of expediency. Yet it has been condemned by the world. The man who obtains charity on false pretences should be hanged higher than Haman because he not only deceived and defrauded his fellows but-quoting from Dr. Guthrie"he poisoned the springs of charity." The law of truth and honor are obligatory on Christians. Sir Walter Scott might have been legally relieved of his debts but he preferred to toil the remaining years of his life until he had paid them all. So the American humorist, Mark Twain, when he might easily have compromised with his creditors, began life anew with nothing and has labored until his obligations have been met. Balfour, who will be Prime Minister some day, is called by his Irish opponents, Prince Arthur, for his chivalry and generosity. Dr. Temple, now Archbishop of Canterbury, when a master of a school had this compliment paid him: "Temple," said a schoolboy writing home, "is a beast. But he is a just beast."

Mr. Guthrie then referred to the ethics of the sermon on the Mount and closed with this fine paragraph: "As we pass from the crowded peaks of the written law to the solitary summits of the unwritten law, as we ascend from justice to generosity, we may see yet beyond and above us the path untrodden save by the pierced feet of the Son of God."

These few extracts from the proceedings may serve to give some idea of what was said and done in Washington at this session of the Council.

The Council elected Principal Caven, of Canada, next President, chose Liverpool as the place of next meeting and adjourned Friday evening, October 6th.

I. CRITICISMS AND REVIEWS.

THE PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. Being the Philosophy of the Feelings, of the Will, and of the Conscience, with the Ascertainment of Particular Rights and Duties. By R. L. Dabney, D.D., L. L.D., late Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology in the Union Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church in Virginia. Crescent Book House, Mexico, Mo.

This work has already been intelligently reviewed in the PRESBYTERIAN QUARTERLY, and yet it may not be amiss to give it another examination somewhat more critical than it has yet received. It is the last and possibly the greatest work of its distinguished author, and is unfortunately a posthumous publication.

errors.

It is to be lamented that the book should have been manufactured by an inexperienced house in a small town; as it is marred by typographical More than this, the editorial supervision was not well done, as may be seen throughout the volume, sometimes to the confusion of the meaning. The title page shows inaccuracy. Is Union Seminary the property of the Presbyterian Church in Virginia? It is just, however, to say that the book is as well made up as could be expected from the conditions of its publication.

Dr. Dabney calls this treatise on ethics "The Practical Philosophy." The Greeks divided human knowledge into theoretical and practical. The practical was subdivided into the practical proper and the poetic. The distinction between the practical and poetic is that indicated by the words. The practical embrace those arts which involve action and nothing more: while the poetic include those whose action results in making or producing something. Thus Ethics, Politics, Economics, Music, and Dancing are practical, while Oratory, Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture are poetic. We thus see that ethics was by them considered practical, both in the generic and specific senses. Ethics, however, was not “The Practical Philosophy," the only, the generic, or even the specific Practical Philosophy; it was regarded simply as one of the practical studies. Kant has perhaps justified this limitation of practical philosophy to ethics.

While this book is Dr. Dabney's contribution to ethics, it is more than that. It is his Psychology of what Stewart calls the Active Powers, embracing both the Sensibility and the Will; in other words, it is his discussion of all the mental faculties, except the intellect. The question arises, why dissociate the intellect from the other powers as not practical in its nature and relations? Dr. Dabney not only admits but asserts that the intellect is active, as truly so as the feelings and will. Moreover, he affirms the practical nature of the intellect in his argument for our responsibility for belief. It seems an error and an important one, to treat ethics as not concerned with the intellect as vitally as with the other

powers; inasmuch as the intellect largely influences and determines the affections, desires and volitions.

The treatise has four chief divisions: I. Psychology of the Feelings. II. The Theory of Volitions. III. Ethical Theory. IV. Applied Ethics.

Dr. Dabney seems to use the word Philosophy, not only in the title of the work, but also in the book itself, as the equivalent of Psychology. This is allowed by popular but not by scientific usage. Philosophy is concerned with the entire universe of being. There is, however, a recognized department of Philosophy, Epistomology, which is concerned with the origin and extent of human knowledge.

His analysis of the intellect, Dr. Dabney gives us in the first paragraph of the book; it is virtually the same as Hamilton's, and has similar defects. It omits the powers of expression, conception, and invention. He probably makes generalization include conception; there are, however, two kinds of concepts, which are not produced by generalization. There is the complex individual concept; for example, the idea of a man, some particular man, tree, horse, etc. We do not perceive John Jones, we perceive each separate quality of John Jones, and by conception combine these into the complex idea of John Jones. There is also the collective concept, as forest, army, etc. This concept is not generic but individual, and is formed by combining the individuals of the mass into a collection. The inventive power he would probably place, as is frequently doue, under his representative imagination. But the inventive power is quite distinct from this. The representative imagination simply pictures to the mind some object of past knowledge. The inventive power is that which creates a new object of knowledge by a combination hitherto unmade, the invention of the telegraph or the making of a poem. The representative imagination is a low power of the mind, possessed in vigor sometimes by feeble intellects; the inventive, creative power is that which shows the intellect to be most like God.

There is no recognition of the power of expression; in this, he has the company of others. It is strange that psychologists have overlooked this power. Every human being has it, even the infant, more or less developed. It is a power of the mind, not of the body. It is true that the mind uses the body as the instrument of expression. Just as the mind uses the eye to see with, so it uses the mouth to express its thoughts and feelings. It is an intellectual power, it is intelligence making itself known.

Dr. Dabney also omits instinct as one of the powers of the intellect and puts it among the feelings. It is indeed both; we have some instinctive knowledge, as well as some instinctive feelings. In man the intellectual instincts are limited to knowledge necessary for the perpetuation of lite.

In his nomenclature Feeling is a generic term embracing all the mental powers, or capacities, except the intellect and will. He thus adopts that analysis of the faculties whose excellence has given it credit over the eminent authority of Aristotle's dechotomy, continued down to Reid

and Stewart as Understanding and Will, and Kant's proposed trichotomy into Intellect, Feeling, and Conation.

Feeling includes sensations, simple emotions, affections, desires, and hopes. He subdivides these into two distinct classes: I. Sensibilities, or the passive feelings; and second, Conations, or Desires, or Appetencies, the active feelings. This distinction is just. Objection may be made, however, to the distinguishing terms, active and passive. There are, rightly considered, no passive powers of the mind; the terms indeed are contradictory; for a power cannot exert itself when it is passive, it must act when it is in exercise. What is true is that these so-called passive powers do not originate action, they never act until they are first acted upon. They are objective in origin, while the active was subjective. The true basis for the radical division of the feelings is their simplicity; they are either simple, mere modifications of pleasure and pain, or they are complex, combining other feelings with these agreeable or disagreeable emotions. The complex feelings are the affections, desires, and hopes.

Dr. Dabney places the sensations of sight. hearing, etc., among the sensibilities. This accords with the general view. It is however not true. Baldwin is right in declaring that sensation, as distinct from perception, is purely physical; it is merely the nervous condition of perception. All mental feelings are modes of pleasure and pain, but the sensations may be perfect without any consciousness of either. I see the paper on which I write without the experience of the least pleasure or pain.

Dr. Dabney places the Affections among the mere sensibilities; they properly form a sub-class of the complex emotions. They contain two elements: 1. The generic feeling of pleasure or pain. 2. That peculiar feeling which every mind recognizes as love or hate.

It is also noticeable that there is no recognition of the Hopes in the Table of Feelings and Appetencies. The complex feelings embrace the Affections, which are pleasures or pain plus love or hate; the Desires, which are pleasures, loves, and craving; and the Hopes, which are pleasures, loves, cravings, and degrees of expectation.

He subsequently mentions Fear and Hope, and says that they are not original, but derivative feelings. They are as original as any of our affections or desires. They are not simple, neither the affections and desires; but they are sui generis and cannot be resolved into anything else than themselves. They have elements in common with other feelings, but they have that which is their proprium, and is not found in any other class of feelings.

One of the most interesting and important points in the entire discussion is found on page 14, where it is held that our sensibilities are nonmoral; that, as we are passive in them, we are not responsible for them; that our responsibility is limited to our appetencies or desires, in which alone the soul is active. If this distinction be correct and the loves, as Dr. Dabney states, are mere sensibilities, then they are without moral char

acter. Again Dr. Dabney puts "inordinate self-will" among the sensibilities, p. 39, and must consistently hold that it has no moral coloring Dr. Dabney is therefore surely mistaken either in making the sensibilities non-moral or else in putting the social affections and inordinate self-will among them; he may be wrong in both.

He seems to err here in what he considers an important discovery of his, our lack of responsibility for our sensibilities. The mind moves, as Dr. Dabney allows, in this order: First, thoughts, then sensibilities, then appetencies, then volitions. We are responsible for our thoughts as found in our opinions and beliefs, as Dr. Dabney distinctly teaches. We are also responsible for our appetencies and volitions, the sensibilities are thus left as the only mental exercises of an irresponsible character. It is strange that what precedes and what follows are moral, and that the intermediate link is not. It is also strange that man is responsible for all his mental acts except his sensibilities.

On what ground does he exempt them? It is because the mind is passive in them. This, however, is not true. A power may be latent, dorment, non-acting at any particular moment, though this is doubted by some thinkers. But it is incredible that a power can be in exercise and yet be passive. Take for instance what he calls "the ethical sensibility, resentment;" is the mind passive when it is exercising the feeling of resentment? Surely not; it is active in resentment and may be intensely What is true is not that mental powers are ever passive in their movements, but that their action is not primary but secondary, their action is a reaction. Resentment is never a primary movement of mind, it is its response to some action by others.

so.

Are we responsible for our secondary as well as for our primary actions; for our reactions upon the influences exerted upon us by others? This depends upon whether they are our acts; if so, we are responsible for all in them that is ours. Our sensibilities are as truly our own as are our appetencies, and we are therefore as surely responsible for them.

Dr. Dabney's reasoning in this reminds us of his defence of American slavery. He not only admits but asserts that the origin of this relationship was wrong; that the African slave trade was evil, not only in the horrors attending it but also in the act itself. If it was wrong to bring the negro into slavery, how could it be right to keep him in that state? So if the appetencies are moral, how is it that the sensibilities which give rise to them are non-moral ?

Dr. Dabney declares, p. 28, that "all activities of our natural powers involve some degree of pain or pleasure." This is surely not true, as he himself calls to our attention "the action of those powers of whose presence we are only conscious by the pain they cause us." The perfectly healthy man knows by consciousness nothing of his nervous system; it gives him neither pain nor pleasure in its normal working. Moreover, there are thousands of perceptions every day, sights and sounds, which are absolutely neutral to us so far as any pain or pleasure is experienced in them.