Some years ago a Belfast funeral undertaker was on holiday in County Down. One sunny evening he climbed to the highest point in the Ards Peninsula. The visibility was good and the view magnificent. On one side lay Strangford Lough with Slieve Croob and the Mourne Mountains in the background. On the other was the Irish Sea with the Isle of Man, the Cumberland Hills and the southern Scottish uplands in the distance.

Theories of beauty are often divided into the objective and the subjective. I am doubtful whether a rigid distinction between the two can be maintained. It is difficult for an objective theory to assert that the impression of beauty is received quite passively, without any reaction or co-operation on the part of the subject, which is likely to be similar in the various cases.

Nowadays the word “conscience” has an old-fashioned, obsolete air. I shall try to guess at the reasons, and then I shall consider whether they are good reasons.

His “practical purpose” was first to express the popular notion of responsibility and then to relate it to the philosophical theories of “freewill and necessity.” For he could not approve the suggestion that to understand popular comments on morality was a worthless occupation; indeed, while he respected the Westminster Reviewers for the blunt declaration that vulgar responsibility was a “horrid figment of the imagination,” he plainly considered it his business as a philosopher to examine ordinary morality and to reconcile it, if possible, with philosophical theory.

The most interesting feature about Mr. Richardson's criticism of my paper (PHILOSOPHY, October 1954) is that it reveals the typical attitude of the traditional intelligence tester which I set out to criticize. He accepts the view (1) that intelligence deals mainly with the grasping of relationships, (2) that intelligence thus defined is an innate ability, (3) that it may be relatively isolated by the use of suitably designed tests and treated independently of other abilities.

A philosophical survey should, I take it, attempt to supply as much information as possible in a conveniently short space. When the space is as short as it must be here, the survey is in danger of turning into a catalogue. This danger can be avoided easily enough when one or two among the works under review stand far and obviously above the others in general interest and importance, for they may properly receive exclusive attention. But this is not the case, I think, as far as the works received from France and Belgium in the past year are concerned. The first need seems to be for a guide to enable some bearings to be found. Let it be added, with regret, that while it may be possible to mention some of the works that have not in fact been received by this journal, there is far from being any guarantee that there are no omissions of anyworth.