Page:Philosophical Review Volume 31.djvu/111

No. 1.] greatest of hindrances to the scientific method in this field. He then shows us the good ethical consequences of determinism, the chief of which will be the abatement of hate for people whose acts we know to be determined. He might also have added, with Spinoza, the abatement of praise.

From this point he passes on to a review of the goods in life and the means to their attainment. The much-talked-of instinct of workmanship he classifies as a form of self-approbation. These goods of life are socially objective, they are goods for all men; and to prove it Mr. Hayes gives the sound and well-known argument against solipsism, that our knowledge of other minds by inference is no more uncertain than our knowledge of our own past conscious states, the existence of which we infer from our memories of them.

The moral law is to be learned not from conscience, since consciences vary in different times and societies, nor from any categorical imperative, which is metaphysical, but from a study of what men most fundamentally want with a unified personality—with a whole soul. This is what they ought to have, and obligation hangs on the facts of human nature. The points will be familiar to students of naturalistic ethics. Mr. Hayes finds the social good to be the good of men, not of any man; a good like that of Royce's 'community' with a motive like 'loyalty.' Indeed Mr. Hayes is so much impressed by this idea as to speak of the three great seers, 'Christ, Mill, and Royce.'

His criticism of Kidd and social Darwinism is taken on firm premises; struggle is not the necessary rule of the social life; cooperation and rationality are factors in evolution. In conclusion the author makes a brief excursion, himself, into epistemology, and comes out with an amended pragmatism, one purged of the influence of the emotions.

The book, on the whole, traverses well-worn philosophic ground with no new results. It is more an earnest plea for the scientific spirit and social good will, than a detailed study of either sociology or ethics.

In this fifth fascicle Mr. Steele continues his commendable enterprise, interrupted by the war, of editing the hitherto unpublished works of Roger Bacon. The present volume centers about Roger's text of, gloss on, and introduction to the famous Secret of Secrets, most influential of the