Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/578

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion of them." In the concluding chapters Mr. Kay shows that, if the foregoing is true, "it is evident that, in order to improve the memory, special attention must be given to the training of the senses. This is to be done by first training them to observe carefully what is before them, and then making them recall or reproduce what has been presented to them, as accurately as possible. These two are distinct. The one depends on attention, the other on association and frequently recalling what is in the mind. In attention the great thing is to concentrate the mind upon one thing at a time till it is thoroughly mastered. In association we must seek to bring together and associate those ideas that most nearly resemble each other and that we wish to recall each other." The two processes of attention and association are involved in every act of remembering, and suggestions as to how they may be made more effective form the substance of the author's advice on how to improve the memory. Throughout the book the author makes prominent the bearing of his views on education, for he deems the treatment of the memory in the present system of education to be wholly wrong. "Instead of the communication of knowledge," he says, "being made the means of improving the memory, the interests of the memory are sacrificed in order that it may be crammed with as much knowledge as possible, without regard to the permanent injury that may thereby be done to it." The subject is evidently one on which the author has studied long and read widely; his presentation is simple and consistent, and various statements are supported and illustrated by many brief quotations from eminent specialists in mental science.

Works of Thomas Hill Green. Edited by R. L. Nettleship. Vol. III. Miscellanies and Memoir. London and New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. clxi and 479. Price, $7.

Mr. Green led a quiet life as a tutor and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, seldom appearing before the public or engaging in movements that brought him into prominence, but he did much work that the world should not let be forgotten while the improvement of mankind and of government is sought. He is characterized by his biographer as a man in whom "philosophy was reconciled with religion on the one side and politics on the other; . . . to whom reason was faith made articulate, and for whom both faith and reason found their highest expression in good citizenship." His thoughts were directed toward practical measures for lifting the English masses into a higher physical and mental condition; and the reading of his essays shows him to have been a man of providential foresight, looking not to the present aspect, but to the remote, not yet seen, result. He was born in a small village in Yorkshire, in 1830, of Puritan descent; was schooled at Rugby, where he showed a tendency toward philosophizing; became a student at Balliol College, Oxford, where he obtained a degree and afterward a fellowship; and then worked as tutor and later (1878 to 1882) as professor. He was one of the "recognized politicians" of the Rugby school, and was considered, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, a "dreadful radical." In college, he made himself felt by his fellow-students, and showed his independence by following his own line of reading rather than pursuing honors and prizes. He regarded Louis Napoleon as a "successful brigand"; had an enthusiastic admiration for John Bright, whom he described as "a great 'brick,' simple as a boy, full of fun, with a very pleasant flow of conversation and lots of good stories"; read Wordsworth, Carlyle, Maurice, and Fichte; failed in the candidacy for a professorship at St. Andrews, Scotland, because he was charged with Comtism and materialism—to which he was really opposed; rejoiced in 1860 over the repeal of the paper-duty, because it would secure the position of the penny papers and destroy the despotism of the "Times"; was comforted with the sure prospect of Gladstone's becoming a radical, for he. Bright, and Cobden would "form a fine triumvirate to lead the people's cause"; and he sympathized ardently with the United States in the war of the rebellion, and saw clearly what was the real issue in the contest. In 1864 he was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on Education, and spent about a year, all told, in industrious personal inspections of the schools of five counties. The remarks in his reports, upon the condition of the schools and the