very different from action initiated by the teacher. While he insisted that the child's individuality should be respected, he did not advocate giving the child license to do wrong. The teacher should be able to transfer the child's interest from what is wrong to what is right. He wished to banish coercion; he "would have the control of the mother and kindergarten so thoroughly in harmony with the spontaneity of the child as not to be felt by it." He fully recognized the educational value of play, and was the first to use it systematically as a means of mental and moral training. His profound sense of interrelationships made him a pioneer in the correlation of studies. The same characteristic caused him to look beyond mere perception on the part of the learner, and to insist on apperception. Froebel was an evolutionist before Spencer and Darwin, and he was the first to make systematic use of manual training in distinction from industrial training. The supreme aim of his educational system is character-building, and "he applied precisely the same laws to the revelation of ideals of right, justice, duty, and will that he applied in the general development of the child." In stating Froebel's views Mr. Hughes makes large use of quotations from Froebel's Education of Man and Autobiography, and from the Baroness von Marenholz-Bülow's Reminiscences of Froebel. The book is eminently one to stimulate the teacher's growth.
In Telepathy and the Subliminal Self we have an attempt to put certain occult phenomena on a scientific basis.[1] The author, rejecting all ideas of the supernatural, approaches his subject from the point of view of a scientific observer who does not speculate with the intangible, but who has a definite theory, that shall account for certain mysterious occurrences. The subjects he takes up are Telepathy, Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Clairvoyance, Double or Multiplex Personality, Somnambulism, Dreams, Automatism, Planchette, Crystal-gazing, and Phantasms. He explains most of these phenomena by means of the subliminal self. This mysterious personality lies hidden away deep down below our ordinary self, coming to the surface only on special occasions, or when called up without our knowledge by the hypnotizer or mesmerist. And it does not seem to be given to every one thus to project this inner being into the outer world of sense; although apparently this other personality is latent in us all, only the "sensitive" can manifest it. The author deduces his theory from a number of experiments and "experiences" recorded by the English Society for Psychical Research, the French therapeutic hypnotists of La Salpêtière, and of Nancy, and others, both physicians and laymen. The chapters on Double or Multiplex Personality and Natural Somnambulism give a number of cases in which the subliminal self stands plainly revealed. Some instances, however, might very well be classed under temporary aberration of mind, as for example that of Ansel Bourne the evangelist, who, leaving his home in Rhode Island, went to Norristown, Pa., and after keeping store there for two months under the name of A. J. Brown, suddenly awoke to find himself in a strange place. One of the most curious chapters in the book is that on Crystal-gazing, a species of divination somewhat akin to clairvoyance. The chapters on Phantasms sustain perhaps most fully the author's theory of the subliminal self. He does not pretend to go over the whole ground of psychic phenomena, leaving untouched, for example, the subject of the return of the departed, and other spiritualistic manifestations. But "confining ourselves within the limits assigned, if the series of alleged facts which has been presented in the preceding chapters be true,
- ↑ Telepathy and the Subliminal Self. An Account of Recent Investigations regarding Hypnotism, Automatism, Dreams, Phantasms, and Related Phenomena. By R. Osgood Mason, A. M., M. D. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Pp. 343, 12mo. Price, $1.50.
