LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE.

FRANCE.

M. G. MILHAUD just publishes his Leçons sur les origines de la science grecque, a highly interesting work, from which the students. to whom it is addressed will derive much profit. The source from which M. Milhaud has drawn his materials is the remarkable and learned work of M. PAUL TANNERY, Pour l'histoire de la science hellene (de Thales à Empedocle). Although this latter work dates back to 1887, I must mention it here as an authority of the first order for the study of scientific theories.

To construct the history of science is tantamount to a construction of the history of philosophy. Every serious philosophical education should commence at this point. How can we estimate the worth of the theories which have succeeded one another in the progress of the centuries if we are incompetent to judge of the facts upon which scientists and philosophers have successively founded their hypotheses? Modern doctrines would resemble fairy tales to one who did not give some study to the habits grafted in the human mind by the disciplines of times gone by, and to the new conditions which a new science imposes on thought. What a host of intermediary links exist between these centuries of Greek history which M. Milhaud' and M. Tannery call to life again, and the modern epoch to which M. CH. ADAM brings us in his book, La philosophie en France (Première moitié du XIX. siècle)!

1I shall simply mention to-day M. Milhaud's dissertation for the degree of doctor, which he publishes under the title, Essai sur les conditions et les limites de la certitude logique.

M. Adam's book is a fine performance, and I may recommend it to persons desirous of becoming acquainted with the evolution of ideas in our country. Its analyses are made with lucidity, sobriety, and with no pretension except that of exactitude. In the first part

we see marshalled M. de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert, the representatives of a movement effected entirely within the bosom of Catholicism; in the second part, Maine de Biran, Ampère, Royer Collard, Cousin, and Jouffroy, a philosophy of half-blood, as it were, which remained too Voltairian for religion, too metaphysical for science, and too subjective for practice; in the third part, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Jean Reynaud, and finally Auguste Comte, men of unequal ability, but all of whom represented the positive philosophy, took a strong interest in real life, and conceived philosophy in its last offices as a social and religious discipline. To these belong the future, -we can see it in the lasting influence of Comte,-for they had a very just feeling of the needs of modern times. M. Adam cheerfully recognises this, and I am not the one to reproach him for his preferences in this matter.

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Two

In the departments of physiology and psychology I shall mention first the French translation by M. P. Langlois of A. Mosso's book, La fatigue intellectuelle et physique, upon the whole an excellent, instructive, and pleasant work, but slightly discursive. conclusions, in my opinion, follow from M. Mosso's researches. The first is, that although fatigue is the condition of progress, it ought not to be imposed upon man too early in life; the other, that we are complicating life too much and constantly rendering it more artificial. The education of children, being confided to common pedants, often begins with thwarting nature, and an excessively refined civilisation ends with deforming it. Taine said one day, in the pardonable freedom of conversation: "The prevalent system of education is one of the greatest abuses of the present century; but we must not speak evil of it, at least openly, for there are many people who make their living by it." Meanwhile, serious educators may be found, and these will profit by Mosso's work.

But it is still not said that fatigue has no other cause than productive labor, the overwork of brain and muscles. It also springs from vice, and the degeneration, which arises from social illness, constantly contributes to augment it. To this question of fatigue DR. PAUL AUBRY's work, La contagion du meurtre, étude d'anthropologie criminelle, is devoted.

Dr. Aubry shows by examples that murder is contagious, and that this contagion is spread by the habits of families, by the living together of prisoners, by the witnessing of public executions, and, finally, by the press. On this last point Dr. A. Corre, who has written the preface to this work, is not of the same opinion with M. Aubry. The latter asks for laws repressing the liberty of writing and of speech; the former is a partisan, though an uneasy one, of the absolute liberty of the daily press, books, and speech. Good reasons, pro and con, are not wanting, yet I think that it is possible and prudent to prohibit at least the illustration of crimes in public journals, and so prevent the spread of this contagion by pictures, which are so suggestive. With respect to the discretion to be observed in newspaper reports, the good-will and assent of journalists are hardly to be expected; they would be loth to sacrifice reasons of interest to reasons of morals. Did we not hear, only a few years ago, the representatives of the Parisian press declare legitimate the publication of documents abstracted from the depositories of the courts of justice!

"The means of bettering this condition of affairs," thinks M. Corre, "is to be sought wholly in a system of instruction and education fully adapted to the wants of modern society." No doubt. But that is sooner said than done, while in the meantime the dangers of a life without religious or scientific discipline are aggravated. Even certain moral habitudes which take the place of rules in life are falling into desuetude.

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Restorations are improbable and invariably inefficacious.

One

is obliged to recognise this fact anew after the perusal of such studies as those put forth by J. E. ALAUX, under the title of Philosophie morale et politique. M. Alaux is a man of elevated thought

and possesses a deep sense for the difficulties which weigh down upon us. But the spiritualistic deism to which he has remained faithful no longer satisfies us, and it would scarcely seem as if the unity of human consciousness was to establish itself in the future on the principles of the old spiritualism. That the reaction has been excessive I do not deny, and every voice merits the privilege of an audience if only it is sincere.

Still, it is impossible for me to attach much importance to attempts at the rejuvenation of existing religions, which are especially manifested in the Reform Churches, more flexible than the Roman. This latter, indeed, has picked up again in the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas a certain philosophical direction; but I see by recent works that the most advanced members of the clergy do not dare to renounce the doctrine of miracles. To seek to-day one's point of support in ignorance approaches the tactics of despair. I shall refer the curious reader of works of a theological character to the reviews of M. F. PILLON in the L'Année philosophique, 1894.

There is much talk about the Buddhistic propaganda. It is with us a mere fad. Even persons who are afflicted with a taste for the supernatural and the marvellous do not seem disposed to fetter themselves with the rules of the past. With much more rea

son, therefore, do our liberal minds dismiss with a smile our few panegyrists of the Asiatic religions. "There is no reason why a man who has been released from one prison would strive to enter another," we read in the sprightly and forcible Current Topics of General Trumbull, to whose memory I may be permitted to address a word of sincere and respectful homage from France.

I have not to speak of purely literary works here. There are, however, two studies of Victor Hugo which I should mention, as they relate partly to psychology. The one is from the pen of M. CH. RENOUVIER, Victor Hugo le poète, (A. Colin, publisher,)1 the other by M. L. MABILLEAU, Victor Hugo, (Hachette, publisher).

Works not thus excepted are published by F. Alcan.

The reader will find here some excellent pages on the question of images and imagination, with many valuable remarks.

The last work of M. CH. LETOURNEAU, L'évolution littéraire dans les diverses races humaines (L. Battaille, publisher), raises a question of broad scope. M. Letourneau continues in this volume the laborious investigations which he has undertaken regarding the evolution of the fundamental facts of society, evolution, family, property, politics, law, and religion. It is not possible, one will think, to attack subjects as diverse as these with equal competency. And

the author's criticisms are not always exact. He has reached, however, solid results, agreeing in his main points with M. ERNST GROSSE who published simultaneously in Germany a remarkable work under the title Die Anfänge der Kunst.

M. Letourneau points out to us the original union among all nations of dancing with music and poetry; the exceptional importance of dancing from the point of view of social interests; the origin, in the pantomime or mimetic dance, of the drama, which would be thus a primitive form and not appearing by necessity after the epic, as the exclusive study of the Greek classics have induced people to believe. He has clearly pointed out the predominance of rhythm in the music and poetry of savages without mentioning their feeble sense for musical intervals, which is frequently almost null according to the inquiries of M. Grosse.

But to what extent is the fate of literature connected with the social conditions in which it appears? M. Grosse responds to this question with the invocation of an economical element, productiona precise criterion, but one which becomes insufficient as soon as we go beyond the primitive stages of humanity. M. Letourneau, whose researches properly extend further back, has sought to trace literary evolution to political evolution, making this last consist chiefly in the passage of the communal clan or republican rule to a monarchical form of government. Unfortunately he does not develop his law with sufficient exactness and the passage or transition of which he speaks escapes us as soon as we replace his words "republic" and "monarchy" with actual facts.

But this remains true, that prolonged oppression, no matter