LITERARY NOTICES. 



629 



nual Record." By so doing, he is enabled 

 to give more space and fuller treatment to 

 the " Summary of Scientific Progress," and 

 the result is a remarkably satisfactory re- 

 view of the scientific work of the year in 

 the various departments of research. Each 

 particular science, and, in some instances, 

 particular departments of a science, are 

 treated by writers eminent in their respec- 

 tive specialties. 



The Ethics of Positivism : A Critical 

 Study. By Giacomo Barzellotti, Pro- 

 fessor of Philosophy at the Liceo Dante, 

 Florence. New York : Charles P. Somer- 

 by. Pp. 327. Price, $2. 

 This book, the first edition of which 

 appeared in Florence a few years ago, and 

 is now translated into English and printed 

 in this country with a new introduction by 

 the author, is a study of those more recent 

 aspects of philosophy which have culmi- 

 nated in the British school of psychologists. 

 It seems to have been written with a prin- 

 cipal view of instructing the Italians in re- 

 gard to the great modern movements of 

 thought that are going on most actively 

 outside the limits of that country. But the 

 writer's object is by no means purely ex- 

 pository of current thought: he dips into 

 controversy with opinions of his own, and 

 avows his aim to be to defend "the princi- 

 ples of morality against the attacks of an 

 empirical utilitarianism." The appellation 

 of positivism, which the author connects 

 with his discussion, he informs us has been 

 criticised by leading authorities as inexact, 

 and we think the objection was certainly 

 well taken. At any rate, the propriety of 

 the term, as designating the English school 

 of thinkers with which he is chiefly dealing, 

 has been so strenuously contested as mis- 

 leading by prominent members of that 

 school, that it seems somewhat assuming 

 in Prof. Barzellotti to persist in this ques- 

 tionable or disputed application of the word 

 in the title of his book. 



The work is similar in scope to Masson's 

 "Recent British Philosophy," and its topics 

 are discussed in an excellent spirit and in 

 an intelligent and instructive manner ; but 

 it will be more valued as a delineation of a 

 system of ideas than for any contribution 

 it offers toward their further development. 

 We notice that Prof. Barzellotti differs very 



widely from President Porter in his estimate 

 of the philosophical position and influence 

 of Herbert Spencer. For, while to the Presi- 

 dent of Yale College Spencer is little bet- 

 ter than a pretender and a verbal trickster, 

 whose illusive reputation is destined to van- 

 ish so speedily that the world will wonder 

 how the delusion lasted so long, the Italian 

 professor, on the other hand, accords to him 

 a regnant place as the commanding mind of 

 the most vigorous and powerful philosophi- 

 cal school of the present age. He says, 

 " Modern psychological inquiry reaches its 

 highest degree of development in Herbert 

 Spencer." He closes an elaborate account 

 of the doctrines and methods of this thinker 

 as follows : 



" Such is in outline the psychology of Her- 

 bert Spencer. The idea that rules it is that of 

 a harmony of things which extends by degrees 

 from one form of life to another and culminates 

 in mind. It is not an original idea, but it ac- 

 quires particular aspects when thus treated ac- 

 cording to the positive method ; and, in the in- 

 termediate path which Spencer pursues, between 

 popular empiricism and a priori speculations, 

 the conception of an evolutionary process cer- 

 tainly assumes an original character. Spencer 

 has been led into this course by his closely in- 

 ductive genius. He is opposed to too abstract 

 generalizations, and likes generalizations to im- 

 ply carefully-observed facts ; but, by a bold syn- 

 thesis, he surpasses all that his predecessors 

 have achieved by analysis only. This equilibri- 

 um of faculties makes Spencer worthy of being 

 considered in more aspects than one. He marks 

 in the history of psychological inquiry the latest 

 stage that the inductive method has attained in 

 England by the work of a powerful mind im- 

 pressed with the refinements of modern science; 

 and this is not less true, although some traits, and 

 particularly a certain metaphysical touch in the 

 works of this most distinguished philosopher, 

 remind us of Schelling and Hegel. The tenden- 

 cy of the method of the English school, as it is 

 applied by Spencer, seems to become ever more 

 and more distinct from the general tendency of 

 psychological studies on the Continent, and 

 marks in him the climax of the course of thought 

 exhibited, in successive phases, by James Mill, 

 John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain. It is a 

 movement of thought, implying the tendency to 

 find the basis of mental science in the knowledge 

 of concrete facts, and the progress of that ten- 

 dency we can estimate by the successive ad- 

 vances made in psychological analysis by Hart- 

 ley, James Mill, Bain, and Spencer. The inquiry 

 into the facts of the world of consciousness, as 

 we have indicated, had no definiteness in the 

 vague mechanism of Hartley and James Mill; 

 it was more logical in John Stuart Mill, more 

 minute in Bain, and is to-day broader and more 

 comprehensive in Spencer, who is the one so 



