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152 NEW BOOKS. lations, however, against Dr. Meinong, in so far as they make the whole of the psychological course, and not merely the elementary part of it, come before logic. In two divisions of his pamphlet he sketches out a course of psychology and logic ; suggesting in psychology improvements on the traditional Herbartian treatment. Ueber die Geistesfreiheit vulgo Willensfreiheit. Psychologischer Nachweis von H. THODEN VAN VELZEN, Dr. theol. zu Jena. Leipzig : Fues (E. Keisland), 1886. Pp. vi., 78. The author's contention is that freedom ought to be ascribed to the Ego, not to " the will ". The conception of " freedom," like that of " will "itself, denotes a certain activity of the mind; hence both conceptions alike should be attached directly to the mind ; to attach one of them to the other is as if we were to speak of " the activity of an activity " or " the power of a power ". The activity of the Ego is " a willing or a not willing," a choos- ing among representations. Only of the Ego, as of the active being in us, can it be said that it begins anything of itself ; but this expression also ought to be avoided, for without the phenomena of the external world and memories in the mind the Ego would have nothing to choose from. It therefore does not absolutely begin anything, but is only " relatively free". Die Entstehung der neueren AZsihetik. Von Dr. K. HEINRICH VON STEIN, Privatdozent an der Universitat, Berlin. Stuttgart : J. G. Cotta, 1886. Pp. vi., 422. The author, while recognising that the real origin of reflective thought on art must be sought further back, regards its continuous development in modern times as beginning with the French Classicism of the 17th century. What the different European nations have contributed to aesthetics will best be made clear, he thinks, in following the course of the French influ- ence, which at first was the determining influence everywhere. Accord- ingly, his history of the origin of modern aesthetics begins with Boileau ; reference being made in the systematic exposition to the earlier sources of modern aesthetic theory. The divisions of the book are as follows : Section I., "French Classicism," c. i. "Boileau and his Predecessors," c. ii. " The Connexion with Descartes," c. iii. " The Classical Spirit " ; Section IT. "The Direction towards the Natural," c. i. "The .Esthetic Formulae of the Period," c. ii. "Shaftesbury and English Classicism," c. iii. "The Descriptive ./Esthetics of the British," c. iv. " Dubos, Diderot, The Epoch of Rousseau"; Section III. "Comprehension of ^Esthetic Problems by Swiss, Italians, Germans," c. i. " The Swiss," c. ii. " Italian ^Estheticians, Theories of Music," c. iii. " The ./Esthetics of Baurngarten and his School," c. iv. " Winckelmann ". The division into sections indicates the author's view of the development of aesthetic theory, in which he finds three, chief phases. The aesthetic doctrine that first took shape is summed up in Boileau's hemistich, " Eien n'est beau que le vrai ". This doctrine the author finds to be dependent, through Port Royal, on Descartes ; citing from a work of Nicole, published in 1659, expressions e.g., "pulchritu- dinis fontem in veritate esse" by which he thinks Boileau may have been influenced. The second phase of aesthetic theory is " naturalism," the theory cf "imitation of nature". The naturalistic doctrine is best represented by Diderot who made beauty consist in abundance of the "relations" contained in a work of art, in fulness of content as distinguished from simple expression of some one clear idea. The next transformation was partly accomplished by Rousseau, whose real originality was not in his appeal to the taste for landscape, which was