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NEW BOOKS. 289 elusion, but to prepare the way by experiment and analysis for a synthesis which the author regards as impracticable till more is known of the functions of the brain and of the physiology of natural sleep. The aptitude to carry out suggestions which characterises the hypnotic state results, he thinks, from a kind of " cerebral shock ". He does not deny that com- munication of thought may take place without physical signs, but has not observed any case of it in his own experience. La Psychologie du Raisonnement . Recherches experimental es par 1'Hypno- tisme. Par ALFRED BINET. Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. 171. The object of this book, by an author who is well known to the readers of MIND, is to arrive at a psychological theory of reasoning ; this being, as Wundt has contended, the fundamental form of psychical activity, from which all other forms, such as memory and imagination, have sprung and to which they may be reduced. The act of perception, on grounds afterwards more fully explained, is selected at the beginning for special study. It is found that what takes place in perception exactly resembles syllogising. Psychologically, both processes consist in an " or- ganisation of images," determined by the properties of the images alone, taking place necessarily when these are brought together, and the same whether the process is conscious, as in the developed form of reasoning, or unconscious, as in the formation of percepts. In this process there are always three terms : (1) a present image or sensation which becomes <l fused " with (2) an image that resembles it, and (3) an image associated with the second by similarity or contiguity, which in the percept or the conclusion of the syllogism becomes attached to the sensation or first image {or rather to the product of the "fusion" of this with]the second). The psychological nature of the process could not have been detected by study of the syllogism alone, but only by observing it in the percept, where the images are not yet obscured. This is why the percept was selected as the object of study. But further, to discover the exact character of the organi- sation of images in normal perception, it was necessary to have some method of exaggerating the elements and observing them in isolation. This has been found in the study of illusions and hallucinations, especially the artificially produced hallucinations of hypnotism. Between these hallucinations and normal perception there is a whole series of intermediate states. Ordinary illusion, hypnotic illusion, and hypnotic hallucination are more and more accentuated distortions of perception. As in percep- tion there is always an element of imagery, so in the most exaggerated forms of hallucination there is always an element of sensation. M. Binet describes this as the "point de repere". Imagery is the same in character throughout, consisting of copies of sensations ; is always cerebral ; and is localised in the same part of the brain as the corresponding sensation. These conclusions are led up to by accounts of the different types of imagery in different persons (" the visual type," " the auditory type," " the motor type ") and of " after-images," which are found to have both the positive and negative characters of the ordinary image, not of the sensation. As the elements of perception and hallucination are the same, so also the process is the same. The difference is that in normal perception, as in rightly constructed syllogism, there is correct judgment, while in illusion and hallucination there is sophism ; but this is a logical, not a psycholo- gical distinction. Philosophie du Droit civil. Par AD. FRANCK, Membre de 1'Institut, Pro- fesseur au College de France. Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. vii., 295. The author bases his " philosophy of civil law " on the ideas of " right "