Review of The Secret of Personality by G. T. Ladd
Ellsworth Faris
Four preceding volumes of Professor Ladd forming a series in which he discussed the problems of knowledge, duty, faith, and hope are followed by this fifth book, in which the search is continued for some scientific assurance for the existence of a metaphysical soul and for some scientific information concerning the nature of it. There is no break with the point of view set forth in the other four books from which numerous quotations are cited. The effort is rather to elaborate the same argument from a slightly different point of view. That there is a soul is held to be proved by the social character of our thought, by the witness of language, by the fact of will and character, and by the evidence furnished by the tendency to reason, to follow conscience, and to love beauty. There is no doubt, therefore, of the existence of the soul.
( 222) Concerning the nature of the soul, however, neither science nor philosophy has any helpful word. Faith in immortality offers the only clue (p, 275). The modern social psychology as set forth by Dewey and Mead is ignored in the argument.
ELLSWORTH FARIS
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
