A " PREFACE TO MORALS."
The literary event of the week is the publication of Walter Lipmann's Preface to Morals. Mr. Lipmann is one of the Editors of the New York World, and is commonly regarded as having been the author of the phraseology of President Wilson's famous Fourteen Points. He has written upon a great variety of subjects, but in the present work he undertakes the most daring task of his career. On the assumption that religious and other authoritative sanctions of our present moral code have lost their validity, Mr. Lipmann examines the moral foundations upon which a man must build his life if it is to be the good life. In essence he comes close to the conclusion that most of the moral commandments generally approved by Society really embody the wisdom of ages, and thus we are pretty well back where we were as to what our moral duties and obligations are. It is a brilliant book, valuable chiefly for its incisive analysis of our present discontents, and the first printing is an edition of 80,000 copies.
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