424 NEW BOOKS. the passages of other authors referred to (usually anonymously) by Butler, or more or less evidently in the author's mind, will often be found really useful. The same may be said of the large amount of interesting matter relating to the history of Butler's writings, to what has been said and written about them and against them, collected in the volume of Subsidiary Studies. When Mr. Gladstone launches forth into more general topics of Theology and Philosophy (especially the latter) we have abundant cause to admire the multifarious knowledge which he has found time to acquire in the interval of laborious and splendid public work. That he exactly meets the difficulties which Butler presents to the professed student of modern Philosophy, it would be too much to say. Even in the midst of his most energetic protests against various phases of modern theological speculation, it is quite clear how much his mind has really been affected by the progress of biblical criticism and theo- logical thought. Still, it must be confessed, his way of looking at things often belongs to the past rather than to the present. There are two elements in Bishop Butler an element that exhibits in a somewhat exaggerated form the limitations and the embarrassments of eighteenth century Theology, and an element that is of permanent and enduring value. Mr. Gladstone, it must be confessed, does not do very much towards helping us to disentangle the one from the other. Nevertheless in exhibiting the hold which Butler's thought has obtained on so powerful a mind, Mr. Gladstone has constructed a notable monument to his hero's memory. Mr. Glad- stone would probably consider himself rewarded for this labour of love if it should incite and assist some younger student to make a more deliberate and systematic attempt than has yet been made to assign to Butler his true place in the history of Philosophy and of Theology. Christianity and Idealism. The Christian Ideal of Life in its Relations to the Greek and Jewish Ideals and to Modern Philosophy. By JOHN WATSON, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in Queen's University, Kingston, Canada. Glasgow : James Maclehose & Sons. London : Macmillan & Co. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1897. Pp. 216. This work has grown out of lectures recently delivered before the Philo- sophical Union of the University of California. Part i. is the expansion of a lecture on " The Greek and Christian Ideals of Life ". Part ii. contains three lectures in defence of Idealism. The author seems anxious to prove throughout his dissertation that religion and morality have been always indissolubly connected. In order to show this he tells us that he selects for detailed examination "one or two instances where the con- nexion seems at first sight to be broken " (p. 6). Accordingly in chapters i. and ii. Professor Watson brings historical evidence indicating the rela- tion of totemism and polytheism to the ideal of life and standard of con- duct existing among those ancient nations who adopted them as their basis of religious belief. His conclusion seems to be that when the practice of a community becomes purer than its cult, the latter is replaced by a loftier object of faith and worship. Chapter iii. treats of Judaism, where all morality consists in a rigid adherence to the letter of the Law with its code of adscititious precepts, devised by the ingenuity of the Pharisees. With this entirely external system of morality Professor Watson contrasts the ideal of life exhibited in the Christian Beatitudes (p. 63). Christ traces back the real source of all moral ideas to the heart of man as a member of a social community.
