dividual, the community, and the relations between them. Under the first is discussed the being of the individual, his freedom, and the content of his life; under the second, the family, society, and the state; and under the last, property and labor, personal relations to one's neighbor, and the content of the moral life of the community. Within these lines sections are devoted to such diverse topics as suicide, slavery, regeneration, marriage, war, usury, the death penalty, etc. Each of the eighty-six sections into which the volume is divided consists of three parts, — a few lines at the beginning in large print; two or three pages in smaller type elaborating the points, suggesting questions, or stating other views; and, finally, half a page or more of bibliographical references. The following fairly typical passage may serve to illustrate both the general position of the author and his method of treatment:
"19. . . . The concept of regeneration serves as a tie between dogmatics and ethics. Moral regeneration is the objective transformation of character, so far as that occurs without purpose and effort ["without desert," "by grace," or, as Schopenhauer says, "as if coming suddenly" (angeflogen] "from without"], and is felt as a relatively new beginning of the moral life. It shows itself objectively in the actual improvement of the life, and subjectively in the knowledge not only that the oppressive burden of the former feeling of guilt has been rolled off, but also that the life is now guided by a practical law of progressive improvement. [Jer. xvii, 14; John viii, 36; Tit. iii, 5.]
"The idea of the kingdom of God may be regarded, as by Pfleiderer, as the tie between dogmatics and ethics. But in the doctrine of the sumrnum bonum, which is essentially the same as that of the kingdom of God, the religious point of view is not so necessary as it is in the doctrine of regeneration. This latter doctrine Sigwart has recently emphasized, like Schopenhauer before him, as indispensable for ethics. — The ethical value of the concept of overcoming [Ueberwindung] depends on one's idea of the nature of this act of will. Does it consist in choosing the higher good and renouncing the lower [Plato, Locke, Kant], or is it more correct to consider it as the choice on each occasion of the single real good in preference to all really unsatisfying apparent goods [Spinoza, Fichte, Krause, Baader]? Mediating ideas: to suffer evil is better than to do it [Plato, Gorgias; I Peter iv]," etc., pp. 54 f.
Then follows half a page of bibliography.
Such bibliographical references throughout the book are mainly to the German literature, and to a considerable degree to the German theologians. Next to German, the author seems to be best read in English, while the French and Italian books are perhaps less adequately represented. A conspicuous case of ignorance of what is happening across the French frontier occurs in the following passage: "The question of legal divorce has a prominent position in France, especially since the attempt made early in the '8o's to reintroduce it, and the
