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NEW BOOKS. 145 history of " Animal Magnetism," which may be taken as pretty complete for France, while it takes account also of the work at least of Braid in England. For the French Academy of Medicine, in particular, the sub- ject, alternately spurned and recognised over and over again, has been a sore trial. To all appearance, it has at last been recognised on the footing of one with which science must henceforth steadily and progressively reckon. Les Conditions physiques de la Conscience. Par ALBXANDRE HERZEN, Pro- fesseur a I'Acaclemie de Lausanne. Geneve : H. Stapelmohr, 1886. Pp. 55. This is a new statement by Prof. Herzen of the grounds and results of his formulation of the law of the physical conditions of consciousness, briefly described in MIND, iv. 268-70. An Appendix (pp. 39-55) is added in which the author seeks to determine the elements of the feeling of personality. Especially worthy of notice as a piece of original psycho- logical observation is his description of the phenomena of recovery from syncope (pp. 20-24), by which he obtains support for his theory of the degrees and kinds of consciousness in the spinal cord, the sensori-motor centres and the cortical centres of the cerebral hemispheres respectively. The use he makes of his observations may be compared with Mr. Spencer's use of similar observations on consciousness under chloroform (see Psycho- logy i. and MIND, iii. 555). The consciousness that accompanies the func- tioning of the spinal cord and of the lower centres is, he concludes, at its maximum in the lower vertebrates, at its minimum in man ; being more and more suppressed by the development of the higher centres. The " physical law of consciousness " itself, however (for which see MIND, iv. 269), is the same for all parts of the nervous system. In the higher centres also consciousness is perpetually shifting its ground as organisms evolve. What was at first a conscious process becomes with repetition, as so many writers have shown, " automatic ". This does not mean, however, that the total amount of consciousness becomes less. So long as the plasticity of a race or an individual remains, the more perfect organisation of any set of processes serves as the basis for a more and more complex consciousness of higher processes. The whole study deserves attention as certainly one of the best attempts yet made at a synthesis of results in the special subject- matter. Lepons de Philosophic. Par ELIE RABIER,- Professeur de Philosophic an Lyc6e Charlemagne, Membre du Conseil Superieur de 1'Instruction Piiblique. II. Logique. Paris : Hachette et Cie., 1886. Pp. 384. M. Rabier's Logique presents the same characteristics as lent a special interest to his Psychologie, noticed in MIND, x. 305. The Psychologie was not only a remarkably well arranged and clearly expounded treatise on its subject, but showed the traditional spiritualism of the French school ready and eager to take advantage of all the newer lights in particular anxious to appreciate and as far as possible incorporate the results of recent English investigation. How strongly moulded the Logique also has been by the like influences appears in nothing more clearly than in the prominence given to "Applied" over "Formal" Logic, after the distinction is made in terms that would seem perfectly familiar to any English student. " Applied Logic " (or, as in opposition to " Formal " it might better have been designated, " Material ") occupies almost three-fourths of the whole work, and does not omit any of the more important usual topics, while also including others, not less important, that have not yet received sufficient attention in the English books. Chap, xvi., " General Method : Analysis 10