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NEW BOOKS. 555 book is his first work of importance. In it his ostensible purpose is to set out, not so much a complete exposition of the methods and results of contemporary psychology as a statement of " the general principles on which it is based, as well as the ways by which these have evolved from philosophic doctrines and antecedent psychology". And he confines himself, of course, to work done in Germany, England, America and France, trusting, as to his own land, that he may help to stimulate the as yet very tender growth in her of psychological research. The com- pilation has occupied some years of labour, and has taken the following shape : A brief introduction on the present position of psychology. Seven very lengthy chapters on (i.) the historical development of psychology, (Li.) definition and scope of it, (iii.) body and mind, (iv.) the methods of psychology, (a) in research, (6) in exposition, (v.) psychical functions, (vi.) consciousness, (vii.) the laws of psychology; conclusion, including brief discussions on theories of " social and historical conscious- ness" and of the immortality of consciousness, and a general summary. There was much to say ; much also is here said. The diction is generally lucid and straightforward, nevertheless the author seems to prefer to more concise methods the rhetorical device of impressing by repetition. To take only one instance, there is scarcely a chapter in which the " intellectualistic " character of English psychology is not set forth and discussed. This plan of " rubbing it in " is not without its advantages where, as in this case and in, alas ! how many other cases of this class of research the book is launched on the world without either index or page reference to the details of its contents. One cannot open the book at hazard or study any one chapter without practically sampling what the writer has to say. On the other hand a good deal of needless diffuseness and repetition might have been avoided to good purpose. And 660 pages is a deal to read. The more need then for more subdivision than is afforded by a few chapters of vast length, and for all the machinery possible by which an author may take his reader by the hand and aid him in the gentle art of selection. Even for the Italian reader, unless he be a scholar of leisure (is there now anywhere such a species ?), the digestion of the work is not made as easy as it might have been. Both the investigator and the learner have their special reasons for requiring many sign-posts and mile-stones. How much more orphaned must the foreign student feel, who, with possibly only a smattering of Italian, has gladly hailed the appearance of Prof. Villa's book as supplying a great want unmet as yet, either wholly or in part, by the psychological literature of his own country ? The work will, in course of time, if that want continues unsatisfied, find its way into translations, and richly deserves such a fate. Meanwhile, many a reader will have to wait whose acquaintance with Italian might, with the aids I have indicated, have proved adequate to his understanding the contents. That the extent of the book's usefulness should be thus handicapped ia the more to be regretted when the special benefit is considered which accrues to the English and the German student through a " historico- critical" comparison of the two chief traditions of constructive psycho- logy as made by one whose country and language are as yet undominated by any such psychological tradition of its own. They learn to know their own tradition from the outside, and to estimate where it is strong or weak in its standpoint and evolution by holding up to it the linea worked out in other schools. And the criterion of efficiency in the compilation of such a comparative study must of course lie in the power shown by the compiler to lay hold of the vertebral features of each school of doctrine and trace their development up to the present day with justice and with sympathy.