Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/183

Rh part of his book on "Pragmatism" and is devoted to the thesis that "the truth is only the expedient in the way of our thinking just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our acting." The present writer believes that most who read this work, unless they are double-dyed speculators as to the abstract question as to what the quiddity of reality actually is, will be interested chiefly in the author's vivacious style which gives a certain sort of interest, even if a meretricious one, to any topic he chooses to consider, and to the fine distinctions he makes between his own views and the various misunderstandings of them that have arisen. The fact that so many intelligent, earnest and respectful, not to say friendly, writers are away off in their interpretation of what James really means and says is itself very significant of the splay-footedness of attempting to treat these serious topics in the off-hand, slap-dash, vivacious way of after-dinner table talk, instead of in the method of severely reasoned, logical thinking that proceeds from point to point, has something that can be called beginning, middle and end, and which is susceptible of proof or disproof, and is met with something more than these tedious, hair-splitting attempts to explain and set others right in a dapper, lively, Hudibrastic way.

This is the third book in English of this voluminous author within a few months. In an earlier publication he had declared in a most emphatic way that experimental psychology had nothing in it for teachers. This view he modifies radically here because, as he says, since the first was written new light for education has appeared from the laboratory. But in looking over the thirty-nine chapters, it would be difficult to point out any important theme, the validity of the applications of which was not nearly as well known ten years ago as now. What would have been the harm for this writer frankly to acknowledge a change of view on his own part, which has certainly been both radical and excellent? As for the book itself, it claims, as we understand it, to have nothing whatever new for the psychologist. It is extremely elementary and rehearses what has long been well known. The author also still carefully follows what seems to have long been his policy in refraining from making acknowledgments to other writers, save in a line or two giving a mere list of names. With this point of view it is, for the present writer at least, hard to feel reconciled. The reader should be given a little help on the important topics toward further reading if so disposed. It gives the book an oracular character as though now, for the first time and from this particular author, the truth was vouchsafed to the reader.

This is the second volume of the German translation by Richard Weinberg of the venerable author's probably final revision of his views and account of his own researches. It is devoted to the cerebellum, the mid-brain, and the subcortical ganglia, with 142 cuts.

All friends of the eminent Scotch educator, born in 1829, will welcome this account of his philosophy. It is divided into two parts: first the theory of knowledge, and second his views of God and man.