Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 117 incorporate it in sharply limited form within the structure of his own metaphysical and psychological outlook. The final portion (Section IV) of Wolff's Psychologia rationalis deals with such topics as "spirit" ("a substance endowed with intellect and free will"; #643), the nature and limits of human wisdom, the origin of the soul in creation, its union with the body, immortality, and the souls of brutes which are not spirits though they manifest some behavioural analogues with human souls. As a result of the work of Professor ~cole and his publisher, students of the history of continental thought in the eighteenth century who wish to acquaint themselves with Wolff's psychology now have available fine editions of both the Psychologia empirica and the Psychologia rationalis. In these volumes, they will find a doctrine which displays an obvious indebtedness to Descartes, Leibniz, and the Scholastics--not to mention a variety of other sources--but which, nevertheless, is distinctive in its ultimate character and unique in its systematic form. The content of the two volumes is of some importance for the development of the history of philosophy; the distinction which they embody touches on the relationship between philosophy and the sciences, and especially upon the origin of psychology as a distinct discipline; and some of the issues with which they are concerned continue to trouble philosophers today. CHARLES A. Con Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes. By Jonathan Bennett. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Pp. 361. $5.75) A cursory glance at this book could prompt the reaction: Bennett has simply used Locke, Berkeley and Hume in a treatment of philosophical issues which interest him, without making a really serious attempt to understand the thought of the three philosophers . But such a reaction could not be sustained by a thorough and unprejudiced reading of the book. Professor Bennett does make a serious attempt to understand-whether successful or not is another matter. And this fact should not be obscured by the healthy amount of philosophical criticism in the book. Nor should it be obscured by Bennett's correct refusal to take Locke, Berkeley and Hume to be relatively easy philosophers whose doctrines and arguments can usefully be presented without elucidation . Furthermore, Bennett's book is in fact more an attempt to understand Locke, Berkeley and Hume than it is an effort to settle philosophical issues Bennett and many of us find interesting. The amount of text devoted to the former exceeds the amount of text devoted to the latter. And though Bennett does try to resolve philosophical issues that come up in discussing Locke, Berkeley or Hume, his resolutions often require considerably more discussion than he provides. For example, in Chapter III (p. 68) and in Chapter VI (pp. 133-139) Bennett opts for Phenomenalism as an answer to the problem of the relation of sensory states (sense-data) to objective things like tables and peoples' shadows. But well-known and forceful objections to Phenomenalism such as the one in the Appendix of R. M. Chisholm's Perceiving receive no rebuttal from Bennett. Bennett's book is deliberately selective; it does not purport to deal even with all the major aspects of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. (For instance, Locke's polemic against innate ideas gets none of Bennett's attention.) In the Preface Bennett tells us that his book treats of three topics--meaning, causality and the physical or objective world--in the company of the three philosophers. Construing these topics broadly, the bulk of 118 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY what Bennett says does fall under his own description of the book. However, there are portions of the book which are not, or are not primarily, concerned with meaning, causality or the objective world. Chapter VH includes discussion of the question whether Berkeley really thinks that objective things exist when unperceived by humans, a question coming under the heading "the objective world." But the emphasis in Chapter VII is simply on getting clear about Berkeley's two arguments for God's existence, and discussion of matters pertaining to causality and objectivity is subordinated to this aim. Also, the last two thirds of Chapter VIII dealing with, among other...