Philosophical Idealism, and the reader finds it easy in such an atmosphere to get a good view of this picture and of that.
The Moral Philosophy, of Chapters IX, X, and XI, deals with Duty, Freedom, and Rights. The author reaches his own point of view, which is almost identical with Green's, by a critical examination of Kant. This section suffers from compression; but it will be very serviceable to students of Kant's Ethics, as indicating directions in which that system must be modified.
The last chapter, which is entitled the "Philosophy of the Absolute," is also a criticism and correction of Kant's view of Religion and Art. Twenty pages is too limited a space for so broad a theme.
In spite of the largeness of the subject, whose different phases are discussed in this short volume, and in spite of the author's method of blending criticism with systematic theory, Professor Watson has produced a work which is of great service to contemporary philosophy, and which, by its rigid insistence upon the problems of philosophy as distinguished from the problems of science, will surely prove a fruitful stimulus to metaphysical and ethical thinking, even in an age which has taken science for its idol.
J. Q. Schurman.
Conceptions. By David G. Ritchie, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of St. Andrews. London,
Swan Sonnenschein & Co.; New York, Macmillan & Co., 1895.—pp. xvi, 304.All who are familiar with Mr. Ritchie's previous writings know, of course, that he is, and from the very nature of his metaphysics must be, an opponent of the doctrine of Natural Rights. The aim of the present work, accordingly, is to subject to criticism this theory and such practical applications of it as have been made, and to warn both conservatives and reformers that it cannot serve as the foundation of a sound political science. The metaphysics of the subject is generally avoided. The treatment is rather historical, and, when theoretical, from the point of view of the general reader—"the plain man." The chief purpose seems to be didactic rather than than merely objectively philosophical—not so much to contribute to political philosophy as to disabuse the popular mind of pernicious error.
The work is divided into two parts. In the first, the theory of Natural Rights and its historical development are discussed. In the second, particular Natural Rights are historically and critically ex-
