Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/540

 526 CEITICAL NOTICES : the work. This is a subject that can be satisfactorily dealt with from that purely psychological standpoint which is adopted by Ehrenfels, and his treatment of it is full of interest. His discussion of the struggle for existence among valuations is particularly good ; and some of his remarks on the survival of forms that are not directly useful may even be of importance to the biologist. (See especially pp. 158-165). He holds that organs that have no direct use to an organism as organs may be valuable as modes of spending a superabundant vitality. He explains horns and other excrescences in this way ; and he believes that even some organs that are now of the greatest use, such as the eye, may originally have grown up and survived in a similar way. So also he thinks it is with many modes of human thought and feeling. In the third part Ehrenfels develops his theory of desire. Here he maintains the thesis that the more pleasant presentations tend to persist in consciousness. In this connexion it is interesting to find him contending (in answer to an obvious objection), that, in people of a melancholic temperament, disagreeable presentations are often the pleasantest. This is one of the points at which a more definite theory of universes of desire might have been of service ; and without some such theory it is difficult to prevent the doctrine from wearing an air of paradox. Perhaps his discussion of the distinction between wishing, striving and willing (p. 220 sqq.) might also have been simplified by such a theory. It should be noted that Ehrenfels's theory of the will is one of pure deter- minism, and that he does not recognise activity as a special and independent function of consciousness. " There is no special fundamental element in consciousness," he says (pp. 248-49), "which can be described by the term ' desire' (wishing, striving, willing). What we call desire is nothing but the presentation of an object as coming into or going out of the chain of causal con- nexions that is woven round the centre of the present concrete presentation of self, and thus serving as a basis for the promotion of a relatively happy state." This position is defended by Ehrenfels at some length. But here again it would hardly be profitable to attempt any discussion. In the second volume Ehrenfels proceeds to deal more definitely with Ethics "as a branch of the general theory of value". He notes in the first chapter that there are two antagonistic views of the nature of ethical science. According to one of these, Ethics is not to be regarded as a purely theoretical science, but rather as a practical discipline, grouped along with Logic, Aesthetics, Economics, Hygiene, and the various branches of Technology, but supposed (at least by Kant and his followers) to differ from these in laying down an absolute categorical imperative. According to the other view (represented by such writers as Simmel), doubt is thrown on the possibility of establishing a normative science of Ethics, and its province is restricted to the historical investigation of moral facts. The former of these views (at least