Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/562

 548 NEW BOOKS. and depression, tension and relief. The third part of the book (chaps, xiv., xv.) is a suggestive and practically useful review of the varieties and " abnormities " of emotion, intellect and volition. Prof. Royce's psychology, which is here presented in condensed form, will doubtless give rise to considerable discussion. We have only space to mention one or two points which seem open to criticism. The emphasis upon tropism as a principle of psychological explanation is a happy thought, but it is doubtful whether the opposition between docility and initiative is not pressed beyond the point where it is an instructive distinction. Docility is defined as control by our past. But such control is what we commonly mean by self-restraint or in- dependence of the present stimulus and so far falls on the side of initiative. Mere restlessness, on the other hand, as opposed to such control is the lowest form of subjection to present impulse and might with equal propriety be taken as the type of docility. But passing this over it is still more doubtful whether anything is gained, at any rate for the class of students for whom the book is primarily de- signed, by the above inversion of current methods of treatment. We may grant that, as Prof. Royce claims, his classification is more funda- mental than the ordinary distinction into elements of consciousness, in the sense that the mind's general attitude to stimulus is more funda- mental than the features of the resulting experience. But just on that account it might be contended it is less suitable as a basis for the dis- cussion of specific forms of consciousness, as seems to be proved by the paradoxical attempt to treat social opposition and with it conception and inference as forms (though " higher forms ") of Docility and the obscurity in which " restlessness " is finally left after having been treated at one time as a form of feeling, at another (surely the true doctrine) as a more general form of instinct or conation. But a still more fundamental point than either of these is the reproduc- tion of a doctrine of mental development in its main outlines identical with Prof. Baldwin's well-known account based upon imitation. Prof. Royce's recent philosophical writings had led us to expect a more thorough-going criticism of the conception of Imitation than it had yet received, and we confess to a certain disappointment in finding it here employed in the older uncritical sense. Briefly, is imitation simply reproduction ? If so, it is not only doubtful whether it plays any large part in mental development, but whether it plays any part at all. We may say if we like that the child reproduces in its imitative play the actions of others, but even here the important thing is not the reproduction but the modification of the actions of others to suit the particular environ- ment and the reactions expected from it. A fortiori the important thing to notice in our ordinary practice is not that we repeat but that we co-operate under the general pressure of the social structure. The centre of psychological interest is not the impression which the actions of others make upon us, but the consciousness (clear or obscure) of the whole to which we and others belong as co-operative members. If it be said that what the term Imitation is intended to express is merely one aspect of a complex fact, the term, we submit, is unfortunate, and nowhere more so than when used of the process of thought. The exaggerated emphasis it leads Prof. Royce to lay upon the self-conscious element in the thought process ("one who thinks makes it part of his ideal to be conscious of how he behaves in the presence of things," p. 284) is perhaps a minor point. But the seal it seems to put on the ordinary dualistic interpretation of thought (" All science is an effort to describe facts, to set over against the real world an