Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/708

 692 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

be stated in a word. It is a treatise sufficiently elementary to be used as a textbook for an introductory class, which succeeds in co-ordinating the outcome of the analysis of the content of conscious- ness with the functional interpretaion of those contents which alone can give them rational organization and meaning. The failure of previous textbooks to accomplish this end satisfactorily has been largely due to the transitional stage of the subject itself. The stress of psychological activity, and the most striking and definite results obtained up to within a very recent period, have been in the realm of the analysis of the content of consciousness. So true is this that there is in many quarters a tendency to regard a complete statement of content as the only goal of psychology. It is only with the grow- ing importance of the conception of evolution, involving, as it does, the idea of a human individual as an organism in vital relationship with its environment, that the necessity for interpreting the products of psychological analysis in the light of the functions of the organism in which they play a part has been generally recognized. The text- books, representing, as they do, the best-established and most thor- oughly organized phases of the subject, have laid so much stress on content analysis, especially in the field of cognition, where it has been most complete, that the occasional suggestions of a functional standpoint have left the poor beginner wondering what possible connection there could be between such facts as sensation, percep- tion, memory, or imagination, and the notion of an organism adapt- ing itself to an environment. It is exactly this connection which the present textbook makes. The fortunate student of the future who is brought up on it will end his introductory work with a unified view of the structure and function of consciousness which has come to most of the previous generation only after a considerable period of additional work. Even an instructor who appreciates the funda- mental importance of the functional point of view, and endeavors to impart it to his class, finds himself very much hampered by being obliged to use a textbook based chiefly on a content analysis.

In his preface the author acknowledges his indebtedness to both James and Dewey. The influence of Dewey is most evident in the general standpoint, and that of James in many of the details of treatment In comparison with James's classic textbook, it has, however, two advantages in its completeness and in its systematic unity. The affective processes, which James nowhere mentions, herti receive due treatment, and many minor omissions in the older text-