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NEW BOOKS. 263 and light are seconded by like-minded lecturers in the future, we may look forward to a time when the work of ventilation will be done, and that of verification can profitably be begun. Perhaps by that time some generous donor will have equipped Harvard, or some other university with a laboratory for the ' psychical researches ' which the current ' ex- perimental ' methods so conspicuously fail to prosecute. F. C. S. SCHILLEE. Leibniz. The Monadology and Other Philosophical Writings. Translated with Introduction and Notes by K. LATTA, M. A., D.Phil. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898. Pp. vii, 437. (8s. 6d.) This is a book which should be welcomed by many others besides pro- fessional teachers and students of metaphysics, and may indeed be said, in the hackneyed phrase, to fill a real gap. It is remarkable, and not at all to our credit as a nation of educated men, that we have hitherto had no worthy English version of the philosophical writings of Leibniz. By his freedom from pedantic technicalities, the extraordinary range of his studies, and the wonderful suggestiveness of his ideas, Leibniz appeals, more perhaps than any of the great metaphysicians of modern times, to the reflective and educated man who, without being exactly a philosopher, takes an intelligent interest in philosophical speculations, provided they can be put before him in a language he understands. And one has only to think of the writings of Prof. James, or of Du Bois- Keymond, to be reminded that, with the specialists both in Psychology and in Physics, Leibniz is still a living and potent influence. Moreover the chief works of Leibniz have what is from the average reader's point of view the high merit of being as concise and brief as they are free from wearisome technicality. It may be doubted whether any other man could have achieved the feat of compressing a system of Philosophy into a dozen pages ; it is certain that, with the exception of the author of the M<>,iadology, no one has ever done so or is likely to do so again. Thus the special characteristics of Leibniz seem to fit him in an uncommon degree for translation, and in Dr. Latta he has found a translator who performs his task with as much learning as accuracy. Were it not for certain translations of other works of Leibniz which have recently been given to the world, it would be indeed " faint praise " to say that Dr. Latta's version is everywhere faithful both to the original text and to the laws of English prose style. As it is, the character of these previous versions, or rather perversions, makes it necessary to say that the present translation is one on which a reader unskilled hi French may confidently rely as correctly conveying the sense of the author. The works selected for translation have naturally been those which are of chief importance as containing in a brief compass Leibniz's statement of his characteristic tenets ; the Monadology and the Principles of Nature and Grace in the first place, of course, and, as illustrative of these Hauptschriften, the New System of the Nature of Substances, with the " explanations " called forth by it, and one or two other minor tracts. The Introduction, which contains a detailed account of the life and philosophy of Leibniz as well i critical estimate of his influence on later thought, will henceforth take rank beside Mer/'s brilliant and all too brief monograph as an indispensable aid to the English student of the philosopher of Leipzig. If Dr. Latta is on the whole less fertile in original suggestion than his predecessor, he is, as would be expected from the scope of his work, much fuller of information on points of detail. There is hardly any