purely hypothetical, but the important point is that the hypothesis, which in part we have seen fully established, is in other respects susceptible of experimental verification, and may become the point of departure for our study" (p. 134).
The proposed plan proceeds on lines suggested by this hypothesis. The immediate aim is to establish the time at which new mental phenomena appear in the life of the child; for example, when imaginative associations are first formed, when the first images of internal origin appear, when adjectives appear in the utterances, and whether qualities of things are apprehended before the things themselves. From this early stage the investigator should pass on to the formation of judgments, of abstract ideas, and to the study of words without images. Obviously, this project requires the study of minds at an extremely early age. A special laboratory, under the charge of Professor Bechterew, has been created in St. Petersburg for the systematic study of a number of young children. In this Institut Psycho-pédologique last spring four infants were being cared for, and there is good prospect that many more will enter.
Edward M. Weyer.
Washington and Jefferson College.
This disciple of Rudolf Eucken believes that the problem of human life arises from the ambiguous position of man in the universe, midway between the natural state in which he cannot remain, and the spiritual state toward which his striving is directed. History, literature, philosophy, art, and religion are to be interpreted in terms of this progress toward the state of ideal humanity. Three types of humanity are revealed in this process of self-realization—the naturistic, characteristic, and humanistic—corresponding to the ethical theories of hedonism and eudæmonism, intuitionism and rigorism, and the type of humanistic idealism advocated by the author.
The development of naturism, which begins by defining worth in terms of pleasure and pain, but soon finds these inadequate, and next resorts to such hedonistic compromises as utilitarianism and evolutionism, which also prove inadequate, terminates in eudæmonism. Ancient eudæmonism emphasized contemplation, whereas modern eudæmonism stresses activity. The comparison of Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Montaigne, Voltaire, Goethe and Kant in this connection is masterly, and furnishes an excellent illustration of the erudition and interpretative skill that characterize the work as a whole (pp. 141-159).
Contrasted with naturism, which leads to a sense of 'value' that man receives from the world, characteristic ethics reveals, in the capacity of a moral character distinct from nature, "the dignity of human life." Though the four concepts that are subsumed under human dignity—conscience, rectitude, freedom and duty—at first seem external to the individual man, he later learns to recognize in them the voice of universal humanity speaking within him.
