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NATURE 



[April 7, 192 1 



world. Thousands of volumes have been written 

 upon the subject, and doubtless will continue to 

 be written, for it is of perennial interest, as the 

 book before us testifies. 



Prof. Saintsbury does not profess to be more 

 than an amateur alcohologist. His present treat- 

 ise, if such it can be termed, has no pretensions to 

 profundity. Serious books on wine, he thinks, 

 have, as a rule, been rather dull, and to be dull on 

 such a subject is worse than a crime — it is a 

 blunder. He discourses freely and pleasantly, and 

 with the lightest possible touch, concerning his re- 

 miniscences of the contents of a cellar, accumulated 

 at various times during upwards of half a century, 

 more in the interests of a refined hospitality than 

 of winebibbing and the riotous eating of flesh, 

 as the Wise Man has it. He tells us frankly what 

 he prefers, and on what he sets little store. But 

 he is too wise to be dogmatic. His preferences, 

 he learns, are not always shared by others, and 

 he fears he may occasionally wound worthy feel- 

 ings by what he writes. To nothing is the old 

 adage, De gustibus, etc., more applicable than 

 to a man's drink. The Lord Derby who preferred 

 the gout to a certain brand of sherry would 

 doubtless find people to whom the wine was 

 palatable. Prof. Saintsbury can, however, be 

 emphatic enough at times. He has unmeasured 

 contempt for what he denounces as the dishonesty 

 of the so-called temperance party. To his mind 

 "it is a question whether the most Jesuitical Jesuit 

 of the most heated Protestant imagination has 

 ever outdone a thorough-going temperance advo- 

 cate in the endless dodgings and windings, sup- 

 pressions and suggestions of his method." This 

 is trop de zele. There was no occasion to attempt 

 to break a lance with the temperance party. 

 Sensible men will agree with the author that 

 abiisus non tollit usuni is a sufficient reply to what 

 he terms "the unscrupulous exaggeration of 

 partisans," and he would have been well advised 

 to leave it at that. All temperance advocates are 

 not fanatics or faddists, and the opinions of 

 earnest, thoughtful, and conscientious men are 

 worthy of respect. There is such a thing as in- 

 temperance in argument as well as in alcohol. 

 Moreover, the spirit of self-denial which actuated 

 thousands of men during the gravest crisis 

 through which this country has ever passed is 

 worthy of a more generous recognition than it 

 receives. Prof. Saintsbury 's arguments would have 

 met with very short shrift at the hands of the late 

 Sir Victor Horsley. 



These apart, the book affords very pleasant 

 reading, and an idle half -hour may be pleasurably 

 spent in dipping into its pages. 

 NO. 2684, VOL. 107] 



Some Aspects of Psychology. 



(i) Educational Psychology. By Dr. Daniel 

 Starch. Pp. xi + 473. (New York: The Mac- 

 millan Co. ; London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 

 1920.) 145. net. 



(2) The Psychology of Childhood. By Dr. Naomi 

 Norsworthy and Dr. Mary Theodora Whitley. 

 (Brief Course Series in Education.) Pp. 

 xix-t-375. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; 

 London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1920.} 

 I05. net. 



(3) Human Psychology. By Prof. Howard C. 

 Warren. Pp. xx + 460. (London : Constable 

 and Co., Ltd., 1920.) 12s. net. 



(4) Spiritualism and the New Psychology: An Ex- 

 planation of Spiritualist Phenomena and Beliefs 

 in Terms of Modern Knowledge. By Dr. 

 Millais Culpin. With an introduction by 

 Prof. Leonard Hill. Pp. xvi4-i59. (London: 

 Edward Arnold, 1920.) 6s. net. 



THOSE who are by nature and training suffi- 

 ciently eupeptic to digest a diet of well- 

 prepared statistics will find Dr. Starch's " Educa- 

 tional Psychology" (i) to their taste, and will profit 

 by its assimilation. Most English teachers prefer 

 general impressions handed on by tradition from 

 masters of their craft, and endorsed, as they think, 

 by personal experience, to results expressed in 

 coefficients of correlation. But some of them 

 want to know what all this mass of statistical 

 work really comes to, and how far it is helpful 

 as a guide to practice. The author goes far to- 

 meet their requirements. After outlining the 

 nature of the problems that arise, he deals (i) with 

 the native equipment of human beings, and 

 (ii) with the psychology of learning, first "in 

 general," and then in the case of sundry recog- 

 nised school subjects. 



The reader wilL probably turn with special in- 

 terest to the treatment of certain large questions 

 such as the inheritance of mental traits and the. 

 transference of training. As a result of a review 

 of the statistical evidence so far to hand. Dr. 

 Starch concludes that the ultimate achievement of 

 any given individual is due to his inherited ability 

 probably to the extent of from 60 to 90 per cent, 

 and to actual differences in opportunity to the extent 

 of only from 10 to 40 per cent. If, then, nature 

 bears to nurture something like the proportion of 

 three to one, and if there is but little statistical 

 evidence in support of the cherished belief that 

 the outcome of nurture in one generation is so 

 transmitted as to contribute to the inherited 

 nature of the next, it might seem that the rSle of 

 the teacher is less important than he is apt to 



