Elements of Metaphysics

Abstract

PROF. MACKENZIE is to be congratulated on having produced an exceedingly useful little book of a kind which has no precise counterpart in our current philosophical literature. Within the compass of less than two hundred small pages he deals very suggestively with the nature of the metaphysical problems, the methods of meta physical science and its relation to the rest of our theoretical and practical interests, science in general, art, ethics, and religion. The aim of his discussion is not so much to indicate conclusions as to lead his reader to comprehend the nature of the problems to be solved and the methods of solution which are at our command. Hence the beginner in philosophy could hardly have a better introduction to what is, after all, the main business of philosophy, the practice of thinking intelligently for himself on the ultimate problems of knowledge. So far as the author's own conclusions in philosophy are put forward, they indicate a rare catholicity of view with a certain bias in favour of the line of thought, represented by Aristotle and Hegel among the great names of metaphysics, which insists upon development as the key to the understanding of the forms of existence. As might be expected from his choice of philosophical masters, Prof. Mackenzie is an idealist in his general position, though he evidently realises the difficulties which beset an over-hasty idealism, and states his result in an avowedly tentative form.

Elements of Metaphysics.

By J. S. Mackenzie. Pp. xv + 172. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1902.); Price 4s. 6d.