Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/427

 426 CRITICAL NOTICES Attgemeina Etlrik. Mit Bezugnahme auf die realen Lebensverhalt- nisse pragmatisch bearbeitet von JOSEPH W. NAHLOWSKY. Zweite, verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Leipzig : Veit & Co., 1885. The aim of this work, which the author did not live to see published in its improved and enlarged form, is to bring the prin- ciples of Ethics into closer connexion than is commonly done with practical life, and to give equal prominence to its social and to its individual aspects. The standpoint is definitely and consistently Herbartian. The book brings out so clearly the peculiar Herbar- tian views of the connexion of Ethics with ^Esthetics, and of its disconnexion with Metaphysics, and it is so thorough in its attempt to show the practical application of the ideas elaborated, that it is worth while to draw attention to some of the leading features of the system expounded. "The complete separation of practical philosophy from theoretical is," according to the author, " Herbart's great achieve- ment." Metaphysics starts with the notions of experience, and the inherent contradictions in these notions require that they be manipulated and criticised. From this procedure, that of Ethics is doubly distinguished. In the first place, it starts with something certain always and unchangeably valid namely, the self-evident judgments of preference or the reverse pronounced upon the simplest relations of will. In the second place, it does not start with the real of experience, but with the ideal, which is entirely independent of experience. Ethics, the author thinks, is con- nected with metaphysics only by a "stiff-necked" generation, unwarned by previous failure, and misled by the false idea that all departments of philosophy follow from one fundamental prin- ciple. Yet if one considers the matter, perhaps it will appear that this dismemberment of philosophy is due to a peculiarity of the Herbartian metaphysics. The facts of human action and the ideals it aims at are excluded from metaphysical treatment by Herbart. But they are a part of that whole of experience which a more comprehensive metaphysics takes acccount of : even although they may not involve the contradictions implicit in the notions of experience with which Herbart starts. This leads to the element of arbitrariness almost in the author's other distinc- tion between Ethics and Metaphysics. Herbart insists that the notions experience gives rise to say, of space and time require manipulation and transformation ; while the ordinary notions of right and wrong are said to be clear and self-evident and to stand in need of no parallel process of sifting ; and in the same way Nahlowsky affirms the invariability and universal validity of ethical ideas. No reference is made to the contradictions of the ordinary moral consciousness disclosed by a systematic elabora- tion of ethical notions such as that carried out by Prof. Sidgwick. This is the more to be regretted, as the greater portion of the