know, although this solution would be quite in harmony with much of his thought. But the fact is that he has two conflicting views of the Metaconscious. On the one hand, it is regarded as a positive and creative power with an intuitive wisdom guiding the world-process by an immanent purposiveness. Yet, on the other hand, it is asserted, still more emphatically, that as a Prius it is unreal, and real only in the monads, whence it is clear that no existence must be attributed to the One which conflicts with the absolute reality of the Many. The contradiction is not solved by saying (p. 431) that "a monism must imply pluralism and a pluralism monism." No doubt it marks a great advance on ordinary monism to recognize this, but Mr. Fawcett does not see that the recognition of monism by pluralism is no more than formal, and need not have any metaphysical consequences. For the One is a Prius only in thought. It is nothing beside the fact that the monads interact (cf. p. 368), and as without interaction there would be no world at all, this fact can require explanation (e.g., by a 'Metaconscious') only if we suppose ourselves committed to the absurd undertaking of giving a derivation of existence as such. Hence, though Mr. Fawcett's dictum is verbally correct, the value of the only "monism" that can be recognized is nil. The One is not a principle of explanation. Hence it will not explain the purposiveness of the world-process. The "Metaconscious" has no other intelligence but that of the monads at its disposal, and, while these are all of a low order, their intelligence cannot explain the purposiveness. The fact, then, that the rule of the universal egoism of the known monads "hammers out remorselessly the world-plan" (p. 375), shows not that the Metaconscious is intelligent, but that the process is overruled by some real, though unknown, intelligence. Thus Mr. Fawcett's view, in its only tenable form, leaves plenty of room for a God, to supply that intelligence. And such a Deity would also form a principle in matters of "palingenesis" greatly superior to Mr. Fawcett's extension of the law of struggle to the supra-sensible. This is the most original point in Mr. Fawcett's book, but it is difficult to find it attractive. If the struggle for existence is the law also of the spiritual world, it is hard to see why it should ever cease and whence the principle of harmony is to come. As it is, the implications of Mr. Fawcett's doctrine seem to be decidedly pessimistic. In spite, however, of these objections, Mr. Fawcett's book is promising, and forms perhaps the best and completest attempt to solve these ultimate problems from a monistic basis, and if he will only cultivate a simpler and severer style, his next work may be looked forward to with pleasure.
This translation, as the editor informs us, is nearly a hundred years late; but the philosophy of Schleiermacher has, from the first moment, stirred
