BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES. GESCHICHTE DER ETHIK IN DER NEUEREN PHILOSOPHIE. VON FRIEDRICH JODL, o. ö Professor der Philosophie an der deutschen Universität zu Prag. (2 vols. ́Stuttgart. Vol. i., 1882. Vol. ii., 1889.) The publication of the second of these two volumes was delayed by a change of residence and the pressure of new duties upon the author, with all the hindrances incident to both of these circumstances. The contents of the first volume include a short introductory account of Greek and Christian ethics, and then proceed to discuss quite fully modern ethics from Bacon to Kant. There is in this no attempt to give a philosophic classification of schools, because it is found impossible to make the philosophic and the historical order go together. In the second volume this is to some extent accomplished. It begins with Kant and includes all but contemporaries of the nineteenth century. The first division is that of nationalities, and none are admitted except England, Germany, and France. In Germany are considered the schools of Idealism headed by Kant, the mediation between Idealism and Naturalism headed by Schleiermacher, Pessimism by Schopenhauer, and Eudæmonism by Beneke and Feuerbach. In France there are the two schools, "Spiritualism" and Positivism, headed respectively by Cousin and Comte. In England there are also two schools, Intuitionism and Utilitarianism, the former led by Dugald Stewart, Whewell, and Mackintosh, and the latter by Bentham and Mill. It will be apparent from this outline that the two volumes present a fine field for study, and such it is. Besides the merit of the treatment adds to the interest of the subject. It was the original intention of the author that the second volume should contain a summary of results, but this, it was found, would require a volume by itself, and it has been omitted. Fortunately we do not have to await such a summary in order to determine the position and views of the author. These are very well defined in the method of criticism adopted and in the sympathies occasionally betrayed thereby, as well as in the brief résumés appended to the discussion of each of the three nationalities considered in the second volume. These reviews betray an evident antipathy to Kant in every respect except that in which he exalted the validity and authority of moral imperatives, or the ideal, after he had cut away the usual grounds upon which they were made to rest, and also they indicate an equal admiration for J. S. Mill and his utilitarianism. Indeed, it is not necessary to go outside of the author's relation to these two authors to discover both the strength and the weakness of his sympathies and antipathies. Aside from all criticism upon the views either latent or expressed, the work is one of the best that has appeared. There is less ability to appreciate the ethical consciousness which has sought to express itself in various theories than there is to measure their relative merits according to a given standard. This is a defect in criticism, and exposition, although it might not be in mere history. But even if the work be faulty in this respect, it is not wanting in candor and fairness, a quality which will cover a multitude of other defects, and this quality has been so cultivated in the author as never to narrow his sympathies in any such way as appears in the philosophy of J. S. Mill. Even the opposition to the fundamental conceptions in the Kantian school is never tempered by the feeling which supporters of that system would have to deplore. All criticism is scientifically and temperately conducted. In the main the work is what a true history of ethics must be; namely, a history of tendencies, and the author finds that the three national movements of which he treats converge in a form of positivism, which he thinks is best represented in the system of Mill. There is, however, a disposition to view systems of ethics apart from the metaphysical theories out of which they grew, and to consider them as too exclusively the product of existing circumstances, social, political, and moral. This is the natural consequence of the method and tendencies set afloat by evolution, but it neglects both the agencies and the material elements of metaphysical systems in determining ethical views, and these influences are often more effective and perhaps always superior in character to all the contributions of environment. Metaphysical systems have always presented the principle or fundamental conception which is found in the particular phenomena to be explained by it, whether those phenomena were scientific or ethical. But evolution, in so far as it is content only with external environment and its mechanical forces for explaining morality, either does nothing more than explain the historical genesis of empirical morals, or it completely eviscerates them of all ideal or ethical content, by setting up no higher principle than the struggle for existence as the ethical norm. Whatever fault can be charged to metaphysical ethics, they have come much nearer a true deduction of morals than either positivism or evolution. We believe there is a position which will furnish both methods, at least, a relative vindication, but it will not be found by assuming a permanent antagonism to metaphysical methods, although it may be just enough to repudiate either certain metaphysical systems or certain improper applications of their method. Each general section of the author's work closes with a summary of results, and it is in these that we catch most definitely an expression of his own views and tendencies. The one closing the volume is the most explicit in this respect, and shows the author more in sympathy with the English school than with the German. It is the doctrine of J. S. Mill that strikes him as representing the position from which the future must reckon with the ethical problem. But it is not Mill's utilitarianism that impresses him so much with this conviction, but Mill's negative views on theology and religion. In bringing this to the forefront Jodl betrays most distinctly his predisposition to regard the ethical problem as involving a well-defined position for or against theological conceptions of it. This may be true for a great many minds, and is unfortunately true for too many. But to any mind which holds that all theological conceptions are the result, not the condition, of the development of the ethical consciousness, such an assumption is not at all necessary. Nevertheless the facts which the author endeavors to indicate are so important that we may well accept his position for the sake of appreciating a very serious problem which we think moralists and theologians alike have not sufficiently pondered. We cannot undertake in a brief criticism to solve it, but only to state it, and to indicate the influence which it seems to have exercised upon the mind of our author, and which has been strong enough to convince him that the whole ethical problem must be decided at this point. The crucial question is found in the conceptions which the religious mind has connected, or is assumed to have connected, with its notion of God. These are that in addition to the ideality of God, the conception has stood for the creator of the world, the supreme governor of its order, or the moral director of all its events. This conception unites the ideas of moral personality with causal agency, and, as in human affairs, carries with it the inference that this causal efficiency is responsible to the moral for all results that may come of its action. But Mill steps in with his dilemma which indicates that we have to choose between the finitude and the goodness of God. Nature is shown to be preeminently immoral or non-moral, in which case it is presumably impossible to find the reflection of a perfectly holy God in it, and the deity if righteous at all must be regarded as morally and "physically" finite. On the other hand, if his infinity must be saved it can only be at the expense of his moral goodness which is not effective in making the power and the character of God equal to each other in his revelation. Jodl seems to think the dilemma insoluble, and in view of the fact finds it necessary, like Mill, to resort to a position which is a sort of alliance between positivism and the Kantian ideal and imperative. Whatever may be thought of this reconstructive effort it is certainly more commendable and satisfactory than all such purely negative criticisms as Hume's. A positive view with moral earnestness and honesty behind it always deserves charity, if not sympathy, and Jodl is in earnest, besides being less affected by philosophic sectarianism than Mill. The dilemma itself, which he finds insoluble, might be criticised for its failure to recognize the extent of human responsibility for the existence of evil, and for the more important failure to see, that the whole difficulty may be occasioned by the surreptitious introduction of anthropomorphic conceptions of goodness and evil, which would vitiate all accusations against the Godhead. But however we might solve the problem philosophically in this way, the solution would not meet the difficulties of the ordinary mind for which Mill is speaking, and we do not think Jodl is wrong in emphasizing the fact that a very serious intellectual question is here presented. Its seriousness is very much enhanced by the success of evolution, which has done so much to take the lid off of nature, as it were, and has shown the place held by mere force in the economy of life. No doubt, the long-standing antithesis between the ideas of God and " ture" has much to do with the difficulty, and in so far as it has, older theories must share with evolution the responsibility for the consequences. But while this fact may explain the source of the difficulty, it does not remove the tendency of the mind to reason with the conception which this traditional antithesis sets up as the standard of speculative judgment. As long, therefore, as this whole problem is not reconstructed the common mind will be exposed to the terrible inroads which empirical evolution will inflict upon its moral ideals. Mill has struck the key-note to the profoundest reconstructive problem that the human mind has ever undertaken, although his destructive motives suggest that it can be approached only in some such way as Kant approached the results of Hume. The desired end can be attained only by a critical reconsideration of the ordinary antithesis between the ideas of "nature" and God; of the relation between power and goodness, and of the conceptions involved in the "genesis" of moral ideas. COLUMBIA COLLEGE. J. H. Hyslop. na LA MORALE ANGLAISE CONTEMPORAINE. Par M. GUYAN. 8vo, pp. 432. THE first thing that strikes the reader of this book is the fact that it makes no mention whatever of such writers as Green, Martineau, Courtney, and Fowler and Wilson. Contemporary English ethics include these writers, all of them quite as important as Bentham, who cannot be considered a contemporary at all, and yet they are not even alluded to. Alfred Barratt is briefly discussed, although we suspect he is scarcely known among English writers themselves. But this anomaly is explained when we observe the less emphasized portion of the title, which adds to what we have given the explanatory phrase, "Morale de Utilité et de l'Evolution." This makes clear the real contents of the work, and it includes the examination of Bentham, Owen, Mackintosh, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Grote, Bain, Bailey, Lewes, Sidgwick, Darwin, Spencer, Clifford, Alfred Barratt, and Leslie Stephen. Some of these are mentioned only in a few lines, while Bentham, J. S. Mill, Darwin, and Spencer occupy the discussion and criticism of nearly the whole of the work. The interesting feature of the book is that the author vigorously attacks the whole principle of the utilitarian school, although we would naturally expect the descendants of Condillac and Helvetius to sympathize with this phase of thought. But Guyan is even above the general level of French thought. He shows in many passages, and especially in those which define the functions and objects of the science of Ethics, that the influence of idealism has not been in vain. He sees that the problem regards what ought to be, and not merely what is, pleasant, although a system based upon pleasure may be the only means of making itself effective in society. But in spite of perceiving the inherent defects, if they are defects, of the utilitarian school, the work is less reconstructive than critical; in fact, it is not reconstructive at all. It betrays indications of having been written in the midst of that general intellectual ferment which the doctrine of evolution has everywhere produced in ethical speculations, and which is more or less a sign of transition. It may be that the author is partly affected by the natural preferences of his nation, a fact for which there are not wanting some indications, although the half unconscious recognition of a position which is due to Kant, but which the author does. not trace to that source, or does not emphasize, shows that he is groping about for a light of whose existence he is assured, but which he does not yet see in its real place or brilliancy. However this may be it is pleasant to recognize a disposition to remind Englishmen of faults in the utilitarian phase of speculation, if for no other purpose than to prevent it from degenerating into a system of dogmatism, as every victorious system is in danger of doing, be it political, philosophical, or theological. This spirit, coming from a writer outside of the prejudices and sympathies which attach to the English student of his own writers, has a value worth respecting. The style and method of discussing an author are admirable. They consist in an exposition of the system to be discussed, in the spirit of its author, putting everything as if the author were discussing it himself, and this mode of treatment is so well sustained that the reader would not detect the real sympathies of the critic, which are revealed only in the second part of the book, except in such occasional passages as are necessary to indicate the point upon which a successor endeavored to improve the theory of a predecessor. Candor and fairness are very marked features of the work. Although Bentham is not strictly a contemporary it was necessary to examine his system fully in order to criticise Mill, Spencer, and Stephen. In examining Bentham the author very clearly points out a defect of his system, which Leslie Stephen frankly admits. It is that duty and pleasure cannot be reconciled with each other in the existing world. They may often consist, and perhaps would consist, in an ideal world; but in the world with which we have to do, and with which alone a system of practical ethics has to deal, this complete harmony of individual duty and desire does not exist, and, as Stephen remarks, cannot be made to harmonize by any chicanery of logic or speculation. After pointing out this fact in the founder of utilitarianism the author proceeds to measure the success of other members of the school in their attempts to solve the problem. He disputes the validity of Mill's effort to solve it with the distinction between the qualities of pleasure, by insisting that this distinction of quality is a surrender of the fundamental principle of utilitarianism. This may or may not be so, but the persistency of this criticism forces the school to engage in more fundamental analysis than has been previously practiced, if it is to be sustained. Darwin and Spencer are criticised from the standpoint of a man who has no religious opinions to sustain against the imaginary opposition of evolution. But aside from this attention is called to the fact that these authors, and, for that matter, the whole school of evolutionists, fail to distinguish between the origin and the nature of moral conceptions and principles. But the criticism is not developed as it might have been. Here is a point of great value, but it is buried amidst a mass of discussion that completely conceals its importance and usefulness for pointing out the incompleteness of evolution without in the least impeaching a single conclusion that it may have established concerning the origin of morality. In regard to the criticism of Sidgwick, we think the author has entirely misunderstood that author, as has also Fouillée, and in the same respect. They criticise him as one whose system is constructed to terminate in the theological view. Nothing is farther from that author's intention, although such a conclusion in Ethics would not be inconsistent with the view he holds. But Guyan and Fouillée mistake subjunctive and concessive for declarative propositions on the part of Sidgwick. Besides, they fail to see that his sole object is to discuss the "Methods" of ethical theories, with as little exposition of his own positive views as possible, rather than to defend a particular theory to the exclusion of all others. Among English writers Sidgwick is regarded as a pronounced utilitarian. But his critics in this volume have mistaken his candor and justice to all theories, and more especially, perhaps, his strong statement of the objections to the form of utilitarianism advocated by Bentham, for the support of the intuitional theories which they think the only alternative to English thinkers, and which they imagine is always associated with theological sympathies. Certainly in this case neither the fairness of Sidgwick is understood nor his really utilitarian affinities. A principal defect of the work is the extremely attenuated character of some of its criticisms. Utilitarianism is sometimes quite misrepresented in order to reduce it to an absurdity, or in order to multiply objections to it. These misrepresentations, however, are not in the historical narrative, where, as we have said, all is incomparably fair, but they are found in the critical discussions where the desire to refute the system uncon |