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IX. NEW BOOKS. Life in Mind and Conduct : Studies of Organic in Human Nature. By HENRY MAUDSLEY, M.D. London : Macrnillan & Co., Limited, 1902. Pp. xv., 444. THE contents of this book are sufficiently indicated by the chapter headings': Life and Mind; The Social System; Imagination and Ideal- ism ; Ethical Theory and Action ; Religion, Philosophy and Science ; Habit, Intonation, Experience and Truth ; Education, Mental Culture and Character ; Friendship, Love, Desire, Grief and Joy ; Fate, Folly and Crime; Pain, Life and Death. "There has been no thought of writing a methodical treatise nor of setting forth any sj'stem of doctrine. By bringing several subjects usually treated as if they were separate, and for the most part abstractly, into touch with the realities of organic life and into vital relations with one another, they are put into positions in which they may be safely left to suggest their own lessons. Nor is there anything new in the moral reflexions made, which for the most part have been made over and over again . . ." (p. 15). It appears to be the work of a man who in his leisure moments has jotted down the thoughts on the above-mentioned topics, which from time to time must occur to every reflective mind. These notes have been worked up with great care into book language. Here and there occur passages with which perhaps most readers will be found to disagree, and too often the style passes beyond the limits of dignity into the grotesque. In the main, however, such as have the leisure to peruse the work will find it in- teresting and at times suggestive. Its pages express with fair accuracy the general opinion of liberally educated men at the present day. Within the short limits of this notice it is impossible to quote the many excellent passages with which the book abounds. The sections dealing with the social system, with religion, the ideal and with mental culture are particularly well conceived, albeit tinged too deeply with pessimism. At the same time, as is inevitable in a work of this kind, statements have crept in which have little or no justification in fact, or which appear to be contradicted elsewhere in the work. On page 32 we are told that " it would be wrong to perceive feeling in the lowest form of living monad reacting fitly to its stimulus, though it give all the signs of that which were it deemed conscious would be feeling, for it is destitute of that which observation shows to be the necessary physical basis of consciousness." On page 37 we read, "that which is irritability in muscular substance becomes excitability in nervous substance ". Surely this contradicts the principle of continuity in nature insisted on at page 14 and again at page 33. Moreover, muscular substance is characterised by excitability as well as by irritability. The limitation of excitability, irritability, respiration, feeling, and the