality. Arguing on the strictly scientific plane he gives us a con- siderable amount of acute and valuable criticism ; he rightly insists that the recent researches of physicists into the constitution of matter should be philosophically interpreted, and may lend important support to the spiritualistic view : and he traces in a clear and interesting passage the historical development of materialistic theory. This part of the book, however, is greatly marred by a pointless polemic against Kantian and Neo-Kantian metaphysics. It is quite open to Dr. Hyslop to restrict his own argument to such considerations as experimental science can supply ; but in doing so he should have avoided meaningless sneers at those who work on a profounder level and wield a more powerful dialectic. Kant, he tells us, deals in ' mere possibilities ' he did not see the importance of verification Philosophy in his hands was the ' speculative explanation of phenomena without much regard to evidential considerations '. This is. a definite charge most of his readers will think an amazing charge ; and the only interpretation which I can put upon this part of the argu- ment is that Dr. Hyslop will not believe in the a priori Categories unless they can be detached by the method of Difference and exhibited on the table of an experimental laboratory. This passage, combined with the extraordinary caricature of Kant's position in chapter ix., shows to how little purpose Dr. Hyslop has reflected on the meaning of the transcendental method. The book is specially remarkable for its omis- sions. One does not expect the author to deal with all Problems of Philosophy, but one who claims to be above all things abreast of the times ought surely, writing last year, to have dealt with the absorbing- controversy on the place of the Will in Cognition. So far as I have noticed, this problem is ignored except for a few platitudes on Kant's postulates of Practical Reason. We get instead, in the last chapter, a long polemic against the uselessness of current philosophy, with a threat that such vain speculation will be swept away by the rising tide of democracy 1 HERBERT L. STEWART. Sociological Studies. By J. S. STUART- GLENNIE, M.A. Reprinted from Sociological Papers, vol. ii. The Sociological Society. In this age, whose peculiar characteristic is the love for detailed specialisation, it is well that there still remain some philosophers who strive to " see things whole ". Mr. Stuart-Glennie's first paper, in his series of sociological studies, " The Place of the Social Sciences in a- Classification of Knowledges," proposes a scheme for the grouping of all knowledge in one co-ordinate form. This grouping is especially under- taken in the interests of the Social Sciences, since their aims cannot be clearly seen until they are assigned their definite places in the general classification of the sciences, and their placing necessitates an attempt to reconcile the antagonistic philosophies, the materialistic and idealistic theories of causation. This reconciliation is effected by the conception and definition of Atoms as having at once psychical and physical
