illustrative of Mr. Stedman's previous volume, which was a critical review of British poetry during the reign of the present sovereign. As good a picture of the queen as we have ever seen prefaces the volume. The reigns of England's two great queens, Elizabeth and Victoria, are marked by unequaled imaginative fertility. Choice and typical selections from four hundred and forty-three poets of the latter reign are in this delightful and valuable book. The colonial minstrelsy of India, Australasia, and the Dominion of Canada is here also, including Toru Dutt, Rudyard Kipling, and Bliss Carman. Among our latest contemporaries in these selections are Austin Dobson, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Robert Louis Stevenson, W. J. Dawson, Eric Mackay, William Watson, Norman Gale, and Richard Le Gallienne. Alfred Austin, made Poet Laureate since this book appeared, is classed with the "composite idyllic school," and only four short selections are made from the voluminous effusions of his muse. Evidently Stedman did not rate him anywhere among England's foremost living singers. It is hardly possible to say too much for the fine taste and consummate good sense which have culled this unsurpassed collection from the flowering fields of Queen Victoria's reign and realm. Blessed Be Drudgery. By WILLIAM C. GANNETT. 16mo, pp. 29. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co. Price, paper, 10 cents.

Eighty-three thousand copies of this tract have been sold. The author offers it as a discourse on a fresh beatitude. Michael Angelo is quoted: "Nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives for it strives for something that is Godlike." Two cobblers being asked how long it takes to become a good shoemaker, one said, "Six years, and then you must travel;" the other said, "All your life, sir." Maydole, the Central New York hammer-maker, said to James Parton, "I have made hammers here for twenty-eight years." "Well, then you ought to be able to make a pretty good hammer by this time." "No sir. I never make a pretty good hammer. I make the best hammer in the United States." The president of the Cambria railworks in Pittsburg, employing seven thousand men, being asked the secret of such an enormous development of business, answered: "We have no secret. We always try to beat our last batch of rails. That's all the secret we have." Tracts like this

cheer the world's toilers and make drudgery seem divine. It might profitably be read by eighty-three thousand more.

The Spiritual Life: Bible Lectures. By GEORGE C. NEEDHAM. 12mo, pp. 262. Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society. Price, cloth, $1.

Fourteen chapters on the Bible and how to study it, made by an evangelist who uses the Scriptures for immediate practical effect upon the minds and hearts and lives of men.

Home Making. By IAN MACLAREN. 16mo, pp. 18.

Christ Enough. By HANNAH W.

SMITH. 16mo, pp. 14. Joy, Rest, and Faith. By HENRY DRUMMOND. 16mo, pp. 16. New York: Wilbur B. Ketcham. Price, paper, ornamental, each, 15 cts.

The quality of these booklets is defined by the well-known character of their authors.

METHODIST REVIEW.

MAY, 1896.

ART. I. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY.

WITHIN the past seven years nearly thirty American universities have established, in connection with their departments of philosophy, laboratories equipped for the new or experimental psychology. This interesting movement is traceable to a previous but slower one in the universities of Germany, which is strongly stimulating the philosophic thought of the world. The popular interest in mental phenomena, shown by the prevalence of public hypnotic exhibitions, spiritualistic séances, faith healing, and similar perversions of true science, can now be gratified in a way that is wholesome yet thoroughly scientific and naturally attractive to the keen American mind. The recent publication of Dr. Scripture's readable work in this field, and of its modest, clear, and skillfully planned predecessor, written by Dr. Sanford +-the first English book written in this newest department of psychology-has opened up a mine of valuable mental possibilities for American students and teachers.

Experimental psychology occupies in philosophy a place corresponding to that of Methodism in religion. As from the cleansing truth that "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself," and the other truth that "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness;

* Thinking, Feeling, and Doing: A Popular Psychology, 1895.

+ A Course in Experimental Psychology, 1895. There is also a small French work by Binet, Introduction a la Psychologie Expérimentelle, Paris, 1894. 23-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XII.

and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" (R. V.), experimental religion has produced the greatest spiritual renovation in modern Church history, so there is now growing up a novel and invaluable science of mind, rooted in the basal facts of repeated and accurate experiment upon every phase of mental life.

Like many other changes in philosophic thought, experimental psychology had its scientific origin in astronomy. In 1795 Maskelyne, the astronomer-royal in Greenwich Observatory, while scrutinizing the transit records of his assistant, Kinnebrook, found them constantly too slow by amounts varying from .5 to .8 of a second-a very large error in such exact work. He expostulated, but in vain. The errors continued. Finally he discharged the assistant for chronic inaccuracy. A similar difficulty was detected later by Bessel (1784-1846), the eminent astronomer at Königsberg, Prussia, who found his own transit records one second in advance of those of his contemporaries, Argelander's being one and a quarter seconds slower than his, while those of Struve were quicker. He could not understand why such errors, varying from .3 of a second to one second, could be made by such expert observers; and finding that the variations were constant in each one's records, and could not be due to the instruments or conditions of observation, which were the same for all, he correctly inferred that the errors were mental, that the minds of the observers acted at different speeds by amounts which were appreciable and measurable. This constant margin of error he called the "personal equation." It is now always calculated carefully for each observer, and must always be considered, together with corrections for atmospheric refraction and other hindrances, in order to attain absolute accuracy.

The historical origin of experimental psychology is traceable to the Kantian philosophy. The metaphysics of this unique thinker (1724-1804) terminated in a dualism of idealism and realism. The idealistic phase was expanded variously by Fichte, the subjective idealist (1762–1814), and Schelling, the objective idealist (1775-1854), and culminated in the absolute idealism of Hegel (1770-1831), beyond whom idealistic metaphysics will probably never go. The realistic phase was developed by Herbart (1776-1841), who thereby turned the thought of Ger

many, and therefore of the world, into its present psychological channels, and is to-day the ruling spirit of philosophical Europe. His great work, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, was issued in 1824. The interest in psychology which it aroused was enlarged by Lotze (1817-81), whose Medicinische Psychologie, published in 1852, gives due prominence to the physiological accompaniment of mental actions. Eight years later an epochal change originated with the issue in 1860 of Fechner's (1801-87) Psycho-Physik, in which the important discoveries of E. H. Weber (1795-1878) concerning the connection between stimuli and the resulting sensations, known as Weber's Law, were elaborated and reduced to exact formulation. Fechner emphasized the relationship of the psychical and physical factors, as his term "psycho-physik" implies. The interest and controversies aroused by his theories were still prevalent when Wundt (born 1832) published at Leipzig in 1874 his Grundzüge der Physiolog ischen Psychologie, combining the somewhat diverse influences of Lotze and Fechner, and showing the great value of the then recently founded science of physiological psychology. This originated in the discoveries of the physiologists Fritsch and Hitzig, who had been experimenting on the localization of function in the brains of dogs, and had found that stimulation of certain parts of the brain produced movements in corresponding parts of the dogs' bodies. Wundt accordingly saw the possibility of applying the experimental method not merely to the body but to the mind, especially the human mind. Remembering the well-known "personal equation" of the astronomers, he inferred that all mental action might perhaps be capable of similar exact measurement. He therefore started at Leipzig, in 1878, the first laboratory in the world for the experimental study of mental life.

Experimental psychology, which uses apparatus to study the mind, is thus the reverse of physics, which observes the action of natural forces by means of apparatus. The main purpose of this new science is the accurate measurement of mental acts. How long does it take to remember, to discriminate between two colors? How delicate and reliable are our space perceptions? How much energy is expended in thinking? The new psychology vouches a trustworthy answer to thousands of such questions. From a large fund of exact facts it endeavors to

formulate reliable rules of mental life, and to generalize these into laws which can stand in sturdy independence of metaphysical vagaries with the unimpeachable declaration, "Thus saith consciousness in the name of careful, repeated, and verified experiment."

The facts of experimental psychology are best secured by the laboratory method. Each mind to be experimented on must be suitably isolated from all disturbances, especially noises and strong lights. The mental laboratory should be a small building in a secluded place, with many sound-proof rooms, and with neutral-tinted walls devoid of all adornment except, perhaps, injunctions to "silence." Obeying these, and passing through the various rooms, one sees benches and tools for repairing and constructing apparatus, tables convenient for investigations, and cabinets filled with various supplies; large squares of white, black, and colored cardboards; colored papers, gummed letters and figures, photographs and engravings, electric keys, wires, batteries, and motors; glass and rubber tubing; some chemicals; stand rods and clamps. Here are also a series of "nonsense syllables," such as ZAZ, BIF, WUL, SOS, and GUG. These are mounted on small squares of white cardboard, and being quite devoid of suggestions are invaluable in memory experiments. For similar purposes are mounted some series of grammatical forms, nouns, verbs, and conjunctions. Which can we remember best, and why? And what are the subtle processes of speech? Arranged in show cases are large elastic models of the brain, illustrating the location of cerebral function, and models of the eye, ear, and other sense organs. Here is a group of instruments for testing the time tense-pendulums, stop-watches, and the sensitive chronoscope whose dials indicate the thousandth part of a second in reaction time. For arguing the correctness of spatial judgments there are standard meters, sliding tubes, and the indispensable kymograph—a revolving drum with tracing paper for recording minute intervals and distances. The delicacy of the sense of touch and pressure is examined by many simple but important devices-corks, pins mounted in various figures, hairs, and soft brushes, weights, balances, dynamometers, and ivory-pointed compasses to be drawn slowly over the skin to test its sensitiveness in different places. Here are thermometers, metal disks, beakers, and test