species" whose desire to get out, to be everlastingly "on the go", surpasses even her husband's.

So we find these compact little five room band-boxes quite barren of books. Usually there is a piano whether any member of the family can play a note or not and often there is a victrola, no books of any sort or description; the nearest thing in the set line of a book being a few popular magazines, like an oasis in a desert, saving the place from complete literary vacuum. If inclement weather or sickness force an evening at home, these magazines, or perhaps a book borrowed from some circulating library, serve as a diversion. Luckily, many of the magazines run books in serial form before publication and, in this way, a few are read. If it were not for these magazines, there would be a total lack of any sort of reading material in most of our middle class homes. A garage has become a necessity, a library a superfluity, to these people. Is it because the younger generation has lost all desire to read, or because the swiftlypassing moments are so filled with other things, that the stories they might otherwise read, such as "Vanity Fair" or A "Tale of Two Cities", being vividly portrayed on the screen, they prefer to get them that way in a single evening rather than pore over them for perhaps a week or two?

Of course there are a few homes among the middle class which have their readers, to whom books are the most precious possessions of life, but these homes are in a sad minority. For my part, I assert, unhesitatingly, without fear of contradiction, that nine out of every ten young people, founding a home, start without one book. This would not be so deplorable but for the fact that the books are never forthcoming in these homes. If one can exist without books the first year of one's married life, one can the second, the third, and so on to the golden sunset.

The calamitous part of it all is that these bookless people don't seem to realize what they are missing. It may be vastly amusing to see Charlie Chaplin caper about the screen, but is it

something to treasure-to remember, to help solve the tremendous problems of life which constantly confront us? Mary Pickford's smile may warm and charm us, but is it to be compared to a volume of George Eliot?

In this mad rush, this whirl of business and pleasure, books, especially the classics, have no place. People seem to have neither the time nor the inclination for them. Yet, life at the present time to most people is far from satisfying. We have only to glance about at the restlessness, the discontent, to verify this. The mad rush which catches and hurls us from one moment to the next leaves nothing-nothing tangible, nothing helpful, nothing beautiful, such as we might have gained from the quiet perusal of a book. Rather it leaves a driving discontent; an insatiable desire for more; more excitement, more amusement and on and on we rush, caught in the whirlpool of the times.

It is the woman who is content to found a bookless home at whom I wonder. A home without a book! To me it is unthinkable, surrounded as I write by books on all four sides of me. Yet, is it true. The bookless homes are becoming more and more in vogue. It does not occur to our modern architect to build bookcases in his little five room band-box. Why should he? Of what use would they be? There is not demand for such an arrangement, and until a demand makes it necessary it will certainly not be done.

What of the children of bookless families? If children, brought up in homes where there are books, at least a few of a sort, are willing to do without them, how much more are the children of bookless homes coming to regard the book as useless, unnecessary? Brought up, as they are, on Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford instead! Can Fatty Arbuckle and Douglas Fairbanks take the place to a child of James Whitcomb Riley and Eugene Field?

It is neither through lack of money, nor because books might by some be classed as a luxury, that they are done away with in our modern home. It is simply and purely because of lack of desire. They don't want them, at least not badly enough to buy them; and as nobody buys them for mere display, like the time-honored piano, for instance, they do without, not despairingly, but quite cheerfully, quite contentedly.

I do not know how a race of "thinkers" and "doers" can spring from a race of non-readers, but perhaps this is possible. One can only speculate upon the possibilities.

I am speaking, however, of the average middle-class home. But the middle class being in an overwhelming majority, it is safe to judge from them. Of course, the rich man will have his library whether he is a reader or not and the poor, thank heaven, have always recourse to the public libraries. It is the middle class who neither know nor care, who have not the slightest regard for a good book, be that book ancient or modern. Reading to the exclusion of all other pastimes, is perhaps unwise. But surely the book ought to have some place in the lives of the present generation. Perhaps bookless homes have always been existent, but certainly we must admit that they are more prevalent today than they have ever been. If this be progression, give me stagnation!

It is not progression. At least not for the bookless mob. To the few readers of good literature, ancient and modern, the affairs of the nation must ultimately revert. They, it will be, who will lead and guide the unthinking, unreading mob, whether they be rich or poor. We have never yet had a great man, a statesman, scientist or artist, who was not a reader. The printed page has always wielded its power and always will even though it be persistently omitted from so many of our modern homes. To men and women whose homes are comprehensive enough to contain libraries may we look for achievement, and to them only. The bookless mob must be content to follow, for they cannot hope to lead.

Current Thought

Does Humor Deserve More Philosophical Consideration?

From Epicurus to Lord Dunsaney we have heard of the laughter of the gods, but too seldom if ever is humor considered seriously as an item of metaphysical significance. Katherine Gilbert in The Philosophical Review for July criticizes Bosanquet's omission in his writings of any systematic treatment of humor, and insists that it not only holds a high place among the virtues, but that it is an attitude of the first significance and of "supreme value, coordinate with, or perhaps part of the texture of the religious attitude." The writer contends that "humor is one of the 'dominant attitudes,' that is, that it is one of the attitudes which takes man beyond morals, the whole way to salvation. It goes with greatness, either with the gifted spirit or with the highly significant situation. Weak minds are not complex enough to construct the aesthetic whole, or produce the curious perversities and involutions of genuine humor; the best they can do is laugh at some deviation from the normal which seems to them outlandish or repeat some trifle which by mere repetition becomes funny. Minds at a higher level, but not the highest, can be sharp and satirical, but scarcely humorous. The real spirit of comedy is a function of high altitudes and wide spaces. If one presses for examples of distinguished humor, the obvious one in a philosophical discussion is the irony of Socrates, which permeates and partially constitutes his reflective view of things..."

Humor saves from the overpowering of the immediate situation, assists in perspective, and hence is of supreme logical value. In the make-up of a world view of things, humor assists in sane balance. "The absence of humor in the view of any concrete situation is likely to entail a distortion of facts and logical error. And it would be generally admitted, I think, that absence of humor in a person's make-up is a fairly sure index of limitation in general capacity." At the same time "Humor makes a man a creative artist as surely as does the ability to paint or sing." It thus acts as a preventative of spiritual dullness and bondage to the prosaic cramping of facts as they immediately appear. In high forms comedy is as much a bearer of important meaning as tragedy. Its greatness lies in the cheerfulness and self-confidence, which Hegel recognizes, but also in its speculative disinterestedness, which he seems to deny. Humor is philosophical, because it readjusts a synoptic vision of things, putting the trifling and unimportant matters of life in their proper perspective. Comedy is but little practical, it is essentially speculative; and while religion leads us to act, humor helps us to see.

Moral Responsibility and the New Psychology

This practical and acute problem Professor John Laird discusses in the Hibbert Journal for July. The new psychology is an at least temporary alliance between behaviorism, psycho-analysis, and crowd psychology, the original motives for which were a reaction against the narrowness of previous psychological and political theories, and a growing appreciation of the significance for psychology of that obscure phase of mind revealed in 'psychic phenomena,' hysteria, and neurology, together with an important advance in the study of animal behavior. "It is impossible," he writes, "to believe seriously, I think, that all, or even most of the lavish hypotheses, the generous enthusiasms, the brilliant apercus, and the wearisome, if cynical, ingenuousness of this movement can bear the test of calm investigation. Indeed, it may be contended, with great show of reason, that most of these accounts of the play of 'basic forces' and 'insatiable urges' show a poverty of reflection and a prodigality of quasi-scientific verbalism which make psychology cut a very poor figure in comparison with other sciences; and there are excellent grounds for believing, as a recent writer has shown, that much in the new psychology is the work of 'slumpers' who mistake names for causes after the fashion of the 'faculty' psychology which is erroneously alleged to be dead.” Nevertheless, pioneer work is being done, and it is very hard.

The relation of the new psychology to moral responsibility is two-fold. In the main the new theories constrict, if they do not completely stamp out, the sphere of genuine responsibility. The determining or driving force in action is always an instinct or impulse. On the other hand, some of the new theories would greatly enlarge the sphere of our responsibility; we are responsible for failure to inhibit recurring temptations and suggestions. The therapeutic value of psycho-analysis depends upon conscious catharsis, while Coue, Baudouin, and the new Nancy School insist upon the value of auto-suggestion and self-hypnosis in strengthening our moral fibre.

The new psychology cannot change our judicial system, with its use of penalty, for the latter is maintained for the simple pragmatic reason that it works. Nevertheless, the truth of the new psychology, if established, would have important consequences for the business of living. If deliberate action and self-control are empty names, its self-styled optimism is a sham. If on the other hand our volitional life is seen to require more self-direction, we can improve our lot by taking heed to the new revelation. If the latter theory be true, "the usefulness of the new psychology lies principally in the spadework it is doing. It is immensely important on any theory to know, or to try to know, how far our rational control of ourselves extends, and what price we have to pay for the use (and for the abuse) of this or the other persistent inhibition. The pity is that so much of this spade-work raises such clouds of dust." The strength of the new doctrines probably lies in amending rather than in supplanting. If the new gospel "has not succeeded so triumphantly as it is apt to boast, it has done an invaluable work none the less; for it has forced all the thinkers of the present hour to give a serious and not merely an official recognition to aspects of moral and of social problems which are as fundamental as they are perturbing." On the other hand it should be