Page:Philosophical Review Volume 6.djvu/202

186 is shown by the hope, elsewhere expressed, that a transition is beginning "from the platitudinous ethical discussions of recent years to a hard-headed, scientific study of ethical phenomena" (p. 405, note). In the Preface to the Third Edition, seen after the foregoing was in type, Professor Giddings frankly admits that the suggestion for his doctrine of consciousness of kind came from the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and that he is now inclined to "claim for Adam Smith the first place among sociologists.… The stone that the builders of political economy rejected will become the head of the corner for sociology." That stone is so securely and prominently placed in the system of English psychological ethics, perhaps England's noblest contribution to the speculative thought of the world, that it will not easily be torn from its place. If Professor Giddings has determined to make the attempt, an adequate knowledge of the development of English ethical thought, nowhere shown in the present volume, is a primary requisite.

To the author's attempt to show that there is a logical place for sociology in a classification of the sciences, it may be replied that such a classification can have no exclusive or probative validity. To his attempt to lay a basis for it by the theory of the consciousness of kind, it may be replied that the relations of this consciousness of kind to sympathy, and of the science based upon it to ethics, are still in obscurity. As these are his two novel positions, it must be held that the work, however valuable to 'the sociologist,' is not of fundamental importance to the student of speculative philosophy.

If one were not already acquainted with the avowed character of L'année philosophique,—which now appears for the sixth time, still under the very able editorial supervision of M. Pillon,—one might feel inclined to criticise a periodical which so evidently is the organ of a particular philosophical school. Indeed, it may well be doubted if criticism is completely disarmed by the reminder that the annual is just what it professes to be, in this respect. The iteration of the fundamental tenets of any school, however interesting and important, becomes a little tiresome, particularly when found in the pages of a regular periodical. In a word, it is the signal ability with which the