relationship with some transcendent reality which, in the moment of experience, is believed to be God." To the second, he replies by distinguishing between criticism of mystical experience which is abstract, and that which is concrete. Denying the possibility of judgment in the abstract, Dr. Jones makes his own test of the normality of the experience a pragmatic one. Granting that there are extreme types, and calmer and more restrained types as well, Dr. Jones affirms that we should not class as abnormal experiences which bring "spaciousness of mind, new interior dimensions, ability to stand the universe-and the people in it and capacity to work at human tasks with patience, endurance, and wisdom." It is to the third question that Dr. Jones devotes the major part of discussion, centering his thought, in the main, upon the problem as to whether the mind has any way of approach, except by way of the senses, to any kind of reality. Since the answer to this question must lie in the realm of experience, the mystic's own experience is his ultimate answer. That there is a world of spiritual reality of which we know, not through the senses, but through the channels of spiritual activity. That he himself has found that world, the mystic is as sure as he is that Columbus found San Salvador. After all, the ultimate answer to the reality of the knowledge, is phrased in Dr. Jones's succinct sentence about mystical experience, "It makes God sure to the person who has had the experience."

Providing Spiritual Opportunities for Our Fellow-Countrymen.— That a tremendously large field in need of educational facilities and moral uplift lies within a few hours' ride from Washington is urged by Sara A. Brown in the American Child (August, 1921). She makes a moving appeal in behalf of the mountaineers of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. A study of the conditions of rural child life in Appalachia resulted in a compilation of schedules for 1,005 dependent and neglected children of whom 482 were visited in 172 homes.

There is no excuse for our government and the religious organizations of our land to allow such conditions to continue long in the future. It is to be noted that the church has done more than any other institution for the well-being of the southern mountaineers; but it has hardly made a beginning.

Some Social Consequences of Divorce.-A study of children in institutions of Los Angeles by Mrs. E. K. Foster and Carrie M. Burlingame revealed some disturbing facts which they have presented in the Journal of Delinquency (July, 1921). Two hundred and twenty-three children were studied and the following facts discovered: Over half had both

parents living. Nearly half were in institutions because parents were separated or divorced. Less than one-fourth were over ten years of age.

Three-fourths of the parents living were not over forty years of age. Three-fourths of the parents were American born.

Investigations in other cities bring equally severe indictments against divorces. It no doubt would be interesting and stimulating if these studies also revealed how many of the divorced parents were professing Christians and regular church attendants.

Armaments and Missions.-The bearing which disarmament may have upon foreign missionary work is a subject which should command the interest of Christian people. Discussing this subject in Missions (November, 1921) Professor Henry B. Robins, of Rochester Theological Seminary, makes the following statements:

First of all, no people which faces the uncertainties of a world under arms and still arming can throw itself with a whole heart into sacrificial preparation for the early establishment of a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and love. Nobody can measure the moral enthusiasm and active good will which will be generated through a general movement for disarmament.

And again, the effect upon the non-Christian world of such a concerted act of the nations or any great group of them would be arresting. ... When the new situation has become an accepted fact, the representative of the Christian gospel might find its claim to represent a heavenly order, a new society of peace and good will, more readily and completely credited by the heathen mind. Away out in western China I saw the armed employees of a great American corporation patrolling the Yangtze River, "shooting the fear of God," as they said, into the natives with modern machine guns. That is one way of doing it; but I am thinking that only the propulsion of a mighty new affection will ever project the love of God into the heart of the pagan world. What a difference it would make if our claim to be a Christian nation would be somewhat supported by the facts.

Lyman Abbott on the Fundamentals.—In an article, "The Fundamentals of Christianity" in the Outlook for November 23, 1921, Dr. Abbott concludes with the following words:

If Christianity is a system of philosophy, then certain doctrines might be regarded as fundamental in that system. But if Christianity is a life, the fundamentals are not understandings by the intellect as to the nature of the Bible, Christ, and of Sacrifice, but acts of the will, as repentance, love, and loyalty. And if so, the condition of admission to the Church of Christ should not be acceptance of a creed, ancient or modern simple or complex, but the conservation of the life to the service of God in the service of his children under the leadership of Jesus Christ.

BOOK REVIEWS

A NEO-REALIST'S CONCEPTION OF GOD'

Simon Alexander, professor of philosophy in the University of Manchester, has been recognized for some years as a leading exponent of the "new realism" in England. His articles, which have been appearing from time to time in Mind and in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society have attracted a good deal of attention in philosophical circles, so that when it became known that he had worked out a new metaphysical system along realistic lines, the publication of these Gifford lectures was awaited with interest.

In the introduction to his metaphysical treatise Professor Alexander indicates briefly his position with reference to the problem of knowledge. Although bred, as he tells us, in the school of Bradley and Bosanquet, he has reacted emphatically against even the revised version of absolute idealism which these thinkers present. What he objects to, fundamentally, in absolutism is its assertion that the parts of the world are not ultimately real or true, that only the whole is true. Alexander's own view is that minds and external things are co-ordinate members of the real world, the act of mind and the object of the mind's awareness being distinct existences united by the relation of "compresence," or togetherness, in the experience. The mind's direct awareness of its own mental state is denoted by the term "enjoyment," while "contemplation" is the term reserved for the mind's awareness of objects. Every object is, as an existence, independent of mind; it is selected for contemplation from the world of independent being. The object owes to mind neither its qualities as known nor its existence, but only its being known.

Philosophy for Alexander is essentially metaphysics, defined as the empirical study of the non-empirical, or in other words the science of the a priori features of the actual world. It is the study of the pervasive as opposed to the variable characters of experienced things. With this conception of his task, he presents his material in four books: I, SpaceTime; II, The Categories; III, The Order and Problems of Empirical Existence; and IV, Deity.

In its general features the system reminds one of Spinoza's, except that instead of Space and Thought as the fundamental attributes of

Space, Time and Deity (The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow, 1916-1918). S. Alexander. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. 2 vols. xvi+347 and xiii+437 pages.

Being, all existences, mental as well as physical, are viewed as modifications of Space and Time. Space and Time, according to Alexander, are in reality one; they are the same reality considered under different attributes. In reply to the question, What do you mean by Space and Time? Do you mean by it physical Space and Time, extension and duration, or do you mean mental space and time, that which you experience in your mind? The answer is that in the end both are one and the same; what is contemplated as Space-Time is enjoyed as mental spacetime.

The categories, or pervasive characters of existent things, are "the grey or neutral-colored canvas on which the bright colors of the universe are embroidered." They are common to mind and to physical things, but this does not mean that as present in the physical they are due to mind; rather is it that they are fundamental properties of Space-Time, of which both minds and physical things are modifications. The categories examined are Identity, Diversity, and Existence; Universal, Particular, and Individual; Relation; Order; Substance, Causality, Reciprocity, Quantity and Intensity; Whole and Parts, and Number; Motion; the One and the Many. Quality and Change are not regarded as categories, inasmuch as quality is simply a collective name for the various specific and variable characters of things, while change is transition from one quality or variable empirical character to another.

In the third book interest centers in the discussion of mind and its relations. The main levels of existence are motion, matter as mechanical, matter with secondary qualities, life, and mind. When matter, which is itself a complex of motions, attains to a certain degree of complexity, colors, sounds, and other secondary qualities emerge. Life is an emergent quality taken on by a certain complex of physico-chemical processes belonging to the material level. Similarly mind, the last empirical quality of finites that we know, is an emergent from the level of living existence when it reaches a certain new complexity.

one.

The doctrine of a parallel relation between the mental and the neural is rejected on the ground that in reality they are not two, but one. That which, as experienced from the inside, or enjoyed, is a conscious process, is, as experienced from the outside, or contemplated, a neural The mental process is physiological, and it would seem that it is simply its locality which makes it mental instead of merely neural, although its being mental means that a new feature, that of mind, has emerged. However, while mental process is something new, a fresh creation, the mind is itself identical with the totality of certain neural processes, only not as contemplated, but as enjoyed. Different processes of consciousness

can belong to one mind simply because all the parts of the neural structure are physically connected. Thus the entire weight of the system before us is against belief in the continued existence of mind after physical death. "Should the extension of mind beyond the limits of the bodily life be verified," the author admits, "the larger part of the present speculation will have to be seriously modified or abandoned."

Unlike the empirical qualities of external things, values, or tertiary qualities, as Alexander calls them, imply the amalgamation of the object with the human appreciation of it. What is true, good, or beautiful, is not true or good or beautiful except as many minds through conflict and co-operation have produced standards of approval or disapproval. Values are the creation of mind, but they are real characters which real objects possess by virtue of their relations to minds, which they satisfy. Pragmatism is criticized in these words:

All science is the unification of propositions of experience, and a proposition is true if it works with other propositions. Were the doctrine of pragmatism nothing but an assertion of this fact it could hardly claim to be a novelty. Its significance is that it maintains that there is nothing more to be said of truth. So apprehensive is it of the doctrine that reality is a closed system, fixed and eternal, into which all finites are absorbed and lose their finite character in the supposed Absolute, that it dispenses with all inquiry into the ultimate nature of reality. Reality is indeed no fixed thing, but being temporal is evolving fresh types of existence. But truth which is not guided by reality is not truth at all.

Appended to the discussion of values in general there is a protest against the philosophical method which adopts value as the clue to the nature of reality; to proceed thus, it is claimed, is to discolor the truth with our affections. Now, while our general criticisms of the book are reserved until the end of this review, a critical remark may be interjected at this point. Illegitimate as it may be to assume that reality as a whole, or fundamentally, is like what we appreciate, it does seem permissible to ask what logically must be believed about reality if we are to maintain without inconsistency that our critically examined and still assured evaluations are valid. This method is not to be used to contradict verified scientific results, but to supplement the necessary deficiencies of scientific information. For example, if the consciousness of moral obligation is to be regarded as at all valid, man must be to some extent a creative determiner of his own conduct. Absolute determinism, which scientific observation never has demonstrated and, we may be sure, never will demonstrate, can be contradicted with moral certainty. It is because he scorns to make use of such considerations in philosophy