September 13, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



347 



with him an enthusiastic interest in the 

 philosophy and psychology of religion — an 

 interest that prompted his publication in 

 1872-3 of I. A. Dorner's "System of Theol- 

 ogy " and that, persisting to the present time, 

 has led him to establish a Journal of Religious 

 Psychology, and to interpret the great philo- 

 sophical systems as Freudian sublimations of 

 religious conviction. It is significant that the 

 names of Graf and Kuenen, to whom was due 

 the renascence of the higher criticism in the 

 sixties, do not appear in his pages: yet he is 

 catholic enough to appreciate Dorner and 

 Zeller and Delitzsch, Pfleiderer and Lazarus. 

 So far, we may suppose, Germany continued 

 and enriched a mode of thought which was 

 already familiar. But there was surprise in 

 store : the " narrow, formal, rather dry cur- 

 riculum " of the college was to give way to 

 " a great and sudden revelation of the mag- 

 nitude of the field of science." And what a 

 revelation ! Those were the great days of 

 Darwinism; the days of Haeckel, of the 

 " Generelle Morphologic " and the " Natiir- 

 liehe Schopfungsgeschichte " and the biogen- 

 etic law, of the " Descent of Man " itself ! 

 Biology was thinking in great sweeps of 

 thought; evolution was the key to world- 

 riddles; there was no cloud upon the horizon 

 to warn men of the minute specialization and 

 laborious experimentation that were to come. 

 It is small wonder that Dr. Hall became the 

 enthusiastic champion of a genetic psychol- 

 ogy; and it is small wonder that his geneti- 

 cism bears the indelible impress of its date of 

 origin. This contemporary Darwinian en- 

 thusiasm is, indeed, the fount and source of 

 most of the critical judgments passed in the 

 book. 



Along with the interest in religion and the 

 possession by the genetic idea go two other 

 marked characteristics: the zeal of the re- 

 former, the exhorter, the practical educator, 

 and a sort of perpetual youth, with an un- 

 satiated appetite for intellectual novelties. 

 The former is apparent throughout the work; 

 the latter is seen in the writers almost boy- 

 ish absorption in new movements — in Freud- 

 ianism, in Bergson, in the introspective de- 



partures of the Wiirzburg school — and crops 

 out in the oddest personal fashion, as when 

 one great man is censured for a stay-at-home 

 life, and another is credited with a habit of 

 vacation-trips. Every chapter begins in this 

 way with a biographical sketch, which in fact 

 makes us acquainted with the author no less 

 than with his subject. Then follows an 

 analysis of the subject's principal works, with 

 more or less of running commentary and 

 criticism; the exposition seems to be taken, in 

 the main, from lecture-notes of the seventies 

 and eighties, while the comment represents the 

 writer's more mature position. Finally, the 

 sketch ends with a general appreciation and 

 a selected bibliography. The first five por- 

 traits in Dr. Hall's gallery occupy some sixty 

 pages apiece; Wundt, who evidently and 

 quite naturally has given him the greatest 

 trouble, fills no less than a hundred and fifty. 

 Dr. Hall delegated to an assistant " the 

 burden of revising and correcting the entire 

 manuscript of the book, and seeing it through 

 the press." It is no blame to the assistant 

 that the slips and inconsistencies of state- 

 ment, inevitable in composition of this kind, 

 have not been removed. But in regard to 

 what are somewhat unfairly termed printer's 

 errors, I am afraid that blame is deserved: 

 the avoidable mistakes of word and phrase are 

 both numerous and grotesque. 



E. B. TiTCHENER 



Enzymes. Six lectures under the Herter Lec- 

 tureship Foundation, at the University and 

 Bellevue Hospital Medical College. By 

 Otto Cohnheim. New York, John Wiley 

 and Sons. 1912. 



This publication brings before an enlarged 

 audience the forceful lectures upon the sub- 

 ject of the enzymes, which delighted those 

 who were privileged to hear them two years 

 ago. The book is simply written and the 

 views therein expressed, even as regards the 

 author's own discoveries and beliefs, are con- 

 servatively stated. It is a trustworthy guide 

 to modern knowledge, and will be of especial 

 value to those who have no desire to master 

 the larger monographs on the subject. The 



