reviewer an unfortunate mistake in policy, a mistake at least in the case of brief descriptions like those under consideration. He has made the book, to a very considerable extent, a collection of quotations from the authors presented. The result is, for reasons which can easily be imagined, that the readers seem to be given the letter rather than the spirit of the doctrine in almost every instance. They seldom, indeed almost never, see it in its plausibility as the creator of the system himself saw it. This seems to the reviewer true even of the presentation of the doctrine of St. Thomas. He believes that Sidgwick's account in his History preserves more of the spirit of this great system than does this account written by a disciple. With this defect goes what to the reviewer seems a certain limitation of vision. He cannot feel that the author is as yet sufficiently awake to the variety and complexity of the moral experience to produce an adequate presentation of the theories which attempt to reflect and interpret this experience.
Frank Chapman Sharp.
The University of Wisconsin.
In a handsome volume containing one hundred and eighty five portraits and other historical illustrations, Dr. Paul Carus, Editor of the Monist and author of many books on many subjects, offers a "presentation of Goethe with the special purpose of bringing out those features of his life which characterize him as a thinker or, perhaps better, as a philosopher." The book is "not intended to exhaust the entire field, but to serve as an introduction to his work and to set forth in general outlines the significance of his world-conception in the literature of humanity, though there are many branches of his literary activity which have scarcely been touched upon." Dr. Carus has performed the task which he has set himself in a most creditable manner: the book gives one a sympathetic insight into the personality of "an extraordinarily normal man." No one can lay the work aside without having been impressed with the great poet's remarkable objectivity, his keen desire and his wonderful capacity for seeing things as they are, his honesty with himself, his healthy judgment, his clearness of vision, his fairmindedness, his lack of envy and his generous appreciation of the worth of other men of letters. In refusing to exaggerate the defects of Goethe's character and in emphasizing the lofty moral purpose that inspired him, our author may perhaps have idealized the picture of the man; but he is right in asserting that "even his failings had no trace of vulgarity and that his character was much purer than that of many a saint whom we know not in his sins but only in his contrition and repentance."
Students of philosophy will be particularly interested in the chapters dealing with the "Religion of Goethe," "Goethe's Philosophy," and "The Significance of Faust." Goethe did not work out a system of metaphysics
