Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/685

669 the truest. For, in the first place, being apprehended sensual concepts, they being consequences, witness the presence of the object, contrary to Idealism; and as regards judgments concerning that which is sensuously known, since truth in judging consists in the agreement of the predicate with the given subject, and since the concept of the subject as a phenomenon is given only by relation to the sensuous cognitive faculty, the sensuously observable predicates being given according to the same, it is plain that the representations of subject and predicate are made according to common laws, and hence give occasion for perfectly true cognition." The introduction and discussion which Dr. Eckoff has prepared to accompany his translation, are as unsatisfactory as the translation itself, and should never have been published in their present shape. We miss the thoroughness and care which we have a right to expect from works of this kind. Windelband's History of Philosophy seems to be the writer's vade mecum. He fails to mention the opinions of Kuno Fischer, Paulsen, Riehl, Vaihinger, and other great students of Kant's philosophical development, though the position taken by him, that the Dissertation forms the turning-point of Kant's philosophy, is Kuno Fischer's.

The aim of this work is to trace the development of Kant's ethical views up to the appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason. In addition to the pre-critical writings of the master, our author investigates the Fragments published by Reicke, and the unpublished ethical reflections collected by Benno Erdmann. He finds that the final ethical system of the sage of Koenigsberg is not, as has been supposed, diametrically opposed to his earlier moral beliefs, but that it is the natural outcome of the latter. The development of Kant's ethics runs parallel with that of his attempts to reform metaphysics. There is no absolute breach between the period when Kant taught eudaemonism, and the critical epoch. The two periods are connected by a stage of transition.

Dr. Foerster's work is a valuable contribution to the history of Kantian ethics. The author has made a careful study of the writings pertaining to his subject; and the results reached by him cannot, it seems to me, be questioned. His judgment is sound, and the only criticisms that can be made are not very serious ones. The book, however, is full of typographical errors, and the references are not always exact.

The author holds that in order to combat the materialism of the times, to reconcile faith and science, to terminate the bitter feud existing between the