In chapter 1, ‘Our Contemporary Moral Confusion’, Mitchell introduces the subject of his discussion by describing the ambiguity of the contemporary moral climate and the ever-shifting relationship between morality and religion, citing the popular conception of ‘moral decline’ yet without any agreed-upon sense of what this means. The resulting perplexity, this ‘moral confusion’, is his concern in the lectures.

Lecture XII examines the ‘Principles of Classification’, arguing that any true understanding of religion requires a full understanding of the language in which religion and mythology are embodied. Müller’s focus here is on the Aryan and Semitic families of language, although he moves beyond these to other language families (the Ural-Altaic) in Lecture XIII. Müller then poses the question of what language actually is, and attempts to answer this in Lecture XIV, ‘Language and Thought’.

These lectures are, not surprisingly, dated even in their most innocuous assumptions; for instance, in the very limits of the term “modern science”. Despite such obvious and unavoidable marks of the time, however, their value within their time is the reason why these lectures still hold such sway in philosophical discussion and debate.

In the lectures collected in La Nature et l’esprit (1926), M. Émile Boutroux sets out to heal the divisions created by the Scientific Revolution and its aftermath, divisions between nature and spirit, science and philosophy, religion and reason. Boutroux, a French spiritualist, was an ardent opponent of scientific materialism and its systematic dismantling of what he calls l’esprit humain [“the human spirit”].

In something of a welcome break with tradition, these lectures are shaped by the choices made by the organising committee for that year. Rather than have a single thinker present a whole series of lectures, the committee invited two philosophers (Kenny and Lucas) as well as two scientists (Waddington and Longuet-Higgins) to have a series of conversations, mostly extemporaneous, about the nature of mind. What makes this collection so readable is that the tone throughout is conversational and engaging, avoiding much of the technical language of either science or analytic philosophy.

In Nature, Man, and God, Archbishop Temple sets the groundwork for his “Philosophical Theology” by exploring issues related to the study of mind, and concluding with the person and work of Christ in what can be described as a Christocentric metaphysic.

Giving some indication of this book's provenance, the latter half of the dedication reads: "The volume contains those parts only of my lectures which refer to recent archæ​ological and historical research in Rome, and which have not appeared in my previous publications." Aside from the dedication, however, there's little indication that these were intended––by Gifford, even if not by Lanciani––to be lectures in natural theology.

Georg Henrik von Wright’s Norm and Action represents a significant step in the development of deontic logic. By introducing the ideas of action and change into the system of formal logic, von Wright is able to bring the idea of norms, especially prescriptions which govern actions, under logical consideration.