Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/843

 REVIEWS.

The Development of English Thought. By Simon N. Patten. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1899. Pp. xxvii + 415.

AN EXAMINATION OF PROFESSOR PATTEN'S PSYCHOLOGY.

Psychologists have of late years observed with appreciative inter- est the growing tendency among economists and sociologists to build certain portions of their respective sciences upon psychological founda- tions. Mr. Patten's latest work is a striking illustration of this tendency, and his psychological doctrines are sufficiently heretical to render them at once interesting and worthy of examination. It may contribute to a juster estimate of our discussion of these doctrines, if at the outset we comment briefly on the general intellectual temper of the book in which they are presented.

Few writers on social topics have dared to be so elliptical in their processes of inference as Mr. Patten, and a reader sensitive to the niceties of argumentation is teased now and again by the suspicion that all sides of the questions under discussion have not been fully and fairly dealt with. Remarkable generalizations are often made as though their truth were, like that of the multiplication table, obvious past all necessity for elaboration and defense.

Take, for example, the following diagnosis of English pessimism as a dermal disorder, the cherished opinions of regiments of philosophers to the contrary notwithstanding (p. 193): "An unbathed English- man is a sensualist ; a bath turns him into a gentle optimist. The bath-tub is the parent of that English optimism of which the last two centuries have seen 30 many examples." What more obvious ? You wonder how it can have escaped you before, and immediately you behold in your mind's eye the dark and horrid hordes of pessimism retreating along with other noxious parasites, before the gentle erosive influences of the virtuous bath tub. On second thought you suspect this is allegory. But if so, the author leaves you to discover the fact unaided.

This quotation will, perhaps, serve to suggest that Mr. Patten is fertile in generalization and subtle in deduction rather than strenuous in analysis. And let it not be supposed that this characteristic is

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