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An interesting series of essays, of which the first—originality of thought and its physiological conditions—has already been translated. In the second essay on the concept of internal necessity, Vivante draws an interesting contrast between poetic expression and dreams as interpreted by Freud. He points to the poverty of thought in dream images, the absence of constructive thought: poetic truth is the real truth; it apprehends, he says, following Wordsworth, the infinite in the passional moment; the significance of art is to give to a moment community with the absolute and the eternal. Unlike the dream, art seeks a unity in concept and in expression; art is not to be interpreted through the dream. Dream symbolism, in the psycho-analytic sense, is something other than the symbolism of art: although poetry may also make use of the form of symbolism that is found in dreams. Poems composed in sleep, e.g. Coleridge's Kubla Khan, or under the influence of narcotics, may approach the dream imagery and expression. A critical examination of the unconscious follows, which, however, raises nothing unfamiliar. The final essay is an examination of the relationship between poetic and constructive thought: poetic thought is not unconscious, though its images may arise involuntarily. The essays require careful reading, for the writer often seems to use current philosophical and psychological terms with a peculiarly individual connotation—a usage