Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/447

446 NEW BOOKS. Even those who return to Thomism find it impossible to be " Thomist in the sense of Thomas ". We may return to the past, but we do not find it again as it actually was. In conclusion the author expresses his high admiration for the great mediaeval thinker and his work, points out the importance for criticism of " a system in which Aristotle, Plotinus and Augustin. meet," and concedes the right to take a polemical stand on Thomism in order to draw attention to the defects of modern life ; but finally again insists that it is as impossible really to return to the thoughts of the Middle Age as it is to restore the past otherwise than in memory. Die Seele indischer und hellenischer Philosophic in den Gespenstern moderner Geisterseherei. Von ADOLF BASTIAN. Berlin : Weidmann, 1886. Pp. xlviii., 223. The author's present contribution (coming after so many others) to the science of Volkerpsyclwlogie deals with the idea of the soul, not only as it has existed in Hindu and Greek philosophy, but also as it exists in modern times among the higher as well as the lower races of mankind. In tracing the history of the related conceptions, he takes occasion to show, with the aid of his enormous reading, how all the features of "the new witches' kitchen" of Spiritualism, Theosophy and Esoteric Buddhism have been long since anticipated in the magical doctrines and practices of savages and in the survivals resembling them in historical religions and philosophies. Raumanschauung u. Formale Logik. Von ALFRED Freiherrn v. BERGER, Jur. et Phil. Doctor. Wien : C. Konegen, 1886. Pp. 48. This is a hostile criticism of the thesis maintained in F. A. Lange's pos- thumous Logische Studien (see MIND, Vol. ii. 278 and, more at length, iii. 112) that "the intuition of spatial figures exhibiting concepts and their logical relations is the source of our conviction of the necessity and univer- sality of the rules of formal logic ". Against this position, which implies in Lange's view that they must have the character of synthetic judgments a priori, the author would uphold Kant's doctrine that they are strictly analytic, in dependence on the law of contradiction. Ueber Wesen und Wirkmig der Tragodie. Eine Untersuchung von Prof. Lie. ADOLF WETZ. Berlin : C. Duncker's Verlag (C. Heymons), 1886. Pp. 79. The author defines tragedy as "the poetic representation of the daemonic". By "the daemonic" he understands those events in human life which are apt to be ascribed to a hostile power in nature. All events are determined ultimately by a balance of forces : "the order of the world is mechanical, not moral". Any fault of miscalculation (which may alstt be, but is not necessarily, an ethical fault) may therefore bring upon its perpetrator an altogether disproportionate evil. It is this disproportion (from the ethical point of view) of an action and its consequences, that con- stitutes "the daemonic". The embodiment of universal humanity and its fate in the individual character and iate of the hero gives rise to the "dramatic illusion," by which the spectator sees himself in the hero or rather in each person of the drama in turn and sees, concentrated in the sufferings that are represented on the stage, all the possible attacks, from which in the conflicts of life he is never secure, of the daemonic powers of nature. Having, by this identification with the hero, as it were, lived through all that is represented before him, and suffered in the person of another the worst that fate can inflict, he now feels himself set free for ever (although in reality the feeling of liberation can only be temporary) from dependence on external forces, exempt from all the strokes of fate.