Page:Philosophical Review Volume 23.djvu/233

217 In general, the author, while not over-anxious to be practical and edifying, speaks with such clearness and conviction that his book is a moral tonic. He recognizes what is sometimes forgotten by his fellows, that a prime requisite of a text-book on Ethics is evident system, a logical structure as nearly faultless as possible. Accordingly, he endeavors to make his work practical in the best sense.

Professor Wright regards Ethics as a science, yet he does not allow himself to be hampered by too strict an interpretation of the term. He does not hesitate on occasion to pass from the scientific to the philosophical point of view. While, in general, efforts to fuse the scientific and the philosophical are ill-advised, Ethics is so distinctively and fundamentally a philosophical discipline that a hard-and-fast scientific treatment limits unduly the range of discussion. Professor Wright treats Ethics as a science only in the sense that its material lends itself to systematic arrangement, with Self-realization as the organizing principle.

To write a book which will successfully meet the beginner in philosophy on his own level and safely conduct him into the difficult path of philosophical inquiry without benumbing his spirit and chilling his interest in the subject is a desperately difficult task. One who undertakes to write such a book is at once confronted by many perplexities. Where shall he begin and where leave off? What shall he discuss and what shall he exclude from consideration? With how great a show of finality shall he present his conclusions? Indeed, what conclusions shall he reach? For it must be assumed that the student for whom the book is primarily intended knows little or nothing about philosophical problems and methods, that too much or too little in the book will bewilder him and give him a false impression of what philosophy really is, and that too great a hesitancy on the part of the author to express his own views in the light of conflicting opinions will lead to scepticism concerning the possibility of the science of philosophy itself, just as surely as too great a degree of dogmatism in the presentation of the various problems will defeat its own end and leave the student untouched by the invigorating stimulus of the philosophic spirit. To write a first book in philosophy is a task not to be lightly undertaken.

The volume before us is a very serious and a very commendable