Abstract
Tins is a philosophical sketch, or skeleton, clothed upon with the human interest of a story. A party of happy and well-to-do people are staying at a Scottish castle, and James Gordon expounds to them his philosophical views. These are of the idealistic kind, which may roughly be called Berkeleyan, and Gordon develops them very ingeniously, making some use of the modern psychological doctrine of the subconscious. All our knowledge of the world is a mental knowledge; all “things” are thoughts or, at least, cannot be proved to be anything further. But this does not destroy anything of importance, or reduce cosmos to chaos, as common-sense” might suppose. The world of each one's experience is real enough in each one's own mind, and there is no gain in attributing to any material kind of reality. The concordance, in general way, of my experience with your experience, is explained by supposing a universal-thinking or dominant Self who is thinking the world. Or, as Berkeley would say, the universe exists as the thought of God.
Puppets: a Work-a-Day Philosophy.
By George Forbes, F.R.S. Pp. ix + 183. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911.) Price 3s. 6d. net.
Enjoying our latest content?
Log in or create an account to continue
- Access the most recent journalism from Nature's award-winning team
- Explore the latest features & opinion covering groundbreaking research
or
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
H., J. Puppets: a Work-a-Day Philosophy . Nature 88, 4–5 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/088004b0
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/088004b0
