NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
This volume is the first of the Ethical Series, edited by Dr. Sneath, of Yale University, and published by Ginn & Co. As stated in the prospectus, each of the volumes of the series will be devoted to the presentation of a leading system in the history of modern ethics, in selections or extracts from the original works. Each volume will contain a bibliography, a brief biographical sketch of the author of the system, and a critical introduction, explaining the main features of the system, and showing its relation to preceding and subsequent ethical thought. Besides this volume on Hume's Ethics, the series will contain volumes on the ethical systems of Hobbes, Clarke, Locke, Kant, and Hegel. The names of the editors, among whom are President Patton and Professor Watson, are a sufficient guarantee of the care with which these volumes will be prepared.
It will be remembered that Henry Holt & Co. have already published several volumes of a series of Modern Philosophers, also under the general editorial supervision of Dr. Sneath, the object of which is to do the same thing for the history of modern philosophy that this series aims to do for the history of modern ethics. Of course, whatever objections may be urged against the one series will apply equally well to the other. But however little one may believe in the principle of representing a philosopher by selections from his works, neither series should be condemned off-hand. For instance, the present volume on Hume's Ethics, edited by Dr. Hyslop, can hardly be called a volume of selections. It contains the whole of Hume's original treatise on "Morals" (Bk. iii of the Treatise of Human Nature) together with a portion of his work on the "Passions" sufficient to indicate his position on the subject of "free-will," which, it will be remembered, is neglected in the treatise on "Morals." Probably it was wise, on the whole, to choose the original work, rather than the revised form of 1751; but it is to be noticed that the book on "Morals" in the Treatise is about sixty per cent longer than the Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, while the style in which it is written is distinctly inferior to that of the Inquiry. Moreover, the present volume's excuse for being is not so evident as would have been the case, if the Inquiry had been chosen. There is no respectable cheap edition of Hume's Essays, while the Clarendon Press edition of the Treatise, with its valuable sixty-page index, can be purchased for a sum
