the dignity of virtue with the need of divine grace. If Marcus Aurelius could have studied Christianity under as wise a teacher, he might have found in this devout Christian a deeper moralist than his master Zeno, and perhaps anticipated Constantine as defender of the faith, instead of being its bitter persecutor.

We need not carry out our summing up of Rothe's peculiar merits, nor show in detail his generous recognition of the claims of our modern culture, our art, our science, our government and civilization, within the kingdom of God and Christ. He has his limitations and infirmities, and he is sometimes eccentric in his thinking as in his way of life, somewhat of a hermit in his theosophic retirement, and unmindful of the value of institutions and usages that are essential to mankind. But before we criticise his failings, we must appreciate his virtues, and allow that he may have seemed strange to the mind of our time, because this mind is estranged from God. With his earnest study, his close observation, his keen logic, his profound insight, his lowly piety, his gentle and brave humanity, he gave himself without reserve to meditation upon God and the supreme good; and his life, which moves within the limits of our century, and is a widening and rising power, is a noble proof that this nineteenth century has not ceased to belong to the ages of faith and of love. Richard Rothe deserved the name of sage and hero and saint.

ARTICLE VII.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

KRAUTH'S BERKELEY.1 This edition of Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge is made, upon the title-page, to fall under the more general rubric of "Philosophical Classics." This would seem to be an intimation that the work before us is the first of a series designed to facilitate among American students the study of philosophy at its historical fountain-heads. Nothing is more to be desired, for the deepening and expanding of American scholarship, than that such an enterprise may succeed. For the success of the present volume nearly everything has been done that could be accomplished by careful editing, introductory explanation, annotation, and by a handsome getting up externally. The Prolegomena, by the editor, covering nearly one hundred and fifty pages, include an account of Berkeley's life and writings, his precursors, and the friends and critics of his doctrine, as also a historical account of idealism, and an estimate of its merits. The historical matter, although in large measure fragmentary, is perhaps sufficient for the purpose of the editor, who seeks rather to guide the student and teacher than to furnish a complete repository of information. We could wish that in the treatment of the history of idealism the scope of the writer had been larger, so as to include idealism in its earlier and ancient historical forms and in its broader sense, and not simply the technical idealism of modern times. This broader view, suggesting more numerous and just points of comparison, would have enabled the student less versed in the subject more satisfactorily to estimate the merits and narrownesses of modern systems. In the account of the latter we could wish, further, that the author hadespecially in the case of German systems—confined himself less to analysis, and 'translated more freely into our own philosophical vernacular. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, for instance, we venture to say, will never be understood by any English-speaking student not familiar with the German originals, until the data, methods, and results of the speculations of those philosophers shall have been rendered into carefully-considered, perspicuous English, no matter how periphrastic this may be in form, or how far from representing verbal equivalence to the German. This work yet remains

1 Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge. With Prolegomena, and with Annotations, select, translated, and original, by Charles P. Krauth, D.D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co. 1874.

to be done for the English student of those German masters. But if in these observations we seem to be dwelling on relative deficiencies, we would hasten to accord to the author of the Prolegomena the full meed of praise for his industry, the general amplitude and clearness of his statements, and the spirit which has animated him throughout. His conclusion that a sound philosophy must unite idealism and realism meets our cordial approval, and his conviction that philosophy is now decidedly tending in that direction we believe to be just.

That Berkeley's "Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" is to be considered as a "Philosophical Classic," we suppose none will question. Whether it is a classic of the first order, and whether we are to admit, with Ferrier, that the "speculations of this philosopher..... have done better service to the cause of metaphysical science than the lucubrations of all other modern thinkers put together," is open to more serious question, or, rather, it must be flatly denied. Berkeley, as at once prelate and philosopher, as Christian philanthropist and man of rare graces of mind and character, as the one of whom Pope could write,

"To Berkeley every virtue under heaven,"

is well adapted to extort our interest and admiration. But his "Principles " do not exhibit him as either a strictly cogent or a sufficiently careful reasoner. The strangeness of his conclusions and the real difficulty of the question he discusses have, in our opinion, done as much as his own merits as a metaphysican and logician to render him famous. To this should be added the place which he occupies in that development of English thought (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) which furnishes, through Kant, the connecting link between English and German philosophy, and, indeed, the basis of nearly all modern philosophy. In view of these historical relations, the study of Berkeley may well occupy a leading place in the investigations of the modern student. That this fact is realized by our German cousins is evidenced in the circumstance that the work now before us was translated, a few years since, and annotated by the late Prof. Ueberweg, for von Kirchmann's "Philosophische Bibliothek." It is the translation and addition of Ueberweg's annotations to the American edition which constitutes one of the chief attractions of the latter.

Berkeley holds that the objects of our knowledge are ideas; that the latter are always definite, primarily concrete or individual, derivatively general (denoting a collection of concrete object-ideas), never abstract. The former opinion, interpreted strictly, involves the non-existence of so-called sensible objects external to mind; the latter is designed more particularly to ward off the supposition of a substratum in which supposed sensible qualities are presumed to inhere, i.e. the supposition of the existence of an entity termed "matter," which is not definitely knowable, cannot take the form of (or, as we should ordinarily say, be represented by) a concrete idea, and must therefore be, if it is anything, an abstraction.

The stand-point of Ueberweg in his criticisms is that of a believer in the objective reality of space and time, and in the existence and knowability, at least in their geometrical attributes, of objects existing in the same, and external to the mind. Ueberweg objects, first of all, that Berkeley, in terming ideas at the outset the objects of our knowledge, begs the whole question at issue, which is, whether our (sense) ideas are not, rather, the means through which we know external objects existing apart from the mind. This criticism is rather formal, than material. It would be materially just only in case Berkeley made no subsequent attempt to substantiate his assumption.

A more telling objection is raised by Ueberweg in his thirty-eighth note, page 353. "The real esse of things," says Berkeley, "is percipi,” which is but a restatement of the doctrine already enunciated, that "things" (of sense, that is, alleged or assumed "unthinking things") are nothing but ideas. To suppose otherwise involves a contradiction. This Ueberweg denies, and says: "Were there such contradiction there would be equally a contradiction in supposing that there was a time previous to my own existence. For to suppose this I must think of that time; it is consequently in me; consequently it does not exist without me, or outside of me, consequently not before my existence; for that anything should be in me without myself being is a palpable contradiction." If esse is strictly percipi, if nothing exists except as it is actually present in some consciousness, then the fact of past existence, past time, is not a fact, except when thus held in consciousness. Holding to this strict interpretation of Berkeley's famous formula, Ueberweg finds it equally easy to show its irreconcilability with various facts in the natural order of things as declared in the results of positive science. But this exact construction, although in uniformity with Berkeley's ordinary use of language, is yet in conflict with Berkeley's doctrine that all the ideas we have, or can have, exist in God, who excites them in us. It is also opposed to Berkeley's occasional use of language. For sometimes (as, for example, in section 8 of his "Principles ") his test of existence is not the being perceived (that is, the actual existence of the idea in the mind), but perceivableness. This gives an altogether different and more plausible character to his theory, assimilating it to the modern theory of the external world propounded by John Stuart Mill. But looseness and confusion in the use of terms must unquestionably be laid to Berkeley's charge. Ueberweg's criticisms point out errors and inaccuracies in Berkeley's reasonings, and show how little he has rigidly demonstrated, which is all that could be expected, perhaps, in the form of annotations.

In justice to Dr. Krauth, the editor of this volume, we must say that the most conclusive objection to Berkeley which the notes contain, seems to us to be found in his own note (pp. 360, 361), where it is pointed out that Berkeley really "makes our psychical activity depend on God, as much as VOL. XXXI. No. 124.

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our psychical passivity, and overthrows the infallibility of our consciousness of our own mental acts. My idea that I am eating is not a mere senseimpression, but a consciousness of will."

We should have been pleased had the editor, in his summary of “Estimates of Berkeley," included the very definite and telling criticisms of J. H. Fichte and Erdmann. These men, in their histories, discover contradictions, either among the component elements of Berkeley's doctrine, or between these and conclusions derivable from them, which it is instructive to contemplate.

On page 392 of this volume we notice a mistaken reference. Ueberweg's Article on Berkeley is in Bd. 55, Heft 1, of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie, and not Bd. 54, Heft 2, as incorrectly given. We notice, further, the two spellings " scepticism" and "skepticism" in the book. In general the press-work is quite perfect.

In conclusion, this book is to be commended to all who would meditate on the relations of God to man. The fundamental question involved is really the question of true causality. Is there any true cause which has not intelligence and will? Is there any such thing as secondary causation ? On the answers to these questions depend not only our theories of the world, but also of God and his relation to man.

G. S. M.

ZELLER'S HISTORY OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.'- The accomplished historian of Greek philosophy, and successor of the lamented Trendelenburg as Professor in the University of Berlin, contributes in the abovenamed work, one solid volume of nearly a thousand pages to the " History of the Sciences in Germany "— published "at the instigation and under the patronage of his majesty Maximilian II., King of Bavaria." One of the conditions of the publication was that the work should be written in the most "popular" manner possible. Yet so thorough a scholar as Dr. Zeller could not, of course, interpret the word "popular" as synonymous with "superficial." At the same time the cumbersome apparatus of notes demonstrative and substantiatory had to be excluded, owing to the compressed limits within which the subject-matter was to be treated. Accordingly, we have in the present volume a history of the most interesting phase of intellectual development in modern history, presented succinctly and clearly, with only such references to originals as were indispensable, and written by one whose well-known scholarship, extensive knowledge, and admirably facile style are particularly adapted to recommend the book in the regards of all such as are likely to feel a special interest in the subject of it.

German philosophy, in its history and character, undoubtedly offers the most remarkable series of purely intellectual phenomena in the history of 1 Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz. Von Dr. Eduard Zeller. pp. xviii und 924. München. 1873.