VII. NEW BOOKS.

[These Notes (by various hands} do not exclude Critical Notices later on." History of Modern Philosophy. By KUNO FISCHER. Descartes and his School. Translated from the Third and Revised German Edition by J. P. GORDY, Ph.D., Professor of Pedagogics in Ohio University. Edited by NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D. London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1887. Pp. xvi., 589. This handsome volume deserves warm welcome, and will, it is hoped, be followed by more than the one other, extending over Spinoza, which is de- finitely promised. No greater service could be done to English and American students the thought and deed are American than to give them a trust- worthy rendering of Kuno Fischer's brilliant exposition, so far as he has himself yet been able to carry it through. Whatever exception may be taken to it here and there, it stands apart as the most effective present- ment yet made of the lives and work of the heroes of modern philosophy. A portion on Kant, long since translated by Mr. Mahaffy, is all of it that has yet appeared in English, and this was taken from the undeveloped first edition. (The Bacon, earlier translated, also from a first edition, by Mr. Oxenford, is an outlying work.) The translation now begun follows the latest edition, which for the author's vol. i. is the third, as has been noted in MIND on appearance of each of its two parts. It is these two parts of vol. i. of the original that have for the present been taken in hand ; the (English) volume now issued covering, besides the whole first part (on Descartes, with General Introduction), as much of the second as (after the Cartesians proper, with Geulincx and Malebranche) leaves only Spinoza to be handled at approximately similar length. By the time that the volume on Spinoza is ready, it is to be hoped that the improved (second) edition of the authors vol. ii., on Leibniz, &c., may have seen the light, and that all who are concerned in the present enterprise of translation may feel encouraged to proceed with at least that division of the work, than which none is of greater value (even in first draft), and which is more wanted in English than perhaps any other. A trial of the present volume at various places turns out altogether to the credit of the translator. Though he is fortunate in having an author who writes extremely well, yet even Kuno Fischer's sentences, being German, can at times carry a heavy weight of sail. The translator has done everything that is necessary in the way of reefing ; and the general effect of the whole is excellent. This result is the less surprising, because, as Dr. Noah Porter, in a few words of intro- duction, tells us, the translator, Prof. Gordy, already competent as a German scholar and familiar with philosophical literature, armed himself specially for the present work by devoting some months of critical study to the Cartesian doctrine. Though the translator has not remarked it, the present opportunity may be taken of correcting one error in Fischer's exposition. It is where Descartes is made to say (pp. 322, 323 of the trans- lation, which with slight omission follows Fischer) : " I have first asked myself what one really means by * mathematics,' and wherefore arithmetic and geometry [only] are considered parts of it, and not astronomy, music, optics, mechanics and so many other sciences, with just as good right". Instead of the words here italicised, what Descartes really says in the EegulcB is " quare non modo . . . sed etiam," conveying an obviously diffe- rent meaning.