Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/687

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No. 6.]
REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
671

minister. Twenty-nine subjects are discussed in the fifty-three pages. "Justice" gets scarcely a page; "Moral Law" and "The Will" fare no better; "Evangelical Ethics" overspreads two pages, and "Duties to God" six. This distribution of topics tells clearly enough the nature of the book, so that it is not necessary to allude to the quotations from the Shorter Catechism. But those persons who have been thoroughly trained in the latter will scarcely stand in need of the present volume; nor can it be recommended to the professed student of ethics. But the work is not without value. As an autobiographic record, it is of the greatest interest. It shows us what a man of Mr. McCosh's eminence thinks and feels about the most momentous subjects that can engage the mind of man.

J. G. S.
Ethik. Encyclopädische Skizzen und Litteraturangaben zur Sittenlehre. Von Dr. Georg Runze, a. o. Professor an der Universität zu Berlin. I. Praktische Ethik. Berlin, Carl Duncker, 1891. — pp. viii, 274.

Dr. Runze is a professor in the theological faculty of the University of Berlin. The scope of his previous work and his standpoint may in some measure be judged from the title of an earlier work, — Outlines of Evangelical Dogmatics and Ethics, — and from these courses of lectures he has given within the last three years: History and System of Ethics; The Different Opinions upon the Person of Christ; The Christian Doctrines of Reconciliation and Justification, with Especial Reference to the Theology of Ritschl.

The volume in hand contains only the first part of a treatise which is to include two other divisions, Historical Ethics and Abstract Ethics. As stated in the preface, the object of the work is not directly to contribute to scientific inquiry, so much as to enable the student to orientate himself in reference to the scope of the questions and the means of answering them, to point out difficulties and stimulate to independent reflection. The author's reason for the arrangement of his parts is suggested as follows: "This [historical] part we give its position between the synthetic presentation of practical or concrete ethics, which is connected merely with the interest in the individual problems, and the analytical treatment of the universal problems of the theory of morals, the solution of which requires encyclopædic knowledge, and which should not therefore be treated at the beginning as de Wette and most others do, but should rather be postponed with Wundt to the conclusion of the system" (p. 15).

This first division has three parts, dealing respectively with the in-