Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/131

No. 1.] regards content, and the fulness with which the more important systems are treated. Another important feature, which is especially evident in the second volume, is the insertion of important and lengthy remarks, partly explanatory, partly critical, in the historical presentation. The first volume, a little more than a third of which is devoted to the systems of the Greeks, treats of philosophy before Kant. The most noticeable feature in the proportions of this volume is the small amount of space allotted to the philosophy of the Middle Ages and the transition period. The first part of the second volume deals with the period from Kant to Fichte and is much fuller in its treatment than the preceding. The latter half of the volume has not been yet published, but the author hopes that it will be ready some time during the present winter. A critical review of the work as a whole will follow.

J. E. C.

This second edition of Wundt's ethics appears six years after the first. The main divisions are unchanged. The introduction (pp. 1-17) treats of the nature, methods, and problems of ethics. The first section (pp. 18-269) presents the facts of the moral life as they are revealed in language, religion, customs, and laws. The author differs in some points from Ihering, but the Zweck im Recht appears to be the source of a good deal of the material embraced in this section. It is characteristic of German ethics, as compared with English, that there is throughout no appeal to, no consultation with, the individual consciousness of the moral agent. The second section (pp. 270-432) traces the development of theories of morality from the earliest Greek moralists to Mr. Spencer and Mr. Sidgwick. This treatment is necessarily sketchy, but in this part the author has made many improvements in the second edition. The excellent classification of ethical systems is common to both editions. The third section (pp. 433-594), which has been little changed, discusses the principles of morality in four chapters devoted respectively to the will, conscience, moral ends, moral motives, and moral norms. The fourth section (pp. 595-684), which treats of the different spheres of morality, considered as individual, social, political, and cosmopolitan, suffered in the first edition from a too great compression, but the matter has been worked over for the second edition and considerably improved.

J. G. S.

This work aims to trace the development of the idea of moral law throughout the course of ethical philosophizing and so to establish a historical foundation for the use of the term in modern ethics. Primitive communities are found always to be governed by a mass of customary law in which are contained, without distinction, political, religious, and moral norms of conduct.