Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/679

663 would have clashed with all his habits of thought and feeling; he would have felt it to be in bad taste. Moreover, the over-great importance ascribed to Darwin's influence upon Nietzsche seems to be partly due to the desire for a unity that is not present until put there. One must admit, of course, the added simplicity and precision possible to such an interpretation of Nietzsche; the only objection to it is the conviction that it is not entirely justified by Nietzsche's writings.

In the seven chapters of this volume, Miss Addams considers one by one the problems confronting the man or woman actively engaged in efforts to benefit the poorer class of working people. These problems are social in nature, that is, they concern the proper relationship between different members of society. No one can hope to answer such questions without a broad experience, the obtaining of which is coming to be regarded more and more as a duty. Only through this broader experience can the existing social confusion be obviated, only through its means can men be fitted to cope with the difficulties of social reform; for the confusion and the well meaning but mistaken efforts to better it are both due to the attempt to make an individual code of ethics do duty in the larger field of social relationships. The cure for social evils is to be found in democracy, and the cure for democracy in more democracy. A code suited to social relationships cannot be the product of observation and speculation; it must be the result of experiment. We must live our democracy before we can theorize about it. In short, the conclusion reached by Miss Addams, as a result of her careful study of the questions with which her own experience has so well fitted her to deal, is that the evils in our social ethics will be remedied only as it becomes more democratic.

The essays composing this volume have already been given to the public in the form of lectures before various societies, and with a few exceptions are now reprinted from different periodicals.

The different papers of which the book is made up have the following titles: Philosophy and Life; Professor William Wallace; Robert Louis Stevenson's Philosophy of Life; Abstract and Political Ethics; What Imperialism Means; The Science of Poor-Law Relief; Modern Methods of Temperance Reform; A Liberal Education; Psychology and Education; The Place of the Concept in Logical Doctrine; The Goal of Knowledge; Hypothesis; Is Knowledge of Space a Priori? It will be seen that the greater number of these essays discuss subjects of practical ethics, while the