CHARLES MERCIER, Criminal Responsibility. 407 ' want of due reflexion " is responsible for this barbarous state of things, thus implying that somehow we can transcend the plane of fatal dependence on the feeling given. But how, if not by an in- tellectual, that is at the same time a moral, effort? And such effort, so far at least as we know or are likely to know, is free rather than caused. The ordinary sociology with its cheap deter- minism borrowed uncritically from the physical sciences may set forth to explain the higher life purely from without, and our withers are unwrung. But we expect an explicit recognition of freedom as at least one ' moment ' in human history from an " ethical subjectivism " worthy of the name. Finally, I would insist that the determinism I am objecting to is one that displays itself at the scientific level, or, in other words, in the organising and explaining of the actual facts of human history. With such a purely metaphysical determinism as Dr. Westermarck professes in the closing chapter of his first part I hardly feel called upon to quarrel here. I cannot myself reconcile an ethical sub- jectivism with a metaphysical objectivism, but others apparently are able to do so. Dr. Westermarck argues that it is " absolutely meaningless" to regard our actions and selves as anything but " in every respect a product of causes " a position he identifies with determinism but maintains that it is quite another, and a wrong, thing to suppose us to be wholly conditioned from without, and not partly from within as well. This wrong view he terms utalism. Well, my point is that his handling of the facts tends be, in his terminology, fatalistic. ' Cause ' at the level of a ,tionalistic metaphysic may mean almost anything free cause for one thing. But at the level of physical science it means some- thing quite definite, and is not, I think, to be transferred in the same sense to social science without grave danger. E. E. MABETT. Criminal Expansibility. By CHARLES MEECIEE, M.B., F.E.C.P., F.E.C.S. Clarendon Press, 1905. Pp. 232. Price 7s. 6d. LIKE previous works by Dr. Mercier this book is notable as a piece of vigorous and independent thinking on a difficult topic, well and clearly expressed. The principal aim of the book is to answer the question, " Whom ought we to punish ? " The author therefore sets aside the legal definition of responsibility, substitutes for it the definition, " Eightly liable to punishment," and goes on to inquire into the meaning of ' rightly ' and of ' punishment '. He quickly reaches the conclusion that " By rightly liable to punishment I mean, then, liable to punishment on grounds that appear fair and just to the ordinary man," and proceeds to inquire " what are in fact the aims intended by punishment, and what they ought to be ". He argues that retribution is and always has been the main end of punishment and draws the conclusion that " for the practical
