December 11, 1003.] 



SCIENCE. 



749 



deavor and it is marked throughout by an 

 evident fairness of spirit, for all of which the 

 writer desen'es appreciation and credit. More- 

 over, it is, on the whole, clear, the author be- 

 ing at his best in dealing with the more phil- 

 osophical aspects of his subject. The trans- 

 lator has done his work acceptably. Never- 

 theless the book suffers from several serious 

 defects. Thus, for example, although mucli 

 space is devoted to the description of Wundt- 

 ian doctrine, the portrayal of the methods and 

 results of cxperimeutal psychology- is dis- 

 tinctly inadequate. No one could possibly 

 gain from it a just conception of the scope 

 and solidity of achievement of this branch 

 of psychological work. Morbid psychologj', 

 animal psychology and the psychology of re- 

 ligion are even more gravely misevaluated. 

 Needlessly distressing are the misprints which 

 deface almost every page, distorting dates, 

 rendering proper names in some cases almost 

 unrecognizable, etc. An exasperatingly in- 

 complete index furnishes the climax of this 

 kind of annoyance. 



Professor Royee has put aside his meta- 

 physics long enough to write an admirable 

 psychology, which is ostensibly constructed for 

 teachers, but will undoubtedly find a much 

 wider public* Indeed, it will probably be 

 only the better trained teachers who will suc- 

 cessfully follow the text, for the author has 

 written with something of his usual fullness 

 and freedom, and the average pedagogue com- 

 monly demands his intellectual pabulum cut 

 up in smaller pieces than those here offered. 

 Several novel features appear in the construc- 

 tion of the book, which is extremely sugges- 

 tive, and characterized throughout by a strong 

 flavor of practical common sense. 



In the first place, the author has abandoned 

 the conventional lines of division of the psy- 

 chological field into cognition, feeling and will. 

 In their stead occur the categories of 'sensitive- 

 ness,' under which are included feeling and 

 sensory discrimination : ' docility,' in connec- 

 tion with which we find discussions of the 



* ' Outlines of Psychology, An Elementary 

 Treatise with Some Practical Applications,' by 

 Josiali Roj'ce, The Mncmillan Company, Xew 

 York, .1903, pp. x.xvii -f- 392. 



multifarious influences of past experience 

 upon the consciousness of the i)resent moment ; 

 and ' mental initiative,' under which we are 

 confronted with those facts which indicate a 

 factor of variation and individiial peculiarity 

 entering into our mental operations. These 

 rubrics are in essence, perhaps, variants upon 

 current usage rather than wholly original, but 

 they undoubtedly serve to avoid certain perils, 

 to which the customary method of division is 

 exposed and they facilitate the practical ap- 

 plications of a broadly pedagogical character 

 which the author desires to make. 



An entirely novel doctrine, so far as I am 

 aware, is, however, advanced in connection 

 with the theory of feeling. As is well known, 

 pleasure and displeasure have long held sway 

 as the sole rudimentary forms of feeling. 

 Wundt has recently contended for two other 

 elementary polar groups, i. e., feelings of ex- 

 citement and depression and feelings of ten- 

 sion and relief. Professor Royce proposes iivo- 

 fundamental groups, i. e._, pleasure and dis- 

 pleasure, restlessness and quiescence. Space 

 does not permit an examination of the merits, 

 of this program. Sufiice it to say, that the 

 deficiencies of the pleasure-displeasure classi- 

 fication as usually advocated are increasingly 

 evident, and in the reconstruction which ap- 

 pears to be immediately at hand Professor 

 Royce's proposition may prove to be as near 

 the mark as any. He seems to be unaware of 

 the support afforded such a theory as his own 

 by the physiological observations of Binet, 

 Courtier, Vaschide, Thompson and the re- 

 viewer. 



Another striking feature of tlie book is the 

 attempt to connect the phenomena of mental 

 initiative and variation with such organic 

 reactions as those to which Loeb and others 

 have given the name of tropisms. The point 

 which our author wishes to make is the recog- 

 nition of a type of spontaneity independent of 

 the individual's own past e.xiierience and in- 

 dependent of the usual hereditary factors of 

 the in.stinct variety. That the two groups of 

 phenomena are analogous to one another hardly 

 admits of doubt, but in identifying the two 

 activities so closely Professor Royce has surely 

 allowed his first enthusiasm to carry him 



