Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/120

 106 CRITICAL NOTICES : best that can be done in the end, and I can do it very heartily, is to recommend the reader to explore the book and nnd out its many good things for himself. It should be added that the volume contains two excellent por- traits one showing Ritchie as he appeared as an undergraduate at Oxford, the other as he appeared in his later years. J. S. MACKENZIE. Der doppelte Standpunkt in der Psychologic. Von MARY WHITON CALKINS. Leipzig : Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1905. Pp. 80. IT is not necessary to be in radical agreenunt with the main con- tention of this pamphlet to appreciate both its stimulating quality and its psychological importance. The author's central concern is to free the study of Psychology from a confusion so fundamental and so habitual that it may well be called the scandal of the intro- spective reason. The Psychology without a soul has long given place to a Psychology that doesn't know its own mind, but clings with perplexing indecision now to the concrete Self, now to a mere stream of conscious states. Against the distractions of this mode of treatment Miss Calkins's book offers an excellent antidote. The clearness and the thoroughness with which the remedy is presented is admirable. Within the short compass of some fourscore pages, we have, in concentrated outline, not only one Psychology, but two. For the remedy lies in keeping two legitimate treatments of Psy- chology clearly apart, the Psychology of psychical states (Vorgangs- Psychologie), and the Psychology of Self-Consciousness (Ich-Psy- chologie). Each treatment is to be consistently carried out without any assistance from the other. This does not imply that either treatment can hope, in isolation from the other, to yield a complete picture of the psychical life, but that, in the interests of true method, each must faithfully bear its own intrinsic limitations. The statement that the two points of view admit of consistent independent development is likely, we imagine, to mislead the reader ; for it might readily be supposed from what the author says, that a one-sided psychology need have no defect beyond a lack of comprehensiveness. The fact that from the view-point of a Self- Psychology, the results of the Psychology without a Self needs not only supplementation but critical revision, is, in my opinion, not sufficiently emphasised. Thus the former Psychology cannot, as Miss Calkins herself points out, distinguish definitely between perception and imagination. Again it appears to discover that a feeling of reality is essential to belief, whilst from the point of view of the Self-Psychology, this feeling is declared unessential. The first division of the book deals with the difficult question of psychical elements. The various rival theories under this head are critically considered, and preference given to the theory which