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292 NEW BOOKS. absolute indestructibility as the atom in the material world" (i. 240). The distinctive character of his position is, however, occasionally obscured by his repudiation, in the ordinary language of Positivism, of all "meta- physics" and "search for essences and causes". His general philosophical doctrine is that "facts," material and spiritual, which, as we have seen, are all, in ultimate analysis, mental phenomena, resolvable into sensations and elements of sensation, are the reality ; and that, in all propositions about this reality, the truth is in "the particular," in sensation and its elements, not in the mere form of association or mental construction. This Positiv- ism differs from the incomplete Positivism of Hume in getting rid of the ultimate doubt and the falling back on a blind " instinct of nature " ; for it affirms not only that phenomena are all that we can know, but that they are reality itself. Of this kind is the Positivism of the Italian philosophers of the Renaissance, especially of Pomponazzi, the earliest of them, who constantly appeals to experimental verification, and in one place declares that "sense and experiment are the balance of truth ". To Galileo belongs " the title of father of Positivism, not only in the physical sciences but also in the philosophical sciences properly so called " (ii. 436). Positive philo- sophy represents the true direction of Italian thought, destined, it is hoped, to resume its course as growing national life gains the victory over foreign and mediaeval influences. In its application to ethics, Positivism continues the Greek tradition. Its morality is social, like that of Aristotle, not indi- vidualistic, like that of Scholasticism, which at last found its most rigorous expression in Kant (iii. 165). La Dottrina dello Stato di G. G. F. Hegel e le altre Dottrine intorno allo stesso Argomento. Studio comparative del Dr. GIUSEPPE LEVI, Professore di Filosofia del Diritto nella R. Universita di Catania. Vol. I. (i. " Pre- liminari," ii. " Esposizione interpretativa della Dottrina di Hegel"). Vol. II. (iii. "La Dottrina dello Stato nei Libri di Platone e di Aris- totele e la sua Comparazione con la Dottrina di Hegel "). Roma : E. Loescher, 1884. Pp. 127, 257 ; viii., 434. These two volumes bring together three successive parts (first published in 1880, 1881 and 1884 respectively) of a work which is not yet finished, but which has now a certain completeness as far as it goes. The author has, so far, expounded Hegel's doctrine of the State and compared it with those of Plato and Aristotle ; in future instalments he proposes to compare it in detail with the doctrines of modern philosophers. Part i. is a preliminary statement of the general principles of Hegel's philosophy (with special reference to his doctrine of the State) and a defence against objections ; Part ii. contains the doctrine of the State itself; Part iii. begins with an exposition of the corresponding doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, and then proceeds to a comparison of Hegel's doctrine with theirs. The comparison is made (1) in regard to the conception of the State as "organism" (not "mechanism"), (2) in regard to the character of this conception as "con- crete" (not "abstract"), (3) in regard to its character as "statual" (not "individualist"), in all of which points there i> agreement between the doctrines of all three philosophers. Hegel's doctrine is found to be in each respect superior to that of the Greeks, In the first place the State i> no longer conceived as a merely "natural" organism analogous to a plant or animal, but as a "spiritual" or "ethical" "organism of wills"; secondly, the ideal State is conceived not as artificially formed by legisla- tion imposed as from without, and henceforth (having received perfect laws) as stationary, but as spontaneously formed by the wills of its mem- bers and constantly growing ; lastly, the parts of the social organism are not conceived simply as members with functions in relation to the whole,