(1) William James and Henri Bergson: A Study in Contrasting Theories of Life (2) The Mirror of Perception (3) What is Adaptation? (4) The Story of Yone Noguchi: Told by Himself

Abstract

(1) NOT the least useful contribution to philosophy made by William James was a negative one, viz., the ignoring of the traditional antithesis between reality and appearance. This antithesis may safely be said to have been the original sin of metaphysics since meditation began, and James's philosophy may most fruitfully be studied from this starting-point. The older philosophers, logical and static, discriminated between appearance and reality “in one or all of the compensatory terms of God, freedom, immortality, and cosmic unity”; and later, “in response to the pressure of rapidly growing sciences, men faced fact, only to change it in such wise as thereby to satisfy the inner need for logical consistency.” But James “insisted that each event of experience must be acknowledged for what it appears to be, and heard for its own claims. To neither doubt nor belief, datum nor preference, term nor relation, value nor fact, did he concede superiority over the others. … Pure experience knows no favourites. He admits into reality … evil as well as good, discontinuities as well as continuities, un-human as well as human, plurality as well as unity, chance and novelty as well as order and law.”

(1) William James and Henri Bergson: A Study in Contrasting Theories of Life.

By Dr. H. M. Kallen. Pp. xi + 248. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: Cambridge University Press, 1914.) Price 6s. net.

(2) The Mirror of Perception.

By L. Hall. Pp. 129. (London: Love and Malcomson, Ltd., 1914.) Price 2s. 6d.

(3) What is Adaptation?

By Prof. R. E. Lloyd. Pp. vii + 110. (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1914.) Price 2s. 6d. net.

(4) The Story of Yone Noguchi: Told by Himself.

Pp. xi + 255. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1914.) Price 6s. net.