vice versa. As senior member of the notorious "Metaphysical Club," Wright was "boxing master" to the fledgling pragmatists C. S. Peirce and William James. Peirce admired his mentor's sheer intellect as superior to his own, and Darwin himself respected a mind "so clear" that he asked Wright to develop a theory of human volition and consciousness. Regrettably, Wright's brilliance was never fully vested in his philosophical work. His radical views precluded regular academic employment, and for years he was forced to scrape out a living as a computer for the Nautical Almanac. Despite an amiable disposition, he suffered bouts of depression and inertia. His untimely death at age forty-five leaves suggestive essays and correspondence but no developed system.This volume recovers the principle publications of Chauncey Wright, originally collected by his friend and publisher Charles Eliot Norton. Most of the articles reproduced here are book reviews that appeared in The Nation or The North American Review; they focus upon philosophical method, natural selection, and the evolution of consciousness. The second volume of this set retrieves Wright's correspondence, and with it a wealth of detail about his life and his views about religion, morality, and social thought. The final volume, introduced by the dean of Wright scholars, Edward H. Madden, explores Wright's legacy among his contemporaries and successors.Although Madden has called Chauncey Wright America's "forgotten philosopher," a steady trickle of studies over the years testifies to the enduring character of his thought. Whether or not his radical empiricism entitles him the honor of "father of pragmatism," clearly his efforts to break the yolk of a priori metaphysics cleared a path soon followed by Peirce, James, and Dewey. And Wright's view of evolution is strikingly modern, more so even than that of Darwin hi...