The essay is divided into five chapters, the first four dealing with the several senses of Sollen, the fifth with das Gute. The first chapter is entitled "Uber die Frage: Was soll ich thun?" (Philosophie der Normik). I ought to do what I am commanded to do, the command being accompanied by punishment for disobedience. The interest regarded by the act of duty is always, however, that of the law-giver, and the act itself is, therefore, always altruistic. The second chapter deals with the question, "Was soll ich thun, um?" (Philosophie der Technik). Here we have to do with the hypothetical as contrasted with the categorical imperative, with counsels as contrasted with commands. Commands take no account of individual ends; counsels imply and are dependent for their validity upon such ends. It is the function of die Technik to discover the means to given ends. Even that end which may be said to be universally given, i.e., happiness, yields only a hypothetical imperative. The question "Was soil ich thun, um glücklich zu werden" discussed in the third chapter, is the question of Eudämonologie, a special branch of Technik. The next chapter is devoted to the question, "Was soll sein?" (Philosophie der Ideologie)—the question of the relation of our wishes, and more particularly of our ideals, to reality. The author here insists upon the antithesis of logic and life, upon the biological value of error, upon the a-logical character of the ideal. "It is questionable whether an ideal which has nothing Utopian in it deserves the name of an ideal at all." He also condemns what he calls Entwickelungsideologie, finding in it only a new version of the errors of Naturrechtslehre.
Having distinguished and discussed these four forms of Sollen, the categorical, the technical, the eudamonological, and the ideological, the author, in proceeding to the consideration of the good (Philosophie der Ethik), reduces the ideological to the eudämonological, the good of the former, namely, the desired, being identical with that of the latter, namely, the pleasure-giving. Is the ethical good, then, synonymous with the categorical ought? The author, instead of offering an answer of his own to this, the fundamental question of the entire discussion, contents himself with a classification of the various possible interpretations of ethical good. The classification corresponds to the four senses of 'ought' and to the possible systems of ethics. According as the ethical good is conceived as (1) that which is commanded, (2) the useful, (3) the ideal, (4) the expression of a certain type of character, the ethical system is (1) an ethic of duty, (2) an ethic of ends, (3) an ethic of the ideal, (4) an ethic of virtue. These various "types of ethical theory" are further subdivided with a painful and unnecessary minuteness.
This book is a discussion of the doctrine of evolution from the theological standpoint. Accepting evolution as a fact, the author seeks to ascertain
