Philosophy is keenly interested in the new cosmological theories. For, whatever view we take of the nature of ultimate reality, the world in space and time is an appearance of that reality, and must bear some relation to it. That the discoveries of Copernicus and Darwin have deeply influenced both philosophy and religion is universally admitted. Many think that Einstein and his colleagues may produce a revolution not less momentous.

In the January number of the quarterly journal published by The British Institute of Philosophy, called Philosophy, Sir James Jeans with extraordinary ability has represented the view of the universe which may be held now in the twentieth century by a mathematician, and concludes that this representation contributes to and upholds an idealistic philosophy. Now with the contention that an idealistic philosophy is superior to any other, that is to say nearer the truth, we may be allowed to sympathize. Several physicists, even in the nineteenth century, were inclined to sustain the essence of Berkeley's view, or to consider that metaphysical truth must lie somewhere in that direction. G. F. FitzGerald, for instance, was notably of that opinion. But he was not prepared on that account to abandon the physical view of existence, and to take refuge in mere mathematical abstractions.

So far I have taken prose and poetry where admittedly they exist, in literature, and attempted to discover the difference between them by taking pieces of prose or poetry which have the same or much the same subjects and comparing them with one another. In all these pairs of passages I thought I could detect this difference: that in the poem the subject as rendered in words (for the poem is words and nothing else) acquires a life of its own, is a living thing, as it were, living its own life like an animal or plant, is organic, and, in a word, concrete. While the prose, for all its constructive unity, is not self-subsistent, but is descriptive of a given subject, even though that subject is itself created by the writer, as in a novel, and, in a word, is analytic. It is not the greater passion or vividness of the poem, for prose may be vivid, as in Carlyle, and passionate, as in Burke. It is that the poet places himself and places his hearer within the subject itself, and works from within outwards, while the prosaist describes relatively from without. Both of them describe, the poet as well as the prosaist. But the prosaist builds up his subject so as to bring it before your mind. The poet starts with his subject in its integrity, places the hearer's mind within it, and his exposition is the unfolding life of the subject itself.

First Criticism of the Theory (161C–162C).—This is of the nature of an argumentum ad hominem. In the first place, (1) It is surprising that so clever a man as Protagoras did not see that he proved more than he intended, for according to his theory not only are all men, the wise and the foolish, reduced to the same level, but on the plane of sentient experience it is just as true to say that a pig or a tadpole is the measure of all things.

It is difficult within the space of an article such as this to do more than indicate the principal features of Renouvier's philosophy, and it is, of course, impossible to give in detail a discussion of the immense wealth of thought and argument contained in his writings. Of his thought before 1854, the most important piece of work was the article on “Philosophie” written for the Encyclopédic Nouvelle. This in some respects shows his own thought developing in the direction

It is the custom, nowadays, to say that “realism” is very dead indeed, and to speak of it invariably in the past tense, or only in the historical present. What happened, we are told, was that, during the first quarter of the twentieth century, two distinct bodies of men propounded either “naïf” or “new” realism. The naif realists followed Mr. G. E. Moore—to some extent and without his consent; and they were called naif (by some misogynist) because the masculine form of the adjective expressed their rugged creed better than the more usual feminine form. (They were esprits forts rather than esprits fins).