Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/452



This book is one of the welcome signs from America of a strong forward movement in psychology now in progress there. The large number of psychological and psychophysical contributions to that have come from over the Atlantic in recent years; the announcement that an American Journal of Psychology is henceforth to be added to the list of scientific periodicals in which the abounding energy of the young Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore seeks a vent; the appearance of a work of the size and comprehensiveness of Prof. G. T. Ladd's Physiological Psychology, mentioned elsewhere in the present No. and claiming the detailed appreciation that will follow,—are other evidences, to which more might be added, of the same fact. It is significant, too, that the very object of Prof. Dewey's book is to help in getting "scientific psychology" set before the students of American colleges, instead of that "compound of logic, ethics and metaphysics, mingled with extracts from the history of philosophy"—as he calls it—which it has been usual in the past to serve up for them, in connexion with some tags of psychological theory from Reid and Hamilton. Some years ago in (iv. 89-105) a very effective description was given of the kind of elementary philosophical instruction so widely diffused through the United States by the host of colleges, mostly denominational. If the present manual of psychology finds its way into general use among American students, it will not leave things as they were.

A manual of psychology, it is still expressly written as an introduction to the study of philosophy in general. Not only is Prof. Dewey of opinion that it is impossible to exclude from the science a reference to the philosophical principles it involves, but he has, as readers of this Review have been made well aware, very decided views on the quite special relation that subsists between psychology and philosophy. He finds it possible to reconcile an idealism of the thoroughgoing modern type, first developed in Germany, with an adoption of the spirit and aims of the English psychological school from Locke onwards. It has been interesting to hear such ungrudging allowance of philosophical import to the work of the English inquirers from one who speaks the language of a class of thinkers with whom it has been a common fashion to regard it with a certain disdain. Somewhat more certainly, however, than Mr. Sh. Hodgson, from his independent standing-ground, could (in No. 44) impeach