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140 - NEW BOOKS. viously imprinted matter. The present volume gives 17 pieces down to 1846, in chronological order, for the sake of the light thereby tin-own on the writer's mental development. Beginning with Lotze's Latin disserta- tion for his medical degree in 1838, it contains, besides one or two medical reviews, the famous article on "Life and Vital Force" in JVagnei J s ffandw. der Physiologic, by which he first made his mark, followed by another article on "Instinct"; the two here occupying pp. 139-220, 221-50, res- pectively. The other pieces (except the mathematical dissertation of 1840, " De summis continuorum ") are of general philosophical interest. Most of them are reviews of books (about Kant, Descartes, &c.), but three have a more independent character : (iv.) " Remarks on the Notion of Space," in a letter to Ch. H. Weisse (1841), pp. 86-108 ; (v.) "Herbart's Ontology" (1843), pp. 109-38 ; (xi.) "On the Notion of Beauty" (1845), pp. 291-341. The editing has been performed with the most scrupulous conscientiousness. System der Christlichen Sittenlehre. Von D. J. A. DORXER. Herausgegeben von D. A. DORNER. Berlin : W. Herz, 1885. Pp. xi., 560. This posthumous work of the distinguished theologian Dorner contains his ethical doctrine. His aim is to find a point of view from which the unity of Christian and philosophical ethics may be seen, at least as a limit to which both equally tend. "The way to this union is long and the reaching of this end nothing less than the whole history of the world," and we are as yet only in the middle of the process ; although, even now, a philosophical ethics may become Christian without ceasing to be rational, and a theological ethics need not give up the claim to a severely scientific character. There must therefore be no forcing of union on the tvo systems from outside. It is not only unavoidable but desirable that attempts should still be made to construct a philosophical doctrine of morality inde- pendently of all reference to Christian morality. Yet in the final union, that is to be sought and will at length be attained, between natural and Christian morality, the theological element will not have disappeared from Christianity. This element, indeed, is an essential part of Christian ethics. For of the three stages of moral progress, the stages of "law" or "duty," of "virtue" or law which has embodied itself in habit, and of morality as "highest good" or as the absolute good" which is identical with God, the last, stage, which is the stage of "love" or of "the Gospel," sums up in itself the other two, the first as well as the second, for in it the. essentially Christian idea of love is united with the philosophical idea of mural law. Now this process is inconceivable apart from the historical and theological element in Christianity; for love (.-annul be felt towards a law, but only towards a person. The idea of the God-man as the highest manifestation of moral good in the world is thus a necessary idea in ethics. Morality is the only thing in the world that is absolutely good ; but tin-re are also goods that are not ethical. In the ideal Christian orgaiii>atiun of the world, or Kingdom of God," which is the end of the whole movement of things, those goods, such as knowledge, which are not of absolute value would have a place axigned to them, not indeed on a level with morality, but distinct from it. In the ideal Christian state the pursuit of knowledge, for example, and the investigation of all truth on purely natural grounds, would be left perfectly i i Allgnneine Ethik. Von Dr. H. STKINTHAI., a. o. Prof, fiir allgemeine Sprach isseiischaft, c. Berlin: G. IJeimer, 1885. Pp. xx., 4.">,s. This treatise, upon a subject to which the author, more than ten years ago, fell himself irresistibly drawn (but without abandoning the psycholo- gico-linguistic studies that have brought him his fame), has been looked for