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proper place for the qualification was the place where the argument was stated; the more so, as it would not then be necessary to re-state the argument, in order to make known how it is to be qualified. In the particular instance mentioned, we lost ourselves in the attempt to find out what actually was the qualification to be made.

Enough, however, of criticism. However sorely the reader's patience may sometimes be tried, he cannot fail, if he resolve sternly to exercise it, to profit by Mr. Sidgwick's careful analysis. It may be hoped that those who in time to come write on what has been, is, or should be the aim of human endeavour, will study his criticisms. They will thus be made familiar with the distinctions which they otherwise might overlook, and will not, like Mr. Lecky, fall into the blunder of mis-stating, or of failing to comprehend, the doctrine of their adversaries, and of then vigorously com-. bating their own misapprehensions. As Mr. Sidgwick remarks, "The difference between the propositions (1) that each ought to seek his own happiness, and (2) that each ought to seek the happiness of all, is so obvious and glaring, that instead of dwelling upon it we seem rather called upon to explain how the two ever came to be confounded, or in any way included under one notion ;" and yet no less a person than Mr. Lecky has failed to make the distinction in the onslaught which he has made upon what he supposes to be Utilitarianism. If Mr. Lecky studies this work, he is not likely, we think, to make the same mistake again, and it is probable he will be made aware of still more subtile distinctions which may not have been dreamt of in his philosophy.

It is obvious that it is not possible in a short space to give a critical review of so minutely critical a book. Were we to begin at the beginning, we should be inclined to question Mr. Sidgwick's right to start with what he calls the simple assumption that there is something under any circumstances which it is right or reasonable to do, and that this may be known. Is not this verily a complex and big assumption? It is the assumption of the existence of a moral sense or faculty, for it assumes a faculty of some kind, which recognises by intuition and makes known what is right or reasonable; and of its validity, for it assumes that it makes known what it is right or reasonable to do? Let us try to touch solid ground, and, coming down from the abstract to the concrete, ask the somewhat crude, but certainly not irrelevant, question-To whom does it make this known? to Mr Sidg

wick, or to the Todo of the Nilagire mountains of Southern India, or to the Bosjesman of South Africa, or to the hereditary criminal of Europe? Mr. Sidgwick would hardly have had occasion to write a book of exposition and criticism of methods of ethics had this faculty really made known to men in times past, or did it make known to them now, what it was right or reasonable to do for it is a matter on which they have been disputing ever since they began to reflect upon themselves, and with regard to which they have not yet come to an agreement. Can anyone now formulate for mankind what it is right or reasonable for them to do? Pilate asked, not jestingly, as Bacon fancied, but in the spirit of philosophy, "What is truth ?" and in the same spirit may we ask, "What is right?" and, like him, we shall wait in vain for a reply. For we should desire to be informed whether it was a sure and immutable formula applicable to mankind in the abstract, to an ideal mankind, or whether it was applicable to the concrete races of men, and if so, to which race, and at what stage of its development? If you say that each race of beings had a notion of right and wrong which influenced its conduct, then we should beg to be informed specifically what that notion was, and how it is related to the notion of right and wrong which prevails amongst the most cultivated individuals of the most cultivated raceswhether, in fact, the right of one age is not often the wrong of the next. We object, at any rate, to classing very different things under the same abstract name, and thereupon converting that name into an invariable entity. And we do not think that any discussion of the moral sense, and of the methods which have been pursued to discover its teachings, can be satisfactory which does not take notice of its origin and development. When, for instance, a method of ethics which found favour in the time of Aristotle is contrasted with the latest method of ethics which has been propounded, how is it possible to set forth accurately the comparison, and to do justice to the latter, without taking into account what modern science has taught concerning the origin and evolution of the moral sense? A criticism of the latter which formulates its supposed tendency as Hedonism, or Universalistic Utilitarianism, or by any other scholastic term, abandons the real for the abstract, and is apt to be barren and verbal rather than fruitful and actual. Mr. Sidgwick might probably say, as, indeed, he does somewhere say, that the question of the existence of moral intuition cannot be in

any way affected by inquiries into its origin; that the three questions of existence, origin, and validity of moral intuition are separate, should be discussed independently, and the answers to them sought by different methods. "It seems to be frequently assumed," he says, "that if it can be shown how certain mental phenomena, thoughts, or feelings, have grown up, if we can point to the antecedent phenomena, of which they are the natural consequences, then suddenly the phenomena which we began by investigating have vanished; they are no longer there, but something else which we have mistaken for them: the 'elements' of which they are said to be composed."" That is to say, the moral intuitions have not vanished, because you imagine you have shown how they have originated. The question of existence is entirely independent of the question of origin. criticism would be just if it were really ever supposed that the phenomena were disposed of as realities when their origin was explained. But we doubt whether so extravagant a supposition is entertained by anybody. The argument is not that, but this: that the question of origin goes to the essence of the two other questions of existence and validityis an essential part of the question of their existence as intuitions, and of the question of their validity as such. No one supposes that they are not there, because it has been shown how they have grown up; but many persons think that our knowledge of what they are, if there, must depend very much upon what is discovered concerning their origin and evolution.

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Putting aside this difference of opinion with regard to the extent of bearing of the question of origin, Mr. Sidgwick might still say that he is not greatly concerned with the fact whether the simple assumption with which he starts is true or not. It is sufficient for him that it has always been made, and that, the methods of ethics having postulated it, his purely scientific exposition and criticism is nowise affected by its truth or falseness. But we cannot think so humble a claim, which puts his dissertations on a level with dissertations concerning phlogiston before oxygen was discovered, would be just to his work; it might have been so had he contented himself with a simple exposition of methods, and written it as an introductory chapter instead of an elaborate book; but the wealth of acute criticism and subtile analysis would be wasted except for his evident conviction that moral intuitions, apprehensions, or sentiments exist in the human

mind, have a fixed character, and are valid. Having that conviction, is he justified in passing over altogether a question which bears essentially upon the questions of existence and validity-the question of origin?

Our intention to have done with criticism has led us into further criticism. We began by finding fault with the exposition because it deviated into so many byepaths; we have now been finding fault with the criticism because it makes implications for which it does not furnish proper warrant. All the while it is possible that our objections have been anticipated and answered in one part or other of the work. Readers should do what we did not-study the table of contents at the beginning of the book before reading the chapters. They will thereby get a clearer idea of the author's argument. It would have been well perhaps if the summary of the contents of each chapter had been placed at the beginning of it. Whatever else may be said of Mr. Sidgwick's book, it will not be denied that it contains much subtile thought, and is deserving of earnest study.

Lux e Tenebris; or, The Testimony of Consciousness.
Theoretic Essay. Trübner & Co. 1874.

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A book which proclaims itself by its title to be a "light out of darkness" makes a pretension which is not suited to disarm criticism. The title is, however, the most pretentious part of a book which is not written in a spirit of pretension. The author has had in his mind for thirty years the project of enunciating the reflections which he has now set forth, and, whatever may be the fate of his book, "will never regret the time and labour he has spent on its production. It has beguiled many a dull hour, soothed many an anxious one; and he parts with it now as he would from an old friend with whom he had passed many years of his life." He has the modest hope, however, that it may be of assistance to some, in directing and helping them on the way they should go, though he cannot expect that among these will be included the cultivated class of cynics and sceptics.

There are also the more cultivated class of cynics and sceptics, who ask, with the polite Roman governor, "What is truth ?"-who believe that right and wrong are accidents; reason and wisdom, names; goodness and virtue, dreams: they see the darkness, but do not believe in the existence of light. With these the author has no quarrel; their

eyes are at any rate open, and if he fails in making them see, the fault will not be theirs. To convince them he can scarcely expect; all he asks of them is to pardon his weakness in believing that "there may be words which are things-hopes which will not deceive;"-that "Goodness is no name, and Happiness no dream.”

We doubt not that the cynics and sceptics will pardon him, if they do not envy him, this amiable belief.

What then is his story? It is the old one: consciousness the light of the world. This is the light which, notwithstanding its failures in the past, is to lighten our darkness, and defend us from all the perils and dangers of thinking. He begins his first chapter with enunciating a series of ten propositions with regard to consciousness, scarce one of which we should accept entirely in the sense in which it is propounded. It is laid down, first, that all existing things are divisible into two classes-those that do, and those that do not, manifest consciousness; secondly, that consciousness is the one essential attribute of mind, it being impossible to conceive consciousness without a mind to which it belongs, or mind without the property of consciousness; and, thirdly, that consciousness and knowledge are convertible terms, for there can be no consciousness without knowledge of such consciousness, nor can there be any knowledge without consciousness of such knowledge. It is consciousness which tells us we know, and knowledge which tells us we are conscious; and they are not two things, but one thing. Is this so? Can any one at any given moment call to mind, that is, to consciousness, one thousandth part of what he knows? It will be replied that this latent knowledge, or whatever else it may be called, is not real but potential knowledge, a possibility of knowledge, that is, something which can be knowledge when it becomes consciousness. Well, but what is it actually when it is not conscious? Potential knowledge is merely a verbal expression describing what may be; we want to know what that is which we can know at any moment when it becomes conscious, which is not known until then, and where and how it exists meanwhile? The author's answer is that it exists in memory, but he does not tell us as what, only says as knowledge that may be. Where, then, does memory exist, we ask? In the mind, it may be presumed the answer will be, seeing that we cannot well have mind without memory.. So, then, we have potential knowledge laid up unconscious in the mind. But by the second proposition it appeared that there was no consciousness without mind, and no mind without conscious

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