REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
Dr. Schmidkunz's work is one which it is difficult to read, and by no means easy to report upon. Qui trop embrasse peu étreint; and in seeking to extend the notion of 'suggestion' so as to find illustrations of it in every department of human life, the notion itself tends to lose all distinctness, and the author's results become most vague of outline. The book itself, in fact, is little else than a mass of 'suggestions,' humane, unprejudiced, guided by the truest feeling for the facts of human nature, but disconnected, tentative, dubious, and interrogative to such a degree that the reader fairly craves a sharp-cut and decisive formula, even a false one, to give emphasis and relief to the style. So much said, however, it must be immediately added that, like many a magic lantern picture not yet brought to focus, this book shadows forth a mass of fact which will probably some day have to be treated as an organic total, much as Dr. Schmidkunz now treats it, and which little by little will probably become more intelligible in detail.
A glance at the author's divisions will show how he conceives the magnitude of his task. The first eighty-four pages treat of suggestion in general, by objects, by persons, by the subject himself; of the proper way of conceiving of suggestion, of suggestibility, and of the conditions which favor it. The second part, going to page 158, is an account of hypnotism regarded as one of these conditions. The third part, to page 242, aims at the explanation of suggestion by psychological principles. The fourth part, to page 340, draws philosophical and practical reflections, and throws out queries sychological, logical, aesthetical, ethical, sociological, biological, therapeutical, juridical, and religious. Finally a rich collection of bibliographical and other notes and addenda fill the last sixty pages.
Dr. Schmidkunz gives no exact criterion by which to distinguish 'suggestions' from the other influences of our environment or of our inner nature. It would seem from page 54 that any new belief or conduct not preceded by deliberation or articulate reasoning, must be laid to the score of Suggestion. Whatever in our lives follows authority, fashion, or
