aux faits religieux"—wakens no less interest than that of the first part; but again the reader is doomed to disappointment, although this time for a different reason. Some of the so-called laws are so general as to be almost meaningless, for instance, the law that the human spirit always is striving to rise a little above its present level; others are so special as to be nothing more than the statement of a particular phenomenon, for example the "law of mythism." Moreover, these laws are so heterogeneous that they can hardly stand in the same series. Certainly the law of the unity of the human spirit, the phrase by which the author attempts to explain the appearance of similar phenomena in different localities, does not stand on the same plane as the "law of mythism"; and the fact that evolution assumes a "spiroidal" form is not coordinate with the tendency of religious rites and beliefs to become empty form. The phrase "mentalité humaine" occurs rather frequently in these chapters, but if we recur to the author's distinction between the psychological and the sociological study of religion, it becomes very evident that most of his 'laws' really belong to the domain of sociology; in fact several of them have already been propounded by sociological thinkers.
The few pages at the end on the psychological motives of religion contain some useful observations which are strictly in line with the aim proposed by the author, but as a whole the book accomplishes extraordinarily little of the program announced in the beginning.
Arthur Fairbanks.
The author regards duty or obligation as the fundamental and all-inclusive principle of mortality, and his effort is to exhibit it in its true significance, and in its central ethical importance. The book is divided into three parts, the first psychological, the second critical, the third historical. In the first, M. Fulliquet seeks to establish a basis for obligation in freedom, finding in the power of attention "a sort of vital potential" at the disposal of the agent, which breaks the determinism of the mechanical conditions. The freedom thus reached is a freedom narrowly limited; "it reduces itself to the necessity of choosing between two or more directions rigorously determined." "Man is not free to prepare the elements of his choice, to form for himself the resolutions which are possible for him; he receives them all made, he is only called to choose. A moment before the choice, no freedom; at the moment of choice alone does freedom appear. Nor is man any longer free after his choice to execute his decision: It is entirely determined. Finally, man is not free to avoid choice; not only can he choose, but it is more exact to say that he must choose" (pp. 73-74).
With freedom obligation is inseparably connected. With the consciousness of alternative comes the consciousness of the obligatoriness of one
