him at times to rather severe judgments. To this he will reply that he has only wished to sketch out a general preliminary plan to which it will be wise to conform. If other critics reproach him with having simplified the questions too much, they will at least do him the justice of granting that his purpose in simplifying them has been to make them more easily understood. He lays bare our most sensitive wounds; but he cherishes a confidence in the future which stimulates and comforts us.

With M. FRANCELON MARTIN's new work, La perception extérieure et la science positive, we return to pure philosophy. M. Martin has order and clearness; but his habits of mind are not ours, and his reasonings have not convinced us. He has undertaken to show: (1) that science has passed through three very clearly marked stages -the substantialistic interpretation (of what things consist), the finalistic interpretation (why they exist), and the mechanistic interpretation (how they have been produced and are conditioned); (2) that science retraces the path of perception, but in the opposite direction: all that perception, or spontaneous, concrete observation has put into things (time, space, causality, finality, substance, individuality,) it is the effort of the scientific mind or abstract observation to get out of them again, by substituting quantitative relations for the qualitative relations which nature presents.

The first thesis is maintainable. I have myself long made use of a similar seriation for my own instruction, but I would not exaggerate its merits. As to the second thesis, the definition of M. Martin slightly perplexes me. If perception " signifies the simple judgments by means of which in the multiplicity of sensations the mind gets light for arriving at a relatively precise knowledge of particular facts or "individuals," we may say that science has for its end the more exact knowledge of elementary facts or "concretes." If perception denotes merely tentative explanation, we may remark that it corresponds in some measure to the intellectual state designated fetishistic or theological. Take it as we will, then, perception appears to be only a species of imperfect science which in the historical or individual evolution remains the substratum of perfect

science.

But I cannot very well see what the value is of the parallelism of M. Martin, from the point of view of a "philosophy of the sciences" and of the explanation of scientific development.

What appears most clearly in this work is the desire to withdraw mind from the action of the external world, to restore it as a primordial agent, to battle against the mechanical theories, and to reach the ground of idealism by the path of criticism. "Kant," says the author, "assumes things to be formed by the mind; the empiricists assume the mind to be formed by things; we shall consider it as forming itself by experience." M. Martin desires neither to neglect evolution as Kant did, nor to slight mind in the manner of the empiricists. He does not seek to conceal, I think that he reserves mind rather than discovers it. What does the old antithesis accomplish in which both idealism and materialism still loiter if not the objectification and substantialisation of simple logical positions.

*

M. Tescanu publishes, with a biographical notice, the Théorie sur l'ondulation universelle, essai sur l'évolution, of his Roumanian compatriot, BASILE CONTA, a philosopher who died very young. The profundity of the work will interest the reader less perhaps than the intellectual character of its author. In some respects M. Conta was the disciple of Büchner. He calls himself a materialist, has cast aside all religious belief and sees in the universe only force and matter. With extensive knowledge, he has hardihood and penetration. But that does not prevent him from being naïvely enough a metaphysician. He thinks anew the science of others and aims to grasp the world in a formula. In his principle of universal undulation, where the evolutionism of Spencer is corrected by the attractionism, or rather gravitation, of Newton, I see a personal effort for a better comprehension of things by means of a hypothesis, I see a procedure of acquisition rather. than a well-worked-out theory. M. Conta was a true philosopher, who was unfortunately not permitted to complete his full evolution and to fulfil all his promises.

I shall point out in closing an excellent work by M. GEORGES DUMAS, Les états intellectuels dans la mélancolie; a fine study by M.

FR. QUEYRAT, L'abstraction et son rôle dans l'éducation intellectuelle; a very interesting little book by GEORG HIRTH, which I have translated into French under the title of Les localisations cérébrales en psychologie (Pourquoi sommes-nous distraits?); the Spinoza of M. LEON BRUNSCHWIEG, which seems to me an excellent résumé ; and finally the Philosophie de Jacobi by M. LÉVY-BRUHL, an extremely erudite contribution to the history of German thought.

LUCIEN ARRÉAT.

PARIS.

BOOK REVIEWS.

AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. By C. Lloyd Morgan, Principal of University College, Bristol. With Diagrams. London: Walter Scott. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (imported). Pp. 382. Price, $1.25. Works of the type and spirit of Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan's Introduction to Comparative Psychology are rare. By its ease and vivaciousness of style, its clear singling out of the fundamental points of interest, its economy, its philosophical grasp and broad comprehensiveness, it is an exemplar of what the propedeutics of the subject should be. From a rich life, sustained by exceptional advantages and a rigorous scientific training, Professor Morgan has gathered a wealth of illustration and argument that plays with a never-failing light about his expositions. It is not the least of the merits of the book, and certainly an unfrequent trait in any work, that the author's conclusions, even where they may be allied to the results of others or have been suggested by them, are essentially the outcome of independent thought reached in connexion with independent data. For example, his experiments with newly hatched chicks and ducklings, which in themselves constitute an invaluable psychological document, form almost entirely the empirical basis of his conclusions regarding animal instinct and intelligence, association, animal sense-experience, etc. We have before us the facts that the author had, and are placed by them in immediate touch with reality. The results of Professor Morgan's inquiries are not a little enhanced by this trustworthy mode of procedure.

Two main purposes pervade the work: first, to discuss the relation of the psychology of man to that of the higher animals; and secondly, to consider the place of consciousness in nature, the relation of psychical evolution to physical and biological evolution, in the light which comparative psychology throws on certain philosophical problems. We shall take up the second heading first, premising that the author throughout accepts evolution as the basis of his explanation of nature, including psychical nature, and that his method of interpretation is the monistic method, as that will herein be defined. In the first place, Professor Morgan's monism is resolvable into three aspects: (1) it is a monistic theory of knowledge; (2) a monistic interpretation of nature; and (3) analytic monism. According to the first, object and subject, cosmos and self are of co-ordinate reality; they are the polarised

aspects of experience as explained through reason. This does not exclude but needs as its supplement a further hypothesis, which, in so far as it is monistic, declares that nature is explicable; that the organism both in its biological and psychological aspects is a product of evolution; that mind is not extra-natural, nor supra-natural but an aspect of natural existence. According to Professor Morgan's form of monistic philosophy, the evolution which sweeps through nature is characterised by three traits: (1) it is selective; (2) it is synthetic; (3) it tends from chaos to cosmos. What this means we shall see later. The third aspect of monism is termed analytic, which declares that the true reality is the man, one and indivisible; that body and mind, object and subject, are products of analysis, distinguishable in thought but not separable in existence.

So far, Professor Morgan has trodden the ground of purely experiential analysis. A final step, he thinks, is necessary. That selective synthesis of the cosmos which shows itself in evolution is regarded by him as the manifestation under the conditions of time and space of an underlying activity which is the ultimate cause thereof. This underlying activity is not a product of evolution; it is that in and through which evolution both of body and mind is rendered possible. In this synthesis he seems to find "the essence of the whole process, that which makes it comprehensible or rational "—the divinity that shapes the ends of the world and which there would certainly seem to be no objection to calling God, if we had the least encouragement from the author to add such an appellation. Of this underlying activity, object and subject, as we have stated before, are correlative modes of manifestation inseparably united in experience but fundamentally distinct in aspect. Now, how has this two-faced unity had its origin? This is the problem of psychology.

It would be impossible for us to reproduce the powerful and subtle steps by which we are led up in this book to the conclusions which the author adopts, and in stating here merely the bald results we must say that much of their cogency and argumentative coloring is lost. In the first place, "the Not-self is the generalised "'concept of all that reflexion has taught us concerning the objective aspect of the 'data of sense-experience; the Self is the generalised concept of all that reflexion 'has taught us concerning the subjective aspect of our life experience." How has that consciousness arisen which is the symbol of this Self? What is its significance, and what is its relation to the Not-self?

We seek our point of departure in the study of the correlation of psychical phenomena with physiological phenomena. A living organism, unconscious as a fertilised ovum, passes through the conventional stages of birth, conscious maturity, and death. Here again consciousness is absent. In the ovum nothing approaching to that orderly complexity of molecular vibration which we find in the brain is present, but gradually comes with the development. In this molecular vibration, the manifestation of physical energy more than structure is important. Incidentally, we have a very significant opinion of the author here, namely, that "the problem of