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M. GTJXAU, DE VEST RET IQTJE CONTEMPORAINE. 119 memory, much that he says on the nature of recognition and the laws of association, though not altogether new, is characterised by freshness and force of expression. Among other interesting points worthy of notice is the sharp distinction he draws between the association of simultaneous and of successive impressions, a distinction which he seems to base on his peculiar theory of the way in which the nervous organism functions. Some of his statements however seem open to criticism. For example, he contends that in recognising an object, say a portrait, " you do not recall in any manner the traits or the circumstances identi- cally similar," and he goes on to ask, " How could you do so since you have them before your eyes ? " To this it seems enough to say that unless the mind distinguishes a past like im- pression from the present, identification and therefore recognition . becomes impossible. Returning finally, in one more section, to the state of dreaming, the author urges afresh that, saving perception, all the faculties of the mind remain " intact in their essence " though employed about objects which are imaginary and mobile. In illustration of this he gives us a number of interest- ing facts drawn from his own dreams and from those of others. Yet he hardly succeeds in establishing the proposition he lays down. That in sleep the will is enfeebled with respect both to muscular action and to the free direction of attention is, one would say, a familiar fact to every dreamer. At the same time one may cordially approve of the endeavour to trace the effects of fixed habits of mind in sleep, and to claim for the dreaming intel- ligence a higher degree of rationality than is commonly accorded to it. 'In carrying out this endeavour our author proves himself a painstaking collector of facts and a skilful psychological analyst. In following him here in a domain which he has made thoroughly his own, the reader may be tempted to regret that he did not confine himself to a discussion of dreams themselves, some aspects of which are touched all too lightly, while others, and these by no means unimportant ones, are not handled at all. JAMES SULLY. Les ProUemes de VEsthetique Contemporaine. Par M. GUYAU. Paris : F. Alcan. 1884. Pp. 257. It is always pleasant to find oneself substantially in accord with what professes to regard itself as hostile criticism. M. Guyau's work is directed for the most part against the aesthetic views of the modern English school of physiological psycholo- gists, represented in the concrete by the constantly recurring trio of names, " MM. Spencer, Grant Allen et James Sully ". Speak- ing for the middle term at least of this unequally- yoked assem- blage of evolutionary writers, I may candidly admit that M.