A Defence of Idealism: Some Questions and Conclusions

Abstract

MISS MAY SINCLAIR'S “Defence of Idealism “is written with a most refresh ing ease and freedom from technicality. It is the work of an amateur, but of an amateur who has read much and sees how arguments that are usually thought to be abstruse bear closely upon problems which should command the interest of every thinking person. Professional students cannot fail to regard such a book as a gratifying proof of the vitality of philosophy in this country. The idealism which Miss Sinclair sets out to defend is not idealism in general, but idealistic monism. It would have been well if Miss Sinclair had said plainly what she understands by this doctrine, and how precisely it differs from other “isms “to which Miss Sinclair is opposed. Some times she speaks as though the enemy were the New Realism, sometimes Pluralism, sometimes Pragmatism, sometimes something else. To be definite is not to be dull, necessarily; it would not have detracted from the readableness of Miss Sinclair's book if she had made plainer just why she disagrees with William James, M. Bergson, and Mr. Bertrand Russell, to mention three of the contemporary names which figure most frequently In her pages. However, let us take the book as we find it. To a vague and there-or-thereabouts doctrine one can offer nothing but a criticism correspondingly inexact.

A Defence of Idealism: Some Questions and Conclusions.

By May Sinclair. Pp. xxi + 396. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1917.) Price 12s. net.