354 
provided us with ample material for developing the 
subject along such paths as may appeal to us most 


nearly. GRENVILLE A. J. COLE. 
Comparative Psychology. 
Handbuch der vergleichenden Psychologie. Heraus- 
gegeben von Gustav Kafka. Band 1: Die Entwick- 
lungsstufen des Seelenlebens. Pp. vilit526. Band 
2: Die Funktionen des normalen Seelenlebens. Pp. 
viii+513. Band 3:] Die Funktionen des abnormen 
Seelenlebens. Pp. viiit+t515. (Miinchen: Ernest 
Reinhardt, 1922.) 
HE present is often said to be a psychological age, 
and certainly the recent rapid multiplication of 
psychological books and lectures would seem to justify 
the above statement. One happy result of the stimulus 
which popularity has given to the production of psycho- 
logical literature has been to make that literature 
extensive and varied. Nevertheless a survey of that 
literature shows that the psychologist’s library is by 
no means adequate to his needs. There are at least 
two regrettable deficiencies, deficiencies which are 
more obvious in English than in German psycho- 
logical literature. There is, on one hand, no large-size 
and generally accredited work on theoretical or pure 
psychology, a work sympathetically mediatory between 
the several divergent schools of contemporary psycho- 
logical thought, a work which provides a basis of theory 
for the co-ordination of the as yet somewhat scattered 
results reached in the various fields of psychological 
research. There are in existence many first drafts of 
and essays_towards such a work, but none is detailed 
and comprehensive enough, apart from the fact that 
none of them can claim anything like general agree- 
ment; and this deficiency, however unavoidable, 
however much a symptom of scientific health, is 
obviously very disconcerting to students. 
The second deficiency, the one most in question here, 
is the absence of a sustained and comprehensive 
attempt to describe the world of living beings from the 
psychological point of view. Twenty years ago this 
would have seemed an impossible, if not a thankless 
task. To-day it is at least possible to make a beginning. 
For one of the many indications of the psychologicalness 
(if the word may be permitted) of this age has been and 
still is the rapid and unresting invasion of one realm 
after another of concrete experience by the psychologist. 
From the somewhat supermundane and, to many, jejune 
science, closely associated with metaphysics, which it 
was in the last century, psychology has developed into 
a science which touches practical interests and activities 
at a thousand points. Education and industry, art and 
society, war and peace, all have begun-to be at least 
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NATURE 
[Marcu 17, 1923 

discussed and often treated from the psychological 
point of view. And one result of this successful 
ramification has been the accumulation of material 
for such a description of the world. 
What a fascinating gazetteer tNat would be, a psycho- 
logical gazetteer of the world! A survey of the world 
through the eyes and from the vantage point of the 
psychologist ! What tantalising glimpses one has of 
a psychological description of politics, of business, 
of courtship and marriage. . . . Those preserves of 
opinion which, as Mr. Trotter says, are deemed too 
lofty for knowledge and are reserved for conviction, 
would no longer be able to keep their sacrosanct aloof- 
ness. One would seek to understand not only the origin 
and persistence of the opinions but also the taboo itself. 
All phenomena, oaths, and tea-parties, morality and 
social rank, would be approached from the point of 
view of psychological interpretation. Ethical and 
zsthetic prejudgments would neither deter nor mislead, 
they would be explained. One would psychologise on 
a cosmic scale, never stopping till the psychology of the 
psychologist himself had been written. 
There is scant prospect, alas, of anything of the 
quality and scale of the above for a very long time 
to come. Intensively and extensively contemporary 
psychology -is not equal to such a task. On one 
hand, psychology, despite its recent advances, has not 
yet explored, much less cultivated, the full extent of its 
territory. Progress has been ragged, and while here 
the workers are many and progress rapid, there it is well 
if a bare seisin has been taken. On the other hand, 
psychological theory is as yet too limited and too 
sketchy, neither strong enough nor comprehensive 
enough, for the organisation and interpretation of the 
vast mass of data with which it would have to grapple. 
But half a loaf is better than no bread, and if even 
relative finality cannot be looked for, yet a beginning 
is feasible. If no beginning has so far been made, with 
the possible exception of the late Wilhelm Wundt’s 
obsolescent and inadequately conceived “ Vélker- 
psychologie,” the fault must lie with the necessary 
specialisation of contemporary psychology. The indi- 
vidual psychologist has been marooned, as it were, in 
his own field of work, ample though that field has often 
been ; his tentatives towards communication and co- 
operation have been baffled by the immensity of the 
science, and few have had the courage and the vision 
even briefly and imperfectly to envisage that science 
as an articulate whole. So that even the little that 
was possible has been left undone, and the reader who. 
wishes to gain even a cursory and incomplete conspectus 
of psychological experience must pursue his purpose 
through scores of ill-related and narrow volumes. 
The student’s labours have been considerably 
