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 NEW BOOKS. :, j:t doctrine. Perhaps it, is his constant appeal to " eonimon sense " and "the common fnitli of mankind" Unit. h;t. l>rti,i,-,| him i|>oniopilii, tiir. reader being expected to supply the missing context out oiliin inner being. Meanwhile, so far a* the " realism of common Hon.te" which he professes is formally expounded, the theory would seem an confused M it is certainly confusing. The objective reality of our ideal* j a no inference, he maintains, but a matter of direct apprehension, V* also maintained that it is by an assumption, an act of f.iith, that we apprehend our apprehension to be correct N'or again do< lism" attempt to bridge save by flights of language the 'ugly block ditch ' thut separates the fact of the "permanent self-identical and independent " existence of the Ideal from the fact of its development in us -its " pro gressive revelation in and to man". Allusion is indeed nmde t.. "tin- perfect revelation in Christ". But if this mean 'of Christ in us,' then here is sheer inconsistency. If not, then Christianity fulls into line with the Toternisrn of another of Mr. Jevons' works as having no h validity in respect to doctrinal content than such as may happen to be adjudged thereto by the confessedly partial intuitions of Mr.'jevons >in(///<<. lly I,i < -tux I,KVY-|!RUHL, Maitre de Conferences in the Sorbonne, Professor in the Ecole l.ihp des Sciences Politiques. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner i Co. Pp. x., 500. Beginning with Descartes and concluding with a rapid survey of con- temporary speculation, Prof. Levy-Bruhl places before us in a of lucid and precise summaries the opinions of the leading French thinkers during the last three centuries. The impression left is that France, to which the world owes such great gifts in the special depart- ments of knowledge, has not given it any theory, at once original and widely influential, of being, of knowledge, or of conduct. This compara- tive sterility is no doubt due to the rivalry of a vast theological s based not on reason but on authority, and having to be reckoned with at every step. Descartes and his immediate successors are more < apologists of the prevailing faith, the philoaophe* of the eighteenth century are more or less its assailants, the numerous schools of thought that have competed with one another since the Restoration, while sul> sistiug for the most part on foreign ideas, keep its pretensions constantly in sight. What gives French philosophy a national character is, as the author well shows in his last chapter, not a doctrine but a method. Perhaps in this respect he attributes rather too much importance to the initiative of Descartes; but he is fully justified in observing that the Cartesian teach- ing " co-operated with the tendency of the national temperament" p. 477). This method, whatever may be the cause of its prevalenc-e. is at once logical and popular. Many French thinkers have had a mathe- matical training, and all have been influenced by the spirit of geometry. Hence their love of clear ideas and their passion for deducing multi tudinous consequences from a single principle. And they have also addressed themselves to mankind at large, to all rational beings rather