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 430 NEW BOOKS. As to what the author calls dialectic realism, this evidently originates in the fascination exercised on philosophers by the marvels of mathe- matical demonstration. Plato desiderated a science which should do for all nature what arithmetic and geometry did for the empirical rules of mensuration, and which should explain the facts postulated by arithmetic and geometry themselves. Spinoza was evidently inspired by the same ideal ; and Hegel more remotely influenced by it through their example. This, if you will, was an abuse of assimilation, but an abuse not necessarily accompanying its use, and at any rate remote enough from the idea of efficient causation, which, as I have said, is no other than unconditional antecedence rightly understood. What the French, who are very liable to it, call simplisme is the last infirmity of noble thinkers, and an infirmity from which Prof. Guastella himself is not entirely free. A. W. BENN. Che Cos' e il Bello ? Schema d'un Estetica Psicologica. Manfredi Porena. Milano : Hoepli. Pp. xi, 483. This book contains much that is suggestive, even for those who cannot approve the attempt to construct a purely psychological ^Esthetic. It falls into two main divisions ; the general theory of the beautiful, and the system of the arts. The theory of the beautiful is subdivided into sections dealing with " the beauty of sense," with " expression," and with " inward beauty," by which I understand the beauty of content as such. Within "the beauty of sense " or " accessible to sense " (il bello sensibile) there are recognised immediate beauty and the beauty of relation, this latter including typical and final beauty. Within expression fall " expressive forms " and " ex- pressive actions" a distinctive correlative with that between immediate beauty and beauty of relation. And the treatment of inward beauty is- divided in the same way into immediate inward beauty and the inward beauty of relation. The system of the arts follows on the whole a type of classification familiar in recent continental aesthetic the main division being taken between the "ideomimetic," i.e. the imitative or representative arts, in- cluding painting, sculpture and (dramatic) recitation ; and on the other hand the " free " arts, architecture and music, the parallelism between which has dominated many aesthetic systems. A general treatment of the literary process from the point of view of representative perfection concludes the substantive part of the work. An appendix deals polemic- ally with the theories of Benedetto Croce, with which the present writer is not acquainted. It will be seen that the author's theory of beauty breaks up into three parts, each of which repeats within itself what is essentially the same distinction. It is with a certain intention, probably, that " expression " comes between " sensible beauty " and " beauty of content," between which it is a natural link. But as expressiveness or utterance has no special significance for the writer's doctrine, no true unity results from this collocation, and distinctions which might have stood for phases in a development appear to recur (as "beauty of relation" within "sensible beauty") within every phase. However, to pursue this point would perhaps be " cadere nella metafisica," which is the author's final word of censure. The general definition of beauty is " that which pleases the mind or soul (anima)," and the point thus made in the distinction between the aesthetic and the non-aesthetic senses is interesting. The eye and ear, it is boldly maintained, feel in their proper activity no trace of localised pleasure,