After defending the possibility of a "theory of knowledge" against Hegel's objections on the one side, and Comte's on the other, he proceeds to define the meaning and scope of "Experience." The experience to be investigated is that of the investigator himself, not, however, merely as his separate individual experience, but as identical with the consentient experience of persons of ripe years, who are capable of interchanging thought.

The content of this consensus is, first and foremost, the external world, then the inner world of the soul-both with their infinite variety of objects and the qualities, activities, changes, laws thereof; each allowed even by the materialist to be irreducibly distinct from the other.

But in what sense is the existence of an outward world to be defined as a fact of experience? As the author avows himself to be a transcendental idealist, one cannot but be curious how he will answer this question. "Only so far as we keep to the point of view of experience is it permissible, in a preliminary way, to maintain the existence of the corporeal world. But we do this when we take for granted the existence of a knowing subject, which finds an external world as part of its actual experience. Whether the said world will remain or disappear altogether, or undergo a total change after we cease to take this for granted, and proceed to discuss the question, Do things exist in themselves independently of our perception? it is not permissible for us to enquire, as long as we occupy the standpoint of experience. It cannot, however, be doubted that from the point of view of experience, we are warranted in affirming the existence of the outward world as a fact." "We maintain accordingly that for our experience everything is actual or real, or, still better, that we designate everything 'real,' the reality of which is guaranteed by perception, acting under normal conditions, and against which no negative case can be adduced."

This seems to me, I confess, a somewhat lame conclusion; for what does it amount to save that as long as we mean by reality, real presence in perception, we are at full liberty to affirm that it is real; but if we mean by real what the common mind means, namely, real independent of perception, we have no right to call it real. To say the least, it is a roundabout way of confessing that real is simply real to us. But roundaboutness is rather a characteristic of Herr Ehrhardt's mode of discussing the problems passed in review. The work as a whole is both a defence, an elucidation, and a criticism of Kant's "Kritik." More than half of it is taken up with the question of the apriority and ideality of time and space, as to which the author avows his agreement with Kant. New results, in the strict sense, therefore, in this regard he does not profess to present; but he believes himself to have offered new arguments in

support of Kant's position and against opposed views; and expresses the hope that his investigations will not only help to lay bare the weakness of the empiricism and realism which at present dominate scientific literature, but do something towards turning the tide in favour of Kant's theory.

Whilst endorsing Kant's view of space and time, he altogether rejects his doctrine that a certain number of pure concepts of the understanding, along with the principles thence arising, are subjective conditions of the possibility of experience. The reference is in particular to the principle of causality and that of the persistence of substance or matter. In his view the concept, causation, or effectuation arises solely from experience; and for that reason is applicable, not to phenomena, but to things in themselves. He further asserts-also in opposition to his master—the knowableness of things-in-themselves, and in reasoning out this point is led to the "important result that all the active principles in nature are to be regarded as absolutely real, and that the thing-in-itself of the corporeal world is to be viewed as a system of forces." He equally questions Kant's assumption that the ideality of psychical phenomena follows from that of time, and that to allow the reality thereof involves the rejection of the ideality of time.

The doctrine of the absolute reality of the forces of nature, just referred to, involves the position that a thing-in-itself is immediately given in our inner experience, namely, each man's self as a psychical being, and that the soul is in reality "one of the special dynamic principles which work in nature, and which form a great hierarchical system; in fact, so far as we know, the highest -a view of the ultimate elements of the cosmos substantially identical with that of Lotze.

In the light of these and other considerations he considers it possible to demonstrate the erroneousness of the notion that "transcendental idealism converts the empirical world into pure seeming, and robs our experiential knowledge of all objective value."

These are some of the main features of the work. It is certainly not without its merits; it is well fitted, for example, to serve as an introduction to the study of the great questions that are in debate between Empiricists and Realists on the one side, and Apriorists and Idealists on the other. In this regard its very prolixity may be an advantage. But one may be allowed to doubt whether it will inaugurate as the writer seems to hope-a new epoch in the branch of philosophy to which it is devoted. D. W. SIMON.

Handkommentar zum Alten Testament: Die Klagelieder des Jeremia übersetzt und erklärt.

Von Dr Max Löhr, Professor der Theologie in Breslau. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht. 8vo, pp. xx. 26. Price, 1s. 6d.

A Short Commentary on the Book of Lamentations :

Chapter I.

By the Rev. A. W. Greenup, M.A.

Hertford: Austin & Sons.

1893. 12mo, pp. 52. Price, 28.

PROFESSOR LÖHR's condensed commentary on Lamentations appears under highly favourable conditions. In 1891 he published a valuable and more extensive treatise on this book, so that, when wisely invited afterwards to prepare the present work for the series of handy commentaries now in course of publication under the editorship of Professor Nowack, few contributors perhaps could have been more fitted to accomplish so satisfactorily the task assigned. Abundant material was ready for adaptation, while judicious criticism of friends, together with his own more mature reflection, showed how such a work could be improved. Considering further the spacelimitation imposed in this series, it is obvious that Professor Löhr has now given to the public the cream of his thought on this book of the Old Testament. The scholarly commentary is admirable in itself, and promises to be one of the best in the series. It is a marvel of cheapness; the printing is excellent.

Mr Greenup's work is one of considerable merit, but unfortunately is a mere fragment, consisting of Notes on the First Chapter of Lamentations, with no Introduction. Seeing that the whole is specially designed to aid "those who are just beginning the critical study of the poetical books of the Hebrew Bible," it is perhaps too much to expect students at such a stage to read and understand the comments frequently cited from Rabbinical writers, or to make out the occasional quotations from the Targums. Attention is rightly called to the unusual accentuation (in ver. 1) of the archaic form rabbathi on the penult: it would have been well to indicate also the euphonic reason. On page 5 we read that (in ver. 1): "The Massoretic accentuation is neglected by the LXX. and the Vulgate"; but as the Hebrew text was without accents, or even vowel-points, till centuries after the Septuagint translators had completed their work, these cannot be said to have "neglected" signs which had not yet been invented and used.

The work contains a large amount of valuable material, displaying the varied scholarship and general ability of the author.

JAMES KENNEDY.

Der Grundcharakter der Ethik Jesu im Verhältniss zu den messianischen Hoffnungen seines Volkes, und zu seinem eigenen Messiasbewusstsein.

Von Lic. Eugen Ehrhardt. Freiburg i. B. und Leipzig: J. C. B. Mohr, 1895; London and Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate. 8vo, pp. 119.

DR EHRHARDT assures us in the preface to this book that his object in dealing with such a subject is to endeavour to answer the question, "Can we still look upon Jesus as our supreme guide in matters of conduct or not?" For Dr Ehrhardt's mind this question resolves itself into another as to how far Jesus succeeded in transcending the limitations of the popular Messianic ideas of His time, and in proclaiming an ethic free, pure, and universal.

With a view to answering this latter question, Dr Ehrhardt devotes the first section of his book to a careful statement of the Ethical problem with which, in consequence of the peculiar development of later Judaism, Jesus and His contemporaries found themselves confronted while the second section deals with the solution of the problem which Jesus offered.

I. The First Section begins with a glance at the prophets. Here we are assured that the prophetic ethic was essential Messianic. The aim of all ethical striving was for them a future period of Messianic bliss on this earth, to be enjoyed by a holy remnant of the people and in this ideal such really different elements were inextricably blended as divine fellowship and earthly lordship.

Further, it was essentially a social ethic-the individual could partake of the supreme good only as a member of the people of God.

In the second place, the Law is dealt with from a similar point of view. Here it is maintained that the Law too is essentially Messianic in character, being regarded as the absolutely perfect means of attaining the supreme good. It tended, too, to separate Israel from the rest of the world, and thus to strengthen their expectation of final lordship in the earth. Consequently, upon the whole, it was unsuited to develop the really religious element in Israel's hopes about the future.

Thirdly, the period of the Apocalyptic Literature is considered. It is here that the real problem arose. Now, under external pressure, Israel abandoned the hope of a glorious earthly future, and looked for the magical appearance of a heavenly life of bliss for God's people. Now, too, the individual also began to expect a palingenesia. Yet from lack of real religious experience the people were unable to conceive of any future but one really earthly in character. They really depreciated not this life and this world, but just the Present; and their thoughts about the future continued to

have an earthly tone. Hence, then, the dilemma of that time. The Messianic system contained an inner contradiction, refusing, on the one hand, to demand an interest in the social and political affairs of this world, it was yet unable, on the other hand, to pronounce a thorough and sincere condemnation upon this life and this world, and thus it proved itself powerless to furnish a definite ethic or a powerful moral stimulus.

II. In the second section we have a careful, if complicated statement of the solution which Jesus offered to the problem.

Dr Ehrhardt insists that Jesus' conception of the Kingdom of God was harmonious and consistent throughout and emphatically eschatological.

He did not oppose the tendency to turn from the world, but purified and deepened it, setting before men the ideal of becoming at home in a higher world. Further, He freed this ideal from any exclusively national colouring, and definitely regarded individuals as the bearers of this supreme good. Hence Christ's gospel had power to determine conduct, and led to a definite following of the real aim and spirit of the law which Christ regarded as the true “fulfilling of the law."

Yet Dr Ehrhardt finds another moral mood in Jesus teaching, viz., one concerned with human common life.

The reconciliation of these two tendencies. is found in the special character of Christ's relation to God. Christ had direct personal knowledge of God dependent neither upon nature nor upon history. No earthly goods mediated His enjoyment of God. He possessed what the pious Israelite only longed for. In a sense this God is far from the world and foreign to it; it is unholy, and God is holy. Yet is God near to man's soul; and as Christ lived so truly in God's presence He was able to turn again to the world, and take a real interest in it. He could regard it as a field opened to Him for work for God, and felt compelled to attempt to realize in the actual world the good He had reached in His inner life.

Clearly, however, Christ's religious disposition is quite opposed to that of the Messianic system. This supreme good is mediated by nothing earthly, and if He talked the language of the Messianic system the real spirit of His gospel depended upon His own experience.

What is common to Jesus and that system is the eschatological character of His religious disposition. He thinks of this world as at best only a relative good, He would have men see in communion with God the real supreme good, and while He accepts the title Messiah He is concerned to establish a new conception of the Messiah, and to teach other truths than those popularly connected with that name.

The book finishes with an interesting section on The New Messianic Ethic.