NEW BOOKS. 263 religious act. Das Denken ist auch ivahrer Gottesdienst. The truth is that a purely intellectual being would not be religious at all. In his concluding essay Dr. Sterrett takes up again the problem of authority in religion, and discusses its ultimate basis. As he leaves out of view the ethnic religions, the question becomes, What is the authority of Christianity ? A point the author lays much stress on is, the validity and relative rationality of the historic Church and its creeds ; and he rightly urges that the individual Christian consciousness is essentially mediated by the historic Christian consciousness. He seems to suggest that the ultimate authority is a fusion of both factors, the subjective and the objective. Yet the weight must fall on one side or the other : and from Dr. Sterrett's standpoint it must be the reason of the philosopher which is the final authority, for he admits the capacity of speculative thought to criticise and translate into a higher form the historic doc- trines of the Church. Indeed this is conceded when it is said, " Philo- sophy gives the highest authority to religion by demonstrating its absolute not merely its psychological necessity" (p. 276). In other words, we justify religion because we can think out its meaning and value in the system of the universe. The writer's faith in philosophy is excessive. Those who start from the same speculative basis as he does come to the most divergent conclusions on the nature of the Absolute and the value of Christian dogmas. Dr. McTaggart's view of the Absolute is diametrically opposed to Dr. Sterrett's, yet both draw their inspiration from the same philosophic source. I venture to think Dr. Sterrett's spiritual Theism is the result of a personal value- judgment rather than the logical outcome of the speculative theory he adopts. One or two minor points may be noted. Dr. Sterrett is rather fond of speaking of ' Kantian agnosticism,' yet, as he must know, the term is mis- leading. For Kant held we have a real knowledge of God, though only in a practical regard. On page 64 Paulsen is classified among Ritschlians. This is inaccurate, for though Paulsen has points of contact with the School, he definitely dissociates himself from the Eitschlian hostility to metaphysics. The reference to Aristotle's Metaphysics on page 104 should be to book xii., and on pages 102 and 105 common Latin phrases are wrongly given. Though we do not agree with Dr. Sterrett on a good many points, it is but fair to say that he has written a vigorous and in- teresting book which will repay perusal. GEO. GALLOWAY. The Psychology of Beauty. By ETHEL D. PUFFER. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. vii, 286. fe have here an interesting book written in an attractive manner. "le author believes that with one important modification of Hegel's lefinition of Beauty the way is opened from the traditional philosophy 3f aesthetics to a sound psychological theory of the means by which the snd of Beauty is attained. That is to say, we might hope " to express the idea to sense " if we could find for it a form-quality, or subjectively, in the phrase of Kant, a form of reflexion. This must be a combination of unity and totality, i.e., self-completeness. An object is absolutely self-complete only and this is the heart of the author's position when it produces a self-complete experience for that subject : " The subject should be not a mirror of perfection, but a state of perfection ". The author is opposed to the " expression " or " significance " theories of the Beautiful : " The yellow primrose needs not to remind us of the harmony of the universe, or to have any ulterior significance whatever, if it gives
