Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/162

 NEW BOOKS. 149 Die Ethik als Wissenschaft, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung der neueren englischen Ethik. Eine philosophische Abhandlung von Dr. HANS VOLTZ. Strassburg : Karl J. Triibner, 1886. Pp. 55. The author aims at developing an ethics of " pure Positivism ". His discussion of the ethical question proceeds on the basis furnished by " the German Positivism " (as represented by E. Laas and Prof. v. Gizycki) on the one side, and Utilitarianism (as represented by Prof. Sidgwick) on the other ; the ethics of Evolution (as represented by Mr. Spencer, Mr. Stephen and W. H. Kolph) being taken up incidentally. To his dis- cussion of the question, " What may we expect from the scientific treat- ment of ethics ? " (" Ethischer Theil," pp. 19-55), he prefixes a consideration of the preliminary question, " What may we expect generally from the scientific treatment of any object-matter ? " (" Erkenntnisstheoretischer Theil," pp. 3-19). The answer to this question is that science can do nothing more than systematise facts and express them by the simplest formulae. The answer to the ethical question is that science determines the means to morality, which is itself a means to happiness not necessarily the consciously sought happiness of the individual, but happiness as an "actual result" somewhere. Choice of the end rests finally with the individual, and theoretically there is no way of convincing anyone that his choice is wrong. . Practically, however, 'the possible ends have been reduced to very few. The author decides personally for the formula, " Greatest possible domestic happiness of the greatest possible number the only end, everything else (science included) a means to this". When they have taken the first step the recognition of science as only a means others, he believes, will find no difficulty in selecting the same end. Kkine Schriften. Von HERMANN LOTZE. Bd. II. Leipzig : S. Hirzel, 1886. Pp. xviii., 530. Dr. David Peipers here continues the important service of collecting and editing with utmost care the minor writings of a thinker who has been singularly fortunate in inspiring followers with devotion to the memory of his work. Vol. i., noticed in MIND, No. 41, swept the field of Lotze's varied activity as a writer till 1846, except that it left over his chief production of that year. This was the article " Seele u. Seelenleben," placed at the beginning of the present volume (pp. 1-204), and much the longest of his three remarkable contributions to Wagner's Handworterbuch der Physiologic. The nineteen other pieces here given are mostly reviews or notices of books written for the Gott. gel. Anzeigen, but some of them have a special interest in view of Lotze's own original work on the subjects ; particularly the elaborate reviews of Waitz's Grundlegung der Psychologic in 1847 (pp. 284-302) and Lehrbuch der Psychologie in 1850 (pp. 471-505). There are notices " Selbstanzeigen " of his own books on General Pathology and Therapeutics and on General Physiology : also should be mentioned the long essay (pp. 205-72) " Ueber Bedingungen der Kunstschonheit " a favourite subject which, after appearing in 1847 in the Gott. Studien, was separately issued in the following year. The volume reaches to 1851. There remains a long term of years to be comprised in the third and concluding volume to follow, but these were the years of writings other than minor. Werth und Ursprung der philosophischen Transcendenz. Eine Studie zur Einleitung in die Erkenntnisstheorie. Von MARTIN KEIBEL. Berlin : W. Weber, 1886. Pp. x., 75. After examining the various arguments on behalf of " the transcendent object," the author concludes that there is no logical proof of it, neither is