Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/255

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No. 2.]
SUMMARIES OF ARTICLES.
241

parallel opposition between the necessity of authority and the right of private judgment. The application of the same methods brings about the solution, that authority and liberty are only justified so far as they preserve the race. Authority is necessary to prevent moral anarchy, liberty to prevent unlimited authority rendering progress impossible. Making survival a test of right substitutes a practical standard for a metaphysical one, and unites the logical vantage ground of authority with the practical vantage ground of liberty. Little use has been made of this test of survival, because ethics in our century has been separated from law and sociology. We can show how this separation arose by tracing the development of law. The justice of savage tribes is based on a body of tribal customs, – neither law nor morals in any sense of the words, – maintained by an organized terrorism, each member of the community being ready to punish transgression. First arose a set of officials to enforce certain customs, then a definite procedure, and finally a definite statement of the customs and rights themselves. Law thus developed as the political authorities came to be entrusted with enforcing certain parts of morals. The residuum in its turn developed and altered in character. The necessity for ethic legal force grew less and less, and when the sovereign could not compel obedience, stress began to be laid on religious and ethical sanction. The scope of human sentiment widened considerably when its precepts were enforced by conscience instead of physical compulsion. As moral authority develops, the part played by fear grows less, that by reason greater. The separation of moral from legal conceptions led to a confusion between the exponent and the source of law. Hence the notion that the court can say anything and it will be law; that conscience can say anything and it will be right. Neither court nor conscience can strike out a new line of decisions apart from the moral sense and traditions of the community. Behind the court, the legislature, the church and conscience, there is something larger and wider which develops and finds embodiment in national law and character.

David Irons.

METAPHYSICAL AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL.


Die moderne Energetik in ihrer Bedeutung für die Erkenutnisskritik. K. Lasswitz. Phil. Mon., XXIX, 1, pp. 1-30.

It is the aim of this essay to analyze the fundamental concepts of the modern theory of energy and to show their epistemological sig-