Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/674



The Ethical Series, of which the above is the third volume in order of appearance, is a notable plea for the historical method of studying ethics. Historical criticism, while seriously defective in many respects, as a philosophical method, unquestionably enlarges one's horizon, introducing content derivable in no other way. Critical insight and scholarship are thus advanced with one common effort—two items which can well be promoted in greater measure in the tuition of the American undergraduate. In bringing so many selections from original treatises before the student, this series lays a good foundation for original and independent research.

Hobbes's thinking, having something of a synthetical, as well as an analytical character, and occupying a formative position in the ethical development which is largely continued in the writings of English moralists, is thus doubly beneficial for the student. The editor of the series has wisely headed the list of texts with Hobbes for another reason, viz., being "the father of modern systematic psychology," and the first champion of a psychological doctrine of determinism, his speculations on the varied problems of conduct are of the type showing the determining influence of one's psychological analyses upon one's ethics. This relation needs to be emphasized at the present time, and an excellent opportunity for doing so is provided in the usual arrangement in our college curricula which introduces the study of ethics after that of psychology. Academicians, however, are more often traditional than reflective; and the very publication of this series will lead teachers of ethics to answer, at least in a negative fashion, some pressing pedagogic problems.

The aim of this book is to present the ethical and political speculations of Hobbes in selections from his writings, as a text-book for college classes in ethics, political science, and the history of philosophy. In his excellent introduction (pp. 1-43), which is preceded by a well-selected and conveniently arranged bibliography of sixty-seven titles on Hobbes, Professor Sneath follows a sketch of Hobbes's life and writings, with a clever exposition of his ethics and politics, points out their psychological bases, and traces their relations to contemporary and subsequent thought. Emphasizing the psychological roots of Hobbes's speculation, the editor severely criticises that historic interpretation of Hobbes which entertains the view that "he simply taught a positive, institutional, political morality—a morality founded on the will of the sovereign." He maintains, on the