Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/134

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. II.

(= 31, 51, 52), 28 (= 42). The remaining chapters (15-24 inclusive, 27, 30) are quite new.

Noticeable alterations of standpoint are the psychological explanation of Weber's law; the proposition of a periodicity theory of visual sensation in place of the Young-Helmholtz hypothesis; the explanation of optical contrast; the place assigned to feeling as a constituent of conscious content; the ascription of all expressions of the animal intelligence to the laws of association; etc. Noticeable omissions, besides those already mentioned, are lectures (of the old edition) 3-6 (physiological and logical), 12 (on the structure and function of the sense-organs), and 18-20 (self-consciousness, consciousness, idea).

The book can be unreservedly recommended to those who are seeking for an introduction to the methods and results of the new psychology without the intention of pursuing the study of the science very far. Its style differs greatly from that of the Physiologische Psychologie, being easy and comparatively untechnical. For the working psychologist, it has another and a more positive value. One may, perhaps, hope that the volume will before long appear in an English dress.

E. B. T.


Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. By J. A. Stewart M.A., Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. 2 vols. Oxford, Clarendon Press; New York, Macmillan & Co., 1892. — pp. ix, 539, 475.

The author gives us in these two stately volumes a thousand pages of notes on Mr. Bywater's edition of the Nicomachean Ethics. The notes are not exclusively philosophical in kind: along with explanations and illustrations of the philosophical notions and termini technici of Aristotle, philology and textual criticism receive attention. With few exceptions, as Mr. Stewart says in his preface, the text of Bywater has been accepted. No text is printed in the volumes excepting in the passages quoted for comment or illustration; nor are the notes preceded by introductions or followed by appendices. The author supposes these to have been satisfactorily supplied by Grant in his edition of the Ethics (1885). A good feature of the book is the admirably prepared analysis which prefaces each chapter. The work will be found a storehouse of information about the Nicomachean Ethics and the history of its criticism, the author having made liberal use of the more important commentaries, both ancient and modern. The notes are not free from diffuseness; in fact, the contrary could hardly be expected in a thousand pages of commentary on two hundred pages of Greek. Not least interesting is the skilful employment of modern philosophers for purposes of illustration and comparison, — as Hobbes, Cudworth, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Bacon, and others.

W. H.


First Steps in Philosophy. By William MacKintire Salter. Chicago, Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1892. — pp. 155.

This little book is devoted to the examination of two fundamental philosophical conceptions, — Matter and Duty. The first part is thus occupied