596 CEITICAL NOTICES I

because (from my own point of view) the importance of the book lies in admissions of whose logical consequence the author seems (if I may so, with all respect) to be not sufficiently aware ; and those consequences can only be elicited by a criticism which must at times, I fear, have appeared somewhat more hostile than is usually desirable in a notice of this character. I trust, how- ever, that I have sufficiently indicated that for those who are satisfied with the intellectual positions of "Inductive" Utilitarian- ism for those who believe that it is possible to think without consciously or unconsciously falling into " Metaphysics " the book should be a very welcome contribution to our philosophical literature. It would be impossible for Utilitarianism to be pre- sented in a more amiable, a more conservative I may add, a more edifying dress than it wears in Prof. Fowler's pages. What seem to me the defects of the book are no doubt largely accounted for by the conditions under which the volumes have been published conditions for which Prof. Fowler is in no way responsible. The work was projected, and 110 doubt largely written, before 1875, that is to say, before the great advance in ethical speculation in this country, to which Prof. Sidgwick, 1 Mr. Leslie Stephen, Prof. John Grote, Prof. T. H. Green and Dr. Martineau have been (from different points of view) the principal contributors. In very many points, advances upon the older Utilitarian doctrine, which have evidently been made quite independently, have been substantially anticipated by some of the writers just men- tioned ; while the critical or controversial parts of the work often seem to be written rather from the philosophical point of view of 1875 than from that of 1887. It is to be regretted that the book did not appear at a time when it would have possessed an im- portance as a contribution to the progress of Ethical Science which now it can hardly claim. But it is impossible not to welcome the publication of a work in which some of the most important results of this advance are arrived at by an independent method, and presented in a clear, manly and attractive style. It is probable that Prof. Fowler's interest in Moral Philosophy lies less in its speculative controversies than in the practical principles which will be generally admitted by instructed and thoughtful persons, however much they may be lost sight of in popular Ethics. Of such principles Prof. Fowler is an admirable exponent : his book supplies a good illustration of the practical value of a scientific treatment of Morality and of the large extent to which that value is independent of speculative differences. H. EASHDALL. 1 The Methods of Ethics was published in 1874, but whether or not most of the joint- work of Profs. Fowler and Wilson was written before that time, it is at least fair to say that the position of Prof. Sidgwick is not dealt with iu the way which is demanded by the epoch-making character of his book.