Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/161

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148 NEW BOOKS. " society " and " the state " in the origin of morality. In an essay on "The State and Morality" (xv.), and elsewhere, the author contends that morality was formed under the direct action of the state rather than of " society ". It is the state, he holds, that makes society possible, not society the state (p. 232). This essay, it may be mentioned in passing, is one of the best and most characteristic in the volume, the author's view of " the free state " having special interest. " Morality in the wider sense " (Sittlichkeit), as distinguished from " morals " (Moral), or obedience to traditional moral precepts, is made to include that care for personal well- being on which Mr. Stephen lays stress while excluding it from morality properly so called (xxiii.). ^Esthetics also, though outside morality in the narrower sense, is to be included under " ethics," or the science of "Sittlichkeit" (xxi, " Zum Problem des Schonen"). The good and the beautiful both depend on the true. In the order of development, accord- ingly, intelligence precedes art and morals, the growth of intelligence being itself made possible by the protection of the state. The ideal of " Sittlichkeit " is thus not merely the moral but the complete man. The "ethical" aim is happiness, which coincides with "development," indivi- dual and social. The " moral " aim is social " health " or " well-being ". This distinction the author finds to be recognised by Mr. Stephen, and only not made perfectly explicit because of the want of an English word for "morality in the wider sense". Of the essays not directly occupied with ethics or aesthetics (i.-xiii., besides two or three of the later ones) the most are devoted to the exposition of the " real-idealistic monism " which the author makes the basis of his practical philosophy. This monism he attaches to the doctrine of the Eleatics, " the ancient represen- tatives of idealism " (vi.), as well as to the " Materialism and Sensualism of the 18th century" (iv., v.). While admitting the imperfections of these latter doctrines from the point of view of the theory of knowledge, he at the same time claims for them that they only need correction in the light of ideas that have since been better understood to give a true view of the origin and nature of human consciousness. As the moral sense did not exist in the beginning but is the final flower of the civilised state, so life and consciousness do not belong to " elements" but arise out of their com- bination, a combination of which the organism is the material expression. Ethik. Eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen u. Gesetze des sittlichen Lebens. Von WILHELM WUNDT. Stuttgart : F. Enke, 1886. Pp. xi., 577. In like form with his Logik, Prof. Wundt here presents a systematic treatise on Ethics. Though he has won his chief fame upon a field from which Ethics seems somewhat remote, those who remember his early work Vorlesungen uber die Menschen- u. Thierseele will know that his interest on the subject now treated reaches back to quite the beginning of his philo- sophical career. For the present, till Critical Notice follows, it may suffice to mention that, while recognising the indefeasible relation of Ethics to pure Psychology, he relies upon Folk-psychology or Anthropology as affording the effective basis of ethical inquiry this, as against the notion that the true basis is to be found in Metaphysics, which must rather itself be founded upon ethical considerations ; on the other hand, when he comes to the philosophical determination of the principles of Morality, he finds himself in what some may think but which, he contends, is not really surprising agreement with certain main positions of the Kantian school of speculative idealism. After a short Introduction, the work falls into four parts : (1) The Facts of the Moral Life, (2) Systems of Moral Philoso- phy, (3) The Principles of Morality, (4) The Departments of Moral Life.