Page:Philosophical Review Volume 31.djvu/624

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. XXXI.

political thinking by the eighteenth-century doctrines, and looked with suspicion upon social legislation; and they, too, confirmed the lawyers in their extreme individualist ideas. Old conceptions die hard, particularly when there is an element of truth in them and they have accomplished so much for human kind as the individualistic ideal has accomplished. Besides, it remains to be seen how far the coming generation will go in the socialization of the common law. The fear of communistic socialism has already led to political reaction in the United States, and it may check the progress of the new movement in the law. That would be a calamity, for there is nothing revolutionary in the new school as represented by men like Professor Pound and Judge Cardozo, whose illuminating little book on The Nature of the Judicial Process has recently appeared. Their aim is not to introduce into the common law a socialistic theory but to infuse into it a social spirit, which is quite a different thing. Their purpose is not to destroy individualism, but to temper it with justice, to enable a greater number of human beings to be individuals. They are the true individualists.

Frank Thilly.

Cornell University.

History. Its Theory and Practice. By Benedetto Croce. Authorized Translation by Douglas Ainslie. New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1921.—pp. 317.

This is volume IV of the systematic works of Croce, which bear the general title of "Philosophy of Spirit." Its contents originally were published in large part in proceedings of Italian academies and in Italian journals, but its first appearance in book form was in Germany in 1915 under the title, Zur Theorie und Geschichte der Historiographie. The present translation is from the second edition of the Italian edition, which has the title, Teoria e Storia delta Storiografia. The American edition of the English translation has been given a somewhat modified title, while in England it has appeared as Theory and History of Historiography. This change of title may easily become the source of some confusion.

As the author points out, the theory of history does not form a new systematic part of his philosophy, but was already outlined in certain chapters of his Logic. The form of historical comprehension is, as it were, the ideal form of theoretical intelligibility towards which all his discussions of the forms of spiritual life have pointed. "In a certain sense, therefore, this resumption of the treatment of historiog-