412 NEW BOOKS. her flesh and bones had turned into iron, and in that of Rente Marie who fancied she had for years been secretly married to a certain gentleman of her acquaintance, the conclusions were false because the premisses were so wide of the truth. The really interesting question is how the false premisses were elaborated. The authors' explanations are not precisely clear ; and they are couched in the queerest possible French. But by the exercise of a good deal of patience, and some ingenuity, the reader will be able to construct for himself out of the facts scattered through chapters ii. and iv. some idea of the genesis of two curious kinds of delirium. F. N. H. AungewSMte Beitriii/i zur Kindenwychologie mid Pddagogik. Von Dr. G. STAXLKY HALL. Translated into German, with an Introduction and Notes, by Dr. JOSEPH STIMPFL. It is noteworthy that the articles on "Child-Study" by Dr. Stanley Hall, which have, from time to time, appeared in American periodicals, have been first collected in a German edition. Ko country has been so much influenced by German pedagogy as the United States, and, as Kektor Ufer, the general editor of the series, points out, this influence is a reciprocal one. Thirteen articles are collected in this volume ; six of them are on the general question of Child-Study and its relation to education, whilst others are detailed investigations of particular psychoses. The first article by Dr. Stanley Hall on Child-Study and its relation to education deals with the criticisms of which the following are typical. He has little difficulty in rebutting appeals to popular sentiment such as those of Prof. Munsterberg when declaring that his own children should never be mentally vivisected ; that they should be loved, not studied ; and he points out that the precocious self-consciousness, which children under observation are supposed to develop, is a bogey of the imagination. Moreover, it may very well be contended that the independence of theory, which the statistical investigations in Child-Study are supposed to exhibit, is more apparent than real. Of course there are collections of relatively little value, but, speaking generally, the framing of the questions to which answers are required is a matter involving a very considerable grasp of psychological theory and some prevision of the results. A more cogent objection is the little value that matter collected by un- trained observers is likely, to possess. In an investigation on the de- velopment of Colour Names in very young children I was much impressed by the lack of knowledge shown even among the best teachers. But, as Dr. Stanley Hall points out, much depends on the kind of question which is asked, and much depends on the way in which the teachers are told to obtain answers. There will be errors undoubtedly, and many of them. There are errors, to.o, in the most brass-instrumental psychology, and the information collected, if not duly rounded and fitted into theo- retical compartments, has still a suggestive value even for the psychologist of the laboratory. Moreover, there is a stimulating effect which the teacher may derive even from relatively unimportant observations made in answer to relatively inexact questions. But Dr. S. Hall tends to press the claims of child- study upon the teacher with rather exaggerated force. The teacher's attitude is, necessarily, other than that of the pure scientist, and the endeavour to submerge his function beneath that of the investi- gator is, for obvious practical reasons, inadmissible. It is not due, at least nowadays, to the a priori and scholastic ways of psychologists that
