j. SULLY' s OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 429 and the close relation of the inquiry to other lines of philosophical investigation, that one must examine any new presentation of the science ; but before asking how far Mr. Sully's volume advances our insight, a word may be permitted on certain minor ends which the work may serve and probably is intended to serve. It is a text-book, that is, it offers a general introduction to the vast subject, an introduction suited to a first study ; and further, it includes special reference to the theory of Education. In both respects, while the book gives much that is valuable, much that cannot be got elsewhere and that is nevertheless indispensable, it appears to leave something to be desired. For the student who is beginning psychological work it is at once too long and too short too long, because it has endeavoured to include almost every special line of investigation, too short, because it has been found necessary to refrain from the complete, exhaustive treatment of even cardinal difficulties. In my opinion, it is far more impor- tant that the student should be brought by careful and many-sided treatment of the more prominent phases of mental life to realise the general nature of the subject, than that he should be intro- duced to the special researches that have grown up in connexion with each point in the complex history of mind. Such special researches have their value only when carried out 011 a well- secured basis, and they are even apt to mislead when taken up too soon. The considerations involved in them can only be appreciated by a fuller handling than is appropriate to a text- book, and brief reference is likely to convey a false impression of their exact nature. I do not say that what Mr. Sully gives us, in regard, e.g., to the mechanism of sensation and to movement, is not in itself of high value, but merely that it does not seem material of a kind to be profitable to the student. On another feature of the book in w T hich it bears on the wants of the student, the unity of conception or method implied in it, I shall presently comment ; and I would add the expression of a wish, which will probably be shared by other readers, that Mr. Sully had found it possible to extend largely his bibliographical references. I am in entire agreement with Mr. Sully in his remarks on the connexion between Psychology and theory of Education ; and certainly, were one to draft a course of instruction for the training of teachers, Psychology should occupy an important place therein. I would add that, in my judgment, the study of the problems peculiar to the theory of education is of the highest value for. the psychologist. These problems compel him to dwell on the gradual development of the mental life, and bring before him in a very suggestive way the variations in the nature of each phase of that life due to its development. But if a writer proposes to go beyond the general bearing of psychology on educational work, which is involved in the very conception of a regular order of mental development, he must, I think, take in more than Mr. Sully has found compatible with the limits of his treatise. He
