Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes. Von Dr. HUGO MAGNUS, Privatdocent an der Univ. Breslau. Leipzig: Veit, 1877. Pp. 56.

Die Entwickelung des Farbensinnes. Von Dr. H. MAGNUS, &c. Jena: Dufft, 1877. Pp. 22.

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WORKING on the basis of historical research laid down by Geiger (Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit), Gladstone (Homeric Studies) and others, Dr. Magnus, in these two tracts, reaches the following conclusions:-(1) In the earliest stage of the development of the colour-sense, red was the only colour recognised as such, while even this was not clearly distinguished from brightness or mere light; at this stage the single function of the retina was sensibility to different quantities of light. (2) In the succeeding stage, the sense of colour was more sharply differentiated from that of light, red and yellow now being discriminated from mere brightness. (3) In the next stage, the light and dark shades of green became distinguished as independent colours, the first from pale yellow and the second from darkness in general. (4) Finally, in our own stage, blue and violet are recognised as colours, though these are not yet perfectly separated except by the more cultivated eyes. That is to say, the course of development of the sense of colour has corresponded with the prismatic order, beginning with the colours (reds) most rich in light and gradually arriving at those (violets) of feeblest light-intensity. These facts are thus conceived by the author. The sensibility to colour is a higher function of the retina, which appears only when its irritability or excitability has been increased and made more delicate through the incessant action of the light-stimulus. mediate consequence of this intensified and refined retina acquired the capability of distinguishing the impinging rays as well as their light-intensity." illustrates the relation here assumed between the sense of colour and the condition of excitability produced through light-intensity, by a reference to the familiar fact that even to our developed organ coloured light loses its colour when (as reflected by objects in evening dusk) it falls below a certain intensity or degree of luminosity. The author conceives that the peripheral regions of the developed retina which are very inferior in the discriminative sense of colour represent a past stage of development of the eye as a whole. Wisely perhaps, he does not seek to bring his results into connection with either of the two principal theories respecting the physiological conditions of sensations of colour which are at present in vogue in Germany. It might be found that they are capable of being more fully interpreted either by the hypothesis of Young and Helmholtzthat different colours involve different nerve-elements, or by the theory of Wundt-that all differences of colour-impression depend on the form of excitation of the same elements. Dr. Magnus cannot be said to supply an adequate physiological interpretation of his facts, though he has certainly rendered good service in preparing the way for such an interpretation. [J. S.]

As an imactivity, the colour of the Dr. Magnus

Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft. LILIENFELD. 3 Bde. Mitau Behre, 1873-7. 484.

Von PAUL v. Pp. 399, 455,

THESE volumes start with the conception of Society as a real organism, and attempt to work out this point of view upon the methods proper to the Natural Sciences. The treatise commences with a demonstration that Society consists of individuals in the same manner as the physical organism is made up of cells, and that the one is real in the same sense as the other. With this idea the author seeks to exhibit a thorough-going identity between the laws of Nature as they exist in the case of its highest development, Society, and in its lower stages, including the individual human being. The first volume is entitled "Human Society as Real Organism;" the second, "The Laws of Society;" the third, "Social Psychophysics;" and a fourth is promised upon "Social Physiology". The first three parts are worked out with great minuteness, the connecting thread being the conception of a real analogy between the individual and the social group as the essential foundation of the Social Science of the future.

Das Problem einer Naturgeschichte des Weibes.

Historisch und

kritisch dargestellt von FRIEDRICH VON BAERENBACH.
Dufft, 1877. Pp. 126.

Jena:

Not intended as a solution of the problem of a Natural History of Woman-for which the author invokes the exertions of an inquirer like Mr. Darwin-but as a statement of what it must involve as the preliminary step towards determining her true social position. The author got his impulse from Schopenhauer and Michelet, who, in spite of their differences, seemed to him to work in the same scientific direction. Among English writers, he is most beholden to Prof. Huxley.

Vorträge und Abhandlungen. Von EDUARD ZELLER. 2te Sammlung. Leipzig: Fues's Verlag (R. Reisland), 1877. Pp. 550.

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In this second scries of collected essays (sixteen in number) by Prof. Zeller, rather more than half are on philosophical subjects. The last four are academic addresses that excited much attention at the time of their delivery, and it is well they are now reproduced in a form that will henceforth make them accessible for reference: On the problem of Philosophy and its relation to the other Sciences (1868); "On the present position and task of German Philosophy" (1872); "On the meaning and problem of Theory of Knowledge" (1862) with "Additions" (1877); "On the Teleological and the Mechanical explanations of Nature as applied to the Universe" (1876). The series opens with a long discussion "On the origin and essence of Religion" (1877), followed by a paper on "Religion and Philosophy among the Romans" (1865). The subject of another essay is Lessing as a Theologian " (1870).

Kant's Begründung der Ethik. Von Dr. HERMANN COHEN, ord. Prof. der Phil. an der Universität zu Marburg. Berlin: Dümmler, 1877. Pp. 328.

THE acknowledged leader of the Neo-Kantian movement in Germany here follows up his classical interpretation of Kant's Theory of Experience with an exposition of the fundamental principles of the Kantian Ethics. Prof. Wundt's general sketch of the movement in the last number of MIND may, it is hoped, be supplemented before long in these pages by a fuller appreciation of the later Kantian literature, and then will be the time to do justice to Prof. Cohen's varied activity. The preface of his new work contains a short but very striking defence of his philosophical position. Rejecting the imputation of aiming at a mere "Kant-philology," he does not hesitate to declare that Kant's "Transcendental Method" must henceforth rank as of no less account for Science in general than the fundamental logical principles themselves; and that the advancing philosopher of the present day has a duty in relation to Kant like that of Newton's successors in physics to the author of the Principiu. "Kantian philosophy is nothing else than philosophy as science," and the essence of science is to be steadily progressive from positions already won. As regards the special subject of his present work, the author holds it to be no accidental sign of the truth of the Critical Method that it bases the possibility of an Ethics in the Doctrine of Experience. To exhibit Kant's foundation of Ethics is to show Ethics based in the Theory of Knowledge.

Die Vorsokratische Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer organischen Gliederung. Dargestellt von S. A. BYK. Zweiter Theil: "Die Monisten ". Leipzig: Schäfer, 1877. Pp. 240.

THE author's first part appeared in 1876 and treated of "The Dualists," meaning those Pre-Socratic thinkers who assumed "a material foundation of all things, and by the side of this a principle of motion standing in no logical connection with it." By "Monists he means those who assumed "either one absolute principle only, or, if a motor principle besides the absolute foundation, then one implicated in the very conception of it". As such "Monists," the author passes successively in review (1) The Eleatics, (2) Heraclitus, (3) Leucippus, and Democritus, (4) The Sophists.

X.-NEWS.

Mr. Douglas Alexander Spalding, well-known of late years for his observations on the first movements of young animals, died on October 31, at Dunkirk, on his way to the Mediterranean coast, where he was to spend the winter for the sake of his health. He had long suffered from pulmonary disease, before he was thus cut off at the age of 37.

His first observations were brought before the British Association in 1872, and afterwards worked up into an article on Instinct' in Macmillan's Magazine of Feb. 1873. Some farther observations, communicated to the British Association in 1875, were published in Nature, vol. viii., p. 289. All of them were very carefully made, and they may be held to have finally established what had often been asserted before but as often doubted or denied-the power of certain lower animals, especially birds, to perform extremely complex movements of an appropriate character on the first suggestion by way of the senses. It was when Mr. Spalding went on to theorise upon his observations that he became a less satisfactory guide. His facts did not, as he supposed, in the least touch the Berkeleyan theory of vision, regarded (as it should be) as an explanation of certain facts of conscious perception in human beings. And when he rode off upon his summary conclusion that "animals and men are conscious automata," he became a warning example of a certain tendency to premature and hasty speculation adverted to in some earlier pages of the present number. He not only fancied that nobody had ever dreamt of such an idea before, when in fact the whole Cartesian and even the Leibnitzian school had asserted (upon grounds of their own) a thoroughgoing parallelism with no cross-action of the physical and mental in man; and he not only went the length of doubting whether there were five people alive who were able to understand the conception. What was far more serious-he himself seemed to become incapable of taking an interest in anything else. and spent in an iteration of generalities (in critical notices of books for Nature) powers which, even in the short time allotted to him, might have solved several other questions of biological fact as satisfactorily as the first he attempted. Mr. Spalding who, though born in London, belonged to Aberdeenshire and spent his early years in Aberdeen, began life under great material disadvantages, and raised himself through his own exertions.

The remarkable paper by Dr. G. M. Beard on 'Trance,' reported upon in MIND, No. VIII., p. 568, has now been published in a separate form (Pp. 47, New York: Putnams' Sons) under the title The Scientific Basis of Delusions. It is "designed as an introduction to a work on the Philosophy of Delusions, which will aim to unfold in detail the phenomena of the Involuntary Life, including Trance, and to give practical suggestions for the reconstruction of the principles of evidence in their application to history and to logic, to science and to law ".

A Chair of Logic and Moral Philosophy has at last been instituted in King's College, London; and the Rev. H. W. Watkins M.A., Chaplain and Censor of the College, has been chosen to fill it.

The Whyte Professorship of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford being vacant, through the clerical preferment of the late incumbent, Rev. J. R. T. Eaton (appointed in 1874), Mr. T. H. Green, of Balliol College, editor of Hume's philosophical works, has just been elected in his place.

The Chair of Moral Philosophy in Trinity College, Dublin, is vacant through the retirement of the Rev. Dr. McIvor, who has served the statutory period of five years for which it can (with re-elegibility) be held.

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Mr. Malcolm Guthrie (31 Stanley Road, Bootle) sends the following suggestion":

"In Liverpool we have formed a small society of six or ten members called the Philosophy Reading Club'. Our plan is to take some work of philosophical importance and, after reading a chapter at home, to examine and discuss it at our weekly meetings. The advantages of this systematic and combined study over individual desultory studies are obvious. I have no doubt you would be willing to put your readers in different localities into communication with each other for that or similar purposes."

JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.-Vol. XI., No. 3. Schelling -The Method of University Study' (Lect. 4th, trans.). Von Hartmann- -‘On the True and False in Darwinism' (Sections trans.). Herbart-Application of Mathematics in Psychology' (trans.). W. T. Harris-Michael Angelo's Fates'. G. S. Morris- The Life and Teachings of Spinoza'. D. W. Phipps-' Kant's Transcendental Esthetic'. Kant- Anthropology (trans. continued). Notes and Discussions, &c.

REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.-2me Année, No. X. H. Lotze-Sur la Formation de la Notion d'Espace'. M. Straszewski- La Psychologie est-elle une Science'? D. Nolen-'L'Idéalisme de Lange'. Notes et Documents-'Cause et Volonté,' par Alexander Main. Malebranche, d'après des manuscrits inédits,' par C. Henry. Analyses et comptes rendus. Rev. des Périodiques. No. XI. Dr. Ch. Richet-'La Douleur: Étude de Psychologie Physiologique'. G. Séailles-L'Esthétique de Hartmann (I). Notes et Documents-Sur l'Etude du Caractère,' par le Dr. G. Bon. Variétés-'P. Pomponazzo et ses récents interprètes italiens,' par L. Mabilleau. Analyses et comptes-rendus. Rev. des Périodiques. No. XII. Séailles-'L'Esthétique de Hartmann' (II). D. Nolen-Le Mécanisme de Lange'. P. Regnaud- Etudes de Philosophie Indienne: L'Ecole Vedanta'. P. Béraud-Le Moi comme Principe de la Philosophie'. Notes et Documents- Le Sens Commun Essai d'explication physiologique,' par F. Paulhan. Analyses et comptesrendus. Rev. des Périodiques.

LA CRITIQUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.-VIme Année, Nos. 33-47. C. Renouvier Le Cours de Philosophie positive est-il encore au courant de la Science?' (33, 34); 'Le positivisme jugé par M. Huxley--Les sciences naturelles et les problèmes qu'elles font surgir' (36); Descartes fondateur de la physique, d'après Huxley' (40); La question de la mort traitée scientifiquement' (41, 42, 47); Examen des Principes de Psychologie de Herbert Spencer: Principes de la logique (38), L'emploi des expressions mathématiques (42), La PerceptionL'origine des connaissances' (45); 'Les labyrinthes de la metaphysique: L'infini et le continu-Une évolution personelle' (44, 46). Pillon-Monadisme et matérialisme' (38); La doctrine de Schopenhauer sur le libre arbitre: La conscience de la liberté' (39); 'De quelques objections au langage psychologique de Hume' (40); 'La classification des éléments de la connaissance selon Hume' (46, 47).

F.