Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/329

Rh of attention is the fundamental form, the problem of volition resolves itself into the problem of voluntary attention. Volition results from a more or less complex aggregation of motives which exhaust the possible alternatives of present action. In general these motives are comprised in two classes — affects and ends — and the value of the affects lies in brightening and strengthening the ends. But this picturing of ends is not different from the picturing of anything else it is an ordinary act of apperception." Just as soon as the elements of the end-complex cease to act as partial influences, causing the movements of attention by their very vividness, and the attention gets its hold upon its integrated content as a grand related situation, the fiat goes forth " (p. 355). Volitional apperception is therefore a case of general apperception with an "explicit motor reference." Lack of space prevents anything more than the above presentation of the bare skeleton of Professor Baldwin's views in regard to voluntary action, as it prevents any discussion of them. It is one of the most satisfactory parts of a book which, taken as a whole, distinctly raises the level of psychological thought in America.

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This is an abridgment of the author's Principles of Psychology, which appeared in two large volumes in 1890. About two-fifths of the volume is new, either in matter or form; the rest is 'scissors and paste.' The omissions have the effect of condensing, but not of obscuring; indeed, the results stand out more clearly when extricated from the processes and raw materials in which, throughout the larger work, they were left embedded. But a mistake was surely made in dropping the fine chapter on the Perception of Reality (Vol. II, pp. 283-322). On the other hand, the additions have been most judicious. The new chapters on the various senses are indispensable to students who come to psychology without some knowledge of physiology. It is unfortunate that a new section on the Feelings also could not have been inserted, but there is a vague promise of it for a later edition. The statement that 'harmful' and 'useless' states of consciousness are not treated, because they form the subject-matter of psychiatry and aesthetics (pp. 4-5), is misleading and unnecessary.

Although the number of text-books in psychology is rapidly increasing, and some of them are of unusual merit, teachers and students will alike welcome the new competitor with which Professor James has enriched the market. It has great and unique excellences. In the