In the world as we know it to-day it may seem foolish even to speak of such a thing as justice among nations. Whatever we may say about justice within the nation—and even within nations justice seems to have disappeared over a large portion of the globe—it appears obvious that the relation of one nation to another is determined, not by justice, but by force. The state of nature so gloomily described by Hobbes as the condition out of which men have emerged, a state in which there is “continual fear and danger of violent death,” seems to be embodied in the international situation as it actually exists. In such a state of war, as Hobbes remarks, “this also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice.”

Plato's thought on the question of the immortality of the soul, in the sense of the existence after death of an individual personality, is stated by Constantin Ritter in his book on The Essence of Plato's Philosophy as follows: “I must admit that for Plato personal immortality was a serious problem and that his whole exposition and especially the trend of his argument in the Phaedo, urges us to accept it” (page 119); and again—“The notion of immortality in the sense that we understand it, viz. the survival of personality beyond the limits of earthly existence, was for Plato a serious problem; but it never became a dogma with him, even though he gives us a strong hint in the Phaedo to affirm this notion” (page 301).

There are two main questions which it is possible to ask about war. The first is, whether it is inevitable; the second, whether it is desirable. The former question is one of fact, the latter one of value. In the discussions of ordinary conversation the two are frequently-confused and obscured; arguments to prove war desirable may be heard based upon the supposed fact of its inevitability, and conversely. It is worth while considering how the two are related.

(The following article is the substance of a chapter of an autobiographical account by the late John Henry Muirhead, in which with characteristic modesty the author gives the “recollection of a Journeyman in Philosophy of some movements of life and thought in his time.” Professor Muirhead was closely connected with the Institute of Philosophical Studies and its Journal from its inception, and it was thought that readers of Philosophy would appreciate this account of visitors, philosophical and other, to Birmingham in the early years of the present century. The volume John Henry Muirhead will be published shortly by Messrs. George Allen and Unwin, and will include a short biographical completion and memoir together with a bibliography of Muirhead's writings.)

“The will is nothing but practical reason.” In other words choice, without being any kind of judgement, resembles inference in being either valid or invalid. Moral lightness is validity of choice.