Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/443

 NEW BOOKS. 427 economics by Boscher and Knies. The speculative school despised facts, the historical school despised speculations. The historical school did good work in accumulating vast masses of facts, but it had no satisfactory key to the interpretation of these facts. The biological school represented by Lilienfeld and Schaeffle professed to find a key by borrowing the methods of the natural sciences. Society was assumed to be an organism, and its structure and functions in their origin and development were to be interpreted by methods similar to those employed in interpreting the facts of organic life. The biological school has obtained little hold in Germany. It is felt that biological laws will not explain social institutions. These institutions are determined as much, if not more, by psychology. In short, it is not by the methods of other sciences but by an independent method of its own that social science can discover the laws which govern social phenomena. In a concluding chapter M. Bougie compares the sociological movement in Germany with the same movement in France. He has written a good and instructive book. Kssai sur le Genie dans I' Art. Par GABRIEL SEAILLES, Directeur des conferences de philosophic a la Faculte des lettres de 1'Universite de Paris. 2 me edition. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1897. Pp. viii., 313. An inquiry, mainly psychological, into the nature of genius, the beautiful, the ideal, and the work of art as such. Starting with the assertion that genius connotes only a difference of degree in the spontaneity, facility and harmonious co-ordination in mental procedure characterising all intellectually constructive activity, whether perceptive, imaginative or conceptual, the author proceeds to analyse the mental image and its fundamental tendency to emerge in movement, deeming that here the germ of art is to be sought. A des degres divers tout homme est artiste. The work of art begins with the relative freedom of the imagining, as compared with the perceptive mind. To imagine is to idealise ; there are as many ideals as there are objects and minds to contemplate them. And the beautiful is not in any object, but is what my mind makes of it, what I see alone and endeavour to embody. This essay, presented some time ago as thesis for a doctor's degree at the Sorbonne and now republished, though it is not wholly free from those defects of la litterature phraseolor/ique which characterise so much that is written on aesthetic subjects, has more sound psychology than most, and is full of verve. Nor from its abundance of matter and wide range can justice be done to it in a brief note. Le IK ti 1 mi i n Same Biologique et la Personnalite Conaciente. Par FE"LIX LE DANTEC. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1897. Pp. 156. This is the sequel to the author's Theorie de la Vie, which dealt with ' biological determinism '. The present volume proceeds to the descrip- tion of the ' psychical epiphenomena ' which accompany, but do not influence, the ' physical phenomena '. The expression ' biological de- terminism' signifies that bodily processes are sufficient to themselves, and reject the interposition of 'will'. M. Le Dantec studies the con- sciousness of atoms ; then the union of these psychical centres, in chemical combination, into the consciousness of the molecule ; he proceeds to the consciousness of the cells of the body and studies the relations of these subordinate experiences to one another ; the latter do not fuse or unite to form the mental life of the individual. The volume concludes with short considerations about reason, sleep, memory, and death. It