Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/96

82 embraces these examples, it may be safely asserted that there is no common name to which it does not extend.

That place is made for the distinction between conditional and hypothetical propositions is admirable; yet what is one to make of it, when he is told that the proposition: If any flower is scarlet, it is scentless, is conditional, and that the proposition: If any bird is a thrush, it is speckled, is hypothetical? That this is no mere lapse in selecting examples is shown by the fact that both cases are laboriously drawn out in other forms. This vital distinction, upon which Keynes lays stress, loses under the definitions and elucidations here given both clearness and pertinency.

Taking them at random, I have pointed out two or three of the rather numerous defects of this little book, with full acceptation, for the time, of its general theory. But any handling of logic which deals with propositions rather than judgments embodied in them, and with names rather than concepts fixated in names, has unavoidably more radical vices than such as have been noted. Not only do mere lexicographical and grammatical formalities tend to perplex and to confuse, to make difficulties where none exists, and to cover them up where they are serious (in the treatment before us, certain idiosyncrasies of the English tongue appear almost nudely as logical principles), but the best "Logic" of this kind can never be more in Logic than a good Physiognomic can be in Psychology.

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The many readers of Professor Bowne's other philosophical works have doubtless been pleased to learn that this talented author has at length written a companion volume on ethics. It is evidently designed primarily as a text-book, but as Professor Bowne is a thinker of established reputation, the views expressed seem to call for more than passing mention. It is needless to say that the style is clear, concise, and attractive, — except, perhaps, in certain controversial passages, where the author lapses from argument into rhetoric. In another respect, also, the book is worthy of commendation. The author has a realizing sense of the great complexity of our concrete moral life, and refuses to admit that it can be explained completely by the application of any single abstract principle. He thus comes to recognize difficulties that are apt not to occur to the champion of one of the classic "types of ethical theory." One cannot help feeling, however, that the