REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
The aim of the late Professor Sidgwick in these lectures, which formed a single course, delivered several times to his students at Cambridge, is clearly stated by the author himself in the introductory lecture on Martineau: "It appeared to me that having expounded my own system in my book, what I could further do in the way of making it clear would be best done in the form of criticism on the views of others" (p. 315). Accordingly, he takes Green as the representative of transcendentalism, Spencer as that of evolutionism, and Martineau as standing for the latest version of the intuitional theory of ethics. It is with the theories of Green and Spencer that Sidgwick is especially anxious to come to terms. The editor of the volume, Miss Constance Jones, of Girton College, who must be congratulated upon the care and skill which she has brought to bear not only upon the text of the lectures, but also upon the exhaustive "analytical summary," remarks in her preface: "Before the publication in 1874 of The Methods of Ethics—the great constructive achievement of which was the unification of intuitionism and Benthamite utilitarianism—the prominent doctrines in English ethical thought were the intuitional and utilitarian views, and these were currently regarded as being in thoroughgoing antagonism to each other. Later, Professor Sidgwick came to regard the transcendentalist and evolutionist schools as the principal rivals in contemporary English ethics of his own system ... Readers of The Methods of Ethics have sometimes complained that it does not contain a more detailed consideration of Green's ethical theory. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics, however, did not appear until after the publication of the early editions of Professor Sidgwick's book. The same is true of Mr. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Ethics, and of Dr. Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, which latter is probably the most influential recent work on ethics from an entirely 'intuitional' standpoint. The following Lectures are thus to some extent supplementary to The Methods of Ethics."
As might be expected from this statement of their scope and method, these lectures are even more critical and less constructive than The Methods of Ethics, or rather the construction is even more indirect
