Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/440

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NEW BOOKS. 439 as to the present state of cerebral pathology. They are marked by great clearness of statement and independence of judgment. We hope for an opportunity, later on, of drawing more particular attention to some points in those of the lectures (such as x., " Affections of Speech ") where the author trenches more directly upon psychology. Kant's Ethics. A Critical Exposition. By NOAH PORTER, President of Yale College. (" Griggs's Philosophical Classics.") Chicago : S. C. Griggs, 1886. Pp. xviii., 249. The chapters of this essay on Kant's ethics are, after a short Intro- duction, (i.) Principal Ethical Treatises, (ii.) The Fundamental Princi- ples of the Metaphysics of Morals, (iii.) Tlie Critique of the Practical Reason, (iv.) A Critical Survey of Kant's Ethical Theory, (v.) Brief Notices from a few of Kant's German Critics (Schiller, Trendelenburg and Lotze). The line the author takes in the critical part of his work is to urge, against the purely formal character of the Kantian ethics, that under the title of "fitness to be a universal law of nature" Kant really makes use of the criterion of " tendency to promote the general welfare". A "rational nature," if it is absolutely insensitive, cannot be an end to itself. " Worth and value are terms which can have no import unless the emotions are appealed to." Butler's "principle of reflection" is compared with the doctrine of the practical reason and is preferred to it because, although not sufficiently based in analysis, it is yet founded on a doctrine of human nature, and not, like the Kantian doctrine, put forward as applicable to " all rational beings " without any reference to the special constitution of man (pp. 186-9). " Our solution holds fast to the authority of the moral reason and the moral law, as recognised by both Kant and Butler. So far as Butler recognises simple authority as the distinctive attribute of the moral reason or the moral nature in the way of personification, without any explanation of the natural endowments which make it possible, so far he is fairly open to criticism. So far as he resolves the possession and use of this authority into the nature of man as a reflective and voluntary being, so far does he make his theory rational " (pp. 205-6). German Psychology of To-day. By TH. RIBOT, Director of the Revue Philo- sophique. Translated from the 2nd French Edition by JAMES MARK BALDWIN, B.A., late Fellow of Princeton College ; with a Preface by JAMES M'Cosn, D.D,, LL.D., Lit.D. New York : C. Scribner's Sons, 1886. Pp. xxi., 307. A welcome translation, by a competent and careful hand, of Prof. Ribot's well-known work. The task of translating "was undertaken with the feeling that no greater service of the kind could be rendered to the ' new psychology ' ". Dr. M'Cosh, in a Preface of 8 pp., says first a useful word or two for the introspective method as fundamental in psychology useful because of a certain exaggeration in some of the author's statements that follow ; and then makes some interesting remarks on the supplementary (physiological) method. (" Herbart of Leipsic " must be a slip of the pen for Konigsberg or Gottingen if local designation were necessary.) Etudesur le Scepticisme de Pascal consider e dans le Livre des Pensdes. Par EDOUARD DROZ, Docteur es Lettres, Maitre de Conferences a la Faculte" des Lettres de Besanpon. Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. 394. The author's object is to oppose the view of Pascal's Pens&s which he takes to be the prevalent one among the educated public, viz., the view derived from Cousin and summed up in the phrase "the scepticism of