So far as M. Fonsegrive aims at showing that the free-will question finally becomes one of metaphysics, his argument is perfectly cogent. The last step however, the affirmation of a belief on the ground of the "practical reason," is open to dispute. One possible position, as I have ventured to urge, against M. Renouvier (see MIND No. 45 and Critique Philosophique, Nouv. sér. An. iii. No. 8), is that, instead of the system involving free-will, the system involving absolute determinism ought to be affirmed, because it satisfies the desire for an intellectual ideal; this ideal, in theoretical philosophy, being alone relevant. To this contention M. Renouvier has replied (Critique Philosophique, Nouv. sér. An. iii. No. 9) that the moral ideal conflicts with what is held to be the intellectual ideal, and that, as this last is not forced on the mind, the logical position remains for the intellectualist one of scepticism, from which only the acceptance of the postulates of the practical reason offers a way of escape. Now it is interesting that, so far as the question of free-will is concerned, M. Fonsegrive, in a discussion of the determinism within the limits of science advocated by M. Ribot, to a certain extent anticipates the answer to this. M. Ribot's "relative determinism," as it may be called, is obviously, from M. Fonsegrive's point of view, the complement of the "relative indeterminism on which he more especially dwells. He ought, logically, to admit that it is the only scientific position. For, on one side, free-will, as he defines it--that is, as having for one of its characters the theoretical impossibility of prevision even when all conditions, physical and psychological, are known— introduces an element of which science, psychological as well as physical, can take no account; and, on the other side, M. Ribot makes no dogmatic affirmation of absolute determinism. Yet this position does not satisfy M. Fonsegrive. He points out that, carefully as M. Ribot's scientific determinism is limited, it inevitably tends to pass beyond scientific limits. Now this, instead of being an argument against scientific determinism, is in reality an argument for metaphysical determinism. What it proves is that even in the most severely restrained statement of the scientific position an ideal is already suggested to philosophy. This ideal, as M. Renouvier has shown, is not forced on the mind; it is not completed by science: but, on the other hand, it is not arbitrary; it is inevitably suggested.

And is it so certain that the ethical argument is in favour of indeterminism? Determinists have often contended that it is really the denial of the necessity of human actions that would destroy moral responsibility; and M. Fonsegrive admits that determinism supplies a basis of its own for the greater part of ethical, political and aesthetic theory. What he urges on behalf of indeterminism is that it gives a certain "accent or a certain grace" that would disappear with the destruction of the belief in free-will. Yet in a chapter (part ii., bk. ii., ch. v.) in which he discourses of " the degrees of freedom" and the progress from

one stage of moral freedom to another by the exercise of freewill, he dwells especially on "moral gymnastics"; pointing out, by way of illustration, with what psychological exactness "examples and occasions," as aids or hindrances of the moral life, have been set forth in Catholic manuals (p. 477). Now does not all this minute attention to psychological conditions rest on the determinist part of the Catholic theory? And in what way has the doctrine of an undetermined free-will tended here to rescue that spontaneity which, M. Fonsegrive elsewhere urges, is unrecognised by determinism? In political theory, again, he holds that the doctrine of free-will gives a certain additional sacredness to personal rights. History at least, it may be objected, does not confirm the association of free-will doctrines with political freedom. As to the logical bearings of the opposed doctrines, M. Fonsegrive, in his chapters on Consequences," seems occasionally to be forgetful of what he has himself made plain in the earlier part of the Essay. "The three characters of free action," he has said earlier, are "contingency, spontaneity and intelligence". He makes plain in his exposition, however, that the first character alone, and this in the sense of a real "ambiguity of contingent futures," is the distinguishing character of the indeterminist conception of free-will. When, therefore, he sets forth the consequences of his total conception of "free action," this proves nothing in favour of indeterminism, at least against those determinist doctrines that equally recognise "spontaneity and intelligence" as characters of the higher kinds of activity. "The enemies of free-will," M. Fonsegrive says, are "habits and passions" (p. 472). But are these the enemies of strictly indeterminate action as such, and not rather of action that is at once rational and spontaneous in a sense compatible with determinism? If anything is to be proved in favour of the consequences of the indeterminist doctrine, the element of real indetermination ought to be detached from the others and its consequences viewed separately.

THOMAS WHITTAKER.

VII.-NEW BOOKS.

[These Notes (by various hands) do not exclude Critical Notices later on.]

The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an Autobiographical Chapter. Edited by his Son, FRANCIS DARWIN. 3 Vols. London:

John Murray, 1887. Pp. x., 395; ii., 393; iv., 418.

Eagerly expected, this book has also been so universally welcomed that there is no need to enter here into any particular description of its contents; while yet description is almost the only kind of notice suitable in the case. When it is said that, from beginning to end, it contains as little as possible that is not from the hand of Darwin himself, everything is said to recommend it to those who have not so far had the opportunity of reading. Yet it would be ungrateful not specially to acknowledge the exemplary care. with which the editor has done everything that was necessary, and almost everything that could be desired, to link together the stages of his father's life as traceable in the "Letters"; nor less the frankness (but also at some points the delicate reserve) with which, in a chapter of personal "Reminiscences" (i. 108-60), the great naturalist as he lived and laboured is set before us. The later chapter entitled "Religion" (i. 304-17), though containing but a few lines not written by Darwin, should also be noted in evidence of the editor's conscientious candour. The autobiographical sketch (i. 26-107), placed first after the preliminary account of lineage, was written for the family only, but as now given to the public (with some omissions) is a document of unsurpassable and enduring interest. Never did a mind of highest rank in its class turn itself inside out with such perfect freedom from all affectation; and never did unpretending record reveal, or rather betray, a more attractive human character. Perhaps it is enough to add here that " Autobiography" as well as "Letters" insist upon nothing more strongly than their writer's sense of his intellectual limits; while at the same time the "Autobiography" (i. 100) tells of a curious dying-away of the "higher æsthetic tastes," as life went on and his mind more and more became "a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts". The proclamation of philosophical (as distinguished from scientific) incompetence has a truly remarkable interest in view of the fact that, whether himself philosopher or not, he has given philosophers more serious occasion for thinking than, perhaps, any one scientific inquirer that ever lived. To vol. ii. (pp. 179204) Prof. Huxley contributes a chapter "On the Reception of the Origin of Species" (1859), in which the philosophical aspects of Darwin's work are nowise overlooked. Here (p. 188) there is an interesting reference to Mr. Herbert Spencer's earlier (public) advocacy of the Evolutionist doctrine-advocacy, it might have been mentioned, carried to the length of The Principles of Psychology as first published in 1855. With characteristic enthusiasm, Darwin himself bursts out in one letter of 1870 (iii. 120) thus :-"I suspect that H. Spencer will hereafter be looked at as by far the greatest living philosopher in England; perhaps equal to any that have lived ".

Tertium Quid: Chapters on various Disputed Questions. By EDMUND GURNEY, Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 Vols. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1887. Pp. viii., 372; 302. Mr. Gurney here publishes a collection of essays (three of which-on

"matters

"Natural Religion," "The Utilitarian 'Ought,' and "Monism". originally appeared in MIND) dealing, for the most part, with of contemporary controversy". "In most of these questions," he says, "I am conscious of a great deal to be said on both sides' In most of them the true view seems to me to depend on taking a standpoint, or in recognising facts and principles other than those which partisans have usually recognised or taken. And this truer view, if such it be, is not one that would extenuate differences, or induce lions to lie down with lambs, or generally tend towards compromise in the ordinary sense; its immediate tendency, on the contrary, is rather to make each of the duels triangular. In short, it is a tertium quid." This idea of a tertium quid is less obvious in the second volume, which consists exclusively of aesthetic essays (though in æsthetic controversies also the author regards it as applicable), than it is in the first. Here it gives a real unity to essays diverse in subject. In the first essay ("The Human Ideal") the author premises that Utilitarianism based on "Positivism" (in the wider sense) is the true ethical doctrine; and that it is perfectly possible to work strenuously for the Utilitarian ideal without having a belief in any order of existence beyond the natural order. The emotion with which life is contemplated when it is regarded as part of a wholly natural order does not, however, with one class of minds at least, rise to the height of a religious emotion. It cannot be assumed that the problem will be simplified by the disappearance of minds of this class. If, however, there were even a bare chance that there is a supernatural order, the ideal of Positivism would be transfigured by it. But, the author proceeds in the next essay ("The Controversy of Life"), science, in this relation, is "inexorably restrictive". "Views as to the transcendent worth and ever-progressive evolution of the individual life-views of some importance to individuals whose lives are in question-have received so far not the very slightest countenance from physics and biology; nay, they have been made gradually harder to entertain. And till this is alteredtill those views can be based (as who can say they never will?) on some sort of objective evidence-scientific convictions must differ absolutely from religious convictions in the response that they can evoke in human hearts and imaginations." The direction in which Mr. Gurney is inclined to look for a reconciliation is indicated by his parenthetical question. He regards it as possible that "external testimony" may give positive ground for belief in continued existence after death. The question as to the positive grounds that would be sufficient to justify acceptance of the kind of evidence required to support such a belief is discussed in an essay on "The Nature of Evidence in Matters Extraordinary". The suggested answer is thus a tertium quid, because it would affirm an extramundane order on grounds that may be scientifically tested. aesthetic essays of which the second volume consists are divided between Music and Poetry. The last essay ("The Psychology of Music ") is based on the author's reply in MIND vii. 89, to some criticisms contained in Mr. Sully's review of The Power of Sound in vi. 270. In its present form it includes also replies to Prof. Stumpf and M. Georges Guéroult, and is so written as to make intelligible, even to those who have not read the author's larger work, his general position as to the nature of the characteristic effect wrought by music. Music, he insists, is "primarily a presentative art, bound to the perpetual production of pleasurable impressions that are otherwise unknown," and not primarily "a representative art, bound, like stage-gesture, to the perpetual depiction of recognised emotions and sentiments as they occur outside it". The theories that try to explain musical effect without the assumption of

The

a unique "musical faculty" to which it directly appeals, admit of reduction to three, viz., that which derives it from "discoverable principles of order, or of freedom under conditions of order," and those which derive it from "suggestions of concrete external phenomena-movement and speech". The first theory, if it refers to general conditions of structure, does not explain why some tone-sequences are pleasurable, while others, which equally fulfil all formal conditions, are not. And if pleasurable sequences alone are said to have the required "freedom under conditions of order," then the problem is merely reaffirmed; for, outside the musical impression itself, no reason can be given why one sequence fulfils these conditions more than another. The remaining two theories have the defect of trying to explain the whole effect of music by means of symbolisms and suggestions that may indeed form part of the effect of large compositions, but that are not the central quality requiring explanation. Every composition is "musical," not by its explicable structure, or by its definite or indefinite suggestions of movement or of speech, or of any emotion extraneous to musical emotion, or in virtue of all these things together, but in virtue of certain "structural units" or individualised tone-sequences, that give a distinct pleasure comparable to no other. These may be more or less frequent with different composers, and may be interrupted by longer or shorter passages that only give vaguer effects, but it is in the power to create individual melodies that musical genius consists, and the power of musical appreciation is the power of enjoying these. The psychological difference between the vaguer effects due to superinduced associations and the simple and definite effect of individual melodies is brought out with abundant illustration in the first two essays of the volume ("Wagner and Wagnerism," "A Musical Crisis"). No theory, with the single exception of Darwin's "theory of the primeval use of music under conditions of sexual excitement," Mr. Gurney contends, as he had already contended in The Power of Sound and in his reply to Mr. Sully, comes anywhere near the explanation of the unique effect of music; and even this, perhaps, does not touch the central problem of the effect of "definite melodic forms (p. 298). The two essays on Poetry ("Poets, Critics and Class-Lists," "The Appreciation of Poetry") are intended to show the desirability of allowing for the influence of personal idiosyncrasies on appreciation of different poets and of different kinds of poetry. Hegelianism and Personality. By ANDREW SETH, M.A., Professor of Logic, Rhetoric and Metaphysics in the University of St. Andrews. Second Series of "Balfour Philosophical Lectures, University of Edinburgh". Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1887. Pp. xi., 230.

The newly-appointed St. Andrews professor's "Balfour Lectures," published under the title Scottish Philosophy: A Comparison of the Scottish and German Answers to Hume (see MIND xi. 120, 267), are now followed by a second series, issued in a form somewhat altered from that of their delivery last spring. The present subject was pointed at and to some extent had its way prepared in the first course of lectures. More generally phrased than in the title, it is an attempt "critically to test the Idealism reared upon Kant's foundation by his successors in Germany, and now represented in this country by a number of writers often classed together as Neo-Kantians or English Hegelians". Green is taken as protagonist among these latter, but it adds not a little to the interest of the undertaking and significance of the conclusion attained that the author himself has been no mean fighter in the ranks. It is for