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 NEW BOOKS. 139 Philosophy shall be expressly treated of. A Note is added (pp. 55-60) recalling the distinction between " the two senses of Reality" explained in the Address for 1883 : the first philosophical, in which "Esse is Percipi" ; the second scientific, in which " Existence is the Order of Eeal Condition- ing ; '. The Anatomy of Negation. By EDGAK SALTUS. London : Williams & Norgate, 1886. Pp. 226. The author gives a sketch in which, as he points out, " no attempt has been made to prove anything " of " anti-theisin from Kapila to Leconte -de Lisle ". " The anti-theistic tendencies of England and America have been treated by other writers ; in the present volume, therefore, that branch of the subject is not discussed." The chapters of the book are (1) -"The Revolt of 'the Orient"; (2) "The Negations of Antiquity"; (3) " The Convulsions of the Church " ; (4) " The Dissent of the Seers " ("Spinoza The Seven Sages of Potsdam Hoi bach and his Guests"); (5)*" The Protests of Yesterday " ; (6) " A Poet's Verdict,,". The last is an essay on Leconte de Lisle as a representative of " theoretic pessimism ". .Scientific Romances. No. V. " Casting Out the Self." By C. H. HINTON, B.A. London : Swan, Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., 1886. Pp. 205-29. With this part (following on the others previously noted in MIND) the author completes his series of speculations on the knowledge of space, being here not less concerned with that subject in its purely theoretic aspect because he chooses a title of apparently ethical import. The title has a reason in the author's own psychological experience, as he seeks to .show by way of conclusion to the whole inquiry. The Mechanism of Nature. An Essay on the Fundamental Principles of Natural Philosophy. By ALFRED M. STAPLEY, late Berkeley Fellow of the Owens College, Manchester. Manchester : J. S. Cornish, 1886. Pp. 71. Mr Stapley's tract deserves recognition as an earnest attempt to give explicit statement to the fundamental metaphysical conceptions involved in the scientific study of nature. It has, at the same time, the more ambitious aims of restating these conceptions in what seems to the author their true philosophical character, of snowing the dependence on them of the general laws of nature as established by science, and indirectly of simplifying and exhibiting the close inter-relation of the most general physical axioms accepted in science. The work shows considerable acquaintance with philosophical and scientific speculation, and proves the author's genuine interest and no small ability in the abstract problems of thought. But its form renders it hard to appraise its value, and will in all probability cause it to receive less attention than may be its due. Science does not readily tolerate large and far-reaching metaphysical con- ceptions, the scope and grounds of which are equally ambiguous. It is almost impossible to say what is the extent and what the justification of the very general considerations with which the Essay starts. The positions are laid down in over-dogmatic fashion, and the language, though appa- rently precise, leaves the largest possibilities of misinterpretation open. At the critical points, moreover, it appears as though Mr Stapley rather darkened counsel. The topic of the essential tri-dimensionality of space ( 31-33), on which the writer has seemingly been much influenced by Lotze, is not handled in a way to overcome that writer's well-weighed scruples, and while we willingly leave to the judgment of scientific