Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/453

 44:0 CRITICAL NOTICES : the validity of the attempt to bring about an alliance between German transcendentalism and empirical psychology, may it be doubted whether those who make a first beginning of study under Prof. Dewey's guidance will be able to grasp the peculiar philosophical speech which he is apt to employ in the midst of his psychological exposition. To be told, for example, at p. 6 that " Psychology is the science of the reproduction of some universal content or existence, whether of knowledge or action, in the form of individual, unsharable consciousness," may prove a hard hearing, even when the student is comforted, at p. 157, with the assurance that he will " see more clearly what is meant " thereby after taking in such a statement as the following : " The know- ledge of the finite individual is the process by which the individual reproduces the universal mind, and hence makes real for himself the universe, which is eternally real for the complete, absolutely universal intelligence, since involved in its self-objectifying activity of knowledge ". The author also has a way at times of resorting to a kind of kaleidoscopic play with antitheses, which tend to pass over into one another in a manner more dazzling than edifying. There is a notable instance at p, 153, where Apper- ception and Retention are given as the " two sides of the process of knowledge " the one accounting for the world as it " comes to exist for us," the other for the self as it " comes to exist as real ". The antithetic statements that follow in rapid series ,. through half a page get mixed up in a way that leaves one with no very clear notion of what it is that Prof. Dewey thinks is done for the world by self or for self by the world, how in his view it all comes about, and what that world and self are that he so sets in face of one another. The philosophy involved does not seem to do much for the beginner in this case or in others like it. It would, however, be giving a very false impression of the character of this text-book to dwell longer on the features yet mentioned. As a purely psychological treatise implying philosophical principles and portending philosophical issues, but not necessarily to be used for enforcing particular philo- sophical conclusions it has great and obvious merits. While Knowledge has the inevitable precedence and prominence (pp. 27-245), a distinct stand has evidently been made for some- thing like a fairly balanced consideration of the two other phases of mind. Feeling, especially, within the hundred pages given to the topic, has received an adequate handling. Feeling and Will have, besides, their part in two chapters of general introduction, as again, to some extent, in the account of Sensation (pp. 27-80) with which " Knowledge " begins. Nothing, indeed, could be better than the whole general view that is given of the relation of the three phases to one another, except when the disposition to merge and dissolve, in dialectic strain, begins to assert itself for the behoof of Will as "the complete activity," "self," "man," or what not, wherein