Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/443

 PHILOSOPHICAL PEEIODICALS. 429 which all our organic sensations are summed up. The evolution of conscience is reserved for a subsequent discussion.] ' Recensionen.' [Among these is a long review of Dr. Stout's Analytic Psychology.'] Heft 2. Theodor Elsenhans. ' Theorie des Gewissens (Schluss).' [Conscience in the individual cannot be entirely accounted for by experi- ence, and must to that extent be described as innate. The variety of existing moral standards is no proof to the contrary any more than the innateness of reason is disproved by the divergent standards of truth. This aboriginal conscience cannot be reduced to the intuition of an abstract obligation : it is inconceivable without a concrete content. But we cannot tell definitely to what that content amounts. The develop- ment of conscience is determined on the one hand by the natural growth of society, and on the other by the development of intelligence. Among subsidiary influences art deserves particular mention as fostering the sense of ideality.] Prof. M. Guggenheim. ' Beitriige zur Biographic des Petrus Ramus.' [Two points of interest are here incidentally touched on, the great revival of Aristotelianism in the second half of the sixteenth century, and the Erastian tendencies of Ramus as against Calvinistic theocracy.] Prof. Dr. O. Schneider. 'Die schopferische Kraft des Kindes.' [A series of minute observations on two little girls, the writer's own children, which in his opinion go to prove the manifestation of dis- tinctively human faculty at a very early stage of infant consciousness, and -the application of intellectual and moral categories in anticipation of experience and independently of imitation.] L. "William Stern. ' Der zweite Hauptsatz der Energetik und das Lebensproblem.' [The writer denies the doctrine of entropia, generally accepted by physicists and eagerly embraced by Hartmann in the interests of pessimism. Admitting, on Carnot's principle, that the performance of work and therefore the existence of life is conditioned by the unequal distribution of energy in space, and admitting further that this inequality is continually diminish- ing through the dissipation of motion under the form of heat, it does not follow that a state of complete equilibrium can be reached in a finite time. According to Stern the real relation between increasing time and diminishing tension is asymptotic : they approach but never meet. But granting so much it might be urged that the tension at the end of a finite time will have become too feeble to admit of the existence of life. The difficulty is met by pointing out that the reduction of the mean tension within a given system has nothing to do with its proportionate distribu- tion among the partial tensions in the total quantity of energy included. There might even be an absolute increase in that particular tension whence life results. A discussion of the special relations between life and energy is reserved for a future article.] Johannes Volkelt. ' Beitrage zur Analyse des Bewusstseins.' [The feelings produced by the contemplation of a work of art fall into two classes : sympathetic appropriation of those experienced by the persons represented, and sub- jective feelings produced directly in ourselves by the incidents exhibited as admiration, pity, or terror. Volkelt maintains against Konrad Lange that the emotions so excited are not merely represented feelings but the actual feelings themselves, although they may be weakened to any ex- tent by the consciousness that they arise from fictitious causes.l PHILOSOPHISCHE STUDIEN. Bd. xviii., Heft 3. M. G-eiger. 'Neue Complications versuche.' [Are-investigation of the technique and of the psychological significance of complication experiments. The results of the Leipzig observers (Wundt, von Tschisch, Pflaum), all obtained with the complication pendulum, are on the whole in agreement : though there are significant differences between those of Pflaum and of the