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SHORTER NOTICES 439 But the astonishing genius of the writer is probably hidden from most of his readers. ... You meet Browne in a byway; you forcibly transfer him to your highway; deciding that you have made a mistake you pluck him out and set him to shine in the sky; then you say his light is hidden. And after that you elaborate a good deal on various aspects of the background of thought in his time-Baconian, Cartesian, Platonic. There are times when it is impossible not to wish that backgrounds could be daubed over and frameworks broken up to let the individual be seen. The best parts of this book are the two last chapters, on Browne's view of nature as the art of God, and man as the great amphibium. It seems to this reviewer surprising to speak of Browne's "peculiarly sombre and morbid cast of thought," but Professor Dunn writes pleasantly and interestingly about the general character of Browne's mind and imagination, and attempts an extended analysis of two or three significant passages. The evidence for an earlier statement that "undoubtedly the commonest epithet" for the author of Religio M ediei was "atheist" should be indicated. I believe the evidence is clearly the contrary, as can be seen by the European prefaces and annotations. N. J. ENDICOTT Philosophy of Nature. By JACQUES MARITAIN. New York: Philosophical Library. 1951. Pp. x, 198. $3.00. Aristotle divided all philosophy into two branches, the practical and the theoretical. The practical includes ethics, the theoretical he subdivided into physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The theoretical he deemed superior, for it embraces all of what may strictly be called knowledge. Today most sciences have broken away from philosophy. Descartes was symptomatic of the change which brought this about. He sought to reform philosophy for a practical goal, to make man the master of nature. The culmination was to be an ethics; ethics, as with the Stoics, would embrace the whole of philosophy. This effort found no fulfilment beyond Spinoza. Descartes is better remembered for his doctrine of method. For in the eighteenth century the distinction came to be made between philosophy and science; the part of the seventeenth -century effort which was successful was called science, physics. Prior to this time one might be a Platonist or an Aristotelian in physics. The new physics was neutral, a science everyone must accept regardless of his philosophic leanings. It was a branch of knowledge apart from philosophy, impoverishing philosophy, and authoritative for philosophy. SHORTER NOTICES 439 But the astonishing genius of the writer is probably hidden from most of his readers. ... You meet Browne in a byway; you forcibly transfer him to your highway; deciding that you have made a mistake you pluck him out and set him to shine in the sky; then you say his light is hidden. And after that you elaborate a good deal on various aspects of the background of thought in his time-Baconian, Cartesian, Platonic. There are times when it is impossible not to wish that backgrounds could be daubed over and frameworks broken up to let the individual be seen. The best parts of this book are the two last chapters, on Browne's view of nature as the art of God, and man as the great amphibium. It seems to this reviewer surprising to speak of Browne's "peculiarly sombre and morbid cast of thought," but Professor Dunn writes pleasantly and interestingly about the general character of Browne's mind and imagination, and attempts an extended analysis of two or three significant passages. The evidence for an earlier statement that "undouhtedly the commonest epithet" for the author of Religio Medici was "atheist" should be indicated. I believe the evidence is clearly the contrary, as can be seen by the European prefaces and annotations. N. J. ENDICOTT Philosophy of Nature. By JACQUES MARJTAIN. New York: Philosophical Library. 1951. Pp. x, 198. $3.00. Aristotle divided all philosophy into two branches, the practical and the theoretical. The practical includes ethics, the theoretical he subdivided into physics, mathematics, and metaphysics. The theoretical he deemed superior, for it embraces all of what may strictly be called knowledge...

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