Abstract

Perhaps "perspective" is a better work than "thesis." For, as Smith unfolds it, this becomes such a large idea that it tends to generate, rather than require, lines of argument. The book as a whole is thus a speculative work in the best, and altogether too rare, sense of the word. In order to assess it, the reader cannot simply "go to his experience." He must also stand before his own ideas about experience. And if he does this in the spirit of impartiality, he may directly observe the sense of Smith's perspective: that we do not understand the basis and meaning of that chain of experience which constitutes our life. Such a realization will surely involve the feelings as well as thought. To the degree it involves both, it may be a moment of that sort of doubt which prefigures what Smith terms "the religious dimension" of life.