Page:Philosophical Review Volume 5.djvu/115

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
99
NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
[Vol. V.

was undertaken, and many of the selections were made by him. The remaining selections have been made with excellent judgment by Mr. Knight, who for many years was secretary to the late Master of Balliol. The extracts in the first volume are taken mostly from the dialogues of the Socratic Period; the second volume is devoted to the Republic, the Timaeus, the Critias, and the Laws. One is particularly glad to find so much space allotted to the Laws, a much neglected work. The brief introductions and analyses set as captions to the several chapters are admirable in their directness and clearness, and furnish just the information that is needed. Everybody who is interested in Philosophy or Greek literature will bespeak for this well-planned and well-executed work a cordial reception. W. A. H.

Friedrich Eduard Beneke. An Introductory Study. By F. B. Brandt, Ph.D. Columbia College Contributions. New York, Macmillan & Co., 1895.—pp. 167.

Twenty-three pages of this monograph are devoted to Beneke's biography; the remaining portion gives an exposition of the philosopher's system. The author says in his Introductory Note: "While the following work in form is in no sense deliberately polemic, it will be found in spirit to contain as its underlying thought the contention that, if German idealistic philosophy is to be regarded as a systematic development, the true development after Kant is to be found, not in Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, but in the system of Friedrich Eduard Beneke. This is only to say in other words that in the philosophy of Beneke we have both in outcome and in method the profoundest metaphysical insight of our century." This is indeed a very "bold claim," and will be taken cum grano salis by those who are familiar with doctors' theses.

The expository chapters of Dr. Brandt's pamphlet give evidence of patient research and painstaking care. The biographical portion sounds more like a translation than an original piece of work. The sentences are awkward, cumbersome, and thoroughly un-English. Fortunately, however, the second part of the book shows a vast improvement over the first.

Frank Thilly.
A Study of Ethical Principles. By James Seth, M.A., Professor of

Philosophy in Brown University. Second edition, revised. Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood Sons; New York, Charles Scribner's

Sons, 1895.—pp. xvi, 460.

The early exhaustion of the first edition has made impossible anything more than a rapid revision on the present occasion. The corrections will be found to be mainly verbal and of minor importance, though in one or two places I have tried to guard against misunderstanding by a slight