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264 NEW BOOKS. keep animal numbers below the point at which fierce individual competi- tion would ensue, but has forced most species to adopt, in a greater or leas degree, various forms of mutual aid. It is in the economy of effort and energy thus effected, and in the stimulus given by sociability to the growth of intelligence, that Prince Krapotkin sees one, if not the chief, cause of the progressive improvement of species. A great part of the book is taken up with the attempt to show that there is no historical proof that " the Hobbesian war of each against all " was ever the normal state of society. The earliest geological records show man already a gregarious animal. Such forms of mutual aid as the tribe, the village community, the guild, are examined in detail, and the conclusion is suggested that un- fettered individualism is, on the whole, a late and abnormal phenomenon. What is undoubtedly proved is that we require much more extensive knowledge, based on unbiassed observation, of animal psychology and animal habit, and that in our present state of ignorance, the application of biological generalisations to sociology is likely to result in error. For this reason it would have been well to confine the present volume to the consideration of mutual aid among animals, with special reference to its bearing on physical and intellectual evolution. The subject requires and deserves the fullest investigation on its own merits. A History of English Utilitarianism. By E. ALBEE, Instructor in the Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University. London: Son- nenschein, 1902. Pp. xvi., 427. Dr. Albee's History is a painstaking and judicious work which will be found useful by all who have to lecture or examine on the subject. For the junior student it is hardly suitable and still less so to the general reader, who will find the minute analysis and criticism of second- and third-rate Hedonists exceedingly wearisome. Its scope and method are quite different from Sir Leslie Stephen's well-known work. Sir Leslie begins with Bentham and takes little notice even of the predecessors to whom Bentham was immediately indebted. Dr. Albee begins with Richard Cumberland and does not reach Bentham till nearly half-way in his book. Sir Leslie devotes himself mainly to the social and political side of English Utilitarianism. Dr. Albee neglects this almost entirely to trace the filiation of abstract theories. His work is a summary of " isms," and never touches on personal character and concrete environ- ment. We are never out of the strictly scientific atmosphere of the lecture-room. Within the limits he has marked out for himself Dr. Albee's work is well, though not brilliantly, done. The summaries and criticisms are thorough and certainly do not err on the side of brevity, since J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer and Henry Sidgwick have each three chapters assigned to them. Occasionally we are inclined to think that the wood has got obscured by the trees ; and that in the minute discussion of the various and complicated forms of utilitarian theory we somewhat lose sight of the general tendencies and meaning of the whole development of thought. For this reason the latter part of the book is less interest- ing than the earlier, which explains the connexion of the secular utilitarianism of Bentham and the Mills with the older utilitarianism of theological writers. H. S.