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410 NEW BOOKS. the opening chapter deal with the general problems of the nature of beauty and of art ; then follow a series of more special studies, suggested by the difficulties which encounter the artist in the reproduction of nature. Two more isolated chapters on the relations of art to curiosity and to morality close the book. In the Introduction M. Lechalas concludes, perhaps somewhat sum- marily, that beauty is to be identified with being. To this conception, as though aware of the difficulties involved in its application, he does not again return, but directs his attention, for the most part, to the concrete and material in aesthetic phenomena. In consequence, perhaps, , of his anxiety to avoid a too strictly a priori treatment, he has, in several of these essays, decidedly overstepped the limits of aesthetic proper. In the essay on art and nature he is led somewhat astray by a too exclusive consideration of the merely external in nature. The difficulties, the unavoidable limitations to which the artist is subjected in the endeavour to reproduce this aspect of nature, invite a discussion of the general laws which govern artistic reproduction : and here M. Lechalas encroaches still more evidently upon foreign territory. The processes, physical, physiological and psychical, which lie at the base of aesthetic experience, no doubt afford matter for interesting and fruitful investigation ; but of the significance of the experience, as a complete, given whole, such in- vestigation can tell us nothing, and therefore the claim of certain of these essays to the title of aesthetic studies is a doubtful one. Apart from this, the problems under discussion, many of them extremely in- tricate, M. Lechalas has treated with much insight and enthusiasm : his aim being rather to present the general state of scientific opinion in each case than to elaborate any theory of his own. In this he is perhaps wise, as the conclusions drawn must necessarily be very problematic. This method he has also pursued in the essays which fall more strictly within the province of aesthetic. The two most widely accepted theories of the object of art, as emotional content or as beauty of form, are, in the chapter entitled " Qu'est-ce que 1'Art," considered, illustrated, and condemned. Those, however, who agree with M. Lechalas in this con- demnation will hardly feel satisfied with his own conclusion, which is more a compromise between the other views than a solution of their apparent contradictions. M. Lechalas handles in a broad spirit several of the many aspects which the question of the relation of art to morals presents : he condemns the fiction of Part pour Vart, and while denying the necessity of a definite moral aim in the artist, insists on the fact that art, if rightly used, is a mighty power for good ; and that, in conse- quence, the employment of this force " saurait etre regie par elle-meme et par elle seule ". In a long chapter devoted to " L'Art et la Curiosite," M. Lechalas seeks to determine the ideal relation between these two principles, which are so antagonistic and yet so inseparable. To " la curiosite," however, . a double sense seems to attach, as sometimes it corresponds to our curiosity," sometimes to a less ignoble desire for information. How- ever, both impulses have this in common that they are detrimental to the true aesthetic enjoyment, whether it be that our undue interest in the subject renders us too indifferent to the treatment, or that we are diverted from a proper appreciation of the artist's meaning by the attrac- tion of historical detail. The greatest artists and poets have therefore, as M. Lechalas shows, obeyed a true instinct in making subject and local colour matters of subsidiary importance, although they could not be ignored altogether. As M. Lechalas relies so largely on the appeal to experience, his wide