Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/622

 610 NEW BOOKS. Essai sur les Formes a priori de la Sensibilittf. Par CHARLES DUJTAX, Agrege de Philosophic, Professeur de Philosophie au College Stanislas, Docteur es-lettres. Paris : Alcan, 1884. Pp. 227. A well-written essay, designed to show that space and time are not the a priori forms of sensibility for which Kant contended, but rather uni- versal characteristics of our representations, springing from an anterior and more fundamental form of mental activity. The question as to the true ultimate nature of space and time should not, as by Kant, be raised with the other question whether they are pure data of representation devoid of objective reality as to which, the author first argues at length, no doubt can be maintained. Maintaining then (against M. Ribot) that the philosophical question as to the nature of space is really involved in the issues of the physio-psychological conflict between Nativism and Em- piricism, and himself deciding for the middle position of Projectionism (after Volkuiann, Donders, &c.), he urges that the intuition of time is given simul- taneously with that of space, and that the two have accordingly one and the same origin. This origin is the one fundamental process of " multiplex unity and unified multiplicity " manifested in every act of mental repre- sentation a process the two moments of which are familiar in science or reflective knowledge as analysis and synthesis. The process is not a law governing the phenomena of mind from without, but is a law inherent to thought itself ; mind and thought being identical, and thought being one and multiplex because mind is one and multiplex, that is to say, imperfect. From the consideration then arising, how one and the same thought can give rise at once to the intuition of time and of space, or, in other words, of the Ego and the universe, the author next passes to the problem of the categories, where he finds that judgment can only be the extension of the attributes of mind itself to the totality of external things. The doctrine so set forth is idealism, but, it is argued, not an idealism that involves the negation of an external world, in the only sense in which the existence of such can rightly be maintained. La Morale dans le Drame, l'lpop& et le Roman. Par LUCIEN ARREAT. Paris : Alcan, 1884. Pp. 219. M. Janet and also Mr. Galton have urged the importance of utilising the rich store of psychological observation deposited in the masterpieces of literary art, and in this work the author employs the creations of the poet and novelist as a class of moral experiments that may serve to test the philosophical systems of morality. Whereas the moral agent of the philo- sophers is a pure abstraction, the dramatic character departs from the concrete individual of real life no more and not otherwise than as in a scientific experiment actual bodies are placed in specially controlled cir- cumstances for the more exact study of particular aspects of their nature. From this point of view, the author, with easy movement over the literary field and at the same time with good philosophic insight, takes up in suc- cession " The Sources of our Moral Activity," " The Ends of Duty," "Moral Obligation," "Moral Conflict," "The Sanction of Conscience," " Dramatic Justice," " The Mechanism of Will," " The Sanction cf a Future Life ". His own philosophic object is to show how a " positive morality " based on a recognition of the intellectual craving or logical intuition resulting in the idea of Justice, as well as of those instincts of self-preserva- tion and reproduction that give rise to Egoism and Sympathy should penetrate into the details of conduct, instead of remaining content, like the intuitionalist systems, with some vague and general rules of common sense.