sometimes even only of one-sixth (Section vi.). Mr. Prendergast's 'mastery' method of learning languages is founded on this principle. Section ix., the last, attempts to determine the relation of retention to the associations formed during learning. The associations here considered are merely auditory and thus differ from the significant ones investigated by Mr. Galton in his psychometric experiments (Inquiries, p. 199). It must have caused our author some trouble to fix upon a method to determine the associational linkages of his intractable materials. The one he has hit upon is to form new rows of syllables by skipping one or two or three syllables in his verses. Thus from the verse given above he could form new ones of the types baf fil hum, köp maus peuch, &c., baf gom köp, &c., baf hum maus rosch, &c. The saving of time thus effected as compared with learning entirely new verses is given in percentages of the original time taken in learning, and may be expressed in the following Table, where the Roman figures give the number of syllables skipped and the last rubricrefers to a case where only the first and last syllable of each row was retained, the remainder being arbitrarily permuted. The number of syllables learnt was 96, six rows of 16 syllables; these could be relearnt when unchanged with a saving of 33 per cent. of the original time. The influence of association is shown by the relation of the following numbers to this figure rather than to 100 one ought perhaps to treble them. It may be remarked that the probable error in this case is exceptionally large and the results proportionately uncertain. The general result reached is not of very startling novelty: associations are formed with all the series of intensity varying directly with contiguity. Other experiments seem to show that there is a kind of rhythm in associations, the odd syllables being more likely to be retained than the even. Such is the method and such the main conclusions of this remarkable series of investigations, remarkable, it is perhaps needless to observe, more for their method than for their results. Indeed the irreverent critic might be tempted to remark that the results obtained scarcely seem calculated to set the Spree on fire. That it takes a relatively longer time to learn a longer set of verses; that the more you repeat mnemonics, the better you retain them; that you forget more as time goes on; that it is better to have spells of repetition at intervals than go on repeating till brain is weary and attention distraught; that associations are formed with strength varying according to the contiguity of the associated images results like these scarcely seem to need two years of strenuous and exhausting labour to establish. But it almost invariably happens with statistical inquiries that the earliest results reached are mainly confirmatory of the rough averages which we term impressions and only have the additional advantage of determining the how much. It is rather from the subsidiary results that new generalisations emerge which were previously unsuspected. As the chemist finds his new compounds in the rubbish of the retort, so the statistical inquirer finds his new truths in the débris of investigation. Herr Ebbinghaus is very sparing in hints as to the direction in which we may expect psychological novelties from his investigations; he is almost ostentatiously cautious in keeping close to details. His reticence tempts one into speculations as to the future of the new branch of psychometry which he has opened up. May we hope to see the day when school registers will record that such and such a lad possesses 36 British Association units of memory-power or when we shall be able to calculate how long a mind of 17 'macaulays' will take to learn Book ii. of Paradise Lost? If this be visionary, we may at least hope for much of interest and practical utility in the comparison of the varying powers of different minds which can now at last be laid down to scale. Herr Ebbinghaus's results are as yet personal, but we are glad to learn from his preface that he is now engaged on the wider and more promising field of comparative work, the harvest of which will be anticipated with impatience. Meanwhile let us not part from him without a word of recognition for the astonishing patience, painstaking diligence, and scientific caution and accuracy shown in his work, qualities which one takes as a matter of course in a Privatdocent of a German university, but which would be regarded in any other case with wonder and admiration. JOSEPH JACOBS. VIII.-NEW BOOKS. [These Notes (by various hands) do not exclude Critical Notices later on.] Francis Bacon: An Account of his Life and Works. By EDWIN A. ABBOTT, D.D., Author of Bacon and Essex and Editor of Bacon's Essays; formerly Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. London: Macmillan & Co., 1885. Pp. xxxix., 508. After an The author, who had previously done good work upon Bacon, has ended by writing this considerable volume when he started with the design of compressing all he had to say within the compass of a short "Literature Primer". It is an independent account of Bacon's life, character and works, and has features that give it no small interest and value. argumentative "Introduction" (pp. V.-xxix.), turning chiefly upon a disputed incident in the Chancellor's judicial career, it gives, first, a summary of " Events in Bacon's Life and Times" (pp. xxxi.-ix.) which, besides being otherwise useful, helps to fill in those parts of the following narrative that are (as in the closing years) less adequate than they might be. The "Life fills 331 pp., and, if it does not give evidence of special familiarity with the political history of the period which it covers, yet presents a view of Bacon's action throughout that is always well considered and often shows genuine insight. Especially notable is the final statement of the “problem" of Bacon's character, with the "solution" that his moral derelictions (1) were justified in his own eyes "by the hope that if he rose to eminence in the State he should have a larger command of industry and ability to help him in his philosophic work"; (2) did not appear such, because of his high estimate of his own character, sustained not only by his "consciousness of vast plans of universal philanthropy, but also by an habitual inaccuracy of mind combined with an unusually sanguine disposition," making him "always take the most favourable views of everything that concerned himself". Here, especially with his second point, Dr. Abbott surely transfixes the mark. Part ii., "Bacon's Works," without pretending to go very far into scientific or philosophic matters, is comprehensive and instructive; there is only, at p. 410, a somewhat uncalled-for outburst against that deeper kind of philosophical inquiry which is not therefore to be made light of because Bacon had no aptitude for it. After some Appendices, more or less philosophic in character, the book ends with an Index that is most happily redolent of Bacon at his best-as the master of all who write. M. Tulli Ciceronis Academica. The Text revised and explained by JAMES S. REID, M.L., Fellow and Assistant Tutor of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; University Lecturer in Roman History. London: Macmillan & Co., 1885. Pp. x., 371. Mr. Reid in putting forth this elaborate edition of Cicero's treatise expresses the opinion that "there is no ancient philosophical work which ought to be of greater interest to modern students of philosophy, and particularly to English students, than the Academica". The arguments of the New Academy against dogmatism are, he contends, essentially identical with the most important sceptical arguments of modern times; and the Stoic reply that the criterion of certitude is simply our conviction of the truth of our impressions is the only reply that it has ever been found possible to make to the sceptical position. He protests against the excessive depreciation of Cicero as a philosopher by recent historians, explaining it by political partisanship. Cicero, he contends, was essentially not a politician but a man of letters. He was not an original philosopher; but he had profound philosophical learning; and in his time no one sought for originality in philosophy. The question of Cicero's accuracy as a translator and interpreter of the Greeks does not seem to the present editor to be settled; but from his own studies he has formed a very favourable opinion of it; "confirmations of Cicero's accuracy," he says, "often come to light in the most unexpected quarters". He argues that the defects of bad arrangement, want of lucidity, &c., with which Cicero. has been charged, may very well be due to his Greek originals; probably nothing but the framework of the dialogues, "the local scenery, the illustrations from Roman history and the connecting links" are of his own invention. Mr. Reid's historical discussion of the philosophical schools of the age of Cicero and his relations to each of them as well as to individual teachers is very full. Works of THOMAS HILL GREEN, late Fellow of Balliol College, and Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford. Edited by R. L. NETTLESHIP, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. Philosophical Works. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1885. Pp. xxvii., 541. Vol. I. This edition will include all Green's printed works except the Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford, 1883), and also à selection from his unpublished papers. The promise, in another volume, of such new matter is hardly more welcome than the collection, in the present one, of his two Introductions to Hume, with his later Articles on contemporary English psychology, as represented by Lewes and Mr. Spencer. It is well to have the famous Introductions' in accessible form, apart from Hume's works, and it would very usefully lighten an otherwise excellent edition of Hume if in future it should be issued without the Introductions' that made it so unwieldy. The later Articles, filling about a third of the present volume, are five in number, including the one (v.) in which Green replied to Mr. R. Hodgson's defence of Mr. Spencer, and one (iv.), on Lewes's doctrine of the Social Medium, that has not been previously published, being withheld, at the time when it was written (1878), on account of Lewes's death. "In reprinting, a few obvious corrections have been made in the text, and the division into sections and marginal analysis, which the author had made for the 'Introductions' to Hume, have been continued through the rest of the volume," except in the case of Article v. The Logic of Definition: Explained and Applied. By WILLIAM L. DAVIDSON, M.A., Minister of Bourtie. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1885. Pp. xxiv., 353. The author of this work has endeavoured (1) to formulate and expound the principles of Definition and (2) to apply them. The spheres of application are mainly-the Dictionary, the School-book, Philosophical Vocabulary, Philosophical Questions, and Taxological Biology. He has kept constantly in view the wants of the student of philosophy and of the teacher, seeking also to be helpful to Dictionary-compilers and writers of educational manuals. An Appendix (pp. 319-30) gives some account of Boëthius with an abstract of his De Divisione. Some discussions now incorporated with the work have appeared in past numbers of MIND. Critical Notice will follow. Outlines of a new System of Political, Civilisation and Progress: being the Religious and Social Philosophy. Longmans, Green & Co., 1885. The "New Organon” (Part i.) is the study of the mind as a concrete whole, in the manner of the "seers," such as Carlyle: this method the author aims at reconciling with the scientific method of Comte and Mr. Spencer. "The Goal” (Part ii.),“ the end that Nature has at heart," is "the expansion and elevation of the individual mind ". Liberty and expansion are ends in themselves, order and duty are only means." The error of Comte's politics was that, instead of the elevation and expansion of the individual, he made the order and stability of society as a whole his chief concern. In Comte's view of religion (Part iii., "The Religion of Humanity") there is "a confusion of planes ". Religion, in its true and final form, will have no effect on Action, but will be restricted to giving that harmony and satisfaction to the Intellectual, Moral and Emotional sides of our nature, which is necessary to their balanced and healthy activity." (Part iv., “Religion".) Its object must in the end be "a divine mind behind the world"; it cannot cease to be in some sense anthropomorphic. The last two Parts of the book (v., "Government," vi., "Theory of Progress") are chiefly concerned with more special political theories. "The material and social conditions of men are, the author holds, "the controlling factor in civilisation and progress". "Mr. Spencer, by attaching the problem of Civilisation to a remote, abstract and impersonal law of Nature, rather than to immediate, human and concrete causes, has left the problem still unsolved." On the other hand, civilisation is not to be best advanced, as Comte held, "by primarily addressing the hearts and imaginations of men, by appeals to their consciences and exhortations to duty and self-sacrifice"; but "by ameliorating the material and social conditions of men, in the belief that, out of the improved conditions, the higher morality will arise of itself". The Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte. By EDWARD CAIRD, LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons, 1885. Pp. xx., 249. The central principle of Comte's philosophy ("the vital spot," the Achilles' heel") is the idea of a "subjective synthesis". This idea is an advance on the individualism of Locke and Hume with which Comte started, and from which critics of his system such as Littré and Mill never escaped; but because he was unconscious of the philosophic movement of which he formed part, of his real agreement with modern " "metaphysicians," who, equally with himself, reject the abstract individualism of the last century, his synthesis remained imperfect. His imagination had, indeed, escaped from the presuppositions of his understanding, and in the adoration of space and of the earth "optimism, which is rejected at the beginning as truth, is brought back in the end as poetry". But this optimism can be theoretically justified; for, when we once depart from the purely individual point of view and, with Comte, regard man as the reality and the individual as a mere abstraction, we are compelled to seek a higher unity in which the opposition of Nature and Humanity also disappears. Comte's position resembles Kant's; it is intermediate between the philosophy of the last century and that of Kant's idealistic successors. ferior to Kant in power of speculative analysis, Comte was able to give a kind of insight into the social needs of modern society such as we could not expect to gain from Kant. The defect of his synthesis is that it is not "subjective" and not "relative" enough. A step further would have brought him to see the identity of a complete subjective synthesis with an In |