BOOKS.
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THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
IIEnn FRITZ WirrEns has been a member of the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society, a pupil and a friend of Freud : he knew at first hand about those quarrels of personality and those quarrels of idea which made Adler, Stekel and Jung break away from Freud and set up as masters and giants themselves. The quarrels were, in truth, epic : a psycho- analyst, by theory, should be the most self-possessed, the least combative of men, and it is by final differences of nature that these four men were compelled to explosiveness and separation. There was a danger for Herr Wittels, in writing this biography of Sigmund Freud (Allen and Unwin),that he might fall far below his subject and make the energetic and creative, yet clearly-defined, struggle in the Society seem a mere squabble of cranks. But he has done his work quite well ; his exposition of the rival ideas, though biased in favour of Freud, and still more of his own peculiarities of outlook, never abandons dignity and is never wholly at fault in judgment. Anyone who reads his book will feel on much easier terms with psycho-analysis than before ; will become familiar with the lie of the ground and able to form his opinions with some degree of confidence.
Mr. E. Herbert Stone's book on Stonehenge (Scott) is as complete as we could wish. It includes a series of historical drawings, showing how the site looked in earlier centuries ; and all that archaeology, petrology, astronomy, and every other science can tell us he has recorded. An immense volume on The Great Pyramid, by D. Davidson and H. Aldersmith (Williams and Norgate), though it is devoted to making clear " the Divine Message " of the Pyramid, contains a most impressive amount of information on its structure and the scientific calculations which it was built to embody. Mr. Stanley Morrison's Four Centuries of Fine Printing (Beim) must be one of the heaviest and most magnificent volumes ever published. There are over six hundred repro- ductions of the work of presses between 1500 and 1914.
It sounds odd that Messrs. Osbert Sitwell, Eden Phillpotts, Gerald Cumberland and Grant Richards should have arrived at a unanimous verdict on anything : they all decided, how- ever, that a War novel, The Natural Man, by Patrick Miller (Grant Richards), was the best of the novels submitted to their judgment in a recent competition. The Hand of Glory, edited by J. Fairfax Blakeborough, sent by the same pub- lisher, is a good collection of exciting legends from the northern counties of England. Mr. H. Warner Allen gives love and particularity to his description of The Wines of France (T. Fisher. Unwin). M. Jean de Pierrefeu, who wrote the French communiques during the War, has now felt himself at liberty to write an account of the truth as he saw it. In Plutarch Lied (Grant Richards) he is iconoclastic and sensational : three-quarters of a million copies were sold in France.
THE LITERARY EDITOR.
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