Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/624

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. III.

Schopenhauer's great constructive work with so much vigor, would remember to acknowledge the debt they owe to him for his substantial contribution to clear thinking in The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

In his preface, the author says he hopes "that the two more technical essays [i.e., the last two] will be regarded as suggestive rather than as final"; and it would be mistaking the intent of the book, in its present form, to insist too much upon the importance of the final chapter, "Pessimism as a System." At the same time it must be said that the chapter is somewhat disappointing. After a brief introduction, in which he refers to the "unreasoned pessimism" of poets like Byron, Leopardi, and DeMusset, about fifteen pages are devoted to a very inadequate summary and criticism of Schopenhauer's system. The rest of the chapter, sixty-two pages, consists of a much more careful analysis and criticism of the metaphysical and ethical doctrines of von Hartmann, whom the author regards as "more representative of the most modern Pessimism," and related to his predecessor as Hegel to Kant. At the end of the chapter we have a confession of the author's own ethical faith, which,—as any one at all acquainted with modern ethical theory would have surmised almost from the first,—is the doctrine of 'self-realization.' Indeed, throughout the book, utilitarianism is treated with an impatience which is hardly deserved, whatever may be the difficulties connected with making the 'greatest happiness' principle the ethical ultimate. The author is a little incautious on the last page but one of the book, when he says, "The real sacrifice of the whole man to what heart and head recognize as the good character can neither be surmounted by Pessimism nor grounded on Hedonism." The "real sacrifice of the whole man,"—and in some cases nothing less seems to be demanded, is a pretty serious crux for the principle of self-realization,' strictly construed.

Ernest Albee.

The Human Mind: a Text-book of Psychology. By James Sully, examiner in Mental and Moral Science in the University

of London. New York, D. Appleton & Co.—2 vols., pp. xvii,

501; xii, 393.

Mr. Sully's chief aim in giving us this enlarged, and to some extent recast, version of his Outlines, was, he tells us in the preface, to meet the needs of "those who desire a fuller statement of the latest results of psychological research." The book, in consequence, bears some-