TAINE "ON INTELLIGENCE "* introduces the author as laboring in a somewhat new field of activity, yet not altogether new; for if we remember rightly he attracted public attention several years ago by a trenchant criticism on Monsieur Cousin and the Eclectic school. Even his art-criticisms suppose a philosophy of man that is pronounced and peculiar, and his very vigorous work on English literature is written in the spirit of a psychology that is, at least, well known to himself. He urges in his preface to the work before us that "history is applied to psychology, psychology applied to more complex cases. The historian notes and traces the total transformations presented by a particular human molecule or group of human molecules, and to explain these transformations writes the psychology of the molecule or group, etc., etc. For fifteen years I have contributed to these special concrete psychologies; I now attempt general and abstract psychology."

The particular type of "general psychology" which Taine represents in this volume, might be inferred from the phraseology of molecules which he adopts. We do not need to read many pages to discover that he is an ardent advocate of the associational psychology which is received by Alexander Bain and John Mill, and does not shrink from accepting its legitimate consequences. We use the term advocate advisedly, for the entire essay may justly be regarded as an eloquent argument for this special theory, rather than a candid enquiry concerning the acts and laws of the human spirit. Regarded as the argument of an ingenious and well furnished pleader, it is admirable for its skill, its affluence and effectiveness. It begins with a brilliant illustration; it proceeds step by step, with steady, but unobserved progress, taking position after position, each looking towards the end, which, if it is not always apparent to the reader, never escapes the eye of the author. At each new step forward, or turn in a new direction to either side, the author, with dexterous, perhaps with unconscious readiness, conceals the fact that a skillful substitution has been effected, or a quiet sophism has been allowed. There never fail, however, abundant examples or apt illustrations. After the discussion is finished and the argument is mastered, it would not be surprising if the unskilled or uninstructed reader should exclaim

"How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh or crabbed as dull fools suppose."

* On Intelligence. By H. TAINE, D.C.L., Oxon. Translated from the French by T. D. HAYE, and revised, with additions by the author. New York: Holt & Williams. 1871.

It would be a rude shock to such a reader to suggest that the system which his author so skillfully defines is substantially the same with the doctrines of Hume-" A sensation is a strong impression, a recollection is a weaker impression, an imagination is an impression still weaker;" and sensations, recollections, and imaginations are subjective tendencies, that attract or repel one another, according to molecular relations, and so account for all the varieties of psychological phenomena. The large support which these views are supposed to receive from the discoveries of physiology, is readily disposed of to the mind that reflects that a mind with intuitions and beliefs must be pre-supposed, in order that a science of physiology itself may be possible, or that analogies from physics and physiology may be transferred to the processes and combinations of the human spirit. These primary intuitions and beliefs, it would seem, cannot be explained by any molecular theory such as Taine adopts when he declares that: "All that observation detects psychologically in the thinking being are, in addition to sensations, images of different kinds, primitive or consecutive, endued with certain tendencies and modified in their development by the concurrence or antagonism of other simultaneous or contiguous images."

While we reject as unsatisfactory the theory of the Intelligence which is maintained in this volume, we find the volume itself most abundant in its suggestions. The facts and illustrations are various and interesting, and they are set forth with the eloquence and spirit in which the author is surpassed by few living writers. The work is one which all students of psychology will find it necessary to read and desirable to possess.

the

MANSEL'S METAPHYSICS* is a reprint, with a few alterations, of very comprehensive treatise under this title in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which is familiar to and greatly prized by all students of philosophy. For the general reader it is perhaps the best treatise in the language which aims to give a general outline of the topics. and questions embraced under this title. It consists of an introduction, explaining the significance of the appellation and the principal topics which it covers. I. An outline of Psychology, in which the several divisions are briefly but concisely treated. II. Ontology, in which the questions appropriate to metaphysics pro

* Metaphysics; or, the Philosophy of Consciousness Phenomenal and Real. By HUGH LONGUEVILLE MANSEL, B.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1871.

per are explained and discussed, the relations of the finite to the infinite are set forth, and the ground of our belief in the several kinds of reality are also explained. For the general reader and the advanced student, the treatise has some important advantages, and it may be recommended as a very convenient book of reference. The Kantian proclivities of the author are not concealed; but they are not offensively obtruded, and do not especially interfere with the usefulness of the volume as a class or reference book.

PROFESSOR BASCOM'S LOWELL LECTURES* treat of the following topics, viz: 1. Mind, the Seat and Source of Knowledge; 2. Primitive Ideas. 3. The Field of Physical Facts. 4. Resemblance not the Sole Connection of Thought. 5. Matter: its Existence and Nature. 6. Consciousness the Field of Mental Facts. 7. Right the Law of Intellectual Life. 8. Liberty. 9. Life: Nature and Origin.-The Mind. 10. Interaction of Physical Forces and Spiritual Forces. 11. Primitive Religious Conceptions. 12. Classification of Knowledge; Form of Development.

These topics will readily be recognized as fundamental to Science, Philosophy, and Religion, and they are all treated by the author with his usual energy and comprehensiveness. Though he has expressed his views in respect to some of them in his Principles of Psychology, he has broken new ground in the present volume, so far at least as to discuss these topics in new relations, and from points of view before unoccupied by himself. Upon some questions we should dissent from the views which he propounds; but we commend the volume most warmly as an important contribution to fundamental Philosophy in its two-fold application to Science and Religion.

JOWETT'S TRANSLATION OF PLATO.-Prof. Jowett's long expected translation of Plato follows not long after Mr. Grote's elaborate and voluminous paraphrase of the Platonic Dialogues, which, with the dissertations appended, fills about as much space as would a full version of the works which are thus minutely analyzed. No English scholar has surpassed Grote in the judicial

* Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Lectures delivered before the Lowell Institute, Boston. By JOHN BASCOM, Prof. in Williams College, etc., etc. New York: G. P. Putman & Sons. 1872.

The Dialogues of Plato, translated into English, with Analyses and Introduc tions. By B. JOWETT, M.A., Master of Baliol College, Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1871. 4 vols.

He

fairness with which he weighs evidence and presents a verdict, or in the impartiality of his representation of another's views. Few have equaled him in breadth and exactness of erudition, on all matters pertaining to Greek history and literature. But Mr. Grote was not a Platonist. In the cast of his mind, in his philosophical predilections, he belongs to the opposite school of thought. was one of the earliest of the distinguished advocates of positivism in England. Hence although Plato finds in him a just and candid, he does not find in him a sympathetic or applauding, critic. Mr. Jowett is more Platonic in his own philosophical convictions. His reputation as a philologist authorizes the presumption that he has correctly rendered his author. It is plain to all that he has translated the original into lucid, forcible, unaffected English. Taylor, the old translator of Plato, was so great an admirer of the ancient philosophy that he made it his religion; but his knowledge of the Greek language was insufficient. The translations in

Bohn's Library are unequal, being made by different hands; and some of them are detestable, so far as their English style is concerned. In many cases where they are not incorrect, they are as clumsy as the first attempts of a dull schoolboy upon the classical authors. It is refreshing, therefore, to meet the immortal philosopher in so comely an English dress;-the philosopher who has done more to stimulate the most gifted and spiritual minds than any other uninspired author; who has been the bridge over which so many thinkers, from Augustine to Neander, have passed into the kingdom of God. We observe that Mr. Jowett stands mid-way between Mr. Grote and the skeptical school of German critics, on the point of the genuineness of disputed dialogues. He does not go so far in believing, on the testimony of the ancients, as Grote, nor so far in the opposite direction as Schaarschmidt.

DR. MARTYN PAINE'S PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SOUL AND INSTINCT* is the third and greatly enlarged edition of his physiological treatise on the Soul and Instinct (1848). The additions are largely physiological, and bring down to the present time the results of the author's own reading, which seems to have been liberal and pains

Physiology of the Soul and Instinct, as distinguished from Materiolism. With Supplementary Demonstrations of the Divine Communication of the Narratives of Creation and the Flood. By MARTYN Paine, A.M., M.D., LL.D., etc. New York: Harper & Brothers.

1872.

taking in most of the works accessible in the English language. From these writers he makes abundant and extended quotations, and he subjects their doctrines to a rigid but not unfair criticism. While we agree with the author in most of these criticisms and in the positions which he adopts, we do not sympathize altogether with the decidedly polemical spirit with which he inveighs against the materialistic theories. The volume is, however, very valuable as containing a tolerably complete collection of modern physiological theories on these subjects, with many acute and earnest protests against them. As a book of reference it will claim for itself a place in all libraries.

The "supplementary demonstrations," etc., in the Appendix, are regarded by the author with a fond and fervent interest, which seem to us entirely misplaced. The attempt to account for all the changes in the crust of the earth by a single catastrophe like the Noachian deluge, seems to us so utterly preposterous as to be unworthy of serious criticism. We can only regret that a physiologist of such industry and ability, and a Christian philosopher of such devout purposes, should imagine that he has the knowledge or insight which qualify him to succeed in so hopeless an enterprise.

MR. C. G. DAVID'S POSITIVIST PRIMER* is dedicated "to the only Supreme Being man can ever know, the Great but imperfect God, Humanity, in whose image all other Gods were made, and for whose service all other Gods exist and to whom all the children of men owe labor, love, and worship." It is a little volume of 141 pages, in a series of fourteen conversations, and exhibits with great clearness and without reserve the principal doctrines of the Positivist Faith, with a conciseness and point which are decidedly refreshing by contrast with the dreary sand-wastes of Comte's expanse of dogmatism and dullness. Those who are not repelled by the bald and inane blasphemy of the dedication may find much instruction in brief compass concerning the practical teachings of this much noised system, of which we are not forced to deny that it contains some instruction, in order to be justified in asserting that some of the noise which it makes is owing to the rattle of dry dogmas in the empty heads of many of its adherents.

* A Positivist Primer: Being a Series of Familiar Conversations on the Religion of Humanity. By C. G. DAVID. New York: David, Wesley & Co. 1871.