in calling into activity hereditary homicidal tendencies. The central idea round which his facts are grouped is that on which M. Tarde so strongly insists, namely, imitation as a sort of " contagion" equally active for good and for evil. His practical conclusions are as follows:"La prophylaxie du meurtre repose: (1) sur une saine hygiène morale, individuelle; (2) sur la moralisation des mœurs; (3) sur la réglementation des comptes-rendus des crimes par la presse; (4) sur une sévérité plus logique des tribunaux ".

La Mimique et la Physiognomonie. Par, Le Dr. TH. PIDERIT. Traduit de l'Allemand d'après la deuxième Édition par A. GIROT, Professeur agrégé d'allemand au lycée du Havre. Avec 95 gravures dans le texte. Paris: F. Alcan, 1888. Pp. vii., 280.

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Dr. Piderit-whose interesting work now translated into French is the subject of reference in Darwin's Expression of the Emotions-has sought, in a series of publications, the first of which dates from 1858, to establish the principles of a science of "mimetics," and on the basis of these to construct a scientific "physiognomy". His present work is divided into two parts-i. "Mimique" (pp. 1-164), ii. "Physiognomonie" (pp. 165-267). Both divisions are illustrated with "simple linear designs," which are partly reproductions of the same face with different mimetic expressions, partly taken from portraits or busts of eminent persons. In order to make these both more conclusive for the correctness of theoretical principles and more useful practically, the author has thought it best "to renounce completely the resources of art" and to make the drawings as "schematic' as possible. Dr. Piderit regards the physiognomical division of his work, though readers have usually found it the most interesting, as of less importance than the mimetic division. The science of mimetics, while it is the basis of physiognomical theory, is not to be regarded as existing merely for the sake of this. Independently, it is of special practical importance for artists, deserving a place, as an auxiliary of art," side by side with anatomy. It is chiefly with facial expression that the author deals. In his view," the origin and the very essence of the muscular movements of expressions depend on the reciprocal relations which exist between the life of the soul and the activity of the senses". The principles of mimetics, therefore, must be deduced from those of psychology. Now when particular senses, e.g., those of sight and taste, are in exercise, certain muscles are in activity, and the form of activity varies according to the mode of perception or the nature of the sensation experienced. In "states of the soul" where there is no direct impression from without, what is represented is either an imaginary object or an imagined sensation. "The muscular movements of expression, then, caused by certain states of the soul are in relation either with imaginary objects or with imaginary sensorial impressions." From this "fundamental principle" of mimetics it follows that the various expressions of the emotions are analogous in form to the various modes of activity in sense-perception. The feeling of concentrated attention to an external object and the feeling that accompanies concentrated thought, or, to take another example, a bitter taste and a "bitter" emotion, have the same mimetic expression. To put it generally, the muscular movements of expression of "representative" states of mind are such as would be caused by real perception of an object of the kind and in the position imagined, or by real" sensorial impressions," agreeable or disagreeable as the case may be; the movements of expression of agreeable emotions being such as would facilitate the reception of agreeable sensations, while the movements of expression

of disagreeable emotions are such as would hinder the reception of disagreeable sensations. "Passing, mimetic traits," when frequently repeated, become "persistent, physiognomical traits". In making inferences from physiognomy to character, however, many qualifying considerations have to be borne in mind; as, for example, that facial lines capable of being produced by repeated mimetic expression may also be hereditary (and therefore, in the author's view, not significant mimetically).

La Liberté de la Volonté. Par O. K. NOTOVITCH. Paris: F. Alcan, 1888. Pp. 256.

This book, by a Russian author, is an examination of the question of the freedom of the will in its relation to legal and moral responsibility. The author begins with a discussion of the doctrine of Schopenhauer, and decides that it is unsatisfactory in so far as it seems to admit freewill in any sense. Human actions are necessitated exactly in the sense in which everything that happens in the universe is necessitated. "Since the universal law of necessity exists, there can be no question of a responsibility for man, the animal, the vegetable, the stone. Man does what he can, and he is forced to will to act in virtue of the motives that influence him" (p. 114). Men are naturally social (as are all races of animals within wider or narrower limits). When a man acts so as to injure society, his action is "only the manifestation of some of the numerous defects of the social education that has been given him, and in no wise of what it has been agreed to call ill-will” (p. 126). The only possible means of attenuating "the motives of what is called the bad will" is "a reduction of legal regulations, and their replacement by a large field left to the action of the true moral principle upon the human conscience" (pp. 151-2). “Do you think that the refusal by the State to interfere for the protection of written transactions would be fatal for the general economical order? On the contrary: the place abandoned by the law would be immediately occupied by its true possessor, public opinion (p. 160). The less a profession is regulated by law, the more moral credit it has in the community (pp. 166-7). "The village is more moral than the town because the life of the village is less regulated than the life of the town" (p. 169). In the present social and political order, "crimes, that is to say, manifestations of insufficiencies in the education of man, appear inevitable" (p. 218). The author, however, is careful to point out that he neither proposes to substitute a new social order for the present one nor to abolish all existing penal laws. His general conclusion is this: “That the only issue from the magic circle described by crime and punishment, is found in the reduction to its extreme minimum of the sum total of the laws and penalties formulated by legislation" (p. 225). After such thorough-going theory, the practical suggestions that follow (pp. 225-6) are quite moderate, aiming chiefly at the exclusion from legislation of all excessive restrictions on "personal or general spontaneity".

Origine et Philosophie du Langage, ou Principes de Linguistique IndoEuropéene. Par PAUL REGNAUD, Professeur de Sanskrit et de Grammaire Comparée à la Faculté de Lettres de Lyon. Paris: Fischbacher, 1888. Pp. xix., 443.

The theory of language here expounded is that of its "development motu proprio” (p. xii.) according to certain laws of "phonetic evolution,” which again can be explained by physiological conditions (pp. 148 ff.). "The multiplication of the forms of language by phonetic evolution,"

to which is due, in ultimate analysis, the origin of language (p. 179), is at length brought to a close by "grammatical fixation". A l'évolution phonétique des mots, fait d'ordre essentiellement physiologique et fatal, s'oppose leur fixation grammaticale, résultat évident d'un usage traditionnel suivi d'efforts réfléchis qui ont abouti à un ensemble de conventions destinées à perpétuer cet usage. On peut dire en d'autres termes que la tradition a engendré la littérature dont la grammaire est issue à son tour, et que l'évolution phonétique, déjà ralentie par la tradition et endiguée par la littérature, a été définitivement arrêtée dans toutes les langues par la rédaction et la codification des règles grammaticales." Language is to be regarded as a living " organism developing itself unconsciously in the bosom of oral tradition according to laws generally analogous to those which preside at the evolution of the productions of nature" (p. 415, n.). In its detail the book is devoted exclusively to Aryan philology. It is divided into three parts:i. "Exposé historique et critique des principales théories qui ont eu cours jusqu' ici sur l'origine du langage"; ii. "Esquisse d'une théorie nouvelle"; iii. "L'avenir du langage ".

MARIO PANIZZA. La Fisiologia del Sistema Nervoso e i Fatti Psichici. Terza Edizione con Aggiunte e Figure intercalate nel Testo. Roma: A. Manzoni, 1887. Pp. xvi., 441.

The author's critical examination of "the two postulates of the physiology of the nervous system" (viz., "(1) that the nerves are conductors of sense-impressions from the periphery to the nerve-centres and of the motor impulses of the will from the nerve-centres to the muscles; (2) that external objects, to be perceived, have to make impressions on the organs of sense ") was noticed in MIND vi. 296. He now publishes the positive work then promised; not, however, as a separate volume, but in the form of a third Part, entitled "The Physiology of Consciousness (pp. 225-432 of the present volume) added to the two Parts of his critical work which he here republishes in a third edition with slight alterations, but with no modification of the general conclusions. The reason that determined him to reject the ordinary "postulates" was that, if they are accepted, an independent science of psychology is required which admits the unextended"; and between its data and those of the physiology of the nervous system there is no causal relation. "The physiology of consciousness is possible only if consciousness in its form and in its content depends on physiological conditions, and so absolutely that it could not be, or at least could not be understood, without them." The rejection of the postulates makes it possible to explain consciousness physiologically from the facts alone, without the aid of any hypothesis and without the introduction, as a datum, of "the unextended," which for modern science, with its method of observation and experiment, ought to be identical with "the unreal". Expressed in its simplest form, but in other words than the author's, his theory is that consciousness is inherent in the whole nervous system, and not merely in some special part of it: impressions may be received at any point and acts of will may start from any point: consciousness, therefore, is primarily consciousness of extension, since the nervous system of which it is the consciousness is itself extended. The name he gives to that which he regards as the primary fact of consciousness is "perception," which he defines as consciousness of extension filling a certain sphere included in the larger sphere of space". Each individual organism carries about with it in space its own " sphere of perception". When we perceive a

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new object, we do not see a fragment of space adding itself to other fragments; but the object falls into a place that is already given in a total space of which we are conscious as a whole. "Given perception with the nervous substance, the perception is given of space in its three dimensions; and hence every organism that perceives, however elementary, perceives the space occupied by it, or occupied by its nervous circuit, perceives, that is, itself as solid body; and whatever other object is perceived by it is necessarily perceived as extended." Space and time with continuity are the "forms of perception". "The continuity of perception has for condition the continuity of the nervous system." For objects to be perceived, they must be in "the field of perception ". The nervous substance is in the field of perception necessarily, being "the very basis of perception ". The "idio-nervous perception" that belongs to it primarily is "the vague intuition of a space extended as far as the nervous system, without other determination or particular content". Perception of objects beyond depends on the relations in which the nervous substance happens to be with the environment. Since in the psychical order there is only one irreducible and invariable datum, perception," all detailed explanation of the peculiarities of special sense must be sought in the objective peculiarities of the sense-organs. In the order of evolution, all special sense-organs arise from an "indifferent " organ of general sense. By division of a nervous system into a number of independent nervous systems, independent "consciousnesses," that is, spheres of perception, are formed, and total consciousnesses are formed by union of isolated nervous systems, as, for example, in echinoderms (p. 244). In any particular nervous system, section of a nerve, or lesion of a nervous centre such as to interrupt continuity with a peripheral region, cuts off a certain sphere of perception (p. 309). Having thus, in the first of the two chapters of his "Physiology of Consciousness," dealt with Perception, the author proceeds, in the second chapter, to deal with Will, of which he regards Emotion and Intellect as manifestations. Will, in his view, is a 'force," differing from other forces in that it is determined to act by a perception of something". Its physiological basis is "nervous excitability". While ordinary stimuli have only a single point of application, the will is present throughout the whole sphere of perception. There is thus no necessity to suppose transmission of the stimulus to a centre and its reflexion thence, before action can take place. "The only anatomical bond necessary between the point stimulated and the organs that are set in motion in the voluntary act is the continuity of the nervous system" (p. 327). The function of the grey matter of the cerebral cortex is to enable the will, when acting through it, to augment "tonicity, the force of the muscles, and hence the energy of movements" (p. 383). As he goes more into detail, Dr. Panizza's theories differ less from those of other physiologists. For example, he finds that repetition of the action of the will in consequence of similar perceptions in the same fibre makes the production of a movement easier in that fibre, and, with respect to other fibres, makes the quantity of motion greater for the same excitation (p. 330). The objection here occurs that this process, in a series of organisms, would tend to bring about a greater differentiation of the parts of the nervous system than his general theory admits of. It is not necessary, however, to accept the author's theory in order to see the force of many of his criticisms. His psychological theory of the nature of space-perception and his physiological doctrine that the whole nervous system, and not merely the central organs, is the physical basis of consciousness, are of course not entirely new; but this does not diminish

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their importance. What is most distinctive in his positive view is the attempt to connect them by deducing the psychological fact of perception as primitively "extensive" from the physiological fact of the inherence of perception in the nervous system as a whole. An "extensive" perception, he thinks, can be inferred from the existence of a material basis, which is necessarily extended, while from an extended basis it is impossible to deduce the unextended "sensations" which are the elements" of ordinary psychology. Psychological criticism, however, would show the assumption that the character of consciousness as a totality is explained by its inherence in the whole nervous system to be just as much an error as the assumptions of physiologists who fancy they have explained consciousness when they have found in cells and fibres a physiological basis for its elements. Dr. Panizza's negative argument is, in reality, a very good proof of the necessity for an independent science of psychology. From this obvious conclusion he only escapes by "postulating" the non-existence of such a science.

Prof. GIOVANNI CESCA. L'Educazione del Carattere. Conferenza tenuta nella R. Accademia Petrarca di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Arezzo la sera del 30 Novembre, 1887. Verona-Padova: Drucker e Tedeschi, 1888. Pp. 26.

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Underneath the rapid scientific and industrial progress of modern times, there is, in the author's view, an intimate and profound physical and moral degeneration, and a social and political decadence," of which the primal cause is the over-excitation due to competitive industrialism, and the preponderating symptom an enfeeblement of individual character. The most efficacious means of checking this decline is "the education of the character," that is, of the sustained will to act according to fixed principles conformable to the moral law. The points insisted on are that, for moral education, it is especially important (as Mr. Spencer has shown) to act on the emotions, mere intellectual precepts being of no avail; and that the character can be effectively educated only in the family. In a brief discussion of the factors of character (pp. 10-12), the author takes an intermediate position between those theorists who, like Schopenhauer, have held that character is immutably fixed by heredity, and those who, like Helvetius and Rousseau, have regarded education as all-powerful.

La Filosofia e la Scuola. Appunti di ANDREA ANGIULLI, Prof. ord. nella R. Università di Napoli. Napoli: Ernesto Anfossi, 1888. Pp. xi.,

408.

In the four parts of this book-which reproduce "conferences held in two successive years in the University of Naples, on the conception of positive or scientific philosophy and on its moral and educative importance"-the author deals with (1) "The Problems of Philosophy,” (2) "The Criticism of Experience and the Doctrine of Knowledge," (3) "The Doctrine of Cosmical Evolution," (4) "The Doctrine of Ethics". He has proposed to "demonstrate three things: the necessary scientific reconstitution of philosophy; its social and moral significance; its educative office in the school". The view of philosophy for which he contends is that in addition to logic and theory of knowledge it includes a cosmical doctrine founded on the special sciences but distinct from them, and a practical doctrine,-in other words, the ancient "physics and "ethics". In his theory of the aims of education, he follows Mill;