corresponding to every change of consciousness, psychology would not have achieved its mission; it would still need to interpret the relations of the parts of the subjective series to one another, and of complexes to their elements. Of course Professor James does so explain them; but the physiological counterpart, which is surely the starting-point merely, seems to him the goal of psychological explanation. To meet its demands, he imagines cerebral processes which are sometimes nothing more than a transliteration of the psychical. His object, no doubt, is to work the physiological hypothesis "for all it is worth," in order that its results may be brought out as fully as possible. But has not this praiseworthy desire sometimes led him to underestimate the value of purely psychological explanation?
Another result of "the materialistic task" (p. 7) is the almost inevitable tendency to eliminate activity from consciousness. When Professor James is confronted by the automaton theory of mind and the necessitarian theory of volition, he declares, though not very emphatically, for the spontaneous activity of the Ego (pp. 103-104, 444-452). But elsewhere throughout the book the Self is conceived as too exclusively passive, except perhaps in the chapter on Attention. Now it might be objected that this is a question of metaphysics rather than of psychology. But as Professor James writes a chapter on The Stream of Consciousness, and analyzes the Self (chap, xii) into a "Stream of thought, each part of which as 'I' can remember those which went before," etc., he would scarcely admit that psychology had nothing to do with the activity or passivity of mind. The question is a burning one among German psychologists at the present day. Professor James suggests in the Epilogue (p. 467) that the activity of consciousness is "rather a postulate than a sensibly given fact." It is a pity that, even as a 'postulate,' it had not received fuller recognition in the body of the book. The Outlines of Professor Höffding, who also denies any immediate consciousness of mental activity, is nevertheless permeated with the interpretative influence of that 'postulate.'
I have given prominence to what I consider a defect in the volume, because in almost every respect it is an admirable text-book. The larger work, which is an ornament to American thought and scholarship, has proved itself a matchless treatise for class-room use in the hands of students who have had elementary courses in psychology and metaphysics. The abridgment is likely to win even greater favor as a manual for beginners. Besides the excellence of the typography and paper, it commends itself by a wealth of facts, an orderliness of arrangement, a recentness and variety of interest, and a- clear, forcible, and glowingly stimulating style.
