Bernardino Varisco, the Italian metaphysician, was born at Chiari (Brescia). It was only in the later part of his long life that he developed his philosophy, for he began as a teacher of science and his early outlook was characterized by empiricism and positivism. These views found expression in Scienza e opinioni (1901). Thereafter he became interested in the problem of reconciling the scientific and religious ways of understanding the world and moved into metaphysics. In 1906 he was appointed professor of theoretical philosophy at the University of Rome, where he remained until his retirement in 1925. His metaphysic was a philosophy of spirit in the manner of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Rudolf Hermann Lotze and won him a considerable reputation in Italy and elsewhere.

The empiricism of Varisco's earlier phase was still apparent in the approach that he employed in constructing his distinctive philosophy. His starting...