Page:Philosophical Review Volume 11.djvu/566

550, metaphysics, and logic, all being used conjointly. In some twenty-three short chapters, mainly concerned with what he calls the four forms of knowledge, he considers the inception and growth of the mental life, mental potentiality, attention, memory, imagination, concepts, judgments, reasoning, the logic of deeds, and first principles. These lead to a consideration of the feelings, will, motives, character, conscience, and the spiritual. This brings his psychological interpretation to a close, and, as already said, no call for special attention is given in its almost transcriptive eclecticism. When, however, the author does attempt independent opinion, the reader may find himself treated to some strange interpretations. To be told, for example, that it is God's plan that man should be industrious and create capital, seems to lay the Godhead under the imputation of a rather venal interest in political economy; nor is it easy to reconcile such declarations with those of the founders of that Christian religion which Mr. Fiske is rather aggressively concerned to defend.

In the second division of the book—the physiological—Mr. Fiske seems to be on somewhat securer ground. There he considers the care of the body, physical development, persistence of the developed forces, interaction of mind and body in the sphere of morals, etc. The third division of the book is occupied with the consideration of community life, marriage, childhood, education by contact, influence of travel, the church as a sociological organism, etc. And the whole is finally brought to a conclusion in the "complete man."

The book is frequently marred by crudities of statement—by attempts to state the intent in some particularly striking manner that more often achieves the outré. There are, too, occasional literary improprieties, as when "transpire" is used, throughout, in the sense of "to take place." It is due to say of the book, however, that it contains valuable hints in some, indeed much, of its philosophy of the common life. Mr. Fiske occasionally pointedly places his finger on some of the superstitions of athletics, labor conditions, etc.

In this little book Signor D'Alfonzo succeeds in inspiring a subject as old as the time of Hippocrates with no little freshness and vitality. Not a few readers will be glad of the clear and precise formulation here given of the doctrine of the four temperaments, as taught first by Hippocrates and later by Galen; but of greater interest is that part of the essay devoted to showing that this doctrine, corrected, modified, and supplemented by the results of psychological and physiological science, still possesses a genuine value for the educationist, the pathologist, and the student of psychology and of social science. As regards the last subject, one can only regret that the whole question of racial temperament is not here more fully dealt with; but to have treated it with the requisite fullness would no doubt have