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NEW BOOKS. 133 savages. On the other hand, the languages of uncivilised peoples, in the material offered by the laws of formation of words, perhaps promise more to the psychologist than the fixed languages of civilised races. The opposite, again, is the case with rules of syntax. It is pointed out as a favour- able circumstance for the psychologist, that, just when the experimental methods of physiological psychology cease to be applicable, speech offers itself as an object which, through its independence of the observer and its modifications under changing conditions, is adapted for experimental investigation. Here we see what an extended sense is given to the "experimental method" that is advocated, in opposition to the method of " self-observation " (taken in the sense of attention to passing states of consciousness) which Prof. Wundt condemns as unscientific. Logos. Ursprung und Wesen der Begriffe. Von LUDWIG NOIRE. Leip- zig : W. Engelmann, 1885. Pp. xvi., 362. In this new work the author reaffirms the doctrine that reason is coextensive with speech, and that the essential character of man is his power of thinking by means of general conceptions, which without words are impossible. The problem that the science of language offers to philosophy is, he says, to explain how the limited number of roots to which it brings back actual languages were formed originally as the signs of activities. This problem he attempts to answer by successively limiting it. First, primitive roots must denote human activities ; secondly, these activities must be social ; lastly, it is only social creative activities that have the capability of awakening thought and speech together. The general theory of language maintained by the author in opposition to the " imita- tion" and "interjection" theories, he describes preferably as the "Logos- theory ". His solution of the problem of the origin of general conceptions, " the most important in the whole of philosophy," and the special subject of the present work, is a kind of Conceptualism. He holds that " the great advance of modern philosophy is the clear consciousness of the pos- session of general conceptions as particular beings in the thinking spirit ". The ancients had not this clear consciousness, but spoke of " things " when they meant concepts. The founder of Conceptualism was Abelard ; but in the Middle Ages, preoccupied with the inner life, it was impossible that due importance should be assigned to objects or to words. Locke, in tracing knowledge to experience, gave their part to objects ; he also showed the dependence of thought on speech ; but although he recognised that words are not the signs of things but of concepts (" abstract ideas "), he could not solve completely the problem of general conceptions, because he did not recognise the creative activity of thought. It was left for Kant, by a new departure in philosophy, to make possible the completion, of the theories both of Locke and of Abelard. Der psychologische Ursprung des Rechts. Von Professor Dr. J. HOPPE. Wurzburg : A. Stuber, 1885. Pp. 103. An examination of Dr. Strieker's Physiologic des Rechts (see MIND, Vol. x. 310), together with the statement of an alternative theory of the origin of law and the sense of "right". In the author's view the " consciousness of right " ought to be traced to " the noble feelings of the knowing being," not to primitive feelings of power. We must not seek for its origin in "contracts" and "juristic rights," themselves inexplicable without the possibility of that satisfaction of the "noble" or "spiritual" feelings in which the "right" consists. It is because these feelings do not find full expression in actual contracts and their observance that the State