3. Lebens-Seelen-und Geisteskraft, oder die Kräfte der Organischen Natur in ihrer Einheit und Entwickelung. Erster Theil: Die Pflanze und das Thier. Halle, 1860.

4. Zweiter Theil: Der Mensch als Geisteges Individuum nach seiner Bildung und Entwickelung auf der Grundlage der Natur. Nordhausen, 1867.

The above-named works constitute a complete sketch of Philosophy in outline. Commencing with the Inorganic, our author-after an introduction in which he justifies his method of investigation and discusses the various standpoints and categories used in a Philosophy of Nature--considers, first, the forces which constitute matter or manifest it, such as magnetism, electricity, chemical affinity, &c.; second, the forces which move matter. The former forces are the static ones that give form and shape to matter; the latter forces relate to motion as well in molecules as in masses.

Ascending from the Inorganic, Dr. Werther grapples with the problem: What is organism or vital force? Sharply discriminating this from the mechanical and physical realms of force, he comes to the wider and deeper idea that subordinates those spheres and exhibits itself as final cause.

The Absolute force" he defines as self-determination. To this not merely the Inorganic and the Organic realms are necessary, but the realm of Mind. He traces step by step the organic forces through the life of the Plant and through that of the Animal until its elevation to consciousness. The struggle for selfrevelation, checked in the lower forms, at length achieves its purpose.

A sketch of Man as a “pneumatic individual”—i.e. as a being of instinct, a mere soul-is followed by a portrayal of his higher life in the activities of thinking and willing. Thought and will are the polar manifestation of the psychical force, or, as he calls it, the "pneumatic" force. "As thought, the conscious activity represents the objectivated multiplicity in the unity of the subject; as will, it represents the unity of the subject in a determinateness of objectivated multiplicity." Thus they are two antithetic activities, inseparably connected and in continual reciprocal action. There are three stages of progress in the perfection of the soul-power. I. The thinking activity reaches only the phase of forming judgments, of joining predicates to subjects- the descriptive stagewhile the corresponding development of the will manifests itself only in moving to realize purposes, i.e. simple ends and aims. It is the interaction of this stage of the will with that of the thinking that elevates it to the next higher, that of the reflecting thinking and the willing in accordance with principles. II. Here subjectivity begins to assert an equal right with objectivity. Thinking by its activity develops abstractions, and posits them as the truth of the objective. To will to realize a purpose is a free act; no inorganic or merely organic being can do this only a being possessed of a soul can form purposes. But it is far in advance of that stage to be able to will one's action in conformity to principles. Through the mediation of this form of will with the thinking that reflects, the psychical power rises to the third and highest stage of development: III. The thinking activity of Reason and the activity of the Will for the realization of Ideals, are the highest antithesis of the soul-power. In the activity of Reason the antithesis of subject and object is reconciled, and objectivity comes to be a moment of subjectivity which proves itself the Absolute form. The thinking Reason stands in unity with Faith, and seizes the revelation of the Infinite Unity in the Finite by means of thought-representations, while Faith seizes the same through the living sacrifice of the individual to this Revelation. All thinking and knowing is brought to a unity; and thus Science is formed. The Will becomes ethical in

adopting as its principle the absolute ideal, and thus also becomes free. This ideal is self-determination. The threefold combination of individuals gives rise to the manifestation of the Family, the State, the Christian Religion. The process of completely realizing this unfolds successively the course of human history. Arrived at this point, our author pauses and takes a rapid survey of the phases that enter now into this highest unity.

It will be observed that the peculiarity of Dr. Werther's exposition consists in uniting the theoretical and practical sides of Mind and treating their development as the result of reciprocal action. Other branches of the Hegelian school treat first the Theoretical and then the Practical. A certain resemblance to the popular methods in which subjects of natural science are treated, is also observable, and makes a vivid impression on the reader.

La Morale nella Filosofia Positiva: studio critico di Giacomo Barzellotti, Professore diFilosofia nel R. Liceo Dante di Firenze. Florence: 1871.

We have already spoken in this journal (vol v., p. 94) of the great revival of Philosophy in Italy, and of the two centres of its activity, Florence and Naples. Among the most notable philosophical laborers in Florence is Professor Barzellotti, author of the critique above named. In his handling of the subject, one is very strongly reminded of Cousin's method. He investigates the ideas of experience and law as they have been presented in the Positivist school; then unfolds the two extremes of opinion on the subject of free will, and how the positivists essay a middle ground. Alexander Bain's analysis of the physical and psychological conditions accompanying volition is stated and criticised. John Stuart Mill's theory of volition passes next under review. The concepts of cause and force are investigated: "psychology becomes in the English school a natural history of the mind."

In Part Second the author investigates the subject of final causes and motives, sketching the history of discussion on this subject, and drawing distinctions between the intuitive and utilistic schools. Absolute obligation is contrasted with materialistic theories. The inductive system of morality, taught by the positivists and illustrated in the writings of Mr. Lecky, is well defined as regards its outcome. Theories of happiness, utilitarianism, methods of investigation, are discussed. The prevailing method in Germany after Kant is Reduction; in England after Bacon, is Analysis. The method of Reduction does not seek the relation of psychical activity to its organs-of Psychology to Physiology-but the relation of the various forms of psychical activity to each other and to a common foundation, Feeling. Association is the fundamental psychological law in the English school.

In Part Third our author takes leave of the English - having discussed sufficiently the old writers, Hobbes, Cudworth, Clarke, Locke, Butler, Hutcheson, Hume, Price, Paley, Brown, and Bentham, as well as the contemporary moralists, Mill, Bain, Spencer, and others. He turns now to the theory of Comte himself and the French positivists. Their system of "social physics" makes impossible any science of Character. The abstract universal of society annuls each individual as effectively as the abstract force of the correlationists destroys the identity of particular forces.

With some important remarks as to the future direction of investigation, the book closes.

Introduzione alla Filosofia della Storia: Lezioni di A. Vera, raccolte e publicate con l'approvazione dell'autore da Raffaele Mariano. Florence: 1869.

In this work the Philosophy of History is worked up with admirable intro

ductions calculated to initiate the reader into all the great philosophical questions.. It deserves to be translated into English as a primer of Speculative Philosophy.

Compendium der Logik zum selbstunterricht und zur Benuptzung für Vorträge auf Universitäten und Gymnasien. Von H. Ulrici. (2d ed. improved and enlarged.) Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1872.

In the author of this work, Dr. Ulrici, is recognized one of the editors of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Philosophische Kritik, published at Halle. As may be supposed, the author embodies in this book the results of his investigations as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Halle. He claims in this work to have mapped out a reform in Logic in its trunk and limbs, and to have completed, for the first time, a firm foundation for the same. He combats, as untenable, not only Hegel's identification of Logic and Metaphysics, but also the more recent attempts of Trendelenburg and others to fuse logic with the theory of knowledge (or Psychology). He does this on the ground that before a theory of cognition or a system of Metaphysics can be treated, there must be a preceding investigation into the general laws, norms and forms of thought as such, and by this means the question is settled whether and how far we are justified to assume as belonging to us a faculty of cognizing things in respect to their metaphysical conditions.

The Finite and the Infinite. By Theophilus Parsons. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1872. (From Soule, Thomas & Winsor, St. Louis.)

Contents: What is Matter? The Belief in God; The Natural Intellectual Faculties; The Spiritual Intellectual Faculties; The Natural and Spiritual Affectional Faculties; The Idea of God; God an Infinite Person; Man as Immortal; Freedom; Our Life our own, and yet God's Life; What is the Preparation for another Life? The Providence of God; Revelation; Succession of Revelations; Correspondence; Ancient Churches; The Bible; First and Second Christian Revelations; Swedenborg; Spiritism; Who receive the Latest Revelation; The Word of God cannot pass away; Future Revelations; He comes with Power and with great Glory.

The To-morrow of Death, or the Future Life according to Science. By Louis Figuier. Translated from the French by S. R. Crocker. Boston: Roberts

Brothers. 1872. (From Soule, Thomas & Winsor, St. Louis.)

Contents Chapters I. to XXIII.: Man the result of a triple alliance of Body, Soul, and Life; Death Analyzed; Where the Superhuman Body dwells; Reincarnation of the Wicked and of Infants; The Planets as Inhabited; Mercury, Mars, and Venus; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; Order of the Development of Life in the Planets-Vegetables, Animals, and Man; Attributes of the Planetary Man; The Superhuman after Death; The Sun the definitive Home of Souls that have reached the highest stage of the Celestial Hierarchy; The Solar Rays are Emanations of Spiritual Beings who dwell in the Sun; Sun-Worship among various Nations ancient and modern; Relations that Subsist between Ourselves and the Superhumans; The Soul of Animals; The Plant as a Living Being; Proofs of the Plurality of Human Existences and Incarnations; The innate Ideas of Locke [!!! p. 251, M. Figuier is made to say by the translator, "The English philosopher Locke immortalized himself by the discovery that the human understanding has ideas called “innate,” that is, ideas that we bring with us into life"], and Dugald Stewart's principle of Causality, are explicable only on the hypothesis of a Plurality of Lives; Answer to Objections; Ethical Results of his Theory.

Do universals possess reality-or are particular things alone real? Are all general ideas to be held as simple names, flatus vocis, representations without content and without reality? Does the particular include all that exists, and is the general idea only a fiction formed for convenience of expression?

At first thought, it is a little strange that this old dispute should revive in our day amid the blaze of Positive Science and enlightened Baconian Induction. Has not this whole question been set at rest by the doctrine of "Conceptualism" advanced by our modern eclectic thinkers?

However clear and simple the answers may be to these questions if regarded in the light of the traditional Metaphysics of this country, we apprehend that our new thinkers-those who call themselves Positivists, or who rank under the banner of Herbert Spencer-are very nearly in a quandary. Their declarations at the outset are very unmistakably nominalistic. They regard the particular thing as alone real, and all general names as without corresponding reality. The reader of Spencer's First Principles remembers the precise statement of chapter second, to the effect that conceptions are symbolic when general, and that they are real and true only in ratio of their application to the particular individual. But we are disappointed in these

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men when we expect to find them consistent. The entire process of their scientific expositions has this general object in view the reduction of all particularity and individuality back to general terms, such as matter and force, or law. They prove that there is no such thing as permanence of the particular-that it is only an immediate phase of a general process -that its only reality or existence is its vanishing (its beginning and ceasing)-that "the sole truth which transcends experience by underlying it, is the persistence of Force." Thus, while claiming to be nominalists or conceptualists at the outset, they end in asserting, in the most explicit language, the reality of the universal. They would say that the concepts and names Force and Matter correspond to the most real of realities, while they are the most general and farthest removed from the realm of particularity.

That such realism as this is called pantheistic or materialistic, and is dreaded by spiritual or religious thinkers, makes the question all the more a vital one. That Religion can be defended at all only on the ground of the highest realism, must never be forgotten. Unless the "Real of all realities" is a Spirit-not an abstract Universal such as the correlationists hold, but a concrete Universal such as Plato and Aristotle held (the one virtually, the other explicitly)-Religion must necessarily be fetichism, and nothing above that.

But this position assumed by the new realists is so strange when viewed from the premises with which they set out, that it deserves a more definite exposition.

Scientific Premises.

Starting from the assumption that all speculation is vain, that there is no such thing as pure thought; or that if there is any pure thought, it is mere idle fancy; and holding that a knowledge of the true is obtained by means of the senses, and that its truth is measured by its exact correspondence to the particular facts as they exist in their separateness or isolation in the world; holding, moreover, that classification and generalization, the discovery of laws, is the legitimate occupation of science, although its results are symbolic or inadequate just in proportion to their generality; holding to these irreconcilable premises, they proceed to expound the doctrines of Positive Science.