MARCH 21, 1884.] 
is hardly any living English writer more 
abounding in vitality and wit than Mr. Leslie 
Stephen ; but even he, when he enters this en- 
chanted region, seems benumbed and drowsy, 
and is positively hard to read. ‘There is said 
to be no American teacher who has imparted 
more moral force to his students than the ven- 
erable president of Williams college ; but, the 
moment he arranges his instruction in a book, 
it is as if he gathered his living flowers from 
useful and from noxious plants, and laid away 
these virtues and vices, all pressed and juice- 
less, in successive drawers. 
The last work of Janet, which he frankly 
describes as his Magna moralia, is certainly 
as little open to these criticisms as any book 
of its kind. It attracted much attention on its 
first appearance in 1874, and was for some 
years used as a text-book in Harvard college. 
It is now translated, and very well translated, 
for the use of President Porter’s classes in Yale 
college. 
adviser would call it, and is full of learning. 
Its strength lies where the German master- 
pieces are weakest, —in force and variety of 
illustration. It is hardly extravagant to say 
that so clear and picturesque a treatise, in the 
hands of an alert teacher, might save the study 
of ethics from its almost inevitable fate of 
being very dull. 
The stand-point of the author may be very 
briefly described. He is a conspicuous instance 
of the many minds who desire to be eclectics, 
but whose hearts will not permit them. He 
sees that the problem of ethics, like that of all 
present philosophy, is a problem of reconcili- 
ation. He sets himself to comprehend in his 
system the whole range of contributions to 
ethics made by modern utilitarianism, but he 
is none the less at heart a Kantian. The 
moral law of Kant appears to him too formal, 
too abstract, too empty, and he is repeatedly 
offering corrections and supplements; yet if 
Fichte is a disciple of Kant, so, in spite of 
frequent controversy with the master, is Janet. 
His first thrust is at the least-guarded part of 
the experiential method, —its incapacity to 
distinguish between quantity and quality in 
conduct. Here he discloses with ease the con- 
tribution which Mr. Mill has made to the view 
of conduct which he believed himself to be 
opposing ; and we pass from the recognition 
of this distinction of quality in acts to the 
principle which alone can give quality to them. 
This principle he defines as their intrinsic ex- 
cellence ; and this excellence, in its turn, is to 
be judged by the contribution of acts to the un- 
folding of the best in man, —of his real person- 
SCIENCE 
It has lucidity, as our last literary - 
361 
ality, his reasonable will. ‘Thus we find before 
us the moral dynamic of a completed life, the 
conception of an end in which happiness and 
excellence shall coincide, —in short, a moral 
ideal. This discussion occupies the first of 
three divisions in the treatise. The two re- 
maining books unfold this fundamental con- 
ception in its relation to outward standards of 
duty and to inward laws of life. They proceed 
with great clearness and almost with vivacity 
of treatment, and invite us in somewhat frag- 
mentary fashion to a great variety of problems, 
both of metaphysics and casuistry, which we 
cannot here consider. 
Returning to the main contribution of the 
book to the theory of morals, the present re- 
viewer has no controversy to undertake with 
its evident purpose. The ideal aim which it 
presents is not stated with the frankness of 
Grote, or with the fulness of Green; yet it is 
as plain with Janet as with Grote, that man 
is essentially ‘an ideal-making animal,’’ and 
as certain, though not so plain, with Janet as 
with Green, that the development of the moral 
ideal is a personal and inward, and not a 
social, evolution.” What we shall here with 
some diffidence suggest, however, is the highly 
technical character of all these treatises, and. 
indeed, of the whole range of ethical literature. 
We repeat the impression with which we began 
this notice. Here is a subject which deals 
more directly than any other with the real and 
daily relations of life; yet, as we have just 
now tried to describe the purport of a remark- 
ably lucid book, we have found ourselves forced 
into the language of specialists, and away from 
the methods of practical affairs. It is quite 
possible for a man to be a highly trained moral 
philosopher, and yet be a powerless adviser 
concerning a specific moral problem, so far 
removed has been the science of right conduct 
from the subject with which it is supposed to 
deal. Now, we maintain that a science of life 
should frankly take its start from the data and 
the problems of life, and should proceed in- 
ductively to analyze and classify these data, 
and to discover what may be their law. The 
literature of moral conduct may be at present 
divided into two distinct classes, — the books 
which deal with theory, and the vast and 
rapidly growing literature which deals with the 
practical conduct of social life. This latter 
department is largely the growth of the last 
few years. It may be called ethical sociology. 
It describes the duties one owes to himself and 
to society, — the duties, or, in the case of Pro- 
1 Grote on moral ideals, p. 46, ff. 
2 'T. H. Green, Prolegomena to ethics, 1883, pp. 189, 201. 
