is naturalistic back to Bacon. The exposition of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of conscience deals not only with what is said in the seventh chapter of The Data of Ethics ("The Psychological View"), but also with other connected parts of Mr. Spencer's system, and with the other English authors from whom his ethics are more or less derived, especially Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Professor Bain. While it is quite true that the "positivism” and “empiricism" which culminate in Spencer's "naturalistic utilitarianism” are the characteristically English ethics, the author seems hardly to recognize that other types of moral philosophy have been widely represented among English writers. He quotes "Sidgvvick" (sic) in one place (p. 180), but refers to no English defender of Intuitionism or of Idealism except Mr. Llewelyn Davies (p. 169). There are frequent references to the works of Ribot, Guyau, and Fouillée; and the last two seem to have influenced Dr. Zuccante very much, and to have helped to determine the character of his criticisms of Spencerian ethics. These criticisms, though "full of respect and deference for the profoundest and most comprehensive thinker of modern times" (p. 8), are directed mainly to showing the inadequacy of Spencer's account of moral obligation and the inconsistencies between different parts of Spencer's own teaching. The theory of evolution is used by Spencer to get over the difficulties in which utilitarian ethics had been placed by J. S. Mill. Evolution seems to enable Spencer "intrinsecare l'estrinseco,"—to show how what were originally external lessons of experience come to be innate moral instincts in the individual. Dr. Zuccante argues at some length that the theory of heredity cannot explain conscience; but, though he minimizes the power of heredity, he takes no notice whatever of the possible untenableness of the whole Lamarckian doctrine of use-inheritance which lies at the basis of Spencer's psychology. The great defect of evolutionary naturalism, according to Dr. Zuccante, is that it ignores individual spontaneity. He asserts a doctrine of free-will, however, not in any way inconsistent with psychological determinism; like M. Fouillée, he holds that "Ideas are forces" (p. 140),-ideas, except in purely abstract and impersonal matters, being always accompanied by emotion, and so capable of affecting conduct. The contradiction is pointed out between Spencer's exaltation of individual initiative as against the state and his theoretical reduction of individual action to the outcome of mechanical processes (p. 95). In several matters Dr. Zuccante recognizes the inconsistency between the individualistic politics of Spencer's Social Statics and the evolutionary naturalism of his developed system. The defence of the doctrine of "natural rights" in Justice is cited as a crowning proof of the way in which the evolutionary positivist falls under the sway of metaphysics (p. 187). The need of recognizing a metaphysical or non-experiential element in morality is put in a somewhat curious but interesting way. Spencer, it is urged, admits the Unknowable as the absolute reality; why then does he assign no place to it in morality? (p. 167. When Dr. Zuccante says "the Unknowable, "-using Spencer's phrase, does he not really mean "the incompletely known"?) When Spencer speaks of "absolute ethics" as distinct from "relative ethics," he is really admitting the metaphysical into morality; for his analogy between absolute ethics and abstract mechanics, etc., is fallacious. In astronomy, e.g., it is reality that leads us to modify the abstract laws we start with; but in morality the laws of absolute morality lead to the modification and alteration of facts (p. 182). What precisely Dr. Zuccante means by the metaphysical element in ethics is left somewhat vague. His rather questionable identification of the "divine sign" of Socrates with the voice of conscience (pp. 158 seq.) seems to suggest a doctrine like that of our old-fashioned Intuitionists, which is not easily defended against the psychological analysis of the evolutionary utilitarian. From the same author come two articles reprinted from the Rivista Italiana di Filosofia of 1896 and 1897 (Rome). They are on "The Biological Aspect of Conduct according to Spencer," and on "Good and Bad Conduct according to Spencer." They are critical expositions of the same kind as the larger Essay. Another pamphlet is an extract from the transactions of The Lombard Scientific and Literary Institution: "Concerning the Origin of the Utilitarian Ethics of Stuart Mill." It deals with the development of Mill's altruistic ethics out of Benthamism, and is based mainly on what Mills himself tells in his Autobiography. The author does not go behind Benthamism. One would like to have had from a Milanese writer a discussion of the question whether Beccaria derived the famous formula of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number' directly from Hutcheson or not. But what Dr. Zuccante gives is merely an admirably written account of Mill's own ethical ideas. UNIVERSITY OF St. Andrews, SCOTLAND. D. G. RITCHIE. DANTE'S TEN HEAVENS: A Study of the Paradiso. By Edmund G. Gardner, M.A. Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co. This volume contains a very good account of Dante's Paradiso, and brings together many interesting illustrations of its theological and philosophical ideas. It is in the form of a detailed description of the argument of the poem with interjected commentary, and thus it may form a very good companion to the reading of the Paradiso. The author takes special pains to bring out what we may call the architectural structure of the poem, to mark out its main divisions, and to trace the correspondencies of its different parts. He also gives at the proper places references to or quotations from Dante's other writings as well as from Aquinas, St. Bernard, Boethius, and the other writers to whom he owes his main theological conceptions. From a literary point of view this is perhaps all that was necessary; but from the point of view of this JOURNAL we could have wished for a more thorough discussion of the many philosophical or semi-philosophical questions which are raised by the interpretation of the Commedia. Thus in the first chapter there are some interesting remarks on the different senses-literal, ethical, allegorical, etc.—which Dante authorizes us to seek for in the poem ; but the subject is not pursued very far, nor is any attempt made to explain to us the strange complex attitude of Dante's mind, which at first seems so alien to our conceptions of the sensuous directness of poetry. Yet the key to this problem is not very difficult to find. The scholastic philosophy with its hard and irresolvable distinctions had for its necessary counterpart a mysticism in which all distinctions were lost. Now the method of allegory, in which everything, we might say, was treated as a symbol of something else, formed a sort of link between the two. It was a means whereby, without giving up the fixity of distinctions which hid the relativity of the ideas of human and divine, of secular and sacred, of material and spiritual,-without rising to a really organic view of things, the presence of the whole in every part could yet be anticipated, prophesied, or hinted at. It was a means, in other words, of suggesting what could not be directly stated without contradicting acknowledged premises. It enabled Dante as a poet to accept the logical system of dogma, and even, as it were, give it visual manifestation in the definite material structure of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, and yet to suggest to us that all these hard divisions were but presentations of different aspects of the same thing, which ultimately in some mysterious way fuse together into one, as at the end of the poem the human figure of Christ is declared, in Dante's mystic vision, to coincide and identify itself with the three circles of the Trinity. It is, perhaps, through this complex series of correspondences, beginning with the exact parallelism of the division of the three parts of the poem into cantos, and rising to the curious echoes of sound and sense, which we find between them, and also between the different cantos of the same division, but gives to Dante's poem its peculiar ambiguous charm. With Purgatory and Paradise they are held apart in startling distinctness of outline, yet seem, the more we study the poem, to swell into one as different sides of our complex existence. And we with Dante are in all three, without for a moment leaving the cold earth. In this point of view there is considerable disadvantage in an attempt to treat of a division of the poem separate from the other two, a disadvantage, however, which Mr. Gardner minimizes by frequent references. Especially we may note his careful treatment of the correspondence of passages in the Paradiso to others in the Purgatorio. (See e.g. p. 170.) Altogether we may say that, if Mr. Gardner has not given us a philosophical discussion of the ideas of the poem, he has done much to provide the materials for any one who wishes to undertake it. The book concludes with an interesting chapter discussing the authenticity and import of the letters attributed to Dante. EDWARD CAIRD. BALLIOL COLLege, Oxford. BERNER STUDIEN ZUR PHILOSOPHIE UND IHRER GESCHICHTE. Band viii. Herausgegeben von Dr. Ludwig Stein, Professor an der Universität, Bern. DER ÄLTERE PYTHAGOREISMUS. Eine kritische Studie von Dr. Wilhelm Bauer. Bern, Steiger & Cele, 1897: 8vo, pp. viii, 232. (Preis, Mk. 1.75.) There is something about Pythagoras and his teachings that is particularly provocative of curiosity. Nor is this wholly unjustified; for Pythagoras, strange as it may sound, stands to the Greeks in much the same relation as Zarathushtra stands to the Persians, Moses to the Hebrews, and Mohammed to the Arabs. If his influence is less obvious than that of these men, it is equally profound and pervasive, and more varied and fruitful in character. He is not only, like them, a religious reformer; he is also a philosopher, scientist, and founder of an order of social life. Unfortunately, the "brotherhood" founded by him came early in conflict with the political institutions of the time, and was so persecuted and disorganized that it had to exist as a secret society for many centuries. It thus became what Islâm might have been, had the hijrah never taken place. Its doctrines, being controlled by no central authority, assumed numerous forms, often very different from those of the master, and, as no Avesta, Torah, or Koran came into existence, he was at last credited with almost every known doctrine, and elevated almost to the rank of a divinity, around whose name clustered myths and legends without number. To penetrate this dense overgrowth and reach the true teaching of the philosopher, is a task as tempting as it is difficult. Many attempts have been made to do so, among which the most noteworthy thus far are those of Zeller, Röth, and Chaignet. To these must now be added the work before us, perhaps the best of all, both in method and in results. It is no secret to any student of Greek philosophy to-day that Zeller's monumental work on that great subject is already, in many respects, outgrown. Röth's work on Pythagoras, in its effort to avoid the common German fault of hypercriticism, errs in the other direction, and is uncritical, while that of Chaignet suffers from French mathematical neatness. The present work combats-successfully, I think-many of Zeller's views, is severely, and even somewhat pedantically, critical, and makes no attempt to prove Pythagoras the author of a perfectly harmonious system. It is divided into three sections, headed, (1) Pythagorean Metaphysics, (2) Pythagorean Cosmology, (3) Pythagorean Ethics; and there are two appendices, (1) on Aristotle and Philolaus, (2) an Attempt to Determine Pythagoras's First Principles. Though the author does not seem to have hit the mark on all occasions, he has certainly contributed to illuminate for us the figure and import of Pythagoras, and to render his farreaching influence intelligible. And, from an ethical point of view, this influence has the profoundest interest; for Pythagoras was perhaps the first man in history who completely grasped the full significance of the ethical problem, and sought to find for it a practical solution. He saw that, since ethical life involves man's relations to the universe, its laws can be learnt only through a study of these relations and of |