BOOK REVIEWS
A NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY
Scepticism and Animal Faith. Introduction to a System of Philosophy. By George Santayana. 8vo. 314 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50.
THIS volume is only a prelude to a work on Realms of Being, which will deal with the different spheres of Existence, Essence, Truth, and Spirit. It is a brave thing in these days, to launch a system of philosophy; there is everywhere so much detail, so much bored familiarity, that few men have the comprehensiveness for a large synthesis. Mr Santayana has the power of dismissing the irrelevant: "exact science and the books of the learned," he says, "are not necessary to establish my essential doctrine. . . . It needs, to prove it, only the stars, the seasons, the swarm of animals, the spectacle of birth and death, of cities and wars." He claims, accordingly, that his philosophy is not merely an expression of the intellectual fashion of the moment.
"In the past or in the future, my language and my borrowed knowledge would have been different, but under whatever sky I had been born, since it is the same sky, I should have had the same philosophy."
This is more nearly true in his case than in that of any other living European, but it is not quite true—probably it is not meant to be quite true. It is true that the speculations of the last two centuries leave him cold. Philosophy in modern times, he says:
"ceased to be the art of thinking and tried to become that impossible thing, the science of thought. . . . The whole of British and German philosophy is only literature. . . . Not one term, not one conclusion in it has the least scientific value, and it is only when this philosophy is good literature that it is good for anything."
