NOTES.
Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Development.
The gold medal of the Royal Academy of Denmark has been awarded in philosophy to Professor J. Mark Baldwin of Princeton. His memoir was in substance the work on "Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Development," announced for early publication by The Macmillan Co. This medal has some historical interest from the fact that it was taken by Maine de Biran early in the century, and also from the fact that it was not taken by Schopenhauer who competed for it with his Grundlage der Moral in 1840. The following is an extract from Professor Höffding's Report to the Danish Academy.[1]
"At the meeting of Feb. 8, 1895, the Royal Academy of Denmark put in competition the following question in philosophy (see the Comptes Rendues de l’Académie, 1895, p. 22):
"'Is it possible to establish for the individual isolated in society a line of conduct drawn entirely from his personal nature; and if such rules are possible, what is their relation to the rules which would be reached from the consideration of society as a whole?'
"There were no less than nine memoirs presented for the prize, four in Danish, two in German, two in French, and one in English. The exceptionally large number of the contestants, taken with the variety of nationalities to which they belong, testifies to the interest which is felt to-day in moral problems, and also, we may suppose, to the interest which this particular question excited.
"… The memoirs seem to fall, according to their value, into three categories.… The third category contains a single memoir which is free from the defects which diminish the value of the others. By the method which it employs, it throws new light upon the solution of the question proposed and thereby advances it remarkably toward a solution … a memoir written in English, bearing the pseudonym of Socius. This extended and profound work commences with an inquiry into the relations subsisting between the individual and society. Proceeding by observation and analysis, the author studies the development of the consciousness of the individual, and this study bears at once upon that aspect of consciousness which relates to purely individual existence and upon that which relates to the society, great or small, to which the individual belongs. Occasionally
- ↑ Bulletin of the Royal Academy of Science and Letters of Denmark, for the year 1896 (published May, 1897), pp. vii-xvii.
