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274 NEW BOOKS. sciousness, which stores up and synthetises the acquisitions of the senses. Subconsciousness " is, for the most part, independent of the normal will and consciousness " (p. 129), and hence it is difficult to determine where it begins and ends ; but it exercises a general guidance in the manifesta- tions of consciousness, and may be supposed to know and influence consciousness without being known by it. The subconscious being furnishes the conscious being with innate faculties and predispositions, and adapts these as far as possible to the organic conditions, for the development of the conscious being ; and, since it evidently has some power of directing matter, may have some share in the development of the organism. All this is very vague ; but Dr. Gyel is not attempting to prove any- thing, but merely to show what deductions might be made from his hypothesis, if true, and how it would solve the problems of normal and abnormal psychology. And he adds that it would do more than that. If the personality that exists from birth to death is transient, if individu- ality endures and advances through successive incarnations, if ultimate happiness is attained by the observance of moral law, man is set free from the false principles of authority and social justice, assured of im- mortality and provided, by his belief in the progress of humanity through the free efforts of individuals, with an adequate motive for conduct. E. F. STEVENSON. Esquisae d'un Enseignement base sur la Psycholoyie de I'enfant. By PAUL LACOMBE. Paris : Armand Colin et Cie. The brilliant epigrammatic style of this little book must not distract our attention from the solid common sense with which the whole subject is treated. No doubt educational heresies are so common now that M. Lacombe is much less out of the rut than he thinks he is ; yet his revolt against the fonctionnaire way of regarding education is none too common in France where such a revolt is urgently called for. The existing system would do admirably if only the pupil were not a child, and " s'il etait en bas age un estimable professeur de 1'Universite ". Against the present dogmatic instruction our author recommends what he calls dialectic instruction. This new method corresponds in everything but name with the method rising into favour in all quarters and usually labelled as heuristic. M. Lacombe is, however, more thorough than most supporters of this method. His view of a teacher is not " en homme qui, sachant tout, enseigne tout, mais en homme qui aide a apprendre tout ce qu'on veut savoir". If a child wants to know about bookbinding, let the teacher take him to a bookbinder's. The Psychology upon which the enseignement is based naturally interests us here. We have no objection to the limitation of our forces over the child to the three levers, curiosity, imitation and amour propre. We even admire the epigrammatic use of his " la moutonnerie des enfants ". But on pages 71 and 72 we find a theory sketched out which surely deserves fuller treatment. All formal logic is based upon the assumption that the processes of mind are the same no matter what the subject upon which the mind acts. Without a word of apology to the author of the Outlines of the Laws of Thought M. La- combe tells us that the intellectual operations differ with the subject, and concludes his paragraph with the pregnant words : " A I'enfant qui demeurerait tout il fait ignorant de Tune de ces maitresses branches du savoir humain, il manquerait l'id<5e de 1'un des precedes qui composent la raison humaine ". He meets the educational difficulty by suggesting typical forms to illustrate all the different processes, but we cannot help