144 H. STEINTHAL'S ABRISS DEE SPRACHWISSENSCHAFT, i. no co-ordinating : the active mind is reduced to a chaos of disconnected impulses and desires. The physiological ground of these disorders is probably a disturbance of the organic functions, of general sensibility, mobility, &c. The review of the phenomena of volitional disease is completed by a reference to that condition of perfect annihilation of will and of action as a whole, which shows itself in ecstacy and in som- nambulism. In these conditions we see the tendency of contem- plation or of deep reflection to inhibit action, which is observable in normal life, fully realised. This state of mind, so well described by one of its subjects, Saint Theresa, involves a sup- pression of feeling and of active impulse. Pure ideation, com- monly of a very abstract character, sums up the psychical condition. The absence of all motor impulse in the case accords with the fact, noted above, that as ideas become general or abstract their tendency to initiate movement lessens. With a brief reference to the phenomena of somnambulism the author brings his interesting study to a close. JAMES SULLY. Abriss der Sprachicissenschaft. Von Prof. Dr. H. STEINTHAL. Erster Teil. Erste und Zweite Abteilungen. Berlin : Diimmler, 1881. Pp. xxv, 496. One cannot but wonder at the apathy displayed by the English school of psychology toward the remarkable contributions of the Herbartians, and more especially of Lazarus and Steintbal, to comparative psychology and the science of language. The author of the present work is one of the most vigorous of German writers. Prof. Pott has somewhere said of him that he delights in putting the edge of a razor on his sentences, and none can doubt that he is rich in trenchant, pithy phrases. By most philologists in this country, and even in America, he is looked upon as a "mystic," and the general impression seems to be that, whatever his worth as a psychologist, in the realm of lan- guage his researches are of singularly little value. This opinion has arisen solely from an inadequate appreciation of the nature of the issues involved in the study of human speech. In this Outline of the Science of Language we miss the ' dithy- rambi ' of the earlier works, which used to leave the impression that the author must everywhere have the consciousness that everything w y as begun, nothing completed. Throwing his powers into the stream of the evolution of universal mind, Steinthal has created a new organ of psychological analysis, the value and scope of which will be differently estimated according to one's personal equation. Those who think that language is too gross a medium for a clear and exact analysis of psychical processes, may well be content with the abstract formulae which are here
