NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.
In defining the scope of his subject, Mr. Fite says that ethics is a study of practical life in its more general aspects; and the plan of his book is evidently determined by the conviction that theory is for the sake of practice, and by the desire to get behind the antagonisms of ethical theories to some agreement or compromise which can serve the purpose of practical guidance. He starts from the fact that there is a contradiction between the ideal and the practical, and between the interests of humanity and those of self. This fact gives rise to two fundamentally different types of ethical theory, viz., hedonism, which represents the claims of material needs and self interest; and idealism, representing the claims of ideal and disinterested aims (pp. 6, 29-33).
Although the same dualistic classification is reached in another way by tracing back ethical theories to their roots in one or the other of two divergent philosophies (p. 17), I think that the practical aim is fundamental in controlling Mr. Fite's arrangement of material; and this is also its best justification, since it is doubtless true that from the practical point of view,—the standpoint of tendency, of moral attitude,—hedonism and idealism may be said roughly to correspond to the well recognized Epicurean and Stoical attitudes toward life. If we must describe the otiose and the strenuous moral attitudes in philosophical language, the words hedonism and idealism are perhaps accurate enough for popular and practical purposes, though it seems to me that the moral attitude of a conscientious universalistic hedonist of the Sidgwick type is more properly described as Stoical than as Epicurean; and Mill, whether consistently or not, would certainly make the claim for his own system that, like Stoicism, it preaches a morality of self-devotion and sacrifice. No objection, however, need be taken to Mr. Fite's dualistic classification of ethical theories; since it is true that all types of ethical theory can be ultimately reduced to varieties of the view that pleasure is the supreme good, or of the view that virtue or perfection of character is the good.
And yet, in spite of the author's simplicity of outlines and clearness of style, I am afraid that 'thoughtful persons' who are not moral philosophers, and college 'students beginning the study,' will be rather confused, if not misled, by Mr. Fite's too simple classification and loose exposition of rival theories. In failing to act upon the familiar adage of giving the devil his due, he has done violence to the history of ethical opinion, and has set up an idol of his own manufacture as the typical deity of hedonism. Hence, I say, to at least one class of readers to whom the volume is ad-
