Page:Philosophical Review Volume 21.djvu/721

703 Rogers saves this space for the more extended exposition of the typical modern systems, which does not mean that the significance of Christianity is in any sense minimized. The author's principal aim seems to have been to make the very most of the space at his command. In this he has succeeded to a remarkable degree: there is practically no waste space in the book and, with few exceptions, the expositions are admirably clear. As already remarked, the book is evidently intended mainly for those who have little or no knowledge of the subject. The brief Introduction explains, in very elementary fashion, some of the essential problems of ethics, while Part I, "Greek Ethical Systems," expounds in almost equally simple terms the salient features of Greek ethical speculation. While the simplification is carried pretty far in some cases, there is nothing really misleading in the treatment, which will leave the reader well prepared to profit by a more extended history of the subject. More than this, the Part on "Greek Ethical Systems," thanks to the simple and methodical treatment given, may be regarded as the real introduction to the last two thirds of the book, i.e., Part II, "Modern Ethical Systems." The critical reader's estimate of the author's historical account of modern ethics will be largely determined by his sympathy or lack of sympathy with the standpoint and method adopted. Mr. Rogers says in his Preface: "This book is mainly descriptive but also critical." But, while the expository portion naturally occupies a good deal more space than that which is explicitly critical, the expositions themselves, while always careful and generally fairly objective, constantly indicate the author's own view as to the way in which the problems of ethics should be approached. For example, on one of the early pages of Part II we are told: "Many of the ethical systems hereafter described belong to one of two types, which may be termed Naturalism and Intuitionism. According to the naturalistic writers moral ideas are derived; they are the products of desires and feelings or instincts that originally have no moral predicates, and they arise by necessary laws of nature (whether physical or mental) which for all we know may be purely mechanical and undirected by Reason. ... The Intuitionists, on the other hand, hold that moral obligation and moral ideas and truths are fundamental and irreducible; they cannot be explained as being products of non-moral forces like self-interest, animal instincts, or the love of pleasure" (p. 119). This division, substantially Green's, of course, may look fair enough at first; but the definitions plainly emphasize the weakest side of 'naturalism' and the strongest side of 'intuitionism,' to say nothing of the fact that they are too general to admit of safe application to particular systems. And the attempt to apply these labels to the seventeenth and eighteenth century moralists—to whom alone, it is admitted, they are strictly applicable—leads to suggestive results. Spinoza appears as the representative of "Rationalistic Naturalism," while Butler's ethical theory is termed "Autonomic Intuitionism." The reviewer has very little sympathy with such attempts at 'scientific classification' in the history of philosophy or of ethics. In both of the cases noted, the highly artificial designation emphasizes a side of the system in question which, in