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634 NEW BOOKS. the Study, his use of the term " force " or " motion " in preference to " work" or " energy".) The character of the law of causality or conservation is that which Kant says would belong to it if drawn from experience ; that is to say, it has only " empirical universality " and not "necessity"; although the absence of the character of necessity does not follow, as Kant holds, simply from the experiential origin of the law. Problems der Lebensweisheit. Betrachtungen von JTJRGEN BONA MEYER, Zweite Auflage. Berlin : Allgemeiner Verein fur deutsche Literatur, 1887. Pp. vi., 369. This volume opens with a collection of proverbs, of various nations, re- lating to the training and education of children (i. " Erziehungsweisheit im Sprichwort "). The author then goes on to discuss some of the questions suggested in his opening study ; proceeding from discussions of " Play" and of " Natural Disposition and the Choice of a Vocation" to consideration of the differences between Genius and Talent and the training of the Imagina- tion and the Memory. Essays on questions of casuistry and on the diffe- rent types of moral systems are followed by a series of essays (ix.-xiii.) in which the author opposes the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Hartmann and seeks to substitute for it a moderate optimism, both as regards the indi- vidual life and the future of the race. Die Geistesthatigkeit des Menschen und die mechanischen Bedingungen der bewussten Empfindungsausserung auf Grund einer einheitlichen Weltan- schauung. Vortrage von J. G. VOGT. Mit erlauternden Holzschnitten. Leipzig : M. A. Schmidt, 1887. Pp. 140. This is an interpretation of the facts of psychology in the interests of a materialistic view of the world. The author's materialism is, however, modified by the positions (1) that we do not know what matter is in itself ; (2) that every atom has an element of feeling attached to it, and that it is out of the combinations of these feelings that intellect arises. Nature has an end that is not to be expressed in anthropomorphic terms. The end for which living beings are evolved is neither happiness (as the pessimists think it ought to be) nor knowledge (as idealists imagine), but simply "orientation" in the system of things ; the brain being the great "organ of orientation ". Idealism is an expression of the arrogance of man ; but this arrogance is an artifice of Nature devised to intensify man's energy ; for a belief that he is at the summit of things furnishes him with a power- ful motive to action. Hence the majority will always be favourable to idealistic doctrines. A few see through this illusion, "descend from the mock throne of the Ego," and make their brain-mechanism a mirror of the mechanical processes of the real world. " This mirroring of the mechanical world-process in our brain is indeed an imperfect, a fragmentary one. It will be complete and all-revealing only in the world-intellect that develops itself out of the whole fundamental scale of feeling, in which accordingly the mechanical process will be able to mirror itself in all its modalities." Hegel's 0/enbarungsbegriff. Ein Religionsphilosophischer Versuch von Dr. JOHANNES WERNER. Leipzig : Breitkopf & Hartel, 1887. Pp. 90. A critical exposition of Hegel's conception of " revelation," more espe- cially in its religious sense. The author finds that the true heirs of Hegel's thought were neither the Right nor the Left, but the Centre, represented by those who, like Vatke and Zeller, have not slavishly followed the master but have worked independently from his point of view.