HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. By HOWARD C. WARREN, Boston. Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1919. XX., 450 pp. $2.75.

One is impressed upon reading Professor Warren's contribution, “Human Psychology," to the long list of elementary psychology texts, with the scholarly and painstaking care that everywhere shows itself in both style and arrangement of the book. At the same time, one who is dealing hand to hand with the perplexing and pressing needs of human life, both as it comes before one in the college class-room, and in the larger associations in the complex community life, finds the book rather too academic, one might say, almost too prosaic, in style. The reviewer is convinced that the most effective text book in elementary psychology must be far more than a dry, mechanical, systematic though conscientious presentation of the accepted facts of the science. All too frequently, the course in elementary psychology is the only contact the student has with the scientific study of human behavior. If we keep in mind the great need that he shall better understand himself, and be better able to control and direct his own conduct through understanding and control of the mental factors that make conduct what it is; if we understand the central aim and purpose of education to be that of helping the individual to make more successful and constructive adjustments, then we must write our texts not merely as an introduction to the succeeding "courses" to be given in the further pursuit of our subject, not merely as a preparation for advanced study, but with the life needs, the practical human needs, of our students as the guiding and motivating purpose.

It would have added greatly to the strength and value of the book had this purpose been permitted to permeate its pages, rather than the more aloof and impersonal purpose of a presentation in most carefully chosen language of certain facts.

On the other hand, as a presentation of cold facts, as a combination of the view-point of the behaviorist, and of the older viewpoints and methods of the so-called structuralistic and functionalistic schools, the book is admirably done. This is not the place to approve or disapprove, according to one's own convictions, of any of the special modes of treatment or investigation of psychological facts, or to side with one school or the other as to what properly constitutes the field of psychological investigation. But to revert to the idea thrown out as a constructive criticism above, the author's leaning is so far toward the behavioristic method and

attitude in dealing with his facts that the student is likely to receive the impression that behavior is purely a matter of mechanics, and gain no impression of the dynamics of consciousness. Let us by all means use all objective devices of observation possible for determining what both overt and implicit behavior are. But let us not omit to make central the fact that through the study of behavior we are learning something more about the nature of conscious processes, the forces that go to make up human personality. Let the psychologist not forget, in his eagerness to get at the objective facts of behavior, that these objective facts must be facts to him. and can be facts to him only in terms of his own consciousness, if they are to have any part in his world at all. And finally, if we shall accept the position, no matter in what particular words we may express it, that psychology has to do with the scientific investigation of human behavior, its causes and conditions, then let us by all means keep constantly before ourselves and our students the dynamic part played by consciousness in its relation to behavior, its relation to success or failure in making our adjustments to life situations. In actual experience, we find ourselves translating everything into conscious life to make it ours. In actual experience we find ourselves face to face with differences in conduct or behavior that grow out of thoughts, feelings, ideas, judgments, that is, not to continue the list, out of forms and factors in the mental life, the life of consciousness. Then let us not be content, in presenting to immature minds, to men and women whose most urgent need is self-control, and whose most insistent call is for action, a scientific introduction to the facts and laws of human behavior which is coldly anatomical, a catalogue of events, a glossary of technical terms, rather than the dynamics of human personality as it manifests itself in behavior. Better still, let us constantly take the dry bones of our science and clothe them with the living flesh. Let us use our anatomies, our structuralistic facts, our physiological substrate or correlate of consciousness, our classifications and our laws always as a means toward helping the student, in this his first and perhaps his only contact with our science, to see the dependable and inescapable relation between the forms and factors of the mental life and his adjustments, which constitute both his objective and his subjective behavior, and aid him in his peculiarly human task of so reconstructing or remaking this psycho-physical human nature of his that he shall make some progress in the direction of acquir

ing that conscious control of conduct which alone gives any assurance of behavior that shall be progressively constructive.

Professor Warren's book is a most excellent anatomical analysis and is written with a painstaking care, and a clearness of diction that quite equal the range of scholarly knowledge which is evidenced on every page. But, on the other hand, we cannot but regret that there is everywhere lacking that dynamic element of vital contact with life needs, that vital translation into terms of life adjustments, which have been pointed out above. In this respect, the book is certainly not unique upon the ever lengthening shelf of psychology texts. F. E. OWEN.

SPIRITUAL VOICES IN MODERN LITERATURE by TREVOR H. DAVIES. George H. Doran Company, New York, 1919. Pp. X, 312.

Some will complain that the use of literary criticism to bear a religious message is a perversion. Such criticism is short-sighted however in this, that there is no great literature which does not deal with the fundamental human instincts and as such is full of conclusions of the greatest moment for theology. The greatest study and the greatest interest of the human mind is ever the human reactions, those of human souls. These studies in this book are full of the homiletic interest but are therefore not the less valuable for purposes of moral teaching. It is appropriate that from time to time the deeper teachings of the masterpieces should thus be set forth.

The author begins by discussing Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven" as the epic of the love that will not let us go. He follows with Peer Gynt as the example of the ignominy of halfheartedness. In the remaining lectures he deals with Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, Tennyson's In Memoriam, The Letters of John Smetham, Wordsworth's Ode to Duty, Morley's Gladstone, Browning's Saul, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, and Masefield's Everlasting Mercy. He does this with a freshness and vigor which is likely to add to the interest already present for these books and to send his readers back to a review of them under the light of his teaching.

Only those will be disappointed who find it always difficult to tolerate seriousness, or who cannot be satisfied with a book which is less than a thorough-going critique. This book is correct in assuming the aim of great literature to be a serious one. It possesses no

particular value as a critique, nevertheless it is valuable as sending many people back to the original springs of inspiration.

THE VITAL MESSAGE, by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. George H. Doran Co., New York. 1919. Pp. VII, 164.

It is not unusual for the desperate partisan frequently to declare the complete annihilation of the same enemy, because the partisan mind dwells upon the instances favorable to its conclusions and as stolidly overlooks those that are unfavorable. One can never look hopefully to such a source for scientific accuracy. Such a case of special pleading and inaccuracy is to be found in this book. Yet it will have considerable influence with the uncritical minds of such as will to believe it.

It frequently happens that men who are famous in one field of human endeavor carry the conceit of confidence to other fields of which they know nothing. They thus come to be listened to by the ignorant and uncritical while they make themselves ridiculous to the clear-sighted. There are illustrations a-plenty in contemporaneous history, as when a successful manufacturer attempts to enter the field of international diplomacy, or a chemist speaks with unabashed dogmatism in the field of theology.

The partisan bias of the book is disclosed by an attack upon institutionalized Christianity so obviously unfair and untrue as to be evident to one who has even read in the newspapers of the philanthropic and humanitarian effort to which the church is at present giving itself.

The author looks for the dawn of a new day through the discoveries of spiritualism, but he does not show the benefits. Neither does he disclose any moral and ethical values to flow from the substantiation of such doddering and feeble messages as are supposed to come from the unseen world. One might well pray for annihilation rather than to look helplessly forward to such an order of intellectuality as seems to be "disclosed" in the widely heralded "manifestations" of spiritualism.

Why are so many widely known men seeking after the occult? It is an indication of spiritual poverty, a loss of the sense of the things worth while. It is pursued by those who have lost or never had a religious faith worthy the name. It has been emphasized by the effect of the tragic events of the war upon many whose former materialism proves no longer adequate for the load of human. tragedy.

Notes and Discussions

WE

LIFE'S IDEAL

E are going to be through with this life before very long. The longest life is short when it is over; any time is short when it is done. The gates of time will swing to behind you before long. They will swing to behind some of us soon, but behind all of us before long. And then the important thing will not be what appointments we had, or what rank in the conference, or anything of that sort-not what men thought of us, but what He thought of us, and whether we were built into His kingdom. And if, at the end of it all, we emerge from life's work and discipline crowned souls, at home anywhere in God's universe, life will be a

success.

-Borden Parker Bowne

IBÁÑEZ AND THE CELTIC REVIVAL

The visit of the writer of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" to America brings us into closer touch with old Spain, for he may be regarded as the first Spaniard in these modern days who has struck the international key and found readers all over the world. Russia, Sweden, Norway, Hungary with Tolstoi, Laegerlof, Ibsen, Jokai and other notable writers have given their quota to world literature; and now Southern Europe-the sunny Mediterranean-is coming in for a share of popular interest. Part of the story, it is true, is laid in South America, of which the hero is a native; but the interest soon passes definitely to the Old World, and the intensity of the European crisis where the "horsemen," conquest, war, famine and death, have been riding in spectacular form as never before in the history of man.

It is to be noted that the novelist pays particular attention to the preposterous claims of the swelled-head Teuton to be a superior world race, especially when compared with the rival Celt, to whom many have never ceased to grant pre-eminence in the higher civilization. And the Prussian classed Spain with the Celtic peoples who were now decadent. In the new appreciation of values in civilization, which has definitely dethroned the Hun from the leading