Ethical Studies. By F. H. Bradley, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. H. S. King & Co. London, 1876.-Mr. Bradley does not pretend to have composed a systematic and exhaustive treatise on moral philosophy. He is not even prepared to define the sphere of moral philosophy, so as to determine what properly falls within it, and what ought to be excluded from it. He professes simply to discuss some leading questions in ethics, with a view to expose and correct some misconceptions which he thinks prevalent. This is undoubtedly a perfectly legitimate and useful task, provided always it be performed by a competent hand. Strange to say, Mr. Bradley himself proclaims his own incompetency. "The writer," he says, "knows how much is demanded by his task. It demands an acquaintance with the facts of the world which he does not possess, and it demands that clearness of view on the main conceptions which govern our thoughts, which comes, if at all, to the finished student of metaphysic. The reader must not expect this either." We cannot help suspecting there is more of rhetorical artifice than genuine sincerity in this self-depreciation. It reminds one too much of Antony's,

"I am no orator, as Brutus is, But as you know me all, a plain, blunt

man

and the sly irony of Socrates, which renders him so much more formid

able an antagonist, and gives such an exquisite zest to the Platonic dialogues.

Let no one be simple enough to interpret Mr. Bradley's words literally. He is anything but the untutored, unsophisticated, "plain, blunt man," crassá Minervá, that he

represents himself. Whatever may be his deficiencies, he is certainly not wanting in metaphysical acuteness and logical dexterity. If anything, he shows an excess of these qualifications. His Oxford training has told upon him He has not studied logic, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and Hegel, without effect. No distinction is too nice for his subtlety, no conception too abstract for his firm grasp. He revels in hair-splitting to the n'th degree. His divisions and sub-divisions confuse one with their multiplicity. His conjuror's tricks with words startle and puzzle. He has no difficulty in showing, by this means, that a thing both is and is not, and is both black and white. Paradox and contradiction are his delight. He starts all sorts of objections and questions, which would never occur to an ordinary mind, and tells the reader, for his edification, that they admit of both an affirmative and a negative answer. One is perpe-' tually reminded of the interminable and amusing quibbling by which Plato represents Socrates as arriving at contradictory conclusions, which he does not attempt to reconcile. Nor is Mr. Bradley destitute of Socratic humour. He flings

his sarcastic sneers about with great freedom, is never tired of quoting current phrases that have become the catch-words of party, and sometimes manages to make his antagonist look very ridiculous. He professes never to have gone beyond the limits of fair controversy, yet he does not scruple to intimate pretty plainly that those who differ from him are the victims of ignorance and dulness of perception.

The book is altogether too dogmatic for a professedly critical work. Criticism, to be of any value, should consist of something more than assertion, unsupported by fair argument. It is a poor apology for dogmatism and one-sidedness to urge, as Mr. Bradley does, that other English works on moral philosophy are chargeable with the same faults. This may be true not only of English works, but also of the great German authorities followed by Mr. Bradley; but it does not remove, or in the slightest degree alleviate, the objection to such a tone in philosophical writing. In these scientific days people are more than ever impatient of dogmatic affirmation without proof.

The first essay is entitled, "The Vulgar Notion of Responsibility in Connection with the Theories of Free Will and Necessity." Mr. Bradley begins by telling us what is not the object of the essay-a practice which he adopts, with questionable advantage, throughout the work. This, together with his fondness for frequent digression, and endless multiplicity of detail, has a tendency to confuse and weary, rather than enlighten and interest the reader. If he had confined himself to fewer leading thoughts, giving them their due prominence, and keeping others in subordination, conform ing, in fact, to the laws of mental perspective, the impression left on the mina of the reader would

have been more distinct and intelligible.

The drift of this essay seems to be to show that both the necessitarian and free-will schools of philosophy are wrong, because they are at variance with vulgar notions of responsibility. Mr. Bradley declines the task of discussing the subject on first principles, and will not even venture to say what responsibility at bottom is.

As is commonly the case, the critical or negative portion of Mr. Bradley's work is more successful than the constructive or positive part. Acute and crushing as he is in demolishing the theories of others, he is not so clear and convincing in establishing his own doctrine as might be wished. He acknowledges that it is not new, though comparatively unknown in this country. His chief authorities are the German writers, Hegel, Kant, and Vaske, whose philosophy he describes as one "which we all have refuted, and having so cleared our consciences, which some of us at least might take steps to understand." Judging from this philosophy as represented in Mr. Bradley's pages, it would appear far from easy to understand. The sum and substance of morality, we are taught, is self-realization. 'Realize yourself as an infinite whole;' in other words, Be specified in yourself, but not specified by anything foreign to yourself,"" is the first and great commandment. Those who feel a difficulty in clearly understanding what this means, may perhaps be enlightened by the following explanation: "Realize yourself as an infinite whole," means Realize yourself as the self-conscious member of an infinite whole, by realizing that whole in yourself.' When that whole is truly infinite, and when your personal will is wholly made one with it, then you also have reached

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the extreme of homogeneity and specification in one, and have attained a perfect self-realization."

Even supposing this to be intelligible, it is scarcely consistent with what we are afterwards told. Here the injunction is, "Be specified in yourself, but not specified by anything foreign to yourself." Elsewhere, moral good is said to bethe realization of the good will which is superior to us." The mysterious process of realizing this goodwill is thus explained:

"The good will, then, is the bare form of the will, and this is the eud. This is what I have to realize, and realize in myself. But I am not a mere form: I have an empirical' nature. a series of particular states of the 'this me,' a mass of desires, aversions, inclinations, passions, pleasures, and pains, what we may call a sensuous self. It is in this self that all content, all matter, all possible filling of the form must be sought; for all matter must come from experience,' must be given in and through the perception of the outer world or of the series of my own internal states, and is in either case sensuous, and the opposite of the insensible form.

"The empirical' self, the this me, is, no less than the self which is formal will, an element of the moral subject. These elements are antithetical the one to the other; and hence the realization of the form is possible only through an antagonism, an opposition which has to be overcome. It is this conflict and this victory in which the essence of morality lies. Morality is the activity of the formal self forcing the sensuous self, and here first can we attach a meaning to the words 'ought' and 'duty."

What constitutes the goodness of "the good will which is superior to ourselves" is not stated. All we are told is, that "the good is the good will," and that a man good when he is moral, and he is moral when his actions are conformed to, and embody a good will, or when his will is good;" in other

66 is

words, a man is good when he is good. This may appear to a reader not initiated into the mysteries of German transcendental philosophy as rather a lame and impotent conclusion; but Mr. Bradley, who is, of course, a much better judge, regards it with no small complacency.

Though Mr. Bradley's work cannot be said to have settled any great question in moral philosophy, or even to be a very valuable contribution to philosophical discussion, it is full of suggestive thought and racy writing-hence, it is well worth the attention of those who are interested in such inquiries. The author's definitions of pleasure as "self-realizedness," and pain as "the negatedness of self," are curiosities both of literature and philosophy.

Famous Women and Heroes. A poem. Third and cheap edition. The Poetry of Creation. Fourth and cheap edition. By N. Michell. W. Tegg and Co. 1876.-That Mr. Michell has achieved a certain amount of success as a writer of verse, is abundantly proved by the number of editions his "poetical works" have reached. But success in the sense of having produced poetry of a superior order is more than we can honestly concede to him. Such facility in versification as can be acquired by careful study and practice he may be allowed to possess. His verse is generally correct in metre, accent, and rhyme, flowing with a gentle smoothness, if not much sweetness. He is well acquainted with all the usual artifices employed for poetical ornament and effect. But the highest art of concealing art he does not possess. His verse is artificial rather than artistic, more rhetorical than poetical, and

deficient in depth of feeling, power of imagination, freshness of thought, and force of expression. We have all the machinery of poetry without its moving power, the body without the soul. Walking on stilts is a poor substitute for flying, and plain honest prose is better than prosy verse. Mediocrity and dulness in professed poetry are unpardonable sins, of which, unless we are very much mistaken, Mr Michell is by no means guiltless. It is not possible to read many pages of his verse without a sense of weariness and sleepy languor.

"Famous Women and Heroes " is simply a series of passages in history put into verse spun out to a tedious length, and largely diluted with milk-and-water moralising. These pictures of the past are neither vividly conceived nor effectively pourtrayed. The attention is dissipated and wearied by trivial details which are matters of course. Commonplace exaggeration and strained metaphor serve only to reveal poverty of invention and feebleness of expression. These remarks are especially applicable to the account of the battle of Waterloo, which is spread out thin over no less than six pages. In the account of Cæsar, his crossing the Rubicon naturally occupies a prominent place. From this scene we

extract two stanzas.

The apostrophe to the Rubicon in the first stanza is flat and tedious, the descriptive part being just as suitable for any other small river, and the reflective portion feebly expressed. The next stanza is even worse. This is the firs

time we ever heard of the glowworm twinkling. We always had the idea, both from the report of others and our own observation, that it glowed with a steady, unchanging light. Nothing can be in worse taste than to talk about the wavelets raising their tiny voice in prayer, unless it be the prayer itself they are supposed to utteras if Cæsar needed them to teach him that it is a happier task to make men smile than weep, and that years flow swiftly like a stream. If these talking wavelets could find nothing better than such twaddle as this to say, they might as well have held their tongues.

In "The Poetry of Creation" Mr. Michell ventures on a higher theme, and shrinks not from treading on the same ground as Milton.

and provoking comparison with him. The subject is so completely beyond the range of human knowledge, that common sense, tɔ say nothing of higher considerations, would seem to dictate silence as the only proper course. Certain it is, that even Milton, with all his true, poetical insight, was betrayed into abundant absurdity and impiety through going beyond what is written. And what right has Mr. Michell to suppose he can succeed where Milton failed? The confident coolness with which he presumes to describe the deliberations and reveal the purposes of the Divine mind is revolting to a rightly disposed, thoughtful person. Of the various objects in creation which Mr. Michell undertakes to describe we will select the moon, which he thus apostrophises :

way,

Blessing thy calm, benignant ray!
Yet, gentle lady of the skies!

With whitest flowers around thy
brow,

And tenderest dreams in mildest eyes,
Sorrow to thee will love to bow.
Thy step so still along the blue,
Thy beams, if smiles, seem tear-drops
too,

Shed softly down but coldly bright,
Making more mournful mourning
Night;

Yes, in white vestments thou art clad,
To show thy stricken heart is sad,
Like grieving vestals, who below,
When death lays some young sister
low,

Steal on and weep in weeds of snow.
O Moon! thy tale thou wilt not tell,
But in thy heart there seems to dwell
A sorrow that makes pale thy cheek,
And yet thou look'st so blandly meek,

We love thee, and would scarce desire
To see thy languid, placid eye
More brightly lit with golden fire;

Some memory in thy breast doth lie,
Silently, slowly, feeding there;
And thou must move sedate and fair,
And ofttimes pine and fade away,
With shrinking orb and lessening ray,
Through the long cycle of thy years,
A thing of beauty, love, and tears."

Mr. Michell's idea of the moon's being clad in white vestments to show its stricken heart is decidedly original, so far as we know. But that it has any poetic truth or beauty in it, is more than we will undertake to say. Why the moon should be represented as a palefaced young lady, wasting away with grief at heart, and a long tale upon her mind which she refuses to tell anybody, is more than we can understand. Mr. Michell goes much too far in personifying and apostrophising all sorts of objects and abstract ideas on all sorts of occasions. His similes and metaphors are often egregiously unnatural and jumbled together, and his exaggeration is beyond all reason. The following few lines describing the nightingale's singing in Eden will suffice for illustration :

"Now sinking low, the feeble trill
Breathes like the gushings of a rill,
A thin-drawn thread of silvery sound,
That pulses soft, and faints around,
Unutterably sweet the lay,

Each leaf upon the aspen spray

Ceases its trembling, as to listen; Gemm'd Night her finger lifteth up, And, as she drinks the nectar'd cup Of low rich sounds, her pale eyes glisten."

If poetry consisted of nothing more than metaphor, however overstrained and confused, and exaggeration, however irrational, this passage might fairly be considered highly poetical; bit if good sense