essay is full of charmingly presented erudition, and as a short vue d'ensemble for students' use it cannot be surpassed.
The third essay of the volume, by Professor L. Dauriac, is entitled Du Positivisme en Psychologie, à propos des Principes de Psychologie de M. W. James. M. Dauriac has the temperament of genius, but his style lacks the clearness of that of Pillon and the weight of that of Renouvier. He is often more ingenious than direct, and sometimes hard to track to a categorical conclusion. He confines himself in this discussion to pointing out the vacillating character of his author's cerebralistic attitude in psychology, after speaking in very indulgent terms of the general qualities of his book. In the latter it is contended that "Psychology" should become "positivistic" and a "natural science." If, says M. Dauriac, by this a science be meant which shall aim to deal with facts that can be physically (in this case cerebrally) explained, the inevitable result is the omission of a great deal of that purely descriptive account of mental phenomena which the older psychology succeeded in giving us so well. In J.'s book, accordingly, we get no mention of the higher processes of Imagination, a very inadequate chapter on Emotion, and nothing on Æsthetic and Moral sensibility. M. Dauriac then shows how "the study of mental life and its conditions" usually results in making so much of the physical antecedents as to leave but little room for consideration of the mental life itself. "The human automaton is at the end of physiological psychology, and consciousness is bound to become a superfluity there ... a sort, horresco referens, of excrement of the brain." But the author, by admitting feeling to be a teleologic force, is unfaithful to his professed "positivism"; and the moment one admits that consciousness may have a use, the postulate of continuity would lead one to suppose that reflex action not only may be explained by the evolution of the organism under the guidance of the feelings of past generations, but may even now be accompanied by a consciousness which has become relatively inert. More consistent positivists will therefore look coldly upon Mr. James's work. As for M. Dauriac himself, he applauds him for his inconsistency, believing that the "metaphysical" view is the eternal one, that the physical world is a phenomenon; that consciousness, psychologically considered, is a cause of movement; and that if it ever ceases to be so, that will be because it has freely abdicated its task.
This little work is not designed, as might be supposed from the title, to introduce beginners to the study of philosophy. It rather discusses
