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368 J. H. MUIEHEAD : problem, but where discussion has hitherto shown itself fruitful it has taken the question up at the point where the idealism of the seventies left it. With all its ability Mr. Taylor's discussion leaves- on the reader the impression of being to a large extent beside the point. This impression is confirmed by the statement that Green "at- tributes to the inmost core of selfhood an absolutely unchanging character," an accusation which is sufficiently opposed to the whole tenor of recent idealism and which can only have found a place here through misunderstanding. It need hardly be said there is nothing in Green to support it. On the other hand many passages could easily be found (e.g., Works, vol. ii., pp. 325-326) where such abstract identity is expressly repudiated. The chapter on the "Boots of Ethics" begins the more con- structive part of the Essay. Dispensing with the assumption of any implicit reference to a principle of organisation, it traces the moral sentiment in the spirit of Hume to its root in the feeling of approbation and disapprobation identified with satisfaction or dis- appointment arising from fulfilled or unfulfilled expectation. The discussion is a good one and may be said to bring the similar dis- cussion in the Inquiry up to date. But it leaves a similar difficulty. Granted as an axiom of genetic psychology that there was a time when the distinction between ethical and other forms of disapproba- tion (e.g., aesthetic) was unrecognised, whence could it spring except from some ' anoetic ' difference in the content of these primitive undifferentiated judgments ? Idealist writers have sought to find it in a germinal reference to the self and its achievements as ' will '. Mr. Taylor, so far as he touches on this "root " problem, seems to find it in the distinction of things and persons. This is a question of fact which we may be content to refer to the decision of the psychologist. I would suggest that while the latter distinction must doubtless be recognised before we can have moral judgment as we understand it we may have the distinction without moral judgment, and it would be difficult to prove that we may not have judgments which are essentially ethical without this distinction. The latter interpretation seems at any rate to be that of Mr. F. H. Bradley, who is quoted by the author as lending authority to his own view. It is true that in the note in Appearance and Reality to which reference is made Mr. Bradley speaks of approbation as the germ of moral consciousness, but he is careful to point out that not all approbation is moral but only such as contains a refer- ence to the will or self, and to emphasise as the most important for ethics the factor which Mr. Taylor's account leaves in ob- scurity. 1 1 1 have perhaps misunderstood Mr. Taylor's meaning in this passage. Yet it is difficult to see on what other footing he could have treated the question consistently with the general psychological theory as to the relation of volition to feeling and presentation which he seems to adopt.