" THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND . . ."

Tim progress of science until about fifteen years ago was chiefly what we might call objective. We considered processes of manufacture as they affected the product, not as they affected the produoer. We even came to regard such virtues as thrift, foresight, and prudence in the citizen as they affect the body politic rather than as they modified the citizen's own " body natural." The result of regarding things from this point of view has been of the kind that is unavoidable in almost any lop-sided treatment of almost any topic. We intended to produce marmalade, hardware, and calico. We also incidentally produced Dundee, Sheffield, Oldham and Burnley and the inhabitants thereof. These, we are beginning to realize, are somewhat embarrassing by-products. We have at last begun to see that there is another side to the industrial question : that the producer is more important than the% which he produces. Some of us, indeed, see approaching a time when we shall over- emphasize this point of view just as we formerly thought only of the other, and the products of all that he desires may dry up altogether in the interests of the worker. But we are at present far from this dilemma, and there are, besides, other tendencies which seem calculated to counteract this drift quite effectively.

The science of economics has always been a difficult one, and has often embarrassed. its followers by its apparently complete independence of realities. Professor James Dreyer, the author of the twin books upon the nature of man which lie before us,* very properly attributes this to the fact that economics deal with only one set of factors in a compound problem.

We obtain the economic aspect by ruling out that part of the concrete act in which the psychologist is interested, by assuming a society consisting of standard economic individuals, not the concrete human society which is the .primary fact. Psychology takes up the investigation of the activities of human society at the point at which economics, as it were, leaves off by studying the concrete activities of the concrete individuals. . , . The factors which economics does not investigate, which it, as it were, takes for granted, are precisely the factors which in the world of concrete reality give meaning and significance to every economic process, which underlie and maintain all economic activity. Human needs, impulses, and desires constitute the very driving force of economic life. The processes in the economic world are each and all inspired by human. purposes, , carried through by human labour, ingenuity, and skin we speak of eoonornic forces we are speaking abstractly. In strictness there are no separate economic forces. We so designate from our abstract point of view forces which are really either physical or psychological. In all the applied social sciences the problems are psychological as well as economic, and the fundamental problems being human problems are primarily psychological rather than economic."

Professor Dreyer goes on to point out the differences between Industrial Psychology and the scientific management now so prominent in American industrial life. Scientific management has incurred the suspicion of the worker because it confessedly set out to increase production and profits, and because it ap- proached the psychology of the " hands " entirely from the point of view of the management. In vain did economists point out that in the long run the interests of managers and managed were the same ; the truth that the employed may be temporarily exploited for the benefit of the employer in practice nullified the economic truth.

Intelligence tests, vocational tests, efficiency, fatigue, recreation, and lastly the arts of the advertiser and salesman are all touched upon in the book, and the reader who was beforehand conversant with some of the dozens of volumes already published on these subjects will feel something like astonishment at the number of points of view and aspects of the ease which Pitofessor Dreyer has managed to examine in the comparatively small compass of his book.

His work would be a good introduction to the study of these things for any person who had the (by no means universal) capacity of acquiring practical guidance from somewhat abstract statements of general principles. Very much the same comments are applicable to the book's twin, The Psychology of Everday Life. Here, again, we have an exceptionally compendious account of the state of modern inquiries : an account which, though written from a very definite standpoint, gives the reader a certain insight into the theories of several of those schools of thought with which Professor Dreyer is not in agree- ment.

Professor Dreyer regards psychology from the point of view Ths Psychology of Industry. By James Dreyer. London : Methuen. OIL not-l--(2) The Psychology of Everyday Life. Same author and publisher. Vb. net.]

of the metaphysically-minded—such as Henry James, for example—rather than from that of the physician—i.e., the

psycho-analyst. There is & great deal both in Professors Freud and Jung's theories with which he " does not hold," though he

is too wise to underestimate the enormous importance of Freud's investigation into the action of the subconscious. He is, however, in spite of some criticism, in agreement on many points with the psycho-analysts.

We reviewed a short time ago a book by Dr. Wilfrid Lay in which he dealt with the possible interpretation of " supernatural " events from the point of view of psycho- analysis, and remarked how alike were the phenomena of the seance and of the psycho-analyst's consulting- room. On this point Professor Dreyer has apparently inde- pendently reached the same conclusion, although, of course, in this short summarized work he is not able to deal with the ques- tion at such length and cannot bring such convincing testimony in support of his arguments.

He summarizes quite interestingly the conclusions of various schools on that most perplexing question, the laughter of man, but deals very summarily with the conclusion of those psycho- logists who say that man is the only animal that laughs for no better reason than that we do not find among animals " thole peculiar grimaces and signs which we call laughter in the human being."

" To argue therefrom that animals do not laugh is as sound as to argue that the lion must be a vegetarian because we find no knives and forks in his pantry. Psychologically mirth and laughter are much more than the spasmodic eontractions, grimaces, and sounds. That the psychological phenomena are found among lower animals does not admit of a doubt to any one who has carefully watched a puppy, a lamb, or a young rabbit."

In the present writer's opinion Professor Dreyer goes astray in his attempted derivation of artistic creation from the play activity. Play, as the reader is aware, and as Professor Drover agrees, is usually defined as an activity which is valued for the sake of its subjective effect without reference to the outside results produced. In work, on the other hand, the value does reside in the results produced— in an end, that is, outside the activity itself. Here, then, at once is an instance in which Professor Drover's theories will obviously not fit. The fact that in the case of most artists, poets, painters, or what not, the product does not fully realize the hopes and ambitions with which it was begun makes no difference to the general principle that the artist is a creator; the very word "poet " signifies a maker.

We suggest that Professor Drover should read, if ho has not already done so, Miss Jano Harrison's little book, Ancient Art and Ritual, which almost certainly gives a truer view of art as near to the religious emotion, now its accompani- ment and mode of expression, now its substitute.

The emotions and the higher forms of imagination which are involved in or are the mechanism of religion or of art are not given their proper place by Professor Drover. This is a serious fault. The book, however, provides, with this one rather unfor- tunate omission, a wonderfully concise and thorough picture of the present state of inquiry in this field, and we strongly commend both books to ,those general readers—and there are many—who are content to read rather hard for their livings and who find honest food more digestible than pap.