Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/295

 282 CEITICAL NOTICES : " there may be phantasmogeiietic efficacy ". It would seem then that, in Mr. Myers's view, if I understand him, the percipient may visit in spirit scenes he has never visited in the flesh, and that his spirit may be visible as a phantasm to the human occu- pants of these scenes. Into the dimly-lighted spirit-land to which he thus beckons us I dare not follow him here. In conclusion, let me repeat what I said before elsewhere. The hypothesis of thought-transference, ideal and phantasmal, and the evidence adduced in its favour, must be submitted to the most searching scrutiny and criticism, but it should not be met with easy and ignorant ridicule. Each case reported needs separate and individual consideration. Hence any sweeping criticism of the evidence en masse would be beside the mark. Messrs. Gurney and Podmore, who have interviewed many of the witnesses, are in a position to appraise the value of their statements to which no outsider may lay claim. The outsider must content himself with enunciating the truism that the amount of the evidence accepted by each reader as valid will largely depend upon his general opinion of the veracity of his kind. The evidence can only be rejected as a whole by one who is prepared to repeat at his leisure what David is reported to have said in his haste. C. LLOYD MORGAN. La Psyclwlogie de V Enfant : L' Enfant de trois a sept Ans. Par BERNARD PEREZ. 'Paris : F. Alcan, 1886. Pp. xi., 307. In this volume M. Perez gives us a second instalment of his studies on the psychology of childhood. The earlier volume, Les trois premieres Annees de V Enfant, took a general survey of the mental phenomena of this period by dealing successively with such heads as motor activity, sensation, faculty of acquisition, &c. The present work follows the same method. Only, since at this later stage the several directions of mental activity are more clearly marked, the author is able to take up these in something like a systematic order. Thus the volume proceeds to discuss the principal stages of intellection, as Memory and Association, Imagination, Abstraction, &c., and then to deal briefly with the Feelings and the Will. As in the earlier volume, there is a judicious mixture of the analytic and the descriptive method. Thus, for example, in dealing with the laws of Association, we have first of all an exposition of the precise nature and function of each, and then an account of the special part played by the law in the acquisi- tions of the particular period considered. In the more analytic portion, M. Perez leans to a considerable extent on the authority of others, as Dr. Bain, Mr. Spencer and more recent writers. Yet he is by no means a mere reproducer of other men's ideas even here. Thus, in expounding the so-called law of Contrast, he suggests as the natural basis of the associations referred to