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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 326 



furnishes a report of the papers and discussions of the New Jersey- 

 Sanitary Association, which met in Trenton during December, 

 1888. Reports from local boards of health, and health laws and 

 •circulars, together with vital statistics, are also given in the report. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



■Psychology as a Natural Scietice applied to the Sohition of Occult 

 Psychic Penomena. By C. G. Raue, M.D. Philadelphia, 

 Porter & Coates. 8°. $3.50. 

 The author of this work is by birth a German, and as long ago 

 as 1847 he published a little book in the German language which 

 is the nucleus of the present treatise. His psychological views are 

 those of Beneke, whom he regards as the real founder of scientific 

 psychology. In this work, however, the author's special object has 

 been to explain the various " occult phenomena," such as hypno- 

 tism, thought-transferrence, etc., which have of late attracted so 

 much attention ; and the views presented on these subjects are the 

 ■result of his own researches. The earlier part of the work is 

 simply an ordinary treatise on psychology, containing some doc- 

 trines peculiar to the school of Beneke, but on the whole traversing 

 pretty familiar ground. The author holds that all our states of 

 consciousness and all our mental capacities arise from two sources, 

 — the primitive or original forces of the soul, and the stimuli of 

 the external world ; the primitive forces, as he is careful to tell us, 

 ■comprising nothing but the powers of sense. These primitive 

 forces he also divides into two classes, — those that have been modi- 

 fied by external stimuli, and those that have not been thus modi- 

 fied, and which he calls void, unoccupied primitive forces. These 

 forces and stimuli together he calls " mobile elements," by which 

 •we suppose he means active elements. These, then, being the sole 

 sources of knowledge and mental power, the problem is to explain 

 by means of them the occult phenomena in question. Dr. Raue 

 holds that physical. causes are wholly inadequate to the purpose, 

 and that nothing but psychical forces -will account for the facts. 

 The soul he defines as " an organism of psychic forces externaliz- 

 ing itself in the organism of material forces which constitute the 

 body. . , . The psychic forces are spaceless. . . . They act where 

 they are, and yet apparently on objects far away in space, because 

 for them there exists no space " (p. 522). But how is the action 

 ■of one soul upon another, as in thought-transferrence, suggestion, 

 etc., to be accounted for .^ Dr. Raue devotes many pages to the 

 discussion of this subject ; but it seems to us that he gets lost in a 

 cloud of words. Here is the essence of his doctrine, which the 

 reader can judge for himself. " The nature of thought-transfer- 

 rence consists essentially in the excitation of the modification in 

 the recipient similar to the one excited in the agent, and is effected 

 ■by mobile elements, and principally by primitive forces partially 

 modified or charged with external stimuli. Void primitive forces 

 -determine the concentration of the mind to the modification which 

 is to be transferred. The mobile elements (as all soul-forces are 

 •spaceless) do not move in the sense of corporeal forces from place 

 to place : theirs is an attraction of like to like, independent of cor- 

 poreal distances or interpositions " (p. 400). We cannot think 

 that Dr. Raue has solved the problem of the occult phenomena ; 

 but there are things in his book, nevertheless, that will interest 

 not only special students of this subject, but also general students 

 ■of psychology. 



Peports on Elemejitary Schools, 1852-1882. By MATTHEW 

 Arnold. Ed. by Sir Francis Sandford. New York, Mac- 

 millan. 12°. $2.25. 



We have here the various reports that Mr. Arnold from time to 

 time made as an inspector of schools. They are, of course, written 

 in his usual excellent style, and contain many remarks of more 

 than merely temporary and local interest. Every thing statistical of 

 of transient importance is omitted, so that the matter presented 

 relates entirely to the general principles of education, subjects of 

 study, methods of teaching, and other topics in which educators 

 ■everywhere are interested. Mr. Arnold's district at first comprised 

 most of the midland counties of England and a large part of 

 Wales, but schools controlled by the Anglican and Roman churches 

 were not under his charge. At a later time he had the oversight 



of all classes of schools, but only in a small district consisting of 

 Westminster and its neighborhood. Mr. Arnold was evidently not 

 well impressed with the character of most of the schools, and he 

 complains of the slow progress they made. He speaks of the low 

 degree of mental culture prevailing not only in the lower schools, 

 but also among candidates for the teachers' training-schools, all of 

 whom were eighteen years old or over. This lack of general cul- 

 ture he attributes to the want of true literary training ; and he 

 affirms that all the literary culture the mass of English school- 

 children get is the ability to read the newspapers, — a remark which, 

 we fear, is applicable to other countries than England. He 

 strongly recommends the study of English grammar and analysis, 

 on the ground that " grammar is an exercise of the children's 

 wits ; all the rest of their work is in general but an exercise of their 

 memory." Besides grammar, he would teach what the Germans 

 call Naturkunde, or the leading facts and laws of nature, with 

 geography and national history ; this programme being intended 

 for pupils not over thirteen years of age. He deprecates the evils 

 that result from cramming for examination, some of which he 

 predicted in advance. He seems to have had a keen eye for every 

 thing connected with the schools, attending even to the form of the 

 desks, the cleanliness of the rooms, etc. The book presents no 

 theories of importance but such as readers of Mr. Arnold's other 

 works are already familiar with ; but it contains much that will 

 be interesting to educators. 



The Principles of Empirical, or Indtictive, Logic. By JOHN 

 Venn. New York, Macmillan. 8°. $4.50. 



This work contains the substance of lectures which the author 

 has been giving for some years past to his pupils at Cambridge 

 University. It is a discussion rather than a treatise ; and the 

 reader must be already familiar with the rudiments of logic, both 

 inductive and deductive, in order to understand it. It is mainly 

 devoted to induction, though there is a chapter on the theory of 

 the syllogism, and other chapters on weights and measures, the 

 possibility of a universal language, and other topics not really be- 

 longing to logic. The principal fault of the book is a tendency to 

 trifling distinctions and over-subtle refinements of thought. For 

 instance, Mr. Venn calls attention to the fact that in some depart- 

 ments of investigation, especially in social affairs, our own acts 

 have an influence on the phenomena we study ; and he maintains 

 that this is true in all departments. Even the astronomer, he says, 

 by moving to and from his instrument and by the movements of 

 his hand in making his calculations, alters the position of every body 

 in the universe. Again, he inquires whether we can drop a stone 

 twice in the same spot, and answers the question in the negative, 

 because, even if we could hold the stone in exactly the same position 

 the second time, and at the same height, the weight and temperature 

 of the air would be altered, and, anyhow, the moon and stars would 

 not be in the same position as before. The book contains a great 

 number of these hair-splitting distinctions ; and, though a few of 

 them may have some scientific importance, the great mass are 

 hardly more than curiosities of thought. 



But, in spite of this tendency to over-subtlety, the book is an able 

 one, and professional logicians in particular will find in it much 

 food for thought. Mr. Venn's standpoint is essentially that of 

 Mill; but he goes rather beyond Mill in maintaining the merely 

 probable character of all truth obtained by induction, and he uses 

 the term " empirical " in the title of his book for the purpose of 

 emphasizing this view. His theory of causation is the same as 

 Hume's ; while as to the methods of induction he adopts the views 

 of Mill with but little variation. As regards the syllogism, he differs 

 from Mill, holding that it really gives us new knowledge. He has 

 some interesting remarks on hypothetical and disjunctive proposi- 

 tions, and advances a theory of disjunctives that is, we believe, 

 new ; and, though we can hardly agree with it, it is well worthy of 

 attention. In his concluding chapter, Mr. Venn discusses the logic 

 of morality and the moral sciences, on which he has some impor- 

 tant remarks. He calls attention to the fact that investigations in 

 social matters, and especially predictions as to what will happen, 

 are more or less vitiated by the fact that the course of events will 

 depend in part on what the investigator himself may choose to do, 

 and that in the case of men of genius this influence of the indi- 



