NEW BOOKS. 129 investigation of truth " as strictly as the man of science and the philoso- pher. For the creative artist, if he be of those whose works are not let die, is the bearer of an " instinct " which is the mysterious x equating his solidarity with the aspirations of the past and present, and his indi- vidual spontaneity ; and in giving play to that instinct he has, not in spite of, but by way of all that is most individual in that spontaneity, to make felt " the mighty fasces of myriad human wills ". Two chapters on the critical gift and its utility are not among the least interesting in the book. If the artist represents nature, the critic re-represents it in inter- preting the work of art, and should be therefore as sympathetically dis- posed in approaching his material as is the efficient artist in his own sphere. He should combine the artist's sensitivity with the analytic and inductive insight of the philosopher. In the final chapter on the future of plastic art, M. Fierens-Gevaert, while believing that inasmuch as art is a perennial need in social life, the pursuit of it will live, is not en- couraged by the prospects of highest art-production under democracy and socialism. Its first fruits lead us to look for a revival only in the minor arts of decoration. It may, however, strike the reader that he, like many others, has but bowled over the straw man he or the pygmeen thinkers he quotes from, whoever these may be, have set up. Wagner, Millet, and Whitman, as Edward Carpenter points out (Progressive Review, i., 1), were the harbingers in art of the tendencies he is apprehensive about, and they constitute not a poor beginning. His final exordium is on behalf of a revival of architecture, and whereas his opening chapter pleads, as against the tendency to rapprocher and combine and treat alike the different arts, that " the splendour of their individuality" should be respected, he ends by urging the plastic artist to apply his finer vision to architecture, and the architect to revert, as of old, to Nature. Possibly both must wait till their creations can become the expression of a worthier and humaner social and economic system. Finally, with the more intensive and the more catholic historical know- ledge of to-day such sentences as this should be impossible : " La societe antique n'a pas connu la charite, 1'amour des petits ; done nous diffe"rons des Grecs et des Remains ". C. A. F. RHYS DAVIDS. Theorie Nouvelle de la Vie. Par FELIX LE DANTEC, Ancien eleve de 1'Ecole normale superieure, Docteur es sciences. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1896. Pp. 320. The mam novelty in M. Dantec's theory is the emphasis laid on as- similation as the fundamental and essential vital process. All other functioning is merely the concomitant of the building up of living sub- stance by a system of chemical interactions. Dissimilation is connected not with vital activity, but with its absence. The author supports his theory with great vigour, and he shows exceptional clearness of thought and exposition. He begins with a careful study of the life of unicellular organisms, or " complete plastids," as he calls them. Such plastids do not depend for their life and growth on chemical interaction with other plastids. In multicellular organisms the reverse is the case. The book is certainly worth reading, though the author seems somewhat hasty and dogmatic in laying down the law on a subject which is so enormously complex and so enveloped in mystery. In particular, he does not seem to see that the more completely mechanical is the explanation of vital process, in the abstract, the more urgent is the need of a teleological view of its actual concrete development. 9
