NEW BOOKS. 425 inscrutable, but as capable of being gradually gathered from its empirical working out in history, he will find that he has no reason to be ashamed of his preference for the teleological reading of the hieroglyphs of the cosmic history, and that his method has at least this indefeasible advan- tage over any other that it alone renders the course of events fully con- formable with that of the human mind, and so alone renders the cosmic story truly intelligible. F. C. S. SCHILLER. Christianity and Sex Problems. By HUGH NORTHCOTE, M.A. Phil- adelphia : Davis Co. (London : Medical Supply Association), 1906. Pp. 257. Price 8s. The author is an Anglican clergyman who has spent many years in New Zealand. He writes throughout from the standpoint of a liberal and comprehensive Christianity, discussing in order all the sexual difficulties and problems which are most frequently encountered in life. While the author's position is thus frankly Christian he stands apart from those writers of popular manuals on these subjects who moralise and dogmatise on a very slender basis of knowledge. He is in touch with the most competent scientific authorities on sexual questions, and he always treats with due consideration the arguments that oppose the conclusions he himself accepts. These conclusions are not in every case the most usual or conventional conclusions, but they are generally well worked out and brought to the touchstone of experience, so that they deserve respect even when they cannofc be accepted. The book will be chiefly valuable to clergymen and ministers, who are constantly called upon to give opinions and guidance on the matters here dealt with, but will also be found helpful and instructive by many others. HAVELOCK ELLIS. The Meaning of Good : a Dialogue. By G. LOWES DICKINSON. Third edition. London : Brinsley, Johnson & Ince, Limited. 1906. Pp. 224. Price 4s. 6d. Eeaders of MIND will welcome this third edition of a book with which most of them will be familiar, but which has lost nothing of its fresh- ness and suggestiveness since it was first reviewed in these pages (N. S., x., 413). Rather one may say that some of the characters in the book and their views have gained a fresh interest from their reappearance in a different setting in the author's latest book, A Modern Symposium. L'attention. Bibliotheque internat. de psych, experimentale. By W. B. PILLSBURY. 1906. Paris : Doin. Pp. 305. It was a happy idea to devote a volume of this series to Attention. This is and will always remain one of the central facts and problems of Psychology. Its treatment, however, has been often very diffuse and not always very explicit. Prof. Pillsbury has gathered the material together and gives a very clear and systematic account. After a review of the psychical effects and the motor accompaniments of attention, its conditions are reduced to two classes the objective, consisting in the intensity, the extension and the duration of the stimulus ; and the sub- jective conditions, namely, the idea present to the mind and the mental attitude at the moment, the education, the social milieu and the heredity of the individual. The conception of interest furnishes nothing new and the feeling of activity is itself a group of sensations. A detailed review
