Publisher's Synopsis
Mr. Belfort Bax, in "The Problem of Reality," "is fully conscious that he has undertaken an unpopular task in attempting to deal with "metaphysic." "It would be useless to be deterred from this by any fear lest the ordinary Philistine should, at the mere use of the word, be thrown into convulsions. Of course, its bare mention will cause him to froth at the mouth with inept commonplaces as to the impossibility of any science other than that of 'phenomena.'" This, from the introduction, will prepare the reader for what he may expect, and he will not be disappointed. Mr. Bax, we infer, is a Socialist, and his socialism has penetrated to his philosophy. He asks: "May not the true significance of ethics, of duty, of the 'ought' of conscience, the conviction that the telos of the individual lies outside himself as such, consist in the fact that he is already tending towards absorption in a consciousness which is his own indeed, but yet not his own; that this limited self-consciousness of the animal body, with the narrow range of its memory-syntheses, is simply subservient and contributory to a completer, more determined self-consciousness of the social body as yet inchoate in time?" Of course, anything "may be," but we doubt if any one beside Mr. Bax can conceive the possibility of such an absorption of the individual consciousness in the general. Mr. Bax introduces in his general view of things the presence of the "a-logical" with some effect-the importance of feeling as preceding thought, and a chance element which vitiates any rigid application of the theory of causation.
-"The Westminster Review," Volume 139 [1893]
