Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/449

433 it is promised, will proceed from the psychological and epistemological points of view. The present work shows an amount of critical ability in dealing with fundamental problems, and an appreciation of modern modes of thought that not only speak well for the younger group of theologians, but promise much for the forthcoming treatise.

The interest excited by the essays in Questions de philosophie morale et sociale, constituting as they do their author's last contribution to philosophic thought, is largely of a personal nature. With the exception of the appendixes, Psychologie et mètaphysique, and Psychologie et morale de la subconscience, both of which have been previously published, the book scarcely touches upon the more distinctive views of M. Durand (de Gros). The different subjects discussed, comprised under the titles of Matèrialisme et athéisme, Le déterminisme, Transformisme et struggleforlifisme and Socialisme are united by the common aim of showing that there is no real conflict between morality and science, but that the latter rather furnishes new ground for the struggle toward a better state. The point of view is made particularly clear in the first essay, where after repeating the distinction presented in former books between the questions of the existence of God as substance and that of God as person, between ontology and eschatology or religion, the author defends the possibility of scientific proofs for the spirit world and another life. For M. Durand these proofs, as is well known, take the form of spiritualistic manifestations, in which from the beginning he has shown a keen interest and a ready belief. The next essay treats the question of personal responsibility and the place left it by determinism, and the other two defend socialism as a moral ideal, pointing out and attempting to disprove the portion of evolutionary theory with which it is inconsistent. As a preface to the whole, the editor, M. Parodi, has written a sympathetic account of the life and philosophic standpoint of M. Durand.

In this little treatise is presented a new and unique theory of the beginnings and process of the development of mind. The author's main thesis is that man owes his moral sense more to 'suggestion' deriving from a First Cause, than to either natural selection or the influence of environment. The author's theory of suggestion is, however, somewhat mystical. It is sometimes, too, seemingly oblivious of what might appear to be perfectly