THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ADOLESCENCE. 465 



exposition. In brief, psychologists are rather likely, with a reasonable 

 variation of cordiality, to endorse the emphasis which Dr. Hall's studies 

 have led him to place upon certain aspects of mental evolution, but 

 rather unlikely to endorse his special and insistent applications thereof. 

 Likewise will they hesitate to join forces with him in his subservience 

 of so many other normative trends in psychology to the dominance 

 of the evolutionary and atavistic influences from which in his accounts 

 so many human blessings and their opposites flow. 



It has already been indicated that psychologists and laymen alike 

 will find their sense of obligation to those volumes lessened by certain 

 peculiarities of presentation that seem to result from a too ardent 

 desire for judiciously modified and at the same time richly compre- 

 hensive statements. This detraction from the possible influence of the 

 work is more serious for the layman; and it is to be feared that these 

 volumes, extensive and difficult to read, will lose a considerable measure 

 of the influence which the interest of the subject would have, under 

 more favorable circumstances, commanded. Equally must it be said 

 that the extreme, and to many minds needlessly urgent, frankness in 

 the treatment of topics usually (even if we admit at times unwisely) 

 debarred from public consideration, will give offense in quarters where 

 a less drastic treatment would have saved the situation without sacrifi- 

 cing the pedagogical effect. That this element in the work has already 

 led to the exclusion of the volume from certain public libraries can easily 

 be ascertained. Those who read between the lines will acquire a con- 

 viction of greater sympathy with the author than with his book. They 

 may come to feel, what those who are acquainted with the author's 

 career know, that his influence in shaping psychological and educa- 

 tional interests is sounder and more effective and distinctly more sug- 

 gestive than his recorded position. These mixed feelings of attraction 

 and repulsion, together with the strain of orientation of thought 

 already referred to, will further diminish the influence of the volumes 

 among the lay public. This criticism may be fairly interpreted to 

 mean that the author has attempted too complex and many-sided a 

 task, rather than that he has in any sense failed to accomplish the pur- 

 pose which he set before him. It may well be that two different books, 

 each addressed to a separate set of readers, would have diminished the 

 sense of lack of fitness to their special needs which the layman and the 

 psychologist — to say nothing of the student of education — now feel. 



Having thus indicated the characteristics of the volumes which are 

 likely to detract from the more general acceptance of the positions 

 taken therein and from a proper appreciation of the work among lay 

 readers, it remains only to repeat the estimate more objectively stated 

 above, that the comprehensiveness of the task and the ability of the 

 author will in the end, and in more directions than have here been in- 

 dicated, gain for the work a distinct recognition as one of the notable 

 contributions of American scholarship to the field of psychology. 



