Die Philosophischen Auffassungen des Mitleids. Eine Historisch-Kritische Studie. Von Dr. K. voN ORELLI, Pfarrer in Sissach. Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Webers, Verlag, 1912. Pp. iv, 219. M. 6. This monograph falls into two unequal parts. In Part I. a remarkably complete historical account is given of the conception of pity or compassion. Beginning with Empedocles, Dr. Orelli states the views held by the chief ancient philosophers. Patristic and scholastic philosophy is laid under contribution, and full justice is done to the conceptions of the moderns. Of the Fathers Dr. Orelli writes con amore; with the scholastic philosophy he is apparently not so much in sympathy. The only Doctor mentioned is St. Thomas, and the account of his doctrine consists largely of quotations from the Summa. But, after all, St. Thomas represents only one side, though that is the most important side, of scholasticism. On the particular point with which this study deals, much of value is to be found in St. Bonaventure. Dr. Orelli's attention might be directed to the Diaeta Salutis where St. Bonaventure deals with the threefold nature and causes of compassion, and to the Formula Aurea in which there is a suggestive treatment of its various grades or levels. Dr. Orelli might also profitably have indicated the influence of St. Augustine on St. Bonaventure. The general philosophical value of the historical portion of the volume is seriously impaired by the author's failure to indicate the relationship and development of the various views he mentions. The transitions from thinker to thinker are of the most perfunctory kind: to take a typical example, we are shot from Bacon into the presence of Descartes with a mere apology for an introduction-"Grundlicher als Bacon hat sich Descartes mit dem Mitleid beschäftigt" (p. 51). Part II. gives, with copious references to Part I., a systematic account of pity from various standpoints. From the psychological point of view, it possesses emotional and intellectual aspects. It admits of analysis into three essential elements-the ego which pities, the object (person or thing) pitied, and the actual suffering pitied. It is hard to see that this analysis is not both incomplete and supererogatory. If the analysis is to be exhaustive, the actual feeling of pity which the ego has is also an element in the whole. And does it really tell us anything about pity to analyse' it in this way? After stating the ethical aspects of pity, the author concludes with an estimate of its aesthetic and metaphysical significance. Esthetically, pity is valuable as an effective principle of contrast, including the two moments of pleasure and pain. Metaphysically, its nature manifests itself in the two moments of particularity and universality. On the whole, the book is marked by erudition rather than by insight, and it leaves a most unpleasant sense of the resultlessness of the struggle for knowledge. G. A. JOHNSTON. Bericht über den V. Kongress für experimentelle Psychologie in Berlin, 1912. Ed. by Prof. F. SCHUMANN. Leipzig: Barth, 1912. xxv, 324. M. 11. Pp. A summary report on the Psychological Methods of testing Intelligence, by W. Stern, occupies the first 103 pages of this volume. It is a very full, clear, and useful discussion of the methods, results, and prospects of this recent development of pedagogical psychology. The new field of work has been plotted and probed, but it is evident that the great profits expected cannot immediately be realised. Careful critical examination of every detail of method, test, and end in view, and the gradual consolidation of the extract must precede the attempt to base far-reaching reforms on the results of the new study. The rest of the volume is filled with summaries of papers read to the congress. These are long enough to be of considerable interest. They serve to indicate the most recent efforts of psychology and give a forecast of works soon to be published. The full text of an address by Götz Martius on Synthetic and Analytic Psychology is given pp. 261-281). This is an interesting attempt to remould our views of psychology for the benefit of a critical idealism. For example: objective space and objective time are most closely connected with subjective, felt, space and subjective, felt, time. The former are but immediate space and time experiences brought into the form of law (p. 270). Martius's theses are these: (1) Synthetic psychology [e.g. Wundt's, along with its 'creative synthesis'] proceeds on assumptions that are not necessary for an exact empirical explanation of the fats, but rest on a scientific scheme for turning essence into existence. (2) The results of experimental psychology contradict the methodological demands of synthetic psychology. The application of the principles of the latter rather complicates, than simplifies, the grouping of the observed facts into laws. (3) Psychology is naturally an analytical science, the elements discovered are not ultimate facts in the metaphysical sense. (4) Psychical life falls within the general phenomena of life. The development of the soul rests on immanent spiritual principles. The regularity of the flow of psychical events is a consequence of individual development and is not referable to the elements. (5) The phenomena of spiritual life are referable to individual psychical processes, but they constitute a superindividual reality (p. 281). The spiritual world is ontologically foreshadowed neither in the underlying materiality nor in the sensations (p. 277). HENRY J. WATT. Band I. Hauptwerke der Philosophie in originalgetreuen Neudrucken. This is a precise reprint, page for page, of Lotze's History of Esthetic, originally published in 1868. The left-hand title-page from which the above heading is taken, replaces the left-hand title-page of the original, which described the book as volume vii. of The History of the Sciences in Germany for Modern Times, and was marked with the crown and arms of Bavaria and the imprint of J. G. Cotta's firm at Munich. The right-hand title-page precisely reproduces the original, bearing the title of the book with the arms and imprint as just described. Two excellent indices, of names and of subjects, have been added, which will be a great boon to the reader. It is pleasant to see that an interest in Lotze maintains itself; especially if one might infer that the present republication indicates a general demand, whereas the original issue of the work was due to the 'Historische Commission bei der Königl. Academie der Wissenschaften ". Lotze mediates between the classical philosophy of Germany and the tendencies of to-day in a way that has not ceased to be valuable. B. BOSANQUET. Aristoteles Politik. Neu Ubersetzt und mit einer Einleitung und Erklärenden Anmerkungen Versehen. E. ROLFES. (Philosophische Bibliothek, vol. vii.) Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1912. Pp. xvi, 323. An excellent German version of the Politics. The translation is accurate and, so far as I can judge of style in a language which is not my own, spirited. The notes are at once useful and brief. The Introduction is marked by sound sense and is commendably short. It is specially pleasant to see that Dr. Rolfes has returned to the traditional order of the successive books. The scholars of half-a-century ago were often admirably learned as well as indefatigably industrious, but it is curious to see how many eccentricities of judgment they have bequeathed to us, and how singularly unable they seem to have been to appreciate the worth of an old and well-established tradition. A. E. T. Der Phaidros in der Entwickelung der Ethik under der Reformgedunken Platons. V. POTEMPA. Breslau, 1913. Pp. vii, 68. A careful and sensible degree “thesis” on the argument and drift of the Phaedrus, by a Roman Catholic student of Breslau University. The pamphlet affords a useful analysis of the rather complicated structure of the dialogue, and is, rightly I think, so far divergent from the interpretation of Thompson that it lays considerable stress on the intrinsic importance of the ethical teaching, which Thompson tends to regard as merely subordinate to the theory of the philosophical use of rhetoric. The tone of the discussion of raidepaoría and the attitude to it of Socrates and Plato strikes me as exceedingly sane. It is to be hoped that Dr. Potempa will continue to interest himself in Platonic study. Einleitung in die Philosophie. Von W. JERUSALEM. Seventh to ninth thousand. Vienna and Leipzig: W. Braumüller, 1913. Pp. xiii, 402. This well-known text-book, which was for a time out of print, now appears in a new and enlarged edition, and adorned with an excellent portrait of the author. The additions, which amount to over 120 pages, are chiefly in the departments of sociology, pedagogy, and aesthetics, and will doubtless enhance the usefulness and popularity of the work. F. C. S. SCHILLER. Die Anfänge der griechischen Philosophie. Von JOHN BURNET, Übersetzt von Else Schenkl. Leipzig and Berlin : Teubner. Pp. v, 343. This is a translation of the second edition of Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy by Mme. Schenkl, the wife of the well-known editor of Epictetus, who has given her the benefit of his advice in all technical matters. The translation reaches a very high level of excellence and compares very favourably with most English translations of German works on similar subjects. It is dedicated to the Eighty-fifth Congress of German Scientific Investigators and Physicians held at Vienna last September. The translator has some amusing observations on the difference between English and German style in her Preface. Disegno Storico delle Dottrine Pedagogiche. Da GIOVANNI MARCHESINI. Roma: Athenaeum, Societa Editrice Romana. Pp. 260. Prof. Marchesini of Padua is a fertile and suggestive writer on philosophical and educational subjects. His Le Finzioni dell' anima, and his Pedagogia Generale were recently reviewed in MIND, and the volume before us, though little more than a bird's-eye view of a great field, shows synthetic grasp and insight. It is an historical sketch in outline of the development of Pedagogical doctrines from their beginning in Classical times, and of the ideals which they have generated. As the author shows, the history of Pedagogy is connected with, but must not be confused with the history of Education. Pedagogy is the Science, Education is the Art. The former deals with theory, the latter with practice. Practice in all spheres of activity often lags very far in the rear of theory, and in nothing is this more true than in Education. Many of the ideas which were theoretically established by the thinkers of ancient Greece are only now beginning to be systematically carried out in practical systems. Our author therefore deliberately refrains from discussing the varieties and gradual modifications of scholastic institutions, on the ground that the history of Pedagogy ought to be kept distinct from the history of Education. The book is divided into two parts. The former with a broad brush paints the story of the growth of educational theory in three panels. The first covers the whole movement from the time of Plato to the beginning of the eighteenth century. When we mention that only two pages are allotted to Plato, and the same to Aristotle, it will be clear that there is not much space for detail. The second section or panel is called the "Golden Age of Pedagogy "—and therein is set forth the quickening of Pedagogical thought by the ideas of Rousseau and Pestalozzi. The third section confines itself to the characteristic doctrines of the nineteenth century as represented by their exponents, Froebel, Herbart, Ardigo. Part II. contains a review of the principal problems which have led to discussion in general Pedagogy, such as the scientific criterion, the end of education, formalism, the intuitive method, discipline, the process of instruction, etc. This second part is intended on the one hand to complete from a more special point of view the general exposition of the doctrines, and on the other hand to collect synthetically the informative criteria. Prof. Marchesini has a peculiar fondness for appendices. There is a long one at the end of each section of the book. While it may be admitted that these appendices contain much valuable matter, and that an author is justified in selecting for his purpose from the material at his disposal, it would, in our opinion, have been better if much of the matter thus served up in appendix form had been fully digested and worked into the actual structure of the book. JOHN EDGAR. Received also: James Mark Baldwin, History of Psychology, A Sketch and an Interpretation, London, Watts & Co., 1913, vol. i., "From the Earliest Times to John Locke," pp. xv, 136; vol. ii," From John Locke to the Present Time," pp. vii, 168. Meyrick Booth, Rudolf Eucken, His Philosophy and Influence, London and Leipsic, Fisher Unwin, 1913, pp. xxviii, 297. C. W. Valentine, An Introduction to the Experimental Psychology of Beauty, London and Edinburgh, T. C. & E. C. Jack; New York, Dodge Publishing Co., pp. 94. Vernon Lee, The Beautiful, An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics, Cambridge, University Press, 1913, pp. viii, 158. Mrs. Anna Hude, The Evidence for Communication with the Dead, London and Leipsic, Fisher Unwin, 1913, pp. viii. 351. R. H. Cole, Mental Diseases, A Text-book of Psychiatry for Medical Students and Practitioners, with fifty-two Illustrations and Plates, London, University of London Press, 1913, pp. x, 343. Estelle W. Stead, My Father, Personal and Spiritual Reminiscences, London, Heinemann, 1913, pp. xii, 351. Cyril Bruyn Andrews, Life, Emotion, and Intellect, London and Leipsic, Fisher Unwin, 1913, pp. 95. John P. McLaurin, Elocution; A Product of Evolution, An Examination of the Phenomena in Speaking, and an Endeavour to shew that Elocution is a Science, a Philosophy, and a Branch of Natural History, Glasgow, W. & R. Holmes, pp. 127. G. F. Arnold, Psychology applied to Legal Evidence and Other Constructions of Law, Second Edition, Revised and Re-written in parts, Calcutta, Thacker, Spink & Co., 1913, pp. xi, 607. G. F. Stout, A Manual of Psychology, Third Edttion, Revised and Enlarged, London, Clive, University Tutorial Press, 1913, pp. xvii, 769. Maria Montessori, Pedagogical Anthropology, Translated from the Italian by Frederick Taber Cooper, with 163 Illustrations and Diagrams, London, Heinemann, 1913, pp. xi, 508. Ernesto Lugaro, Modern Problems in Psychiatry, Translated by David Orr, M.D., and R. G. Rows, M.D., with a Foreword by Sir T. S. Clouston, M.D., LL.D. Manchester, University Press, 1913, pp. vii, 305. Philosophy of the Practical, Economic and Ethic, Translated from the Italian of Benedetto Croce by Douglas Ainslie, London, Macmillan, 1913, pp. xxxvii, 591. Benedetto Croce, The Philosophy of Gambattista Vico, Translated by Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, Translated with Introduction by G. D. H. Cole (Everyman's Library), London, Dent; New York, Dutton & Co. pp. xlvii, 287. Maurice Maeterlinck, Our Eternity, Translated by Alexander Teixeira De Mattos, London, Methuen, 1913, pp. vii, 243. Atta Troll, From the German of Heinrich Heine by Herman Scheffauer with an Introduction by Dr. Oscar Levy, and some Pen-and-Ink |