136 PHILOSOPHICAL PERIODICALS. sodium increases perceptual capacity, not only on the day itself but for the following day as well. The effect may be due to the removal of excitatory influences.] E. Kalischer. ' Analyse der aesthetischen Con- templation : Plastik und Malerei.' [By ' aesthetic contemplation ' is meant the mental process which may be termed specifically aesthetic. The mental attitude in contemplation is a psychological anomaly : there is intensive concentration of attention, while yet the normal range of consciousness (Enge des Bewusstseins] is transcended. Attention is focussed upon sensory impressions which, as part-contents of highly complex ideas, possess so great a power of reproduction that a minimum of sense datum releases a maximum of intellectual process. There is thus a peculiar relation established between the elements of conscious- ness and the complexes whose parts they are : between mental force or power and mental process or occurrence. All our mental force is collected in our concentration upon the sensory impressions ; but what the senses receive is minimal in comparison with the range and number of ideas which the impressions arouse, and which develop as if under mechanical stimulus, without the active participation of the psyche. The author seeks to explain the anomaly by drawing a parallel between the condi- tions governing certainty and regularity of reproduction and those governing artistic contemplation. The reproduced ideas (1) appear only in indirect vision and (2) possess concrete universality. The theory which most nearly approaches the author's, in spite of its radically different formulation, is that worked out by K. Lange in his Die bewusste Selbsttaeuschung als Kern des aesthetischen Genusses, 1895.] A. Fontana. ' Ueber die Wirkung des Eucain-B auf die Geschmack- sorgane.' [The author recommends the drug eucaine-B, whose formula he gives, in place of cocaine, for taste experiments. Its effect, like that of cocaine, is greatest in the case of bitter tastes. It has various ad- vantages over cocaine, if it is not altogether as effective. For all but bitter tastes, its operation must be controlled before experimentation, owing to individual differences.] A. Bernstein. ' Bemerkung zu der Arbeit von Dr. E. Storch ueber die Wahrnehmung musikalischer Ton- verhaeltnisse.' [Claim of priority for the statement that the substrate of musical thinking is given in the memory images of laryngeal move- ments.] Besprechungen. [W. Stern on Miinsterberg's Grundzuege der Psychologic, I. ; and A. Wreschner on K. Miiller's Naturivissenschaft- liche Seelenforschung, in. ; Wille, Hypnose, Zweck.] Literaturbericht. Bd. xxviii., Heft 5 und 6. L. Hirschlaff mit Unterstuetzung von H. C. Warren. ' Bibliographic des psychophysiologischen Literatur des Jahres 1900.' [3,482 titles, as against the 2,627 of the Psychological Review, published in March, 1901.] Bd. xxix., Heft 1. J. Volkelt. 'Die ent- wickelungsgeschichtliche Betrachtungsweise in der Aesthetik.' [The subject-matter of aesthetics is limited by genetic considerations in two ways ; for its principal problem is the establishment of the aesthetic norms recognised by the mature feeling (individual genesis) of the modern man (racial genesis). A universally valid aesthetics is an ideal, to be approximated at best in the fundamental chapters of an Esthetics, in no wise attainable in the portions that deal with the several aesthetic departments. But in spite of this double limitation, one may not speak of a genetic ' method ' or ' foundation ' in aesthetics. Genetic consider- ations are necessary, but can be introduced only on the assumption that an aesthetics based on the experience of the mature modern man has already been worked out, and by the mediation of an essentially psych- ological procedure. The ' systematic ' portion of aesthetics, in particular, must consist wholly in a working-over of first-hand aesthetic experience
