Journal of the History of Philosophy

228 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY With such a goodly company of witnesses, we might be content, or we might go on and hope that the heavenly choir of invisible intelligences and the Perfect Judge Himself on that Last Day might lend their Amen. In any case, I accept the whole argument and its foundations as Narveson has formulated them without further ado. But, of course, not without asking a further question, not to the author, but to myself. Where do I go from here? I am daily surrounded by a score of chores and duties that I simply have-to-do, whether they contribute to my happiness and human welfare in general or not. Some are relatively pleasant, others (such as writing reviews) verge on frustration. In the face of such "to-be-dones" I find it both prudent and necessary to quit worrying about happiness and utility in general, or, for that matter, in particular. For, as Narveson well says, the general and the particular problem amount in the end to the same. What presents itself daily as the-to-be-done seems to have a brutely factual quality ("requirements in a world of facts") that reduces the-ought-to-be-done to a lower or higher level of prudence. How to relate such obligations to each other seems to be prima facie a purely practical predicament. And in such a predicament the introduction of a formula for universal prudence is more irritating than useful. I confess this for my own comfort, not for argument. Narveson, himself, gets close to my situation and prudently drops the matter quietly at the end of a chapter: For any given one of us, then, these other concerns are our major business in life. Moral concerns crop up every now and then, to be sure, but by their very nature are secondary.... We might say that in a morally ideal world, morality would be unnecessary. For there is no moral value in the existence of moral problems. The world is perhaps more interesting because interests conflict and moral dilemmas arise, but there is no moral reason for supposing that there ought to be moral problems. Morality is not a matter of taste, even if the taste is in universes. (256) But then there remains the haunting question: what would G. E. Moore say to this? HERBERT W. SCI~EIDER Claremont, California Bool~ NOTES lter Italicum: .4 Finding List ol Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, Vol. II: Italy: Orvieto to Volterra. Ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967. Pp. 671. Gld 196) The lter Italicum will be arranged by countries, beginning with Italy. Within each country, the material will be grouped by cities, libraries, collections, and shelf marks. Manuscripts are described partly from direct inspection and party from handwritten inventories; the two types of material will be clearly marked as "descriptions" and "excerpts." For each library and collection, reference will be made to its printed catalogues and handwritten inventories. At the end there will be a bibliography of works cited in the course of the volumes. It is envisaged that each volume will have an index of proper names and a subject index of anonymous texts. The Italian material, including the Vatican Library, is completely described in volumes I and II except for some addenda. The remaining material will fill another two or three volumes. The core of the material described is Latin philosophical and literary manuscripts containing the work of scholars (mostly from Italy) active between 1300 and BOOK REVIEWS 229 1600. As a rule, documents, chronicles, statutes, choirbooks, vernacular poetry, and technical treatises on theology, law, the sciences and the pseudosciences have been excluded, yet some material of this kind had been included for various reasons. Thus the work does list many literary works on historiography, theology, law, medicine, mathematics, astronomy and astrology, political theory, musical theory, art theory and vernacular poetry, although no completeness has been attempted in these areas. Latin translations of Greek authors have been listed, as well as Latin commentaries on ancient authors. Works by classical, patristic, or medieval authors have been included only in specific cases, that...