This work is a severe criticism of all previous moral systems, especially those of Kant and Fichte, Plato's and Spinoza's finding most favour; its leading principles are that the tests of the soundness of a moral system are the completeness of its view of the laws and ends of human life as a whole and the harmonious arrangement of its subject-matter under one fundamental principle; and, though it is almost exclusively critical and negative, the book announces clearly the division and scope of moral science which Schleiermacher subsequently adopted, attaching prime importance to a "Giiterlehre," or doctrine of the ends to be obtained by moral action.
On the strength of the fundamental distinction between the Ent and the Nonent, the goddess next announces certain characteristics of the former.
Their language is vague and allegorical, full of allusions and pious Mussulman invocations; the author continually announces that he is about to speak without mystery or reserve, but all the same never gives any precise details of the secrets he professes to reveal.
(It is worthy of notice that the same meaning is attributed to the name of Tokko, the hero of a similar legend in Gheysmer's abridgment of the Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus, which may, somehow, have influenced the Swiss version.) The only other known instances of the Uri version of the legend relating to the origin of the Confederation are the Latin hexameters of Glareanus (1515), in which Tell is compared to Brutus as "assertor patriae, vindex ultorque tyrannum," and the Urnerspiel (composed in 1511-12), a play acted in Uri, in which Russ's version is followed, though the bailiff, who is unnamed, but announces that he has been sent by Albert of Austria, is slain in the "hollow way."
The -roll of states is again called, and the chairman of each state delegation announces the vote of the state.
