IF there is any truth in the Hobbesian maxim that no discourse can end in absolute knowledge of fact, then it is fatuous to paraphrase a philosopher, and reviews of philosophic works are especially futile. Mr. Santayana, furthermore, is the kind of philosopher who seems always to use the right amount of exact words, and thus lends himself to quotation rather than to summary. He needs to be quoted for the vigor of his thought and for the lucidity of his style.

The first essay in this volume is on Locke, "the father of modern psychology," whom Mr. Santayana puts in his place in the history of thought. The second essay is on F. H. Bradley, the sturdy but mistaken moralist, for whom Mr. Santayana, unlike Mr. T. S. Eliot, does not cherish an excessively warm regard. There is, as the third essay, a highly suggestive consideration of the theory of relativity and the new physics. The suspicion is advanced that "even Einstein is an imperfect relativist, and retains Euclidean space and absolute time at the bottom of his calculation, and recovers them at the end."

In the essay on Freud, the great Viennese is linked with Hindu philosophy, an astounding, but, it appears, by no means an impossible feat. Mr. Santayana's argument is very plausible and proceeds from Freud's assertion that "the goal of life is death." The concluding essay in this work deals with Julien Benda and the infinite as he propounds it. For his readers Mr. Santayana leaves a query. Are they to think that for Mr. Santayana the infinite is bad, as it was for the Greeks? Answers will vary.