One of the chief grounds of objection to the view that value is a function of interest is afforded by the recognized distinction between what really is valuable and what merely seems to be valuable. This objection was urged against hedonism at the very dawn of European ethics, when it was contended that pleasure is an illusory experience of value (or seeming good) which reason corrects, or a merely provisional experience of value which reason confirms. The same objection is embodied in the assumption of common sense that present inclination, instead of constituting unimpeachable evidence of value, is often false and misleading.

In a paper on “Beauty and Greatness in Art” discussed at a recent meeting of the Aristotelian Society, Professor Alexander says: “In Art there are two standards; there is the strictly æsthetic standard, Is the work beautiful or not; has it attained beauty? and there is the question, Is it great or small?… This contrast of beauty and greatness is the old contrast of form and subject-matter.” Here is offered a problem of capital importance and of age-long interest, but alongside of it there is a subsidiary and a much slighter question which has been comparatively little noticed and which may yet have bearing on the larger issue. This question is the relation of actual size, of size-in-itself, to the other factors in a work of art, and the reaction, if such there be, of such a size-factor upon the aesthetic whole.

It is the custom, nowadays, to say that “realism” is very dead indeed, and to speak of it invariably in the past tense, or only in the historical present. What happened, we are told, was that, during the first quarter of the twentieth century, two distinct bodies of men propounded either “naïf” or “new” realism. The naif realists followed Mr. G. E. Moore—to some extent and without his consent; and they were called naif (by some misogynist) because the masculine form of the adjective expressed their rugged creed better than the more usual feminine form. (They were esprits forts rather than esprits fins).

Among the many outstanding features of Professor Stout's Gifford Lectures, Mind and Matter, there are two which possess special interest to readers of Philosophy: the author”s exposition of a more definite Realism than has been presented in his earlier works, and a renewed defence of the much-maligned faculty, Common Sense, here regarded as “a social product maintained and transmitted from generation to generation through the co-operation and conflict of many minds in thinking and willing ” (p. 8).

Mr. H. G. Wells once suggested that there should be three professors for every subject: one for research, one to write the textbooks, and one to lecture. There is a good deal of truth in the contention that the best philosopher is seldom the best teacher of philosophy. Although most teachers of philosophy are well aware of the fact that they are not great philosophers, and they are genuinely interested in the teaching of their subject, nevertheless there is a tendency for too much emphasis to rest upon their own researches. In consequence, too little attention has been paid to the technique of teaching philosophy.

Much has been said on the importance of the individual: the individual is to be respected; there is value in his self-assertiveness; his desires merit fulfilment. Yet it has been remarked not less that the individual is not independent; for his sustenance and his satisfaction he needs to have commerce with nature and society; and the term “tradition,” which makes us mindful of the prolonged, apparently interminable succession of the generations, reminds us also that in the universal procession of events the life of the individual is but as nothing, that it is very fragile and inevitably ephemeral; and that torn from the fabric of his community, deprived