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The title of Dr. Geley's work may rouse expectations in the mind of a psycho-analyst which, if he reads the book, will not be realised. He will find here no mention of the Unconscious as he understands it, and no reference to the theory or practice of Psycho-Analysis. The standpoint of the author is indeed the opposite of the analytic one. His aim is synthetic; it is "the ideal quest of a wide philosophical generalisation, based on facts." On the conception of the Unconscious which he adopts he erects a metaphysical system, but he claims for his idealistic philosophy that it is scientific, that it rests on no a priori or intuitional formulae but is based on positive demonstration. The work is divided into two parts, the first of which is devoted to a critical study of the classical theories relating to evolution, and of the principal evolutionary philosophies. The second part is the actual statement of Geley's own views.
His criticisms of naturalistic theories of evolution and of the psychophysiological concept of individuality may be read with interest and profit; but the reader will be surprised when he finds himself asked to regard as established facts of science those materialisations and dematerialisations of which he may have read in works dealing with spiritism. The author has evidently been much impressed by the manifestations observed by him at his many sittings with the well-known medium Eva, of whose phenomena Schrenk-Notzing has given a very full account.
Indeed, it may be supposed that one of the main objects of this book is to provide an hypothesis which will afford some solution of the problems of 'supernormal physiology.' The new concept, which Geley thinks removes all difficulties, is that of a "dynamo-psychism constituting the essence of the self, which absolutely cannot be referred to the functioning of the nervous centres. This essential dynamo-psychism is not conditioned by the organism; on the contrary everything happens as though the or