Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/135

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124 NEW BOOKS. Aspects" and "Analysis of Elements," having been briefly recalled, the third and fourth rubrics, "The Order of Real Conditioning" and "The Constructive Branch of Philosophy," are treated at greater length. Under the third rubric the positive sciences enter the philosophical system " on the footing not of being prescribed to, but of prescribing ". Yet the incor- poration of the whole system of the sciences would not complete plains* iphy. Positive science, like common-sense, treats objects as rounded-off totals, as "absolutes"; while for philosophy experience as known remains always bounded by an unknown beyond itself. Construction of the unknown out of previous analysis is the problem of the fourth rubric of philosophy. Of this Unknown we can only attirni with speculative certainty real infinity and continuity with the knon-n. But the questions of the fourth rubric, the Constructive Branch of Philosophy, "escape the grasp of speculation, only to fall within the province of practice, and its highest function of practical judgment, conscience". Thus, without departure from the basis of experience, Philosophy becomes in the full sense a Rationale of the Univtrst ; and there is no problem, whether soluble or not, that does not at least "readily fall into rank, and present itself for treat- ment, under some one or more ot its four rubrics, so soon as the method of asking first what and then how comes is applied to it". Ecclesiastical Institutions : Being Part vi. of The Principles of Sociology. By HERBERT SPENCER. London : Williams & Norgate, 1885. Pp. 671-853. The delay of three years and a half since the publication of Mr. Spencer's previous Part, Political Institutions, has been mainly due, leaders will grieve to learn, to the " ill health which has, during much of the interval, negatived even that small amount of daily work which he was previously able to get through": the remaining two Parts of Vol. ii. Profmxional and Industrial Institutions may, he hopes, be more promptly completed ; but, he adds more despondingly, "it is possible, or even probable, that 'a longer rather than a shorter period will pass before they appear if they ever .appear at all ". The final chapter, "Religious Prospect ami Retro- spect (pp. 827-43), is, save for an introductory paragraph with one added sentence before the last and a few verbal improvements, identical with tl.e paper published in The Nineteenth Century a year ago, which i^ive to so much lively discussion. Illustrations of Unconscious M< mnnj in Disease, including a Thforyof Alt'-ra- tfon. By CHARLES GREIGHT<>, M.l>. London: H. K. Lewis, 1886. Pp- Evi, 212. Dr. Creighton has here written a book the special scientific value of which we have not yet had time (supposing we had competence) to estimate, but a word of immediate recognition is due to the general observations nio-tly contained in c. i. ("Prolegomena on Memory and Organic Memory," pp. -l-K!), with which he pacs to the consideration of the physiological and iVhietly) pathological tacts that concern him. While making reference to different philosophical thinkers, he may be said to base mainly upon Hering's deliverance (1868) OO "Memory as a general Function of Organise, 1 Blatter". He has, however, so eompletelv assimi- lated this idea in connexion with MHIIC surest ions that have fallen from Prof. Bain, as to be able to propound a doctrine on the relations of Memory and (Jeneration in terms of striking felicity, which no one can read and not become riirious to see how far the author may be able in the body of the work to make g 1 his claim (p. -2 that the description of a certain class of maladies according to the phraseology of memory and habit" is "a real description and not a figurative".