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118 NEW BOOKS. adduced is overwhelming, but it is chaotic : the various threads of argument are not sufficiently gathered up and disentangled at the close ; and we fear that either the author's dread of heterogeneity or his keen sense of the peace-making mission of philosophy has led him to under- rate the controversial character of his work. As here presented M. Lalande's facts are only facts ; hence the danger that M. Lalande's theory may remain only a theory. E. A. MENNBBB. La Tristesse Conte-mporaine. Par H. FIBRBNS-GEVABRT. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1899. Pp. iii., 195. This essay is a study of the depression which the consciousness of social disintegration seems to have so widely engendered in France. It starts with a chapter on " I'illusion scientifique" and after a rapid historical survey of the history of thought from the eighteenth century to the present day, concludes with a chapter on Nietzsche. The author's remedy, how- ever, for the malady he describes is by no means easy to discover. He is full of sentimental hankerings after the old Catholic faith, and de- clares in his concluding chapter " II n'y a qu'un seul remede, pensons-nous, a ce malaise : la croyance religieuse. Seule, la foi pent guerir le monde." Yet a page or so later he declares this remedy to be impossible, and to re- quire either a miraculous revival of the old religions or a new revelation, and gives as his final advice the command, " Aimons et agissons " (p. 190). What, we are not told ; and as the attempt to discover its meaning might only add to contemporary sadness, we had best perhaps not pry into the pleasing vagueness of this dictum. The book is agreeably written, but this hardly justifies the daring disregard for dates which its combinations display. Thus Leopard! is represented as the founder of dogmatic pessimism (p. 56) and Schopenhauer as his. successor (p. 62), while Napoleon (p. 39) is said to have been indispensable to the exist- ence of Goethe ! But the most audacious passage of this sort is one which makes (p. 70) Bentham a disciple of Comte. Yet tradition will have it that Bentham was born fifty years before Comte and died seven years before the latter published his C'ours de Philosophic Positive. L'Indiridu et la Efforme Sociale. Par EDOUARD SANZ Y. ESCARTIN. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1898. Pp. 390. This work is a translation from the Spanish and in the translator's preface we are given a short account of the writer. M. Escartin is it appears a very well-known and esteemed writer on social subjects among his fellow countrymen. The present volume is more in the nature of a collection of essays than of an organic whole. These essays cover a con- siderable field. Many of them are well meaning rather than original or profound. The general object of the book is to show what individual action can do in solving the social difficulties which surround us. The author considers that the individual is the foundation of all permanent social reform. His general criticism of modern socialism is that it is incompatible with liberty. Liberty is bound up with the existence of private property and progress is impossible without liberty. M. Escartin considers that the true line of advance is to diffuse property among all sections of the population. It is the more general diffusion of property which will redeem the masses from the triple servitude of ignorance, moral degradation, and physical misery. M. Escartin also insists on the