The Author of "The Alternative" is indebted to Mr. Henry Sidgwick for the following opinion of the work communicated in a letter to the Editor: "I have had an unexpected interim of enforced cessation from my work, which I have employed in reading about half the proof-sheets you sent me. Without reading any more - which for the present I have not time to do - I feel no doubt that the book deserves the attention of all students of philosophy, (...) from the amount of vigorous, precise, and independent thinking that it contains - thinking which appears to me generally consistent so far as it has been completely developed, though at some important points the work of definition and analysis does not seem to me to have been carried far enough. I also find the terse forcible individuality of the style attractive on the whole, though I cannot but wish that the Author had somewhat restrained his impulse to innovate in technical terminology.". (shrink)