Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/312

 NEW BOOKS. 299 for students who have not received any express psychological training. "Figures of Speech," which are specially illustrative of psychological principles, are now treated at more than twice their former length, and placed in the heart of the work, their former place at the beginning being now taken by the more fundamental topics, previously scattered about, of " Order and Number of Words," " Sentence," and " Paragraph ". This is a distinct improvement. The remainder of pt. 1, from p. 233, is taken up with a more developed treatment than formerly of the " Intellectual Qualities of Style," followed from p. 278 by study of a large number of " Promiscuous Examples ". The Intellectual Qualities are now distin- guished as "Clearness," "Simplicity," "Impressiveness" and "Picturesque- ness," the last-named already involving an admixture of the Emotional. The other notable change thus far is the suppression of " Kinds of Compo- sition" (Description, &c.) as an express topic ; what was formerly set out (at considerable length) under this head being now given, or to be given, otherwise in the course of the re-arranged and developed exposition. " Poetry." the final topic of the old Rhetoric, is now, as regards its " defini- tion," made the subject of a special discussion (pp. 207-56) at the end of the supplementary or " overflow " volume, in which the author sets forth (controversially) his general views as to the right mode of teaching English (pp. 1-47), and then works out a series of "Select Lessons on the leading Qualities of Style ". As a study in the art of Definition, as well as for its material import, this chapter on Poetry is to be noted. The Science of Thought. By F. MAX MULLER. London : Longmans, Green & Co., 1887. Pp. xxiv., 664. This book has come to hand just not too late for mention in the present No. Its main contents will be found set out in an advertisement on the wrapper. The author, in his preface, appears to think that the day is past for a time at least when such high philosophy as he and, we may suppose also, his friend Noire' (to whom the book is dedicated) have it still in them to enlighten the world withal, has a chance of being listened to. He need be under no such apprehension. The time never was when topics like those of which he treats would have interested half as many people as will turn with eagerness now to anything new and important that he has to say about them ; and he surely underrates his own (better say nothing of Noire's) power of attractive exposition. The fear indeed should be not that he will not have plenty of interested and admiring readers, but that the better-trained sort may not find his piquant observations on philo- sophical thinkers and philosophical questions quite deep-going and close enough. However, he has always his treasure-house of linguistic facts out of which to draw things both new and old that are of the first significance for a true appreciation of the nature of human reason ; and, making it his chief business in this work of which the motto is " No Reason without Language, no Language without Reason " so to draw, he shall obtain in these pages, as soon as circumstances permit, the patient and open- minded consideration that is due to this outcome of a life of long and .strenuous intellectual labour. He says " possibly " its final outcome ; but we will rather hope that he may still be able to produce not only the other book supplementary to the present one which he says he has long , prepared on " Mythology " as work of self-consciousness, but also his crowning piece in which he would " show that the same road which led mankind into the wilderness of Mythology, in the widest sense of the word, may lead us back to a point from which we recognise in all self-conscious Mona the Great Self, conscious of all Mona ".