But let us return to the works of philosophy properly so-called. What are we to think of that of M. F. RAUH? I deceive myself much if his _Essai sur le fondement métaphysique der la morale_ is considered of much service in his own circles. M. Rauh, who belongs to the philosophic youth, the youth of the age, can be well assured that the partisans of scientific morality will not upbraid him for “the admiration of high metaphysical thoughts” with which he does himself honor, but he can fear lest the metaphysicians accuse him of further compromising metaphysics by the denser obscurities he casts on it. One is stupefied to find again in a modern book a phraseology so made up of abstract words, of substantives with capitals, and logical shadows which affect the posture of realities. Much study, much work, without advancing one step, and still worse, in order to throw us again into the _culs-de-sac_ from whence we have had so much difficulty to disengage ourselves. All the profit one can derive from this dialectic is to contemplate at the end the vague shadow of its own body that is perceived on the wall. The metaphysicians of a certain school are not only reluctant to have to accept that morality is a natural formation, a social product, an historical fact; they wish further that the existence even of moral society should depend on the intelligence that they have of it, or of the explanation that they give of it. They affirm boldly, and these are the words even of M. Rauh, that “the fate of morality is united to that of metaphysics”—their metaphysics. This is a pretension as exorbitant as would be that of a naturalist who should refer the reality of the animal world to the idea he formed of zoölogical types, or that of a chemist who should subject the value of the positive results of science to a particular hypothesis as to the constitution of bodies. * * * * * There are certain difficulties of language to criticise in the work of M. ISIDORE MAUS, barrister in the Court of Appeals at Brussels, _De la justice pénale, étude philosophique sur le droit de punir_. A curious spectator, he tells us, of the battle waged between the new school of anthropology and the ancient penal jurisprudence, he seeks to divine the issue of it. It will probably end, according to him, in the formation of a medium penal jurisprudence, which will accept limited responsibilities, and which, while protecting society, will do its best “to give to punishment all the advantages it can.”