Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/419

X. NEW BOOKS. 7V ,SY/ ,I///K. Basis of Morality. By G. GORE, LL.D., F.R.S. London ; Swan Sonnenschein & Co. THERE is no need to approach this volume with prejudice: it stands self-condemned, a typical illustration of the manner in which science, through no fault of its own, earns discredit before the bar of philosophy. It proclaims itself, in language that would be presumptuous even were t justified by the sequel, an attempt to consider ' questions very com- plex and profound,' including some 'which have been considered insoluble,' ' a work largely for the future,' ' in some respects in advance of its time '. Then follow five hundred pages of ill-connected scientific fact entirely foreign to the subject of morality, with a concluding eighty pages whose relevance seems their only title to toleration. For a man of science to write with such elementary disregard of scientific proportion that nearly five-sixths of the work are extraneous matter, to write on moral theory with an almost entire and deliberate ignorance of the labours of preceding moralists, to raise scarcely any of the great moral problems, and to attempt a solution of none these things are unpardon- able, and in a voluminous work they evoke anger even more than bewilderment. To criticise the book on general grounds would be superfluous and unmerited, it will suffice to point out some of its absurdities in exposi- tion. World-theorists generally begin with definitions : here are two : ' Facts are truths,' 'truth is perfect consistency with facts'. Again, as to the limits of science, ' Science, like everything else, is limited by the possible, by agreement with the operations of energy, with law, and by consistency with all truth ; by time, space, and all other natural condi- tions ' ; while on the very next page ' The limits of science are virtually boundless '. Such sentences set us academically wondering whether the author does the greater violence to consistency of thought or to the conventions of language. And yet again with infinite audacity, after approving the ordinary distinction between science and art, how that a science teaches us to know, an art to do, ' Science,' says Dr. Gore, ' is the art of correct thinking '. A belief in the non-existence of essential evil and injustice leads to contradictions which there is little effort to conceal, much less to acknowledge or explain. At one time ' complete justice and compensation are ultimately accorded to all living things,' at another 'causation is stronger than justice,' 'mankind is governed by ruthless and irresistible laws rather than by what we call justice '. Or listen to a triumphant refutation of Kant : ' Kant stated that Space and Time were forms of the mind itself ; but we know that the relations of time and space to material bodies must remain when all living creatures are dead and all mental action has ceased ' : clearly so far from over- throwing Kant's position, his adversary has not even been able to under-