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118 NEW BOOKS. charm of mystery by promising wonders to the faithful, and then retiring into the cavernous convolutions of a thought which none can really follow. There is no romance about the clear, dry precision with which he makes his points, and in the light of his manner even his more romantic doc- trines, e.g., his doctrine of the Fall, only look grotesque. It must be admitted also that some of the pillars of his system seem somewhat unsubstantial. His Libertarianism does not seem satisfactorily founded upon a mere act of faith, even though it proceeds from a rational percep- tion that neither freedom nor its negation is demonstrable. His doctrine of faith itself, excellent as are the remarks it leads him to make (e.g., on pp. 94-95) as to the necessity of its intervention in the making and sus- taining of every judgment, might have been immensely strengthened by a systematic illustration of this truth from every field of human know- ledge. Even his great doctrine of Personality seems, similarly, to lack a definiteness and concreteness which might well have been supplied by tracing the omnipresence of personality in every act and thought and the impossibility of really dispensing with it anywhere. His choice of a name also was perhaps unfortunate ; from a Neocriticism one would expect neither the novelty nor the constructiveness which his work undoubtedly possesses. But perhaps the whole truth is that M. Renouvier has been neither novel nor constructive enough ; he has allowed himself to be hampered by excessive respect for philosophic tradition and the historic formulation of philosophic problems. But the great man in philosophy, as in the other pursuits of life, is not one of the Diadochi who carries on a stereotyped tradition : he is the maker of new values and the importer of fresh thoughts. Academic philosophy in all ages has shown that mere erudition will not keep thought alive, and that persistent inbreeding speedily results in debility and death. But upon the cross-fertilising of philosophy by the new suggestions which are crowding in upon it from the sciences (especially biology and psychology) M. Renouvier appears to have bestowed but little attention, although it is probably from these sources that will come the evidence which will finally persuade mankind of the general soundness of the Weltanschauung which he champions. F. C. S. SCHILLEE. Etudes de Psychologic. Par J. J. van BIERVLIET, Professeur a 1'Universite de Gand. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1901. Pp. 201. Price 4 fr. This volume is made up of four articles reprinted from various psych- ological magazines. By far the most valuable of them is the first, " L'homme droit et 1'homme gauche," which was first published in La Revue Philosophique for 1899. Its object is to show that dextrality and sinistrality are characteristics of two distinct types of men, and that we must include under these terms, not only ordinary right-handedness and left-handeduess, but also an asymmetry of the body generally, and a greater acuteness of the sense-organs on one side or the other. Ambidextrous persons the author does not believe to exist, though it is just possible that in women the preponderance of one side over the other is less marked. The first part of the article deals with asymmetries of the motor system. The results arrived at by direct measurement, both of skeletons and of living bodies, are not altogether concordant, but it seems clear that the skull of the " droitier " is, like his brain, more developed on the left side, and that the bones of his right arm exceed those of the left in length, circumference and weight, the opposite being the case with the left-handed, who form, perhaps, about 2 per cent, of mankind, or, at any rate, of western peoples. The same asymmetry is found as the