Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/133

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NEW BOOKS. 119 criticisms and appreciations of various psychological writings, of Meynert, Mach, Exner, etc. All breathe an enthusiasm for freedom of thought and freedom of spiritual development. The recurring strains are such as the primacy of Psychology, as the final court of appeal in all questions of philosophy, ethics or aesthetics: the conception of philosophy as a Weltanschauungslehre, not a special study ranking alongside of other sciences, but taking its place rather with religion and art ; the impor- tance of the double method in the study of social and mental phenomena, viz. , psychological analysis and historical synthesis : the consistent work- ing out of the principle that all the phenomena of the moral life are bound up with the existence of society, and could have originated only in a social community ; the meaning and value of psychical processes as consisting in their tendency to preserve or intensify the life of the individual or race. J. L. MclNTYRE. Schriften der Gesellschaft fur Psycholog. Forschung. Heft 15 (III. Samm- lung). Leipzig: Earth, 1905. Pp. 110. The present number of the above series of psychological publications contains two essays, the first by Dr. Baerwald, Psychologische Factoren des Modernen Zeitgeistes (pp. 1-85), the other by Dr. Moller, Die Bedeutung des Urteils fur die Auffassung (pp. 87-110). Both papers have drawn their inspiration from L. W. Stern's writings, on the psychology of Individual Differences, and on the psychology of Statement or Assertion. Dr. Baerwald bases his analysis of the " Modern Spirit " on the order or kinds of difference between individual minds to which Galton, Stern, and others, have drawn attention. Thus in the classical or Goethe-period of German literature and art, the prevailing type was the ' formal,' in the modern period the ' material '. The pictorial art of the former laid stress upon drawing, upon exactness and significance of form and outline, in the modern age colour holds the higher place, richness and splendour of colour-combinations, while accuracy of drawing has become the mark of the Philistine. In music, the place of rhythm has been taken by melody or tone-masses, again the material or substance being valued higher than the form or figure or 'scheme'. Similarly the modern spirit has lost interest in abstract thought, and turns with preference everywhere to the concrete, the material, the practical. The former type of mind rests upon Begriffsgefuhlen, i.e., on pleasure felt in the achievement of wide, comprehensive views and principles, or general notions, irrespective of the material content on which these notions, etc., are built. The capacity to feel this pleasure guides the interest and the attention away from the particular to the Idea, from fact to law. Opposed to that type is the concrete, which finds its main interest in detail, in exactness and in mass of knowledge, without regard to its value or its significance. These main differences are worked out for the two periods in question, more especially in regard to the literatures, in a most in- teresting way. The sixth section, on the " Psychology of Mixed Feelings," with the applications in the later section, contains a useful discussion of the aesthetic Emotions, the feelings of the Comic and the Pathetic, the Touching and the Sublime, the Tragic and the Sad. Dr. Holler's paper, written chiefly from the point of view of legal evidence, discusses the relative roles of presentation and judgment in the ' Apprehension ' (Auffassung) of an event. Especially in the case of events or scenes which pass quickly before the eye e.g., an act of violence, there are marked differences in the actual perception or ap-