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225 the author's interest centers. He confesses that "this book was not written for philosophers at all; God forbid that I should presume to think for people who are already overburdened with thoughts.… Besides, I do not believe that a new system of moral philosophy is either necessary or possible; the great constructive principles have already been so thoroughly developed by Greek philosophy that they are, in the main, satisfactory even to-day. To bring the old truths into living touch with the questions which preoccupy our age, is, in my opinion, the most important function of a modern ethics. Nor do I believe that I am mistaken in the assumption that this view is somewhat widespread in our times. Perhaps there has never been so little disagreement concerning the problem and principles of moral philosophy since the days of Christian Wolff as exists at present" (Preface to second edition, p. 10).

The conception to which, as Paulsen thinks, the thought of the age, influenced by modern biology, is tending, is "the form which Aristotle, the founder of ethics as a systematic science, originally gave to it," viz: "teleological energism." "Our principle would then be: Such modes of conduct and volition are good as tend to realize the highest goal of the will, which may be called welfare. I mean by it the perfection of our being and the perfect exercise of life" (p. 223). "I have coined the word energism, in order to bring my view into sharp contrast with hedonism: the end of the will is not feeling, but action. Its resemblance to Aristotle's may also serve to, remind us of the origin of the concept. The word welfare, finally, seems suited to designate the highest good in its two-fold aspect: it shows, first, that the highest good is an objective content of life, consisting in the perfect exercise of all human psychical powers; then it also suggests that such a life is accompanied with pleasure, and hence that pleasure is not excluded from the perfect life, but included in it" (p. 224). The author defends this conception, first as teleological, against the 'formalistic' or intuitional, and secondly against the hedonistic or utilitarian view. In opposition to the former, "teleological ethics contends that the thing of absolute worth is not the observance of the moral laws, but the substance which is embraced in these formulæ, the human-historical life which fills the outline with an infinite wealth of manifold concrete forms; that the moral laws exist for the sake of life, not life for the sake of the moral laws." In opposition to the latter, teleological ethics contends that not the feeling of pleasure, but the objective content of life itself, which is experienced with pleasure, is the thing of worth. Pleasure is the form in which the subject becomes immediately aware of the object and its value" (p. 11).

True to his promise, Professor Paulsen maintains the subordination of the theoretical to the practical problem, and passes rapidly from the question of Goods and the Good to "the doctrine of Virtues and duties." The former question occupies only a part of one of the four "books" into which the work is divided—Book II, which includes a discussion of