Principles of western civilisation

PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION

By BENJAMIN KIDD.

TIMES.—‘' The book, which is striking and masterful, must take high rank in English speculative literature, and will for years give rise to controversies. It is singularly rich in original expressions coined by the author with reference to his own particular wants, yet certain to weld themselves in our literature.”

SPEC7 ATOR (First Notice).—‘' Mr. Benjamin Kidd has once more written a book which every thoughtful person will have to read, and, what is more, will wish to read. In an age of apparently increasing Materialism, and with the aid of the very calculus which Materialism has been supposed to supply and support, he rehabilitates Idealism.”

SPECTATOR (Second Notice).—‘' What is of more importance is the variety of points touched, the novelty and breadth of the hypothesis and its application. It is no less than a new Philosophy of History. . . . All minor blemishes are of little importance compared with the drift and sweep of the whole, which are irresistible. If the formulation halts, the general argument develops itself with great and growing force; if here and there the writing is inadequate, the general eloquence is very marked, and kindles again and again into a glow of beauty and intensity.’

DAILY CHRONICLE,—“' The new light afforded by Mr. Kidd's present book will certainly surprise alike those who were impressed by his Socza? Evolution and those who have come to believe that the principle of Evolution was incapable of casting any further illumination on social, moral, and theological problems, beyond that achieved, for example, by Mr. Herbert Spencer. The views advanced in this work, in fact, transcend Mr, Spencer's, in the breadth of the synthesis they attempt and the profound significance that any approximate verification of them would carry with it.”

DAILY MAIL.—‘ A work of immense interest to the thinker, one which is certain to exercise a potent influence upon the world, and one which gives us a good philosophic theory on which to work in this our day.”

DAILY NEWS.—‘‘ A work which will doubtless rivet the attention of all serious thinkers in England to-day. We feel that we have done scant justice to a book that is the labour of many years, and which in its aim and its performance does something to raise the level of present English literature."’

SCOTSMAN.—'‘Simpler in construction than the earlier work, free from the ambiguity in the use of certain outstanding terms which tended to obscure its argument, and written with even greater dignity and distinction of style, it cannot fail to command widespread attention, and will probably find yet greater favour... . Analysis so masterly, generalisation so bold, co-ordination of the various aspects of human history so original and suggestive, characterise the work of, perhaps, no other English writer to the same degree. The book will again, and even more than its predecessor, leave all men interested in the significance of our time, Mr. Kidd's debtors.”

PILOT.—“' Once in possession of his formula he applies it resolutely to old and new. As with some space-penetrating telescope, he sweeps the universe, ranging over histories and institutions until he has revealed the connection between our present-day problems and the past out of which they have arisen—nay, not only, or even chiefly, that, but the bearing on them of future developments as yet descried in their potency, not in definite form. Thus the whole yolume exhibits what may be termed a drama of thought.”

MACMILLAN AND CO., Lrp., LONDON.