Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/104

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THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW.
[Vol. III.

If in practical life those acts are pronounced immoral which are done for their author's own private interest at the expense of the common weal, so in the intellectual realm those works are immoral in which the author attempts to pass off his own peculiar notions for universal truths. There is a certain individualism in speculation which is as reprehensible as individualism in conduct. Three-fourths of this work of Dr. Gould's is excellent. Had he omitted the pseudo-philosophical framework and published the rest as a series of essays, he would have produced a highly interesting and morally elevating book. His style is generally clear and forcible, though too often marred by such strange words as "bulemic" (p. 19), "isomer" (p. 80), "organ of action" (p. 94), "chronicity" (p. 150), "illogic insatisfaction" (p. 169), etc. His illustrations are peculiarly rich and suggestive. Numerous quotations might be made as happy as the following: "In this great chess game (of life) selfishness is the ruled-out absurdity of seeking to crown your own pawn before it has honorably reached the king's row" (p. 269). The presence of so much of the true spirit of piety and reverence amid such continuous denunciations of current religious forms, affords new evidence to the ineradicable nature of the religious consciousness. That an A.M. and M.D. could write such an unphilosophical work on a philosophical subject is a painful reminder of the inadequacy of the general philosophical training in our educational institutions.

F. C. French.


Des phenomènes de synopsie (audition colorée) Photismes—schèmes visuels—personnifications—par Th. Flourony, Professeur à l'Université de Genève. Avec 82 figures. Paris, Alcan, 1893.—8vo, pp. 259.

Those who remember Professor Flournoy's little work, Metaphysique et psychologie (Geneva, 1890), much the best argument (in the judgment of the present critic) that has appeared in favor of the 'parallelism' or 'double-aspect theory' of body and mind, will be glad to greet, in this work on a so much dryer subject, some of the same qualities of style that distinguished the former book. M. Flournoy's new material consists of about 700 answers, positive and negative, to a circular of inquiry sent out by himself and his student, M. Ed. Claparède. He infers from his data that more than one person in seven has some form of fixed optical associate peculiar to himself, attached either to sensations of sound, and to certain