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the first edition, great advances have been made in the state of opinion in regard to many of the leading topics. Important concessions have been made by the boldest critics, and the questions in dispute between historical and philosophical writers are narrowed down to fewer points, and are brought within more definite limits. The questions can be easily apprehended by any persons who will take the trouble to acquaint themselves with them, and, when they are once stated, with the arguments for and against. The adversaries of Christianity, whether in or out of so-called Christian pulpits, make the meanwhile noisy and confident boastings that the learning and science of the world are against the supernatural and the miraculons. A multitude of superficial thinkers, and of active minded readers, believe what they hear often asserted and rarely disproved. The unreading defenders of the truth, whether they are learned or unlearned, are frightened out of their wits, lest this boasting may have some terrible significance of reality, or they hide their heads perhaps in the sand. Let them acquaint themselves fully with the utmost that these foes of Christianity have to offer, and they will prosecute their vocation and hold their faith with clearer heads and lighter hearts. The new edition of these Essays is emphatically a book for the times.

PHILOSOPHICAL.

PHILOSOPHY.*-President

PRESIDENT FAIRCHILD'S MORAL Fairchild's Treatise on Moral Philosophy was prepared to be used as a text-book in Colleges and High Schools, and is in most respects admirably fitted for these uses. In its leading principles it is very similar to the two treatises by President Hopkins, but in its details it is more directly and felicitously constructed with reference to the convenience of learners and teachers. The style is

clear, the sentiments upon many delicate questions of practical ethics are, in the main, true and just, and the tone and spirit are eminently elevated and Christian.

The controversial attitude of a work of this kind towards the late Dr. Taylor seems to us entirely inexplicable and unfortunate. There was no occasion for introducing any such reference at all in a college text-book. The author does not attempt to give any other than the most general classification of ethical theories. His

* Moral Philosophy; or, the Science of Obligation. By JAMES H. FAIRCHILD, President of Oberlin College. New York: Sheldon & Co. 1869.

selection is narrow even from English writers, and his notices of these are merely casual and unsatisfactory. That the views of a single American theologian, whose doctrines and influence on so many points were so nearly akin to those of the Oberlin school, should have been singled out for adverse criticism in a work designed for elementary studies, seems to us an offense against good taste and good feeling, and to exemplify a provincial tendency which we had a right to expect that the Oberlin gentlemen, and especially their catholic minded President, had altogether outgrown.

President Fairchild writes as follows: "Of those which account happiness the supreme good, there are again two classes; first, the theories which represent one's own happiness as the ultimate aim and grand motive of all virtuous action; and secondly, those which regard the happiness of all general well-being, as the end. Of the writers that have maintained the first view, Paley in England, and Dr. Taylor of New Haven, may be taken as representatives. The second view has been maintained by Priestly and Bentham in England, Jouffroy in France, and Presidents Edwards, Dwight, and Finney in America, with others less prominent. Each of these writers has his peculiar views and modes of statement, but the theories may still be embraced in two general classes." pp. 104, 5.

In another passage he speaks of the second class of theories as those "which make happiness the sole good, but find the grand motive for action not in self-love or desire of good, but in the value of the good wherever perceived. All good is to be chosen and pursued; and this choice of good is benevolence, which alone is virtuous action. Many writers have failed to distinguish between these two classes of theories, and have applied to them both the term utilitarianism, which is no more applicable to the doctrine of benevolence, as set forth by President Edwards and President Finney, than to the transcendental views of Zeno and Kant." p. 113.

Of this classification we observe that the points of opposition between the two classes are not necessarily exclusive of another. Neither President Edwards, nor Dr. Dwight, nor Dr. Taylor, would have contended that "the desire of one's own happiness as the ultimate aim and grand motive of all virtuous action" in the sense in which they used these or similar phrases--were exclusive of

or antagonist to "a regard to the happiness of all and general well-being as the end."

Next, the classification according to which Dr. Taylor is placed with Paley, and separated from Dwight and Edwards, seems to us entirely arbitrary and unwarranted. All the pupils of Dr. Taylor know, and the readers of Dr. Taylor's writings ought to be able to discover, that the system of Dr. Taylor was, totally opposed to that of Paley in its so called utilitarian characteristic: that the "for the sake of everlasting happiness" of Paley stands for an entirely different motive from "the acting from a regard to their own well-being" spoken of by Dr. Taylor. An attorney trying a case before a country justice might argue that the passages quoted from the two proved a coincidence in their theories, but no person who had studied the systems of both writers ought to confound the two, so far as their doctrine of the desire of happiness is concerned, much less in respect to the spirit of their teachings.

The separation of Dr. Taylor from Drs. Dwight and Edwards, is, in our view, equally unwarrantable. The views of Dr. Dwight may be found in his System of Theology, Sermons 97, 98, and 99, the last of which is entitled "Utility the Foundation of Virtue," and in this the doctrine is explained and defended, that "virtue is founded in utility." It is true that Dr. Dwight did not raise distinctly the questions which Dr. Taylor answers in respect to the universal and fundamental character of the generic subjective desire of happiness, which is common to all special desires, and establishes a relation to itself which is common to every objective motive, but his doctrine was the same in principle, and is occa sionally announced in words. In Sermon 97, the truly good man is described as one "who seeks his happiness in doing good." President Edwards subjects the question to a more careful analy sis with the following results, which we give in his own language: "Negatively, charity or the spirit of Christian love is not contrary to all self-love. It is not a thing contrary to Christianity that a man should love, or which is the same thing, should love his own happiness." "That a man should love his own happiness is as necessary to his nature as the faculty of will is; and it is impossible that such a love should be destroyed in any other way than by destroying his own being. The saints love their own happiness. Yea, those that are perfect in happiness, the saints and angels in heaven, love their own happiness; otherwise that

happiness which God hath given them would be no happiness to them; for that which any one does not love, he cannot enjoy any happiness in."

Affirmatively-"the inordinateness of self-love does not consist in our love of our own happiness being absolutely censidered too great in degree. I do not suppose it can be said of any, that their love to their own happiness, if we consider that love absolutely and not comparatively, can be in too high a degree, or that it is a thing that is liable either to increase or dimunition. For I apprehend that self-love, in this sense, is not a result of the fall but is necessary, and what belongs to the nature of all intelligent beings, and that God has made it alike in all; and that saints and sinners, and all alike, love happiness, and have the same unalterable and instinctive inclination to desire and seek it."

"A man may love himself as much as one can, and may be in the exercise of a high degree of love to his own happiness, ceaselessly longing for it, and yet he may so place that happiness, that in the very act of seeking it he may be in the high exercise of love to God; as, for example, when the happiness that he longs for is to enjoy God, or to behold his glory, or to hold communion with God, or a man may place his happiness in glorifying God. It may seem to him the greatest happiness that he can conceive of, to give God glory as he may do, and he may long for this happiness. And in longing for it, he loves that which he looks on as his happiness; for if he did not love what in this case he esteemed his own happiness, he would not long for it, and to love his own happiness is to love himself. And yet, in the same act, he loves God because he places his happiness in God, for nothing can more properly be called love to any being or thing, than to place our happiness in it. And so persons may place their happiness considerably in the good of others, their neighbors for instance, and desiring the happiness that consists in seeking their good, they may, in seeking it, love themselves, and their own happiness." Charity and its Fruits. 229-239 passim. We have no room to comment on the other criticisms of the author upon Dr. Taylor's theory. Nor need we, for if he fundamentally misconceives it in its relation to that of President Edwards, it will occasion no surprise that he should misunderstand or misrepresent it in other aspects.

gives ample

PROF. BASCOM'S "PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY indications of active and independent thinking in the right direction. In all the positions which he takes he is directly opposed to the sensational and associational systems which are just now so much in fashion, and are at once so plausible at the first view, and so unsatisfactory on closer inspection. Many of the fundamenial assumptions of these systems are ably exposed, and the material analogies by which they have been occasioned are clearly pointed out and satisfactorily set aside. On several single topics the author has made good positions, which he has ably defended. The work was not designed to serve as a complete discussion of the whole subject so much as to lay the foundations of a system, and in a general way to indicate their application to a few classes of facts, and of questions in dispute. It is therefore rather a series of Essays or Studies in the Science of Psychology, than a complete exhibition of the Science itself. The writer of a book of this sort gains to himself an advantage in that he is exempt from the obligation to work out in detail all the inferences and applications of his principles, and to show their consistency with the facts of experience. Then he may allow himself a far more liberal use of figurative language than is accorded to a writer whose problem holds him to a diction that is more strict and severe. We observe that Professor Bascom has availed himself very freely of the last named liberty; to an extent which many critics would scarcely approve. We do not believe in hypercriticism upon such a point, and would by no means reject metaphorical language in the service of philosophy. Nor would we restrict a writer from following the bent of his own genius in the choice of the metaphors which he thinks fit to employ, provided the metaphors do not mislead, and are never made the substitutes for careful analysis and systematic coherence. We dare not

assert that Professor Bascom is never misled by the exuberance of his own fancy and the confidence of his own active and eager intellect to use expressions which offend even a very catholic taste, and deceive his own honest mind. Such phrases as "cross-lots," and log-chained with logical relations," do not help any argument, nor do they please the taste of ordinary men.

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We find some difficulty in determining and accepting the

*The Principles of Psychology. By JOHN BASCOM, Professor in Williams College.

New York: G. P. Putnam & Son.

1869.

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