910 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 235. 



Chapters five, six and seven show the nature 

 and need of spontaneous and acquired reactions. 

 This discussion is new, forceful and illumina- 

 ting. Not all of these things can be said of the 

 succeeding chapter on the laws of habit. This 

 is taken almost bodily from the author's ' Psy- 

 chology.' That it is brilliant and sound will be 

 attested by many. Yet what shall we say of 

 the man who can produce new books, but who 

 simply cojiies his old ones verbatim in the most 

 important parts'? Professor Patten, in his ' De- 

 velopment of English Thought,' declares that 

 geniuses are always lazy. Professor James can 

 bear this double imputation, yet one can hardly 

 excuse him when he says he needs to offer no 

 apology for copying his own books. The 

 apology is needless only because it is useless. 

 An author should treat himself as well as he 

 treats other authors. He would not incorpo- 

 rate their matter without transforming it by the 

 force of his own thinking ; no more should he 

 repeat himself without subjecting his older 

 thought to the transforming influence of a new 

 point of view. Who wants to buy the same 

 book twice ? 



The chapters on Interest and Attention are 

 among the best and most typical in the book. 

 The treatment is eminently popular and general, 

 yet none the less helpful on that account. If it 

 is much less rigid than that of Dr. Dewey, it is 

 perhaps as useful to the ordinary teacher. The 

 difference is that which exists between a dia- 

 gram and a demonstration ; the one is sesthetic, 

 the other intellectual. 



Apperception is described at some length in 

 chapter fourteen, the discussion making no pre- 

 tension to scientific exactness. Indeed, Pro- 

 fessor James has always given the topic a 

 step-motherly treatment, viewing the word ap- 

 perception as a blanket term in psychology, and 

 following the older traditional division into 

 sensation, perception, memory, etc. Yet even 

 from the standpoint of psychology itself, the re- 

 searches of Wundt and others have shown that 

 there are distinct advantages in treating apper- 

 ception as an elemental process in psychic life ; 

 when we come to education the advantages of 

 this procedure are great and unquestionable. 

 It is to be hoped that Professor James will some 

 day give his mind to a thoroughgoing scientific 



exposition of the subject. If one may be per. 

 mitted to cut out work for his neighbor, one 

 may perhaps suggest to Professor James that a 

 monograph upon apperception in its educative 

 bearings would be gratefully received by Amer- 

 ican teachers. 



Of the significance and value of this volume 

 as a contribution to the cause of education 

 there can be no question. Like everything that 

 Professor James writes, it is at once lucid and 

 interesting. If the treatment is popular and 

 general, it is, at all events, founded on scientific 

 insight, and, so far as it goes, may be confidently 

 trusted as sound. If it ridicules ' brass instru- 

 ment ' study of children, it yet tends to awaken 

 sympathy with childhood. If it disappoints the 

 seeker after 'scientific' study of education, it, 

 at least, satisfies the heart of the earnest teacher. 



Finally, this book is to be welcomed because 

 it shows that in educational theory, as in trea- 

 tises upon subject-matter, the writing of books 

 is passing from the hands of professional book- 

 makers into those of the real leaders of thought. 

 In this fact we find the brightest hope of our 

 educational progress. 



Charles DeGaemo. 



Cornell University. 



Wetterprognosen und Wetterberiohte des XV. imd 

 XVI. Jahrhunderts. No. 12, Neudrucke von 

 Schriften und Karten uber Meteorologie und 

 Erdmagnetismus herausgegeben von Pro- 

 fessor Dr. G. Hellmann. Berlin, A. Asher 

 & Co. 1899. 



In this volume, which is the latest and largest 

 of the series. Dr. Hellmann explains the origin 

 and growth of weather predictions in almanacs, 

 etc., and the practice in the different countries 

 of describing remarkable meteorological phe- 

 nomena, illustrating both subjects by facsimile 

 reproductions of printed documents of the fif- 

 teenth and sixteenth centuries. As Dr. Hell- 

 mann remarks, the art of foretelling the weather 

 has always been the object of meteorological 

 research, but it has been practiced in various 

 ways according to the theoretical knowledge 

 that existed of the occurrences in the atmos- 

 phere. Among the Gi-eeks, at the time of 

 Metou, public placards announced the past and 

 expected weather. Later, astrology controlled 



