Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/143

 NEW BOOKS. 129 resistance of pain, and that is the motive of action ; whereas its intention may be to secure the future happiness of the agent at the expense of others, which is egoism, or the future happiness of others at the expense of his own, which is altruism. And it is further asserted that in the up- ward march of evolution, the progress of organic adaptation, the mechanism of individual character becomes so adjusted that the idea of disinterested action tends to be associated with the most pleasurable, and that of its dereliction with the most painful, feelings, so that the race which pro- duces the most Picquarts and the fewest Merciers is bound in the long run to win. After these explanations it is needless to argue the question, for the author makes a number of scattered admissions which taken together give his case completely away. 'Egoism,' he justly observes, 'only arises when one's own profit is sought to the loss of others' (p. 105). ' He who wished to secure the triumph of his own personality to the loss of that of others would not even secure individual happiness ' (p. 132). ' The power of sympathy or of the disinterested impulses enters as an element into the moral sentiment ' (p. 139). ' Primitive societies could not have been perpetuated without the idea and the practice of justice ' (p. 149). ' In man the representation of man awakens by hereditary dis- position a particular pleasure, a tendency to give mutual help, to put others in one's own place ' [Qu., oneself in the place of others ?] (p. 159). ' Certain special psychical dispositions towards well-doing have been formed by heredity ' (ib.). ' In the struggle for existence the victory will not be with those who possess marked physiological strength, but with those who join with power of intellect and feeling an energetic will and a well-developed social psychism' (p. 176). If Signer Sciascia could be brought to see that a physiological founda- tion is necessary to the existence of these admirable qualities, and if he could be disabused of the error that Darwinian moralists ignore intelli- gence and morality as factors of evolution, there would be little or nothing to separate his philosophy from theirs. ALFRED. W. BENN. RECEIVED also : G. T. Fuller-ton, On Spinozistic Immortality, London, Williams & Norgate, 1899, pp. v., 154. W. Smith, Methods of Knowledge, London, Macmillan & Co., 1899, pp. xxii., 340. B. Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State, London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1899, pp. xi., 342. S. V. Dyde, The Thtaetetus of Plato, Glasgow, Maclehose & Sons, 1899, pp. viii., 173. T. Ribot, Evolution of General Ideas, London, Kegan, Paul & Co., 1899, pp. vi., 231. M. W. Shinn, Notes on the Development of a Child (parts iii. and iv.), University of California Studies, The University, Berkeley, London, Williams & Norgate, 1899, pp. 179-424. R. de la Grasserie, De la Paychologie des Religions, Paris, F. Alcan, 1899, pp. 308. J. P. Durand (de Gros), Noavelles Becherches sur I'Esthdtique et la Morale, Paris, F. Alcan, 1900, pp. 275. C. Bougie, Lei Idifes figalitaires, Paris, F. Alcan, 1899, pp. 249. V. Nodet, Leu Aynoscies, la excite Psychique en particulier, Paris, F. Alcan, 1899, pp. 220. 9