VI. NEW BOOKS.
[These Notes (by various hands) do not exclude Critical Notices later on.'} A Dictionary of Philosophy in the Words of Philosophers. Edited with an Introduction by J. RADFORD THOMSON, M.A., Professor of Philosophy in New College, London, and in Hackney College. London : R. D. Dickinson, 1887. Pp. xlviii., 479. This Dictionary has been based on a collection of passages from philoso- phical writers made by " a collator of experience ". The editor's part has been to excise on the one hand and extend on the other, with the view of holding the balance even among the different schools or the different topics. In particular, it appears to be due to the editor that a fair repre- sentation has been given of the later scientific psychology as well as of the recent Kantian movement in English philosophy. To him also is due the present arrangement of the whole mass of extracts according to principles which, if nowhere explicitly stated, are more or less implied in an Intro- duction that deals successively with the definition, divisions and origin of philosophy, its history in general and its present state in this country. The arrangement is topical throughout, without other alphabetical clue than is supplied by two concluding indexes, of names and of subjects. The index of names is, in its way, pretty complete ; not so the other. This is far too little detailed to be of real service, especially as no table of contents in their actual order is anywhere set out. The Dictionary, in point of fact, affords a good deal more information than the index of subjects gives any notion of : for example, Leibniz's important distinction of symbolical and in- tuitive knowledge is not omitted, but is far from having its presence sufficiently suggested by " Knowledge, Application of," even when the index of names adds " Leibniz, Knowledge ". The absence of a table of contents, setting out the main topics in order of treatment and the steps of the treatment in order, is to be regretted in the interest of the student, more than in the interest of the reviewer. The reviewer can, at a certain cost of time, turn over the pages and discover that there are twenty-four main topics in all ; that the first two are general or introductory (" Designations, &c.," " Mind ") ; and that the remaining twenty -two are grouped under three heads of "Psychology and Philosophy "(A.) "of Cognition," (B.) "of Feeling," (C.) "of the Will" and one of (D.) "Moral Philosophy or Ethics ;; . The last ( 19-24) includes as final main topic "The Immor- tality of Man ". Under " Cognition " ( 3-13) the most noticeable feature is that the three closing sections (pp. 223-91) are taken up with an attempt to characterise the chief philosophical thinkers or schools ancient, medie- val and modern by extracts almost entirely drawn from books written about them. Regarding the Dictionary in general, it is not to be denied that good and intelligent use has been made of the material collected, perhaps as good use as was at all possible ; nor should the editor's manifest effort to give fair and full representation of views with which his Intro- duction shows him to have least sympathy, remain unacknowledged. It is the original collector's work that, as far as its quality may be judged from the evidently extensive remains of it, lies most open to criticism. Confining himself (as the editor does too) for the most part to modern books in English (original or translated), the collector seems, first of all, to have been excessively liberal in his allowance of philosophical character to particular works, and then, among works to which that character might