Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/182

172 history of the hand in art, discusses its anatomy, physiology, psychology, the papillary striations and their value in the identification of criminals, its pathology, writer's cramp, degenerations of the hand, the language of gesture in society, the methods and results of research on the hand, its evolutionary significance, motor images, researches in divination and prevision, and concludes with a special essay on the theory of the possibility of psychic revelations by means of the hand.

This work is introduced by Professor James, and is by a companion of his in psychic research "who from a state of doubt has won through to a faith in human survival in a spiritual order, which continues the visible one. It is a genuine record of a moral and religious experience, profoundly earnest and calculated, I should think, to interest and impress readers who desire to know adequately what deeper significance our life may hold in store." The author evidently lost her creed at Mt Holyoke, soon made the acquaintance of Mrs. Piper, Richard Hodgson, and A. P. Martin; had first failures, then fulfilments. To these the first part is devoted. The second part is entitled Communications from the Other Side of the Veil through Mrs. Piper, with extracts of reports and sittings. The last part is entitled Suggestive Thoughts on the Attainment of Spirituality

In these carefully studied lectures abounding with all the author's charm of expression, he seeks to "small down the universe" and takes Fechuer's notion of a soul of the world as being a deity of sufficient size for humanity to make its deity. To him the whole universe was animated. The earth is in a sense one angel. Plants have souls. His transcendentalism is much above the ordinary pantheism. Consciousness is compounded. We must make a radical breach with intellectualism. The traditional radicalism gives us an essentially static universe. As Bergson, whom this work glorifies, puts it the function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical. Logic cannot define a universe where change is continuous. Living things are their own others. Empiricism is a better ally of religion than is rationalism. Our beliefs form parts of reality. Indeed the word "rationality" had better be replaced by "intimacy." He wants the basis of discussions for all these questions "broadened and thickened up." He condemns very heartily the Oxford thinkers before whom he lectured for their inane Hegelism, and lashes the German metaphysicians even more severely. In homely terms, the book is a plea that we do not need monism or a unitary view of the world and do not need any theory that has cosmic dimensions; but it is sufficient for us to know the world of which the solar system is the boundary; and all discussions of the absolute and infinite must be abandoned. We have no space to discuss in detail the clever apper$us and bons mots that sparkle through these pages. It is interesting, however, to note that there could hardly be a more diametrical opposition than between pragmatism, especially the type of it represented by James, and the book of his colleague, Miinsterberg, entitled "the Eternal Values," which seems to have been written under the inspiration of the motto: Delindus est pragmatismus.

This volume is an amplification of what the writer calls the pivotal