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is the persecution of Christians by Domitian, with whom also, viewed as a re-appearance of Nero, the beast of c. xiii. is identified, the ten crowned horns being the emperors from Augustus to Titus, who are also reckoned, omitting Galba Otho and Vitellius, as seven heads. The second Beast or false prophet who speaks like the Dragon is the provincial governor enforcing the worship of the emperor. But the number of the Beast (vv. 18, &c.) is the later interpolation of some one who now saw in Hadrian the dreaded Nero redivivus. In this way Völter combines the convincing gematria" Dp with a reference to Hadrian, whose name Trajanus Hadrianus can also be so transliterated into Hebrew as to give the requisite numerical total. Passing to the reign of Hadrian, we find the indications of date somewhat closely bound up with a surely belated view of the date of the Ignatian letters (which Völter has elsewhere maintained to be not earlier than 150), and with a kindred view of the date of the Episcopate. The highest Christology of the book is also thought to suggest a date little earlier than this. That Christians at Thyatira are dallying with the oracle of the Sibyl is a sign of the period when prophecy began to be missed within the Churches. "The Nicolaitans" is a name for the Carpocratians or Basilidians. One would scarcely expect the late date thus ascribed to chapters i.-iii. to be reconcileable with the old Tübingen assumption of their anti-Pauline spirit. But this is, ingeniously enough, still maintained. Their repudiation, e.g., of St Paul is alluded to in the paτa eрya of the Ephesian Church, and the Epistles are meant to revive the cooling anti-Pauline fervour of the Asian Christians.

Enough has perhaps been said to show the great importance of this book for all students of the Apocalypse, and at the same time to justify the reviewer's attitude of reserve toward its results. The writer appears somewhat deficient in his appreciation of the Apocalypse as an embodiment of stirring religious teaching and heartsearching appeals to the Christian conscience. He treats it rather as a student of the theory of sound might analyse an exquisite symphony, or a practical drawing-master a "Pietà" by a quattrocento master. In an Apocalypse the canons of strict logical arrangement are applicable only with more than ordinary tact and tenderness. Still, his problem is critical and historical, and even if we often miss the balance and sustained sobriety of the very best historical criticism, we cordially recognise in Dr Völter's book an honest and careful piece of work, that will not fail in its purpose of contributing to the ultimate ascertainment of historical truth.

A. ROBERTSON.

A Study of Ethical Principles.

By James Seth, M.A. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1894. Svo, pp. 468. Price, 10s. 6d. net.

THIS "Study" is by a new writer in the field of Ethical Philosophy. The author prefaces it with the remark that it does not "claim to be, in any strict sense, an original treatment" of the questions dealt with, but in this he is perhaps over-modest. He has supplied a gap in philosophical literature by elaborating a point of view which, while probably gaining ground in English thought steadily, has nowhere else been presented so fully or in relation to the various matters of prime importance in the ethical department, and in one respect at least-in respect, viz., to those further implications of morality which serve to connect man's nature with God and Immortality he has shown a speculative courage and strenuousness which too many of his fellow-workers lack.

The work consists of three "Parts" and an 66 Introduction." The latter deals with such preliminary matters as the Problem, Method, and Psychological Basis of Ethics, and is notable chiefly for its insistance, under the second of these heads, on the position that mere scientific categories, of whatever kind, are entirely inadequate in this department, being useful up to a certain point no doubt, but allowing what after all is the differentia of the moral life to escape investigation. The key-note of the book may be said to be struck here. With Part I., on "the Moral Ideal," the work proper begins. In the earlier sections we have a criticism first of the Hedonist, then of the "Rigorist" (or Rational) Ideal, the fundamental objection taken to these being that they are based alike upon an abstract view of human nature. Man is neither mere Sensibility nor mere Reason, and the Ethic founded on either view cannot but lead to various inconsistencies with the facts of moral experience, which are here indicated. For himself the writer founds on "that total human Personality which contains as elements Reason and Sensibility" both (p. 192). In other words, the formula he proposes is neither Self-gratification nor Self-denial, but Self-realisation, in which "the several changing desires, instead of being allowed to pursue their several ways, and to seek each its own good and satisfaction, are so correlated and organised that each becomes instrumental to the fuller and truer life of the rational human self" (p. 206). To the view thus described Professor Seth gives the name Eudæmonism (“the feeling of the whole self being taken into account, as opposed to the feeling of some one aspect of self," p. 216), a term which he is anxious to rescue from all merely Hedonistic associations and to preserve in its true Aristotelian sense.

Passing next in Part II. to the consideration of "the Moral

Life," our author deals with the various conditions or phases of the self-fulfilment effected in moral experience, that is to say, with the Virtues. Only the broad outline of this part of the subject is sketched, however. Taking the natural division of the Moral Life into Individual and Social, the characteristic virtues of the former are found to lie in Temperance (negatively as self-denial, positively as self-limitation) and Self-development, those of the latter in Justice and Benevolence. In the following section the Organisation of Society is dealt with and its fundamentally ethical nature finely shewn. The State in particular, it is argued, is, in idea at least, only the outward expression and embodiment on the large scale of that higher nature which forms the sovereign element in the individual moral life, and from this point of view such questions are dealt with as the limitations of Rights in Property, the doctrine of Non-Resistance, and the nature of Civil Punishment. In all such matters, it is maintained, it is the interests of Moral Personality alone that fall to be considered and no results less sacred in themselves or more remote.

Finally, in Part III., "the Metaphysical Implications of Morality are discussed, and here the author rises to the height of his argument. If it is "not easy, humanly speaking, to wind up an Englishman to the level of dogma," how much harder is it to wind up your common English moralist? But Professor Seth has the courage of his convictions. As he says, even the evolutionary moralist, in correlating man with nature and seeking to demonstrate so the unity of the universe, is guilty of metaphysics of a kind, and for himself he lends his best strength to making good those (Theistic and other) conclusions that follow from the assertion of the supernatural being of man. Accordingly, he begins with Freedom, vindicating it not only on the side of Naturalism, but also, and even more earnestly, as though from this side the danger were greater, from the tendency of an Absolute Idealism to sublimate human life, with all the variety of its moral experience, into a passing mode of the life of God. Man being thus left as a free spiritual being over against Nature, confronting her and often at war with her, the necessity next arises, it is argued, for the assertion of a Supreme Goodness governing all things with a view to moral ends. "Nature is really blind, indifferent, capricious. Force is unethical. Hence the call for a Supreme Power akin to the spirit of man, conscious of his struggle, sympathetic with his life, guiding it to a perfect issue -the call for a supremely righteous Will "'-a belief which is necessary if we are to escape moral scepticism. Lastly, from such a view of the nature and worth of the moral life then results the further conviction (or "philosophic faith") of immortality. The task set before the Moral Personality has no relation to time at all, and if

cut short by the accident of death, could be nothing but a delusive mockery. While, of course, the only Immortality to which any meaning can be attached must be conscious and personal.

The standpoint, then, assumed here, will be apparent. Is it right to describe it as critical-Hegelian? The writer at least would be the first to confess his indebtedness to Hegel (and to Aristotle), though, at the same time, he maintains his independence of his masters throughout. But so brief and bald an outline does scant justice to a book so full of matter as this, abounding in eloquent exposition and felicitous illustration of many kinds. One must even apologise.

At the same time, many of those even who find themselves in the main in agreement with the author may be disposed to call in question various of his positions. Thus, to speak only of that which is central to his theory, Professor Seth is anxious-it is perhaps the most important feature of his work--to mark his dissent from the alleged Hegelian tendency to swamp the individual and his experience in an all-engulfing pan-theism (or "pan-logism"), but, one might ask, does his mode of stating his own view escape the danger of the opposite or individualist error? Let it be granted that an absolute idealism in its concern for the universal and objective element in moral, as in intellectual experience, does tend in the direction indicated. Let it be granted also that the punctum stans of the moral life is the personal will, self-conscious and self-determiningthat this is the prime datum of the ethical problem, and to be conserved at all hazards. Nevertheless, it might be argued, nothing is gained, but, rather, much is lost by so emphasising the self-centredness of the moral personality as to leave out of view the essential relations in which it stands to other personalities beyond itself. In that case, it is difficult to see how the formula," Be a Person," can be held to supply an adequate moral principle at all. "Self-realisation," per se, is, as Professor Seth admits, so vague as to be useless for this purpose. Nor would it seem to mend matters much to add that it is the total self that is to be developed, the intellectual, the emotional, and the active or volitional elements, each in its perfection, and all in the harmony of a complete and single life" (p. 259). Moral obligation surely does not apply equally to these three? A deeper analysis of the conception of Personality would appear to be called for here. The formula in question can only supply the place of an ethical principle, from which the particular obligations of the good life may be seen to spring, when it is interpreted of such a Self as is nothing, and can realise" nothing except in and through the network of relations it sustains

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to other personalities like itself, and, one would add, to that Supreme Personality which is at once the law, the strength, and the end of the moral life of all of them. Apart from such an interpretation of it, the realising of self would seem to mean merely Culture, and to yield at best only that "individualistic ethics' " which is elsewhere so rightly condemned.

This defect, as the present writer ventures to consider it, reappears at various stages of the argument. Thus, on such a view of the Self as Professor Seth seems to imply, he can base the obligation of Benevolence only on either the presence of "social or other-regarding impulses and instincts" in human nature (p. 285), or on "the common personality of man," in which "is found the ground of the conciliation in harmony of the several individual lives" (p. 217). Yes, no doubt personality is a common property of men, but more, does not its exercise imply the living of that which is in the strictest sense a common life? In that case Benevolence, or the seeking of others' good, would be of its very nature and essence, necessary if its self-fulfilment were not to be thwarted and defeated. But it is in dealing with the problem of God that the consequences of the view in question appear most conspicuously. On this whole subject much that is as true as it is needed, is said, and said finely, as, e.g., on the Personality of God, on the common objections to "Anthropomorphism,' and on the perverseness of a philosophy which is so bent on unifying the universe as to treat as relation and " appearance the fundamental moral distinctions themselves, and to give us, in place of the Living and Holy One, a blank Absolute merely. But, on the other hand, the step to Deity remains in these pages a problematical one only. Faith in Him is a splendid venture which the demands of the moral life constrain us to make, and beyond this nothing can be said. Now, practically it may be enough that were not the very nature of things akin to man at the highest point of his being, and pledged to further his main task and interest, these would be a delusion,-enough to ask with Fichte, "Is man alone to be a contradiction in the Universe?" And when man's nature is conceived as though it were a something complete in itself, a selfcontained whole apart from the Divine nature as from other finite natures, no further or more satisfactory proof may be possible. But if our nature is shut off no more (rather even less) from the former than from the latter; if the very knowledge of ourselves as moral persons at all, much more the achieving of the task which falls to us as such is inconceivable except as we are seen to be related to "a power not ourselves, making for righteousness," which reveals itself in our ideals, and is the impulse and the support in all our following of them, then may we not say that God is the