Page:Philosophical Review Volume 13.djvu/261

247 where no mathematical operation is performed that facilitates and abbreviates the task of understanding the facts, has as its 'psychological correlate' the sense of extreme weariness.

The title of this little volume indicates clearly the question which the author discusses. Casuistry is recognized as "a neglected branch of moral study" (Preface), and it would seem therefore idle to revive it only to show that it has no place in the land of the living, but this is what the author does. Fortunately, however, he gives it only fifty-eight pages of a renewed life, which is all spent in philosophical court. The arguments in favor of giving it a new lease of life are heard, but then the counsel for the plaintiff brings forth Objections to the Presupposition of such a Science, Objections to the Claims of Casuistry to Scientific Method, and Objections to the Practicability of such a Science. The gist of these arguments can be got from the following quotation: "It is just because man is a free, aspiring, and self-conscious agent that a moral science is needed. Therefore to bind his moral and spiritual life to a mechanical system of dead rules is to annul his high vocation and unspeakable glory. It is equivalent to degrading him to the level of a non-moral being, and therefore it dispenses with the necessity for a moral science. Thus even the method of Casuistry involves self-contradiction" (p. 47). Finally the defendant is condemned to a second death, and the reader of the booklet is shown "the more excellent way." "The best loyalty, the best devotion, the truest service is that prompted by a loving heart." Love to God and love to man "cannot be separated in a truly balanced life. In Christianity as taught by its Founder, and expounded by the Apostle of Love, and the Author of the Chapter on Love in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, the union of Morality and Religion is perfectly accomplished, and in Love absolute harmony is reached " (p. 57).

As Mr. Kidd looks upon himself as the champion, and almost the pioneer of a new political order, he has an unreserved enthusiasm for the era which is about to dawn, and a criticism, almost equally unreserved, of the views which have hitherto prevailed. "Systems of theory that have nourished the intellectual life of the world for centuries have become in large part obsolete. They may retain for a space the outward appearance of authority. But the foundations upon which they rested have been bodily undermined. It is only a question of time till the ruin which