Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/499

No. 4.] Dr. Mellone's discussion as to the nature of the Aristotelian Enthymeme, and the Aristotelian Paradeigma is interesting and valuable. His illustrations and examples are also of the kind which possess life and concrete significance.

The very modesty of Professor Sharp's claims for this book makes it difficult to discover its aim. From its title, it might conceivably be a work in literary criticism, psychology, or ethics; but it is prevented from being any one of these by the author's verbal disavowal and actual use of all three methods. "Not merely how he criticised but also how he generalized are subjects that alike fall outside the inquiry that is here proposed" (Preface, p. xi); so this is not a study of Shakespeare's art. "How far these offspring of a poet's imagination resemble the men and women with whom scientific ethics attempts to deal, I have in the main refrained from considering" (p. xi ). The topic of moral pathology constitutes an admitted exception to this plan, and is, accordingly, quite out of keeping with the rest of the book, though it is distinctly the most interesting part. So psychology is sporadic. As for ethics, Professor Sharp announces at the outset that the book bears only upon the descriptive or psychological and anthropological branch of that study. Thus the result is restricted to a description of the moral consciousness of Shakespearian characters. Furthermore, it appears in the course of the book that (e.g., with reference to egoism and altruism) "we find mirrored in Shakespeare's world the chaos of opinion on this subject which prevails in the society by which we are surrounded " (p. 13). This statement is doubtless sound, but the author nowhere states the general principle of interpretation which sums up this and the similar generalizations that abound in late chapters. Shakespeare exhibits the morality of society, or custom, as sanctioned by common opinion. To demonstrate this in detail without formulating it, is simply tedious, and almost ludicrous when it leads to such conclusions as this: "It will now be clear that altruism is represented by Shakespeare as one of the most important factors in the moral life" (p. 7).

One further difficulty remains. Though Professor Sharp does not claim that such a study as this can solve the problem of reducing "the moral judgments of mankind to a consistent and reasonable system" (Preface, p. x), he arrays Shakespeare and Kant against one another as antagonist and protagonist of "Transcendentalism." Moral pathology is held to be the death-blow to the Kantian ethics. If any ethical system was ever constructed upon critical and logical rather than psychological grounds, it would seem to be that of Transcendentalism, and it is difficult to see what the discovery of "incorrigibles" has to do with "that which would approve itself to a mind cognizant of, and sensitive to, all the facts of human experience" (p. x).