"me Axatyss or Marrm."—By Bertrand Hossell, vt, London, Keegan Paul, "preebner and Ca. Price, 187
The Snark has escaped again. Tt lilies been pursued under a thousand names, by a thousand philosophers, many of them with straws in their Tiairs and, in every case, it has [softly and suddenly vanished away. Mr. Bertrand Russell, in his "Analysis of Matter," which "sets out {to discover the philosophical oint-jerome of modern physics," comes no nearer to trapping the Boojem; and, on the whole, the verses of Lewis Carroll represent a sounder intellectual process, Mr. Bertrand Russell, who is admittedly a brilliant mathematician, sees no fundamental distinction between a thought and a Uilliard ball. Each is "a logical structure composed of neutral stut," whatever that may mean; and the conclusion of his book is: that "from the standpoint of philosophy; the istinetion between physical and mental is superficial and unreal." The trouble is that, in his "neuteat stuff," which is neither physical nor mental, he quite successfully loss both worlds. He arrives at his con-
[clusion through the misuse of worts, and through an ambiguity of state: ment which even the introduction of an occasional mathematical for-inula, as a kind of abracadabra fe: the impressionable, cannot disguls: says Mr, Alfred Noyes, writing in of the "Sunday Times."
His references to "relativity" and the "quanta theory" have little bear-{ing on his main theme; and they, too, seem to be introduced to distract attention from his sleight-of-hand. He concedes that the thoughts of Shakespeare and Bach do not come within the scope of physics; but, because their thoughts can only reach us through "certain black marks which they made on white paper," ho forgets even his "neutral stuff," and affirms that tone can doubt that "the causes of our emotions, when we read them, are purely physical." What else can this be called but intellectual "light-of-hand"? You do not get rid of your original cause by conceding it and then turning your attention te something else that is merely a means of conveying the. original. When, again, he remarks that "what the physiologist sees when he looks at a brain is part of his own brain, not part of the brain he lo examin: ing," and that "the feeling: of para about this view comes from wrong views of space," it isnot cxly the naively realistic doctor, or the unfortunate common-sense folk with whom philosophers are 80 severe, that will lift at Jeaet one eyebrow.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.