come to us directly from the Puritans, a gentleness and a genuine kindliness of manner, and a respect for even the prejudices of others, which is constantly remarked by Englishmen themselves who have been in this country.

Mr. James Russell Lowell, in his recent volume of poems, in the tribute which he pays to his friend Professor Agassiz, well describes the Puritan idea of a gentleman. It may be considered to be the recognition by an American descendant of the Puritans of the same qualities which marked a descendant of the Swiss Puritans.

He was so human! Neither strong or weak,
Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared,
But sate an equal guest at every board.
No beggar ever felt him condescend,
No prince presume; for still himself he bare
At manhood's simple level, and where'er
He met a stranger, there he left a friend.

One other characteristic has been stamped by the Puritans on the whole American people-a peculiar respect for woman. I quote from one of the latest of the English historians, who says that even in England a new conception of womanhood was developed by them. He says expressly, in so many words, that "Home as we conceive it now, was the creation of the Puritans." "Wife and child rose from mere dependents on the will of husband or father, as husband or father saw in them saints like himself, souls hallowed by the touch of a divine spirit, and called with a divine calling like his own. The sense of spiritual fellowship gave a new tenderness and refinement to the common family affections." This feeling also was intensified in this country, and the respect with which woman has ever been treated here is known the world over. A respectful deference is manifested to her here which is accorded to her nowhere else in the world. The American woman of all others may well join in grateful acknowledgments to her Puritan ancestry.

CURRENT

LITERATURE.

RECENT BOOKS ON PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM.* This interesting book renders accessible, for the first time, to the public of English readers the results of the more advanced school of French experimenters regarding the phenomena and causes of hypnotism. Its observations were conducted according to "the method inaugurated by M. Charcot, the chief of the school of the Salpêtrière." The whole subject is treated with that clearness which distinguishes the national scientific literature; everything is, therefore, made perfectly intelligible even to those who have no technical acquaintance with the subject.

After a brief sketch of the history of so-called animal magnetism in its three periods of the "beginnings" made by Mesmer and Puységur, "the Academic Period," and the period beginning with Braid, the authors proceed to describe the modes of producing the hypnotic condition, its symptoms, and the various hypnotic states. The phenomena of suggestion and hallucination are then presented; and, finally, the application of hypnotism to the cure of disease and to education is discussed, while the book closes with a chapter on "Hypnotism and Responsibility."

The inexpert reader, on perusing the somewhat too diffuse description of these marvellous phenomena, should bear in mind that as seems probable-the French subjects, if we are to trust the accounts of the experimenters with them, are, as a rule, more susceptible to extreme hypnotic influences than those who offer themselves for experiment in England. Moreover, as we have already remarked, the school represented by this treatise has had the largest success in developing marvels, even among the investigators on French ground.

PHYSICAL EXPRESSION.t-This volume of the International Scientific Series will be especially welcomed by those who are

* Animal Magnetism. By ALFRED BINET and CHARLES FÉRÉ. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1888.

+ Physical Expression, its Modes and Principles. By FRANCIS WARNER, M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

fond of applying the methods of the physical sciences to the study of the human mind. As a matter of convenience the author uses "the term mentation for that physical action of the brain which is associated with the phenomena of mind." If we hold him strictly to this use of the term, we must understand that his treatise designs to show how various molecular changes in the centres of the brain, themselves excited by internal or external stimuli, result in those actions and posturings of the muscles which experience leads us to consider as expressive of particular thoughts and feelings.

The book contains nineteen chapters and about fifty illustrations. The movements of the muscles of the face in facial expression, the active and the fixed hand as indicating particular ideas and emotions, the postures of the whole body and of its separate principal parts, expression in the head, and in the eyes, etc., are all considered in detail. The expressions of human as distinct from merely animal feeling, and the changes in expression due to development from infant to adult mental life, or to the approaches of mental imbecility, receive a due share of attention.

In some places the treatment of the subject is rather too technical for easy mastery by the average reader; and some of the terms employed will probably be unfamiliar to such a reader. But in most such instances the information gained will well repay the painstaking necessary to overcome this difficulty.

SENSES AND WILL.*-Although this volume belongs to the International Education Series, it will prove interesting, not to teachers alone. Students of psychology, not already familiar with its author's work, and parents, will certainly read it with eagerness and profit. We heartily accord with what is said by Professor G. Stanley Hall in introducing the American edition: "It should be read by teachers and even by parents of older children, as the best example of the inductive method applied to the study of child-psychology." The same authority on matters of pedagogics declares that this book of Preyer is "the fullest and on the whole the best among all the nearly fourscore studies of young children printed by careful empirical and often thoroughly scientific observers."

How early and in what order do the senses of sight, hearing, *The Mind of the Child. Part I. The Senses and the Will. Observations concerning the Mental Development of the Human Being in the First Years of Life. By W. PREYER. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1888.

feeling (or touch), taste, and smell, and the various so-called organic sensations, developed in the new-born babe? These are among the questions which Professor Preyer undertakes to answer in a thoroughly scientific way. Especially important, of course, is the early development of the sense of sight. Sensibility to light, discrimination of colors, movements of the eye-lids and eyes, direction of the look, seeing near and distant objects, and interpretation of what is seen, are all successively traced.

The development of the Will in connection with impulsive, reflex, instinctive, initiative, expressive, and deliberative movements, is described in the Second Part.

We can assure all those who take an interest in the evolution of child-life, from whatever point of view, that this little volume will well repay a careful reading.

PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY.*-Among the many titles affixed to the name of the author of this treatise, the first is that of "Special pathologist, county insane asylum, Chicago." The method and manners of the book are of a kind happily somewhat less frequent now than a few years since. Yet the phrases, "bewildered metaphysicians," "baleful influence of teleology," etc., which occur here, are not so nearly antiquated as not to have a familiar sound.

Dr. Clevenger treats his readers to considerable valuable and interesting information of a biological character, drawn from not unfamiliar sources, but mingles with it scarcely less of interesting yet exceedingly doubtful conjecture. This he calls sciencethe science of physiology. It is not, however, by any means all science; indeed, much of it is guessing, not to say mythology. For the psychological implications he relies chiefly upon Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin, to whom he accords a vast influence in the evolution of a sensible psychology." Huxley, Wundt, Ribot, Meynert, and Spitzka, moreover, should be accorded full recognition. Nothing in the book shows that the author has any adequate acquaintance with, or even conception of, the modern experimental psychology or the newer forms of introspective psychology. In these matters a more bewildered metaphysician than Dr. Clevenger seems sometimes to become, it would not be easy to find.

66

* Comparative Physiology and Psychology: A Discussion of the Evolution and Relations of the Mind and Body of Man and Animals. By S. V. CLEVENGER, M.D. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co.

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH.*-This third number of the reports of the American Society shows that it is continuing its work with a somewhat accelerating movement. The volume contains an account of the meetings of the Society, and brief reports from the various committees on Thought-Transference, Apparitions, and Haunted Houses, Mediumistic Phenomena, Hypnotic Phenomena, etc. On the whole, the most interesting of its contents are a paper by Professor Pierce, criticizing Gurney's "Phantasms of the Living," Remarks by Gurney on this paper, and a "Rejoinder" by Professor Pierce. General readers as well as professional psychologists will also be interested in examining the results obtained from patients themselves, and tabulated and discussed in Professor James' paper on 66 The Consciousness of Lost Limbs."

THE HEART OF THE CREEDS.-The author of this book affirms that it is the growth of his own sense of need. The need felt was that of a clear, concise, and popular statement of the "rational theology of the early Church and of the best thinkers of our own time," "the undisputed religious principles which make the basis of the Creeds and Institutions of historical Christianity." As to his success there will no doubt be a wide divergence of opinion among his different readers. But we think that one of a candid and fair mind may go through this little book with interest and profit. And few things seem to us more foolish and ineffective than the attempts of the current ecclesiastical orthodoxy to forbid such a writer to speak in the name of Christianity, because his mode of enunciating the essence of Christian truth does not precisely accord with the more familiar terminology.

MISCELLANEOUS.

THE HEATH IN THE WILDERNESS.-Here is a collection of twenty evangelical and practical sermons by the late Dr. Newton * Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research. Damrell & Upham, December, 1887.

The Heart of the Creeds. Historical Religion in the Light of Modern Thought, by ARTHUR WENTWORTH EATON. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1888.

The Heath in the Wilderness, or Sermons to the People. By Rev. RICHARD NEWTON, D.D. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers.