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 J. M. WILSON AND T. FOWLEE, PRINCIPLES OF MORALS. 591 is good which we have any distinct particular notion of " (Sermon xii.). Accounts of Butler's moral system are too frequently based upon the first three Sermons and the Dissertation. The over-dis- paragement of Butler is the more remarkable inasmuch as there is no modern writer whose influence is so plainly traceable throughout Prof. Fowler's own work. His treatment of the " resentful feelings," for instance, is thoroughly Butlerian ; and there is no better instance of what may be called the latent Utilitarianism of Butler than his sermons on Eesentment. So again, Prof. Fowler's distinction between the semi-social and directly social feelings, and his whole view of the nature of moral obligation as ''imposed upon us by ... the ivhole nature of man . . . capable of reflecting on its own acts, and, as a consequence of that reflection, capable of passing on them a definitive sentence of approval or disapproval ' ' (ii. 260), are thoroughly Butlerian positions. I should hardly exaggerate if I said that the strongest and most valuable parts of Prof. Fowler's exposition read to me like a restatement of Butler in more modern language and in accordance with the changes neces- sitated by the now generally accepted views of the gradual deve- lopment of the moral nature of man. At times also Butler seems to be responsible for some of the more questionable posi- tions of Prof. Fowler's ethics and psychology e.g., his somewhat inadequate appreciation of the beauty of forgiveness and its moral effect on the offender, and again his denial of the existence of " disinterested malevolence" (ii. 112). When they come to the constructive part of the work, most readers will probably be struck by the somewhat disproportionate prominence given to mere psychological analysis the mere classi- fication of " feelings" and description of their growth and develop- ment in the race and in the individual. In the first two hundred pages of vol. ii. a series of descriptions and classifications, which has little direct bearing on Ethics, is varied only by somewhat unimportant moral reflections on the use and abuse of the various passions and affections. It need hardly be said that these reflec- tions are throughout characterised by good sense and good feel- ing ; but they are sometimes on the borderland of the obvious ; and from a philosophical point of view it may be objected that, since Prof. Fowler's view of the ethical reXo? is not established till the latter part of the volume, the reader does not know from what point of view or by relation to what standard of criticism the moral value of the various feelings is being estimated. No doubt, Prof. Fowler's justification of the prominence given to this descriptive and historical Psychology would be that it con- stitutes one long and unanswerable indictment against all Intui- tionist or a priori views of Ethics. As a matter of fact, however, no Intuitionist of the present day will dispute the position that the moral nature of man has been gradually developed. Deve- lopment and evolution are as fully recognised in the ethical works of Dr. Martineau and the late Prof. T. H. Green as in those of