CURRENT LITERATURE.
Philosophy without Assumptions. By Thomas Penynton Kirkman, M.A., F.R.S. (Longmans.)—To make and to grant no assumptions is, in Mr. Kirkman's view, the only safe standing-point of philosophy. If we would learn to reason closely, we must learn to be good doubters. This is the text of Mr. Kirkman's book, and he is never tired of repeating it. "We have," be says, "so many lame philosophers, because we have so few thorough doubters. Why have we all these disgraceful wranglings in science and theology ? It is not because men will doubt too much, but because they will not doubt enough." The author has evidently had a mathematical training, and one advantage of such a training is, he says, " that it teaches a man to hold a doubt in his teeth till it is torn out, as from the mouth of a lion, by the sheer force of demonstration." How does Mr. Kirkman apply all this ? He goes back to the fundamental proposition of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sum, which he renders, " I am, and know that I am, a conscious thinker." To this one postulate he endeavours to restrict himself. Under the word "think- ing " he includes every state or change of consciousness, every sensa- tion, volition, every will-effort of which he may be conscious. It is from this last will-effort, or will-force, as ho generally calls it, that he derives all his philosophical conceptions. It is probably to his use of the word " will," and to what he builds on it, that ex- ception would be taken in the doubting minds to which he so persistently appeals. Mr. Kirkman is aware of this, for he re- presents his opponents as saying, in reply to him, that what he calls his will, instead of being a cause of force, is a necessary effect and resultant of the forces found in action on material atoms. His entire philosophy may be said to rest on our consciousness of " will-effort," or " will-force," as an ultimate fact. Out of this we get at the notion of external resisting forces, being and action not our own, which make up the "cosmos." We are sure that our will-force is something real, and so we are equally sure that the forces which resist it, that is, the external world, is also reaL That this" will- force " is something about which there can be no mistake is, he thinks, fully attested, because it can be measured, graduated by means of ex- periments repeated again and again. Nor can there be any mistake about there being forces, not our own, which act upon us. We push against a wall, and we know that we are resisted, because we are con- scious that we are putting forth " will-force." We, therefore, rightly infer the existence of external forces. But we must not talk about matter. This, according to Mr. Kirkman, is a purely gratuitous as- sumption. All we can say is that there are centres of force, points without dimensions, which attract and repel each other so as to preserve a condition of stable equilibrium. This was Boscovich's theory, and Mr. Kirkman, it seems, entirely adopts it. Indeed, he thinks that BOE- conich did more to construct a scientific theory of the cosmos than all subsequent thinkers. Ho may be right, but there is some difficulty in conceiving centres of resistance making up a resisting line or surface. Common-sense seems to go with Mr. Herbert Spencer when he says that to suppose "that central forces can reside in points occupying no space whatever is utterly beyond human power." However, our author dis- regards this consideration, and laughs at those who hold that a belief in matter is a necessity of the human mind. He is a shrewd, hard- headed man, and he deals heavy blows, but he should remember that he is on ground full of dangerous pitfalls, and should respect rather more the intellectual strength of such men as Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer. He makes great fan of Professor Tyndall, "at the top of his tall ladder, with his hammer in his hand, nailing up a notice to warn off all parsons, poets, metaphysicians, moralists from the domain of Cosmogony." The Professor's famous sentence about "matter containing the promise and potency of every form and quality of life" may be neither very original, nor very helpful or instructive, but still he does not deserve to be treated as an impostor. Mr. Kirkman has written, in many respects, a clever book, but he is too fond of making- jokes.
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