Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/296

B. PEKEZ, LA PSYCHOLOGIE DE L' ENFANT. 283 the impressive contrasts that occur in the everyday successions of natural events, as day and night, noise and silence, pleasure and pain, &c. It is not, however, in dealing with the more abstract principles of psychology that M. Perez shows himself at his best. He has studied the human mind more in nature than in scientific treatises, and his wide experiences enable him to reach many valuable generalisations of a less abstract character. As an example of this happy treatment of the more concrete problems of mind, I may refer to the section on the influence of the feelings on the attention, and more particularly the relation of sympathy to attention. Other illustrations of the same insight into the complex- ity of mental life are found in the treatment of the connexions between reasoning and action and reasoning and feeling. The new volume, like its predecessor, seeks to support its generalisations by facts drawn directly from child-life. As might be expected perhaps, these are on the whole less striking and piquant than those which made the account of the first three years so entertaining. Still even the period between three and seven has its own peculiar charm, and M. Perez has done his best to make his readers feel it. He has evidently taken pains to collect a good number of illustrations, and on the whole they are pertinent and striking, though now and again their connexion with the particular point to be illustrated might, I think, be made somewhat clearer. It may be added that the author has supple- mented the results of his observation of children by some interesting recollections of his own early experiences, and also by well-selected quotations from works of biography and fiction. These last are a feature that deserve special attention, seeing that psychologists as a rule ignore novels altogether. No doubt the novelist's creation is not so valuable scientifically as a real living character ; but it must be remembered that the writer of fiction is bound to be a close observer of mental traits, and that it is reasonable to look in his works for illustrations of psycho- logical truths. The citations from the stories of M. Daudet and of his wife suggest how much valuable material lies ready to the psychologist's hand in the higher departments of fiction. In most cases it is a pleasure to be able to follow M. Perez to the conclusions he reaches. Yet there are one or two exceptions to this rule. Thus I find myself unable to accept the extremely smiling portait of the child which the author offers us under the title " L'enfant optimiste ". " His imaginary griefs (he writes) for he has some are as rare or as shallow as his ideal in all things is limited. All the evils of which we exaggerate the importance, those improbable events of which we make certainties, those evils which come from our imprudence, from our misconduct, or from our laxity, and which compose ninety per cent, of our troubles, imaginary or real, the child knows not, dreads not ; " and so forth. Of course there is a certain amount of truth in all this. But surely there is another side to the