114 CEITICAL NOTICES :

of the wager " has something in common with M. Fouillee's doc- trine of " risk " in action and speculation. It is true he does not end with doubt but with belief ; yet belief, in distinction from knowledge, implies at least the possibility of doubt. But although two types of thought may not be quite so clearly marked out as they ought to be according to the theory embodied in M. Eenouvier's classification, it is only with the aid of a classi- fication such as this that an adequate account can be given of the whole movement of philosophy. The idea of a perennial opposition of philosophic doctrines, and of increasing distinctions among them, is not that which historians of philosophy like best to dwell on ; but now that it has been not merely stated and defended but made the central idea of a systematic classification, it ought to be recognised as at least as important an aspect of the truth as the more common idea of philosophic progress. And M. Eenouvier does not, by a movement of reaction, deny the portion of truth that is in the conception of progress as continuous and in the same direction. He recognises the limitations it imposes on his own view, as well as those that are due to what he considers illo- gical mixtures of doctrines. One ground that a critic might take here is to contend that these mixtures are not all illogical, and that the divergence is really towards several types instead of only two. This would be a criticism in the sense of M. Eenouvier's own doctrine. But whatever may be the view taken of the outcome of the classification, there cannot be any difference of opinion as to the value of M. Eenouvier's work in detail. Every page of it is full of instruction. To its merits as history this is to be added, that it will compel readers who may have arrived at any frag- mentary philosophic view of their own to consider carefully the bearings of this view with regard to the whole, and the direction in which it ought to be developed if they wish to be consistent. It will be remembered that M. Eenouvier finds one logical defect in the system of pantheism to which, as he holds, modern " scientific philosophy " is tending. From the contradiction that is said to be implied in the assertion of infinity, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, in the first of his two articles on M, Eenouvier's philo- sophy in MIND, Vol. vi., has pointed out a way of escape. " The realised infinite," Mr. Hodgson admits, is a contradiction ; but the contradiction comes from taking " representation " as coextensive with phenomena, and assuming categories that are " forms of thought, not perception ". "If we take the forms of perception, time and spatial extension, as our ultimates, then we shall find that infinity is involved in all perception. Every perceived thing, which is a portion of time or of space, has time or space beyond it. The perception that this happens always, whenever you have a perception, this is the infinity of time and space " (MiND, vi. 56). It is remarkable that this restoration of an " unexplored remainder/' as the necessary background of all knowledge, is made from the point of view of what we may call the experi