This volume presents the elaborated material of a course in Ethics given in the Graduate School of New York University. The work is thoroughly representative of present tendencies in philosophy. It expresses the firm conviction that philosophy, if it is not to be shelved as an 'academic' interest, must have something positive to say about the situation in which humanity finds itself.
The problem to which the author addresses himself is that of the individual in the modern world, in his relations on the one side to nature and on the other to society. It may be stated in other terms as the problem of the subjective and the objective, the inner and the outer, as these factors present themselves to one seeking a philosophy of life. The work is an effort to discover what is unique in human life, as distinguished from other forms of existence, and to ask how these characteristic and significant elements can find expression in the objective order. What the author seeks, then, is "a treaty of peace between the forces of individualism" and those of "scientifico-social thought."
The volume is divided into three Books. Book One deals with the Ground of Life in Nature, which is treated in two parts, The Naturalization of Life, and The Struggle for Selfhood. Book Two, The Goal of Life in Society, is devoted in the first part to The Socialization of Life, and in the second to The Repudiation of Sociality. Book Three presents The Higher Synthesis in three main divisions: The Joy of Life in the World-Whole, The Worth of Life in the World-Whole, and The Truth of Life in the World-Whole.
Our age, we are told, is suffering from the submergence of the individual. Classicism sought to perfect the individual through the "substitution of the aesthetic and intellectual for the crude and barbaric." Christianity as a religion of redemption sought in turn the rescue of the individual from the world. Modern thought, on the contrary, has pursued the study of man and the world objectively "with a resolute disregard of the ultimate interests of his being." As a result we have become sure of the world but uncertain of ourselves. This naturalization of human life in the modern era was begun by astronomy and physics, and completed by biology and sociology. Positivism thus assumed "an air of finality": whatever additions might be made to a knowledge of facts, it was believed that no new principles of interpretation would be won. Against this naturalism, in-
