Abstract
EVEN if the thinking of this book were of the best, it would seem a somewhat expensive morsel at half the price; and its thinking is not of the best. It professes to be an exposition of the leading doctrine of Schopenhauer, that in self-consciousness the primacy belongs to will. The author is at the same time careful to explain that he is a Vedântist while Schopenhauer is a Buddhist, but we doubt if the ordinary man will appreciate these fine distinctions. We rather fear that the ordinary man will be repelled by a certain lack of unity, coherence, systematic statement, and logical proof. Thus, for example, we have a chapter full of irrelevancy on “hysteria and sophistry, the deadly evils of civilisation.” Thus, too, we have a small appendix on the notion of life, which explains that everything in the world is in a certain sense alive, and seems to regard it as a valid argument that “the language of the skilled artisan is full of anthropomorphic expressions.” A five-page statement of first principles at the end has certain of the merits that are so conspicuously lacking in the main body of the volume.
The Unity of Will. Studies of an Irrationalist.
By George Ainslie Hight. Pp. xv + 244. (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1906.) Price 10s. 6d. net.
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The Unity of Will Studies of an Irrationalist . Nature 74, 380 (1906). https://doi.org/10.1038/074380b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/074380b0