272 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Hanford Henderson, whose illustrated 

 articles in the Monthly on the present 

 methods of this industry have been 

 widely read. Articles on the Siik, Pa- 

 per, Pottery, Shoe and Leather, Agri- 

 cultural Machinery, and Ship-building 

 industries will be furnished by equally 

 competent hands. In describing the 

 methods and the implements and con- 

 structions used in manufacturing, a pict- 

 ure is often better than pages of words; 

 accordiugly, this series will be fully il- 

 lustrated. For the account of the iron 

 and steel industry alone, sixty-eight en- 

 gravings have been prepared. It will 

 be one of the objects of the coming 

 World's Pair to show the most impor- 

 tant manufacturing processes of the 

 present day in operation, and for com- 

 parison with these the methods used 

 in other countries when Columbus dis- 

 covered the New World. In view of 

 the wide attention that will be thus 

 drawn to the past and present of our 

 great industries, we feel that we can 

 not. offer our readers anything more ac- 

 ceptable at the present time than the 

 series above outlined. The wonderful 

 increase in the quantity of goods that 

 one man's labor will turn out, the im- 

 provement in their quality, the reduc- 

 tion of the cost of manufacture together 

 with the steady rise in wages during 

 the period covered by these articles, 

 are all due to the aid which science 

 has afforded to the world's workers, 

 and this is only a fraction of the field 

 in which the influence of this great 

 agency is active. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



The Principles of Psychology. By Will- 

 iam James. American Science Series, 

 Advanced Course. In two vols. New 

 York : Henry Holt & Co. Price, $6. 



Piiof. James is Professor of Psychology 

 in Harvard University, and this work em- 

 bodies his class-room instruction in that sub- 

 ject. It is a large work. The first volume 

 contains 689 pages and the second Y04 

 pages. The type is admirable and the illus- 



trations are fresh and well adapted to their 

 purpose. The author says in the preface 

 that he has throughout kept close to the 

 point of view of natural science. He re- 

 jects both the associationist and spiritual- 

 ist theories. His ground is that thoughts 

 and feelings exist and are vehicles of knowl- 

 edge, and that Psychology, when she has 

 ascertained the empirical correlation of the 

 various sorts of thought or feeling with defi- 

 nite conditions of brain, can go no further. 

 By attempting to explain thought and feeling 

 as products of something deeper, she becomes 

 metaphysical, and Mr. James claims that in 

 dealing with psychology he is strictly a posi- 

 tivist indeed, this is the only feature of the 

 work for which he claims originality. The 

 author says it is " a mass of descriptive de- 

 tails running out into queries which only a 

 Metaphysics alive to the weight of her task 

 can hope successfully to deal with. That will 

 perhaps be centuries hence ; and meanwhile 

 the best mark of health that a science can 

 show is this unfinished seeming front." It is 

 thus seen that although Mr. James deals with 

 the science of psychology as a positivist, he 

 still has faith in metaphysics, and it is this 

 circumstance, it seems to us, that gives the 

 work its most characteristic quality. His 

 style, which is always clear and forcible, is 

 never so brilliant as when he is discussing 

 metaphysical questions. In stating the vari- 

 ous theories of the different schools of phi- 

 losophy he does not conceal his own prefer- 

 ences. Indeed, he is too much in earnest in 

 his beliefs not to be a partisan. And being 

 by descent both a metaphysician and rheto- 

 rician, while his science is more of to-day, 

 his inherited tendencies now and then get 

 the better of his scientific judgment. 



In Chapter I, On the Scope of Psychol- 

 ogy, Mr. James limits his field of inquiry 

 by taking as his criterion of mind " the 

 pursuance of future ends and the choice of 

 means for their attainment." This view 

 answers his purpose much better than would 

 a nearer approach to the " point of view of 

 natural science." The scientific psycholo- 

 gist usually begins with the earliest phenom- 

 ena of consciousness and the first traces of 

 nervous organization, and uses his earlier re- 

 sults to explain the more complex phenom- 

 ena encountered later on in his inquiries. 

 But Mr. James is catholic enough to say that 



