Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/364

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
There was a problem when proofreading this page.
350
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. II.

and not transferable. But upon Aristotelian, no less than upon Platonic, principles the form is "prior to" the "matter." On other occasions this priority does not create a stumbling-block, owing to the co-eternity of form and matter, which guards against a temporal interpretation, but in the case of the soul the temporal succession is just the datum explicandum. Is it, then, astonishing that Aristotle should have discovered no better way out of the difficulty, no better way of harmonizing the strict individuality of the soul with the priority of the form, which must here be taken temporally, than his obscure doctrine of the (Symbol missingGreek characters)? It is true that he ascribes to it all the attributes he had censured in the Platonic doctrine of pre- existence; but does he not do precisely the same thing in his doctrine of the universal after his criticism of the Platonic ideas, and is not the relation of the (Symbol missingGreek characters) to the (Symbol missingGreek characters) just as obscure as that of the (Symbol missingGreek characters) to the (Symbol missingGreek characters)? Professor Knauer, who follows Brentano rather than Zeller in his account of the De Anima, tries to read modern Creationism into Aristotle, according to which the immortal part of the soul is created out of nothing and combined with the body by the will of God. And this in spite of the facts that Aristotle elaborately refutes the idea (e.g., Metaph., XI, 9) that the perfect would be in any way conscious of the imperfect, that there is not the least trace of a conception of creation in Aristotle, and that the idea of creationism is assuredly no less difficult than that of the (Symbol missingGreek characters)! Professor Knauer appears to greater advantage in his treatment of the problem of the One and the Many. He is a decided opponent of Monism, admires Leibniz and Herbart, and considers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel to have added nothing to Spinoza. Monism, as he rightly insists, is helpless in face of the problem of change, which begins to be intelligible only when a plurality of existences has been admitted. But it may not be amiss to remark that, even according to Herbart, change is only appear- ance, which does not affect the inner nature of the "reals," and that the possibility of a real and intrinsic change is what we are concerned to assert for many scientific and ethical purposes. Moreover, as already stated, pluralism cannot be regarded as established until the question of the relation of God to the Many has been discussed, and such discussion is here entirely lacking. The book concludes with an extremely eulogistic account of the philosophic writings of the poet Hamerling, who, however, does not seem to offer anything of sufficient originality and interest to justify his admirer's claim that he has for the present said the last word in philosophy.

F. C. S. Schiller.