C. HADDON, THE LARGER LIFE. 257 The Larger Life : Studies in Hinton's Ethics. By CAROLINE HADDON. With some unpublished Letters of JAMES HINTON. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, 1886. Pp. xviii., 217. This little volume will be welcome to those, and they are many, who wish for some additional light on the philosophical and ethical views of James Hinton. The author, Miss Haddon, is specially qualified for the task, from the close intimacy which -subsisted for many years between herself and the lamented writer whose views she represents. The selected Letters contained in the Appendix, which are one of the most interesting features of the present volume, form part of a correspondence between them, some being hers but most his. With the exception of these letters and of two papers in the body of the work, "An Analogy of the Moral and Intellectual Life of Man," and " What we can know," which have been already printed in The Art of Thinking, the volume consists of papers which give in the author's own words, or in one instance in the record of a dialogue with third persons, an independent sketch of the main points of Hinton's philosophy. And this throwing into shape, by a disciple, of what in the master's own writings has a certain indefiniteness of outline, cannot but prove a boon to those who would correct or verify their own impressions as to the real drift and burden of the theory as a whole. The author has tried (Preface, p. vii.) " to reproduce some of his ideas in her own words " ; to give a picture of the man and his philosophy with perfect candour, without suppressing "those parts of his teaching which he deemed essential, but in which he .had never earned her entirely with him, and from which the common opinion would dissent most strongly" (p. xiii.). Never- theless we are distinctly warned, that "it is only a small corner of this thinker's mind that she has attempted in these pages to .reveal, and that in selecting the portions of his work to expound she has purposely left untouched those which presented most that was difficult and repellent. Her aim has been to help the student to grasp the general principles on which the master is to be inter- preted, and not to justify every detail of their application" (p. xiii.). Just before, when speaking of Hinton's character as a revolter against conventions, the author had said: "Fifty years hence Hinton will probably be recognised as a more ' dangerous ' man than he is now ; just as Kant, according to Heine's saying, held the whole French Eevolution in his theories, to be evolved by inevitable deductions " (p. xii.). If this and this only is the kind and measure of the danger which lurks in Hinton, we need not indulge in any very alarming degree of disquietude. We may gather from the above that, if it is but " a small corner" of Hinton's mind that is here presented, still it is that corner which contains the philosophical and fundamental prin- ciples of the whole. The matters kept back, in which the danger-
