Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/294

This page needs to be proofread.

NEW BOOKS. 293 but as being at the same time ends for themselves. The superiority of Hegel's conception is due to the progress that has taken place in the passage from ancient to modern modes of practice and thought. Hegel has reconciled modern individualism, so far as it can justify itself, with that conception of the State as an organic whole which he was enabled, by his study of the Greeks, to recover for the modern world. La mwva Biologia. Saggio storico-critico in servigio delle Scienze antro- pologiche e sociali. Per PIETRO SICILIAN:, Prol'essore Ordinario nella R. Universita di Bologna. Con Tavole tassinomiche. (" Biblioteca Scientifica Internazionale.") Milano : Fratelli Dumolard, 1885. Pp. xx vi., 408. The leading idea of this book is that the history of biology ought to be treated all along in relation to the history of general philosophical concep- tions. The historical part (pt. i., pp. 1-208), is divided into an introduction (pp. 1-35) and four chapters treating successively of biology in classical antiquity, in the middle age, in the renaissance and modern times, and in the present century. The author finds that there are, in all, three philoso- phical directions, viz., dogmatism (or " affirmation "), scepticism (or " nega- tion "), and " critical positivism " (or " research "). It is to this last that the future belongs. As schools in philosophy by their conflicts have caused progress, which on the whole has been continuous, so also in biology. In the present century three biological schools have tended more and more to affirm themselves as distinct systems, and to pass into " metaphysics " ; yet within each school there has been progress in scientific ideas. These schools are those of " creation " (represented by Cuvier), of " mechanical evolution " (represented by Haeckel), and of " teleological evolution " (re- presented by Schelling, Hegel, Hartmann, &c.). All schools (including the "Neo-Cuvierians") now accept evolution in some form, while the " mechanical " evolutionists (including even Haeckel) do not consistently maintain the materialistic metaphysics to which their system tends. To show how this progress has come about by the conflict of the three schools is the object of part ii. ("Critical Examination," pp. 211-408). We have learned, with regret, that the author died in December, at the age of 50. Einkitung in die Psychologie als Wissenschaft. Von Dr. HEINRICH SPITTA, a. o. Professor der Philosophic an der Universitat Tiibingen. Frei- burg i. B. : J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1886. Pp. viii., 154. The longest and most important chapter of this Introduction to Psycho- logy as Science (c. iii. numbered iv. in the Table of Contents " Principle and Method of Psychology," pp. 37-129), begins with a defence of the method of " self-observation ". It is shown that this method really con- sists in observation of facts of consciousness, not as present but as remembered. On analysing any remembered conscious process, we find in it unity of form, multiplicity of content, and determination in time and space. When by abstraction we take another step in analysis, when instead of attending to single isolated mental processes as they are revealed by memory, we attend to that which they have in common, " feeling " and " representa- tion " are found to be the ultimate elements of all mental processes. Will is not entitled to an independent position, for it is a complex of represen- tations and feelings. In conscious life not only is there change of repre- sentations and feelings, but there is determinate change, the laws of which are formulated as the " laws of association ". To go beyond these laws we must substitute a synthetical method for the analytical method hitherto followed, and make a hypothetical construction. It is found that the