Abstract

Modern cultivation has multiplied the classic sciences into families of fissionable specialities, whose individual methods and objects tend to be communicated less and less to the man of general culture and even to the specialist fellow traveller. One established means of restoring basic communication lies in the periodic exposition by a team of sympathetic experts of the problems, historic personalities and principles of solution of each family, so that concise, accurate reference is readily available both to the serious student and to the enquiring colleague who may wish to grasp a point of research, theory or jargon without having to search for it precariously in the deceptive haystack of selective text-books, monographs and learned papers. This solution, however, is prodigal of resources, material and intellectual—only anguished editors know what toil underlies the serenity of the expert encyclopedia, with its alphabetical reference, succinct scholarship and up-to-date analysis of every minute point at issue. Convinced lovers of wisdom should quail less than others, perhaps, from this herculean task. In fact, while this century has seen some new philosophic dictionaries and a fair representation of philosophic topics in general encyclopedias, no specialised philosophic encyclopedia has appeared to continue the early enterprise of Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology and of Hasting’s Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Now within two years has come the prodigious completion of a meticulous set of four Italian volumes, which survey the whole history and scope of philosophic and cognate science, and present the reviewer with a veritable embarras des richesses.