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 NEW BOOKS. 303 and finds in these the clue to the question of an after-life. The central atom, when dissolution of an organised body (that is, distribution of its elements) takes place some time after the change that we denominate death, is there ready to begin anew the work of self-incarnation ; but, just as the (already so far incarnated) sperm-animalcule of a dog, though it found its way to the ovum of a sheep, can work no effect upon it, so the simple "central atom" of any grade, having acquired a certain modification of character in the course of its last life-experience, must be placed in new and suitable circumstances before re-incarnation can go forward. By a series of cosmic " revolutions," of which the author thinks the geological record bears evidence, such new conditions have been provided in the past for the progressive development of living things through all grades up to man ; and the indestructible " central atom " of a man who has lived, after having gone through previous lives of lower degree, besides still earlier development into that condition that first fitted it to become central in a living organism, has now to wait till a new cosmic " revolution " gives it the opportunity of entering upon a somehow higher life. It is here that the influence of eastern ideas is apparent in the author's speculation, but h e himself notes how his conception, which he seeks to develop in view of the facts of modern science, varies from the old doctrine of metempsychosis. There is much in his whole theory that is left vague and undetermined, riot to say that it involves what seem obvious inconsistencies. Thus, on the one hand, he speaks of the central atom in man as having reached the stage of " thinking atom," and goes far at times towards making a really philosophical analysis of human reason ; yet, on the other hand, he does not hesitate to explain thought, as well as feeling, in man as the resultant of atomic grouping and to speak of it thereupon (however its effects may remain capitalized in the constitution of the central atom) as ending for the individual with the death of the body ; from which point of view, also, he proclaims with the utmost emphasis that Thought is a mere accident in the universe. The inconsistency seems sufficiently marked, and generally, as before suggested, the final view of " God and the World " appears to hang little together with the doctrine of the body of the work. Nobody, however, that takes up the book will easily lay it down before the end is reached. It is a record of genuine search for light on the highest topics of human concern, and is written throughout with great spirit and force. Les Phenomena Affedifs et les Lois de leur Apparition. Essai de Psycho- logic generale. Par FR. PAULHAN. Paris : F. Alcan, 1887. Pp. 163. This psychological monograph is a perfectly consistent attempt to apply to the phenomena of feeling the doctrine that all consciousness is an unessential accompaniment of certain links in the physiological processes that constitute the life of the nervous system, all of which processes can be reduced to the type of reflex action. The author recognises (p. 13, note) the idealistic objections to this doctrine, but, while reserving the general philosophical question, declares his opinion that these objections can be answered, that ultimately every psychological problem is a problem of physiology, mental states being the signs, physiological processes the thing signified. Man, in his view, is a combination of systems not completely harmonised, " a sort of machine, ill finished or a little out of order, which, receiving impressions from without, dissolves them and synthesises them by combinations of numerous internal wheels, reacting so as to augment in a certain measure the systematisation of the external world along with its own ". Consciousness "is a sign of the imperfect working of the machine, and "affective phenomena," being less " systematised " than intellectual phenomena, are signs of a more considerable imperfection or " trouble " in