Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/442

 NEW BOOKS. 441 L' Alternative. Contribution a la Psychologiepar EDMUND R. CLAY, tracluit de 1'Anglais par A. BURDEAU. Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. xx., 650. The Alternative, published anonymously in England in 1882 (reviewed at length in MIND, Vol. viii. 109), has now in this French translation the author's name attached to it. The translator, in an Introduction of xvi. pp., gives a sympathetic exposition of the main ideas and object of the work, but tells nothing new of the author beyond his name. M. Ravaisson appears to have been struck by the work, for it was he that counselled the translation. Le Langage inte'rieur et les diverses Formes de I'Aphasie. Par GILBERT BALLET, Professeur agre'ge' a la Faculte* de Me*decine de Paris, Medecin des Hopitaux. Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. xvi., 174. We hope to return to this work, which, coming from a medical man, has a special significance in so frankly recognising the necessity of inter- preting the facts of cerebral pathology by the results of properly psycho- logical analysis. The complementary relation of the one to the other could not be better or more intelligently put than in the author's Introduction, where his task is thus described : " Montrer les re*sultats de cette heureuse entente de la psychologie et de la pathologic, faire ressortir les eclaircisse- ments que la clinique apporte a 1'etude de la fonction du langage, rechercher surtout les interpretations des diverses formes de 1'aphasie, telles que les rend possibles 1' analyse psychologique, tel est, si nous ne trompons, 1'effort qu'on attend de nous ". This purpose he appears to have very effectively carried out within the short compass of his work ; though, written as it was with a view to 'aggregation' in medicine, both subject and title of it were set to him rather than chosen by him. Science et Philosophic. Par M. BERTHELOT, Se"nateur, Membre de 1'Institut. Paris: Calmami Levy, 1886. Pp. xv., 492. This volume consists of articles contributed to various journals by the distinguished chemist during the last thirty years, and constitutes " a sort of intellectual and moral biography of the author ". The articles fall into four principal groups : Scientific Philosophy ; History of Science ; Public Instruction; Politics and National Defence. The last two groups include a description of the University of Geneva, with special reference to scientific instruction (pp. 321-50), and an account of some of the efforts made during the siege of Paris by the Scientific Committee of Defence, of which the author was president, to devise new methods of communication by electricity and otherwise (pp. 416-90). In an article on the scientific relations of France and Germany (pp. 351-63), intended as a protest against the introduction of national antipathies into science, M. Berthelot points out incidentally that, contrary to the opinion that is generally formed of the German genius, the part of the Germans in the establishment of the law of chemical equivalents has been above all experimental and practical. " On the contrary, the atomic theory properly so-called, of a more abstract and contestable character, is due to an Englishman, Dalton; whilst its demonstration by the physical study of gases has been given by a French- man, Gay-Lussac." The genius of the European races, therefore, is not so different as some wish to make out (p. 356). Under the head of history of science comes an account of the Academy of Sciences from its foun- dation, under the First Republic, to the present time (pp. 185-214), followed by obituary notices of Balard, Victor Regnault, H. Sainte-Claire Deville, and Adolphe Wurtz ; and further supplemented by sketches of the history of explosives and of the origin of alchemy, both of which subjects have