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 132 NEW BOOKS. founded on experience, or, as he puts it, on psychology ; and, secondly, that an appeal to experience will decide against hedonism. His first position leads him to criticise Kant, who was right in rejecting hedonism, but wrong in supposing that a psychological moral theory must neces- sarily be hedonistic. It was the latter mistake that led him to make the vain attempt of founding ethics on a priori basis. In regard to his second argument Dr. Krueger lays it down that not only is it wrong to say " Pleasure is the supreme good " ; it is wrong to ask what is the supreme good at all. We should not ask what is supremely good, but what is supremely valuable. Ethics, in fact, is the study of human values or appreciations, and its central problem is to de- termine what is absolutely and supremely valuable. In this connexion Dr. Krueger devotes a chapter to the psychology of value or appreciation, and criticises the doctrines of Meinong and von Ehrenfels, with whose hedonistic tendency he disagrees. He concludes that what is absolutely valuable is the faculty itself of appreciating or forming values, and that a man is morally good in proportion as he possesses and exercises this appreciative faculty. "He prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small." Finally the author makes some pertinent illustrations of his own views and criticisms of other opinions. In particular he remarks that harmony among our various appreciations can never be the supreme good. Such an ideal would lead one to a mean-spirited and immoral quietism. In view of Mr. Shadworth Hodgson's exaltation of Harmony as the Moral Criterion these remarks of Dr. Krueger's are worth noting. The author concludes his essay with a review of Schuppe's moral theory which has many points of affinity to his own. Rechte und Pflichten der Kritik. Philosophische Laien-Predigten fiir das Volk der Denker von C. E. EASIUS. Leipzig ; London : "Williams & Norgate, 1898. Pp. vi., 171. The "Volk der Denker" to whom this book is addressed is the German nation, and the title " Laien-Predigten " was chosen because the author did not know himself " whether he belonged to the ranks of the laity or of the philosophers by profession ". This doubt it is impossible for the reader to share. The author is obviously very much of a layman in philosophy. The three sections of the work deal with " intellectual or logical criticism," " aesthetic criticism," and " ethical criticism ". The first two are somewhat commonplace. " Intellectual and scientific criticism has the right to track out mistakes wherever they occur, and to lay bare remorselessly everything erroneous and self-contradictory. But criticism has also the duty of setting forth its investigations impartially, i.e., without any regard for the likes or dislikes of oneself or others," and so on. The author's aesthetic criticism is not much more electrifying. But the ethical section contains some pretty considerable paradoxes, most especially in its practical recommendations. When the author tells us that truth is man's sole fundamental virtue, the proposition, though disputable, appears in a measure familiar. But we have never heard the abolition of capital punishment advocated on the ground that it is no punishment at all, death being the common lot sooner or later. Nor do we think, like the author, that a philosopher should be no less esteemed because he also happens to be a pickpocket. In addition to some other odd doctrines, of which the foregoing are only samples, the reader will find much else in the book to reward his curiosity notes on freedom of the press, antisemitism, the Bible and other topics, all treated with force and conviction, as becomes the lay preacher.