Neo-Hegelianism in Jurisprudence writer intermittently indicates his own positions, and at times elaborates them with a degree of fullness. His own philo sophical attitude, therefore, is quite as much to be reckoned with as the atti tudes examined and described. With Dr. Berolzheimer's personal attitude the present article deals. The features of his historical presentation may be passed over without belittling the value of the book in its chief aspect, that of a his torical review. Only a fragmentary and tentative statement of his philosophical position can safely be attempted with out reference to his other works, includ ing the four other volumes of the series from which "The World's Legal Philoso phies" was chosen. Before taking up this subject, it may be worthy of remark that the epitomization of such a voluminous mass of ancient, mediaeval, and modern theo retical writings is a striking performance, and has been carried out with such pains and skill that the author may more readily than not be excused for any sins of omission, and may be pardoned for exemplifying the inevitable tendency of every selective treatment to choose what most plainly suits the given purpose, and to overlook what though apparently irrelevant may be of cardinal importance. If some theories have been wrongly labeled, and if a theory has not invaribly been stated with its qualifications, and in the light of its manner of dispos ing of hostile arguments, it may be borne in mind that the execution of a work of similar compass avoiding all such pit falls would be a wellnigh superhuman task. The clear literary form, in which the author has been seconded with rare ability by the translator, is also worthy of comment. Of course no style, however clear, could make the cloudy metaphysics of some eighteenth century German
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speculation easy of comprehension. But the author is not to be taken to task for faults of matter rather than of presenta tion. The latter exhibits Dr. Berolz heimer's distaste for technical phrase ology. He adopts a literary rather than a scientific terminology, which is at once a defect and a virtue; his mind on the whole is rather averse to abstractions, and he is possessed of a keen sense for the actualities of practical life. His terminology is not always ideal, but his meaning is not often mistakeable. The theoretical position unsystematically built up by Dr. Berolzheimer throughout the volume may be freely interpreted as follows. The idealism of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth erred through its lack of a sense of reality, and was followed by the inevitable reaction of a natural ism which went equally far to the oppo site extreme, committing the mistake of excluding from the field of knowledge everything but the world of mechanical cause and effect. The latter extremism has provoked another necessary reac tion, and what is needed is an idealism possessing a full sense of reality: Evolu tion is not a purely logical process of the unfoldment of the idea of absolute rea son, of which empirical reality is only the appearance, but the conception of an actual external evolution must be substituted for the Hegelian view. This actual evolution is not a mechanical process to be explained solely by the operation of natural laws, for such a view would be fatalistic, contradictory to the nature of the human will, and refutable by the plain facts of experience and by the entire course of history. An idealistic view of human activity and of the forces of progress is therefore neces sary, the will being conditioned by en vironmental conditions, but not abso lutely determined by them in its action
