Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/338

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
322
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. I.

held apart in his pages. Locomotor functions are too little kept in view. The physiology of emotional expression is not brought into evidence at all. There are, it is well known, cases in which the face is paralyzed for voluntary movements, but reacts in emotion. Could not these have been studied? Bechterew has recently concluded from vivisections that the thalami have to do with emotional expression. In the array of cerebellum cases quoted by Nothnagel in his Topische Diagnostik, emotional disturbance is mentioned, if our count is correct, only twice. Dr. Courmont would explain this as the result of the traditional parti-pris to notice only two things, namely, absence of 'intellectual' symptoms, and disturbances of co-ordination. It may be so, but the point seems a little overstrained. In brief, then, the book before us is rather that of a man of 'one idea' than of an all-round investigator. Such a book, however, may be an extremely valuable breaker of ground, and it will be strange if our author's theory does not prove the starting-point of a great deal of fresh observation and experimentation upon the decidedly mysterious organ of which it treats. All that one can now say is that he has established a presumption that emotions and vocal expressions, of a painful kind especially, have some connection with the cerebellum. Finally, if Dr. Courmont had used fewer commas, his book would have been even smoother reading than, it is.

W. James.
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. An Essay in the Form of Lectures. By Josiah Royce, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy in Harvard University. Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin, & Co., 1892. — pp. xv, 519.

The nucleus of this book was a number of non-technical lectures, in which the author attempted to describe to a circle of friends something in regard to the chief names and problems of modern philosophy. After being enlarged several times, and delivered before public audiences in Harvard University and elsewhere, the author now presents them to the public in book form, under the above title. The work has two main divisions. The first part is devoted to an historical account of the most prominent philosophical thinkers and their problems, from the seventeenth century to the present time. In the second part we have the author's own confession of philosophical faith, which, he claims, is not without originality. His doctrine however he tells us, is no new gospel, but a reconstruction, a synthesis of truths discovered through a study of the history of thought.

The book is written in a simple and non-technical fashion, the style is easy and unconventional, and the treatment of problems, though sometimes diffuse, is always interesting. The artistic biographical