The above title outlines Professor Collingwood’s project for the reinstatement of metaphysics in answer to Kant’s question, ‘How can metaphysics become scientific?’ Since metaphysics has hitherto been a mistake about metaphysics, it was time something should be done about it.

In the books called Metaphysical ( = the next after the physics = much the same kind of title as ‘Collected Works,’ vol. viii), says Professor Collingwood, Aristotle undertakes two tasks. The first is the study (First Science) of the presuppositions of the ordinary non-metaphysical sciences; the second is the construction of a science (ontology) of pure being, and therefore (natural theology) of God. As first science metaphysics is logically presupposed by all the other sciences, although from the learner’s point of view it is approached only when the other sciences have been to some degree mastered. As last science (wisdom) it will be the ultimate goal of the scientist’s pilgrimage, and the most explicit name for it will be theology.

The first chapter of Professor Collingwood’s book is a condensed paraphrase of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. The second separates the two tasks mentioned above and argues, in continuity with Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel, that a science of ‘pure being ‘is a contradiction in terms.

The grounds of this conclusion are already visible in the paraphrase of Aristotle in his first chapter (p. g). Speaking of the system of the subordination of the sciences, he says: ‘At the base of the system of universals there are universals which are infimae species, not giving rise to any further sub-species.