io6 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 265 



The Soul, or Rational Psychology. By Emanuel Swedenborg. 

 Tr. by Frank Sewall. New York, New Church Board of Publ. 

 8°. $3. 



The original of this work is in Latin, and it remained in manu- 

 script for a century before it was published ; and now, after some 

 forty years more, we have a translation of it in English. It is hard 

 to see, however, what useful purpose the book can be made to 

 serve. It is true that the present interest in psychological 

 studies is great, and men engaged in them are glad to receive help 

 from any quarter. But they will not get any help from Sweden- 

 borg, owing to the unscientific character of his work. Every one, 

 whether he knows much of Swedenborg or not, has heard of him 

 as a mystic and as the founder of a religious sect. Now, mysticism, 

 as Mill somewhere remarks, consists in attributing outward reality 

 to the creations of our own fancy ; and that this is the method of 

 Swedenborg, a few examples of his work will show. He assumes 

 that we possess a lower mind or aninms, a rational mind or mens, 

 and a soul or anima, and these are perpetually spoken of by him 

 as if they were distinct entities. Precisely how he does regard 

 them it is impossible to say, for his expression is obscure ; but the 

 following passage from the appendix to the present work, and which 

 is taken from another of his treatises, presents his doctrine briefly 

 in his own words : " The first of the organs is the spirituous 

 fluid, or soul, whose office it is to represent the universe, to have in- 

 tuition of ends, to be conscious, and principally to determine. The 

 next organ under the soul is the mind, whose office it is to under- 

 stand, to think, and to will. The third in order is the animus, 

 whose office it is to conceive, to imagine, and to desire " (p. 357). 

 Besides all these 'organs,' he speaks of something which he calls 

 the ' pure intellect,' his description of which is so obscure that we 

 confess ourselves unable to understand what he means by the term. 

 The translator of the work thinks it is entitled to credit for recog- 

 nizing the part played by the brain and the body generally in con- 

 nection with mental phenomena ; but, unfortunately for this view, 

 Swedenborg's anatomy and physiology are quite as fantastic as his 

 psychology. Thus, at the very beginning of his book, he under- 

 takes to explain " the successive formation of the blood-vessels from 

 the simple fibre," and he begins as follows : — 



" The simplest fibre is the form of forms, or that which forms the 

 other fibres succeeding in order. The simplest fibre by its circum- 

 flexion forms a certain perpetually spiral surface, or membrane, 

 which is itself the second, the medullary or nervous fibre of the 

 body, and is simply a little channel constructed from the simplest 

 fibre, but, together with the fluid which permeates it, constituting a 

 fibre. . . . This fibre, when it falls into the provinces of the body, 

 again forms a kind of little gland not unlike the cortical, from which 

 proceeds the bodily fibre, and this forms the little tunic which in- 

 folds the arterial vessels " (p. 3). And there is much more of the 

 same sort. Now, those who believe Swedenborg to have been a 

 divinely inspired teacher may perhaps accept such doctrines as 

 these and such methods as their author employs ; but to other per- 

 sons his book will be chiefly interesting as an example of the aber- 

 rations of the human intellect. 



Childhood : its Care and Culture. By MARY Allen West. 

 Chicago, Woman's Temp. Publ. Assoc. 8°. 

 In estimating the value of such a work as this, the public for 

 which it is intended is a prime consideration. The scientific man 

 will find little in it likely to attract him, and what there is he can 

 find in a better shape elsewhere. But the majority of mankind are 

 not of a scientific turn of mind, and, as they have the practical 

 problem of educating their own children before them, it is both 

 natural .and advisable that they should have prepared for them a 

 general treatise on the nature of childhood, answering a want anal- 

 ogous to that satisfied by works on home medicine. The spirit in 

 which such works are written is always a reflex of the movement 

 appealing most strongly to the leaders of culture. It is not diffi- 

 cult to trace in this large volume the influence of new and to agreat 

 extent better views upon such questions as the moral training of 

 .he young by means of the every-day usages of society, the proper 

 dressing of children, the dangers surrounding them at critical 

 stages in their development, and so on. Some rather objectionable 

 features that are also new have likewise found their way into the 



work. Chief among these is the early acquaintance of children 

 with the dangers of alcohol, — a topic ridiculously overdrawn. In 

 brief, this handbook aims to put together, in a style apt to attract 

 the uninformed reader, the views of childhood now considered as 

 most satisfactory ; taking much from the development known as 

 ' infant psychology,' piecing in somewhat of child-lore and anthro- 

 pology, and systematizing much of such information as is often 

 found in a magazine like Babyhood. In doing this there are many 

 mistakes, some serious and some not ; but, on the whole, the work 

 leaves one with the impression that it is more remarkable that it is 

 not less satisfactorily performed than that it is not more so. The 

 chief characteristic that marks off such a treatise from a scientific 

 one, is that the former brings in so much irrelevant matter : it is not 

 false, not uninteresting, but out of place. However, there is un- 

 doubtedly a taste for works of this kind, and we ought to be satis- 

 fied if they are no worse than this. 



Life of Thomas Hopkins Callaiidet. By his son, Edward 

 Miner Gallaudet. New York, Holt. 12°. 

 This book is an interesting account of a worthy and useful man. 

 It is written with filial reverence and affection, but, so far as we can 

 judge, without undue bias ; and the story is well told. Mr. T. H. 

 Gallaudet was the founder of deaf-mute instruction in America, 

 and the principal interest of his biography arises from this fact. 

 Few among the charitable or educational improvements of modern 

 times are more important than that which has enabled persons 

 without the sense of hearing, to communicate with their fellow-men ; 

 and, though Mr. Gallaudet was not the inventor of the system, he 

 was the principal agent in introducing it into this country. It was 

 during the second decade of this century that he became interested 

 in the subject, while he was a theological student at Andover, and. 

 at the request of a number of other persons who became interested 

 with him, he abandoned the idea of entering the ministry, and 

 started for London to learn the methods in use in the school for 

 deaf-mutes established there. To his surprise, however, he found 

 that the teaching of deaf-mutes in England was a virtual monopoly 

 in the hands of a certain family, the members of which refused to 

 allow him to learn the system, lest their interest should thereby 

 suffer. After trying for some time in vain to induce them to change 

 their mind, or to obtain any means whatever of learning their sys- 

 tem of teaching, he went to Paris, where he readily obtained access 

 to the information he wanted at the Royal School for Deaf-Mutes. 

 Returning as soon as he had qualified himself, he opened the first 

 school of the kind in this country at Hartford, Conn., in 1817, and 

 continued for many years to preside over it as its principal. His 

 duties, however, were somewhat arduous, and his relations with the 

 directors were not always harmonious ; and after a while he re- 

 signed his position. During the rest of his life he was engaged in 

 various charitable and educational enterprises. He married one of 

 his own deaf-mute pupils, and there is abundant evidence in these 

 pages that she became an excellent wife and mother. His son, the 

 author of this biography, is continuing his father's work, being now 

 the president of the National College for Deaf-Mutes in Washing- 

 ton. During the present year the deaf-mutes of the country will 

 erect a statue of the elder Gallaudet on the grounds of the college 

 at Washington, — a tribute to his memory that is well deserved. 



An Explanatory Digest of Professor Fawcet/'s ' Matiual of Polit- 

 ical Economy.' By CYRIL A. WATERS. New York, Mac- 

 millan. 12°. 70 cents. 

 This little book is intended chiefly for those students who are 

 preparing for examination in Professor Fawcett's work in the Eng- 

 lish schools and colleges, and for this purpose it seems to be well 

 adapted. It fills some eighty pages, and gives an excellent sumniBry 

 of the original work in clear and intelligible language, the more 

 important doctrines and arguments being given in many cases very 

 nearly in Professor Fawcett's own words. The original work is in 

 many respects one of the best of the shorter treatises on the science, 

 but it contains some doctrines that are not accepted now by the 

 majority of thinkers, that of the wages fund being the most impor- 

 tant. Mr. Waters objects occasionally to some of Fawcett's views, 

 and indicates one or two deficiencies in the professor's work ; but 

 he says nothing on the subject of the wages fund. Fawcett's 



