Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/137

121 (and American civilization, which is a copy of it) is a decadence of rationalism, impotent to organize mankind at once in virtue and liberty. As for England and Prussia, they are "biblical peoples, who have taken from the old Book all its brutality and cunning" (p. 109). "Despite its faults and its vices, France alone protects the sacred inheritance of the pure Aryans" (p. 209).

Perhaps it is impertinent in one of the race of "perfidious Albion" to venture any criticism of a "law" announced with so much conviction and so much passion. One may suggest, if it is allowable, that M. Strada exhibits what may be called a common defect of his countrymen—a tendency to abstract views, which neglect the differences which give life and meaning to things. To class together all phases of religion under the head of "Fideisme" is merely to overlook the various stages which the religious consciousness has undergone. Similarly, to talk of "Fact" as the basis of society is to be the victim of an abstraction. M. Strada does not seem philosophically to have got beyond the notion that in the animals and primitive man we find a conformity to fact which is wanting in civilized man. The truth obviously is, that these pay least regard to "fact," if by that we mean an organized society based upon reason. And finally, it is mere abstraction which opposes Faith, Reason, and Fact to one another, instead of seeing that all three are but different aspects of one principle. Though M. Strada regards Comte as obsolete, it is hard to see what he has added to the "three stages" of that thinker, or how his "impersonal method" differs from the "positive" method of his countryman, except in its greater indefiniteness.

Professor Alaux was quite justified in collecting the essays and lectures which he has given at various times, and arranging them in a connected series, dealing, as he says, "first with ethics in general, then with its application to literature, and to French letters, and lastly to many of the great questions of political or social philosophy which has been discussed in our time. It must, however, be admitted that the third and fourth essays, dealing respectively with the "Idea of Literature" and with "France and Letters," are not very closely connected with the others, though in themselves they display that good sense and refinement which are characteristic of their author.

M. Alaux belongs to the school of ethics which traces its descent from Cousin, and has found its most distinguished representative in M. Paul Janet. In his first essay on "The Variations in Morals" he seeks to show that the wide divergence in the moral practice and theory of different ages and peoples is not incompatible with the absoluteness of moral obligation. This might be shown by following the history of morality and law, but it is at once manifest, if we observe that all moralists who admit that there is a