It is no small pleasure to the student of moral science to meet with a book on Ethics by an American author which is neither an attempt to reduce the most abstruse and complex branch of philosophical inquiry to the capacity of the youthful mind, nor yet an effort to bring a priori systems of speculation to the support of the supposed interests of theological dogmas and the rules of conventional morality. But the work before us has more than those negative advantages to entitle it to a favorable consideration, for we find in it many of the more important and interesting ethical problems discussed impartially and carefully, while the author approaches the subject not only in a genuinely philosophic spirit, but also with all the aid which an adequate knowledge of the methods and results of modern scientific investigation can lend to its elucidation. Since the appearance of Alexander's Moral Order and Progress we have had no ethical treatise in the English language showing such an acute power of analyzing moral ideas, and such a firm grasp of the influence of the results of modern science in reforming and modifying ethical and sociological beliefs.
The first part of the volume is devoted to the summarizing of the views of those writers whose ethical systems have been mainly determined, or at least strongly affected, by their acceptance of the doctrine of evolution. In most cases there are copious extracts from the author treated of; and always the synopsis is accurate and sufficiently full to give a fair presentation of the theory in question. This part of the book will of course be of special interest to such readers as have not had the time or the opportunity for studying for themselves the more recent works on moral philosophy; and the accounts here given of the works of foreign authors, such as Rolph, Höffding, and Carneri, may do something to draw the attention of those of us who are interested in ethical and sociological questions to the progress which has been made toward a sound moral philosophy by continental scholars. It is in ethics and psychology, rather than in metaphysics, that the philosophical activity of the present day is being manifested; and so closely are sociological and economic questions bound up with ethical considerations that even those whose interests are mainly practical rather than speculative cannot afford to be ignorant of the light which the application of
