\ 



March 23, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



463 



unfrozen water, followed the same laws, 

 actual freezing causing only a slightly 

 greater reduction than a temperature just 

 above the freezing point. Finally, a few 

 experiments on the formation of ice on a 

 free surface showed that 90 per cent, of the 

 germs present were excluded from the ice 

 by physical processes. The authors conclude 

 that the danger of typhoid infection from 

 the small fraction of weakened germs re- 

 maining in natural ice is probably not a 

 serious one, and that the results of their 

 experiments are in hai'mony with the facts 

 of experience. -^ ^^ ^^^^^ 



Secretary. 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 

 Psychology and Life. By Hugo Munsterberg. 



Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. xi + 286. 



Professor Miiusterberg has here gathered to- 

 gether a number of essays, and has given to the 

 collection the title of the first of the papers. The 

 others are discussions of the relation of Psy- 

 chology to Physiology, Education, Art, History 

 and 'Psychical Eesearch,' respectively. The 

 chapters thus have a common starting point in 

 Psychology from which they veer off in differ- 

 ent directions. The author's special comments 

 in these many fields it is impossible to repro- 

 duce here even in outline ; we must confine 

 ourselves to the more general doctrine pre- 

 sented in the work. 



The book is in many ways an exposition, or 

 at least the hint, of a philosophy ; and to deal 

 with it adequately would take one inevitably 

 into deep water. With his main contention that 

 Psychology is but a partial way of dealing with 

 the mind, the present writer feels entire sym- 

 pathy. It is important to have it put strongly 

 by a psychologist that when we shall have cat- 

 alogued all the facts of our mental life and have 

 discovered their causal order — which is the pur- 

 pose of psychology — there still remain the larger 

 questions which have to do with the value and 

 meaning of these occurrences. Psychology, like 

 any natural science, is concerned merely with 

 the facts ; its aim is to describe and explain 

 things ; and to this end leaves out of account 



the all-important problem of what our con- 

 sciousness signifies or what its ideals should be. 

 The things we perceive, he is fond of saying, 

 merely 'exist' but are not 'real'. For this 

 reason the real mental life — the life of will, of 

 action, of valuation, of ideals — lies outside the 

 province of psychology, which is ever busy with 

 the beggarly elements of the mental life and 

 never takes up the problems that interest us as 

 active and moral beings — questions of deeper 

 truth, of beauty, of conscience and religion. 

 The scientifio spirit is consequently something 

 which stands in contrast with real life ; it is no 

 substitute for the moral and religious spirit. 



At the same time Professor Miinsterberg 

 somewhat clouds this correct perception of his 

 by putting the antithesis between facts and 

 values too strongly. At times it looks almost 

 as if each could get along without the other ; as 

 if a great gulf were fixed between them, so that 

 the realm of ideas appears in almost Platonic 

 isolation from the world of sense-perception. 

 The ' world of values' and the ' world of facts ' 

 are of course not two worlds, but rather differ- 

 ent ways of considering the self-same world. In 

 Kantian phrase, we might say that facts with- 

 out values are blind, while values without facts 

 are empty. Professor Munsterberg shows, at 

 least in one passage, that he himself takes this 

 view ; but a certain love of contrast and antith- 

 esis, too often makes him put the matter other- 

 wise. 



And in his endeavor to show the insuflficiency 

 of the psychological standpoint, the author 

 really does injustice to psychology. He holds 

 that psychology does, and must ' transform ' the 

 facts for purposes of explanation ; and expla- 

 nation, he believes, is possible only when we 

 can restate the facts in terms of atoms or some- 

 thing else equally elementary. In psychology, 

 consequently, everything must, by hook or 

 crook, be analyzed into sensations, since these 

 are the mental elements which correspond to 

 the atoms of the physical world. Even when 

 we distinctly know that the real mental process 

 — an idea, an emotion, or act of will — is not 

 completely described when we have enumerated 

 the sensations that compose it, nevertheless 

 (according to the author) the psychologist is by 

 the logic of the situation forced to shut his eyes 



