288 CRITICAL NOTICES :

societies needs no other explanation than the "law of the unlimited growth of forces," or the " principle of increasing psychical energy". Too much influence, it may be objected from Prof. Wundt's own point of view, is ascribed to ideas of the supernatural. For if, as he insists, illusions may proceed from reality, but out of mere illu- sions no reality can come (p. 340), how can moral conceptions, which he does not hold for illusions, be created by the non- existent gods of man's "personifying apperception" (p. 53)? The deduction of disinterested from egoistic action, he goes on to say (p. 340), reminds us in a measure of the 18th century deriva- tion of religions from the frauds of priests. Does not Prof. Wundt's own account of the origin of morality in a measure re- mind us of the same theory ? It may be allowed, however, that by his contention for a " primitive altruism," in which as well as in " religious reverence " morality has its origin, he does, in the later sections, correct the theory of the exclusively religious, or mytho- logical, origin of morality, which seems to be implied in the first. From the foregoing summary much has of necessity been omitted that is of more interest in relation to comparative mytho- logy and the theory of prehistoric origins generally than to con- structive ethics ; and where the author's theses themselves have been indicated, it has been impossible to give any idea of the labour that has been spent on their development. It will also be necessary, for the sake of going on rapidly to the constructive theory, to pass over in silence the greater part^of the next section. What is of most importance here is to note Prof. Wundt's conclu- sions as to the latest phase of philosophical ethics. In the ethical theories of the 17th and 18th centuries, " individualism," he finds, worked itself out. The Kantian idealism, culminating in Hegel, brought about the restoration of the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrine that the State is " more than a sum of individuals," that it has an end of its own different from all merely individual aims. The " Historismus," or " Universalismus " of Hegel, however, tended to deprive the individual of all meaning except that of a " bearer " of the universal idea manifested in history. It needs to be qualified by the individualism of the " Aufklarung " ; and it needs a scientific foundation. Little objection can be taken to this as a general statement ; and Prof. Wundt shows, though not adequately, that "objective evolutionism " the conception, that is, of an evolution of common knowledge and morality from the basis of language and social custom, as distinguished from the " subjective evolutionism " that tries to explain the transmission of ideas by heredity alone has been arrived at in England independently of the Kantian develop- ment. Mr. Stephen's Science of Ethics, he finds, is an expression of " objective," Mr. Spencer's Data of Ethics of "subjective" evolu- tionism. When he comes to details, however, there is much in his account of English moralists that is open to the charge of injustice or misapprehension . The perverting influence is to be found partly