Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/123

Rh The many sources of error in this method are patent, and chief among them is the chronoscopic error itself. G. E. Miiller has already pointed out (Göt. gel. Anzeiger, 1891, No. 11, p. 598) that the control hammer tests the chronoscope only for periods of about 0,160 sec.; the longer the current flows through the electro-magnet, the greater will be the error in the recoil of the armature. What this error would amount to in a chain reaction it is hard to say, but it is certainly of moment.

Of especial value are Dr. Münsterberg's strictures on that perversion of the experimental method which consists in heaping up columns of figures without careful investigation of the mental phenomena which they, in a measure, represent. But the withholding of figures through which alone one can discover possible sources of error, or form an independent judgment, is hardly to be defended on the ground that every one who reports experiments has a right to demand a certain amount of personal confidence (p. 146). The question here is not one of honesty of intent, but of fallibility of judgment, and even at the risk of tediousness the investigator should put his critic in the possession of data which alone enable him to test conclusions, and try theories.

The last chapters in the book are taken up with the discussion of mediate psychical investigations under artificial conditions, in which, of course, the data are drawn from experiments on animals, and within narrow limits, on children, the insane, and from hypnotic states. A small space is also given to Psycho-physiology, viz. the connection between mental and neural processes. As a whole, the book does not seem to me a weighty contribution to psychological literature; on the one hand, the criticism of the generally accepted methods is hardly searching enough; on the other hand, Dr. Münsterberg has not marked clearly what belongs to his own hypotheses, and what belongs to accepted psychological doctrines. While, as the editor informs us, the works of this series are to be presented in a form accessible to the general reader, they are, nevertheless, to be written with scientific severity. But scientific severity cannot be predicated of a treatise in which the line between hypotheses and demonstrated fact is not sharply drawn.

F..

The appearance of a work on Hegel's Logik, by one who has been so long regarded as the champion of Hegelianism in this country, has