316 NEW BOOKS. most fundamental facts of human nature, found the subject too serious to be so disposed of, and has in all the intervening years been occupied with but a part of the preliminary investigation : at least the present volume which traces "the connexion between the Reign of Law and the ideas which are alike fundamental to all Religions and inseparable from the facts of Nature," seeks only " to establish some method of inquiry and to find some sure avenue of approach " to the question beyond. Parts of the subject have been separately treated from time to time, but are now fused into a connected whole ; the attempt to define man's place in or in relation to nature having interwoven with it an argument for the trustworthiness of the human faculty of knowledge by which the inquiry has to be pur- sued. Content with a doctrine of Relativism, which is however very different from the current philosophy of Nescience, the author would include man within the unitary scheme of nature, and accepts with a certain boldness some implications of the position which others are fain to deny ; but at the same time, as the result of an investigation into the moral side of human nature, he finds man to be after all "The Great Exception," with possibilities of degradation, in the exercise of rational faculty, from which every other living thing is exempt. He is thus led to contest the prevailing scientific assumption that savage life at the pre- sent time gives indications of the prehistoric condition of the human race ; also current views as to the origin and development of Religion. Mention may be made of the brightly- written discussion on Animal Instinct in ch. 3. It is pertinently urged at p. 92 against the ' lapsed -intelligence ' theory of instinct that " if the habits and powers which are now purely innate and instinctive were once less- innate and more deliberate, then it will follow that the earlier faculties of animals have been the higher and that the later faculties are the lower in the scale of intelligence : '. Leibniz. By JOHN THEODORE MERZ. " Philosophical Classics for English Readers." Edinburgh and London : Blackwood, 1884. Pp. viii. 216. In this discussion of the character of Leibniz and the spirit of his philosophy, the author has endeavoured to confine himself as much as possible to those points in the life and doctrine which cannot be easily gathered by a perusal of Guhrauer's biography, of the principal works of the philosopher himself, or of the well-known historical treatises of Ueber- weg, Kuno Fischer, Erdmann and Zeller. Supposing these to be of easy access, he hopes that those who have not read them may be better pre- pared by this volume to do so, and that those who have read them may find something in it which the larger works did not readily supply. The treatment falls into two parts : (1) " Leibniz's Life and Genesis of his Philosophy" (pp. 1-134) ; (2) "The Philosophy of Leibniz" (pp. 135-216). Lectures on the Philosophy of Law, designed mainly as an Introduction to the Study of International Law. By WILLIAM GALBRAITH MILLER, M.A., LL.B., Lecturer on Public Law (including Jurisprudence and Inter- national Law) in the University of Glasgow. London : Griffin, 1884. Pp. xv. 432. As this book, departing from the common English usage, professes to deal with Jurisprudence " from the metaphysical point of view," we hope to return to it in a future number. Besides enlarging upon the "Utility of Philosophy" in his Introduction, the author takes distinctively philosophical ground in at least three (out of the thirteen) lectures (1) "Law and Metaphysic," (12) "Retrospect of the Development of Law through the [Kantian] Categories," (13) "Law, Morality and Religion"; and also finds his profit in the use of philosophical speech throughout.
