Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/570

554 of emphasis still exerts a profound influence upon general conceptions of life and nature, and upon the culture that makes possible their sympathetic appreciation.

Such a book as this by Professor Stratton was much needed as a serviceable and dignified message to which contemporary psychology could point as an instance of the temper and the import of much that, to the intelligent onlooker, might seem insignificant or beside the vital issues. Under modern conditions every science profits by a general and correct appreciation of its aims, its methods, its advancement, on the part of the wide clientele composed of general students of science, of specialists in other fields, of teachers and readers and other devotees of the intellectual life. No volume of studies in psychology that has yet appeared is more nicely suited to serve such a corrective and illuminating function than this interesting collection of products from a busy psychological workshop. Apart from new interests and practical guiding principles, the discerning reader will carry away from the volume a more appreciative sense of what modern psychology means, than he is likely to have had at the outset. He will equally appreciate what psychology is not; that psychology is ready to utilize the data of physiology without in the least forfeiting its independence; that the facts of greatest significance to psychological interpretations are not to be found with much pains in out-of-the-way corners, in strange mental experiences, in weird coincidences or in garbled accounts of the paradoxical, but in the most commonplace but profound experiences of daily life; that psychology is not a matter of theory without practical bearing upon views of life, upon methods of culture, and upon the conduct of affairs; and that equally psychology has not in any way or degree renounced its interest in, or its claim to, a hearing upon those more comprehensive questions of logical principle, philosophic import, and theoretical interpretation from which many blessings and not a few sources of danger flow.

Professor Stratton has chosen both widely and wisely in his selection of specific investigations to represent his main contentions. An historical introduction that clearly sets forth the antecedents and credentials of the modern psychologist; a clear-cut discussion of the status of the experiment in psychology, of the necessary involvement of introspection in experiment and of experiment in introspection; a pertinent and practical elucidation of how far and in what sense mental measurement is possible; these somewhat introductory presentations bring the reader to the first of the special topics, that of Unconscious Ideas. From here on the topics range from Illusions to Mental Space,