Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. did not lie: "But although Dewey’s book is incredibly ill written, it seemed to me after several re-readings to have a feeling of intimacy with the inside of the cosmos that I found unequalled. So [it seemed to me as] God would have spoken had He been inarticulate but keenly desirous to tell you how it was."

Dewey seems to be on to something important in his critique of non-historical metaphysics, so I found certain parts of this book very interesting. But in general I think his style of presentation is terribly unclear. There's really no argumentative thread at all. Most of the time I couldn't understand how the subject matter under discussion was at all relevant for metaphysical questions. So this is a book with a few gems and a hundred loose ends.

This is Dewey's mature metaphysical work. It is an empirical investigation of the generic traits of all natural existences. Experience in all its complexity is taken to manifest the fundamental traits of nature in the fullness of their evidence. The work also covers the distinction and relation of the human and nonhuman. Finally, it contains a good deal of historical matter regarding previous philosophical systems. One of the great works of all time. ( )