the medium of this little book, is more likely to be repelled than attracted by it. In no other part of his system does Hegel's method of starting from the most abstract and incomplete phase of his topic seem so unsatisfactory as in his ethical work. Hegel's theory of morals is, in truth, of a most matter of fact and practical character,—it is rather realistic than idealistic, but the earlier steps of his exposition seem taken in the air. The same thing, of course, is true of the Logic, but in that case the very nature of the subject-matter—the self-evolution of thought as such—prepares us for a certain formal abstractness of treatment that does not seem out of place. In tracing the earlier dialectical stages of the Philosophie des Rechts, it is by no means always easy to recognize any connection between the abstract concepts there discussed and the actual relations of moral and social phenomena. It is only to the student that has already mastered the technicality of Hegel's method, and who has attained to a sympathetic appreciation of the value of its results, that a study of the ethical part of his system will be intelligible or helpful. To such a student, however, the labor required will be amply repaid; for here, as in all Hegel's works, behind the veil of uncouth phraseology and pedantic formalism there lies a wealth of suggestive ideas, potent arguments, and sound, common sense.
The object of these five hundred and odd pages is not, as might have been supposed from the title, the laudable one of elucidating the metaphysical problem of the relations of the finite to the Absolute. Its aim is to establish the theory of "a correlated persistent individuality." These "persistent mind-matter individuals" are "rhythmic atoms," and the self-conscious soul is the dominant atom in the human organism. Whence "Immortality for all conditioned being is the only logical conclusion." "Have we demonstrated conscious immortality? Yes; if our leading premises are accepted. Yes; if the convergence and accumulation of testimony are of more value than pure logical deduction"—the latter of which a severe critic will certainly not find over-valued in this volume. Nevertheless, it is to be feared that the book fails of its purpose—chiefly because its method is as mistaken in principle as it is tedious in execution. The idea of utilizing the permanence which physical theory has attributed to the atom, as a proof of immortality, by making the soul a special kind of atom, is not, of course, a new one, but it has not been discredited without reason. For it commits the same error in principle that materialism does, that of reducing the mind to a conception it has itself formed to explain the character of its contents, in this case to the conception of an atom. And it involves, further, the old and insoluble difficulty of dualism, as to the
