Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/560

544 after distinction is made, in the treatment of concepts just introduced, until even a reader familiar with the subject must find himself becoming dizzy. What the effect on a beginner would be, it is hard to predict. Again, the divisions, sub-divisions, and sub-sub-divisions are not usually the conventional ones, and, even where this is the case, they are commonly called either by names coined for the purpose or by old names used with a new meaning. Moreover, the author has a bad habit of making divisions which are confessedly not mutually exclusive. But this is not all. A lack of proportion is noticeable throughout the book. For instance, 74 pages are devoted to "The Freedom of the Will," and 65 pages to "The Origin of Conscience," while only 49 pages are given to the treatment of "The Theories and Nature of Morality," which certainly ought to have been made the most prominent chapter of all.

The confusion which results from this excessive use of analysis, novel nomenclature, and lack of proportion is considerably increased by the author's careless style. Two examples will have to suffice: "Consciousness is too much a part of it [the act of drawing the hand away from the fire] to be purely reflex in all cases, if it is ever so" (p. 202). Again, "The only remaining question is whether the faculty exhibiting moral phenomena is a natural one or not, or whether these phenomena are creations of empirical causes or not. No one is so hardy as to maintain this " (p. 317). Judging from a remark made in the Preface, it is probable that the author overestimates his obligations to the gentleman who read his proof. At any rate, misprints of the most glaring character are frequent,—e.g., 'methaphysics' (p. 12); (p. 29); 'Paltonic' (p. 30); 'Erscheimung' (p. 69); 'ti' for 'it' and 'there ' for 'it' (p. 97); 'than' left out (p. 113); 'freedon,' and 'illusion' for 'allusion' (p. 215); 'Aristotelean ' (p. 319); and 'altrusism' (p. 361). The Greek accents are fairly alarming. On two consecutive pages we find: ,, , (p. 29); and " or " and  (p. 30). Such errors are too obvious to be misleading; but the punctuation is very bad throughout, confusing still further the already confused style.

So much in general. We shall now turn to an examination of particular chapters. The Introduction [chapter i] is an elaborate attempt to define Ethics exactly, and to distinguish it from the other sciences and from metaphysics. The author's conspicuous lack of a gift for clear and concise statement puts him at a considerable disadvantage here, as it seems to me. Moreover, he hardly appears to