July 29, 1909] 



NATURE 



12- 



The second half of the volume is devoted to essays 

 on various chemical topics. A few titles will indicate 

 their nature; thus there are "The Becquerel Rays," 

 ■" What is an Element? " " Radium and its Products," 

 and " The Aurora Borealis." This last is an interest- 

 ing discussion of the evidence for regarding krypton 

 as a noteworthy constituent of the aurora. An oration 

 upon " The Functions of a University," delivered some 

 eight years ago at University College, concludes the 

 work, and ends with the remark : — 



" As it exists at present, a University is a technical 

 school for theology, law, medicine, and engineering. 

 It ought to be also a place for the advancement of 

 knowledge, for the training of philosophers, and of 

 those who love wisdom for its own sake. . . ." 



.Surely; and if examples were wanted of men who 

 loved wisdom for its own sake, who " scorned delights 

 and lived laborious days " in pursuit of it, yet by whose 

 labours was wrought incalculable material benefit to 

 posterity, what better instances could be found than 

 those of the pioneers of chemistry? 



With two or three exceptions, neither tlie biograph- 

 ical nor the chemical essays pretend to be more than 

 popular presentations of their several subjects, and if 

 here and there they seem perhaps a trifle superficial 

 and jejune, it is only fair to remember the circum- 

 stances of their production, and to recall the fact that 

 some were written when their distinguished author's 

 powers were less mature, by a quarter of a century's 

 growth, than they are to-day. 



C. SiMMO.VDS. 



EXPERIMEXTAL PSYCHOLOGY. 



A Text-bonk of Experimental Psychology. By Prof. 

 C. S. Myers. Pp. xvi + 432. (London: Edward 

 Arnold, 1909.) Price Si. 6d. net. 



THIS book supplies a want vi-hich has been long 

 felt by both students and teachers. Until now 

 there has been no text-book to meet the special needs 

 oi those attending a course of instruction in experi- 

 mental psychology. There have been books on 

 psychology written on an experimental basis which 

 have differed little, if at all, from others not so charac- 

 terised, and there have been handbooks for the 

 laboratory, notably that of Titchener, but there has 

 been no book which attempted to give in reasonable 

 compass a general account of experimental methods 

 and of the results which have been gained by the 

 experimental movement in psychology. Such a book 

 was needed for two classes of persons, for those de- 

 finitely committed to the study of the subject, and for 

 the large class of people who know that experimental 

 psychology exists but do not know what it means. 



It nnv be said at once that for each Prof. Myers's 

 book will be of the greatest service. It gives a con- 

 cise and yet clear account of what has been done by 

 means of experiment in psychology, and it is sur- 

 prising to find so vast an amount of information in a 

 book of the size. At the same time, there has been 

 admirable judgment in the selection of the material 

 and in the discussion of the manv thorny topics in 

 which the science at present abounds. The only fault 



NO. 2074, VOL. Si] 



to be found is that its conciseness will make it difficult 

 for the beginner, but this has been anticipated by the 

 author, who has distinguished the more difficult parts 

 by means of brackets to indicate that they should be 

 left by the beginner for a second reading. Further, 

 the last eighty pages are devoted to an illustrated 

 description of laboratory exercises, and the perform- 

 ance of these will go far to remove any difficulty due 

 to the conciseness of the main body of the text. 



To pass to detail, the earlier chapters are devoted 

 to the senses, and those on hearing are especially full. 

 There is no other book in which a summary of the 

 very important researches of recent years on this 

 subject can be found. The accounts of the psycho- 

 physical and statistical methods, given under these 

 titles and in the chapter on identity and difference, are 

 admirably clear, though, perhaps, not enough stress 

 has been laid on the use of the psychophysical methods 

 for purposes other than threshold determination. 

 These methods were devised with the idea that by 

 their means sensation and other psychical states might 

 be measured. They are, however, coming to be used 

 more and more for the exact comparison of the effects 

 of different conditions on mental processes in which 

 there is no question of the actual determination of a 

 threshold, either absolute or differential, and the atten- 

 tion of the student might have been more forcibly 

 directed to this aspect of the use of the methods. 



The subject of memory is very fully treated, it 

 might be thought a little out of due proportion. The 

 space devoted to it is, however, fully justified, for we 

 have in this branch of the subject what is, perhaps, 

 the greatest achievement of the experimental method 

 in pure psvchology apart from those advances which 

 are rather physiological than psychological. 



In a short chapter on muscular and mental work an 

 excellent account is given of modes of research which 

 are now taking a very important place in applied 

 psvchology and especially in pedagogy, and the author 

 rightly insists on the difference between the mental 

 work of laboratory methods and that of ordinary life. 

 There is at present a great danger that the value of 

 this line of work will suffer depreciation owing to 

 premature application to practical problems. The last 

 two chapters chiefly serve to show how little the 

 experimental method has "so far accomplished in the 

 study of such subjects as attention and feeling. 



It is to be regretted that want of space has not 

 allowed the author to deal with the comparative and 

 pathological sides of psychology so far as these can 

 be studied by the methods of experimental psychology. 

 The result of the perusal of this book, in which 

 the accomplishments of the science have been so 

 ably portrayed, is to confirm an impression that 

 the experimental study of the developed mind 

 will not take us very far, and that it is in the 

 study of the developing mind and of the disso- 

 ciations and destructions produced by disease that 

 there lies the chief prospect of advance. It is to 

 be hoped that the author will be able to deal with 

 these subjects, either in another book or in a future 

 expansion of the present volume. 



Although this country has been very late in recog- 

 nising the experimental movement in psychology, the 



