Formal Treatises Research Articles

The Marxist Theory of the State

Marx did not approach the state in answer to some such broad and abstract philosophical question as: What is the state? Nor did he offer a full sociological or historical or analytic account of state institutions and functions, and there are hence clear and substantial dangers in extrapolating to all or most conditions an account which is, in large part, specific to bourgeois society. Failing a comprehensive and formal treatise on politics and the state, Marx's own discussion consists of a number of scattered and not altogether consistent general observations and some detailed investigation of the role and character of the state in particular historical situations. It seems sensible, then, to begin an elucidation of his account of the state with a comment on the nature of his interest in the subject. Why did he need a theory of the state? At what points does it become important to his explanatory and his revolutionary doctrines?

Medieval and Early Modern Theories of Mental Illness

Historians of medieval and early modern psychiatry have utilized limited source materials in their research. They have focused on printed works, particularly formal treatises by celebrated authors, and neglected manuscript collections. The resulting histories depict early European psychiatric thought as dominated by demonology. Examination of the archives of an early English legal incompetency jurisdiction flatly contradicts this picture. Starting in the 13th century, the English government conducted mental status examinations of psychiatrically disabled individuals, using commonsense, naturalistic criteria of impairment; private, supervised guardians were appointed for such persons. Furthermore, etiological theories entertained by royal officials and laymen relied on physiological and psychological notions of psychiatric illness. These findings raise serious questions about conventional accounts of this period and underline the need for more research using original manuscripts.

La divinidad del Espíritu Santo en S. Basilio

The faith in the Holy Spirit, pacifically possesed during the first three centuries of the Church life, was seriously questioned in the fourth century; the arrian heresy, condemned in the Council of Nicea, directed its attacks against the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, by denying His divine nature and placing Him on the same level as the creatures. We observe the prompt reaction of those who maintained upright the catholic orthodoxy as the faith of the Church is hurt in one of its essential truths. Basil the Great plays over these years such an important role that the doctrine stated by the Council of Constantinople some years after, has its roots in the thought of the Capadocian. Availing himself of the controversy aroused by his liturgy on the Trinity, the Holy Doctor wrote his Treatise on the Holy Spirit where he exposes in an accomplished way the right doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit; the book is the first formal treatise on pneumatic theology and comes up to be a key chapter in the History of Theology. The decisive fact that the Holy Scripture mentions the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the baptismal command given by the Lord to the Apostoles, and the evident datum that the names as well as the operations attributed to the Holy Spirit are common to the other Divine Persons, caused Basil to affirm the koinonia of the nature in the center of the Trinity; the separation of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son would amount to emptying out the meaning of the first of the christian dogmas. The peculiar and difficult circumstances in which the Church found itself in those moments, prevented Basil from speaking his mind distinctly, not to increase division; for this reason, he principally used the term homotimos instead of the nicene word homoousios. The close connection, however, of homotimos to homoousios is noticeable all throughout his work. Finally, the unity of divine nature is of such kind that all seems to imply that in Basil's mind -although perhaps in an unconscious manner, since this is not the question to be discussed- the idea of what we call numerical unity of divine nature is present. Basil completes his reasoning in behalf of the divinity of the Third Person, affirming that his way of proceeding finds its roots in the Tradition of the Catholic Church.

Admiralty Manual of Tides

THE numerous and important developments in our knowledge of the tides that have been made in recent years are largely hidden away in technical journals. There has been but little written for those who wish to know something of the tides and their causes without working through the heavy mathematics which usually surrounds the subject. G. H. Darwin, in his “Tides and Kindred Phenomena”, published in 1898, gave a clear non-mathematical account of the subject as it was then. Public interest in the theory of the tides was shown by the demand for further editions in Great Britain and by its translation into several foreign languages. Warburg's “Tides and Tidal Streams” (1922) was intended for seamen and for those who require a professional knowledge of the tides ; but it contains a description of the chief tidal features in a form suitable for the general reader. Mariner's “The Tide” (1926) is a simple and readable account of the subject and includes references to the more recent work. In. addition, many text-books of geography and allied subjects have devoted a chapter to a more or less sketchy account of the tides and their causes. But there is clearly room for a book, which, while it does not avoid mathematics altogether, yet steers a middle course between the formal treatise and the popular account for the non-scientific reader, and also incorporates the developments of the last thirty years Such a book is the “Admiralty Manual of Tides”, Admiralty Manual of Tides By Dr. A. T. Doodson Comdr. H. D. Warburg. Pp. xii + 270. (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1941.) 12s. 6d. net.

NEUROLOGY—PAST AND PRESENT

The beginnings of neurology as a separate discipline of medicine are so clearly defined that one may say: Neurology began with Romberg, a hundred years ago. His famous "propedeutic clinic" at Berlin, where systematic neurologic examination and clinical diagnosis were first carried out, was an active institution in 1837, and his textbook on nervous diseases, the first formal treatise on the subject, followed in 1840 and 1846. Almost contemporary in Paris that strange and interesting figure Duchenne of Boulogne was haunting the larger Paris hospitals, delving into case histories and unselfishly devoting himself to neurology and electrophysiology. An even more important Parisian figure was soon to follow in Charcot, who created the greatest neurologic clinic of modern times and gave lessons in visualization which few students could ever forget. Marie and Dejerine carried on the great French tradition even to our times, as did Erb in Heidelberg, following the footsteps

The Underworld of India

SIR GEOBGE MACMUNN knows his India from end to end in an intimate work-a-day fashion that has provided material for a life-like picture of the depressed classes, and will probably give the general reader a clearer idea of the real India than would have been gathered from a more formal treatise. The ‘underworld’, of which he writes, includes all untouchables and outcastes the castes of menial occupation, the mendicants, dancing girls, temple and other courtesans, and jungle tribes, as well as the classes whose normal occupations are criminal. Apart from the interest of this description of these characteristically eastern social groups, Sir George's book has the merit of bringing out clearly the place of caste in social relations a very real foundation of opposition to the political claims of Hinduism and the place of sex in Hindu religious thought and social life a constant and deep-rooted preoccupation, which gives them an orientation fundamentally divergent from that in a European society.

Egyptian Art

“AT two o'clock in the afternoon of February 12, 1906, while Naville was finishing his lunch, a workman came running up to tell him that the top of a vault was beginning to emerge from the earth.” This is the opening sentence of the eleventh section or chapter in Sir Gaston Maspero's latest work, and it may serve as an indication of the book's quality. We here have no carefully reasoned presentation of the various aspects and problems presented by Egyptian Art. Such a work, by the same author, we already possess in “Art in Egypt,” which has appeared within the year in the Ars una: species mille Series. “Egyptian Art” falls into quite a different category, and will prove an admirable foil or supplement to the more formal treatise. Egyptian Art. Studies by Sir Gaston Maspero. Translated by Elizabeth Lee. Pp. 223 + plates. (London and Leipzig: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913.) Price 21s. net.

Greek Music

The general conviction that the true nature of ancient Greek music is practically incomprehensible in modern times arises from many causes, of which the most potent are:—1. That hitherto all explanations have been based on the extant formal treatises, which deal either with the decadent elaborations of solo cithara-playing, or the purely theoretical calculations of the self-styled Pythagorean school, which latter professedly despised the actual performance of music.2. The attempts to elucidate the subject make no allowance for the fact that the extant specimens of noted music extend over a period of at least eight centuries, and no one explanation is likely to fit either the whole of these or the casual references to music to be found in general Greek literature.3. Thanks mainly to Aristoxenus, the modern mind has become so permeated by the quarter-tone theory of the enharmonic genus, that even so simple a record as the celebrated Euripides fragment has been generally interpreted as involving this minute interval. The arguments against this theory, at least as regards vocal music, are weighty and almost conclusive; but their full development requires more space than is available here.

Mr. Grant Allen's Article on “The Shapes of Leaves”

As I do not think it necessary to preface four short papers on the shapes of leaves with a formal treatise on pbysiological botany, I am not careful to answer Mr. Bower in this matter. The word hydrocarbons was used deliberately, because the important point to notice is this—that the plant consists in the main of relatively deoxidised materials. From the point of view of energy, with which one has to deal mainly in treating of functious of leaves, that fact is of capital importance. I can conscientiously inform Mr. Bower that I was aware of the chemical constitution of proteids, and of the part which they bear in life generally; but I do not see what harm can be done to anybody by such a confessedly rough statement as that which he criticies. If we must always step aside to say all that we know about any subject whenever we have to deal with it, exposition of new matter becomes impossible. May I call Mr. Bower's attention to tbe further fact that in the same paper I spoke of the plant catching “fragments of carbon,” meaning thereby not free carbon, but carbon in the form of carbonic acid, even though it be merely reduced from carboa dioxide to carbon oxide. It seems to me that such roughly accurate language is permissible in popular writing, where one's main object is to insist only on the general principle involved. It is the carbon that the leaf wants, not the oxygen; it is the carbon and the hydrogen that it deals with, not the nitrogen, which is but the instrument for dealing with them; and the two other elements may therefore be safely neglected. Or must we drag in sulphur, and potassium, and calcium, and all the rest as well?