are familiar with ethical literature will feel that the author's account of the good suffers from abstractness in that it has been arrived at through emphasizing one important element in the good to the detriment of other elements.
John R. Tuttle.
Elm Ira College.
About twenty years ago M. Seillière began the publication of a series of books (on Gobineau, Nietzsche, Democratic Imperialism, The Romantic Evil) bearing the general title Philosophie de l'impérialisme, in which he sought to show that underlying the most diverse manifestations of human action was the basal tendency in every living being to increase its power,—the will to power, or imperialism, as he called it. In the course of further studies he was struck by the close connection, in the life of the individual as well as of society, between this impulse and the phenomena of mysticism. He accounted for this connection by the fact that the mystical experience, the faith, that is, in a superhuman alliance which tends to sustain us in our effort to conquer, and the enthusiasm which results from this conviction, probably constitute the indispensable conditions of methodical and persistent action for the intelligent and foreseeing being. These thoughts have given direction to all of the author's later investigations, and we have a host of interesting volumes from his pen in which he works out his thesis,—among them: Une tragédie d'amour au temps du romantisme, 1909; Les mystique du néoromantisme (Marx, Tolstoi, les pangermanistes), 1910; Le romantisme des réalistes (Flaubert), 1914; Mme. Guyon et Fénelon, précurseurs de Rousseau, 1918; Le péril mystique dans l'inspiration des démocracies contemporaines, 1918; Les étappes du mysticisme passionnel, 1919; Les origines romanesques de la morale et de la politique romantiques, 1920.
In the present book M. Seillière applies his theory to the life and work of George Sand; she stands for him as a typical example of Romantic mysticism; indeed, as one of "the educators of the modern soul." In her he finds revealed the mysticism of passion, political or social mysticism, and the mysticism of art a specifically feminine shade of mysticism, which he regards as the dominant trait of present-day Europe and a menace to our civilization. She is, in his opinion, one of the most complete theorists, one of the most supple theologians of this mysticism, of which Rousseau might be called the Christ, Goethe the St. Paul, Victor Hugo the John of Patmos, and George Sand perhaps the St. Augustine. He believes that such mysticism may either be the means of progress or act as a restraint upon the power of action, upon the dominion over nature,
