176 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



We now all look upon progress as an object naturally to be 

 aimed at, and it is difficult to conceive a time when society 

 was regarded as fixed permanently in structure, and progress 

 was not an ideal aimed at by rational people. Their guiding 

 principle was rather the welfare of their souls in a future 

 world, than advancement of mankind in the present. The 

 introduction of the new idea is very ably described by Prof. 

 Bury ; and we learn with surprise how very recent are some 

 conceptions which we might have supposed fundamental to 

 the human mind. Relativity is at least as true in Psychology 

 as in Physics. 



We may perhaps note the publication of Causeries Philo- 

 sophiques, by A. Badoureau (Paris, Gauthier-Villars et Cie), a 

 sequel to Les Sciences Experimentales. Though not published 

 till the present year, it is entirely pre-relativity in conception : 

 and far more literary than scientific. The author holds that 

 three-dimensional space is an objective fact, that force is also 

 objective, and that atoms are ether vortices. There are no 

 conceptions of novelty in the book, which for the most part 

 is based on a shallow philosophy. 



As regards Ethics, Prof. Mair has edited and published The 

 Historical Method in Ethics, by John Handyside (Liverpool 

 University Press), consisting of three essays by a young author 

 who was killed in the war. A biographical note is provided by 

 Prof. A. S. Pringle-Pattison. The essays are of considerable 

 interest, though naturally somewhat fragmentary. Sir Charles 

 Walston has published a lecture delivered at Cambridge in 191 9 

 on Eugenics, Civics, and Ethics (Cambridge University Press), 

 in which he advocates more attention on the part of Eugenists 

 to the ethical standpoint, desiring that they should form a 

 clear idea as to what type of mankind they desire to cultivate. 

 Sir Charles usually adopts the ethical outlook on philosophical 

 problems : a view natural enough to an ex-professor of Fine 

 Art : for, as we have often insisted. Ethics is not a science, 

 but an art. Sir Charles well insists, however, that it should, 

 like other arts, be based upon science — the science of human 

 character, otherwise called Ethology. 



The British Journal of Psychology has published its No. VI 

 Monograph Supplement on " Pleasure — Unpleasure," by A. 

 Wohlgemuth (Cambridge University Press) : an important 

 investigation into the nature of " feeling," the results of which 

 are summed up in eighty-eight separate propositions. Prob- 

 ably the most important of these conclusions is, that " there 

 are only two qualities of feeling-elements, viz. Pleasure and 

 Unpleasure." All other apparent differences belong in reality 

 to sensation, or other cognitive or conative processes. 



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