er rendering was taken from a first
edition, and that the present one includes the variations made in five
editions which have now been issued. Even on British ground the work
thus translated has reached three editions, and the multitude of
"mankind at large," hearing of these repeated editions in Edinburgh
and of twenty thousand copies sold in Germany, may begin to prick
up its ears, and to think that this is one of the easily-read
philosophies of modern times, of which Taine and Michelet have the
secret. It is not so: abstractions stated with scientific precision in
their elliptic slang or technicality are not and cannot be made easy
reading: the strong hands of condensation which Schwegler pressed down
upon the material he controlled so perfectly have not left it lighter
or more digestible. The reader of this manual, for instance, will be
invited to consider the Eleatic argumentation that nothing exists but
Identity, "which is the beent, and that Difference, the non-beent,
does not exist; and therefore that he must not only not go on talking
about difference, but that he must not allude to difference as being
anything but the non-beent; for if he casts about for a synonym, and
arrives at the notion that he may say non-existent for non-beent, he
is abjectly wrong, for beent does not mean existent, and non-beent
non-existent, but it must be considered that the beent is strictly the
non-existent, and the existent the non-beent." Such are the amenities
of expression into which an eloquent metaphysician, trying his best
to speak popularly, is led. Yet the book is readable to that orderly
application of the mind which such studies exact, and is the firmest
and strictest guide now speaking our English tongue. Its steady
attention to the business in hand, from the pre-Socratic philosphies
down through the great age of the Greek revival, to Germany and Hegel
at last, is most sustained and admirable. Indeed, few thinkers of
Anglo-Saxon birth are able even to praise such a book as it deserves.
The only real impediment to its acceptance by scholars of our race is
that its attention to modern philosophy is rather partial, the French
and the Germans getting most of the story, and English philosophers
like Locke and Hume receiving scant attention, while Paley is not
recognized. This class of omissions is attended to by the Scotch
translator in a mass of annotations which lead him into a broad and
interesting view of British philosop